When Jackals Storm the Walls

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  Sümeya, Kameyl, Jenise, and Çeda all stared at Queen Nayyan, frozen.

  Nayyan, meanwhile, approached them, her hands raised like a thief pleading innocence. “Remain calm,” she said, barely loud enough to hear. “They’ll be gone shortly, and then we can talk.”

  “What are you playing at?” Sümeya hissed, her hand on the hilt of her shamshir.

  Osman stepped carefully into the foyer. He looked like a boneyard shambler, all awkward movements, eyes shifting nervously between the queen and the other women.

  Nayyan glanced at him, then at Sümeya. “You knew the Spears would scour the Fertile Fields and every estate nearby for Varal. Better I came, to ensure they looked the other way, than trust to him.” She waved toward Osman, who looked wounded, but said nothing in return.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Çeda asked him.

  “I ordered him not to,” Nayyan replied. “You would never have stayed until I got here.”

  “Why do you care?” Sümeya asked.

  Nayyan’s piercing eyes widened in surprise. “I care greatly what happens to you, Sümeya Husamettín’ava.”

  There were few things in the world that could make Sümeya look like a clumsy, adolescent girl, but apparently Nayyan’s regard was one of them. In turn, Çeda felt her own gut twisting in knots—Sümeya and Nayyan were looking at each other in that way of theirs, as if with one small spark their romance would be rekindled. They’d been lovers once, back when Nayyan had been first warden of the Blade Maidens and Sümeya had reported to her. That had all changed the night Çeda’s mother had killed Nayyan’s father, King Azad, and Nayyan herself had taken his guise to hide his death from the public. More than ten years had passed since that night, but just then it felt like all it would take was a kind word between the two of them, and they’d fall into one another’s arms.

  “Just remain calm while the Spears search,” Nayyan said. “We have much to talk about.”

  Not long after, the Silver Spears gathered at the front of the estate, their search complete. Nayyan stepped back outside and ordered them to continue searching the other estates then return to her palace when they were done.

  “You as well,” Çeda heard the queen say, surely to the Blade Maiden who had accompanied her.

  “You’re certain?” replied the Maiden.

  There was deep caring in the way those two simple words were spoken, and Çeda wasn’t the only one to notice. Sümeya’s discomfort had returned, and she was avoiding Çeda’s gaze.

  By the time the Blade Maiden and the Silver Spears left, night had fallen over Sharakhai. They all gathered in the dining hall: Osman, Nayyan, and Jenise sitting on one side of the table, Çeda, Sümeya, and Kameyl on the other. They picked at cured meat and aged cheese and slightly stale bread, which they dunked into passably good wine to soften. Soon enough Osman was standing. “Well, I’ll leave you to it.”

  Çeda felt terrible for having misjudged him. “Stay, Osman.”

  “No,” he said. “This is for you to discuss alone.”

  And then it was down to the women. Nayyan, Çeda, Sümeya, Kameyl, and Jenise. Quite a group, Çeda mused. A queen, a traitor, a first warden, a storied Blade Maiden, and a tribeswoman, each with their own tale, each having found their way here, to discuss the future of a goddess reborn.

  They told many tales over candlelight and brandy and wine. Sümeya told Nayyan of their mission in the harbor. Çeda added more about their plans to leave the city. Nayyan revealed some of the details around Lady Varal’s disappearance from the perspective of the House of Kings. Queen Meryam had been preoccupied with many things in the weeks prior, but when she learned of Varal’s abduction, she immediately understood its importance.

  “How could she have known?” Çeda asked.

  “I don’t know,” Nayyan said, using the stem of her wine glass to twist it slowly. “But the very fact that she became so animated about it shows that it’s been a concern of hers for some time.”

  Çeda wasn’t sure when it happened, or how, but they started trading stories. Of life in the palaces. Of life in the city. Of life in the desert. It was, Çeda thought, a normal conversation, the sort she missed so badly. And Nayyan, despite everything Çeda had thought about her, was charming. Her walls had dropped, perhaps because of the wine, perhaps because of the growing sense of sisterhood in the room. Whatever the reason, Çeda was starting to see why Sümeya had fallen in love with her.

