The Forbidden City

by Deborah A. Wolf

His friends were nowhere that he could see them, and the people stared back at him impassively, waiting for him to bind himself to the woman who had murdered their kin. Mouth filled with a taste of bitter ash, heart heavy as stone, Ismai turned to the priestess of Thoth.

  “Are these things acceptable to you, Ismai son of Nurati?” she asked again through clenched teeth. Adalia, standing just behind Mastersmith Hadid, placed her hand lightly upon the hilt of her shamsi.

  “They—”

  “—are not,” Hadid finished. The older man leapt to his feet, knocking Adalia to the ground. He grabbed Ehuani’s reins from the startled Ja’Akari who held them, and threw them to Ismai. “Go!” he shouted, and again, “Go!” Adalia, red-faced and bug-eyed with fury, grabbed Hadid by the shoulder and brought her shamsi perilously close to his throat.

  Ismai stood for a moment gaping like a fool, reins clutched reflexively to his chest.

  “I cannot—”

  “You can,” Hadid said, as calmly as if he were discussing the best way to put a fine edge on a sword. “You must. We both know that things are only going to get worse here. This venom which has been brought into our midst cannot be healed from within. Go, find help. Do not give them what they want, Ismai.”

  All around them people began shouting, but it was as if they were far away and speaking another language. Ismai ignored them completely. In that moment, only the mastersmith and the Ja’Sajani truly existed.

  “If I do not, they will kill you.”

  “No,” Hadid smiled, the sweetest smile Ismai had ever seen. “They will not kill me. Go.” With that, he grabbed Adalia’s wrist with both of his hands and, still smiling, thrust her shamsi through his own neck.

  Ismai screamed.

  The front of the blade sliced neatly through the front of Hadid’s throat and the mastersmith toppled backward, hot red blood spurting from his neck, spraying a fine red mist over Ismai, his touar, his horse, his whole world.

  Go, Hadid had urged.

  So Ismai went.

  He grabbed Ehuani’s reins in one hand, her mane in his other, and pushed himself up onto her back. Her silver hide was so slick with blood that he nearly slipped off the other side, but he clung as well he could. Leaning far forward onto her neck he kicked his beloved mare harder than he had ever kicked any horse in his life.

  “Het het!” he called, giving Ehuani her head.

  Even as the pale mare gathered her strength, even as her front lifted light as silk and her haunches bunched behind him, Hassetha grabbed for Ismai’s leg and nearly unseated him. He had a moment—only just—to see that she held in her other hand a small black bottle. The snake priestess tilted her head up, her nostrils flared wide, and she spat full into his face.

  The world went red.

  Ismai’s face exploded in pain. It burned. He opened his mouth to scream, but instead of drawing breath he sucked in fire so that his insides burned, too. There was pain. It stretched across his life like the red sky stretched across the Zeera. Deep in his mind, Ruh’ayya roared, but he could not understand her words, drowned as he was in agony.

  My eyes, he screamed at her. My face, my eyes, I am burning—

  Then Ehuani launched herself into the air, and they flew.

  FIFTY-ONE

  The blooms of spring had long since died, withered and fallen and lost. Tender petals once woven into garlands for a lover’s neck, or tossed with laughing wishes into the Kaapua, were crushed into dust beneath the soldiers’ feet, their fragrances lost to rot. But the trees were still the same, and the blackthorn. Roots reached deep and limbs stretched wide as tender green leaves burst forth to lick hungrily at the sky, eager for the Sun Dragon’s power.

  The Yellow Road prince, Daeborn, sea-born, cursed and blessed by men, stepped mindfully through the low brush, careful lest he step wrong on a tussock and twist an ankle, or snap a twig beneath his boot and startle the hunters’ prey. It had been less than a two-moon since he had last seen these trees, their bare branches, less than a six-moon since he had left his mother’s home in Bizhan to walk the Yellow Road. Yet it seemed to Jian that he had walked a lifetime, that he had set foot upon an endless road with neither sleep nor death at journey’s end.

  Well… maybe death.

  He stopped at the edge of the woods, where the willow trees and the birch gave way to the old forest, and the world went dark and green, and signaled to Perri, first and most beloved of his dammati.

