When Jackals Storm the Walls

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  “This”—Undosu swept his pipe in a broad arc—“all of this. It puts the entire Enclave at risk.”

  “With Prayna and Nebahat’s actions, the Enclave is already at risk,” Davud countered. “The killings must be stopped, and Meryam’s growing influence in the Enclave, in the city, must be put in check.”

  “And what do you get out of it?” Meiying asked with a polite smile.

  “We want the Enclave to leave us alone,” Esmeray said before Davud could reply. “No more hunting me or Davud, for anything we’ve done in the past.”

  “More than that,” Davud added, “we want sanctuary.”

  He and Esmeray had fought over it for days. Davud wanted the Enclave to actively protect them, not to simply call off their hunt. Esmeray had been burned by them, her magic taken from her, and had refused over and over to even consider accepting their protection, but Davud didn’t care. They needed this.

  Undosu and Meiying stared at one another, silently deliberating.

  “Give us two days,” Undosu said as he stood. “We’ll find you.”

  Meiying bowed lightly. “Thank you for the tea.”

  As they left, Davud prayed he hadn’t made a mistake in trusting two of the most powerful magi in the city.

  The amberlark beneath the tables continued to peck at crumbs, for all the world like any other lark in the city. The patrons of the tea house had failed to notice, however, that there were sigils painted in red beneath its wings.

  Shortly after Davud and Esmeray left the tea house, it launched itself into the air in a flurry of wings. Westward it flew, over the nearby tenements, over the dry bed of the River Haddah, over the Shallows, the city’s poorest neighborhood, until it neared the Red Crescent. It landed on a rooftop that was relatively clean save one corner, where several wire cages and covered pails of birdseed were stacked. Beside the cages stood a man who, upon seeing the amberlark land, crouched and crooked one finger toward it. With no hesitation, the bird hopped on.

  The man, who bore a striking resemblance to Esmeray, stood and spoke in a low voice to the amberlark. “Now what did you hear, my pet?”

  The amberlark gave its lonely call, a trill of rising notes followed by a long coo. Then it began to speak. The man listened—the city arrayed before him, a landscape of mudbrick and stone and clothes drying on lines strung between the buildings.

  When the bird was silent at last, the man smiled.

  Chapter 40

  IN A CAVERN in the city’s quarry, Duke Hektor lay on a threadbare cot. It may have been scorching above ground, but it made no difference in the caverns, where the chill was ever present. He shivered while Hamzakiir pulled up a stool and sat beside him. Ramahd and Cicio were guarding the entrance to the quarry’s tunnels, leaving Hektor alone with Hamzakiir, whose long face seemed longer the closer they came to performing the ritual.

  “You’re ready?” Hamzakiir asked.

  Hektor had had occasion to work with several blood magi in his eighteen years. In those times, he’d given his blood willingly, thinking little about it. But in the cavern, lying before a foreign-born mage who was trying to win Hektor’s throne for him, he was terrified. Hamzakiir looked like a headsman ready to drop a bloody great axe across his throat.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be,” Hektor finally said. He noted the fear in his own voice. Not very regal, Hektor. You sound like a bloody jackdaw trying to chase away a hawk.

  “The fear helps,” Hamzakiir said, putting to rest the question of whether he’d heard it as well. “It will play perfectly into the story we’ve concocted.”

  “Yes, but it’s Meryam I’m afraid of. She’ll surely sense the truth. She’ll learn where we are.”

  Hamzakiir’s pinched smile only made his long face look longer. “Emotions are difficult to fake, so play into them. Let me worry about thoughts and memories.”

  He doused the lantern, plunging the cavern into darkness.

  Mere moments had passed when Hektor began to feel dizzy, as if he’d drank one too many brandies. Then his gut soured. He felt as if he were walking through a dark forest and the snatchers were coming to get him. He felt something dark swoop over him, a condor. It had a bald head, a black mantle of feathers around its neck, wings as broad as a house.

  Hektor tried to retreat, but with two lazy flaps of its dark wings the condor landed hard on his chest. Its long, curving claws pierced his ribs and held him in place. Hektor cried out in agony, but the condor paid him little mind. Its head swiveled about, wary of danger, perhaps. Finding none, it peered down and used its hooked beak to peck at Hektor’s eyes.

