With Blood Upon the Sand

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  “And when did you awaken?”

  “Half a turn ago,” Davud replied. Then he shrugged. “No more than a full. It’s difficult to remember.”

  Hamzakiir looked up to the sun, then to the wake the ship had made in the sand. He laughed silently, as if he found Davud’s answer particularly amusing.

  Davud pulled himself taller and said to Hamzakiir, “The blood on our foreheads is yours, isn’t it?” He didn’t know why he’d said it. He was more scared than he’d ever been in his life. But the vision of his friends lying there, marked, one of them dead with others likely to follow, spurred him.

  Hamzakiir seemed amused by the question. “It is.”

  “Why?”

  “Too keep you docile. To keep you safe.”

  “Safe . . .” Davud wanted to laugh. “Safe for what purpose?”

  “A more salient question, don’t you think? But I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for the answer until we speak again.” He nodded to someone behind Davud.

  Davud only had time to turn his head before a hand was around his neck and a cloth was placed over his mouth. It smelled the same as it had in the basilica, an earthy, alcohol burn. He knew he shouldn’t breathe it in, but in his terror he took in a lungful.

  The brightness of the desert slowly went dark, and in those final moments, he saw Hamzakiir staring at him, not with anger, but with amusement.

  Amusement, and curiosity.

  Chapter 25

  AT HIGH SUN TWO DAYS AFTER the abduction of the collegia graduates, a horn blew from the uppermost tower of Eventide. It resounded over Sharakhai, a lamentation for the fallen who had been taken so unjustly by the Al’afwa Khadar. From her vantage in the courtyard of the House of Maidens, Çeda could see hundreds lining the walls of Kiral’s palace, watching silently as the procession began. Among them would be the families of the dead, by and large the highborn of Sharakhai, but a number who hailed from the desert’s neighboring kingdoms as well.

  Another, deeper horn followed the first, this from Husamettín’s palace. A third followed, higher-pitched, and a fourth, higher still. Çeda could see the mourners standing along the walls of those palaces as well. The cynical side of her wanted to believe that the Kings had ordered the attendance of their servants and soldiers to make their sorrow appear deeper than it was, but as she looked on the tearful faces of those who waited with her in the courtyard—dozens of Maidens and hundreds of Silver Spears—she knew it wasn’t so. Too many in Sharakhai treasured the collegia. Even those in the Shallows revered it, considering it hallowed ground, for what greater pursuits were there in life than love and learning?

  They’ve overstepped at last, Çeda thought. The Moonless Host have reached too far in their thirst for revenge. They have driven a stake through the very heart of the city.

  The battle in the forum had ended shortly after the fire in the garrison. Inquisitors from the House of Maidens were dispatched to investigate, questioning survivors found on collegia grounds and in the surrounding neighborhoods. What they found with the help of the King of Whispers was that shortly after the battle had begun, three wagons had pulled up behind the garrison. Men poured from within, attacking the garrison’s only other entrance. They’d gained entry in short order, and later one witness reported seeing young men and women being carried out from the rear of the garrison. They were laid in the wagons, stacked like cordwood, and then driven away. The wagons had been traced to the Trough and then to the Wheel, the city’s largest open space where traffic was thick, the noise thicker, and the sheer press of humanity difficult for anyone to deal with. Little wonder the Moonless Host had taken their spoils there. It would be difficult for anyone to remember the passing of a few nondescript wagons.

  Where the Host had taken the graduates from there no one knew. The bigger question was why they’d been taken. What did the Host have to gain by abducting the young men and women who would be the least likely to do them harm? Was it not the scholars who were urging for peace in the desert? They would never come out and ask for the Kings to treat with the Moonless Host, but it was implied in many of their pacifist writings.

  Çeda wondered if this had been Macide’s doing or his father’s. This was bolder than anything they’d done in a long while. Perhaps they’d grown desperate. Or it might be due to Hamzakiir’s presence? They’d raised him for a purpose, after all, and the scarabs had had bloody symbols on their faces.