  Pig tracks, he signed as if they were still villagers, as if pig was the reason he had sharpened his sword that morning. Though Perri carried three spears, fine and steel-tipped, they did not have the men for such quarry, nor raptors. Three spears, two youths, and a quiescent sword—hardly preparation to hunt a young sow, much less the bristle-backed, tusked beast whose spoor they followed.

  Perri followed him, trusting, without question. They were bloodsworn, closer than brothers. Jian’s hand closed on the hilt of his sword and he closed his eyes, wishing he could deny the vision of his heart as easily. He felt Perri step close and opened his eyes to his friend’s calm face, his one eye deep with trust and sorrowing.

  “It is as good a place as any,” Perri said. “I am ready, Sen-Baradam.” He dropped his spears to the ground.

  “Perri?” Jian’s breath left him as his chest clenched shut.

  “I know as well as you,” his dammati said, “that you have not been sent here to kill pig, Sen-Baradam. Xienpei has commanded you to kill me, has she not?”

  Jian’s hand fell away from his sword. “She has,” he admitted. “I am to kill you and return to her with your heart, as a test of my loyalty. And if I fail—”

  “She will kill Tiungpei.”

  “Yes. I am sorry.”

  Perri was silent for a long moment, then he shrugged. His one eye was dry and cold. He had not cried since the Inseeing, nor would he cry ever again.

  “I am not sorry.” He reached up and began to unbuckle his breastplate. The issuq emblazoned across his chest flashed cobalt in the afternoon sun.

  “What are you doing?” Jian was stunned.

  “You are my friend. My brother.” Perri’s breastplate fell away. He wore a white silk shirt beneath. “You are my Sen-Baradam, and I am sworn to you. My life is yours, my blood a coin for you to spend as you wish.”

  An image came to Jian’s mind of three blood pennies, now tucked safely away with his childhood treasures. A book, a handful of pearls, the tooth of a shongwei. Mine to spend as I wish, he thought, but is this how I choose to spend it? Is this the darkest wish of my heart?

  Perri raised his arms to either side. His face was still and cool as sea-glass.

  I think not. I think… He drew his sword. Perri nodded and closed his eye, waiting for death. Jian gripped bare steel sharp as death’s kiss just below the hilt until the blue steel was slippery with his own blood, and then he drew back and slapped Perri hard, leaving hot streaks of blood across his face.

  The dammati staggered back, touched his cheek, and then stared without expression at his bloodied fingertips.

  “What of the test of loyalty?”

  “I pass the test.” Jian wiped his bloodied sword on Perri’s white silk tunic, sheathed it again, and smiled. “Come, brother, put that armor back on and hand me one of those spears. It is time for us to go hunting.”

  * * *

  The shadows were long, the ground cooling, and his feet were dragging by the time Jian returned to the Yellow Palace. He was ushered without comment through the bronze doors, up and through the wide, winding hallways, into the presence of Xienpei.

  The yendaeshi sat before a small fire, her eyes half closed in apparent bliss as three lashai combed and oiled her long, dark hair. Jian glanced idly around the room. He had never set foot in the yendaeshi quarters, and was surprised to find them as bare and comfortless as any whore’s.

  Fitting, he thought, considering the role Xienpei plays in the emperor’s court. Jian went to one knee and presented his offering to her. The hear
t of a young pig, wrapped in Perri’s white silk shirt. After some time, Xienpei slid her eyes toward Jian. She did not turn her head, nor smile, nor beckon him closer.

  “Ah, so you have decided to return at last, Jian Sen-Baradam,” she said in a mild voice. “I had wondered whether you became lost.”

  He dipped his head in obeisance, and the heart he held in his hands was not nearly so dead or cold as the one in his breast. Still, he held his voice steady and answered.

  “I have done as you commanded, Yendaeshi.”

  “Have you?” she asked. She waved the lashai aside, and her hair fell about her shoulders like a mantle of night as she sat forward, eyes hungry, mouth cruel. “I ask so little of you, boy, and I offer you so much.” She shook her head and sighed in mock sorrow, but her eyes were hot coals in a face white with fury.

  Jian held the pig’s heart higher, thrust it toward her, hoping that he did not sound as desperate as he felt. It had all seemed so easy, out in the woods.

  “I have brought you—”

  “The heart of a pig,” she spat, nostrils flaring, jeweled teeth flashing in the firelight. “You take me for an idiot.”

