A Desert Torn Asunder Read online

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  Meryam was already rushing along the passageway, then heading up to deck. “To the bazaar.”

  “For what?” Amaryllis called behind her.

  “Ivory, Amaryllis, from the eldest creatures we can find.”

  Chapter 11

  In a subterranean room deep below the collegia, Davud sat before a table. He was reading a book on the parliamentary system of Quang-Li, a country far to the east of the Shangazi Desert.

  Quang-Li was little more than a few interconnected valleys but was famous for its long and unusually stable history. For well over half a millennium, Quang-Li had remained untouched by foreign invaders, hidden away as it was by a range of unassailable mountains. But its stability was attributable to much more than a mere lack of foreign invasion. Quang-Li was ruled by demarchy, a system in which citizens were given seats in the ruling government through sortition, or random selection. It had proven remarkably durable.

  “Interesting,” Davud said to Willem, who sat on the opposite side of the table.

  Willem had a curly mop of brown hair and striking brown eyes. His nose was buried in a philosophy tome. He lifted his head and gave Davud a circumspect look. “Interesting,” he said with exaggerated slowness, “and . . . ?”

  Willem was only a few years older than Davud, but he always seemed much older. At a young age, Willem had been enslaved to a blood mage, an evil man who’d handed him over to Nebahat, another mage who’d been just as cruel. Both men had taken advantage of Willem’s ability to read quickly and to recall what he read almost perfectly.

  Nebahat was dead, slain in a terrible battle between several blood magi. It felt strange to be using his hidden lair, but Willem grew anxious anywhere outside the collegia grounds. And while Davud could have arranged for rooms in the teachers’ dormitories, doing so would expose them to too many people. Plus, Nebahat’s lair was conveniently filled with hundreds of rare books, books that had been helping Davud in his many pursuits since the Mireans had swept into the city two months earlier.

  It also had easy access to the rest of the collegia’s libraries. All Davud had to do was mention a subject, no matter how obscure, and Willem would rattle off a series of titles, a summary of the books’ contents, and would even fetch them if Davud wanted. It made Davud uncomfortable to use Willem in the exact same manner as the men who’d enslaved him, but Willem believed wholeheartedly in their quest to find a new path forward for Sharakhai, for the desert—indeed, for all the Five Kingdoms. He was free to go but had chosen to stay.

  Davud waved to the book on Quang-Li. “Demarchy seems to work for them, but I don’t know that a lottery could ever work here.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Willem countered. “I think you’d be surprised what people could get used to.”

  He was alluding to his own enslavement—Willem had endured much and managed to come through it with a kind heart—but that hardly meant the people of Sharakhai were ready for such a seismic change in the way their world worked. Davud was about tell him as much when Esmeray and Meiying swept into the room.

  “We’ve got trouble.” Esmeray, her hair bound in a rust-colored scarf, looked more worried than Davud had seen her in a while.

  Meiying, a young but unusually powerful blood mage, approached the table. She wore a bright yellow silk dress cut in the Mirean style. Her long straight hair fell down along her back. “You’re aware I’ve been following the Kestrels’ movements?”

  The Kestrels were elite swordswomen, highly trained in the arts of war, spycraft, subterfuge, and assassination. They were led by the Crone, a woman who’d once reported to Zeheb the Whisper King, but since his death in Mazandir had taken orders from King Husamettín. “I seem to recall you saying that, yes,” Davud said.

  “Well, Husamettín just ordered them to assassinate Queen Alansal’s water dancers.”

  “He what?”

  Meiying nodded. “He hopes to rob Alansal of her ability to predict his movements. The mission is to be carried out tonight. The new Crone, Shohreh, has decided to see to it personally.”

  After the crystal shattered, Davud had formally joined the Enclave, the fellowship of blood magi who had operated from the shadows for centuries. He’d effectively become part of their inner circle as well. While no formal vote had been taken, Meiying had vouched for him. She was the only member left alive after the intense battle below the Sun Palace that had led to the crystal’s shattering. With so few magi who could command the sort of power Davud or Meiying could, they’d ceded authority to the two of them, at least until the question of Sharakhai’s survival had been answered.

