With Blood Upon the Sand

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  “You might be surprised.” He sipped from his glass. “In any case, what do you think?”

  “Not altogether unpleasant,” Çeda said, “but in truth I’d prefer a stiff shot of araq.”

  Juvaan shrugged. “Me as well, but I’m always eager to try something new, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Perhaps you’ll visit Mirea one day. I have a collection of rice wine I’d be happy to share with you.”

  “I doubt that I’ll ever leave the desert.”

  “Oh? And why is that?”

  “I have all I need here. What is there to find that I can’t find in Sharakhai?”

  “Why, the entire world, oh Çedamihn the White Wolf.”

  Çeda glanced over his shoulder to the massive room beyond the sculpted archway. “The White Wolf is dead. And to some, Sharakhai is the world.”

  Juvaan looked out over the city, the fading sunset washing his white skin a strange orange hue. “Is this your entire world then? Sharakhai?”

  “And the desert beyond.”

  “You’ve no wish to visit the green valleys of Mirea?”

  Çeda shrugged. “A visit, perhaps, but I suspect a land of constant rain would drive me mad.”

  A chuckle. “It isn’t so bad as that. The patter of rain on the forest leaves can be a wondrous thing, the fragrant smell as it first begins to fall, especially in the deep green valleys beyond the capital.”

  “Said the man who’s fled his country for the shores of Sharakhai.”

  Juvaan laughed. He looked handsome like that. “Fled, is it?”

  “So my sources tell me.”

  She’d made a point of looking into his past. He came from a family of fifteen brothers and sisters. Most had taken up small land holdings or married into other families. A few ran the caravan route his family had owned for generations. Juvaan had captained a ship for a few years, but had decided to remain in Sharakhai, acting as the caravan’s primary agent, brokering lucrative trade deals for when their ships returned. His knowledge of the flow of trade from all five kingdoms was unparalleled, and eventually Mirea’s queen had noticed. As young as Juvaan was—he’d seen fewer than thirty summers, Çeda reckoned—he became one of the queen’s trusted advisors. A scant year later, he’d risen to the rank of Queen’s ambassador.

  “Well, I wouldn’t say ‘fled,’” Juvaan said, “but there’s no doubt I’ve come to love what the desert has to offer.” He was looking at her with a hopeful expression; nothing more than that. He was a Mirean nobleman, after all, not some piece of Malasani caravan trash who whistled at the passing women. He was an attractive man, Çeda had to admit, tall and regal, like the snow leopards she’d seen in paintings from the northern kingdom. But for all that he was still a pawn of Queen Alansal, who was pulling many strings in the desert, and Çeda refused to get any closer to him than she needed to.

  A lie, she said to herself. Or at least, not the entire truth. When she thought of Juvaan she couldn’t help but think of another man: Ramahd, the ambassador to Qaimir. As charming as Juvaan may be, she wished she were standing beside Ramahd, not his counterpart from Mirea.

  When Çeda said nothing in return, Juvaan downed the last of his sparkling wine. “It’s fortunate our paths have crossed again.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because I have a proposition. You once said I could rely upon you.”

  “I did,” Çeda said. It was an offer she’d made when she’d last come to the Sun Palace for her own feast. She’d begun to wonder if he would ever take her up on it. “What is it you wish?”

  “Little enough. A bit of news here and there.”

  “News of what sort?”

  “If I’m not mistaken, your hand now reports to the Jade-eyed King. I have heard word of several of you being sent on very specific missions.”

  She gave no reply, unsure where he was headed.

  Juvaan’s brow furrowed. “The mere is a wondrous device but also, as I understand it, imperfect. It tells him nothing on its own. It’s up to Yusam to interpret what the mere shows, to piece together a puzzle that may be years in the making. My head swims when I think of all that he sees, the various threads he must follow. I’d like to know where he sends you and your fellow Maidens, and what you find.”

  “But as you say, the picture the mere paints is complex. What good will that do you?”

