The Kingdoms of Dust

by Amanda Downum

  He should speak to Samar. The Asalar’s threat couldn’t go unanswered. He had sworn the empress an oath when he accepted her offer of employment. Not the sort that could break a mage’s power if forsworn, but honor meant something to men and jinn alike, and he had no desire to surrender his for cowardice.

  But he couldn’t face another conversation with mortals. Another hour spent pretending to be tame.

  Pretending? mocked the bitter voice inside him.

  When the midnight bells faded and the fever in his brain hadn’t cooled, Asheris wrapped himself in a threadbare burnous and spells of invisibility and left the palace through a servant’s gate. A visit to a night bazaar fetched him what he needed; a satchel swung heavy at his hip when he left.

  He might be mad, but not yet foolish: He took a circuitous route through the city, twisting and doubling back till he was satisfied he wasn’t followed. Only then did he turn west, toward the outskirts of Ta’ashlan.

  He would never have permitted himself an errand like this before the ghost wind struck. Should word of it reach the court, not even his position as the empress’s pet would protect him from the scandal. Although if Ahmar truly knew his secret…

  What could they do against the Asalar, the second most powerful figurehead of the church? Assassins could find their way inside temples as easily as palaces, but a bloody schism between the Lion Throne and the Illumined Chair was the last thing Samar needed her reign remembered by.

  Why did he care? The scheming of men had made him a demon, cast out of the glass towers of Mazikeen and anathema to the people he now lived among. The last emperor’s greed had enslaved him—why serve his replacement? Because she offered him scraps and a place to sleep?

  Such kindness turned wolves to dogs.

  He passed under the arch of the aqueduct gate, noting the drowsing guard with grim amusement. The smell of wet seeped through the stone. This was the final ring of walls. Beyond, houses and farms and shops swept out from the city, tattered as the hem of a beggar’s robe. Especially tattered here to the west—no one wanted a view of Qarafis. The dead city.

  In the shadow of the outer wall he halted, stretching out his senses to be sure no one had crept up during his moment of distraction. He felt the dull spark of the sleeping guard, and hundreds of others clustered in nearby buildings—some brighter with health or magic, some flickering like fireflies as death drew near. He had grown used to the stench of the city, but now it rolled over him with the strength of a khamsin: warm flesh, washed and unwashed; the piss and excrement of men and beasts; spices and cooking grease; seared meat and plants; the pungency of hay and horse-flesh from a nearby stable.

  Asheris shook his head against a sneeze and turned away. The breeze from the west smelled of old stone and old death, the distant sweetness of the River Ash. Clean and soothing after the miasma of the living city.

  The necropolis began far from the last houses, a walled cemetery half a river-measure in length. Beyond the walls of Qarafis, scrubby hills rolled toward the Ash, and beyond that lay the burning expanse of Al-Reshara. And farther still, the shining towers of Mazikeen.

  The city of glass was barred to him. The city of the dead was not.

  Qarafis housed more than old bones and jackals. Mortals lived in the northern tip of the sprawl of tombs. Morticians—funeral workers and those mages for whom the cold call of necromancy was too strong to ignore. They dwelled in repurposed tombs, raised livestock and crops between mausoleums; only here, with only each other and the dead for company, could they put aside the veils and wrappings that they wore among the living.

  Would Isyllt retire here when the empress had no further use for her? Perhaps he would join her, when his unchanging youth could no longer be disguised.

  The gates of Qarafis stood open even in the dead of night. Death, after all, could not be bound or barred. The twisted branches of a salt cedar tangled in one half of the tall iron gate.

  Tombs clustered close inside, curving domes and beehives beside octagonal mausoleums and small square crypts, punctuated by the sharp spikes of obelisks. One broad avenue led into the center of the necropolis—the other paths were narrow and winding, treacherous with broken stones and tangled weeds. The moon was setting and a veil of dust dimmed the stars. Even to inhuman eyes, the cemetery was a collection of shadows and jumbled black shapes. A cat cried nearby, and the shrill warble of a jackal rose in the distance.

  Asheris had often wondered why a people who feared the touch of death so much kept graveyards at all, instead of merely burning their dead. Of course, he also wondered why they bothered to fear death, when all mortals were born to it.