  “You’re certain about this?” Davud asked.

  “Have you ever known me to share knowledge when I’m not entirely sure?”

  “No,” Davud admitted. “It’s just, there’s a lot riding on it.”

  “I understand,” Meiying said. “We all want something from Queen Alansal. But this leaves us with a choice. We could warn her about the threat to her water dancers, use it to get into her good graces.”

  “Or we could let them die,” Esmeray said, “and remove her ability to predict what we, the Kings, or anyone might do.”

  Meiying and Esmeray were both realists and knew the price of war was dear. Willem, on the other hand, looked as if he were about to cry. His mouth opened and closed several times before he finally said, “You can’t let them die.”

  Esmeray scoffed. “Do you know how many have died in our city because of the visions those dancers fed to their queen?” She turned to Davud. “Let her greatest weapon be taken from her. The last thing she’ll worry about afterward is the cavern below the Sun Palace. We can use the chaos to find whatever we need.”

  Davud turned to Meiying. “And your advice?”

  “It could work to our benefit either way”—she shrugged, seeming uncomfortable, a rarity for Meiying—“but I think Esmeray’s right.”

  Davud was momentarily taken aback—Meiying was siding against the country of her birth. But her parents had emigrated from Mirea when she was only a babe. Sharakhai had long been her home.

  He would normally begin weighing the possibilities, the repercussions he and others could expect from Queen Alansal, but just then all Davud could think about was the intense way Chow-Shian had stared at him as she asked whether he’d ever seen someone die.

  Did you let it happen? she’d asked.

  He’d answered that he had, thinking of Brama and Anila, thinking she was asking about the past. But now he wondered. Had she asked the question to gauge what he was going to do in the future? Had she seen her own death in the patterns formed by the falling water?

  He realized he wasn’t ready to make a decision. Not yet. He had to speak to Chow-Shian first.

  “I’m going to Eventide,” he said to the others.

  “To do what?” Willem asked.

  With gut-wrenching uncertainty, Davud replied, “I wish I knew.”

  * * *

  Near sunset, hidden by a masking spell, Davud went to Eventide. He stood in one corner of the water dancers’ hall, watching as a servant stood at the foot of the dais and opened the inlaid box, which held the white powder know as zhenyang.

  Braziers were spaced along the walls, warming the air and suffusing the space in an orange glow. All eleven water dancers lined up before the servant. Each took a pinch of zhenyang between thumb and forefinger and snorted it. When they’d all partaken, the servant left and the dancers proceeded to whirl and spin beneath the bamboo pipes. Water flew in dizzying patterns, thrown by the dancers. The water and the dancers combined into a single entity, a lively gyre of stretched limbs and water droplets that shone like carnelian under the braziers’ low-burning light. It made Davud dreamy just to watch.

  As arresting as it was, his attention often shifted to the dancers’ eyes. They were intense. Far-se
eing. He was particularly enchanted by Chow-Shian, with the dandelion eyes. He could be wrong, but she always seemed to be the first to change her step or pace, a lead the others soon followed.

  At times one, two, even three at a time would stare into Davud’s corner as if they’d pierced his spell of concealment. But never once did they stop, or slow their motions, or alert the guards to his presence.

  An hour into the dance, a bell rang and the dancers came to a slow halt. After undressing near the braziers and drying themselves off, they donned fresh attire handed to them by waiting servants and retired to a small feasting hall. Food was laid out on a round table with pillows spaced around it. There were fried dumplings, pork buns, steamed vegetables, and noodles doused in a thin red sauce flecked with dark spices. Davud’s mouth watered from the savory smells. The dancers sat and ate. They snorted more zhenyang, a ritual their lives apparently revolved around. They spoke in rapid Mirean while soldiers watched from the corners of the room.

  Davud stood beside the fire, basking in the warmth as he tried and failed to understand what they were talking about. He knew the language, but they were speaking so quickly it was difficult to follow. Over time, he came to understand that they were talking about the visions the dance had granted them—trading their impressions as they digested it all.

