“We may be late,” Emre said, “but we’ve brought a bounty with us. More than anyone else, or I’m a boil on a Maiden’s fat arse.”
Frail Lemi laughed so hard he sounded young again. “Fat arse.” When it had passed, he lifted the three crates with one arm until his fist bumped up against the low ceiling. “Three crates we found, sitting untended like babes in the streets. Was a service we rendered, rescuing them.”
“Bring them here,” came a voice on the opposite side of the gathered crowd, “and those of you who’ve already delivered, leave.”
The crowd dispersed, some waving to Hamid or slapping his shoulder on their way out, others glancing back with annoyance at the hunchbacked man who sat at a table with a myriad of glass contrivances. The man, Samael, was the Host’s chief alchemyst. He swung his head around and absently scratched a bit of flaking skin on his bald head. “Send the big one away. I won’t have him breaking things again.”
Frail Lemi glowered at this, but Hamid immediately inserted himself between Lemi and Samael, raising his hands in that placating way of his that mostly worked to calm Frail Lemi’s nerves. “Take this,” Hamid said, reaching into his thawb and pulling out a folded paper packet. “Go home. Take it with araq, just like last time. It’ll quiet the voices.”
Lemi’s eyes flicked between Samael and the packet several times. “Nights like this, they’re fierce, Hamid. Fierce like a sandstorm.”
“I know,” Hamid said. “This’ll help. It always does, doesn’t it?”
Frail Lemi nodded, took the packet, and without another word walked off like a man who hated being late and just realized he’d forgotten something at home.
Emre had no doubt Frail Lemi heard things inside his head, but the main effect of the soporific wasn’t for that. It was to make him shut that big rat trap of his. By the time he woke, he’d have forgotten nearly everything about what they’d done the night before. He was particularly malleable that way. Another reason he was so useful. Part of Emre even envied him. There are a fair few things I wish I could forget.
“Come, let me see,” Samael said, nodding to Hamid and scratching another flaking red spot on his scalp.
Hamid and Emre brought the crates over while Darius watched, trying to hide his frustration over not being able to help. Hamid cracked open one of the crates with a pry bar, exposing a bolt of rich black cloth. Folding it back revealed a mound of what looked like clods of dirt. Emre knew them to be golange, or blackcaps, as they were better known, a Kundhunese truffle with mild hallucinogenic properties and an aroma treasured in fine Sharakhani cuisine.
Samael lifted one of the blackcaps, brought it to his nose, and sniffed deeply. He did so again, his frown vanishing. “Well, well. Fresh indeed.”
Interesting, Emre thought. Hangmen give more compliments than Samael. The crates must have been freshly delivered from Kundhun to rate even faint praise from the alchemyst.
“Do you have enough?” Hamid asked.
Samael looked down at the two other crates. “The others have just as many?”
“Feels that way,” Emre replied.
Samael bunched his lips, waggling his head from side to side, and seemed about to answer when a woman’s blood-curdling scream cut through the darkness of the cavern. Emre turned back the way they’d come, a bitter chill running down his frame. Before he could say anything, Hamid gripped Emre’s wrist and shook his head. It’s nothing to worry about, he was saying, and yet Emre was worried. He hated being in these caverns. They felt poorly built, ready to collapse at any moment. Add to that the screaming—some experiment being conducted in preparation for their assault on the collegia, no doubt—and it made Emre’s mouth go dry.
The scream stopped a moment later. Samael seemed strangely unperturbed by it but he did glance toward the cavern entrance before regarding Hamid coolly. “Not everyone was successful, but with this”—he raised one of the blackcaps—“we’ll have enough.”
Another scream came but was cut suddenly short. Samael looked at Emre with something like appraisal. “You’d better take this one to Macide,” he said to Hamid, disengaging as if he weren’t pleased by what he’d seen in Emre but had neither the time nor the will to do anything about it.
Hamid nodded. “Well enough. Everything else goes well?”
“It will if you leave me to my business,” Samael snapped.