  “Can you not see? Yusam will do the hard work for me. By seeing where he’s sending you, and knowing the outcomes, I’ll learn what he’s most interested in. I don’t need to know what the mere showed him, only the conclusions he’s drawn from it.”

  “And my stories alone will give you that?”

  “You are not my sole source of information from the House of Kings.”

  Çeda considered that. “And what would I get in return?”

  “What do you want?”

  This meeting had come as a surprise, but she had no difficulty answering Juvaan’s question. “I want to know the movements of the Al’afwa Khadar.” She needed to know what the Moonless Host were doing. Dardzada wasn’t going to give her enough information—he almost certainly considered it too risky, especially with her living in the House of Maidens—and this wasn’t something she could learn on her own.

  “And how would I know that?” Juvaan asked.

  From somewhere inside the grand hall, a woman shouted. A split-second later, a group of men roared in laughter. Çeda lowered her voice. “Because you supply them with funds, Juvaan. You supply them with intelligence.”

  He was unfazed by the accusation. “Supposing for a moment that’s true, what makes you think I’m privy to the information you want?”

  “Make yourself privy to it. I’ll be risking my life by feeding you what I know.”

  “As will I.”

  Çeda gave him a flat stare. “My good lord, if you don’t consider what I’m providing valuable enough to find the information I require, then tell me now and we can stop wasting one another’s time.”

  “I’ve no way of knowing if what you can provide me is valuable.”

  He let the implication sit between them, an invitation for her to prove to him that she would be worthwhile as a spy within the House of Kings. She didn’t like being manipulated like this, but then again, what she knew of Yusam’s intentions was cloudy at best.

  “Very well,” she said, and she told him of the missions King Yusam had sent her on since entering his service. She finished with one that had taken her to a Kundhunese ship for a ledger Yusam wanted. It had contained little more than the captain’s ramblings. A diary of sorts, filled with small tales, poems, sketches of his travels. What the King had hoped to find within those pages she had no idea, but when he’d finished examining it, she’d asked him something she’d been saving since her return from the ship.

  “Did the mere tell you that the men on that ship treated with Ihsan’s vizir?” she asked.

  His head jerked back and his mouth had opened like a west end boy meeting the cruel realities of the Amber City for the first time. “Repeat for me what you just said.”

  “The captain and his first mate, I believe it was, were arguing, and they said, ‘Tolovan ad jondu gonfahla.’ It means—”

  “He will be the death of us,” Yusam supplied.

  Çeda had nodded, but Yusam was already ignoring her. He was staring at the book in wonder. Suddenly a chill ran along her skin. She tried to relax the sudden knot in her throat, swallowing over and over, trying to clear it and failing miserably.

  This was it, she realized. This was the reason the mere had given him the vision: not to get the book, but so that Çeda would be sent to that ship, hear that lone phrase, and speak it before the King. He had just been given one of the many pieces of the puzzle he was trying to piece together. But what did it mean? Tolovan was King Ihsan’s vizir, which
meant that in all likelihood the Honey-tongued King was involved with the Kundhunese captain. What she didn’t know was why, or how it related to Yusam and the mere’s revelations.

  Yusam recovered himself, set the book on his desk with great care, and said, “That will be all.”

  Juvaan took her stories in, nodding occasionally, his gray eyes sharp. When she was done, he gave her a practiced smile, the sort one would give to a servant who’d offered another flute of sparkling wine.

  Then he said, “Do you remember the name of the ship?”

  “The Adzambe. It means gazelle in Kundhunese.”

  “I know it.” He meant the ship, not the word. His distant look convinced her he knew more than he was letting on.

  “Do you know their business here in Sharakhai?” she asked.

  Juvaan frowned. “I was under the impression you wanted information about the Host.”

  “Allies can share a bit of inconsequential information, can they not?”

  “Let’s call ourselves business associates.”

  “Then you’re satisfied?” she asked, suddenly feeling as though this night wasn’t going to be a complete waste after all.

  Juvaan considered, his face a study in calm reflection, then he stepped back and, while holding her gaze, gave her a half-bow—a very Mirean gesture indeed. “I’ll arrange a method for the two of us to speak.” He raised his glass to his proposal. “Well enough?”