  More than ever, she wished she could speak with Emre. He might have answers, but the deeper part of her, the part that had known him since they were children, simply wanted to know he was safe. Well of course he isn’t safe. None of us are; not any longer.

  From the palaces above, new horns joined the chorus, each adding their own unique voice until a dirge of eleven horns were sounding in unison. All but dead Külaşan’s now rang, but a short while later—a respectful pause to distinguish Sharakhai’s recently departed King—even the Wandering King’s ghost stood forth with the deepest of the horns, with a first son, perhaps, standing at the railing of his palace, looking down over the city.

  At this, the final horn, the great western gates of Tauriyat swung open. They swung silently at first, then groaned mightily, as if what were issuing forth was not a host of Silver Spears and Blade Maidens, but the collected sorrow of the Kings. The Silver Spears marched forward, rank upon rank, dressed in white uniforms, conical helms with chain mail lapping at their shoulders, shamshirs at their belts, shields at the ready and spears held high so that they looked like a bed of nails marching forth.

  Next came an honor guard of Blade Maidens. Sümeya rode among them, as did several other wardens. Twenty-four in all rode on tall akhalas, the horses’ sleek coats of silver, bronze, gold, and metallic black rippling beneath the glare of the hot sun. Following them came six wagons with prison cages on their beds, each filled to the top with dead bodies. Men. Women. Some hardly more than children. Laurel branches had been split into thin strands, then used to tie each of them against the bars of the cages. Laurel leaves had been stuffed down their throats. Their eyes had been put out, and more leaves stuffed there. And in their hands they gripped laurel crowns, so that each looked as though they were about to place it on the head of a graduate.

  It was a vulgar display. A travesty. The Kings had done what they’d always done, rounded up those they thought might have some small connection to the Host. And if they hadn’t found enough, they’d simply gone to the Shallows and found more, using whatever flimsy evidence they thought sufficient to put chains around their ankles and lead them to King Cahil to be put to the question. How much information those poor souls had given the Kings Çeda had no idea, but she doubted it was much. And now here they lay, eighty-nine slain, a twisted echo of the eighty-nine casualties from the forum: forty-nine found dead after the battle, thirty-seven graduates taken, and, curiously, three scholars unaccounted for.

  “Nalamae protect us,” Çeda said.

  “What?” Melis asked beside her.

  Çeda’s horse, Brightlock, threw its head back and shook, tack jingling. Çeda turned to Melis. “It’s only that my heart weeps.”

  Melis’s look was grim, but her eyes softened. “How can it not?”

  Indeed, Çeda thought. How can it not? Holding her reins, she rubbed her right thumb absently. It ached terribly, and had since the attack.

  “Control yourself,” Melis said, noticing her discomfort.

  Çeda nodded. Melis was right. This was no time to be thinking about her own ills. But the old wound was now so much a part of her life she hardly realized when she was rubbing it, or favoring it while sparring in open hand combat.

  Soon the procession reached them. Ahead, Kameyl and Yndris rode forward. Çeda and Melis followed. A hundred more Maidens came behind, black-clothed, veils in place. As each pair of Maidens rode through the tall gates, they drew their ebon blades and held them, tip upward like black fla
mes to honor the dead. They rode like this, horns sounding, horses clopping, wagon wheels clattering over the city stone. When they reached the Wheel, they rounded it and headed north toward the harbor. The streets were lined with mourners, men, women, and children dressed in white and veiled, so that the dead would not recognize those they knew and linger too long in the land of the living. It was important for the dead, especially those who had died gruesomely, to move quickly to the farther fields that they might begin their life anew, as free from the old as they could be.

  For the same reasons, most would remain silent during such a procession, but the display the Kings had created—a message for those who sympathized with the Moonless Host, or one day might—caused many to gasp, to cover their mouths or moan. Some few cried out in rage at what the Kings had done, though they were quickly brought into check by those around them.

  The procession reached the northern harbor, where it turned around and headed back south. The wails were louder now. The initial shock had passed and more shouted to the gods, Why? They would not deny the Kings’ their justice, not within hearing, but they would also not suffer in silence.