  Hektor screamed, and the moment he did, he was laid bare. In his mind’s eye he saw the condor rifling through his memories: his fleeing when his father, Duke Hektor I, was taken by the Silver Spears; his righteous anger when he’d learned his father had been hung without so much as a trial; Count Mateo counseling him to take up with Ramahd Amansir so that Meryam might be deposed.

  The condor seemed especially hungry for more recent events. Hektor saw his own plotting with Ramahd, how they’d agreed that Amaryllis was the key, that if anyone could convince Meryam to share power, it was her. He saw their abduction by the men disguised as Silver Spears. He saw them being brought to the garrison, and later, once Amaryllis had been released, being blindfolded and brought to a new location where the Spears, men who’d turned crooked, were attempting to ransom Hektor and Ramahd away.

  These last were planted memories, clues to a false trail placed by Hamzakiir. Unbeknownst to Meryam, she and Hamzakiir were sharing Hektor as the focus of their magic: Meryam plundering Hektor’s memories using the blood from Amaryllis’s dress, while Hamzakiir, mere steps ahead of her, sensed what she was looking for and supplied a fabricated version.

  Hektor writhed where he lay on the frayed canvas cot. His neck craned from the sheer intensity of his fears. Hamzakiir had told him to play into his emotions—as if he had any choice in the matter. His mindless terror overwhelmed all logical thought, preventing Meryam from learning anything useful. She might have waited until he calmed down, or tried again another day, but either would be gambling with fate. Delay, and Ramahd might learn of her efforts and use his abilities to protect Hektor. Meryam reasoned that this was her one and only chance to use Hektor’s blood to her benefit; if she couldn’t get from him what she wanted now, she would ensure he could no longer threaten her claim to the throne.

  So it was that after several unfruitful minutes, Meryam did exactly what Hamzakiir had predicted: she pressed on his mind, slowly suffocating him.

  When Hektor was young, he’d gone swimming with his cousin and several of their friends. Hektor was not a strong swimmer, but his cousin, despite never having swum before, had jumped in when a girl called him a coward. When Hektor foolishly leapt in to save him, his cousin kept trying to raise himself above the water’s surface by climbing onto Hektor’s shoulders. Water bubbled into Hektor’s nose and mouth. He gasped for breath in the rare times he was able to kick hard enough to get his head above water. He was convinced he was going to die in that smelly pond in front of all his friends.

  As horrifying as that had been, the feeling of Meryam pressing him down was much, much worse. He tried to fight her. Tried to regain the surface. But her strength was irresistible. Down, down he went, the darkness pressing in as stars filled his vision. His breath bubbled from his nostrils in a gout. The sound of it mixed with the hollow sibilance of his own ineffective thrashing. The last of his breath came out in two short bursts of screaming. Knowing it would doom him, he tried to resist the drawing of another breath, but he couldn’t help it. He sucked in a lungful of black water. It burned his nose, burned his throat, filled his desperate lungs.

  Terror drove out all other thoughts, all other emotions. He could think of nothing but regaining the surface so that he might take in one final breath of sweet forest air. But he was as powerless in
that as he’d been in denying Meryam. Ever lower he went, the water pressing like a vise against his ribs, until he was lost altogether.

  When Hektor woke, his limbs were leaden. His head felt ponderously heavy. He couldn’t so much as lift it off the cot. And how he ached. But sea and stone, it seemed a miracle that he was breathing at all, so for a time he simply lay there, reveling in that most basic function of life.

  The subterranean air was as chill as ever, a balm against his hot skin. The lantern, relit, cast an orange glow against his closed eyelids. He blinked his eyes open, squinting against the sudden light, and found Hamzakiir sitting where he’d been before, staring at Hektor with the clinical expression of a physic who’d grown immune to his patients’ feelings. Ramahd was there as well, smiling, his relief so plain that Hektor hardly had to ask how things had gone.

  “So?” Hektor asked anyway. “It’s done?”

  It was Hamzakiir who answered. “It’s done,” he said in his baritone voice. “We have two weeks, perhaps three, in which I’ll be able to listen to Meryam’s thoughts. In that time, we should be able to find some moment and place that will leave her vulnerable.”

