Sandstorm

by Christopher Rowe

  But for all their differences, there was something they shared, some ineffable quality Cephas could not quite put his finger on. He could not say why, but he felt sure that if he had ever gone onto Azad’s canvas and found one of these men waiting for him, he would have been facing his last opponent.

  With a sigh, Mattias settled down next to Tobin and leaned his canes against the table. The goliath made one of his attempts at a whisper.

  “Corvus says we’re to call him WeavePasha. And it will make his grandchildren angry if we do not.”

  Mattias shot a sour look at Tobin but did not answer. He drew a dagger from his belt, stabbed a thick slice of spiced beef, and sniffed it before depositing it on the empty plate before him.

  “Do not fret, son of stone,” the WeavePasha said to Tobin, returning to his place between Cephas and Ariella. “My grandchildren know there are exceptions granted in certain rare cases.”

  The WeavePasha indicated Mattias’s canes. “Those still serve you well, I trust? My vizars have written monographs about their making. They say they’re among my finest work.”

  Mattias discovered the straw stuck in his hair. He pulled it out and inserted it in a bowl of bright green jelly, where it stood straight up, like a lone tree on a plain of quivering mint. “They were a present from Corvus. It seemed impolite to ask where he got them. Usually, it’s safe to assume any gift he gives is valuable, and that he did not pay the full asking price. If he paid anything at all.”

  A robed man, his face hidden deep in a cowl, shuffled up to the WeavePasha and whispered to him. The WeavePasha listened, but his eyes never left Mattias.

  When the aide withdrew, the WeavePasha stood. “Alas, I must leave you to your own devices for now,” he said. “The demands of the city’s citizenry must be met, even when there is the pleasant diversion offered by honored guests to consider.”

  He bowed to each of them in turn, and took a deep formal step back from the table. Cephas mimicked the nod and folding of hands he saw Ariella make out of the corner of his eye.

  The WeavePasha yet had words for the travelers, though, at least for two of them. “Northerner,” he said, addressing Mattias, “the prices I demand for my work are always paid in full, even those not measured in coins, and even when the payment is owed by Corvus Nightfeather.” Then he turned to Shan. “And speaking of that worthy one, you, adept, will no doubt discover his whereabouts long before my guardsmen do. Send him to me at once.”

  Mattias threw his hand up in a casual wave as the absolute master of the city departed. He pulled another slice of spiced meat from the tray, and for the first time, Cephas noticed there were flies buzzing around the heaps of food.

  “Always good to be back in Almraiven,” said Mattias. “Did he tell you how old this place is?”

  Ariella’s fellow Akanûlans came to the garden before Corvus returned. Except for the absent ringmaster, Ariella was the only one of the travelers from Argentor free to leave the WeavePasha’s gardens. But she had chosen to spend the night in one of the tents and stayed on after the morning meal.

  “They’ll come and find me soon enough,” she’d told Cephas and Tobin, after Mattias and the twins withdrew to their tents. “They can only plot against each other for so long before they realize that plotting requires wits. Much easier to chide me for my many lapses.”

  Chief among these, apparently, was that Ariella was not firesouled like the two genasi who were soon after escorted into the gardens. One of the men was barely taller than Corvus, and the other was almost the same height as Cephas, but each was enormously fat, and both had flickering flames dancing from the glowing orange szuldar lines that webbed their ruddy bronze scalps, the fire mimicking hair. They wore fancifully tailored breeches of a dark orange weave, detailed with red gemstones patterned as flames. These were tucked into high, black leather boots that matched the greatcoats spilling down from their rounded shoulders, boots and coats alike also decorated with fiery patterns.

  Tobin eyed the men dubiously as they approached. “What is their act?” he asked.

  This delighted Ariella, who clapped. “Oh, let’s allow them to demonstrate for themselves, why don’t we?”

  The two men strode toward them in a curious, halting gait. After a moment, Cephas realized that they were attempting to walk in lockstep, but the differences in the length of their strides were so great that this was nearly impossible.

