The Unconquered City

by K A Doore

  Steam slapped her face.

  And the world ended.

  33

  Illi was pulled in all directions.

  Illi was whole.

  Illi was broken.

  Illi was the world.

  Illi was the water.

  Illi was dead. Illi was alive.

  Illi was.

  Impressions: boiling water; calm surface; a scream; a pull; light; tearing; rending, ripping, roaring; darkness; pain, pain, pain. And through it all Illi held and held and held and then—

  She sucked in a breath, got only water. She screamed. The scream was swallowed up whole.

  Slowly, over the course of only seconds, she began to realize she wasn’t dead. Her body still existed. It had stopped falling apart. It was knitting back together. She had shattered only to be melted down and recast. All around her was water, but something else swirled with her.

  She tried to reach, but felt nothing. Nejm was gone. Still, she could hear the whispers of jaan, unintelligible as they were intangible.

  Then something grabbed her and she gasped water and then she was being dragged up, up, up.

  Her head broke the surface. She tried to breathe, but her lungs were full of water. She choked instead. Hands tightened around her shoulders, arms. The world spun and spun and spun—

  Hands pulled her up and more hands tugged at her and the water let her go, let her and whoever was holding her spin, dangling, in the air until finally she was pulled over and onto cold metal. Voices spilled around her, just as dizzying as the sky. Even though she felt the solid surface against her back, she was sinking. The water was closing over her head again, buzzing in her ears. She was still choking, still suffocating.

  Hands compressed her chest. Again. Again. Water spilled from her throat and then she was on her knees—how’d she get there?—throwing up water, so much water. What a waste.

  When the water stopped coming, she sucked down breath after deep breath. She stayed on her hands and knees, shaking too badly to move. Voices stirred the air, trading back and forth. Illi slowly teased out words, sentences, and finally meaning.

  “—she do it? Is the sajaami gone?”

  “—see her wrists. She had bracelets—”

  “Heru? Heru? No—”

  “Shh,” said a voice near her ear. Illi looked up into Canthem’s familiar, warm eyes. Their tagel and hair were wet, both stuck to their face. “Just focus on breathing. You’re all right. It’s over.”

  But it wasn’t over. Not quite. Not yet. Illi could feel that as she returned to herself, felt her body again, cold now, so cold.

  “He’s dead,” said another voice. Thana. “He can’t be dead. That’s just … that’s not possible.”

  Illi sat up slowly, so slowly. Thana hunched over a bundle of red and white. Heru. Illi reached reflexively before remembering the sajaami was gone. Everything felt so dull, so numb. More approaching footsteps vibrated through the ground, up her arms and shoulders.

  Her wrap was sodden and growing colder by the moment. Water still streamed down her back, off her braids, trickled down her face. She was shivering. Shaking. A warm arm wrapped around her shoulders. A body pressed close. Illi leaned into it, hungry for heat.

  She wanted to move, to help, to say something. But she was too tired. She could only watch as more people clumped around Heru, who was still unmoving. She stared at him, waiting for his chest to rise, to fall, to breathe, to live. Thana was right. He couldn’t be dead. Illi was going to travel with him to the Wastes. He was going to finish his life’s work.

  And yet.

  And yet he didn’t move. The stars did, shifting overhead, but Heru remained still. Illi felt the air churning over the sea, heard the whispers of nearby jaan, but Heru

  did

  not

  move.

  A body cannot lose such a volume of blood and remain viable, Heru would have said. He would have clucked his tongue at her for wasting time on something as inefficient as emotion. Accept the truth and move on. There is much to do.

  Much to do …

  Something wet splashed against her cheek. Then her wrist. Then it was drizzling, rain mixing with blood, turning red, then pink. Washing away. The rain came down harder, began to pour. The people around Illi broke into motion, hurrying back under the cover of the stairs.

  Canthem pulled her up. Illi didn’t trust her legs to hold, but they did, and she stumbled to safety. The sound of the rain was muted in here, muffled by the rasp of breath all around. Beyond the stairs, the rain came down even harder, obscuring the world, the wall, the rising sun. But not the body, left behind and washed clean. As he would have wanted.

  And through it all, above it all, swirled the jaan. Illi didn’t need to reach to feel them; there were so many. They swirled over the sea as they had over the pyre, faint streaks of red against the low white clouds.

  A hand took hers. A familiar voice spoke. Mo.

  “I don’t know what you did, but the jaan are crossing over. All of them. They were pulled from the guul. I don’t think there are any guul left. At least, not on this side of the mountains. You’ve brought peace to them all.” Mo squeezed her shoulder, but the gesture lacked warmth and her words were distant and hollow. “You should be proud.”

  Illi didn’t feel proud. Just numb and cold, so cold. But then Canthem wrapped their arms around her and she let out a sigh.