  Throughout, Nayyan’s gaze lingered on Sümeya, and Sümeya’s on her. Whenever it happened, Çeda would interject, taking control of the conversation, hoping to shift Sümeya’s gaze to her. And it would work for a time, but then Sümeya’s eyes would drift back to the queen, her former lover, the woman she’d missed so much she’d been driven into Çeda’s arms, and soon Çeda gave up entirely.

  They talked for hours, long into the night. Eventually, Jenise made excuses and went upstairs. Kameyl followed, leaving Çeda alone with Sümeya and Nayyan.

  Çeda felt awkward as a newborn doe. She was just working up the courage to leave as well and give Sümeya over to the hands of the fates when Nayyan said, “There’s one last thing I would share with you.” From the purse at her belt she took out a bundle of fine linen. She lay it on the tablecloth before her. “Many have wondered how I killed the ehrekh in my younger days.”

  She unfolded the linen to reveal what looked like a perfectly preserved eye.

  “The ehrekh are vulnerable to ebon steel, so you should of course have arrowheads and swords at the ready. But this”—she waved at the eye—“is how I stunned Drehthor, the terror of the southern wastes, before killing him.”

  Sümeya stared in naked wonder. “What in the name of the Great Mother who spawned us is that?”

  “This is what remains of Navesh the All-Seeing. He was a prophet of the old gods who is said to have lived for eons after their death, wandering the world and protecting those whom the young gods had targeted in their anger over the departure of their creators.”

  “And you came by this how?” Sümeya asked.

  Nayyan shrugged, a simple gesture made disgustingly winsome by the small, private smile she shared with Sümeya. “That’s a story for another day.”

  It was clear that this was a mystery long kept from Sümeya. Çeda had spoken with her only once about the ehrekh Nayyan had killed, but even in that short conversation it became clear there was much that was unknown to her. What was more, Sümeya’s hurt at being kept in the dark had been plain.

  “You mean for us to use this if we meet Goezhen,” Çeda said.

  Nayyan swung her gaze to Çeda—reluctantly, it seemed. “It may help. It is said it has the ability to make one see truths they would rather not face.”

  “It is said?” Çeda echoed. “You’re not sure?”

  Nayyan shrugged again, this time without the smile. “I’ve never had the heart to try on myself.” She slid it toward Çeda. “You may.”

  Çeda stared at it a moment, but found herself unwilling to do anything more than wrap it up in the linen and put it in the purse at her belt. That done, the mood of the room returned to one of intense awkwardness.

  “Well,” Çeda said, standing. “I’d better find some sleep.”

  Neither Nayyan nor Sümeya argued. As Çeda retired upstairs and lay down, she heard them talking, giggling, laughing. In Çeda’s stomach, a snake nest turned over and over and over again, but then everything went quiet, which was hideously, infinitely worse.

  Chapter 22

  AS THE DAYS PASSED in the silo, Meryam and Yasmine made water and passed soil in one particular spot, using dirt and the remains of the grain to cover it when they were done. The air still stank of it, though.

  They were fed regularly, but were given a bit less each time.

  “We’re hungry,” Yasmine would tell the men when they arrived with a fresh jug of water and more brea
d, sausage, or cheese.

  “If you wanted more food, your father shouldn’t have thought to cede our farmland away to some northern noble for his fecking winery. There would have been plenty to go around.”

  “That’s what you want? Your land back?”

  “That’d be a start. But what I really want is my brother back. The brother your father’s men slew when he protested the annexation in Valdejas. I want his son back. He was hung when he brought his grievance to the alcalde of the city. But that’s not going to happen, is it? Gold’s what we want now, girl. Good, honest gold.”

  The following day, the skinny man returned. “Your father wants proof we have you. He’s demanded your blood.” He backhanded Yasmine across the face in a sharp, unavoidable blow. “I’m only too happy to oblige.”

