by K A Doore
“Does that mean you’ll help?” pressed Illi. “Even if you don’t have all the resources?”
“At the time we were considering a different method of dealing with the sajaami,” said Heru. “For the record, I still maintain that destroying it is impossible. But this brief incarceration has given me sufficient time to cogitate and I’ve developed a few hypotheses which are in line with your conclusion. The sooner we can test them, the better, for I can’t say how long the containment I made will hold.”
“You mean my body.”
“Yes,” said Heru. “Living flesh may be stronger than glass, but the sajaam were bound within stone for a reason. The sajaami can still flex its will, so to speak, through you. As long as it’s in you, it’s not truly contained. It’s a threat.”
Illi turned over her hands, the bracelets sliding across her blistered skin. A wave of dizziness washed over her, but a few steadying breaths made the ground solid again. “Yes. I’ve realized that. We need to work quickly.”
“Quickly and safely,” said Heru. “We’ll only have one opportunity to perform this rite, and it must be perfect. I suspect the most difficult part will not be in designing the rite itself, but in removing the sajaami from containment first.”
Illi stiffened, her fingers pressed against the whorls on the silver bracelet. “Please don’t tell me you never considered how the sajaami would be removed before creating these.”
“Oh, removing is simple enough.” Heru made a hmm noise deep in his throat. “If you removed the bracelets, then the sajaami would burn through the marks binding it to you and destroy your body. It could take anywhere from several seconds to several hours, and there may be ways to lengthen the process to give us more time, but I imagine that would turn an otherwise briefly painful process into a much longer and more excruciating one.”
Illi’s throat tightened. “Oh.”
“But then, of course, we would have a fully corporeal and uncontained sajaami, and that would be less than ideal,” continued Heru. “So we must minimize the time that the sajaami is without a host or we must discover a way to perform the rite while it is contained within the body. I have a few hypotheses based on the foundational theories of en-marab study and my own understanding of this rite you speak of, but of course, being able to see the rite in person and interview those who regularly perform it would elucidate many problems.”
Heru began pacing his cell as he talked, turning sharp at each corner so his wrap swished against stone and air, his words as precise as his steps. “The biggest assumption of this seven-year rite, as I understand it, is that the jaani will have been weakened by its time spent outside of, if still close to, its body. After seven years, the tether between the body and its jaani that the marab have been attending to will have become so thin as to be nonexistent, at which point the danger of the jaani becoming wild increases exponentially. Thus, during the seventh year post death the conditions are at their most advantageous for successfully guiding the jaani from this world to the next—the jaani is at its weakest point before the tether is gone entirely. But how do we translate such baseline assumptions to something as strong as a sajaami? How much do jaan and sajaam have in common? What properties do they share? A jaani’s energy can be siphoned away until there is nothing measurable left, but can the same be done with a sajaami? Can a sajaami even cross over? These are the questions we seek answers for. Ideally, I would have an entire lab devoted to this question, with sufficient, experienced assistants and a wide sampling of sajaam. Instead, I have one bound sajaami, no lab, and two untrained assistants.” Heru stopped abruptly, his single eye staring up at the ceiling. “You expect no less than a miracle from me. Thank G-d I am a genius.”
“I’m so glad jail didn’t affect your ego,” said Illi. “But we need to focus on one question only: how to get the sajaami to cross over. Everything else is unimportant. Merrabel’s going to notice I’ve slipped her soon, if she hasn’t already, and I don’t think she’s going to let me go that easily.”
“Everything else?” asked Heru. “Your own life is at risk here, girl.”
“It’s mine to risk,” said Illi.
“Be that as it may,” continued Heru. “I will not have this done sloppily and risk loosing an enraged sajaami on the world or losing another assistant. We must progress with care. This could take weeks—”
“We don’t have weeks,” snapped Illi.
