by Micah Yongo
“How long have I been here?”
“Quite some time,” the man admitted. His head bobbed in a slow drunken nod. “You’ve been lying here still as a corpse for just over a week.”
“A week?” Neythan tried to rise again. The room lurched.
“Not the best idea,” the man advised. “You’ll need a few days yet.”
“I’ve been here a week?”
“Give or take. The dart I used, you see.” He shrugged apologetically, one palm opened in commiseration. “It was dipped in a little invention of mine, a mixture I use, very strong. Urdin berries and lingerweed and the heads of certain fungi, but you have to ferment the berries, which, by the way, are fairly rare in this season with all the rain. Then you must grind them together until just so. And heat them. And then… well, details, I shan’t bore you. Suffice to say the mixture is quite potent. I usually keep it to guard against bears and wolves but… well, you had a sword. One must improvise.”
Neythan laid his head back on the stone bed. The room felt as though it was spinning. “Why did you bring me here?”
“Where else was I to bring you?”
“But why? What do you want?”
“What do I want? Now there is a question. One might find a great many ways to answer were he to take his time. Truth is, a man seldom knows. I want gold, he says. Or to live in a palace. Or a thousand wives. A man wants for many things and perhaps sometimes gains them, without finding what it is he seeks…” He drank again from the wineskin and grimaced. “A dangerous question to ask really; what a man wants. Especially for the one who’s to answer. Wiser not to. The hungriest of all beasts, you see – we men – and with less mercy than most. Still, seeing as you do ask, I suppose there might be a thing or two a man of my means would settle for. Especially from one like you… Shedaím.”
Neythan looked at him. “You have not said how you know me.”
“I know the Brotherhood.”
“How?”
“The stench, perhaps.”
“You are a spy.”
“Hmph.” The man spat.
“Then what? Who are you?”
“Caleb. My name is Caleb. I am… a merchant. Of sorts. Spikenard, spices, wines. I deal in what can be found, and sometimes…” He nodded at the pot of incense in the corner. “Things of my own making.” He capped the wineskin closed and held it loosely between his knees as he leaned forward, elbows propped on thighs. “But you asked of what I want, didn’t you, erm… your name. What is your name?”
Neythan didn’t answer.
“It is only a name, boy. Hardly a dangerous secret. And you will need to tell it to me if you are to discover what I want and perhaps have a hope of leaving this place.”
Neythan thought about it for a while. “My name is Neythan,” he said reluctantly.
Caleb nodded. “Neythan… Well then, Neythan. I shall tell you how I know your precious Brotherhood. And I shall tell you what I want. I shall tell you it all. Whom else is there to tell, after all? There are so few a man like me can trust. But you… I know I can trust you, Neythan. I can. Because I know you are the rare soul who will understand what I’m going to say… You see, I wasn’t always as I now am. I was once as you are…”
Caleb waited for comprehension to gather on Neythan’s face.
Neythan said nothing.
Caleb coughed impatiently. “I was Shedaím. A Faceless One. One of your Brotherhood?”
Neythan laughed then realized Caleb wasn’t smiling. “You cannot expect me to believe that.”
“Is it so hard to believe, Neythan? Perhaps in time, should you live long enough, you will learn how deceiving appearances can be.” The man’s gaze wandered to the middle distance. “How sometimes you can think you know something, or even someone, and be deceived.”
Neythan thought of Arianna.
Caleb saw Neythan’s silence acknowledge his truth. “I was one of the most esteemed in my company,” he continued. “A master by only my third sharím.”
Which only made the story more fanciful. There are four sharíms in all, eleven-year seasons that mark a Shedaím’s time. The first is spent at Ilysia as a disciple, beginning as a child and learning the disciplines and apart for a few trips each year to witness the wider world – cities, townships, plains – remaining on the mount. The second begins with the taking of the covenant, which is when a disciple passes from discipleship to Brotherhood and leaves Ilysia, returning once a year to begin with but eventually only returning when summoned. The third sharím is a Brother’s strongest, when he is experienced, and yet still young enough to make best use of the knowledge he has gained. And then there is the fourth and final sharím. Although few survive to see it, it is during this period, as the strength of the body wanes, that the sha is believed to grow most. Those who survive it enter the tutorship at Ilysia or become one of the sharíf’s bodyguard and eventually, beyond that, perhaps an elder.
