The Forbidden City

by Deborah A. Wolf

  “What music might a dreamshifter make, with the heart of the Dragon King?” Ani did not know whether to scream, or laugh, or cry. She felt as if she might puke up every meal she had ever eaten. “What might she not do, with that blood upon her lips? Has she gone mad?”

  “Truly you do not know,” Bretan whispered. He lifted his gaze from the charred table to look into her eyes. “How could you not know? She was your friend. Do you Zeeranim have no souls?”

  The breath stopped in her chest and Ani hunched forward, shaking her head in denial.

  “Know what?”

  “The queen is dead, as well. Dead, in her chambers, just like the king. Nothing was missing,” he hurried to add as she raised her hot eyes to his. “She was just… dead.”

  “And Sulema?” My Sulema, oh my child. Oh daughter of my heart, not you too…

  Bretan hesitated. “Gone, they say. Gone, without a trace.”

  “Dead,” she whispered. “Murdered.” The bones in their bag were singing to her again, a song of ash and fire. I could kill them all.

  “Well…” Bretan pursed his lips, looked at her carefully out the corners of his eyes. Around them, those who had been laid low by Ani’s fire had begun to stir. “Maybe not. Not many people know this, but her horse disappeared, too, and many of her belongings. Zeerani things, mostly. Her bow, her sword… it is said that perhaps Sulema killed both her parents, that it was a Zeerani conspiracy all along.”

  “Who says these things?” Her heart had begun to beat again, crippled and painful and slow.

  “Pythos and his folk, mostly. He put it about that Wyvernus was to name him heir, and since the king’s death…”

  “Pythos? Heir?” Now Ani let the bag drop to the floor, and the bones within chittered angrily. She set her elbows on the table, her head in her hands, and closed her eyes against the dim light. “I leave my girl alone in this city for half a year, and everything goes to shit.”

  The fire in her bones burned low, and Ani began to weep.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  Soutan handed her a nondescript bundle. “As you requested, Meissati. Though I fail to see how even these can help get you into Atukos. You hardly look like a Draik.” He cupped his hands before his chest, puckered his lips, and batted his eyes. The boy seemed to have found some of his missing sass, though none of his quick smiles quite reached his eyes.

  “Impertinent brat,” she said, but her heart was not in it. Her heart was not in anything. Still, Ani drew aside the top rag—an old kamish, far from home—and tossed it aside. Air hissed through her teeth as the gold of a draik’s helm winked up at her. “How did you… Never mind, I do not want to know.”

  “Ah, but it is a grand tale of bravery and derring-do,” Soutan protested, striking a dramatic pose. “Are you certain you do not wish to hear it? A tale to tell your grand-brats, for sure.”

  “I am certain.” There would be no grand-brats for her, however.

  “Ah,” he said, disappointed. “Well, to tell you the truth, I am fucking one of the wash maids.”

  “Only one?” Bretan asked. He had entered the room and was shaking his head at the youth. “You are losing your touch, brother.”

  “Well, one at a time, anyway. I—”

  “Sssst,” Ani hissed. She drew the bundle open and laid out everything it contained. A complete draik’s uniform from helm to smallclothes, and a sword besides, short and ugly but serviceable. She nodded, satisfied. “I do not wish to hear your tales of sexual conquest, cub. I do need you to leave. Both of you. Now.”

  “What are you going to do?” Soutan’s eyes were ripe with curiosity. “Magic?”

  “I am going to undress,” she snapped. “Now, unless you wish an eyeful of my scarred old tits…?” She had not seen young men scurry so quickly since the last time russet ridgebacks had gotten loose in the wardens’ quarters.

  In truth, it was not her scarred old flesh Ani had wanted to hide, but the whole, strong flesh of youth that she still kept concealed beneath loose clothing. Not of her youth, either. Ani could not remember a time when her own skin had been so smooth, unmarked by lash or blade or hard living. The little finger of her left hand no longer canted out at an odd angle, neither of her knees hurt, and both shoulders swung as freely as if they had never been dislocated.

