“The arrow that nearly stole your breaths,” Bora said. “The craftsmen in nearby districts know them as qaufen.” She weighed Anna’s confusion. “Mongoose, child. This is your tongue’s knowledge of such words.”
She thought of the clawed, brown-furred animals a beast-peddler had once brought to Bylka as part of a wandering menagerie, trying to reconcile the creature with a murderous arrow. “Who launched it?”
“Such things are not known.” Bora eyed a Hazani guard on the far side of the cloisters, moving away from the railing and motioning for Anna to follow. Her voice, while casual, had the measured volume of hired blades, giving Anna a strange sense of eavesdropping as they walked. “The alloy of this arrow does not exist within the district, nor Malijad’s entirety. Whispers say that it hails from Leejadal. There are few forces capable of acquiring such a thing, child.”
Anna recalled Leejadal from her rudimentary studies of Hazani provinces, knowing it only as a mapmaker’s dot above the plains. “Then you must know who did it, right?” She glanced over her shoulder, spying the Hazani rounding a pillar and entering their lane of shaded tiles. In a lower tone she added, “You must have ideas about them.”
“These thoughts are wasted. Their flesh is beyond your reach.”
Even if true, the sentiment was infuriating. She glared at Bora, regarding her sharpened awareness and latent power—a spring, waited to snap free—as wasted, despite her countless hours of meditation. The wisest course was one of unspilled blood, Bora had emphasized, but Anna could only guess at the wisdom of allowing would-be assassins to roam the city. “You found out who did this, and I’m still just waiting for them to kill me.”
“Vigilance has never been a passive thing,” Bora said as she steered them through a linking corridor and past a row of partitioned powder dens. Her gaze tracked from side to side, vigilant of the shifting silhouettes and smoke and cackling that leaked from behind silk screens.
“Bora,” she sighed, “I can’t watch out for every shadow.”
“You should.” Bora stared ahead as they stepped out of hardwood shadows and into the vibrant, sunlit grasses of the third tier’s artificial garden. She scanned the gentle knolls, the bright tufts of hazel trees, the snaking streams born from grommets in the walls and threading below bridges. “You wouldn’t see these blades, child, even if I told the truth of their forms. Your only defenses are a hare’s vigilance and lightness of foot. If you recognize the hatred in their eyes, your breaths are already stolen.”
Anna couldn’t fathom seeing the world in the same manner. Her eyes fell on weary tutors leading young students around the greenery, or on red butterflies flitting from one flower to the next, too lost in her own love of the gardens to consider killers. Perhaps it would be her undoing, she considered. “Then call it curiosity.”
Bora led Anna through rows of poplar trees. The northerner had an odd habit of slipping into silence without explanation, and Anna had accepted it over time. But there was a soft slope to her lips, words teasing with escape. “Nahora is an unfailing suspicion. There’s nothing to be done about their malice, child.”
“But why?” Passing a poplar tree, Anna met the piercing green eyes of a hooded grower. She lowered her voice and glanced over her shoulder as the woman returned to trimming the tree’s branches, humming gently with a Hazani lilt.
“Nahora’s aims have always rested in the taming of Hazan,” Bora told her. “If they sensed new blades moving against them, they would release the burden of casualties and make war with this land. One child’s life is not worth thousands.” The northerner was icy in her resolve. “If war is sparked with Nahora, I will not build its kindling.”
“So we sit and wait for them to come back,” Anna whispered. “We know who it is, and we just wait. You expect me not to do anything.”
“Wariness is its own blade,” Bora replied. “As is mistrust.”
“But you expect me to trust the orza and the people around her.” Anna recalled four cycles of private tea sessions, of receiving trinkets in satin-embossed boxes, of never being asked about her life in Rzolka or discussing things with gravity. She recalled the hateful stares of the orza’s own scribe, a skeletal woman with a lower jaw woven from scar tissue, always watching from the doorway. “What about her scribe?”
“What of her?” Bora asked. “I’ve seen the shape of her shadows. Your fears are unfounded.”
