by K A Doore
I can help.
Illi didn’t think. She reached out.
But not with her hands.
Her chest burned hot as coals and a thrum burst outward from her, rushing down her arms and legs and out her fingers and toes and the top of her head. Her heart started up again, and between beats, she could sense all of the guul, all fourteen of them, pinpoint their exact locations, and more. She knew their age, how many bodies they’d inhabited, the personalities they’d once had. She could see where they’d been, could feel their fear and desperation, their urgent will to live.
And at the center of each, she felt the bright fire that was them. She reached and held them all within her grasp, taking care to slide her will between Canthem and the guuli attacking them. Then she closed her fist and its fire dimmed, quieted. Went cold.
At the same time, warmth filled her body like a breath, stinking of burnt iron and laden with moisture. Her mind cleared and the exhaustion that had settled over her lifted. Yes. Good.
As if from a distance, she heard a collection of soft thumps, a sound she knew intimately—that of bodies hitting the sand. Illi’s eyes snapped open. She didn’t remember closing them. She was breathing in quick, shallow gasps. Her mouth was dry and her skin too hot and her wrists—her wrists were burning. She shook her hands and the bracelets shifted across raw, blistering skin.
An eerie stillness had fallen over the sands, replacing the chaos of the fight. The guards moved slowly, hesitantly, first examining each other, then the bodies littering the ground. Everyone held their breath, as if the guul’s sudden disintegration was only a ruse.
But Illi didn’t care for the guards—she sought out only one figure in the group. Canthem still stood tall, glancing around like the others. She’d stopped the guuli in time. She didn’t need to ask Canthem if they were sane to know—she could feel it.
Inch by inch, the guards eased, relaxed. One prodded a guuli with their sword. When the guuli failed to react, they gave it a good kick. Then the guard laughed, an infectious gasp of relief that soon spread to the rest of the group. The laughter turned to cheers, which they poured on Merrabel.
Ignoring the praise, Merrabel crossed the salt and pushed through the guards. She dropped down to one knee next to one of the guul and pressed her thumb against its forehead. Then she looked up, her gaze falling on Illi like a hammer.
A wall of white stepped between them: Heru. He held out his arms, blood still dripping from his fingertips.
“Next time, I might not act so quickly.”
“Fool.” Merrabel flicked her gaze over Heru’s arms, disdain smeared across her face. “I had everything under control. Or do you believe I’d leave my own guard defenseless?”
Illi shook her head, confused. Heru hadn’t done anything. Then understanding broke across her like a storm. He hadn’t. She had. But he was taking the credit, the blame. He was protecting her from Merrabel. Which meant what she’d done—
Illi turned her hands over and the bracelets slipped across blistered, red skin. Not what she’d done.
What the sajaami had done.
12
That night, the caravan didn’t stop. They’d lost too much time defending against the guul, and then again with the subsequent cleanup. The caravan pressed on despite exhaustion and darkness, because even a few hours lost on the sands could spell death if they ran out of water.
Illi’s hands grew numb from the cold. When someone came around with tea near midnight, she gratefully accepted a cup. The heat from the glass was a welcome, if temporary, balm for her chilled and chapped skin. As the moon crept higher, she pulled herself onto Awalla’s neck and let the monotony of the camel’s motion draw her down into a dozing dream.
Illi became aware of a presence nearby during one of those dreams. Her eyes snapped open and snagged on a blur of white walking alongside her. Her hand went to her dagger before her brain caught up with her reactions: it was just Heru.
She didn’t blame herself for not noticing Heru’s approach. His camel, Anas, was unnaturally quiet. It was also dead. Illi recognized the simple binding that kept the camel going. Heru had performed a similar binding on the rodents and snakes he’d have her catch, animating their fresh corpses with guul from his collection.
For a creature seven years dead, it was holding up remarkably well. Some of its skin had thinned enough to reveal moving muscles beneath, and patches of hair were missing, but it wasn’t in danger of falling apart anytime soon.
But it would eventually. Blood no longer pumped through Anas’s veins, air no longer circulated through its lungs, and its tissues no longer repaired themselves. Heru could circumvent death by binding a jaani to a body, had even discovered a way to bind one’s own jaani to one’s body—a task previously thought impossible without serious loss of sanity—but he couldn’t stop the body itself from falling apart.
The life Heru had given Anas was a false, impermanent one. Was that what Heru had done to her? But no, Anas had died and Illi had not. And the marks and scars Heru had given her were another development, one pioneered by the late Empress Zara ha Khatet. Illi could only hope Heru had perfected it.
“We’re overdue for a discussion about what happened. For one, I precisely ordered you not to interfere. Do you have any idea what you did?”
“I stopped one of the guuli from possessing a guard.”
“You did quite a bit more than that, girl. And, might I add, that guard would have been protected from the guuli by the charm they wore.”
Illi’s stomach twisted; of course Merrabel would have given her guards protective charms. Heru steered his camel closer, then looped the beast’s lead over the pommel of his saddle. A pen and roll of vellum waited in his lap. He picked these up and looked at her expectantly.
“Well, go on. Describe how, exactly, you quieted the guul.”