  He held out a pair of clean white handkerchiefs to Yasmine, then jutted his chin toward Meryam. “Smear your blood on one without a fuss and I’ll let you take your sister’s share yourself. Don’t, and I’ll extract a good deal more from her than you’re likely to take.”

  Meryam was aware that the plan was to deliver their kerchiefs to the royal magi, who would use the blood on them to verify that it was indeed theirs, but she’d been raised in a household that feared such things. Giving up one’s blood was a dangerous thing in Qaimir. But what choice did they have? Yasmine took both handkerchiefs and wiped her mouth with one, smearing the cloth with blood. She turned to Meryam and held out the clean one. “Bite your lip, Meryam.”

  Seeing Yasmine’s stern look and the man’s grim face, Meryam did, wincing as she bit hard enough to draw blood. When she pulled her lip down, Yasmine pressed the kerchief to it, then handed both stained cloths to their captor.

  “Thank you kindly,” he said with a twisted grin, then left them alone.

  When night fell, Yasmine stripped off her dress, petticoat, and shift. Before Meryam could think to ask her what she was doing, she slipped back into her dress and began to rip the satin petticoat into strips. When she was done, she did the same with her linen shift, then began braiding the strips into a rope, being sure to interlace the linen with the satin to make the rope as strong as it could be. “I’ll need yours as well,” she said to Meryam.

  Understanding, Meryam complied, and with Yasmine’s help tore her undergarments into strips. Her dress felt loose and itchy without them, and that in turn made her feel smaller and more useless than she already felt, like an ill-made doll that no one wanted and all would soon forget.

  The work took a long while, during which Meryam was certain the men would return, discover what they were about, and beat them for it. They didn’t, though, and Yasmine continued, braiding the strips together until she had a length that might bear her weight. Again and again she tried lofting it over the wooden supports of the conical roof. It wasn’t easy, but she finally managed it. Gripping the lengths hanging down from the beam, she climbed, using her legs to pinch the makeshift rope as she went.

  Meryam’s heart soared as Yasmine stuck her head through the hole. Mighty Alu, she was going to escape. She was going to escape and then they’d be freed. But her heart plummeted as she saw that Yasmine’s shoulders were too wide to fit through the hole. She tried for a good long while, but even Meryam could see it was never going to work.

  “You’re smaller,” Yasmine said as she slipped back down. “You’re going to have to do it.”

  Meryam shook her head so rapidly her cheeks wiggled. “I can’t.”

  “You must.”

  Meryam didn’t want to displease Yasmine, but she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t. She couldn’t make it all the way up. Or she’d fall. Or she’d try to make it halfway through the hole and get stuck there. The entire thing was pure folly.

  But then Yasmine’s look registered. She’d been brave so far—braver than Meryam had given her credit for—but by the light of the moons filtering in through the hole above, Meryam could see the terror in her eyes. Yasmine was scared. Truly scared. “You can do this, Meryam.”

  “I won’t know where to go!”

  “Weren’t you paying any attention on our way here? The horses took us south from Santrión to a road. It would have been the one that hugs the southern reaches of the royal forest and leads to Maracal. The center of Maracal has only two roads that split from it, one with a stone bridge, the other wooden. We went over the wooden one and rode for another two hours beside the river—we heard it the whole way here, remember? Then we struck north along a soft dirt road. We’re right next to Oreño, Meryam. All you need to do is return to the river and follow it home.”

  As if it were all so simple.

  Yasmine took Meryam’s hands. “You must at least try. Here, take this for luck.”

  She took off her necklace and slipped it over Meryam’s head. Meryam didn’t feel any different—it was Yasmine’s fear driving her—but she nodded anyway, took the rope, and began to climb. The trouble was she’d never climbed much. That had always been for Indio and Yasmine, not her, and she slipped several times. Her arms were aching and her breath was on her by the time she’d made it a quarter of the way up. And she was already petrified of falling.

  “Squeeze the rope between your ankles, Meryam.”

  “I am!”

  “No, you’re not. Squeeze harder. Use your thighs, too.”

