He heard Elethra snoring even before he pushed open the heavy oak door. A lock secured the room, but the baker didn’t want to jangle keys while he stole in and out so he’d left it unsecured.
Darik pushed open the door. Moonlight trickled in through the window. Elethra lay on a heavy pillow, her hair drawn into braids behind her head. She snored loudly. Elethra was a large-boned woman and not particularly pretty, less so without the kohl that she smeared under her eyes every morning. But she was no ogress, buying figs and sweetmeats on feast days to bake into special pastries for the slaves. A small kernel of guilt gnawed at Darik when he imagined her grief.
But he had had no time to entertain guilt. He rushed past her bed and stepped into the nursery in the back, where his sister slept in her bed. Graiyan had traded goods with a man from the artists guild, who’d sent an apprentice to paint Kaya’s rooms with pictures of sun flowers and beasts. A small lamp burned in an alcove along the wall; Darik remembered that Kaya woke with nightmares and Graiyan no doubt lit the lamp to soothe her to sleep. But the lamp light guttered along the wall, making gorgons and dragon wasps dance in the shadows. The apprentice artist had magic in his work, and Darik thought the struggling, moving figures in his bestiary were unlikely to soothe Kaya’s night fears.
Darik pulled back the blanket and picked up his sister. She stirred in his arms, then rubbed her eyes and looked at him. She smiled in recognition.
“Shh,” he urged. She said nothing but snuggled her head against his shoulder, yawning. The curls on her head poured over his shoulder, tickling his neck.
He hurried from the nursery, past the baker’s snoring wife and was about to leave the room when Kaya lifted her head. “Bye, bye Mama.”
Instantly Elethra, who Darik thought could have slept soundly in the midst of the Harvester’s kennel, surrounded by baying hounds, sat upright in her bed. All vestiges of sleep fled from her face.
She opened her mouth and screamed.
Chapter II
ELEVEN YEARS BEFORE CRAGYN MURDERED the high khalif and seized the Iron Throne of Veyre for himself, assassins murdered the khalifa of Balsalom and two of her sons while they slept. Then the five deadly shadows slipped through the royal apartments to finish their job by killing the khalif and his remaining children in the tower rooms.
But one of the assassins tripped over a harem girl lying on pillows just inside the khalif’s darkened room, and she cried out before he could silence her. Within seconds, a dozen guardsmen filled the room, rushing to take the five men alive. The first four assassins turned their knives on themselves, while the fifth, who had killed the harem girl, grabbed the startled, groggy khalif, and plunged his poisoned dagger into the man’s chest.
“Seize him!” the pasha of the guard shouted, and the guardsmen pushed past the four dying men to grab the final assassin before he could turn his dagger on himself.
But the assassin leaped toward the window, just out of reach of the pursuing guardsmen. He swept aside the curtains and hurled himself through with a triumphant shout. By the time the guardsmen reached the window, the assassin lay crumpled on the flagstone, five floors below.
The grand vizier arrived a few minutes later, fully expecting to find the khalif already dead. When he saw the man sitting against his pillows, sipping mint tea, Saldibar almost wept with relief. Blood trickled through the khalif’s night paijams and he dabbed a cloth against the wound.
“Not poisoned, eh?” the khalif asked, managing a weak smile. “Else it would have killed me for sure. Ah, but I feel a burning in my limbs.”
He did not yet know what had happened to the khalifa or his two oldest sons, Saldibar realized, or he would not feel so proud of his own survival. The grand vizier picked up the assassin’s blade where it lay on the floor. Steel with a carved Veyrian handle. He wiped the blade on the pillow and was not surprised to see flecks of dried yellow along the blade. His hand trembled.
Guardsmen dragged the bodies from the room, starting with the assassins. The khalif looked at the dead harem girl and his smile faltered.
“The golden bloom,” Saldibar said, dropping the knife to the ground. “One of the most deadly poisons.”
Faces paled in the room. Best that they know now, the grand vizier thought. The truth of the matter would be obvious soon enough.
“Then I am dead already,” the khalif said.