  “They must have to practice walking like that,” he murmured to himself, but Ariella heard him.

  “You have no idea,” she said.

  “Ariella Kulmina,” the tall one said, while Cephas happened to be looking at the shorter one. He was speaking simultaneously, more or less, with his taller companion. But they were not speaking in chorus. The shorter man was speaking a different language, one Cephas felt he would recognize if the man would speak louder. “You stretch the bonds of propriety, again.” The taller one waited for a moment for his fellow to catch up. “You flout the rules of diplomacy, again. You abandon your chambers unannounced, again.”

  With the repetitions of “you” and “again” and the curious halt-and-go manner the firesouled had of speaking, Cephas was able to hear the shorter one well enough to recognize individual words.

  “He’s speaking Alzhedo,” he said. “Like the freedmen. Or almost.” Cephas frowned. “It is something very like it, anyway.”

  Both of the firesouled stopped speaking and stared at him, aghast.

  “You … what? How dare you suggest—” The short one snapped his chubby lips together briefly on his companion’s outburst, then dutifully took up his simultaneous translation.

  “Save the outrage for your letters to your superiors, Lavacre,” Ariella said. “Cephas is not a citizen of Akanûl—or of anywhere else as far as I’ve been able to determine. He has no reason to know about your sect’s linguistic pretences.”

  The taller man’s bright eyes darkened. “Flamburnt speaks the sacred language of Fire, earthsouled. You named a human tongue.”

  Cephas shrugged. “You’ll perhaps be interested to know that the sacred language of Fire is very like Alzhedo. They could be related.”

  Lavacre sputtered again, and Ariella motioned for peace. “The Firestorm Cabal believes that the various languages of the djinn, the efreet, the dao, and so on, are holy tongues given to the genasi as tools to help keep the bloodlines apart and incorruptible,” she said, and this calmed the men more than her placating gesture.

  Cephas asked, “So, these languages are not related to the one spoken by humans from Calimport?”

  “Oh,” said Ariella, “they certainly are. But try convincing one of these fools of that and you’ve set yourself an impossible task.”

  The firesouled spit with outrage. Tobin, who had watched the entire exchange silently until then, spoke. “If it is a clowning tradition, I am sorry to say it is one I do not know. I do not think it a very popular one.”

  Ariella frowned. “More popular than one would hope, unfortunately.”

  When Lavacre responded, he spoke the supposedly holy language. Cephas understood what he said because the shorter firesouled, Flamburnt, began speaking in the Common trade tongue, and finally took care to project. The man’s voice was unexpectedly high.

  “The Firestorm Cabal, windsouled, owes its popularity to the justness of our cause.” The short man paused, then spoke on after exchanging a glance with Lavacre. Some shift in their responsibilities had occurred, because now it was the taller man who muttered translations a half syllable behind Flamburnt’s pronouncements.

  “The Firestorm Cabal stands the long watches, the Firestorm Cabal keeps the history of the genasi as writ and rule, the Cabal assumes the risks in ensuring our future.”

  The last part of the little man’s speech had the sound of a story, and it was clearly something familiar to Lavacre, since the taller man finished his translation before Flamburnt stopped speaking. “We are heroes to the common people, and examples to our youth,” the short
man finished.

  “By which he means,” said Ariella, “that these two are even worse troublemakers than most Firestormers, and when our government heard they were claiming their exile was instead some sort of diplomatic mission, my guild was charged with sending someone to balance their lies.”

  Cephas asked, “So you are an ambassador?”

  Ariella grinned. “Not a bit. Just a courier and sworn witness who drew the short straw back in the guildhall of the Airsteppers. To be honest, this part of the world is considered a barbaric wasteland by most in my homeland.”

  To Cephas’s surprise, the two firesouled nodded in agreement with Ariella, though they also took her explanation as their cue to switch off speaking roles again.