To be made a master before the fourth sharím was unlikely. But then to even know what a sharím was without having been part of the Brotherhood was even more so. Neythan decided to hear him out.
“So what happened then?”
“Ah. Well, funny you should ask.” He opened the wineskin and swigged. “I’ve asked myself the same question many times, Neythan. Many times… You know, it’s said a man chooses his place in the world, but I’m not so sure. I often wonder if it isn’t already set for him, like a seat at the banquet table, and his choice merely an illusion conjured to him by the fact he made his own way to the chair… But then, who can know? Only the gods perhaps, if there are such. If there are any, they are cruel. They do not smile on us. They did not smile on me, Neythan. They cursed.”
“You’re not making any sense–”
“Hikramesh,” Caleb said. “That’s where it happened, you see… I was sent there from a township north of it, along the Low Eastern foothills by the gulf. More than ten years ago now. Wild territory then. Desert lands, mostly. I was to seek out a scribe there – Sarwin, of the house Saliph. Fussy little fellow. Took me a few days to find him. I finally came upon the man at some night council where he was courtier to Jikram the Tirashite, the sharíf’s vassal. It fell to Sarwin to make preparations for his journey north to Hanesda for Helgon’s inauguration as sharíf. My decree was to deliver a letter. That was all. A letter that only his eyes were to see and afterward I was to destroy. Which, when you think about it, is a strange task to have asked of one like me – third sharím, a master?”
“And what did this letter say?”
“I never knew its contents. Never. I was not to read it. I was faithful to what I’d been decreed… I went to the council in the city’s eastern quarter by the watergate. I was to find Sarwin, deliver the letter, watch him read it, and then ensure it was destroyed. I did as I was bid. I delivered the letter. But when I did…” Caleb frowned, his hands beginning to tremble slightly. He gripped one with the other at the knuckles to steady them. “Must have been a trap, you see. The men in that chamber… They tried to seize me. Five men, six perhaps. Armed… I managed to kill two or three but…” and then he grew still, he looked puzzled. “Then there was a fire.” It came out almost like a question. He looked up at Neythan as if expecting him to answer. “From nowhere. A fire.” Caleb pointed to the tight and shiny seared skin of his face. “How I got my scars, you see… It was then they took me.”
“Took you where?”
But Caleb said nothing, staring at the ground.
“Where did they take you, Caleb?”
He tried for another swig from his wineskin and, finding it empty, grunted a muttered accusation at the flask.
“How did you come to be here?”
Caleb frowned into the empty skin, staring at the uncapped hole as if for the answer.
“Caleb?”
“What if I were to remove this incense,” Caleb said. “Release you from its effects?”
“What?”
“What would you do?”
&
nbsp; “What are you asking?”
“Perhaps I’m asking for you not to kill me, should I, against my better judgment, free you.”
Neythan said nothing.
“I could even help you,” Caleb went on, “to find this lady friend of yours. The one you were seeking by the ravine.”
Again, Neythan just watched him.
“You see, I remember, Neythan. I remember many things about the Brotherhood. I remember it was forbidden to give one’s word in oath and break it.” Caleb rose from the stump and stepped toward Neythan. “That when one clasped hands with another the words spoken in that littlest of embraces were binding, just as any decree.” Caleb came closer still until he was standing over Neythan’s limp body on the stone bed. “I remember these things, and it occurs to me how intriguing the hand of Providence is. Fickle, but intriguing. And so I think to myself, perhaps she has come to me in hope of repaying a debt owed.”
“Again, you are making no sense.”
“I’m talking about a bargain, a contract, between you and me. Merchants together, Neythan. Stock and trade. I have something you want, and you, you have something that may be of use to me.”