  She tried, but she felt as if she were losing half the height she’d just gained every time she stopped moving. “I can’t do it!”

  “Yes, you can! You’re nearly there.”

  Meryam looked up. How very far away it seemed. But when she closed her eyes, she saw Yasmine’s terrified look all over again. She stopped focusing on Yasmine. She stopped focusing on the height and her failing strength and fixed her gaze on that hole with the silver light shining through it. And tried again.

  Her arms trembling, she made slow headway. She was halfway up, then three quarters. She came eye level with the hole and through it saw a forested landscape made of moonlight and silver shavings. Reaching one trembling hand out, she grasped the hole’s rough bottom edge. She was halfway to escape, but the hole looked too bloody small. She was never going to fit—

  Her hand slipped on the rope, which made her other hand loosen on the gritty stone lip. And suddenly she was falling, weightless, twisting in the air, screaming all the way down.

  She struck the ground hard. The wind was knocked from her.

  Yasmine dropped to her knees by Meryam’s side. “Oh, gods. Oh, gods.”

  Through her panic, Meryam heard a door opening. Footsteps coming closer. A wavering, golden light reflected off the stones above.

  As Meryam sucked in a long, noisy breath, Yasmine grabbed one side of the rope and pulled hard. It made a buzzing sound as the fabric rubbed against the beam high above. Then down it snaked to fall around Yasmine’s head and shoulders. As a coughing fit overtook Meryam, Yasmine gathered the rope, shoved it behind her, and dragged Meryam’s head onto her thigh.

  “Cry, Meryam,” she whispered harshly, mere moments before the door opened and the burly man stuck a lantern, then his head, inside.

  The light swung toward the two of them. “What happened?”

  “She cried out in her sleep,” Yasmine said. “She’s frightened.”

  Long, terrible sobs escaped Meryam, more from pain than fear. Her entire left side, especially her ribs, felt as if she’d been beaten with clubs, and her knee was throbbing so badly it was all she could do not to reach for it and hold it against the pain.

  The lantern swung over the silo’s interior. In the light, Meryam spotted a bit of the braided rope sticking out near Yasmine’s knee. She cried harder, shifting as she did so, so that one hand covered the exposed braid. Moments passed, the light glaring at them, and Meryam was sure he’d seen it.

  But then the man said, “Just keep her quiet,” and slammed the door shut, locking it behind him.

 
Soon all was silence once more, and Yasmine was holding Meryam to her. “I’m sorry, Meryam.”

  Meryam wiped away her tears. “For what?”

  “If I’d been quieter, you wouldn’t have found me and they wouldn’t have taken you. Just me.”

  “It’s all right, Yasmine.” She started taking off the necklace.

  “No.” Yasmine pushed her hands back down. “You keep it.”

  She took Meryam back in her arms and rocked her. It felt good being held. It made her fears and the aches from the fall feel muted. But the reprieve was short-lived. A moment later, as Yasmine began to cry, her fears came rushing back.

  Meryam woke exhausted. She could hardly open her eyes, but every time she closed them, that dream of her and Yasmine in the silo haunted her. Taking a vial of elixir from the chest by her bed, one of only five remaining, she downed it quickly, willing it to work faster. It did as it always did—it revitalized her—but today it wasn’t enough.

  Her dreams had been of a young Yasmine, hardly more than a girl, but her mind kept wandering to the woman who’d sailed to the desert and been taken by an arrow. Her ship captured in the desert, Macide Ishaq’ava had forced the men to choose between themselves and their wives, and Ramahd had been ready to sacrifice himself when Yasmine threw herself at their captors and was shot through by one of Macide’s filthy scarabs—she’d forced them to kill her that Ramahd and her daughter, Rehann, might live.

  “I know you loved him,” Meryam said as a tear slipped down her cheek, “but I wish you’d let him die instead.”

  She recognized the cycle she was about to slip into. She knew it would mean a day lost as she obsessed over what had happened. She hadn’t even been there, but it didn’t stop her from imagining Yasmine being shot through over and over and over again.