“I am aware that Barca is searching for you, but she is one person and—”
“I don’t have weeks.” Illi stepped closer, heart beating like a drum in her chest. “Heru, these bracelets, this containment you designed—you said it yourself, it’s not perfect. I can’t stay this way indefinitely. They will fail and the sajaami will be free if we don’t act soon.” She swallowed. “I already have to take jaan to keep from slipping. And every time I use the sajaami, it gets worse.”
“Then don’t use the sajaami.”
Illi twisted the burnt bracelet. “It’s not that simple.”
Heru coughed a laugh. “It is that simple, girl. You didn’t even have a sajaami nineteen days ago.”
Illi sighed and dropped her hand. The world had moved and irrevocably changed outside this jail, yet Heru continued to treat her like a naïve child. Merrabel’s intentions might have been bad, but at least she’d treated Illi like an adult, if not quite an equal. Heru refused to change.
“Maybe I don’t need your help after all.”
“You are foolish, yes, but not that foolish.”
Illi held up her hands, displaying the silver scars that crossed her palms. “I’ve learned enough about—”
Heru interrupted her with a barked, “Idiot!”
He reached for her through the open doorway, but Illi reflexively stepped back and his hand slammed into an invisible barrier. Heru snarled, briefly the mad, untethered en-marabi everyone had always claimed he was, and then he calmed his features. The sudden juxtaposition made him look older again by half. He wrapped his fingers around one of the bars, gripping it so tight his knuckles turned as white as bone.
“You fool,” he said, still irate but more controlled. “What have you been doing? Have I not repeatedly warned you to care for the sajaami’s vessel? Every crack is another weakness the sajaami can exploit. Every break is another week you lose before the containment fails and when it does, you will die. And you have been wounding yourself so willingly?”
Illi felt guilt tightening her throat, but she pushed it away. “How convenient that you suddenly care about my well-being now,” she shot back. “I needed to understand the sajaami, and to do that I needed to understand jaan. If you’d taken a few moments out of your day and actually treated me like a person instead of—of a—an ambulatory bowl holder, then I wouldn’t have needed to do this.”
“Perhaps we would have all been better off if you had remained an ambulatory bowl holder,” snapped Heru. “Perhaps then you would not have willingly gone with Barca. Perhaps then you would still be safe.”
This time, anger curled in her, burning away the lingering traces of guilt. “I can leave you here,” she said quietly. Not a warning; only the truth.
Heru barked a humorless laugh. “You’ll do nothing of the sort. You need me, girl.”
“Do I?” Illi took a step back, then another. “You’ve never treated me as anything more than an object; I’m not even an interesting experiment to you. I thought you were safe because you didn’t care, but that was then. Now it matters. Even though you’ve never formally taught me anything, I’ve watched you for years, Heru. I know your methods and I can reproduce … most of them. Merrabel taught me more in a few days than you did in all those years. The marab in Ghadid will fill in the rest. Your assistance would be helpful, but if you refuse to see me as a person, then why should I trust you with the sajaami?”
“You can’t keep me here.”
“Can’t I?” Illi opened her arms. “Then step through those bars.”
Heru’s frown turned t
o a glare. He didn’t move.
“Right,” said Illi. “That’s what I thought.”
As she basked in his glare, Illi’s anger unfurled. Her wrists itched from all the healing blisters and her back was a mess of scars and her home was hundreds of miles away and she was harboring a demon more powerful than the Wastes themselves, than every guul it contained, and she might see home again but she couldn’t return, not until the sajaami was gone, and she missed her family, her cousins, even those stupid celebratory evenings in the inn, Zarrat’s laughter and Yaluz’s jokes and Dihya’s quiet strength—
Merrabel had pulled the levers that smashed Heru’s lab, but Heru had held the sajaami together long enough to ask:
Do you trust me?