  “The stewards of Akanûl consider us troublemakers because our activities expose their incompetence. Their spies decided our arguments were convincing too many among the young!”

  “These two worked the street corner outside the Cabal’s Motherhouse in the capital, Airspur,” Ariella explained. “People had started avoiding the area. Local merchants complained, mothers worried about their children passing by, that sort of thing.”

  “So, to the people in power,” Cephas said, “you were … annoyances?”

  “Not simply annoyances,” Lavacre said. “Threats! To their criminal regime!”

  “His Grace the WeavePasha seems to think their presence here is of greater importance than you do, Ariella,” Tobin observed.

  The way the courier cocked her head to one side reminded Cephas of Corvus. “He does. Finding out why that is the case,” she said, “has been the most interesting challenge of this assignment.”

  She looked at Cephas. “Until recently, anyway.”

  As soon as it became apparent that Ariella’s firesouled countrymen had come to the palace simply to chide her for taking on a mission for the human WeavePasha, she enacted the strategy she assured Cephas was the most effective when faced with Firestormers—she walked away.

  “You two should come along,” she told Tobin and Cephas. “You two,” she said to Flamburnt and Lavacre, “should go … cabal.”

  As she spoke, Tobin muttered something deep in the back of his throat. Then he joined them in wandering away from the tents and table. His pursed lips soon began to betray him, and not long after, his enormous, infectious grin split his face.

  “What is it, Tobin?” Cephas asked, glad to see the goliath smiling.

  “I spoke my clan’s language back there, when Ariella sent those two men away. It is much like Dwarvish, Corvus says.”

  Cephas smiled. “What did you say to them?”

  Ariella answered, “Come, Cephas, you know what he said. ‘You two should go cabal.’ ”

  “Yes!” said Tobin. “Like them with their language for posturing under the language for talking! Although,” he continued, growing serious, “I did not match you exactly, Ariella, because if we have a word for ‘cabal,’ it was never taught to me. I told them they should go enrich the soil of the mushroom beds with bat guano. The word for that sounds very much like cabal.”

  Ariella made a choking sound, and Cephas said, “Perhaps they mean much the same thing.”

  Tobin shook his head. “It would be a happy coincidence, Cephas, but I am afraid that it is not so. It is a very important task, the fertilizing, for the whole community. What those men do may be very important, but I believe it is important only to them.”

  “And to others who share their impoverished notion of what community means,” said Ariella. She peered up at the big man. “You are very wise, Tobin.”

  “It is a requirement for clowning.” He nodded, a hint of sadness coloring the words. “Now I must leave you. Mattias asked Cynda and me to meet the people bringing food to Trill. Cynda is to check that they don’t bring too much, and I am to carry the rest.”

  “You are kind as well as wise, then,” said Ariella. “Though I suspect Trill would believe you kinder if you let the WeavePasha present her with his whole goat herd. But I’m curious, why doesn’t Mattias go himself?”

  Tobin paused. “I think he does not want to risk encountering the WeavePasha again,” he said. “There is old trouble there, I think.”

  Ariella nodded in sympathy. “That’s the worst kind. Go in peace, Tobin. Maybe you can properly introduce me to Trill once she’s satisfied her appetite.”

  “From what I have seen in my time with the circus,” Cephas said, waving good-bye to Tobin, “that’s the same as saying you don’t want to meet her at all.”

  The pair of them followed a graveled path along a brook of deep green water. The current of the stream was curious. It rushed or lingered according to a force unrelated to the gentle slope it ran down.

  Ariella watched him study the water. “I believe it’s a sort of instrument—the sound of the water on the rocks makes a song.”

  Cephas shook his head in wonder. “I suppose nothing should surprise me in this place,” he said. “The world really is like a storybook.”

  “I don’t know, Cephas. Much of the world is not as magical as these gardens. All of this”—she waved at the profusion of plants, all bearing fruits and flowers in a riot of colors—“the pasha weaves it with his spells. There are too many places where the only things that grow are misery and hopelessness.”