“One guuli,” she corrected. “I didn’t think. I didn’t have time to—it had already untethered and it was about to get the guard.” Canthem, she wanted to add, because it was important. But not to Heru; he didn’t need to know about her weakness. “I just reached. I could feel each guuli. And I just … stopped them.”
“You did much more than stop them,” said Heru. “You quieted them. I retrieved the guul afterward.” He patted his travel sack and Illi knew that if she could see through fabric, she’d find a dozen-plus glass spheres pulsing with an orange glow. Then his eye met hers and he added significantly, “Thirteen.”
“But there were fourteen,” she said, and knew it to be true, knew it down to her muscles and bones. She could still feel the individual thrum of each, knew their signatures if not their names. They’d had names once, but those had been sacrificed to the sands and the sun and the winds in exchange for an immortal half life.
Heru made a noise deep in his throat, somewhere between a grunt and a chuckle. His eye stayed fixed on Illi. “Strange, then, that I only retrieved thirteen.”
“But I saved Canthem. I mean, they seemed sane.”
“How’re you feeling?”
“Fine.” But the word tasted like dust. She turned her hands over, the metal sliding across her raw skin. “What did I do?”
“You didn’t destroy the guuli, if that’s what you’re worried about,” said Heru brightly. “No, this act of yours has confirmed a long-held hypothesis of mine. I’ve often wondered how the sajaam could maintain such strength and integrity despite not having bodies. A jaani will whither without a host. Even guul degrade given enough time. But the sajaam have withstood countless millennia, if the histories are to be believed. And they don’t add to their numbers through errant jaan. Now I may have an answer to how they’ve withstood the entropic effects of the wind and the sun, as well as why we’re not overrun by either guul or jaan. It appears they’re cannibals, of a sort.”
It took Illi a moment to understand what Heru meant. “I … ate the guuli?”
“Nothing so crude,” said Heru. “I suspect the sajaami bound to you doesn’t need as m
uch energy as it would in its natural state. But even subdued, it still requires some amount of energy to sustain itself. On multiple occasions in my research, I’ve come across a theory that the sajaam created the guul—perhaps there’s more to that than I initially suspected. They could have cultivated wild jaan for their own purposes, much as we have domesticated goats and camels.”
Illi swallowed, then swallowed again as she tried not to be sick. Even though the guul were dangerous, deadly demons, they’d been jaan once—which meant they’d once had bodies, they’d once been people. Instead of crossing over, those jaan had gone wild. Whatever she’d done to the guuli, it would never cross over now. It would never know peace.
In saving Canthem, she’d committed blasphemy.
Heru was still talking, despite the ringing in her ears. “… would explain the sudden deficiency in my containment spheres. I first noticed that the number of contained guul didn’t align with my records before we departed, but I’d assumed that had more to do with the unlawful destruction of my lab than the sajaami. The spheres, however, have been steadily losing guul every day. I’ve counted a total of four lost so far. While the number is not yet alarming, I suspect that it may be tied to your continued presence of mind.”
Illi shook her head, as if that would help his words make sense. When it didn’t, she pressed her palm against Awalla’s neck, feeling the reassuring warmth of the beast, her steady pulse. “The guul you’ve captured—they’ve been disappearing? And you think it’s because of me?”
Heru frowned. “That’s what I just said, girl.”
“Illi,” she corrected, but she was too distracted by the implications of what Heru was saying to put any force behind it.
“I’d assumed that your relatively stable sanity and containment was due to my own expertise and precision, but even I must admit surprise at just how well such untested modifications have fared,” continued Heru, scratching at the piece of vellum with his pen. “It’s fascinating that even bound and contained and subdued, the sajaami can still exert its will. This doesn’t bode well for its eventual release.”
“Eventual?” echoed Illi.
“Nothing lasts forever, girl,” chided Heru. “And considering how quickly the sajaami is burning through my significant guul collection, our time may be limited to a matter of weeks instead of the months I’d originally planned for.”
“Then we need to do something.”
Heru looked up from his writing and narrowed his eye. “We are. We’re traveling to Hathage, where I’ll set up a new lab and we can resume testing.”
“But there must be something we can do now.”
Heru gestured at the dark sands all around. “With what lab? With what equipment? We could, perhaps, conduct limited experiments on the guul we have at hand or, I suspect, you could summon your own guul from the Wastes. Even within a controlled environment, each of those options has its inherent dangers. And I suspect that continued use of the sajaami will necessitate expending more guul and will likely wear on the containment, so any direct experimentation will need to be exactly calculated to minimize risk.”
“I don’t want to experiment. I want to find answers.” Illi shook her head; they were getting nowhere and she suddenly very much didn’t want to discuss the sajaami with Heru as if it were some thought experiment. It was real. It was in her. And it was already finding ways to endanger the things she loved. “I’ve got to go.”
“I thought you wanted answers,” said Heru. “To find those answers, we’ll need to understand what the sajaami is capable of, even through you. Fleeing from those questions will not make them disappear. I said, fleeing from them—girl—Illi—come back—”
But Illi had already yanked Awalla around and away. Heru’s words chased her through the fledgling dawn, but she didn’t have to listen to them if she kept moving. She didn’t have to understand what they meant. She reached the edge of the caravan and dismounted, drawing her sword in the same motion.