  Then a shudder.

  Then a sob.

  Then, all across the city, the dawn bells began to ring.

  EPILOGUE

  It rained.

  The small clouds built to bigger ones, turned gray then black, and the rain came down.

  It was raining the day they interred Heru Sametket, first advisory marabi to the late Empress. It didn’t take much to bribe a few marab to perform the rite—and to care for his jaani, after. Illi would always remember the smell of wet funeral whites, a faint aroma of ammonia cutting through the air. In Hathage, the crypts were aboveground and the funeral was held outside. Rain plastered the gray shroud to his body, so thin and empty that it was easy to believe that it wasn’t him, that he had a head start on her toward the Wastes, or that he’d found Merrabel’s lab and taken over.

  After all, it wasn’t like Illi could check. The king had reacted swiftly to the death of his best general and there were notices posted on every corner calling for the heads of the traitors. King Thamilcar might not know exactly who had killed Merrabel, but Illi wasn’t about to risk traipsing through his palace.

  They hadn’t risked staying in the city, either. Captain Yufit had put them up in a training ground on its outskirts, far enough from anyone who had seen them that they could stay a few days. At least until the rain let up. At least until they buried Heru.

  The rain hadn’t let up, but the marab carried Heru into the crypt. Their prayers echoed around the small courtyard and Illi wondered what he would have thought of all the proceedings. So obsessed with immortality, he’d never once acknowledged that he could die.

  And Illi had believed him.

  * * *

  It was still raining when they left Hathage and crossed the Aer Caäs. The path had turned to mud and the rocks slipped out from underfoot, human and camel alike. It was treacherous uphill and it was treacherous downhill and the rain followed them.

  It took them twelve days to return to Ghadid. It rained the entire time. Sometimes a shower, sometimes a drizzle, but the precipitation was persistent. When they reached the pylons of home, the wash that cut beneath them but only ran once a year was now twice as wide and twice as strong.

  Illi tried to heal a few times on their way back, but even her meager ability to heal had vanished with the sajaami. She wasn’t as bothered by the loss as she would’ve expected. In a way, it was another burden off her shoulders. Another relief.

  It was three weeks before the rain stopped. By then the marab were already talking about a gift from G-d. The drum chiefs debated baat allocation with the sudden rise in the aqui
fer. The healers found themselves attempting to heal things they’d never dared before, from chronic pain to old injuries.

  But only Illi understood the real consequences of what had happened. That a balance had shifted somewhere in the Wastes, enough to bring the world a little bit closer to what it had been, once. What it might have been. What it could still be.

  * * *

  On the roof, the city smelled strange. The wind stirred intermittently, bringing with it flashes of roasting meat, of burnt cloth, of wet dust. Illi had kicked off her shoes to climb up here and now she stepped into a puddle and froze. A shudder went up her spine but she didn’t move. She’d have to get used to that feeling; the stormsayers predicted more rain in the coming weeks.

  A second season, they were calling it.

  The Circle wanted Ghadid to be ready.

  Which is why Illi was up here, surveying this roof as a possible spot for a new glasshouse. It had potential. After all, the old metal frame still stood. They just needed to replace the panes—and get past the superstition that the place was cursed because of all the glass that had been shattered there.

  Illi had believed in that curse, once. She didn’t anymore. Glass was glass: nothing happened just because you broke it. Things happened because of the choices people made after the glass was broken, how they acted, how they reacted—how they didn’t act.

  This had been her mother’s glasshouse, once. The memories lay broken at her feet, mixed in with the glass. Although they were still sharp enough to cut, Illi wasn’t afraid of them.

  Illi picked her way around the puddles and the broken glass. She rested her hand on the cold metal of the frame. Then she leaned on it, testing it. The frame held. Despite everything—despite the Siege, despite the fire, despite the years it’d been left alone, neglected in this abandoned part of the city—it didn’t give beneath her hand.

  And it’d be stronger once the glass was in.

  Metal clattered on the roof a few feet away from her. A broom, tossed from below. Just beyond the broom, a hand cleared the edge of the roof. A moment later, a body followed.

  “Can’t you people put in ladders?” asked Canthem, rolling to their feet and brushing themself off.

  “That would take the fun out of it,” said Illi.

  Canthem picked up the broom, then glanced around, their gaze taking in the glass, the dust, the puddles, and the frame. Finally they looked at Illi and they smiled. They held out the broom.

  “Well, when we’re done here, I’m going to put in an official complaint with your Circle.”

  Illi took the broom. “That’s not how it works.”

  “All right: I’ll forge a ladder from metal myself.”

  “There you go.”

  Illi began to sweep. Canthem pulled on leather gloves and picked up the larger pieces of glass, dropping them one by one into a sack. None of this would go to waste. Even old, shattered glass could be melted down and recast, reused. Illi swept and breathed in the dust and the memories.