Tears prickled at her eyes and her anger collapsed in on itself, exhaustion filling the space it had carved with the weight of sand. She wanted more than to go home. She wanted to go back. She wanted Ghadid as it was before the Siege. She wanted her parents, her old room, the stringwork she’d tied herself hanging from her window, all of it before it was burned to ash and scattered to dust.
More than that, she wanted herself back. The Illi who had been excited about her lessons with the Serpent of Ghadid, who had kept up with her cousins and practiced her fighting in the darkness of her room, window open and the sounds of a city deep asleep wrapping around her like a tight blanket. She wanted to love someone without constantly knowing they would die.
She wanted to feel safe. She would never feel safe.
But she could at least make certain the city that had survived centuries of raids and centuries of peace, only to fall at the hands of its own people would survive. Would thrive. Would remain unconquered.
With or without Heru.
She started down the hallway, Heru’s heavy stare on her back. She counted her steps. One. Two. Three—
“You can’t leave me here.”
Four. Five. Six.
“After all I’ve done for you.”
Seven. Eight. Nine. Illi stepped around the jailer, now staring blankly at the wall, and reached for the door.
“Fine!” Fabric rustled as Heru threw up his arms. “You are more than an ambulatory bowl holder, girl. I will grant you and your suggestions the respect that they would deserve from an assistant. Does that suffice?”
Illi grabbed the handle. Turned.
“Illi Basbowen,” said Heru, his voice cracking. “I will treat you like an equal, even though you are mortal and extremely fragile. It is the least I can do, since you are, in fact, bearing the physical burden of the sajaami. I will assist you in researching and constructing the rite. I am no good at begging. Do not leave me here.” He paused. Swallowed. “Please. It’s quite filthy.”
24
Illi set the pace of their journey, pushing all four of them to long hours and short nights. They rested while riding and hurried while walking, so they stayed warm through the long, cold darkness. What started as a quiet journey soon became completely silent from exhaustion. But no one complained, not even Heru.
That wasn’t the only way Heru acted differently. He was already prone to bouts of silence, but now he volunteered to brew the tea and was predictably precise and perfunctory in his duty. Every few hours, the toasted warmth of tea wafted in Illi’s direction and Heru would step out of the darkness, proffering a cup. At first, Illi had been careful, rolling a sip of it around her mouth to test for poison or other doctoring attempts. But by the end of the second day, she accepted every cup without hesitation.
He’d also left a strange present in her travel bag. Or at least, Illi could only assume it’d been him, even though she couldn’t figure out how he’d come by its contents. She’d become aware of the small sack of glass orbs during one afternoon rest. They pulsed with a familiar life and, as her exhaustion had stretched and unfurled, she’s found herself reaching, if only out of habit. She’d started when she’d brushed across the six spots of warmth, as unexpected as they were welcome. Upon closer inspection, she’d found the small bag tucked on top of her things, the glass orbs glowing faintly orange.
Illi didn’t ask about the orbs and Heru never brought them up. Not acknowledging them somehow made it easier to reach and take and keep the dizziness and frailty away a little longer.
Besides, asking about them would bring up another question: why. The obvious answer was that Heru was making absolutely certain that the sajaami container wasn’t damaged or otherwise compromised. But he was taking more care than was strictly necessary and giving her space as he never had before, which made her wonder if he truly did see her as more than just a container, if he finally recognized her as a person.
If Illi asked, she might get an answer. But she wasn’t sure which answer she wanted. So she took the tea and she took the orbs and she left the question unasked.
They ran into guul only once. After that, Illi checked for nearby guul throughout the day. Any she found, she urged north and toward the Aer Caäs and Merrabel’s very capable Guul Guard. Illi suffered no guilt from those actions; if Merrabel wanted the guul so badly, she could have them.
Even though there were only the four of them, Illi found plenty of ways to avoid being alone with Canthem. There was always a pack to sort or a wrap to mend or an idea to exchange with the captain. Captain Yufit had turned out to be an invaluable resource when it came to guul; as head of the guard, he’d spent much of his time studying them. Unlike Merrabel or Heru, he’d come to understand the guul on a much more practical level.