  Damn Inna’hael, what has he done to me? Who am I, now, in this strange new body? If I ever get hold of that louse-ridden cat—

  She pushed the thought aside and finished dressing herself in the uniform of a Draiksguard. In order to confront Inna’hael, she would first have to find him, out in the vast wilds of the vash’ai pridelands. Before she could do that, she would have to survive this day. Neither was likely, and so there was no use fretting over it.

  The uniform was loose and ill fitting, likely meant to cover a frame much larger and more male than her own. Ani needed no polished glass to tell her that never in a fucktillion moons would she pass for a member of the Draiksguard.

  She smiled a small and secret smile.

  Ani would not pass… but he might.

  Taking the bag of bones, she spilled its contents onto the table, then caught the skull as it would have rolled away. She brought it up before her face, waggling a finger in admonition as if this were one of the pride’s cubs she had been tasked with raising.

  “Ah, now,” she told it, “there will be none of that. You have work yet to do, my boy.” These bones, the bones she had sent Khoroush-Il-mannech to fetch for her, had not been long without flesh. Istaza Ani would have demanded to know whence they had come, and what had happened to their owner—and how she, herself, could condone such a thing. Was she now no better than Hafsa Azeina?

  Bonesinger Ani dismissed the thought with an impatient flick of her fingers. Hafsa Azeina was dead, and who else might dare to chide her? As she laid the bones out in their places, Ani began to sing, just as she and her mother had done so many times, so long ago.

  Ghar-mah qarc-ap-teh domma’esh et ghar-mah batasoreh,

  Ghar-mah batasoreh domma’esh et ghar-mah kat-pat-a’a!…

  The skull laid just so, and the delicate clavicle—which for some reason had always been her favorite. Sternum and vertebrae, long bones and short, and every tiny bit of his fingers and toes, she laid them each out in their turn, in the proper order, and she crooned to them with as much love as any mother might sing to her child.

  “Be-me-lath-u’on sa’otani-noa ah-Sajani’oa-e leka’a!”

  “Leko’a!” She shouted the last word, and as she did her voice broke. It grew deeper, much more resonant, so much so that she coughed at the strange feel of it in her throat. She pounded her hairy chest with a hairy fist and laughed a harsh, masculine laugh.

  Akari above, that feels so strange. She squeezed her big fists, wriggled her big toes, and peeked inside the waistband of her kilt. And that feels more than strange. She let the waistband fall shut again and decided to pretend she had not seen such a thing. She had done murder and worse, now, but murder at least was a natural thing.

  This was just plain wrong.

  Bretan and Soutan burst into the room, short swords drawn, alarmed no doubt by the sound of male laughter. At the sight of her—him—standing there, they raised their swords and charged.

  “Aat-aat!” Ani shouted, and coughed again. She held both hands up, palms out. How did men ever accomplish anything, with these hams stuck on the ends of their arms? “Give me a minute to get this shit figured out, before you go killing me.”

  Bretan stopped so abruptly that his brother ran into him and they both almost fell over. His jaw dropped halfway to his chest.

  “Ani?”

  “In the flesh.” She cleared her throat and spat. That worked, at least. “Though whose flesh, I am not entirely certain.”

  “You are a bonesinger?” Soutan’s voice climbed to a squeak. “A bonesinger?”

  “Impossible,” Bretan said. His eyes had gone wide and round and white about the edges. “The Dziranim are gone, long gone.”r />
  “I am the last,” Ani said, folding her arms across her hairy chest. It itched. “The last of my tribe, the last of my kind.”

  “The lost tribe,” Soutan whispered. He punched his brother on the shoulder. “Show her. Show her. You have to… Mother would wish it.” Bretan turned his head to stare at the youth, then back to Ani. His eyes were dark and strange.

  “When you return, Bonesinger,” he said at last, “my mother will wish to speak to you. We have much to discuss, we small people of the world. Much to offer one another, perhaps.” He reached up and took hold of his bull’s horn helm.

  “What—” Ani began, but her deep voice choked off as the enormous young man removed his helm.

  His helm, but not his horns.

  “Ohhhhh,” Ani breathed. “Oh, shit.”

  “Exactly,” Soutan agreed. He smiled, and as he did so he dropped the glamour that had hidden his too-sharp features, grinned at her with too-sharp teeth. “Yours is not the only lost tribe, Dzirani. You are not as alone in this world as you think.”

