The Impossible Contract

by K A Doore

  Thana chewed on her answer. She didn’t want the mark to know any more than was necessary. She should’ve turned around and left as soon as she saw that white wrap, her lie to the healer be damned. She could still leave. But then she caught Mo’s gaze and saw her curiosity and Thana’s hesitation solidified into resolve.

  Thana shrugged. “I have a friend who might know something.”

  Heru gestured toward the corpse. “Then by all means.”

  Keeping Heru in her line of sight, Thana spread the parchment across the dead man’s back, careful to keep its rough paper between her and the skin. She held the paper down and scraped kohl back and forth across its surface. The marks took form in the negative space between the thickening black kohl. When she’d captured all of them, Thana wiped the kohl from her fingers off on her wrap and rolled the parchment back up.

  “Thanks,” she said needlessly, and turned to leave.

  A hand touched her wrist. Thana stopped and Mo stepped back, her hands clutched before her.

  “Let me come with you,” said Mo. “I need to know what’s causing this. I want to help stop it. Whatever this is, it came here, to me. I can’t let it go any further.”

  Thana swallowed. It was selfish to do anything but dissuade Mo, but a part of her wanted to be selfish. Amastan was right: she really couldn’t resist a pretty face. Besides, Mo didn’t seem to be the type to idly stay behind. And once Thana found out who or what was creating these monsters, she’d need someone to take the problem off her hands. She still had a contract to complete.

  “That’s fine. But doesn’t someone need to stay here?”

  “Enass will be back. I’ll leave a note.”

  Mo stared at her expectantly until Thana realized what Mo wanted, sighed, and ripped off a clean piece of the parchment. Mo took the scrap with a nod of thanks, then swept away to a table. Heru sidled over as Thana re-shouldered her bag. She stepped back and crept a hand toward her belt and the dagger there, hoping he couldn’t see the fear clawing at her throat.

  “I fear we have not yet been properly introduced, friend,” said Heru, voice low but even. He extended a hand. “I am Heru Sametket, second advisory marabi to the Empress Zara ha Khatet, long will she live. But, I understand you know that already.”

  Thana didn’t take his hand. The charms at her collarbone had grown warm.

  “Thana,” she muttered when Heru didn’t move. She wasn’t sure why she gave him even that. A mark had never known her name before. Then again, this contract was already being smothered by firsts.

  “How’s our other friend faring?” asked Heru. “I assume from the lack of appropriate grieving garb for your culture that he is still unfortunately alive.”

  Thana bristled. “He’s fine.”

  “Ah.” Heru poured a great deal of disappointment into that single sound. He ran a hand down his chest. “What prompted the knives? I would like to know so I might avoid such an inconvenience in the future. Your healers may perform small miracles, but they are quite stingy with their water.”

  Thana took another step back. Mo needed to hurry up with her note. “You threatened me.”

  Heru raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Really? I recall you slipped through my window.”

  “You’re not exactly innocent. What about the whore you brought up and—”

  Thana stopped herself, the implications clear as everything finally clicked into place. She just hadn’t thought it all the way through yet. She’d been stupid, so stupid. In all the excitement between the corpses and the marks, the broken charms and Amastan’s condition, she hadn’t had a chance to think.

  The woman had been unconscious, hurt even—that was indisputable. Then she’d attacked Thana, risen and run across the room. She’d been alive, but her body had moved as if it were not her own. As if her jaani were gone, or …

  A jaani bound to a body is controllable, a slave, Salid had said. The stories of en-marab varied in many ways, but they had one thing in common: where marab invoked G-d to quiet jaan and drive wild ones from the possessed, en-marab bound jaan to their will. Whatever blasphemous magic had created the dead men was the same magic that had commanded the woman. The same magic Heru had used.

  If that magic were so rare and dangerous that Salid couldn’t be certain of even its existence, then what was the chance that two en-marab were in Ghadid at the same time?

  “—And?” said Heru.

  “What kind of marabi are you?”

