Tariq nodded sagely, then began walking again, forcing Davud to keep up. They turned a corner and headed down a section of street with a veritable jungle of thawbs and shawls and veils hanging to dry on lines between the buildings. Tariq said, “You know, I could use a man like you. And in return, I could provide you the protection you need.”
Davud glanced back at the two toughs trailing behind them. “That’s not the kind of thing I do.”
“You might be surprised how vast Osman’s network is, Davud. There’s a lot we could do for you.”
“I can’t.”
“Not even if I get you your meeting?”
Davud paused as a gaggle of laughing children swept past the five of them like a school of fish through cattails. “There’s a reason you thought I was dead, Tariq. Queen Meryam herself is after me. The Enclave is as well. That’s why I need to speak to Undosu. I need safety for me and for Esmeray.”
“Queen Meryam is after you . . . .”
“Yes.”
Tariq seemed to reconsider. “Well, maybe once it’s all done, then.”
“No, not even then.”
For a moment the old Tariq returned—his face became cross; he looked like he wanted to make something of it—but then the dark cloud seemed to dissipate and he shrugged. “Can’t blame me for trying.”
“I don’t.” They turned a corner onto a street that ran between two rows of old, crumbling tenements. “I need that meeting, Tariq.”
“I’m a businessman, Davud. I need something for it.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Something simple for you, I imagine. I want you to find someone for me.” They passed the mouth of an ancient well—the well, the very one the neighborhood had been named for—and came to a boulevard, the most affluent street in the entire quarter. “You may have heard of him,” Tariq went on, “my little cousin, Altan. Like you, he found his way into the collegia after impressing one of the masters enough to sponsor him. He was in his second year. He was a studious little runt, impressing everyone. He was halfway to making a name for himself. Then five days ago he went missing.”
“Missing how?”
“When he didn’t show up for his classes, his mother came to me, worried, so I had the boys ask around. The night before, Altan was seen heading north along the Trough by a few girls who were out drinking. Altan refused to so much as turn and wave to them.”
“Maybe he didn’t like them. Maybe he was drunk.”
“Maybe.” Tariq stopped before a set of stairs leading up to an elegantly carved door. “But he was never much of a drinker, and the girls entered the collegia with him. They were close friends.”
“So you want me to find him?”
“Yes. It would put his mother’s mind at ease, even if it’s only to know he’s dead.”
“I wouldn’t even know where to begin!”
“You’ve always been smart, Davud. You’ll figure it out.” He walked up the steps, his guards following. “Find out what happened to Altan and I’ll get you your meeting.”
Before Davud could say another word, Tariq and his men went inside, the door clattering shut behind them.
“We don’t need him,” Esmeray said.
But Davud’s mind was already working. This might all turn out to be something perfectly innocent. The collegia put a lot of pressure on their students. Altan might have decided to take a break without telling anyone—it wouldn’t be the first time it had happened to a student—but this smacked of something more nefarious. Davud couldn’t help but think of what Hamzakiir had done to him and the other scholars: he’d abducted Davud’s entire graduating class and turned them into foul creations, shamblers, that he’d used against the Kings on the Night of Endless Swords.
“Davud?”
He met Esmeray’s ivory eyes. “I’m going to find out what happened to Altan.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Esmeray said. “We don’t need Altan. And we don’t need Tariq.”
“I’m not doing this for Tariq.”
Esmeray knew of his history at the collegia and what had happened with Hamzakiir—the abduction, the strange experiments, the shamblers he’d turned them into. “This isn’t your fight, Davud. You’ve got enough to worry about.”
“I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t look into it.” He took her hand and led her away. “I’m going to find out what happened to Altan.”
Chapter 13
AS THE WAYWARD MILLER sailed east, Ihsan was confident of two things. The first was that if anyone could get Zeheb to listen, it was Husamettín and his famously dogged persistence. The second, far more important to Ihsan’s cause, was that Husamettín would fail spectacularly in his task—Zeheb hadn’t been named the Mad Bull of Sharakhai for no reason. They were on the deck of their cutter, The Wayward Miller. Husamettín leaned against the gunwales while Zeheb sat on a chair before him, babbling incoherently. The sun shone brightly, casting stark shadows of lines and sails across the Miller’s deck.