  After a moment, Çeda nodded and clinked her glass to his, a crystal clear note that for one brief moment rose above the din of conversation filtering out from the hall.

  Chapter 5

  OVER THE SHALLOW DUNES, two leagues out from Sharakhai, Çeda rode at the end of a line of six horses. Zaïde led the way, with Yndris coming behind, then Sümeya, Kameyl, Melis, and finally Çeda. The twin moons were nearing their apex, the two nearly in line with one another, creating a ghostly landscape over the amber sands. Ahead, a dark line marked the edge of the blooming fields, beyond which lay a thousand pinpoints of light, the blooms of the adichara opening to the sister moons Rhia and Tulathan, basking in their heavenly glow. As they came closer, Çeda saw pollen drifting on the wind, glowing like some otherworldly mist that might whisk them away to the farther fields were they foolish enough to enter it.

  As Çeda reined Brightlock over to follow the others up a shallow rise, she winced at the pain in her right hand. She switched and used her left to guide the horse, albeit clumsily. A week had passed since the feast held in Yndris’s honor, and every day had seen Çeda’s old wound grow progressively worse. At first it had been little more than an ache. But the ache had deepened; then it had felt like a fresh wound, tender to the touch. Now it felt as though the poison were spreading through her arm all over again, ready to sweep through her and take her life once and for all. She should have gone to Zaïde, but she hadn’t wished to go crawling for aid when she knew this was something she needed to fight on her own. There will be times when it will threaten you, Zaïde had told her when she’d revealed the tattoo she’d made to protect Çeda. She’d tapped the images around the wound. These will not protect you. You will need to fight it here instead. She’d touched Çeda’s heart, and Çeda had known it would be a battle she could never truly win.

  It was becoming so painful she was tempted to tell Zaïde, but this wasn’t Çeda’s night. It was Yndris’s, so she resolved to bite her tongue and tell the Matron in the morning.

  When they neared the adichara, they slipped down from their horses to the sandy stone and gathered in a circle. They were so close to the adichara Çeda could feel them, not just the ones nearby, but those farther and farther away as they ringed the city. She’d had this sort of awareness before, but always after taking a petal. This was different. She could feel the swaying trees through the pain in her hand, a sense that the adichara were alive in a way she’d never quite understood, as if all the hatred burning within the asirim, held in check for centuries by the power of the desert gods, was now radiating from the trees that fed on the blood of the innocent.

  A long, low wail fell over the desert. Çeda could hear the lament in that call, but she also felt it in her hand, in her arm. It deepened the ache, like roots reaching into the earth. It felt as if the asirim, all of them, had been given voice through this one wailing asir. In that moment, it was a creature of pure hatred, the embodiment of a people that craved vengeance above all else.

  “Çeda?”

  She turned, realizing Zaïde had been speaking for some time.

  “She said kneel.” This came from Yndris, standing while Melis, Kameyl, Sümeya, and Zaïde all knelt on the ground, waiting for Çeda to comply.

  “Of course,” Çeda said. “My apologies.”

  With Yndris waiting impatiently and Zaïde watching carefully, Çeda kneeled. She tried to compose herself, but it was difficult. The smallest movement of her right hand brought with it a burning pain that was difficult to manage.

  Yndris knelt across from Zaïde. The ritual was now properly underway. Zaïde picked up a handful of sand and whispered a prayer to Tulathan. What she said Çeda couldn’t tell, for her ears had started ringing, a sound that seemed to mingle with the wails of the asir, which were coming closer and closer. Couldn’t the others hear it? Didn’t they realize the asir was coming for them?

  The others whispered their own prayers to different gods, and soon it was Çeda’s turn. She hastily picked up a fistful of sand with her good hand and whispered as it sifted between her fingers. “Thaash feed your anger that you might take retribution against the enemies of Sharakhai.”