  Of course he’d created those men. She saw it now. Amastan must’ve tripped an alarm and Heru had lost control. Maybe he didn’t know what he was doing. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that the mark, sent to their city by the Empress herself, was an en-marabi who had no qualms using jaan to bind both the living and the dead to his will.

  A true monster. And Thana was supposed to somehow kill him?

  If Thana took another step, she’d be through the door. She didn’t have to wait for Mo. She could be gone, far from this awful man. But she was also wary to let him out of her sight and she couldn’t leave Mo alone with him. Mo didn’t know what he was, what he’d done.

  “The kind you wouldn’t want to meet at night,” said Heru softly. “Do you have any intentions of trying to kill me again? Because I would advise against it. You were fortunate last time, but—” He grabbed the front of her wrap so suddenly that Thana didn’t have time to back away. He dug his fingers through the fabric and around the charm pouch beneath. “These pretty baubles won’t save you again.”

  The glass charms glowed bright even through the layers of cloth, then shattered all at once. Heru released Thana and stepped back, hands at his sides as if he’d done nothing.

  “You’ll take me to this scholar,” he continued. “There are few things worse than death, but I am capable of most of them.”

  “You don’t scare me,” lied Thana.

  Mo had finally finished her note and now hurried back to them. She’d tied her braids away from her face with a wide blue ribbon and Thana couldn’t help but look. Heru followed her gaze.

  “I’m not threatening you.”

  His words were a punch. How dare he threaten someone who couldn’t fight back, who didn’t have a half dozen knives close to hand. “Don’t you dare touch her.”

  Heru tilted his head. “Who hired you?”

  Then Mo was between them, thumbing through the keys on her belt. “Come on, let’s see this friend of yours.…” She trailed off, looked at Thana. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Her name is Thana,” supplied Heru.

  Thana glared at him. Behind Mo’s back, Heru kept his gaze fixed on Thana while he ever so slowly reached out as if he were going to brush his fingers through Mo’s braids. Thana’s first impulse was to dig another blade into his chest. But Heru had already broken her charms with a touch and Thana had no idea how much damage he could do in the second it took her to draw a knife.

  What harm was there in bringing him along? This situation couldn’t possibly get any worse, and if she kept the mark near, she could at least keep an eye on him. It’d give her more opportunities to study him—and find a way to complete her contract. When she nodded, Heru dropped his hand.

  “Right,” said Thana. “Let’s learn about monsters.”

  8

  Salid didn’t bat an eye at the small entourage Thana brought with her. Instead of asking about her new acquaintances, he brewed a pot of tea, grabbed extra cushions, and found a bowl of sugar. Once everyone had settled around his worktable, the tea had been poured, and the sugar stirred in, Thana dropped the kohl-blackened parchment on the table. Salid pushed the teapot to one side and spread out the parchment. He weighed down the corners with pieces of unpolished glass and examined the rubbing.

  When a few minutes had passed and Salid had only made a handful of throaty grunts, Heru snapped, “What do you make of it, old man?”

  Thana narrowed her eyes at him, but Salid shrugged. “It’s … puzzling, sa. And worrying. I—hmm.”

/>   Salid began rummaging in a large trunk beside the table. Mo sipped at her tea, gaze wandering the small workspace. Thana looked, too, following Mo’s touring gaze as if she were seeing the shop for the first time. The room was congested, stuffed full of cords and pliers and feathers and hides and all manner of glass beads—in jars, in bowls, even clustered on the workbench. A panel of glass windowpanes hung along the back wall, in various hues of blue and green.

  Thana’s gaze came full circle to Heru, who’d pulled up the bottom of his tagel and was checking his teeth in a knife’s reflection. He picked at something and Thana turned away in disgust. Finally, Salid set a large, leather-bound book on the table with a heavy thump. He stood back long enough for them to appreciate the size, then leaned in and began flipping through its pages, each one filled to the edges with tight, spidery script. At last he paused on one page and scanned its contents with a trembling finger. Then he sat back as if he’d been pushed, all his air coming out in a gust that fluttered his tagel.

  “I—well … that’s unfortunate.”

  Heru stowed his knife and wiped his fingers clean on the table’s edge. “Who is he?”