  When they did, they would attack and bring Meryam to justice. It was of paramount importance that they return her to Qaimir alive. Fail in that, and the likelihood of the country being plunged into a bitter civil war was all but guaranteed. Meryam had managed to rally many royal houses around her, some through use of blood but many through simple guile. She’d given promises and delivered on enough of them that they would fight to keep her on the throne, or work against Hektor if they discovered she’d been summarily killed in the desert.

  As it turned out, finding Meryam at her weakest was easier said than done. Over the course of the following week, Hamzakiir did as he’d said he would. Through use of Hektor’s blood, he listened to Meryam’s thoughts.

  “It’s a dark day in Sharakhai,” he said one night after Meryam had gone to bed.

  “How do you mean?” Ramahd asked.

  “Meryam is treating with the Enclave, promising them more power if they step from the shadows. In return, she’s asking that they find tributes for her, so she can send them to the blooming fields to be taken by the trees.” He told them about the grisly experiments she was conducting in the cavern below the city using the strange glowing crystal. “She hopes to use it to gain power over the thirteenth tribe. She wants to see them all dead.”

  “You mean the Moonless Host,” Ramahd said.

  “She might have wanted that once, but not any more. She can’t tell the difference between those who were once scarabs, those who were sympathizers, and those who had nothing whatsoever to do with the Host, so she’s lumping them all together.”

  Hamzakiir was more unsettled by it than Hektor would have guessed, especially given how ruthless he’d been with the collegia graduates he’d taken before the Night of Endless Swords.

  “Is it true she dominated your mind while you led the insurrection against Ishaq?” Hektor asked.

  Hamzakiir had ingratiated himself with Ishaq and the Moonless Host early on, only to tear them apart from within later. Hamzakiir gave a reluctant nod, but Hektor still wondered. The man might have been manipulated, but who would believe that those terrible acts had been committed by Meryam, and Meryam alone? Certainly not Hektor. There must have been some part of him that wanted it.

  Hamzakiir seemed suddenly uncomfortable. “I’m tired,” he said, and left the cavern to find his cot.

  When his footsteps faded, Ramahd turned to Hektor. “Let sleeping dogs lie, won’t you?”

  “What, forgive him for all he’s done?”

  Ramahd leaned against the rock wall and crossed his arms over his chest. “Our goal is to bring Meryam to justice. Let Sharakhai deal with Hamzakiir’s crimes.”

  “His heart is every bit as dark as Meryam’s. I felt it when he was rummaging through my mind.”

  “He’s ruthless, I’ll grant you that much, but that’s why he’s so effective.”

  “I don’t know that I care to work with him any longer. It’s distasteful.”

  “Then be prepared to give up your quest for the throne. The road to peace winds through many dark fields, Duke Hektor. You’ll have no end of dealing with unsavory elements when you take the throne. Best you get used to it now.”

  “I swore when my father died that my reign would be just.”

  “And I understand why, but a great king looks beyond such things as just and right and honor. You think justice can be found by weighing good versus evil, but suffering can arise from the kindest of acts, and good can flow from the manipulations of evil men.”

  Hektor knew he was right, he just didn’t like it. “Can we agree that we’ll use him no longer than we have to?”

  Ramahd smiled handsomely. “That much we can agree upon.”

  Days passed, and Hamzakiir continued his efforts, but they still had no clue as to where Meryam might go that would give them some sort of edge beyond the Sun Palace itself and the cavern where she was conducting her strange experiments.

  “It’s got to be the cavern,” Hektor said one night.

  He, Ramahd, and Count Mateo were sitting in their shared room in the quarry’s catacombs, passing around a bottle of passable Qaimiri brandy. The husky Count Mateo, who’d drunk nearly half the bottle on his own, took another swig before handing it to Ramahd. “It’s likely our best chance,” he slurred.

  Ramahd nodded, then took a swig. “Agreed.”

  No one was under the illusion that attacking her in the cavern would be easy. There were Silver Spears patrolling the tunnels, and within the cavern itself they would have to deal with Meryam and Prayna. But it would be a good deal easier than waging an assault on the Sun Palace.

  Hektor wanted to wait, to find a time and place that could guarantee their success, but he supposed that had always been a foolish dream. “We’ll begin preparations tomorrow.”