“But Dalma must have some enemies.”
“The Emirahni always have,” Bora said. “Such men already left their mark on her lineage, child.”
“Who did they kill?”
“The wounds were born of salt, not blood.” Bora’s eyes swept the approaching sprawl of sitting circles, where children meditated in silent clumps. “Your tomes will never know the true way of things. They’re words best left buried.”
“If they could break them once, why not twice?” Anna asked. “They could’ve slipped people inside. Enemies.”
“The practiced eye sees them everywhere.” Bora’s gaze rested on a Dogwood guard at the far side of a nearby bridge, his ruj tucked against his shoulder as he stuffed a wooden pipe.
“We’re talking about killers, Bora.” Anna watched the rosy-cheeked guard huffing, his fingers trembling as he struggled to hold the pipe still. “Whatever you think of them, they wouldn’t try to hurt either of us.” I hope. “They don’t have enough men anyway,” she added, as though bolstering her confidence.
Bora noticed her doubt, and gave a faint hum. “Perhaps the orza’s men outnumbered them at one time. But without salt, they had no reason to remain. Does it seed you with fear, child, to consider that these men guard your breaths?”
Anna watched the Dogwood guard drop his pipe and spill charcoal ash into the brook. “The orza has more than enough salt.”
“Now, yes,” Bora said. “But it was not earned in Malijad.”
“So how does she pay the Dogwood?”
“Rot cannot grow without dark, festering shelter.” Bora regarded the Dogwood guard with a passive face, her disapproval well-hidden. “The kales casts enough shade to nurture such a thing, child. Even the most virtuous minds, in times of wicked drought, can be reached.”
They can be reached. It made Anna shudder. “Are they the only blades left here?”
“The largest, surely,” Bora said. “Before their arrival, there were only the Alakeph.” She pulled in a slow breath. “There were few of them, but the way of their hands was known.”
“So they’re hired,” Anna said, strangely disappointed in the realization. “They’re no different from the others.”
“Such words are misguided.” A rare note of scorn slipped into Bora’s words. “Their blades preserved the orza’s flesh, just as the walls of the kales preserved the Halshaf hall. That exchange was one of known hearts.”
“You said that the Katil Anfel could be anybody,” Anna said. “You can’t be sure.”
“I am. Their lives are sworn to ideals that you cannot fathom.”
“They’re sworn to children, aren’t they?”
“To those without kin,” Bora corrected her. “Without their blades, it is not known whether Shem would have lived. He knows the truth of their hearts. If you ever fear them, ask Shem where his joy resides. Ask if their ways are pure.”
They walked through bathing halls and tiled lounges until thoughts of killers faded in Anna’s mind. When they drew close to the market square above the bestiary, surrounded by hundreds of moving bodies that could’ve easily tucked daggers into folded palms, Bora disappeared into the masses.
It was the northerner’s latest trick, forcing Anna to recall the layouts of endless halls and chambers to return to her quarters. She drew a long breath and headed for the eastern gateway, free of fear as she scanned the fists and bulging cloaks and sweat-beaded faces of those around her.
She abandoned terror for hop
e.
Pure hearts existed within the kales, and she would seek them out. She would leave behind memories of guilt, of foggy mornings and wicked promises. She would redeem herself through the way of their hands.
Chapter 19
At the edge of a sweet-smelling nerkoya hothouse, its gloom arrayed in rows of buds and slick bundles with tepid water underfoot, Shem pointed out the foundling hall.
They were gazing down from Shem’s favorite balcony, a secluded stone half-moon that had taken several cycles of garden exploration to uncover. He’d claimed she could see all the way back to Rzolka on a clear day, but Anna didn’t believe it, and wasn’t sure that she wanted to try. All the same, she was glad for confined space after her conversation in the indoor gardens just a day earlier. Here she could dangle her legs between the balusters and, ordinarily, count caravans with the Huuri, which was a constant but demanding game in light of how much trade pumped through the courtyard at any given time. But on that day, she merely watched the blinding, bone-white trickle making its way from the main keep to the outer wall.