Cahil manned the wheel—poorly, it seemed to Ihsan. He caught every dune wrong, setting the ship rolling constantly, to the point that Ihsan felt like he’d swallowed a bag of snakes. He might have gone to the edge of the deck and tossed his breakfast over the gunwales if he thought it wouldn’t hurt his standing with his fellow Kings, but it would. In this respect, Cahil and Husamettín were cut from the same cloth: to show weakness of any sort was a sign of inferiority.
“Baük,” Husamettín was saying to Zeheb. “Find the Blade Maidens in Baük and tell us what you hear.”
Zeheb, his lips working like a burbling stream, swiveled his head and stared southeast toward Baük, a moderately sized caravanserai along the trade route from Sharakhai to the rolling grasslands of Kundhun. Husamettín was bidding him to listen for certain whispers: those of the serai’s master, or the Blade Maidens assigned to the garrison, or the captains of the ships in dock. But nothing he, Cahil, or Yndris had done had so far managed to snap him from his spell of muttering madness.
“Come here,” Zeheb was saying. “Let me do it!”
“Who is it you’re hearing?” Husamettín asked in a patient but forceful tone. “What are they doing?”
“Stop it! Stop! You’re ruining it!”
“Who is it, Zeheb?”
Zeheb pulled his gaze away from the horizon and stared into Husamettín’s dark eyes. His eyes drifted to the scar on Husamettín’s forehead, the mark of the traitor. These moments when Zeheb seemed to be present, able to talk, were rare. He suddenly seemed so lucid Ihsan thought he might actually say something rational.
But then Zeheb’s face soured. “Days like these I’m sad to call you my son. Give me those.”
Husamettín, his monumental patience finally run out, stood and walked away, shaking his head as he went. As was often the case, the spell of lucidity had been a mirage, Zeheb’s reactions not his own, but those of the person he’d latched onto from afar.
A little over a week had passed since they’d stolen him from the Kundhuni fleet. They’d steered clear of the two primary sailing lanes from the caravanserai, Çalabin, and anchored a full day’s sail from Baük. It was risky, their being anywhere near a caravanserai, a risk that grew by the day. The royal galleon would be hunting them, and likely its captain would have sent a skiff to Çalabin with orders for the caravanserai’s master to send more ships to hunt for their cutter.
Husamettín had reckoned the delay worth it, though. They had Zeheb, and they still hoped to use him for their own purposes. They needed a place like Baük where he could hear the whispers, a place to test how they could use him against Meryam in Sharakhai.
Suddenly, Zeheb’s demeanor changed. His mouth worked. He looked up at Yndris, then swiveled his head toward Ihsan. There was a spark of recognition, a flare of anger. Ihsan worried he would speak of Ihsan’s many betrayals, that he might reveal just enough to rui
n Ihsan’s plans, but the look soon faded and his face became calm as a desert morning.
He glanced at Yndris in a distracted way. His hands ran back and forth, as if he were running a plane across a wooden beam. “Don’t forget the pot of grease from Abdul.” His voice had softened. “We need it for the wagon.”
“Who’s speaking?” Yndris asked, taking Husamettín’s place in the questioning. “Who are they?”
But nothing she did—no amount of coercion, bargaining, browbeating, or simple acts of patience—would get through to him. Zeheb was immune to it all. Ihsan could have told them as much, but none of them had asked him, and Ihsan hadn’t volunteered it. He needed them to become frustrated by their inability to reach Zeheb. Only then could he reveal his true purpose.
Or so he thought. He’d no more voiced the notion in his head than Cahil spoke from the pilot’s wheel, “Give it to him.”
“Not yet,” Husamettín replied.
“Why not?” Cahil pressed. “Nothing has changed, and nothing is going to change.” He flung a hand toward Zeheb. “We risked our lives for a reason, and it wasn’t to listen to his blathering until the end of days has come.”
