The Forbidden City

by Deborah A. Wolf

And I had thought the mask was just an affectation.

  “World peace, as I said, but I will settle for Atualon coming through this war in one piece.”

  “War?”

  “There is no time for a game of spiders-and-shadows, ’Zeina—do not pretend there is.” He leaned back with a tired sigh, the empty cup dangling from his fingertips. “You know as well as I that this spectacle of Wyvernus’s was nothing more than foolery, meant to divert people’s minds from the growing threat. Ka Atu is dying, and the Daemon Emperor would rise to take his place. Shadows and spiders and knives in the dark, Issa Atu.

  “It was intended that Wyvernus should lead the delegation to Khanbul, and never return,” he continued. “Not alive, at any rate. The Great Salt Road is a treacherous place, and our king is not as strong as the people think. Then you return from the dead, dragging this echovete brat home by the ear… you were supposed to stay dead, you know. Some people, I would imagine, are very irritated with you.” He paused and frowned. “I need more usca.” Rising gracefully, he poured himself another shot, knocking this one back as quickly as the first.

  Hafsa Azeina set aside her own glass, and her knuckles whitened as she grasped the wooden arms of her chair. The usca burned in her gut.

  “Whose plan is this?”

  “Who do you think?” he mocked. “Who loves Ka Atu best? Whom does he trust the most? The trusted hand wields the cruelest blade, you know this as well as I do. Better, I should think.”

  “Aasah,” she whispered. “Or…” Leviathus? But she could not say it. Damn the boy, where is he?

  “As I said, your guess is as good as mine. Does it even matter?”

  “Yes. No. I suppose not.” She let go of the chair, if not her anger. “Why have you not come to me sooner?”

  “Now there is a question I can answer,” he responded. “I did not trust you, beautiful lady.”

  She blinked at his sudden honesty.

  “The ne Atu have been dying for so many years, and under such suspicious circumstances… nearly all of them while you were still in residence, I might add. Now you return, on the very eve of the king’s death, most conveniently with his only possible heir in tow. You will forgive me if I found your story somewhat less than convincing.”

  “So what changed your mind?”

  “I have not changed my mind, but time is running out, and I find myself with no other ally. No real option other than to trust you and hope for the best. I have to think that if you were planning to kill my king you would have done it by now, and placed your daughter on the Dragon Throne before she was well enough and prepared enough to fight your influence.” He spread his hands wide. “Ka Atu would have simply forgotten to wake one morning… the use of atulfah has worn his soul thin, he has admitted as much, and no one would suspect a thing. Not in your presence, in any case. As your barbarians say, ‘ehuani.’ There is beauty in truth.”

  Hafsa Azeina said nothing as the taste of heart’s blood flooded her mouth. That is exactly how it would have happened.

  Might still happen.

  Ehuani.

  “Life is pain,” she whispered. “Only death comes easy.” In that bleak moment, she wanted nothing more than to return to the Zeera, where the predators were huge and venomous and honest in their intentions. Where she and Khurra’an would once again be just another terror in the night.

  “Please do not leave us just yet,” Mattu said. “Dragon wakes, woman, you wear your every thought on the skin of your face. I have to wonder how you have survived this long. Yet you are the only one Ka Atu listens to.”

  She snorted. Listen to me? He is a stubborn old goat.

  “The only one he listens to,” Mattu insisted, “and certainly the only one of us he can trust. I have seen him with you, Dreamshifter… and more tellingly, I have seen you look at him. Truly, you wear your heart on your face.” He pulled the mask down over his own features, and the cowl up to conceal the mask, then he strode across the room to reclaim his bag of onions and the shuffling walk of an ancient seller of roots. Shaking his head at her, he slipped from the room.

  “Try not to let your heart get eaten,” he said over his shoulder, “before we figure out a way to save the world.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Twice before in her life, Hannei had journeyed to Min Yaarif, the city between two worlds. Each time, she had gained a name.

  The first time, she had been a babe-in-arms. Her mother, Horsemistress Tisara, had carried her across the Dibris to meet and be named by her father. His name had been Daoud, and he had been one of the ul-Khalma’a, a river pirate. Hannei had never seen him again.