  “I—”

  “Enough.” Xienpei’s calm was worse, much worse than her fury. She smiled a little, leaned back in her chair, and the lashai resumed brushing her hair as if nothing had happened. “Enough. I have warned you, little prince, against playing games with me. Apparently you believe my words to be as empty as your own head.” She snapped her fingers. Jian tried to rise up, but strong hands on his shoulders pushed him down, down onto both knees, back bent, as the pig’s heart fell from his grasp and rolled across the floor, leaving a trail of cold gore. “Perhaps this will convince you that I mean what I say, Sen-Baradam.”

  The hands gripped harder and Jian winced as Naruteo’s red and black boots strode past him. The bull-shouldered youth was dressed in fighting leathers made for sparring, and he smiled a tight smile of triumph as he took his place by Xienpei’s side.

  “You called for me, Yendaeshi?” His eyes never left Jian’s face.

  “Yes, Sen-Baradam.” She reached up a languid hand and stroked the side of Naruteo’s face. “I sent a boy to do a man’s job. Would you be so kind as to finish this small task for me?”

  “Of course, Yendaeshi.”

  Xienpei smiled as four of Naruteo’s dammati strode past, dragging a bloodied and nearly unconscious Perri between them. Jian cried out and tried to struggle free, but one of the lashai who held Jian’s shoulders drew back and kicked him in the jaw, so that he collapsed with a groan.

  “Attend, Daechen Jian,” Xienpei sang out in a voice like a young girl’s laugh. A boot crushed his head to the floor and someone sat on his legs, pinning him, as Perri was dragged before his face. Naruteo met his eyes, spat, and drew his bright sword.

  “Watch and learn, little Issuq,” he said, curling his lip in disdain. “This is how one bloods a new blade, and rises to power in the emperor’s court.”

  Naruteo’s bloodsworn dragged their prisoner upright by the arms. Perri’s face was swollen, cut, and bloodied almost beyond recognition, but his one eye stared straight into Jian’s heart, and his cut lips pulled up into a bloodied and fearless smile.

  He winked.

  “Sen-Baradam,” he croaked. “Jai tu wai, my friend. I will wait for you beside the Lonely R—”

  Perri’s last word was cut into pieces by a high, thin shriek as Naruteo’s treacherous blade flashed and fell, biting into the soft flesh and nearly severing his head from his shoulders. Naruteo grunted, placing one booted foot on Perri’s back and pulling his blade free so that Perri fell facedown to lie twitching on the floor, blood spraying from the terrible wound in crimson spurts. The air thickened with the smell of blood and shit and the sharp tang of death. Then it rang with laughter and the sound of Perri’s feet scraping across the floorboards.

  Three names twice shall slay him—

  “Jai tu wai, my friend”

  —and Perri’s had been the first.

  A growl rose in Jian, deep in the pit where his heart had been. It rose like a wave and drowned the sounds of the end of his world. His fingers dug deep into the soft wood, tearing deep furrows as he launched himself up at the lashai who had held him down. The pale face showed no shock, no fear even as Jian’s hand shot forward and slapped the man’s head so hard it flopped backward onto his spine with a snap.

  Naruteo opened his mouth to shout, but his voice was drowned in the raging of Jian’s soul. He lowered his sword to point at Jian, but it was as if he and his dammati moved through water, through mud, crawling so feebly and so slowly that it was a simple thing for Jian to blow through them, drawing his own blade, scattering swords and men like fish torn from the sea.

  Jian raged at the death of his bloodsworn. Naruteo raised his sword to parry but it was too little, too late. Not even thousand-folded steel sung to life by the light of the moons and quenched in the body of an innocent could stand against the wrath of the sea king’s son. The bright steel shattered as Jian’s blade whispered its dark song down, down, through the air, through the ties of blood and bone and broken promises.

  It cleaved Naruteo’s helm and the skull within it.

  Xienpei shrieked, and Jian looked up, chest heaving, still growling low in his throat. The yendaeshi still sat upon her chair, but one wooden arm had been severed neatly, and she clutched at her own arm as blood blossomed bright through her yellow silk robes. The bodies of the lashai lay piled about her, along with those of Naruteo’s bloodsworn and the bullish youth himself, not nearly as impressive now that the top of his head was missing.