As the caravan trudged on and away, she swung and parried and danced through the familiar movements of a fight, her only opponent the air—and the demon curled in her chest.
Because she’d done it, she’d reached and she’d crushed the guuli. The sajaami might have absorbed it or whatever it had actually done, but Illi was the one who had acted.
You didn’t care about blasphemy when you worked alongside the en-marabi, said a voice that was her own, but whose words were not. How is what he does to the guul he captures any different than what I did?
It was different. Heru kept the guul, or he bound them in new bodies. He didn’t destroy them.
But he doesn’t help them cross over, either. He traps them.
He was learning about them, he had to understand them so that he could stop them. There was a difference.
I can help you understand the guul. I can give you so much. You can be so much more than him. He’s held back by fear, but you are propelled by it.
All you have to do is remove the bracelets.
She didn’t need the sajaami’s help. She didn’t need anyone’s help. She was strong enough. She had to be strong enough.
Illi growled as she hacked at the air, driving away the sajaami’s voice. For a few precious moments, she practiced in silence, the only sound the drumbeat of her own heart and the occasional hel! from the caravan. Illi wasn’t concerned about being left behind; the burdened camels moved slow enough that she’d easily catch up.
You’re the most dangerous thing in the Wastes. Just take off the bracelets.
Illi hissed. She held her sword two-handed, raised it overhead, and screamed. The sound came from deep within her chest and went on for as long as she had breath. She pushed with the scream, shoved hard against the sajaami, pressing it back down. At her edges, she felt other things topple and turn as well, as if her voice had the ability to break mountains.
Maybe it did.
Then she was out of breath and the scream broke off, leaving her gasping. She let the sword fall to her side and focused on breathing. There was a crack inside her, a fundamental flaw, and she wanted to keep screaming until that crack was filled. She knew it didn’t work that way, knew she was being irrational, but at the moment she found it hard to care.
“Are you all right?”
Illi whirled. A rider pulled up nearby. As they slid from their camel, Illi recognized Canthem. Her heart thudded and the calm she’d briefly claimed for herself slid away like sand through grasping fingers.
“The screaming,” continued Canthem, gesturing widely. “The caravan leader was worried it might be more guul.”
“No guul here,” said Illi, forcing herself to smile. “It’s just me.”
“Just Illi,” said Canthem with a chuckle. “That’s what I told them.”
They came closer, the moon’s light giving them an outline and little more. Illi couldn’t see their eyes, couldn’t gauge their expression, but she didn’t need to. She could feel them, feel the pulse of them as they neared.
They were both already far from the caravan. No one would see. No one would hear. What was the harm in a little fun?
But she’d proven she couldn’t handle even that when she’d used the sajaami to save Canthem. Worse—if Heru was right about the protective charms—to save Canthem when she hadn’t needed to.
Illi drew in a shaking breath as she realized what she had to do. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. If Canthem had just disappeared from her life like all the others, this could’ve been avoided. She’d thought she could walk the edge between disinterest and infatuation like a performer along a railing, balancing between toppling a few feet to the stones and several hundred feet to the sands. Only she was already falling, far and fast, and any moment she’d hit the sands and shatter.
But it wasn’t too late to climb back up from the sands. She just had to be clear and she had to be firm and she had to end this.
“I can’t.”
Canthem frowned. “Can’t what?”
> “Can’t this.”
Canthem glanced around, as if there was something nearby that might explain her words. Then they lifted their hands helplessly. “I don’t follow.”
Illi growled her frustration and sheathed her sword. Her hands were shaking too much to hold it properly, anyway. Why did it feel like she was gearing up for a fight?
She struggled to find the right words to make Canthem go away, but she kept tripping over her own tongue. Finally, she took a deep breath and decided on the truth.
“What we had in Ghadid—it was supposed to stay in Ghadid,” said Illi, quick and clipped, her gaze not meeting Canthem’s. “Now that we’re away from the city, it has to end. All of it.”
Canthem frowned, their warm eyes searching hers. They started toward Illi, hand reaching, then stopped. “I’ll respect your wishes, but … why does it have to stop? What changed? Was it something that I did?”
“Nothing that you did,” said Illi. “And everything that I’ve done.”
Canthem nodded in understanding. “If it’s your past as an assassin, then—”
“It’s not that,” cut in Illi. “I’m broken. I can’t do this. I don’t know how to do this.”
Canthem’s gaze softened. “Is that all? We can work through that, with time. For now, we can just keep practicing. I promise, you’re definitely not broken.” They reached out and this time their fingers connected, brushing Illi’s knuckles. The touch was static, a shock. Illi gasped, felt her stomach roll as if she were falling. She jerked away.
“You don’t understand,” said Illi.
Canthem spread their hands. “Then help me understand. We had something, back in your city.”
“No. We didn’t. I was using you.”
Canthem shrugged. “You were at first. But it was more than that.”
“No,” repeated Illi, stepping back. “It was only ever supposed to be a one-night thing. Maybe two. I used you and now we’re done and that’s—that’s it.”