  Cephas agreed. “Like Jazeerijah,” he said.

  The silver-skinned woman closed her eyes. “I am sorry, Cephas. I am a fool. Of course, you know there are terrible places in the world. You know it better than me.”

  Cephas held up his hand, indicating that she should not worry. “No, no, you’re not a fool. It seems a long time ago, now. And misery and … hopelessness?” He looked at her for confirmation that this was the word she had used, and she nodded. “Those are in stories, too, though I’m learning that Azad read only the stories that left no doubts. Or perhaps he changed them in a way that fixed the odds, as on the canvas.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” said Ariella.

  “The canvas,” he said. “You know the arenas? The fights and other games? That’s the kind of slave Azad and the freedmen believed they had made of me. A gladiator.”

  “They believed it,” said Ariella. “But you didn’t?”

  “I didn’t then,” he said. He felt his broad face wrinkle as the idea troubled him. “But the fix, I was saying. The crowds that come to the Games, they come to see the fighting, but also to lay wagers. Which gladiator will be the first to draw blood? Will a beast in the bait-frenzy fight or flee? Who will live and who will die? Those sorts of things.”

  They came to a bench and sat. Ariella took his hand, and Cephas reminded himself that the WeavePasha had done the same thing, a companionable gesture during conversation.

  “The stable owner, that was Azad, he makes gold off all the bets, whether his fighters win or lose. The gamemaster, and this was also Azad, makes gold from all the bets, too. But Jazeerijah belonged to Azad alone, and he could also place bets. And since he chose the combatants, and he controlled the conditions of the game …”

  “Then he could fix the outcome,” Ariella said. “He knew how to bet, because he knew in advance who would live and who would die.”

  “Who would win and who would lose,” Cephas gently corrected her. “But it amounted to the same thing, usually.”

  She gazed at him in a way that made something gather in his chest, not the earth-force but something new, and just as powerful.

  “And you always won?” she asked him.

  He shook his head. “I always lived. But there were times I would not fight. There were matches I could force Azad to call because I found some way to cheat death. I learned early on …” He trailed off, thinking. “I don’t remember a time before I knew that Azad would never kill me. He put me in terrible fights, or Shaneerah did, anyway, but he wouldn’t kill me. Beat and starve me, yes,” he said with a laugh, but she did not laugh along with him.

  “So, that’s one of the things I knew. I still know it, maybe,
one of the only things that doesn’t come from stories. I know how to fight and win, and how to fight and lose. I know thirty-one ways to block the swing of a morning star, and I know that when Talid is drunk, he always pulls the whip back early, so you just have to flinch at the right time and he’ll think he’s struck you. And that Azad the Free will not kill me.”

  Ariella took his other hand. Cephas thought if what was in his heart had been the earth-force, he could have set the entire city to rumbling. “And you used those things to survive,” she said. “You fixed the game.”

  Cephas said, “Not as well as Azad. There were times … There were times when I was the one holding the morning star, and I had to let it fall.”

  Ariella squeezed his hands. “Corvus told me this Jazeerijah was an earthmote. That there was no hope of escape.”

  To her surprise, Cephas laughed.

  “No hope? Corvus is wrong. There was little in the way of possibility, but hope? I can tell you of at least six hundred and forty. If hope had wings, some of them might even have worked.”

  Ariella gave him a curious smile. “You always talk like an old story.”

  Cephas tried again. “I mean that, if I were windsouled, like you, I could have floated down from Jazeerijah. No trick of Azad’s could have kept me from touching the air the way he kept me from touching the earth. Perhaps I could have learned to fly.”

  The silvered szuldar lines on Ariella’s face flashed. Her deep blue eyes sparked gold, and Cephas realized he was seeing the reflection of his own glowing pattern in her gaze.

  “Perhaps,” she said, “you still can.”

  If this room is all you have seen of the world,