Yes, Saldibar thought, anguish turning at his stomach when he thought of the horrible death that awaited his master. He looked at the harem girl. She’d have taken the bulk of the poison from the blade. But what was left would suffice. It might take a few months, or even years, but it would kill the khalif just the same.
But which of the khalif’s sons and daughters could succeed the man? There was Omar, drunk with his lust for power. Give him the scepter and his ambition would grow until it engulfed the western khalifates in war. Or Marialla, who thought herself more beautiful than the finest peacock and had half the sense of the plainest sparrow in the gardens.
No, he thought. None of the older ones will do. There is only Kallia.
Kallia Saffa. The blood of seventeen dead kings and queens ran through her veins, a lineage that lasted from the days when her ancestors built Balsalom over the ruins of Syrmarria, a great city destroyed in the Tothian Wars. That blood also ran in her brothers and sisters, but she was the best of them.
But she was barely fourteen years old, still embroiled in the petty intrigues of the palace children, although Saldibar suspected she found little pleasure in such games. He turned back to the khalif to plant the seeds that would make Kallia’s ascension inevitable.
Kallia was not alone.
She had retired to the gardens to read a book of love poetry pilfered from the library while her tutor dozed. Gustau always fell asleep during her history lessons, and today when he’d nodded, she’d slipped the poetry book into her robes. Later that afternoon, when Gustau released her from her studies to go with her sisters to etiquette training, she went instead to the gardens to read the book.
She’d always gone to etiquette training, but in the years since her mother’s death, etiquette training had stretched to four hours a day. Other lessons had increased in length as well. But for stolen moments, she found herself under someone’s instruction from breakfast to bedtime.
Kallia hated etiquette training, not so much for the training itself, but for the other girls at the dinners and dressing lessons, the daughters of her father’s viziers and ministers. Her sister Marialla was too far above them, and the khalif’s other daughters too young, so they focused their nasty games on Kallia. They would speak aloud about how homely Kallia was, while never uttering a single word directly to her. When the girls napped on pillows in the heat of the afternoon, Kallia would be awakened by a dozen pinching hands.
Kallia’s vain, preening sister Marialla was not much better and the younger sisters followed the older girl’s every move. None of them paid any attention to Kallia’s torment.
So Kallia was quite happy that afternoon to find the maids’ attention lagging. She slipped away from the cursed training toward the gardens. Instead of cutting straight through the courtyard, she took the long road through the bestiary. Her father had collected the statues of every beast and monster to be found across the breadth of Mithyl. There were griffins and dragons and winged horses, and one creature so delicately carved that its snarl almost came alive when you looked at it. A fire salamander, her tutor told her.
Past the statuary, Kallia worked her way into a back corner of the gardens, eager to read the book of poetry. This edge of the palace gardens was designed for maximum privacy. Fig trees and grape vines tangled the walls, while a narrow path wound its way through the trees to stop at secret fountains and briars of wild roses, each spot graced with a polished stone bench. For nearly an hour Kallia sat on one of these benches, her only companions a pair of monkeys sitting in the tree overhead, arguing over a fig.
Alas, the book was a silly, sentimental
thing, filled with ornate language and ridiculous romantic sentiment directed toward a woman whose only virtue seemed to be that she had fine lips. Kallia pictured the object of the writer’s affection and laughed at her own imagination. Lips as red as a wild rose, full and sensual, yes, but the poet neglected to mention her bulbous nose, her raspy voice, and her nasty temper.
Odd that such a book had survived the burning of the Veyrian library in the Tothian Wars, while so many others had not. She dropped the book on the bench and walked over to a fountain that bubbled nearby. Removing her slippers, she stepped into the cool fountain, letting the hem of her robe fall into the water. It was deeper than she’d expected and the water rose almost to her knees. Silver and gold koi brushed against her legs before fleeing for the safety of the lilies that grew from submerged pots further into the fountain.
Something rustled in the brush just over her shoulder, and Kallia heard a hushed whisper, and at last she noticed that the gardens all around her had become suddenly noisy.