What’s he talking about? Ihsan signed to Husamettín.
Husamettín, clearly unwilling to share, stared at Ihsan, his pinched brow making the scar on his forehead wrinkle in strange ways.
It was Yndris who answered. “We have a brew my good father’s alchemyst made in Sharakhai,” she said. “It coerces. It forces the one who drinks it to obey.”
“But,” Husamettín added, “it wears on the mind, and quickly. We might be able to use it for a time. A few weeks. A month, perhaps. After that”—he looked to Zeheb with something resembling sympathy—“he will become but a mindless husk.”
“He’s that already,” Cahil said.
“He’s that already,” Zeheb said softly.
They all stared in surprise. It might have seemed at first like Zeheb had snapped out of his spell. But he hadn’t. Not completely. He’d still been listening with his god-given power; it was just that he’d used it on Cahil. He’d somehow drawn his attention here, which was a potentially devastating development for Ihsan. If they thought that Zeheb could train his power on certain individuals, that it wasn’t entirely random, it would give Cahil added leverage to apply the serum.
Indeed, Cahil gave a bright, ringing laugh. “You see? There’s more to him than idle wandering. He can do what we want, but not if we leave him to his own devices.”
“Leave him to his own devices,” Zeheb echoed. It felt like a desperate appeal from a man who knew he was doomed and was communicating in the only way he knew how. The look on his face was one of complete and utter terror.
There may be another way, Ihsan signed quickly. He couldn’t let Husamettín think on Cahil’s course for too long.
“To do what?” Husamettín asked.
To free his mind . . .
Husamettín waited expectantly. Cahil and Yndris did as well. Even Zeheb seemed eager for his answer, but gods, Ihsan wasn’t ready. He’d wanted them at the end of their rope. He should have known they’d have something else in mind for Zeheb.
“Well, out with it!” Cahil shouted.
I’ve been thinking on it, Ihsan signed. If my powers were returned to me, I might order him to do what you wanted.
Husamettín’s dark eyes narrowed. His long, pepper-gray hair blew in the wind. “If your powers were returned to you . . .”
Yes.
“And how might that happen? You said you’d tried the healing elixirs, to no effect.”
Ihsan turned toward Cahil and signed to him. Years ago, your son, Gallan, lost his leg. You healed it for him.
Cahil’s eyes had turned hard and distrustful. He was staring at Ihsan, not as though he were remembering his son whom he had healed, as Ihsan had said, but as if he were close to unraveling the mystery behind Ihsan’s offer. Suddenly his eyes went wide and he turned away from the wheel. He pulled at the rope that secured the rake to the transom, then shoved it hard.
The rake struck the sand and left deep furrows. It threw everything and everyone aboard the ship forward. Zeheb slid away, still in his chair. Husamettín lowered himself into a half-crouch and spread his arms, balancing himself like the expert swordsman he was. Yndris arrested her fall by grabbing a nearby shroud. Ihsan, meanwhile, was thrown to the deck, where he slid along the deck boards until coming to an ignominious crash against the short stairs leading up to the foredeck.
When the ship had come to a halt, Cahil stormed forward and thrust a finger toward Ihsan’s chest as though he wished it were a spear. “This is why you came all this way. This is why you intercepted us. Not because of Sharakhai, as you claim, not because you want to see us back on the mount and in our palaces, but because you lost your precious tongue and you want it back!”
Cahil’s breath came loudly. His nostrils flared, and his eyes gained a certain brightness. Ihsan had seen this sort of change overcome Cahil before. Like a dog slavering before food is laid in his bowl, the look came when he was set to inflict torture, Cahil imagining the acts in detail before things truly began.
There were a hundred different ways Ihsan could take his reply, and he wasn’t sure which he should choose. The wrong step here would see his throat slit, his body given back to the desert, the Kings moving on without him now that they had another option, however feeble and temporary it might prove in the end.