  “Daeborn,” Ani acknowledged. Her massive new heart pounded in her hairy new chest, and she inclined her head toward the two brothers. “Long have our people been allies. We shall have much to discuss upon my return, ehuani. If I return.”

  “If you return,” Bretan agreed, bowing his horned head to her. He smiled. “As the worlds meet, Dzirani, so shall we again. Of this I have no doubt.”

  * * *

  As the brothers had given her a disguise in which to enter Atukos, so too did they give her an excuse. The brothers were well known to the fortress guards, and it was not unusual that a member of the Draiksguard might escort them as they brought a gift of fine liqueurs and cheeses to tempt the palate of the new Dragon King. As they neared the kitchens, Ani raised her head and took a deep, appreciative sniff.

  There is always time to stop and smell the bread, she thought. Even on the last day of your life. Especially on the last day of your life.

  “Do you remember the way?” Bretan whispered.

  “I do.”

  “We could go with you,” Soutan offered. “At least one of us.”

  “No, but thank you for the offer.” She was impatient to be off, truth be told, and they would simply slow her down. “The absence of either of you would be noticed. I will see you again, if I return—”

  “When you return.” Bretan touched his bull’s horn helm, and winked. “Until the worlds meet again, Dzirani.”

  “Until then,” she agreed, and watched the two young men continue down the hallway, bearing their bottles and casks. Theirs was a heavy burden to bear. But not nearly as heavy as my own.

  The bones of the Atualonian man whispered to her of the ways and roads of Atukos till she could have navigated the fortress in her sleep, yet still she stepped gently, carefully. It was likely that she would die this day, but it was not quite certain—at least so she hoped. In any case she very much wanted to carry out this final duty before she was slaughtered.

  Bretan and Soutan had told her of the rumors, that the Dragon King’s body lay in state in a secret room, and would soon be interred with the bones of the kings who had gone before him. The body of Hafsa Azeina, that outlander queen who was accused of his murder, was another matter entirely.

  Her corpse had been set upon a high wall, impaled upon an iron spike, subject to wind and weather and whichever birds of prey might wish to feast and shit upon her flesh. There she would hang until every bit of her had rotted away, unmourned, unsung, unloved, despised in death even as she had been in life.

  Ah, but there was one who loved you, Ani thought, one who loves you still. She turned a corner and nearly ran into a young woman clad in maroon and gray, with hair the color of sandalwood and eyes gray as a stormy sky.

  “Oh!” the girl cried, and a hand fluttered to her mouth. “You gave me such a… Jennet? Jennet?? Where have you been, you two-timing goat-assed whelp of a—”

  Ani held one hand up to the girl’s face and began to sing. I am sorry, she thought, as the slow, cool words wound round the girl’s bones and dragged her down into unwilling slumber. The lass would wake confused and sick, wondering why she had dreamed of her absent lover… but she would wake. I am so sorry.

  The way was long, but her victims mercifully few. Atukos was dark, dead as true stone and nearly empty. Those who were forced by duty to brave those brooding halls scurried about with their heads down and with no wish to speak to anyone. Soon enough she reached the high walkway, the narrow path lined on either side with unspeakably crusted iron spikes. Three bodies rotted here, in this sky chamber, beneath the harsh gaze of Akari. One was a man, naked and without legs. One was a half-grown person of indeterminate gender. And the last…

  Oh, thought Ani, and her massive man’s heart crumpled. Oh, my beloved. Oh, my friend.

  Sheathing her short sword, she reached up and lifted what was left of Hafsa Azeina from the cold iron that pinned her fast. Never minding the stench, the gore, never minding the sight of her friend’s smashed face and half-flayed corpse, she held close the body of her dearest and oldest companion, and kissed her blood-matted, gore-matted, moonsilk hair.

  “Oh, my love,” she intoned, and the voice that issued from her throat was her own. Not even a bonesinger’s magic could deny the power of a broken heart. “Oh, my friend. What have they done to you, what have they done…”

  She shrugged out of the armor and removed the silk undershirt she wore, so that she could wrap her friend’s body in it. Most of the blood was dried, and it hardly bled through at all as she cradled the pale bundle in her arms as once she had cradled her child. A new song rose in her heart, the song of the Zeera, slow and mournful and vicious, and as she gathered the too-light bundle and began the long trek upward she began to sing. Soft it was at first, this song, but it rang true in the silent chambers of her heart, the silent chambers of Atukos. These angry echoes lent a strength and breadth to the notes that had waves of red-gold power rippling along the path before her.