  He had a brain after all, Jian observed. Pity he never learned to use it. The room trembled as the doors behind Jian crashed open. Yellow Daechen in robes, in armor, in their underrobes—a few in nothing but their own skins—filled the room.

  “Seize him!” Xienpei shrieked, jeweled teeth bright and bloody in the dying light. “Stop him!”

  Strange eyes—round eyes, slit eyes, sloe eyes, and hawkish—stared at her, then turned to Jian. One by one the yellow Daechen fell to their knees, wrists bared and held upward as they offered fealty. He took a step toward Xienpei, and another, flicking Naruteo’s blood from his blade. Oddly enough, there was no sense of anticipation, or victory. Rather he was calm, as if every step he had taken in his life had prepared him for this moment.

  “Daechen Jian,” Xienpei said, “stop this at once.”

  Jian raised his sword high. It trembled, as if hot with the rage he could no longer feel.

  “Jian Sen-Baradam,” she pleaded, soft voice breaking like waves upon the rocky shore. “Please. Please—”

  “Jai tu wai,” he told her, and his blade bit deep.

  There was silence after that.

  Somewhere in the dark, a nightingale sang.

  FIFTY-TWO

  Hafsa Azeina crept through the Dreaming Lands quiet as the memory of an ordinary day. Bereft of her instruments of death, no longer assisted by her young apprentice or strengthened by her bond with a vash’ai, she was more naked here in this land than she had been at the moment of birth. More naked, perhaps, as then she had been covered in the blood of innocence.

  I am not here, she told the strange green grass as it bowed beneath her weight. I am not here, she told the low trees as she ducked and dodged between the leafed branches. I am not here, she told the wind, I am most certainly not here.

  So the grass sprang up behind her, unmarred. The trees’ branches snapped back into place unbowed, unbroken. The wind carried no scent of her blood, for the land believed her. As for the one who had breathed this land to life in the long ago, whose flesh was the earth, whose hair was the trees, whose breath was the very air—she was not deceived.

  Even as the dreamshifter hunted these forbidden paths there came to her dreaming ears the hollowed-out and desperate cries of the hounds as they bayed hungry, hungry, and the sound of drums beating thrrrrum thrrrrummm thhhhrumble—doom, thrrr
rrum thrrrrummm thrrrrrumble—doom doom.

  Hafsa Azeina stepped more lightly still. She made no more noise than the shadow of a shadow, and walked so deftly upon the land that she no longer had to beg the forgetfulness of grass or tree or wind. They never dreamed she was there.

  But the one who had blooded this land in the long ago, who had dreamed it to life from song and sorrow and shadows—she was not deceived. Even as the dreamshifter opened her waking eyes, the better to see her way in this dark place, there shivered through the air a single golden note, long and low and lovely as the first dawn of time, and the world stood still. The dreamshifter, trembling with exertion, wove for herself a hiding place from fugue and shadows and the cobwebs of old dreams.

  I am not here, she told herself, I was never here. So convincing she was, so sweet her song, that she believed with every fiber of her being. Deep within her concealment she began to fade from the Dreaming Lands, to unravel and drift away back, back to the land of waking and sunlight and harsh truths, but the one who had hunted these lands for ages unmourned was not deceived.

  Her hounds bayed ouuuuu-ouuuuuu, her steed’s hooves threw sparks where they struck the rocky path, and the tooooook-toooook-toooookiaaaahhhh of her horn blasted through the dreamshifter’s hiding place, bursting it asunder and leaving her exposed to the eyes, the hounds, and the arrows of the Huntress.

  Hafsa Azeina stood still while the hounds flowed around her, red-eyed, red-tongued, and slavering. Black as a starless night, no two were the same. Some of them were long creatures, lean and clean-limbed, with ears long and silky. Others were hunch-backed, strong and thick as bulls. And there was a third kind, twisted and wretched to look upon, hairless, pitiless things of hide and bone and spite. None of them came closer to the dreamshifter than the edge of the clearing in which she made her final stand, but neither did they need to. They had been commanded not to kill, but to seek, and to hold.

  This kill belonged to the Huntress.

  Courage, Annu.

  Hafsa Azeina looked down in surprise. There at her feet sat Basta, more beloved than self, whom she had murdered and who, apparently, had decided not to stay dead after all.