Hamid gave Emre a stone-faced look. “Touchy, this one.” Then he shrugged as if to say he’d gladly suffer men like Samael so long as they produced results, and turned Emre around with an arm across his shoulders. As they exited the cavern and were swallowed by the tunnel’s gloom, another shriek came, a mixture of fear and rage and driving will. “Dear gods,” Emre said to Hamid. “Like Goezhen himself come for vengeance.”
Hamid nodded, a bit of emotion showing in his sleepy eyes. And then it was too dark to see. Until, that is, they reached a point where another light, hidden from them behind a curve in the tunnel, was revealed. Soon they arrived in a room where three men were standing, with a fourth kneeling next to the form of a prone woman. The kneeling man was dipping his fingers into a censer filled with what looked to be blood. Indeed, it looked to be his own blood; as he pulled the sleeve of his khalat back so that it didn’t dip into the blood in the censer, a cut along the man’s forearm that was revealed. Emre recognized him. He hadn’t seen him since the flight from Külaşan’s palace, moments before he’d been taken away by Meryam and the men from Qaimir. But here he was now, Hamzakiir, Külaşan’s own son—returned to them, it was said, after sweeping into the throne room in Almadan and killing King Aldouan and a dozen of his family by plunging a knife into their chests.
A lantern on the floor cast an eerie golden light against the three standing men. They looked like the first men must have looked, regal and puissant, like the gods who’d made them. The nearest man Emre didn’t recognize, but he certainly recognized the second: Macide, his arms crossed over his chest, revealing the viper tattoos on his lean, muscled forearms. The man to Macide’s left was easily three times Emre’s age. He wore a dark khalat, its exact color swallowed by the darkness. The cut was not like the lords of Goldenhill might wear today, but instead something from centuries ago. Its silhouette was older, the fabric coarser, but it seemed all the finer for it. Emre had never seen him before, but given the identity of the other men, and a not-inconsiderable similarity to Macide, Emre had a very good guess as to who it might be.
“Sharakhai welcomes Lord Ishaq,” he said, bowing deeply.
Macide glanced knowingly at his father, then to the other man next to him, a man dressed in finery one might find in the palaces of the Kings. “Father, Lord Aziz, this is the one I told you about,” Macide said. “Emre Aykan’ava, the one we took to the King’s palace.”
Something lit in Ishaq’s eyes. He became much more intense than he had been a moment ago. “You know Çeda, then.”
“I know her quite well, in fact,” Emre replied, regretting it a moment later. It felt a betrayal, those words, though why that should be, he wasn’t quite sure.
“Well then,” Ishaq said, “we’ll have to speak on it one day.”
He nodded his head and said, “Of course.” But inside he was wondering, Why? What do you wish to know?
The woman lying on the floor still breathed, but only just; her eyes were fixed on the ceiling as if she were staring through it to the farther fields. Emre thought surely Hamzakiir would speak to Macide and Ishaq, report to them whatever it was he’d been doing with the woman, but instead he stood and faced Emre, every bit as interested in him as Ishaq seemed to be, though surely not for the same reasons.
“Our young falcon has returned,” Hamzakiir said. “Victorious, I hope?”
Emre nodded. “Exceedingly.”
“Good, good.” He glanced down at the woman, then at Macide and Ishaq and Lord Aziz, completely ignoring Hamid. “My lords, mig
ht I speak with young Emre alone?”
Ishaq spoke first. “Well enough, but come to us tonight.”
“I would dream of nothing else.”
Ishaq bristled at this, but said nothing else as he turned and strode away. Macide ushered Hamid behind him. Lord Aziz remained a moment. He was a large man, quite unlike both Macide and Ishaq. In fact, he had the look of Sharakhani royalty about him. His clothes, the cut of his beard, even the way he took in the ritual being performed, as if he were above such things. “We’ll speak again soon?” he said to Hamzakiir.
“Of course,” Hamzakiir replied, and there was a look exchanged between them, a knowing look, the sort that made it clear there were things to speak about, but not openly.
Soon Emre was standing alone in this room with a dying woman and a man who should long ago have been dead. Hamzakiir kneeled next to the woman and motioned Emre to a spot across from him on the stone floor. “Come.”