Around the Alakeph were their flocks of foundlings, dense wagon lanes, a limestone barrier that encircled the space, dozens of nondescript buildings huddled against the inner wall. Beyond them and their courtyard dwelling were the true streets of the district, threading through setstone heights in dizzying patterns. Travelers, she noted, rarely wandered into sunlit streets. It was a city where travel routes changed by the hour—the hesh, according to northerners.
The foundling hall was little more than a speck of color against the haze, its red tile roofing smothered by a cluster of nearby crafting huts. It was a blotch on the sand-swept burg, seemingly in danger of being swallowed by the surrounding cityscape. Yet if she’d slipped out of Galipa’s inn on a night so long ago, she might have ended up in a hall just like it. A child in robes, or a Halshaf sister, living under the protection of the Alakeph and their white veils.
It was the perfect place to remake herself, she’d considered as she lay awake the night before. To be defined by pride rather than regret, by works rather than birthright.
“Could you take me?” she asked. She thought to tell him of her own fascination, perhaps even about a bid for penitence, but decided that it could only cloud his joy. Not that he would understand an ascended being’s need for atonement.
If only he knew how low we could descend, she thought as they made their way to the capsules. It would break him.
* * * *
After reaching the base level and worming through the premier markets, which consisted of countless stalls selling distant spices, beasts, blades, jewels, woods, and ores, Anna spotted a Dogwood patrol station. The dark-lipped attendant flashed a dutiful smile and led them to the concourse away from the trade gates, making sure, as the others did, to waggle his pocket mirror and apprise his comrades of Anna’s movements.
Cracked mud buildings filled the inner perimeter of the courtyard, raked by the hot winds and airborne grit. Kitchens with circular roasting pits operated alongside drying huts, and every so often was a counting house, where men behind shielded grates dispensed painstakingly measured lumps of salt to merchants. A diamond-shaped lattice of dark metal formed the courtyard’s towering main gate, permitting entry to lanes of giants, some hauling caged soglavs or bear cubs. Drop-peddlers wandered with their arms out, adorned with dozens of swaying canteens that resembled spores along their wrapped flesh. Traders from the less-settled routes were marked by their packs, which used jutting metal rods and stretched skins to form movable awnings, cumbersome yet granting salvation from har-gunesh.
Don’t fight it, she thought as she saw an imported hound panting in its cage. It was slumped against the wire mesh with shallow breathing, unlikely to survive a day. Let the heat drown you.
“There!” Shem called. He took off running, sandals kicking up whirls of dust as he slipped past a soot-faced glazier. Before Anna could make sense of his wild dash and catch up, the Huuri crashed against the foundling hall’s iron door and drummed with a balled fist.
In Rzolka, nobody dared to question a closed door. Here, it was a mere suggestion of privacy. Anna drew closer and wandered behind Shem, breathing heavily with her hood drawn high and sweat seeping into her undershirt. “Give some warning next time,” she said, her rare smile making the boy giggle and flash his pristine teeth.
A metallic whine stilled Shem’s laughter. The door swung in, revealing an aging woman in a white robe. A white hood similar to those of the Alakeph, yet concealing far less, was draped over her sun-creased skin and small yellow eyes. Her nose was slimmer too, her lips nonexistent. Blooming heptagons moved under the skin.
She spoke with Shem in a strange, clipped dialect of flatspeak. Between each sentence, the woman nodded thoughtfully and hummed in understanding. When Shem finished, she stepped aside and motioned for them to enter.
Anna wavered in place, wondering if the sister, as Halshaf legends suggested, could read the truth of her heart. She held her breath high in her chest, praying she couldn’t.
Once Anna stepped past the Halshaf sister, the air became cool and breathable, tinged with honey and herbs far too delicate for Hazan. The atrium’s lighting was soft red, tinted by rows of candles in ornate metal jars, and the walls were covered with quilts and wood panels. Images of blood-covered newborns, breasts, and women’s loins adorned nearly every surface, carved into tabletops and sewn into ceiling tapestries.