  The second time to the city of slavers, she had been a young warrior-in-waiting, traveling with the Ja’Akari as they escorted a herd of churrim to market in hopes of trading the second-choice animals for a few healthy children. Late one night, while a fellow guard was distracted by the sight of a pretty slave boy, Hannei had caught a thief trying to steal a spotted buck. She had stabbed the man with the pointy end of a borrowed shamsi, and watched trembling as he bled out upon the sand.

  First Warden had gifted that blade to Hannei, had named her Ja’Akari for the first time, in front of her pride-mates.

  On this third and final visit, Min Yaarif was in another world entirely. On this day, Hannei Ja’Akari—now and forever Hannei Kha’Akari—was to be named slave.

  The day was as right and alive as any along the river Dibris. A golden haze hung like a veil over the lands to the east, from which she had been cast. Red stained the sky to the west, a warning to those who would brave the peaks of the Jehannim mountains, or the Seared Lands beyond. The river herself, sharp and silver as an unblooded sword, sliced the two apart as neatly as flesh from bone.

  Hannei let the sights and smells and stench of Min Yaarif blow past her like wind across the Zeera, though it raised no song in her heart. She was as dead inside as Eid Kalmut, the Valley of Death, as empty as a loving cup spilled upon the sand. Ismai rode before her, splendid upon his bright asil. He led her to market like a goat, all the while thinking he had saved her life.

  A life in chains, she thought again, is worth less than a handful of sand in the desert. Better she had died upon the low stone table, that she might seek Tammas upon the Lonely Road.

  Swallowing the bitter thought, she stifled a whimper at the pain it caused her.

  Lirya, riding to one side, glanced down at the prisoner. Her mouth twisted in disgust. “Do you miss your tongue, liar? Does your mouth hurt, murderer?” She spat upon Hannei’s bald head in disgust. “Akari willing, you will feel the loss every moment of your miserable life. If it were up to me, you would be dead already. If it were up to me, you would be walking, not riding so much as a broken-down churra.”

  Unbidden, the voice of her sword sister whispered in Hannei’s ear. How can you walk, if you are dead? Sulema would have laughed. Who ever heard of the walking dead? Stupid as a cup of churra piss, that one.

  Hannei grunted a laugh, but that hurt, too. Getting me in trouble even when you are long gone, she retorted. Typical.

  “You laugh at me?” Lirya drew the lips back from her teeth, and reached for her shamsi. “I will teach you a—”

  “Enough, Lirya.”

  The voice of Sareta, First Warden of the Zeeranim, hacked through the stinking air like a flensing knife. “One does not waste words on the Kha’Akari.” She rode into view astride Hannei’s own mare. “After all… she cannot answer.” And she smiled.

  Hannei pressed the aching stump of her tongue hard against the roof of her mouth, hard enough that she could taste—or remember the taste of—blood. Her heart, still beating, urged her to vengeance. In that moment, Hannei learned that she could still feel, after all. She felt hatred.

  In that moment Hannei chose a name for herself.

  I am Kishah, she thought, stealing the ancient word for her own. I am vengeance, and these are my people now, for the rest of my life.

  However long that might be.

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nbsp; The stench and noise deepened to a fine stew as they drew nearer the slave houses. Hannei’s vision narrowed so that all she could see was the tall wooden stage upon which she might soon stand, bound and naked, to be sold for a pig, a couple of goats, a handful of beans. So had she watched slaves dispatched in the past, but she had never seen them.

  Now, as a man with a hooked pole shepherded a naked old man up the steps and onto the next leg of his wretched journey, Hannei watched her own fate unfolding before her eyes, and this time she saw clearly. She saw the whip marks and bruises upon the old man’s begrimed skin, saw how one ankle turned under his slight weight, likely due to an old, untreated injury. His hair, shorn close so as to discourage lice, was bald in patches as if it had been torn from his head, and his eyes…

  Those eyes. Hannei wondered what those eyes had seen, to make them go dead like that. Though Hannei had thought herself past all fear she shivered, and her hands broke out in a clammy sweat. Will my eyes come to look like that?