  Though there were many conversations taking place at once, they were more like a unified whole than a group of individuals. Several times, one dancer would make a comment that made the entire group stop and laugh. There were other times when they all stopped speaking at once. One would continue, the others listening, rapt, as if they’d set their own stories aside for what was clearly a dominant concern for them all. Then, as abruptly as the conversation had ceased, it would resume.

  It was a whirlwind of sights and sounds, a scattering of tesserae which these women were somehow, improbably, trying to piece together.

  Throughout the meal, Davud was on the lookout for signs of an infiltrator. The Kestrels’ leader, Shohreh, was supposed to come tonight. Had her mission been delayed? Had she failed to reach Eventide? Had she been caught? It was certainly possible—Davud knew from experience that Alansal’s defenses in and around Eventide were robust—but the Kestrels were legendary for good reason. If even a fraction of the stories told about them were true, they’d done many things that seemed impossible.

  Then something strange happened. It started with a pause in the conversation. The water dancers froze, several with dumplings or noodles halfway to their mouths. Their arms lowered. Their gazes went distant. They were no longer staring at one another but through one another. A single word was spoken by Chow-Shian.

  “Demon,” she said in Mirean.

  “Demon,” echoed the others.

  And then a name.

  “Ashael.”

  “Ashael,” repeated another.

  “Ashael,” they intoned in unison.

  For nearly a minute they sat in silence, backs stiff, eyes wide, as if the tesserae they’d considered unrelated earlier were coming together, forming the mosaic of a grim, horrifying future.

  They returned to their meal in silence, and when they were done they were led away to a large hall that had been converted into a communal residence. A great hearth held a blazing fire that pressed back the vault’s ever-present cold. Men and women were brought in. Prostitutes, Davud quickly realized—some Mirean, others Sharakhani, Kundhuni, Malasani, or Qaimiri.

  The water dancers stripped and lay with them, sometimes three, four, five at a time, moans of pleasure, of ecstasy, rising then falling then rising again. Davud was uncomfortable at first . . . but the longer it went on the more he wished he could join in.

  All changed when an old Mirean woman entered with a tray of eleven glasses filled with mijiu, a potent alcohol distilled from rice.

  By then the orgy had wound down. Their partners and the servants left. Alone now, the water dancers donned robes, sat on pillows around a circular table, and handed the glasses of mijiu out until each of them held one.

  It was in that moment—as it dawned on Davud how serious they were, how fey—that understanding came like a bright bolt of lightning. They knew the fate that awaited them. The mijiu was poisoned. That was how Shohreh planned to kill them, and this evening’s feasting and pleasures had been their final goodbye.

  But why? If they knew about the poison, why would they drink the wine? What vision of the future would convince them to take their own lives? And why had they spoken so strangely of demons and the elder god, Ashael? It must be related to the earth-shaking events of the recent past or those about to unfold, but that hardly explained such an irrevocable decision.

  Davud had come to Eventide ready to decide their fate, but now it felt as if his fate were in their hands. It felt as if letting them die would doom Sharakhai itself. Even so, he felt frozen. The moment felt too big for him, as if any move he made would be the wrong one.

  Chow-Shian slowly turned toward him and stared for so long it felt as if she were giving him permission to reveal himself. As he let the spell fall, her expression didn’t change in the least.

  “What did you see?” he asked her.

  “An endless tunnel,” she said dreamily. “I saw you leading me along it, our hands clasped.” Chow-Shian touched her heart. Her eyes went distant. “It was the most beautiful thing.”

  “Chow-Shian, I don’t understand.”

  With no small amount of effort, it seemed, she drew her attention back to him. “Once I’d passed through the tunnel, I saw you leading the snow queen through the gates of ivory, that together you may light the darkest day.”

  “The snow queen?” Davud asked. “Alansal?”

  “Yes.” Chow-Shian frowned. “Perhaps.”

  “What are the gates of ivory?”