Emre complied, noting how much Hamzakiir had changed. His cheeks had filled in. His skin was no longer dry as parchment. There was proper meat on his bones. Even his hair and beard had changed. They were no longer wispy as fleece, but thick, black, and healthy. There remained, however, the same undeniable hunger in his eyes, a thing that made Emre wonder why he’d asked Emre to remain while sending the others away.
Hamzakiir laughed, a sharp, grating thing in this hard place. It made Emre’s skin prickle. “I’m not in the habit of devouring young men, in case you’re wondering.”
“Of course not, my lord Hamzakiir.”
“Good. Then perhaps it’s merely her.” He waved to the woman lying on the floor. “Come closer. There’s nothing to fear.”
Emre did so, ignoring the insult, and stared down at a woman who’d seen no more than twenty summers. Çeda’s age. A thought that chilled Emre to the bone. The woman had blood around her eyes, along her cheeks and on her forehead—a pattern drawn with a blood-soaked finger.
“Its been some time since I’ve done the ritual,” Hamzakiir went on. “I had to make sure I remembered. That we were ready for the day.”
He meant the day when the Host would unleash their latest attack against the Kings and their rule. Except now they had the son of a King on their side. It wasn’t lost on Emre that Hamzakiir might fancy himself a King, might want to take the high throne in Eventide should they manage to rid themselves of the eleven kings who remained. And if he was aware, surely Macide and Ishaq had thought the same. But he couldn’t worry now. Hamzakiir was a bloody blade held to the throat of the Kings, a weapon Ishaq would use if it might topple the Kings from their hill.
“And did you?” Emre asked without looking up. He was staring into the woman’s eyes, who ignored him, staring at the ceiling instead.
“Well, let’s just see, shall we?” He held his hand out. “Might I have your knife?”
He had one of his own lying propped against the censer next to the woman, but Emre shrugged and took his out, then flipped it and handed it by the blade to Hamzakiir.
Hamzakiir’s sly fingers took the handle, then he held it above the woman so she could see it. “Take it,” he said softly, “and end thy life.”
The woman’s nostrils flared. Her head turned toward Emre. Their eyes locked. Emre thought she might have shown fear, regret, anger at what was happening. But he saw only cold determination and undeniable pain, the two heated red hot and mixed like bitter alloys, one now inextricable from the other. She gave him that unyielding, flinty stare as if he’d offended her, as if he’d been the one to challenge her to do this. She reversed the knife.
Dear gods, she’s going to do it. Emre saw his brother, Rafa, lying on the floor of their shared home, a Malasani pig hovering over him, grinning, a knife pointed at Rafa’s chest.
“No!” he shouted, reaching for her wrists. But before he could, Hamzakiir grabbed his wrists and prevented him. He didn’t look to be a strong man, but his grip was like stone.
“You don’t have to do this!” Emre yelled.
“We do. We must know the devil’s trumpet is perfect.” Hamzakiir watched the woman with a fascination that sickened Emre. The woman embraced the knife, the sound of it entering her body the very same as when Rafa had been murdered. Blood welled between her breasts. She pulled the knife free and stabbed herself again, then a third time. Her face went from resolve and anger to pain to confusion, and then her body went slack and the light faded from her eyes at last.
Just like Rafa’s.
“You knew she would do it,” Emre said.
“No,” Hamzakiir replied as he released Emre’s wrists and pulled the woman’s hands free of the knife. Gripping the handle, he pulled it free from her lifeless body. “I didn’t truly know. And for this we must.” He stood, prompting Emre to do the same. “Many have volunteered to die for our cause and go through the ritual she’s just completed.” He motioned to the woman lying between them. “But only twelve by twelve will be chosen. One hundred and forty-four, the same number as the Blade Maidens who protect the Kings. Will you be one of them?”
“If that is what you wish.” And he meant it. He didn’t wish to throw away his life—he hated that this woman had been forced to give hers to satisfy Hamzakiir’s curiosity—but he no longer had a fear of dying. He hadn’t since the ritual where he’d drawn the blade across Lord Veşdi’s throat to fill the breathstone, the very stone that, brimming with the power of Veşdi’s blood, had brought Hamzakiir back from the dead. When his day came at last, he would walk to the farther fields and embrace his brother and tell him he was sorry he hadn’t done more.