  “Afraid, liar?” Lirya tossed her warrior’s braids, mocking Hannei’s loss. “You should be. I hear there is a demand for your kind, in the whore pits. Perhaps you will get lucky, and someone will buy your skinny ass for fish food. Perhaps…”

  “Enough, Ja’Akari. It is done.”

  Ismai turned in his saddle so suddenly that his lovely mare Ehuani did an agitated dance. Lirya’s teeth snapped shut and her eyes widened in fury at having been addressed so, especially before outlanders, but she desisted. Ismai had, after all, lost his entire family.

  As I have lost mine, Hannei thought, even as Ismai’s eyes slid past hers. My family, and more. Though he had declared her innocent and had spared her life—such as it was—he obviously was not convinced of her innocence. That hurt as much as the loss of her tongue. “It is done,” Ismai had said, but for Hannei, the nightmare had only begun.

  You never said much, anyway, the ghost of Sulema teased. Now, if I had lost my tongue, that would be a tragedy.

  Hannei almost smiled behind her gag, trying to imagine Sulema Ja’Akari without a voice. Somehow, she was sure, her sword sister would have talked her way out of this storm of shit. Sulema would never allow herself to be so helpless.

  But I am not Sulema.

  Akari Sun Dragon gazed down impassively as the old man was sold for less than a handful of beans, and the slave handler stepped down from the platform to approach their little group. He favored them with a wide smile, and spoke in halting Zeerani.

  “Ah, children of the other half of the world that is not our half! What are you doing this evening, showing your asses at mealtime?”

  Hannei blinked. Lirya sniggered. Sareta rode to the head of the group, face impassive.

  “Khutlani,” she chided, then in tradespeak, “Do not speak our words. Your tongue is too dull to cut such fine cloth. We are here to sell this”—she gestured to Hannei, even as Lirya stepped aside to reveal their captor—“as well as the churra it sits upon. We have no further use for either of them.”

  It was the man’s turn to blink. He was short, and wide, and round, and his confusion made him look like a turtle basking on a log.

  “You are selling a warr—”

  “Hsst!” Lirya and Isara hissed, as one.

  “Khutlani,” Sareta repeated, her face as smooth and expressionless as river-stones. “This one is Kha’Akari, nothing more. Akari Sun Dragon has turned his face from her, and now we do the same. What will you offer us?”

  As the lies fell from Sareta’s lips, Akari Sun Dragon looked down upon his chosen warrior, his champion, the girl who had loved him with all her heart for as long as she could remember… and once more, he did nothing.

  Akari has turned his face from me, Hannei thought, poking at the idea even as she poked the stump of a tongue against her teeth, testing the pain, tasting it. First Warrior of the Zeeranim speaks falsehoods in his name… and he does nothing. She sells me before my sisters, my brothers, and they do nothing. She poked at the pain, prodded it, finally embraced it with her whole heart.

  And she felt…

  Nothing.

  She did not watch as the man poured a fistful of salt tablets into Sareta’s waiting palm, did not react as the people for whom she had vowed to die turned their backs on her and left without so much as a backward glance. Nor did she spare them a tear. As Ismai himself had said, it is done.

  The man snapped his fat fingers and a pair of scrawny dust-skinned lads darted from a low stone stable. They dragged her down from the back of her churra, letting her fall to the ground—badly, since her arms were still bound. Pain lanced through her jaw as she struck it. They led the bawling animal away, likely to be sold at a better price than she had fetched. Hannei winced as the fat man hauled her upright. Her still-swollen face throbbed and her tongue was a ball of wet fire. He scowled, grabbing her jaw in both hands and wrenching her mouth open.

  Hannei blinked back tears of pain as he yanked the gag down and thrust his dirty fingers between her teeth. At the last, even her body betrayed her. She shivered from her shorn scalp to her torn feet, and it was all she could do not to piss herself in terror.

  “Cut-tongue,” he growled in trade. “Filthy savages cheated me. She’s pretty enough, I suppose, once you get her washed. Are you intact, I wonder, little desert slut? Let us see…” The fat little man let go of her jaw and, quick as a snake, grabbed her by the pussy.

  The world went red.