  After several stubbed toes and unspoken curses, he reached the living quarter. The last milky moonlight bled away and the crypt-houses were dark and silent. Mortals didn’t travel after moonset if they could help it, without even the reflected light of the sun to keep hungry spirits away. If any Fata’im lingered in Qarafis, this was their hour.

  In the sea of darkness, one lamp burned.

  The lit house stood away from the others, surrounded by the widest yard. Lamplight fell from one small window, as did the smell of blood. Not human blood, as many rumors suggested, but his nape prickled all the same.

  Asheris-the-man had heard stories about Raisa the butcher well before he gained a second soul, but discounted them as petty superstition. Afterward, Asheris-the-demon had wondered about the stories, but was too insecure in his mortal guise to follow up on them. The last thing he needed was to be caught speaking with a woman said to be inhuman.

  The door of the narrow house stood open to the night, propped with a polished stone. Someone hummed inside. The humming stopped when Asheris rapped on the door frame, and a woman’s voice invited him in.

  A curtain divided the long room. The front was clean and homey, if cramped. Rugs and cushions softened the floor, and a narrow couch lay against one wall. Dry herbs and polished chimes hung from the ceiling; the cracked plaster had been painted recently, a rich blue. Niches in the walls once meant for coffins were now stuffed with books and lamps and jars of beans and honey.

  The curtain parted and a woman stepped through, bringing the smell of blood with her. A veil covered her face, though her sleeves were rolled up and her hands streaked with red. Gore smeared her apron, but her white robes beneath it were immaculate. Her skin was a pale brown, like tea with too much milk, her long eyes an indeterminate shade of sandy taupe, framed by thick sooty lashes.

  “Well.” Her eyes narrowed as she inspected him; creases spread at their corners, but her arms were sinewy and firm. He couldn’t guess her age. “When the jackals told me a stranger was coming, I wasn’t sure what to expect. You’re not here to rob me, are you?” Her voice was low and smoky and veined with amusement.

  “I’m not, mistress.” He bowed low, and his satchel slid forward off his hip. “In fact, I brought gifts, to lessen my imposition at such an hour.”

  “Mistress? Gifts? Perhaps you have the wrong crypt. You do realize I’m an untouchable and a carnifex, not a perfumed courtier?”

  “If you’re Raisa, then I have the right address. No one’s station is an excuse for rudeness. Though you must forgive me if I don’t kiss your hands.”

  She looked down at her bloody hands and laughed; her nails were long and very thick. Asheris fought down an anticipatory shiver—if the stories were true, her human guise was one of the best he’d ever seen.

  Soft parcels dented under his fingers as he knelt to unpack his bag. The bitter richness of organ meat perfumed the air. Sweetbreads—lamb’s heart and calf’s cheek and beef tongue. A carven box held incense, sandalwood and labdanum and sticky dragon’s blood. Blood and smoke, traditional gifts to the Fata’im.

  “Lovely,” Raisa said, “but don’t you know that human meat is sweeter?” Her eyes glinted.

  “So I’ve heard, but I’m afraid this was the best I could manage. They count the humans, you see, in case one goes missing.”

  Rais
a’s white-veiled head tilted with her laugh. The Fata rippled with the sound, a quicksilver flicker. Asheris’s heart climbed in his chest.

  “Sit,” she bade him when her shoulders stilled. “I’ll put these on ice.”

  She returned clean-handed and without the apron, carrying a bottle of wine and two goblets on a tray. Nothing rattled as she sank into a cross-legged seat. “You’ve brought me fine gifts, but not yet given your name. Would you think me greedy for asking it?”

  “No, mistress. But will you permit me to close the door? My business tonight is not for stray ears.”

  Golden-grey eyes regarded him for a moment. “As you wish. We in Qarafis understand discretion.”

  The room warmed quickly with the door shut. Raisa turned down the lamp flame and lit a candle instead. From that in turn she lit a cone of incense and dropped it in a brazier. Smoke rose in lazy coils, musky resin mingling with the scent of blood and wine.