  The night was becoming dreamlike, and a terrible rage was boiling up inside her. It had little direction at first, but as she stared at Yndris, kneeling on the ground by Kameyl’s side, she knew it was because of this girl, this whelp come to the Maidens, fresh from her entitled upbringing, a life that had been built on the graves of the unfortunate, on the lies the Kings had been feeding to Sharakhai for four hundred years.

  Çeda blinked. Tried to quell the sudden hatred inside her. Beyond Yndris, she saw something dark moving among the adichara. The branches spread, creating a tunnel of sorts. It was the asir, once a man, now a blackened, shriveled thing. It wailed no longer, but stood at a half-crouch, the black pits of its eyes trained on the youngest of the Maidens, the one with her back turned. Its intent burned brightly in Çeda’s mind. It would break the Maiden’s frail form, drag her dying body into the adichara before the others could react. That, at least, would be some small recompense for all that had happened in the endless years since the gods had transformed him into this thing, this perversion of man. It plodded forward, but paused, sensing one of the Maidens watching, the one that had been kissed by Sehid-Alaz, its King.

  Çeda sensed its unquenchable anger sweeping her up like a storm until she shared in it. Feeding it. Thaash, Lord of War, let me join your servant. Let me be the one to take Yndris’s foul head from her shoulders.

  Very well, came the asir’s terrible voice from within her mind.

  Before she knew what she was doing, she was standing with River’s Daughter held inexplicably in her right hand. She stared down at Yndris, and the girl stared back, shocked and angry.

  Sümeya, sitting to Yndris’s left, was up in a flash, blade drawn in a glorious arc of shadowed steel. “What do you think you’re doing, sister?”

  Çeda blinked. Saw through her own eyes once more. The asir came forward over the ground in an animalistic lope. Run, Çeda called to the asir. Run! And then she pointed toward it. “There!” Please run!

  Sümeya spun. The others stood and drew their shamshirs as the asir bounded over the rocky ground, heading straight for Yndris.

  Çeda grimaced as the scar on her thumb grew hot. A rumbling shook the earth. As it ran, the asir ducked its head low and then craned it upward. The rumbling built into a bellow. It filled the air, rattled Çeda’s bones. Ahea
d of the asir, sand and bits of stone lifted in a fan. It struck Çeda like a terrible storm, pitching her back, sand flaying her skin where it was exposed. Barely discernible in the deafening roar was Zaïde’s voice. “Cease!” she called. “By Tulathan, I call on you to cease!”

  But the storm raged on, and something happened that shook Çeda even amidst the madness. Just as her heart had fallen into sync with King Külaşan in the moments before she drove her sword through his chest, so it did now with the asir. The beat was a dirge, a lament for a love too early lost. It wasn’t merely that she could feel the anguish in this creature; she was its anger. She was its endless well of hatred. She was its vengeance.

  She could feel its burning desire to kill. To rend. She fanned the flames higher. Somehow unshackled from the gods’ restraints, it raced to take revenge on the Kings for all they’d done. And what example could be more perfect than Yndris? Young. Bold. Generous with her contempt for all save the Kings and the grand house they’d built on the backs of the thirteenth tribe.

  Çeda knew she was being carried on the asir’s rage. From this creature, this man, who’d lived to see as many summers as the Kings, she felt not only anger, but his life, his story. She saw his hands test the grain of freshly sawn wood, saw him brush away the sawdust. Using that same wood, he erected a lintel for a home in a growing neighborhood that would one day be known as the Shallows. She saw a clear night with the twin moons high, a goddess with bright silver skin walking among the streets, her sister with golden hair at her side. She saw his brother fall to the ground and claw at the dirt before curling into a tight ball, wailing from the pain.

  Then he was struck as well, by a dark suffering that smothered his senses. His will bent to another power, and then a dictate was laid upon his soul—a desire for blood, a will to harm those who stood against the Kings. He knew even then it was a hunger that would never be sated.

  On gangly limbs he’d risen and loped toward the edge of the young city. He and dozens, hundreds, of others were being funneled through the city’s gates. Given free rein, this unfettered race felt joyous. He howled. He called to his brothers and sisters, the young and the old, ready to feed on those who stood in the desert with swords in hand.