  “Zhenyang.” She touched one finger to her nose. “Zhenyang is the key.”

  Before Davud could say more, the door opened and a guard peeked in.

  His eyes went wide as he spied Davud. “Intruder!” he shouted in Mirean, then charged forward, drawing his sword as he came.

  He managed no more than two long strides before the water dancers tipped their glasses back and drank their mijiu.

  “No!” Davud cried, and lunged for Chow-Shian.

  She’d downed half of hers before Davud managed to slap the glass away and spill the wine down the front of her silk robe. She reached for the glass as it rolled against the table and tried to drink more, but there was no more. On realizing it, she reached for another’s glass, which still had a measure of liquid within it.

  Davud snatched her wrists and held her tight. “Tell me what you saw!”

  But she would say no more, and soon the guards had reached Davud. He’d just begun casting a spell when Queen Alansal herself swept into the room and threw something at him. It exploded in the air around him, a scintillant rain of light that confused him, made him dizzy. The spell he’d just begun to gather, to make himself invisible once more, was interrupted, but the power had to go somewhere. He barely managed to release it, which threw everything and everyone around him outward, away from him, the heart of the spell.

  Davud grunted from the pain of the aborted spell. He was no newcomer to the casting of magic. He might still have managed to cast another spell and escape, but by then Alansal was there, one hand held high like vengeful goddess ready to strike him down. As her hand blurred toward his forehead, he noticed a flat jade stone, roughly the size of a grape, cupped within her palm . . .

  The pain of it was chaotic and intense. It felt as if his skull had been pierced.

  A moment later, the wild sight of Alansal’s burning anger, the water dancers writhing on the floor, the opulent pillows and the round table topped by empty glasses, all went dark.

  Chapter 12

  In darkness, Emre and Frail Lemi crouched near the edge of the tribes’ vast fle
et. In a clearing at the fleet’s very heart, a great bonfire raged. Hundreds danced around it, driven by a rolling beat played by tanburs, rebabs, doudouks, and skin drums of every imaginable size.

  Unlike his voyage the previous night with Çeda and Sümeya, Emre and Frail Lemi had sailed to the fleet alone. Emre had already managed to secure five votes from the shaikhs most closely allied with the thirteenth tribe. Aríz had agreed to get another from a shaikh who owed Tribe Kadri several favors. Emre needed only one more.

  Though he knew the shaikh in question, he suspected she might be the most difficult of them all. “Everything rests on a knife’s edge,” he said absently.

  Beside him, Frail Lemi drew his gaze from the revelry and stared at Emre soberly. “Time to go nudge it in the right direction, then.”

  Emre stood and brushed sand from the knees of his trousers. “May the fates will it.”

  “Sometimes we make our own fate, Emre.” The surprisingly lucid comment was spoiled, somewhat, by the drinking motion Frail Lemi mimed immediately afterwards. “Don’t forget the araq, okay?”

  They’d run out days ago. Frail Lemi had made Emre promise to pinch a bottle of it on his way out. “I said I’d try.”

  “Well, try hard!”

  Stifling a smile, Emre trudged across the sand, heading toward the ships marked with the sign of the Rushing Waters, Tribe Kenan’s ships. As was true the night before, with so many wandering about, it wasn’t difficult to fit in. He made sure to skirt the light of the fires, though. If he was seen and word of it reached Hamid, his mission would be over before it began.

  Soon he reached a clearing where a group of Kenan elders sat on overstuffed pillows around a low fire. The air was thick with the smell of tabbaq: old leather, moist earth, roasted almonds. A few of the elders were deep in conversation, but most seemed spellbound by the tale spinner, a handsome young man who was waxing on about Fatima the Untouchable. Shaikh Neylana lounged on a pile of pillows, watching the tale spinner with languid eyes while taking a long pull on a shisha pipe. The tale spinner had just reached the part where Fatima used an amethyst, one of the pieces of the fabled Sunset Stone, to hide her soul while the efrit she’d stolen it from scoured the desert looking for her.