But then he saw something he hadn’t noticed before. Cahil was afraid. He’d lost his place in the world, and he wanted it back. He wanted all to be as it had been for centuries, since the days of Beht Ihman, and suddenly it was plain as day how to deal with him. It wasn’t to profess his loyalty to Sharakhai, nor the desert, nor its people. It was to appeal to Cahil’s underlying sense of fear.
Wouldn’t you have done the same in my place? Ihsan signed.
Cahil’s jaw worked. He swallowed several times. For a moment Ihsan thought he’d erred.
In the end, it was Yndris who saved him. “He might last longer under Ihsan’s power than the serum,” she said.
It was a reasonable point, but sometimes reason only made Cahil grow more petulant, more eager to demonstrate his power over others.
“And there’s little doubt,” Husamettín stepped in, “that his having his power returned might get us what we all want in the end.”
Cahil turned to him, red-faced. “Get him what he wants, you mean.”
Husamettín was unfazed. “Might the two not align?”
Cahil stared at him as if he were mad. “You’ve had four hundred years to find an answer to that question. If you can’t figure it out by now—”
He stopped at movement from Ihsan, who had chosen that moment to pull a piece of papyrus from his khalat. He held it out for Cahil to take, which he did with a quick snatch of his hand. As he read it over, his expression calmed, and much of the redness in his cheeks and forehead faded. He stared at Ihsan warily. “We’ll find her?”
Husamettín took the note from Cahil’s stilled hand, read it over with a look of wonder, then handed it absently to Yndris.
Yndris read it as if her life depended on it. “Well,” she said when she finished, “will we?”
From everything I’ve read, yes. It’s one of the strongest threads in the journals.
“Then why didn’t Yusam ever mention it?” Cahil pressed.
Don’t you remember how he was? Flighty. Scared. He had trouble remembering his way to the privy—Ihsan motioned to the slip of papyrus—much less piecing together a dizzyingly complex puzzle like those I’ve found in his entries. He was good at connecting visions, I’ll give him that, but by the end he was terrible at following them to their logical conclusions.
They all looked at one another—Cahil, Husamettín, and Yndris. Husamettín nodded. He would give Ihsan his chance,
especially to gain a prize like the one mentioned in Yusam’s vision, Nalamae herself. Yndris gave her father a tentative nod, the sort that implied: we can always kill him later.
Cahil, clearly frustrated by his own inability to read minds or see the future, took the papyrus from Yndris, crumpled it up, and threw it hard at Ihsan. It hit Ihsan in the chest and rolled down to the deck. “We’ll try it your way. But if we go to Sharakhai and we don’t find her, it’s your head.”
Very well, Ihsan said, not bothering to pretend to be affronted at the threat. Why should he? If the vision didn’t come true, he’d know that all his efforts had been for naught anyway, and that Sharakhai and the desert truly were doomed.
He stuffed the papyrus back into his khalat’s inside pocket. It relayed how three Kings went to Sharakhai to find a woman. How they convinced her to join them. How they used her to challenge those who stood against the city. The woman, Yusam’s vision made clear, was the goddess Nalamae reborn. She was malleable. She could become a weapon if groomed properly.
They would return to Sharakhai. They would find Nalamae. And they would use her to stop what was happening—not the invasion by Malasan and Mirea, but the grand designs of the desert gods.
Chapter 14
WILLEM COULDN’T SLEEP the night Altan walked away. He was too haunted by the dimming of Altan’s light. The resulting darkness had created a terrible hole inside of him, and the more he thought about it, the wider it became. He felt consumed by it.
He tried to occupy his mind by reading the myths of the elder gods. There were dozens of such accounts in the hidden archives. He pored over them in his small, carpet-lined cubbyhole. He often read by lamplight because it helped him to read faster. But when he really wanted to immerse himself in a story, he read in complete darkness. The ink glimmered for him, even in the eldest of texts, some faint remnant of the one who’d penned the pages. It made for slower reading—he could only manage several books per hour instead of his usual dozen—but there was something about reading stories like this, as if it were only him and the world the words created, everything else having moved on to the farther fields just as the elder gods had done. It never failed to relax him, except this time it wasn’t working. He couldn’t stop thinking about Altan.
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