  Salid stared at the marabi with confusion that soon narrowed to suspicion. He gestured to the page, its vellum yellowed with age. “This is a very old magic, a kind that hasn’t been seen in centuries. It’s a type of binding that goes well beyond what’s necessary. A marabi may bind a jaani to its body, but only to keep it from going wild and only until the seven years have passed. The jaani cannot harm anyone in that state. Even though it’s inside its body, the jaani does not possess it. Those men you found, though—that could be called possession, but unlike anything even wild jaan do. This is intentional and directed. The men who once used this magic were branded en-marab because they were everything the marab stood against.”

  Mo shuddered. “Why would anyone make such creatures intentionally?”

  “Control.” Salid spread his hands. “Power. The same things men have lusted after ever since G-d told us not to. The en-marab were once as numerous as marab, until G-d struck them down. Well—G-d and the old kings. It turned out no one likes power-hungry men who can bind anyone they want to their will. The last notable en-marabi lived centuries ago, and he was a remarkable scholar as well as a monster. He pushed the boundaries of binding beyond anything en-marab had done before.” Salid tapped the vellum. “These symbols bind and control jaan effectively and efficiently—and he was the one who invented them. What I don’t understand, though, is how those symbols came to be in our city, today. This knowledge should’ve died with their creator.”

  “But the knowledge is in your book,” said Mo, confused. “And that survived him.”

  Heru snorted. “It takes more than knowing a few symbols to bind jaan, girl.” Then, to Salid, “Who is this man?”

  “Djet Khentawpet. But he’s been dead for some time.”

  “I doubt death would stop him.”

  Salid and Heru shared a glance. Thana leaned across the table to read the book, but the script was illegible and interspersed by the symbols she’d seen seared into the men’s flesh. Old books and history—Amastan should be here, not her.

  “So how do we kill these bound jaan?” she asked.

  Salid scanned the page. “I’d imagine disrupting or removing the symbols should be enough—ah. Yes, it says so here.”

  Heru nodded. But then, he’d already known that. The gashes across the dead man’s back had been just that: disruptions. They’d torn straight through the lines of symbols. But what had happened to the first group, the men who’d attacked her and Amastan? When the watchman had brought those corpses in, their marks had been unaltered.

  Thana eyed Heru. If he’d created all of them, why had he unbound only the last man? It was as if he hadn’t figured out how to undo the binding until after he’d been attacked a second time. Which meant he was either still learning this horrible magic, or …

  Thana didn’t want to complete that thought. She closed her eyes, trying to refocus. She was getting caught up in the wrong things. This wasn’t her problem. She only needed to understand Heru’s magic well enough to finish the contract. Stopping the bound jaan he’d made wasn’t up to her.

  “We need to find who’s doing this,” said Mo. “If someone is misusing jaan, we need to stop them. This is blasphemy.”

  Salid nodded without looking up as he reread the page, then flipped to the next. “Whoever created these bound must be obsessed with studying Djet’s magic. The art of jaan binding is complex enough, let alone with the complications that would arise from using a corpse.” Salid ran a hand across his forehead, smearing sweat and dust; with four people in the small room, what was already stifling heat was quickly becoming unbearable. “Tell me everything you already know about this en-marabi.”

  “His creatures targeted me,” said Heru.

  “They did?” But Salid’s tone held no surprise; he’d already guessed who Heru was. Hopefully, he’d keep his mouth shut. “Who else have they attacked?”

  Thana raised a hand. “Just me, as far as we know.”

  “And your friend,” added Heru.

  Thana swallowed a groan. She’d hoped Heru had forgotten about Amastan in all the excitement.

  “Which friend is this?” asked Salid.

  It’d be less suspicious to come clean. “A cousin who was also attacked. He’s been stabilized, but it’ll take some time for him to recover. I’d rather not bring him into this.”

  “Cousin,” mused Heru.

  “Heru was attacked again, later,” continued Thana, hoping to steer the conversation away from Amastan. “Were you alone then?”

  “I was.”

  “So the common thread here is you, sa,” said Salid. “Assuming these were the only attacks. Do you have any idea why someone would target you?”