  The smell reminded him of Ahmar’s cold smile. Of Jirair’s smile so many years ago. His throat closed beneath the ghost of a collar as he knelt before Raisa.

  “My name is Asheris al Seth,” he said, marking the quirk of her eyebrow. He was in this too far to back out now. “And I make one final gift to you, and pray you keep it.”

  Bowing his head, Asheris uncased his wings. Their light rose to fill the narrow house, pinions brushing plaster walls. He waited for a scream, a curse, anything to prove him wrong, to prove him doomed.

  Instead Raisa let out a long breath. “Oh, serafi,” she whispered. “What have you done?”

  Serafi. Burning one. Most jinn would say he was no longer worthy of such an epithet, but his heart-of-fire flickered all the same.

  “It was not of my choosing.” He blinked prickling human eyes. “Now I merely make the best of it.”

  “We tell stories of you in Carathis,” she breathed. “The lost jinni. I thought you were only a parable against mortal treachery.” Her veil rippled with an indrawn breath and she rocked back on her heels. “Or are you a lure for it?”

  Asheris spread his hands. “No trap, I swear it. On the Tree of Sirité I swear.” The jinn oath came clumsy to his tongue, but Raisa relaxed to hear it. “I only want answers, and the pleasure of your company.” He tried to reclaim his easy tone; she was the first spirit he’d seen since he returned from Symir, the first to speak to him in far longer. He would have lain his head in her lap and wept, if either of their dignities could have borne it.

  “Then sit and drink. But put those away,” she said, gesturing to his wings, “before you set the rugs on fire.”

  “Yes, mistress.” Preternatural feathers furled and vanished once more into flesh, but he felt them still, like the phantom of severed limbs.

  She snorted. “Call me Raisa.”

  She poured wine, the line of her wrist as elegant as any courtier’s. Though jinn often made jokes about the grace and breeding of ghuls, Asheris remembered a delegation from the Bone Queen sent to Mazikeen. He had danced with a ghul maiden at the ball in their honor, and she had been as graceful as any jinni on her clawed toes.

  The wine was a good one, a rich Chassut red. Raisa frowned at her cup before she drank, and finally reached for the pin that held her veil in place. “Since you’ve been so forthcoming with me, serafi, I’ll return the favor.” She drew the cloth aside, revealing the face of a beautiful woman of middle years, black-lipped like a dog. Her smile bared delicate fangs. Unlike his perfect human prison, a spirit’s guise would always have a flaw. “It’s such a relief not to drink under that accursed thing. Red wine stains worse than blood.”

  “Asheris, please.” He paused. “How have you lived here so long? And why?”

  “The fear and isolation help. My neighbors may suspect something, but they’re inclined to overlook any peculiarities. They certainly won’t invite the Unconquered Sun in to look for heretics. As to why—” She smiled over the rim of her goblet. “Would you like a sad, romantic story? Perhaps I loved the Bone Queen’s daughter, above my station. For my hubris I was exiled, to make my way on the surface alone. Or maybe I’m a spy.”

  Asheris returned the smile, but the idea of ghul scouts advancing on Ta’ashlan sent a chill snaking down his back. He didn’t press the question.

  They drank in silence for a time, until Raisa set down her cup. “You said you wanted answers. What are you hunting, besides the truth of me?”

  “The ghost wind. And the mages called the quiet men.”

  Black lips pursed. “Dangerous prey. Both of them.”

  “What do you know of either?”

  “Rumor and speculation. Legends and ancient history. And perhaps a bit of truth. My people are curious, after all, and less…insular than yours.” She shrugged apologetically, but it was true.

  “A bit of truth is more than I have. Will you tell me?”

  She touched her tongue to her upper lip in a pensive gesture. “Why not?” she said at last. “We have hours yet till dawn.” She refilled both their cups and sat back on the cushions.

  “Centuries ago, long before the birth of Queen Assar, Al-Reshara was called the kingdom of Aaliban…”

  * * *

  Raisa filled the night with stories, till Asheris thought his head would split from their weight. Some were familiar tales, told to fledgling jinn in their rookeries, but with a foreign slant. Others were entirely strange. Some might indeed have been true, and those terrified him more than any retold haunting or cataclysm. The wine ran out long before her words.