  The world had ended.

  But then it’d kept going.

  They’d clean up this roof and they’d cast new panes and in a few weeks, there’d be shoots of bright growth in the glasshouse. Illi would tend that growth, turning in the ashes from the rite to feed the soil. Canthem would help. Hopefully, they’d stay.

  But that was something she could worry about later. For now, Illi was content to sweep away the broken glass, the dust, and the memories.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As with all things in life, a seemingly solitary effort is quite the opposite. None of this would exist without the love and support—and occasional hand-holding—of friends and family, beta readers and editor, publishing house and agent.

  I would like to thank the publishing team at Tor—the copy editors and page proofers and marketers and publicists—who together took a large chunk of words and made them into a book.

  Thank you to Diana Pho, my editor, who gave me the space to turn a book into a world, whose energy and excitement helped me believe I could actually do this, and understood all along what I was doing.

  Thank you to Kurestin Armada, my agent, who likewise trusted me to see this through and who still loves these characters and these books after so many years.

  Thank you to my beta readers—Kim Callan, Eldridge Wisely, Sarah Doore—who helped me sort through several messy drafts to get at the heart of this book and see the forest through all the trees.

  Thank you to my agent-siblings, who’ve been there at five a.m. and five p.m. and every time in between to cheer me on and calm me down and otherwise provide wonderfully arbortastic distractions.

  Thank you to my parents, who have become my own personal hype squad in this crazy endeavor. And, you know, did all that raising and rearing stuff, too.

  Thank you to my readers, who have helped turn this world into something more than just in my head, who have loved it as much as I do, who have turned what was merely imagined into something a bit more real.

  And thank you—especially, specifically, thoroughly—to my wife, who has taught me again and again that I don’t need to do this alone, that asking for help is a strength, not a weakness, and that together we are always, always stronger.

  BOOKS BY K. A. DOORE

  The Perfect Assassin

  The Impossible Contract

  The Unconquered City

  PRAISE FOR K. A. DOORE’S

  CHRONICLES OF GHADID

  THE PERFECT ASSASSIN

  “It’s queer AF, well-paced and fascinating and political, and grapples with the morality of assassination in a thoughtful and considered way.”

  —Sam Hawke, Aurealis Award–winning author of City of Lies

  “Full of rooftop fights, frightening magic, and nonstop excitement and mystery, I absolutely loved it!”

  —Sarah Beth Durst, award-winning author of The Queens of Renthia series

  “A thrilling and poignant tale on the costs of loyalty—part murder mystery, part family saga, part coming-of-age chronicle.”

  —Tochi Onyebuchi, author of Riot Baby

  “In a high-flung desert city, a reluctant assassin’s choices threaten his family’s way of life, those he loves, and, worst of all, the spirits of the dead.… The ensuing intrigue forms the core of a highly exciting adventure.”

  —Fran Wilde, Hugo and Nebula finalist, and Andre Norton Award–winning author

  “Set in a world of believable richness, The Perfect Assassin combines a suspenseful plot with a memorable cast of characters, and an assassin protagonist who is compelled to make hard choices.”

  —Ilana C. Myer, author of The Poet King

  “Fascinating world-building with all the mystery and appeal of the One Thousand and One Nights.”

  —Duncan M. Hamilton, author of the Wolf of the North series

  “[An] outstanding fantasy debut … Doore is a force to be reckoned with, blending a stirring plot, elegant world-building, effortless style, and diverse, empathetic characters. Her debut is sure to be a hit with fans of Sarah J. Maas and George R. R. Martin.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Doore’s thrilling fantasy debut is a suspenseful murder mystery wrapped around a coming-of-age story, sprinkled with family intrigue, vengeful ghosts, and a gentle but bittersweet m/m romance.… This author is one to watch.”

  —Booklist

  THE IMPOSSIBLE CONTRACT

  “What a phenomenal book filled with sublime world-building and memorable characters! Seriously, I cannot praise it enough. Doore never flinches from telling a story that is fast-paced, brutal, and fantastic in every sense of the word.”

  —Jenn Lyons, author of The Ruin of Kings

  “Doore’s second novel continues the lush world-building and inclusive characters of the first, while establishing exciting action—and emotion-filled sequences that will keep readers engaged.”

  —Library Journal (starred review)

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

&nb
sp; K. A. Doore was born in Florida but has since lived in Washington, Arizona, Germany, and now Michigan. She has a BA in Classics and Foreign Languages and an enduring fascination with linguistics. She is the author of the Chronicles of Ghadid, starting with The Perfect Assassin.

  Visit him online at kadoore.com, or sign up for email updates here.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Books by K. A. Doore

  Praise for K. A. Doore’s Chronicles of Ghadid

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.