  Thana bit the inside of her cheek. Heru could out her in a heartbeat, not just to Salid, who could up until he did at least protest his ignorance about her true vocation, but to the healer. Yet Heru didn’t even look at Thana. Why not? Was it because his own secrets, the ones she knew and the ones she suspected and the ones he thought she knew, were far worse?

  “I don’t know,” said Heru after a moment’s consideration. “Or would you like me to select from one out of a hundred possible reasons? I’m not free of enemies. One could say I’m a popular man.”

  “Yes, well, perhaps you should’ve stayed close to your Empress,” said Thana.

  Heru replied with a cold stare.

  Salid picked up his teacup, but didn’t take a sip. “I take it that means you’re the ambassador sent by the Empress Zara, sa?”

  Heru turned his cold stare on Salid. “That has no bearing on our current situation. Let us focus on the task at hand. Or do I need to remind you that these creatures have made an attempt on my life twice now? I do not wish for a third.” He held his hands out to Salid. “May I borrow your book?”

  “Certainly, sa.” Salid hefted the book and placed it in Heru’s waiting palms. As Heru scanned the page before him, Salid added, “Just be careful with the binding. It’s been passed down through many generations of my family, so it’s very old and—”

  Heru ripped out several pages and dropped the book on the table.

  “Sa!”

  Heru tossed a handful of foreign coins onto the table and headed for the door. Salid picked up the ravaged book and clutched it to his chest. He gently set the book back within its trunk, then, clenched fists shaking, shouted at Heru’s departing back.

  “I’ll call the watchmen on you!”

  Heru waved a hand dismissively, then the bell jangled and he was gone. Thana and Mo exchanged a glance. Mo was the first to run after him, a dozen muttered apologies in her dust. Thana grimaced but met Salid’s accusatory gaze.

  “You brought him here,” snapped Salid. “I don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into, but if you or anyone in your family ever wants charms again, you’d better return those pages. O
therwise, I’ll curse the Basbowen family myself.”

  “Peace, sa.” Thana bowed her head. “I’ll return them. On my mother’s name.”

  “I’ll look into these monsters of yours, if only because they’re a threat to the city.” Salid glowered, then his eyebrows unfurrowed and he drew a circle in the air around his chest: a ward against evil. “But girl—I fear you’re in over your head. May G-d protect you.”

  “I know,” said Thana. “And thank you.”

  She paused just outside Salid’s door. The sky was a washed-out blue, not a single cloud to mar its vast breadth. When Thana was much younger, she used to lounge on the roofs with her cousins and pretend that the sky was the ground and if they let go, they’d fall and fall and fall forever. She wasn’t sure if the dizziness that swelled in her now was only a memory or a symptom of her exhaustion. But she couldn’t rest yet and she couldn’t let go.

  Heru and Mo had already disappeared. Back to the healers was Thana’s best guess, so she started off in that direction. She couldn’t leave Mo alone with Heru, not when Mo was the only one who hadn’t yet realized just how dangerous he was.

  And whose fault was that? Thana had pretended Heru was her friend. The first rule of being an assassin, the rule that didn’t even have to be said because it should’ve been so extraordinarily obvious, was: don’t fraternize with the mark. A rule she’d broken as soon as she’d seen Heru at the healers and hadn’t turned right around and left.

  Thana hurried through the streets, busier now than two weeks ago but still thinned out by the midday heat. She scanned for her quarry—one in healer blue, one in mourning white—among the city’s lifeblood. She pushed through clumps of people and passed children playing with a ball in an alley.

  There—just over the bridge and on the next platform. Heru’s white wrap stood out among a group of merchants approaching the bridge. He was shoving his way through, Mo only a few paces behind. The merchants around them formed a living wall, so Mo and Heru couldn’t see what was coming.

  But Thana could. A man stumbled out from a side street, movements clumsy and awkward, tagel askew. There was no doubt that the man was another of those creatures—what had Salid called them?—a bound. She started to run, but the merchants reached the bridge before she could, filling it and blocking her path. Mo and Heru continued on just a gap away, heedless of the danger ahead.