  When the night faded and dawn was a growing pressure in the east, she finally fell silent. “That’s not all, but perhaps enough for one night.”

  “Thank you.” His voice was rough, as though he’d been the one talking. His brain burned, the stifling fog of humanity stripped away.

  “Thank you, for the gifts and the company. Perhaps I’m lonelier out here than I’ve realized.” She smiled, then lifted her veil again. “But I don’t think we should make a habit of it. My position is perilous enough—yours is wirewalking.”

  “You’re right, but I wish it were otherwise.”

  “There are safer places for such as us. Nahasheen would welcome you.”

  Asheris blinked. “The Tower of Whispers? I thought it was a myth.”

  “Silly jinni. What do you they teach you in Mazikeen? No, Nahasheen is very real, and the teachings of Eblis are followed there.”

  Nearly all his knowledge of the Eblite heresy had come from his human life. Eblis was called a man or a spirit or a demon depending on the book, but most accounts agreed that he had preached the commonality of flesh and Fata, peace between the worlds. The church had driven his followers out of Assar, but legend held they traveled west across the burning sands, to build a fortress in the mountains on the Ninayan border. A perilous path to follow chasing a rumor.

  Raisa led him to the door. The morning breeze was a shock after the warmth of the blue room. “I’m no haruspex, to read your future in blood, but I know a dark road when I see one. Walk it carefully.” She laid a hand on his cheek like a benediction. “I’ll ask the jackals to look after you.”

  He turned his head to kiss the hollow of her palm. Her smile reached her eyes, but they were sad as well. She closed the door, leaving him alone in the ashen gloom of the necropolis.

  CHAPTER 9

  Isyllt had thought all her tears behind her, but she cried again the first night at sea. Perhaps it was the irrevocable sense of loss she felt as the shores of Erebos faded into the distance, as though she would never see any of the places she’d called home again. Perhaps it was the sea rocking her like long-faded memories of her mother’s arms. Perhaps salt called to salt.

  She woke the next morning and scrubbed the brine from her cheeks. She was no sibyl to hear her future in the sighing of the waves. There was no point in looking back.

  Moth’s bags sat on the other side of the closet-size cabin they shared, but the girl’s bunk looked untouched. Isyllt was no stranger to sleepless nights, b
ut they became less and less appealing with each passing year.

  The sun was high and fierce and the wind carved the water into glittering whitecaps. The deck tilted rhythmically, tarred boards warm under her bare feet. The roar of the sea rose around her, punctuated by creaking ropes and the shouts of sailors. Salt and sun weathered everyone alike, but from their voices she thought the crew were mostly Assari. The last time she’d sailed had been to and from Symir, and most of those voyages were a blur—on the journey south she’d been distracted with grief over her break with Kiril; on the trip home she’d been sick with fever and her freshly crippled hand. This voyage might be a happier one, but she wasn’t willing to bet on that yet.

  Laughter and raised voices drew her to the main deck, where she found a ring of sailors gathered before the mast. Inside, Adam and Siddir circled with knives drawn. Moth stood on the sideline, gesturing to one of the sailors—wagering, Isyllt suspected.

  Adam was still too thin, ribs corrugating his sides and the knobs of his spine sharp through his skin, but his color was healthy again. Black stubble covered his scalp, not yet long enough to lock. More reassuring was the grace he’d regained. He crouched lightly on the balls of his feet, teeth bared, waiting for Siddir to attack.

  Siddir smiled in return, close-lipped and cat-smug. He moved like a cat, too, languid and intent, one hand rising and falling in lazy feints. But despite his slow, controlled movements, he couldn’t disguise his stiff left leg.

  He wasn’t trying to, Isyllt realized a moment later—he was using it to lure Adam close. A feinting stumble drew the mercenary in, only for Siddir to catch his wrist left-handed. A sailor’s shoulder blocked Isyllt’s view; when she craned her neck to see around him, Adam was on his knees, his right arm twisted behind him. A small red blossom unfolded on Siddir’s shoulder.

  Moth groaned, and the sailor beside her laughed.