  They reached the Wheel again, and then headed to the western harbor, and here, along the Spear, the crowd became angry. Çeda could see it in their eyes, though nearly everyone was veiled. Some still wore white, but far fewer, as if those in the west end slums refused to let the dead pass gently. They wanted them to return, to attack the Kings, to haunt them until justice had been served. Near the northern harbor, no one had followed the procession, but here, so near the Shallows, home to nearly all the dead, a smattering of men and women began to trail behind. They kept their distance, enough that the Silver Spears at the rear, instead of turning and chasing them away, chose to remain with the procession.

  As Çeda looked back, her worry grew, and she wondered at the wisdom in that decision. The crowd of mourners following them soon became a throng. The sound of their anguish, their anger, their lament, all grew until it drowned out the horns from the palaces. It became so loud it was difficult for the Spears or the Maidens to pass orders to one another. At Çeda’s side, Melis made the hand sign for be ready.

  They returned to the Wheel and headed south toward the city’s largest harbor. The mourners lining the street were much the same as those who had watched along their northern trek. They were, generally speaking, affluent men and women come to pay their proper respects and to denounce the actions of the Al’afwa Khadar. But the crowd that had formed in the Shallows continued to grow; more and more were rushing in from the western streets and pushing their way through the lines of people to join the trailing column.

  Çeda made the sign for retreat, following it with the modifier, her little finger crooked, to make it into a question. She meant the Kings’ assembly—the Maidens, the Spears, the wagons—that they ought to abandon their plans and return to the safety of Tauriyat. Melis understood and signed back, time is short, which meant, rightly, that it was probably too late for that.

  Along the curving quayside of the massive harbor stood four towers. Three were quite tall, but they were also thinner, unable to hold many men. The fourth, the one nearest the Trough, was a stout, burly affair that had decades ago been granted to the Kings’ tax men for use as an accounting office. It was, however, still a holding of the Silver Spears, and it was to this building that the procession moved. The Silver Spears at the lead encircled the building, five ranks deep. The Blade Maidens’ honor guard moved among them, still on horseback, ebon blades drawn.

  A host of Silver Spears took the dead from the wagons and carried them to the base of the tower, where ropes awaited. One by one the dead were strung from the ropes by their feet and hauled up. Their bodies scraped against the stone, twisting and turning as they went. It looked, Çeda thought grimly, as though they were still alive and in the throes of terrible dreams. A dozen Maidens, including Çeda, Melis, Kameyl, and Yndris, slipped down from their horses and followed a squad of Silver Spears into the tower and up to its roof. Çeda had seen from horseback that the crowd was large, but they’d been behind her, hidden to a degree by the marching ranks of the Silver Spears. From the top of the tower, however, she could finally see its vastness.

  The almighty weight of the crowd pressed in around the base of the tower. They gave the Spears a wide berth, but not so wide as Çeda might have guessed. More and more came behind them, a sea of Sharakhani, fists raised, their voices no longer calling to the gods, but to the gathered soldiers, the Maidens, the Kings in their palaces. Çeda realized how wrong she’d been earlier. Taking the graduates had been no mistake on the part of the Moonless Host; it had been a gamble that was paying off in spades. The Kings, tricked by their overzealous natures, had gone too far in hope of cowing their enemies. Their responses to the Host were always disproportionate. That was nothing new. But there was something about the graduates. Perhaps the people of Sharakhai thought the response dishonored the graduates in some way. Or perhaps this had been a well-orchestrated plan on the part of the Host, a campaign waged in the streets that had stoked the flames of those on the lowest rung of Sharakhai’s social ladder. Or perhaps everyone in the west end was simply tired of being treated like chattel.