As dawn cracked the sky on their eighth morning of travel, Illi walked alongside the captain. Even though all around them was featureless sand and gravel, Illi felt home looming closer with each step. The feeling was a weight on her chest, a hope tangled in fear at what she might find. It’d been weeks, after all, since she’d last seen her city, and she knew from experience that so much could happen in just one night. But today, today she would see it. Today she would know.
Illi wasn’t sure she was ready.
To distract herself from her growing anxiety, she prodded the captain. “Why?”
“Why what?” he returned, lifting an eyebrow at her.
“Why do you hunt guul? What brought you to it?”
“Why do you?”
“They attack Ghadid.”
“You could have left them to the watchmen.”
Illi snorted. “The watchmen are for crowds and riots. They wouldn’t know what to do in an actual fight. It’s our job to protect the city.”
The captain folded his arms. “I see some things haven’t changed. But, better guul than people. Still—why you? If Amastan’s still around, I take it some of your other cousins are, too. It’s not on you alone to stop the guul.”
But it is, Illi almost said. She bit her tongue; the captain wouldn’t understand. “I promised it’d never happen again.”
“That what would never happen?”
Illi swallowed and looked to the horizon, the black of night only now fading to blue as dawn broke behind them. “The Siege.”
And then she saw it—barely a speck on the horizon, a smudge only as tall as her nail, but Illi knew the speck for what it was: home.
She was reaching for the seeing glass before she realized what she was doing. Putting the thick lens to her eye only made the city a fraction bigger, but it was enough. Platforms and buildings smeared together at this distance into a lump that seemed to float above the horizon. Ghadid. The impossible city. The city in the sky. It was only a trick of distance and light, of course; the pylons would materialize as they approached.
But at that moment, it didn’t matter. The sight, as imperfect as it was, took Illi’s breath away. She didn’t realize she was crying until the streaks the tears left behind grew cold. She still didn’t know if everything was okay, if Thana or Mo or Dihya or Yaluz would be waiting for her up there, but in that moment it was enough that Ghadid still stood. There was hope.
“You mentioned this Siege before,” said Canthem, and Illi starte
d; she hadn’t realized how close they’d come. “What happened?”
The captain was watching her with keen expectation. Perhaps it was that and not the sudden, aching relief of seeing Ghadid again that let her talk for the first time in any true detail about what had happened that night. But as Illi began to speak, she found the words coming faster and easier, until it was almost impossible to stop.
“It was the night our dead wouldn’t die,” she began.
Illi told them how the first slave had been pronounced dead, only to rise moments later and attack the marab in attendance. She told them how Drum Chief Amastan—just Amastan, then—had pieced together what was happening before anyone else, how he’d anticipated the dead rising from the crypts and stopped them from destroying the city from the inside.
How even that hadn’t been enough.
She told them how the dead from other Crescent cities climbed the carriage wires and attacked at night, how every person they lost was another soldier for this blasphemous army. She told them about her cousins’ strategy to first defend, then burn the city, how even beheading the bound dead only worked for so long. She told them how she’d volunteered to help spread oil and fire, because she was fast and she was small.
How she’d really just wanted to find her parents.
How she’d been too late.
She told them about their last stand, when so many of her cousins had sacrificed themselves so more citizens could escape. She told them about descending to the sands in shocked silence. How the survivors had watched from afar as Ghadid burned.
Illi stopped suddenly, unsure how to end her story, because it hadn’t ended, it had never ended. She was still living that night, every night. She was still watching Ghadid burn.
A hand touched hers. Canthem looked at her with wonder, not a trace of pity in their eyes. Illi unclenched her fist and slid her fingers between theirs. She became aware of a pen scratching across paper and turned to find Heru nearby, perched cross-legged atop his camel and scribbling furiously. After a moment, he looked up and noticed them all staring.