  “Not so fast.” Hamzakiir strode in and dropped onto the free cot. His eyes were bleary, as they’d been more and more of late. He spent nearly every waking hour with Meryam, which was exhausting enough on its own, but it was compounded by its becoming progressively more difficult for him to remain in contact with her as Hektor’s blood worked its way out of her system. “Meryam,” he said, looking as though they’d already lost, “has managed to gain Rümayesh’s services.”

  Count Mateo seemed displeased, though it was difficult to tell through the man’s alcohol haze. Ramahd, on the other hand, stiffened, his eyes going distant.

  “Who’s Rümayesh?” Hektor asked.

  “A powerful ehrekh,” Hamzakiir replied, “one of the eldest in the desert.”

  Mateo, who’d taken up the brandy bottle again, swung it wildly toward Ramahd. “He fought her.”

  “I didn’t fight her,” Ramahd said. “I happened to be on the ship that she subdued with little more than a wave of her hand.”

  Mateo looked confused, but then his face brightened. “You discovered Rümayesh in the ruby!”

  “It was a sapphire,” Ramahd corrected.

  “Yes, well, the point is . . .” Mateo frowned as if he’d forgotten what he was about to say. A moment later his head jerked back. “The point is, you know how to fight her.”

  Ramahd shook his head sadly, not so much at Mateo’s words, but at their terrible misfortune. “I know nothing of the sort. I do know this, however. If Rümayesh truly is her ally, our chances of taking her in the cavern have just dropped considerably.”

  They agreed that the right course of action was to let Hamzakiir continue until there was no time left. If they found nothing new, they would try the cavern.

  And so it went. Several more days passed with Hamzakiir growing progressively more exhausted and having more and more difficulty listening to Meryam’s thoughts, until one day he said to them, “It’s over
. I’ll get no more from her.” At which point he left to sleep, a thing he hadn’t done properly in weeks.

  Ramahd, Mateo, and Hektor all agreed that it was time to prepare their assault in earnest. Ramahd summoned Cicio, who’d been combing the city for any signs that Amaryllis or the Kings’ Spears had learned about their subterfuge. When Cicio arrived, Ramahd told him the news and bid him to head out to the desert, where the bulk of their knights and soldiers waited on several ships a half-day’s sail from Sharakhai.

  Cicio was just heading for the exit when Hamzakiir stumbled into the lantern-lit cavern. “Mazandir,” he said, out of breath. “Meryam is going to Mazandir.”

  Ramahd stared at him with a look of disbelief. “You said you couldn’t hear her anymore.”

  “I didn’t think I could, but my inability to eavesdrop was due to my exhaustion. When I fell asleep, I dreamed, and it was filled with Meryam’s thoughts.”

  “Why Mazandir?” Ramahd asked. “Why now?”

  “She’s reached out to Macide with an offer of peace. They’re to meet in Mazandir.” Hamzakiir stared at them soberly. “We’ll never have a better chance to take her.”

  Ramahd looked to Mateo and Hektor. “Mazandir?”

  Mateo, head lolling, shrugged his broad shoulders. “Why not?”

  Hektor nodded. “Mazandir it is.”

  Chapter 41

  AS THE DAYS PASSED and their small fleet sailed for Mazandir, Macide ordered that the Malasani and Mirean fleets, both of which had been spotted combing the sand east of Sharakhai, be given wide berth. Even so, the risk of coming across their ships was high. Indeed, at the end of their first week of sailing Çeda spotted a line of what looked to be Mirean dunebreakers in the distance, but the ponderous ships chose not to give chase and were soon lost beyond the horizon.

  Frail Lemi continued to teach spearcraft to Aríz, who had become impressively good at it in the months since Emre last saw him. The two of them used wooden staves with padded ends. During their first several bouts, it was all Frail Lemi could do to force Aríz to yield. It soon became clear that, while Aríz couldn’t hold a candle to Frail Lemi’s strength, he’d inherited all his father’s quickness and more. He would dodge, duck, or lean away from Frail Lemi’s swings, often frustrating his opponent. By their fourth bout, Aríz was keeping up. And by their seventh, Aríz was anticipating all of Frail Lemi’s moves, to the point that late in the day Frail Lemi got so frustrated he screamed and unleashed a blinding series of blows, all of which Aríz blocked or dodged, except for the last, which was so powerful it sent Aríz flying down the foredeck stairs.