  Whatever the reason, Çeda could already see this was ready to spiral out of control. The crowd’s anger crashed against the stones of the tower like waves on a storm-swept sea. Even now, hours after their deaths, the wind tugged the laurel leaves from the gaping mouths of the dead. More fell from the crowns in their hands to flutter down among the crowd. Most would gasp and jump out of their path, fearful of being touched in any way by the falling leaves. But there were some who caught them midair, or picked the leaves up once they’d landed on the ground. Çeda got the impression these were the families of those who’d been killed, for without fail they held the leaves reverently, as if they now held a piece of their departed’s soul.

  Foreign witnesses to this might think collecting something so intimately related to their deaths a strange way of honoring them, but to a true Sharakhani it wasn’t strange at all. The desert tribes saved the arrows, spears, or swords that had slain their fallen; such artifacts were kept as treasures, remembrances of their loved ones’ lives even though the weapons had caused or aided in their deaths. Çeda’s heart ached. It made her feel as though the old ways of the desert were not so distant after all.

  When the first of the rocks were thrown, Çeda was standing on the eastern edge of the tower. She didn’t see who had thrown it, but she saw the Silver Spear flinch, heard the captain’s shout to set shields and ready spears. Like a sinuous creature of spines and thorns and chitinous armor, the white-garbed soldiers locked their shields and lowered their weapons, forming ranks to prevent any in the crowd from coming closer.

  From farther back another rock flew. It struck one of the archers behind the front line full in the face. He reeled away as more rocks arced in. Soon there was a rain of them striking the men of the city guard. Some were launched at the Maidens who stood behind them, but they had room to maneuver and ducked or sidestepped.

  An older woman wearing a faded brown dress and a niqab strode forward until she was a mere hand’s breadth from a soldier’s readied spear. She shouted at him with a fist full of laurel leaves.

  Then she grabbed his spear.

  The soldier tried to pull it away from her grasp, but she had no care for her own safety and allowed herself to be pulled among the Kings’ soldiers. She lifted her hand high, shouting something, and threw the leaves into the soldier’s face. As they fluttered to the ground at his feet, he thrust the spear sharply forward and pierced her belly. The woman gripped the spear’s haft. Even from high above Çeda could see how white her knuckles were. Blood welled from the wound, spreading slowly down her simple dress like spilled wine. Her cries were filled with pain, but also a rage that made a chill run down Çeda’s spine. The cry of a mother for a lost child.

  The c
rowd erupted around her. They bulled forward, a thing alive. Hands grasped spear tips, pushed them up and away so that others might surge forward. Many were impaled, but for each that fell, three more rushed in. The second and third and fourth ranks of Silver Spears held their weapons steady while the front rank drew shamshirs, cutting those that came near. But there were simply too many. They were an endless horde.

  “Dear gods,” Çeda said. “Hundreds will die.”

  Melis, standing by her side, answered in a hard voice, eyes locked on the unfolding riot below. “We will die if they aren’t brought to heel.”

  Some in the crowd were pointing to the closed tower doors, which were the only likely way to cut the ropes that held the dead. Strangely, it was at this point that Çeda felt the pain in her right hand vanish. It felt like those rare summer rains that passed through Sharakhai, lifting, at least for a time, the miserable heat waves. She hadn’t realized just how much pain caused until just then, when it stopped. But it also made her wary. Why had the pain lifted? Why now?

  She scanned the crowd below, seeing nothing she hadn’t seen earlier. But then she noticed a tall woman with hair the color of the amber sands. The eyes of everyone below were fixed on the tower, but not her. She swam against the current, moving steadily across the quay toward the nearby docks, where ship after ship was moored in a grand and graceful arc. The woman was tall, taller even than most of the men, and while those around her moved with the unharmonious rage of a riled hornet’s nest, she glided like a heron on wing. And not a soul seemed to notice her.

  As sure as the desert is dry, here is Nalamae, the woman I once knew as Saliah Riverborn. And yet the goddess did not turn, did not look up toward Çeda, and Çeda found herself second-guessing what she’d been so sure of only a moment ago. But then, as she stepped onto one of the nearby docks, just before she was lost between two massive barquentines, the goddess turned and looked directly at Çeda. Çeda felt her skin go cold. It was as clear a sign as if Nalamae had whispered into Çeda’s ear.