“And what is that?”
“Yourself.”
Neythan frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I was betrayed, Neythan. That much has always been clear. What isn’t, is by who. And why.”
“And you think I can help you.”
“I think if you ever hope to see the light of day you will swear to help me. You will swear to be bound to the answering of these questions until such a time as I release you.”
“It has been many years since what happened, Caleb. Isn’t that what you said?”
“Yes. More than ten. So?”
Neythan just looked at him, thinking about it. “And you spoke of being able to help me?”
“With your lady friend.”
“You know how to find her?”
“I do.”
“If it is true you know something of how to find her, then I will agree.”
“It is.”
“Then that shall be our bargain. You help me find her. And I will help you find your answers.”
Caleb smiled. “You are the one imprisoned. You cannot set the terms. I will want my answers first.”
“I am the one imprisoned. With no reason to trust you. None. Whereas I, as you know, am bound by my word should we take skin for skin in the speaking. You claim to have been a Brother, but you are no Brother now. There is no covenant in your tongue. The bargain can be no other way.”
Caleb stepped away from the bed, thinking it over.
“What do you hope to do,” Neythan said, “when you find your betrayer? Talk with them? Reason? You free me, help me find her, and I will find the answer to your questions, and render judgment as you see fit. The bargain can be no fairer than that.”
Caleb stared long at Neythan. Then his hand slowly emerged from his ragged smock.
“It seems you are quite the barterer. It shall be as you say. We will find this girl you pursue. But afterward, Neythan, the answers. And, as you have said, judgment.” His eyes finally left Neythan’s to glance down at his outstretched palm.
Neythan lifted his own hand and placed it in Caleb’s. “Skin for skin,” he said.
“Yes, Neythan. Skin for skin.”
Six
D U M E A
The trouble with men is they never grow up. Some sort of childish instinct, stubborn as a weed, seemed to cling to their nature. Yasmin had told little Noah more times than there were stars in the sky that he was not to persist with his pigeons until after his Judgment. The ceremony was only two moons away. Seven years of schooling and the boy couldn’t wait another two months for the sake of his future. But what truly annoyed her was his father, her husband Hassan. Rather than doing as he should and insisting that the boy study, he continued to indulge Noah’s hobby. Hassan: son of Nalaam, steward of the citystate of Dumea, the fourth of his line to hold the title, and yet it seemed to Yasmin that it was she, not he, who was more concerned with ensuring their eldest son grew to uphold the traditions his forefathers had walked so well before him.
She shook her head and turned from the childish pair back to the house.
It was late afternoon. The sun was low and tawny. The reapers were still collecting in the wheat. She sighed and marched away through the already scythed part of the field.
It was ridiculous Hassan could be so irresponsible. Even more ridiculous, she was stuck in this backwater of a city.
She’d been the daughter of a consul from Kaloom, far to the east, a month’s journey from here. She could still remember accompanying her father on his long journeys south to Hanesda – the City of Thrones, as he’d call it – for the annual councils and First Moon festivals. They would journey to the crown city once, sometimes twice, a year and every time she loved it. The huge white walls gleaming in the sun, the narrow clustered streets, the sharíf’s palace and royal gardens, and all the people, every one of them in a rush, each hour an event.
It was there she’d met Hassan, more than twenty years ago, at a banquet to celebrate the wedding of Játhon son of Sulamar, a prince of the house of Saliph and a kinsman of the sovereign line. Játhon had wed the young queen of Hikramesh the previous week. A particularly favourable match, Yasmin’s father had said. Játhon, as both a relation of the throne and a member of the Calapaari gentry would now join the lands of Harán, Sumeria and Calapaar together by blood, consolidating their accord and strengthening the Sovereignty. It was good, her father said, for peoples, once conquered, to feel themselves masters rather than slaves.