“You would have no regrets?” Hamzakiir asked.
“Some.”
“Name one.”
Çeda, Emre thought. I would hold Çeda one last time before I die. I would sail her away from the misery in Sharakhai and tell her that I love her. “The desert holds countless delights,” he finally answered.
“And yet I asked for but one.”
“You misunderstand. I love the desert. I love Sharakhai. I will miss it when I walk among the farther fields.”
At this, Hamzakiir paused. Then he smiled, a genuine thing, it seemed to Emre, tempered perhaps by their dark business in this dark place. “As will I.” He handed the knife back to Emre. “You drew me forth from the darkness below my father’s palace. You gave me the breath of life.”
“I wish I’d done more. We’d hardly turned a corner and we lost you.”
Hamzakiir spread his arms wide, as though he were standing in the open, welcoming a rare burst of summer rain. “And yet here we are.”
“Hearty and hale.”
A low chuckle escaped Hamzakiir. “These old bones might disagree.” He motioned toward the tunnel. “Now go, young falcon. Live this day. For tomorrow, we go to war.”
Chapter 22
ÇEDA WALKED EASILY THROUGH THE GATHERING CROWD in the collegia’s grand, open-air forum. She wore a patterned dress she’d been given by the Matrons, one that combined the Malasani flare for colors with the long, flowing cut of a traditional desert dress. It was full-sleeved, and ran almost down to her ankles to hide the light armor she wore beneath. It felt strange wearing River’s Daughter beneath her clothes, but Melis had given her a special leather sheath and shown her how to walk in it so that it looked natural. She’d shown her as well how to move and bend her legs so that the thin leather cords holding the sheath in place would snap, and so that the delicate stitching on the dress would rip, giving her all the freedom of movement she’d need if the day turned violent.
Around the forum, dozens milled about, sitting on the simple stone benches or talking beneath the shade of the myrrh trees that lined the grounds. They were the family and loved ones of the students who would soon receive their laurel crowns, the mark of a collegia graduate. Sümeya, wearing a rich dress of cream accented in azure, stood in a group of highborn men and women. Melis was
near her, chatting with another group, laughing easily at a story being relayed by an aristocrat with thread-of-gold woven into her elaborately braided hair. Yndris strolled the edge of the forum, admiring the flowering shrubs, stopping occasionally to pick one of the blue flowers, smell it, and add it to her growing bouquet. Kameyl was not here but in the garrison building, which loomed like a monolith over the near end of the forum. She stood ready with three dozen Maidens, prepared to deliver a response should the Moonless Host be foolish enough to show themselves.
Çeda, like all of the Maidens now hidden among the crowd, had been ordered to take an adichara petal before coming. She could feel its raw potency coursing through her veins. Her senses expanded to encompass the world around her, often giving her more than she wished. She heard the wheeze of a child as his mother shushed him a hundred paces away. The day was warm, but she still sensed the heat from the bodies all around her. Rosewater and lavender and jasmine might waft from the women, the men might smell of sandalwood and honeypine, but the wind also carried the scent of unwashed masses, the sour smell of the collegia’s brewery, and a sharp, moldy smell she couldn’t identify. Such were the gifts of the adichara.
A pair of colonnades ran along the length of the forum. Chipped and aging, they were some of the oldest structures in all of Sharakhai, built shortly after the basilica to the west and the ancient garrison to the north. The students were gathered in the basilica, awaiting the sound of the kettledrums that would announce their march, but the masters had already arrived. They were easy to spot in their flaxen robes and freshly made laurel crowns. Some wandered, chatting with the families, while others stood like stones at sea, waiting for others to come to them. She saw Master Amalos among them, a bent man wearing the orange robes of a high scholar. One hand swept absently down his white beard as he spoke with a woman half his age—another high scholar whose mirthful eyes twinkled at Amalos’s words.
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