Saldibar. It could only be the Grand Vizier and his men. Saldibar’s eyes were everywhere in the palace, penetrating every corner to watch her, ever since the assassins had come. He even sent a woman to watch her in the baths.
When she complained to her father, he would shrug apologetically and tell her that it was the grand vizier’s job to keep the Saffa family safe.
“Then tell him to watch Omar,” she had protested. “He is the next khalif. Nobody would bother to kill me.” Assassins might even attack Marialla, pretty enough that half a dozen lords in the Western Khalifates sought to marry her to their sons, but not Kallia.
But Father was sick and growing weaker with every passing fortnight, and refused to consider the logic of her pleas.
Kallia turned around slowly in her bench and the rustling stopped. “Saldibar,” she said, “I know that’s you. If you’re going to follow me, at least stop skulking in the bushes like the assassins you claim you’re protecting me against.”
No answer.
“Saldibar?”
Kallia grew afraid. She hadn’t told anyone where she was going. She had nothing to protect herself with, not even one of those ridiculous little daggers that Marialla insisted on carrying in her robes.
“Saldibar! Is that you?” her voice sounded shrill in her ears and her heart pounded. How easy it would be for assassins to slip over the wall and into the gardens.
She waded toward the edge of the fountain. And then the watchers came out of the trees and bushes. Relief flooded through her.
It wasn’t what she’d feared. Instead of assassins, it was five of the palace girls, those same girls who teased her mercilessly at etiquette training and snubbed her at the palace feasts. They might come to tease, yes, but she was safe.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said, breath rushing out. She didn’t like the way the bigger girls fixed her with narrowed eyes, or the guilty look that the three younger girls gave each other. They meant some mischief, of that she was certain.
“What do you suppose the princess is doing?” a girl named Fashima asked.
Fashima was taller than the others, the eldest child of the most minor minister in the entire palace. Before Kallia could get out, the girl reached into the fountain and put her hand on Kallia’s arm, digging fingernails into the skin.
Kallia flinched, fear swimming up from the depths where it had hid just a moment earlier. “It was so hot out here, I thought I’d go wading. And then I saw the fish and—”
Kallia wanted to get out of the water, but Fashima held her in place and she didn’t want to start struggling. Not yet.
“So our little princess was too hot, was she?” one of the other girls said. She shook her head. “I’ve been under the impression that she came to the gardens to avoid us, because she is too good for us.”
So that was it. Kallia had assumed that the girls had hated all of the khalif’s daughters, those girls who would someday rule over the palace, and already ruled during etiquette training. They only picked on her because she made the most convenient target, neither too young nor too old to bully. Or so she’d thought.
But that wasn’t all of it. They’d misread her. They took her need for solitude as aloofness, assumed that she thought herself better than them. And when they teased her, and she withdrew further, it only proved their assumptions correct.
“I think we’d better teach her some etiquette, hadn’t we?” Fashima asked the others, who nodded, solemnly.
“I’m standing right in front of you,” Kallia said. Her temper flared. “You can speak to me directly.”
She put her foot on the flagstones at the edge of the pool, determined to force her way from the water to stand on even footing with the girl holding her arm. Fashima pushed back and when Kallia’s wet foot met the stone, she slipped backwards, flailing to save her balance. Fashima’s eyes opened wide, as she lost her balance, falling forward into the pool.
The girl landed on top of Kallia, slamming her head under the water. Her head hit the stones at the bottom of the pool and lights flashed in her head. For a moment she was disoriented, clawing for the air and reaching the bottom of the pool. She came up spitting water with the taste of pond scum thick in her mouth. In her panic, she flailed against Fashima, still lying on top of her.
“Get out of my way!” Fashima screamed, pushing wet hair away from her eyes.
The other girls laughed, and this only enraged Fashima more. She grabbed Kallia by the hair so hard it brought tears to her eyes. “You want to swim like a fish? Then you’d better learn how to hold your breath.” She spoke directly to Kallia for the first time.