Chanting echoed from the adjoining chamber, but unlike the kator, it was joined by laughter.
She heard dozens of children’s voices, as carefree as any she’d heard in the south. She listened to their footsteps clopping over tiles as they ran and played games, and she heard them shrieking with delight, speaking with a jumble of accents and dialects and ages, from first-years to those in Shem’s range. Behind their words was scattered singing and bouts of string music.
Anna turned to Shem, who seemed lost in his own world as he paced around the atrium, staring at the artwork and muted colors. “Do they remember you?”
His face glowed crimson with the candlelight. “She welcomes me.”
Maybe they could read her, after all. “Am I not allowed?” she whispered. After all, what place could a wretch have in—
“All may pass through this place,” he said. His eyes were wide, awestruck by the chamber’s beauty. “All are loved.”
Such warmth broke Anna’s heart, in a way only the guilty could comprehend.
A heavyset man appeared in the doorway ahead, his dark hair thinning and beard hanging in patchy tangles. He wore a dark smock with his sleeves rolled up to the elbow and, most remarkably, possessed sigils that resembled interlocked fingers. “Onur’ane Shar—” His voice fell away, and Anna realized he was staring directly at her, eerily reverent. “High-Mother Sharel,” he said, this time in accented river-tongue. “The third mass shall be of the convening soon. Our young guest may like to accompany you.”
The Halshaf woman moved to Shem’s side, and took his hand in her own. Shem looked back at Anna with a smile, and accompanied the woman as she led him into the chamber.
“Hello,” Anna said uncertainly.
The man inclined his head. “Low suns upon you, Kuzashur.”
“You know my name.” Even more perplexing.
“Ben’karim,” he smirked. “My wife has told me of you.” He entered the atrium with a limping gait, wiping his hands on a rag. “In fact, most here know about you by now. She’s very fond of you.”
“Oh.” Anna paused. “Your wife?”
The man stopped cleaning his hands and glanced up. He was completely befuddled. Then came a thunderous laugh. “Forgive me, Anna. Such humor is a very southern thing. I’ve been reading scrolls of these laugh-words, as of late. I nearly missed this.”
The man hobbled off, waving for her to follow.
Anna obeyed with latent caut
ion. She passed into the main chamber, where children ran in circles and danced with colored ribbons and gathered for stories. The presence of Alakeph around the chamber, even with long blades and unfeeling eyes, put her at ease. Pure hearts. She followed the man along the rear wall of the chamber until they reached a curtained doorway, where he stepped aside and allowed her entry. His scent reminded Anna of licorice and crushed mint.
The office was cramped but well-stocked, with columns of leather tomes and ribbon-wrapped scrolls piled to the ceiling in places. He had a stool and a metal podium as his work station, surrounded by spare candlesticks, jars of lantern fuel, and ink bottles.
Sidling past Anna, he kicked aside some crates to form a crude path. He dug through a collection of papers and measuring sticks in the corner, grumbling curses in flatspeak, before producing a second stool. He set it down, brushed it clean using his rag, and settled onto his own seat.
“Please, please,” he said, reaching for a flask by his feet, “sit and bring comfort.” He uncorked the flask, filling the room with nostril-tingling fumes, and poured some of its clear contents into an empty ink bottle. “Arak, Anna?” He held the bottle up for her approval.
Anna politely shook her head and sat down.
The man shrugged, swilled the bottle’s contents, and grimaced. “I would not even give this to hounds.” He pinched his left eye into an awkward wink. “Is this a southern thing to say?”
“Yes,” she said, “something like that.” While the man set down his bottle, Anna cleared her throat. “I don’t mean any disrespect, but I really don’t know who your wife is.”
“Ah, okay, okay.” The man rested his hands on his thighs, wide-eyed and smiling. “It was not humor?”
Anna shook her head.
“She is Dalma Emirahn. Now I am sure that you know of her.”
Emirahn. Anna combed her memory to no avail. Perhaps it had been one of the various noblewomen walking through the palace, or—
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