  Hannei slammed the crown of her head into the man’s face and was rewarded with a wet crunch as bones gave way. As he staggered back she brought her knees up into his crotch, one-two, channeling rage and heartbreak and betrayal into the need to hurt, to kill. Even as the man fell Hannei spun and leapt, pummeling him with both feet. He flopped backward like a speared fish, shrieking and spraying blood. Hannei leapt and drove her heel down, screaming wordless profanities as she aimed for the man’s exposed throat, intending to end his life.

  That blow never landed.

  Something hit Hannei hard on one side and sent her flying. She ducked her chin, hit the ground with one shoulder and rolled as she had been taught, once to take the shock of landing, twice to gain momentum, three times and she gained her feet to stand in a low crouch, panting and growling as onlookers gaped at the sight of a barbarian warrior standing over the fallen slaver.

  Grab me by the pussy, will you, fat outlander? She spat dirt—or drooled dirt, rather, as lack of a tongue made even such a simple thing impossible—and waited for them to kill her. She was a warrior. He should have expected she would hit like a girl.

  It is not so hard to die, she thought. The dreamshifter had been right. Life is pain. Only death comes easy.

  A curious noise to her left drew Hannei’s attention. She cut her eyes to the side, not wanting to divert her focus from the small group of men who struggled to raise the spluttering, bawling slaver to his feet.

  The breath caught in her throat.

  The thing that had sent her sprawling stood not an arm’s reach from her side. Scaled lips drew back from row upon row of yellowed teeth as long as her fingers. A crest of brilliant gold and blue feathers rose along the top of its head and ran down its spine… but it was no bird. Iridescent scales in greens and golds and blues shone in the sunlight and whispered as it swayed this way and that, but it was no snake, not even a lionsnake.

  It was nearly as tall as she, lean and muscled like a cat, and Hannei had no doubt that it could kill her as easily as she had beaten the outland slaver.

  What is it? she thought, for one moment forgetting the misery her life had become. It is beautiful.

  It wanted to eat her.

  Hannei shrugged. It was a good day to die, after all. She took a step toward the beast. It blinked at her and hissed, rattling a fine set of claws held before its scaled breast, and the tight crest rose higher. Another step and it crouched low, preparing to leap.

  A hand closed over Hannei’s shoulder, holding her back. Warm breath hissed into her ear.
/>   “Girl.” A woman’s voice, and it spoke Zeerani. “You really fucked up.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  For as long as he could remember, Ismai had held a dream of his life, like a painting in one of his mother’s books. A vision of riding across the desert on a fine horse, with a vash’ai by his side, surrounded by warriors. Had there been a painter among them on this fine day, she might have captured just such a scene with her brushes and pigments, to hang on the walls of Aish Kalumm, the city of the Zeeranim.

  The image he had held in his heart was so at odds with the truth that the images bled together until all that was left was an ugly mess the color of dried blood, leached of all beauty.

  They rode north with the waters of the Dibris to one side and the wicked peaks of the Jehannim too close for comfort on the other. Not so long ago, Ismai might have slipped away from the group and explored the foothills, seeking wights and spider druids and adventure. He might have ridden hard to the north, to Bayyid Eidtein and the Great Salt Road, and from there to Atualon. Surely Sulema had had her fill of brazen bare-legged men by now. She would see him in the touar, with his fine horse and his Ruh’ayya, and she would…

  She would do nothing, he thought, sinking lower in the saddle. Even if I could find her among all those people, she is the daughter of the Dragon King, and will be queen one day. I was nothing to her when she rode among the Ja’Akari, and I would be nothing to her now. Less than nothing.

  You are something to me, Ruh’ayya whispered in his mind. He thought she sounded hurt.

  And you are everything to me, my beauty, he told her. You are the fire in my sky.

  I am, she thought. You are a good human.

  He almost smiled at that.

  “I am pleased to see you in better spirits, Ja’Sajani.” Isara rode up on his left. Her fine flaxen stallion, Nahhar, whickered at Ehuani. “The heart should not linger on what is past. Live in the day, as does your Ruh’ayya.”

  Ismai shot the warrior a sideways glance. Her braids were freshly oiled, and her skin as well. She glowed with health, the very picture of saghaani. Her vest was beaded in blues and greens—the colors of fertility—and her dark eyes flashed interest as she stared directly at him.