It was an idea Yasmin had never liked. That a woman’s affections should be no more than a tool to engineer the accords and affairs of men, that she too should be one day swallowed up in another’s plottings and manoeuvrings for power. An ornament of convenience, an elaborate currency. That was what she’d liked about Hassan. His interest in her. The way he talked to her. It had been her cousin Tobiath who’d introduced them. Even now the memory remained fresh.
“The best gardener amongst the nobility you are likely to meet,” Tobiath said, presenting him to her.
“Gardener? Is that not the work of servants?”
“My father,” Hassan answered, taking her hand in greeting, “has always taught me that he who is to govern must first know how to serve.”
“You’ll find Hassan a man of pretty words,” Tobiath explained.
“But true ones,” Hassan added, smiling as he gazed at her. “And believe me, it is no lie when I say it is a delight to meet you, Yasmin.”
She liked him instantly; the glossy shine of his black hair, his wide and kind mouth, his almond skin, his perfect height. The way his eyes – doleful, long-lashed, though a little too close together – fixed to her whenever she spoke, as if the room and its assembly of consuls and courtiers was, when compared to her, no more than an inconvenient distraction.
“Are you always so forthcoming?” Yasmin said, smiling.
“Often so. Though,” glancing at Tobiath, “my friends tell me I ought to grow out of it.” His eyes returned to her, measuring. “What do you think, Yasmin? This honesty of mine. Is it a vice or virtue?”
“I would say it has a certain charm.”
“Then a virtue it must be. For you to be charmed it could be nothing else.”
Yasmin laughed. “Well, perhaps your virtue might help us then.”
“Oh?” Hassan slid another glance to Tobiath, then back to her. “I would like nothing more.”
She drifted to Hassan’s side, goblet clasped loosely in hand, leaning at his elbow to survey the room. The space was broad and dim and filled with people. Dignitaries from the cities of Caphás and Tresán along Calapaar’s coastland reclined at low tables, wearing their typically elaborate and multicoloured flax-woven tunics. Yasmin had always loved the bold gaudiness of their designs, how lively and audacious they were. Fashions always seemed to move so quick
ly out there by the coast, but then they were seafaring cities after all, used to tasting of and exchanging with faraway places. And never ones to miss a celebratory occasion like this, despite the distance. A crowd of Low Easterners dominated the far end of the room, chattering loudly as was their way. Probably members of the newlywed queen’s retinue. And of course there were plenty of Sumerians too, delegates and consuls from the nearby cities of Qadesh or Tirash as well as the crown city itself, no doubt here to jockey for favour and gain the ear of this new and influential union. Yasmin lifted her chin to Hassan’s ear and motioned with her drink at the blithely peopled space. “Tell me. What do you think of them?”
Hassan raised an eyebrow, took a sip of his wine and shrugged. “Well, at a glance, some portly, some less so. Though, on the whole, finely attired.”
Yasmin smiled and shook her head. “No.” She leaned in a little, waited for Hassan to return his attention to her, and then pointed with her eyes and a nod. “I mean them… Játhon and his new wife. What’s her name again?”
“Satyana,” Tobiath supplied in a murmur.
“Yes… Satyana.”
Satyana, queen of Harán’s largest city, Hikramesh, and daughter to king Jashar of Harán. Tall, elegant and swarthy – she stood at the shoulder of her husband as he talked with a rose-cheeked and heavily bearded man – Játhon whispering, the bearded man guffawing, Satyana silent.
“What do you think?” Yasmin asked as they watched. “Are they well matched or no?”
“How could they be anything other? They are wed after all. As all this lovely wine testifies.”
“Does that make them matched?”
“I suspect you have your own feeling on the matter.”
“Yes. As does Tobiath, though our feelings differ, and so I ask…”
Again Hassan took a thoughtful sip of his wine. “I suppose it’s no secret that agreement between Sumeria and Harán is often… well, difficult,” he said. “That Satyana belongs to the house of Najir may remedy this. Everyone knows the sharíf desires a highway from Tirash to Hikramesh to better take advantage of their ports. It’s not hard to see how he may profit.”