  Never in her life had Ani felt so powerful. Never had she wished for it, for any part of it. She strode up and through the fortress Atukos like a daemon queen from the old stories, baring her teeth in a feral grimace, and the dragonstone walls wept as she passed.

  First there were hallways, and bridges, and walls. These she climbed with the featherlight body in her arms, half wishing that someone might try—try!—to stop her. None came. She stepped free from the overlarge sandals, the studded skirt and underkilt of a Draik, and let them lie where they had fallen. Let those who came upon the tale of her passing pause to wonder. Let those who noted the absence of this defiled body raise a cry. She did not care.

  Let them come, she half wished. Let them come.

  Ani walked on, ever on and ever upward. The stone hall and stairs of Atukos grew rough and wild till at last they merged with the living rock from which they had been called by Kal ne Mur in the long ago. Even as the mountain shed its glamour of civilization, Ani did the same, letting the bones and flesh she had stolen from an Atualonian man melt away so that she was herself again, a Dzirani dark-skinned, dark-eyed and dangerous, bloodying her feet upon the forbidden path. This narrow way meant death for any save the Dragon King and his kin, but no shout was raised as her bare feet touched the black rocks, no arrow was loosed to find her heart, and Akari did not swoop from the heavens to punish her for this trespass.

  Let them try. She sang on, clutching the mutilated body of her friend. Even Akari. Even he, for I will strike him from the sky, if he dares try to stop me.

  Tough as her feet were, dragonglass shards sliced at her flesh with each step. It seemed fitting to Ani that she would leave a trail of blood and tears, a warning to any who might follow. Still none came. Thick white fog rolled down from the peak of Atukos as if the mountain herself offered them cover. Soon nothing in the world existed but the mountain, the sky, and two women—one murdered, the other broken.

  As night crept upon her, the song o
f Ani grew in volume and power with each step, wave upon wave of it rolling outward from the marrow of her bones till she itched with it, burned with it. It had a color, this song, a taste. A scent, of rot and flowers and salted clay. Almost, it had a name. Such a thing was forbidden, of course. It was the darkest of dark magic. Of such songs were nightmares born… but Ani sang on. This world had murdered her, had murdered her friend and stolen the daughter of her heart, and she did not care on this day whether her song raised bonelords, or daelords, or an army of the dead. Let this song wake the dragon, for all she cared. Ani was done with this world.

  You were supposed to sing my bones to sleep, she thought as she paused and cupped a hand behind the silk-bundled head, pressed her lips to the cloth. It was not supposed to end like this. Never like this. The song, her grief, and her bloodied feet carried her up, up, up till she had reached the very summit of Atukos.

  Ani stood for a moment at the very peak of the world, overlooking a lake of purest magic, the dreaming breath of Sajani herself. But there was no beauty left to her, not a song in her heart to hold the love of earth or sky or the reflection of starslight. The moons bathed in the lake even as they danced across the sky, and Ani would not have minded watching it all go up in flames.

  Her burden had grown heavy, and sticky, and it dragged the last ragged notes of song from Ani’s soul, leaving her speechless and empty.

  “Come,” she croaked. “Come, sweetheart, let me take you home.” She walked down the gentle slope of black sand. When she had reached the very edge of the lake that was not a lake at all, Ani set her burden down gently, gently. There were songs for this, too, she knew, proper songs of mourning and leavetaking, songs meant to release the soul of a loved one so that it might find peace and joy in the next world, songs meant to appease the vengeful dead and soothe the vengeful living.

  Ani had no wish for further song on this day, and peace was the very last thing her heart desired. She knelt upon the black sand, unwrapped the poor, torn body of Hafsa Azeina, and wept anew over each hurt, each mark of abuse and defilement. She used the last of her water, the scraps of silk, and her own hands to wash her friend’s face and hands and feet as best she could, and pressed her lips to the cold, torn cheeks.