“No, Fashima. I—”
The girl shoved her head under the water. Kallia fought and clawed at Fashima’s hands and arms. At last, the girl pulled her out of the water, and Kallia gasped for air. She tried to pull away, but the bigger girl held her fast.
“Not bad. Pretty good, in fact,” Fashima said. “But that’s not nearly enough time.”
“Let me go,” Kallia begged. Her heart pounded in terror. “Please.”
“Fashima,” one of the other girls said, sounding nervous.
Kallia’s head went under the water again. This time, she yanked herself free, heedless of the tearing pain at the roots of her hair. But when she scrambled from the pool, two girls pushed her back into the water, and Fashima forced her head under the water again. Kallia struggled harder, but couldn’t pull herself free. Her lungs burned. Spots flickered in the back of her eye sockets.
A single, cold thought penetrated the haze. She was going to die. Not by assassins, but by jealous girls from the palace. It was absurd, really. The black spots spread.
And then her head was yanked from the pond. She sobbed for air. The grand vizier pulled her from the pool. Saldibar shoved the girls out of the way as he dragged Kallia out of the water and set her on the warm flagstones surrounding the pool before leaning over her with a concerned look on his face.
“She started it,” one of the girls said in a shrill voice. “She pulled Fashima into the pool.”
Saldibar turned to her. “I wonder if you would tell the same story to the torturers guild.”
The other girls looked terrified, but not Fashima. She stepped from the pond and wiped water from her face. Water ran from her robe into the pool. A smirk played at her lips.
“You play a dangerous game, my child,” Saldibar said, his voice cold. “One word of this to the khalif and your life is forfeit.”
“No, you play a dangerous game,” Fashima said. “The khalif is practically a dead man. And his son Omar Saffa will be the next khalif. Perhaps you don’t know yet, but Omar and I are betrothed. By the time the khalif’s body sits atop his tower of silence in the desert, my husband will wield the scepter of Balsalom.”
Kallia looked to Saldibar in horror. She would leave Balsalom rather than be ruled by this girl.
Saldibar said, “Ah, so Omar has told you that, has he? He’s told such tales before, I believe, to
bed a pretty young girl.” The grand vizier shook his head. “It’s quite sad that the khalif’s son cannot satisfy himself with his harem.”
Fashima smile faltered slightly, but only for a moment. “The choice is yours, old man. You may tell the khalif and risk your life.”
Saldibar gave a slight smile. When the girl turned to go, Saldibar snapped his fingers in the air. A man appeared suddenly from the path behind, a two handed, straight barbarian sword in hand. He knocked Fashima to the ground, put his boot on her chest and raised his sword overhead. She screamed.
“Shall I kill her?” the man asked.
He was a tall man, but young, a barbarian named Whelan who had served as the grand vizier’s bodyguard for the past year. Saldibar had told Kallia that the man fled some kind of trouble in the Free Kingdoms.
Saldibar turned to Kallia. “Do you wish to kill her, my mistress?”
“No,” Kallia said, rising quickly to her feet. “Please, don’t hurt her.” She laid a hand on the barbarian’s arm. “Please, Whelan.”
The man put his sword down, but rage still burned in his eyes. “As you wish.” Fashima climbed to her feet, face pale.
“Very well,” Saldibar said to Fashima. “Kallia’s mercy has saved your life. Now go, before she changes her mind.”
Fashima fled, and the other girls followed. Whelan helped her to the stone bench beneath the fig tree.
“Now, my young mistress,” Saldibar said, turning back to Kallia with stern eyes. He picked up her poetry book and turned it over in his hands before handing it back to her. “Tell me what happened.”
Kallia told him everything. Saldibar kept his thoughts hidden, but she could see Whelan burning with the indignity. At last he sputtered, “But you are the princess. How could they do this to you?”
“Because I am afraid of them,” Kallia admitted. “They have tormented me for years. Since my mother was killed and father poisoned.”
She had considered begging help from her father, or from Saldibar. She had dismissed the idea, thinking it would only make the situation worse. But how much worse could it have got? Not worse than drowning, she mused.
FIERCE: Sixteen Authors of Fantasy Page 281
