Beneath the Twisted Trees Read online

  In the vision, Amile had reached the rigging. He tore at it, as was the will of the Blade Maiden he was bonded to. As the tops of the canvas sails began to float free, Amile dropped and landed heavily on the deck. A tribesman came at him with a sword, but Amile was too fast. He dodged and surged forward. His nails sunk deep into the man’s chest, clutching him, preventing him from retreating. Amile had broken his bones, pulled his flesh free, and now he was forcing Ramela to live that pain too, as if she were the man he was attacking.

  “Amile, stop it,” Çeda said.

  But the vision was unyielding. Amile moved on to the next tribesman, an ancient, gray-haired man with widely spaced eyes and scars all over the left side of his face. In quivering hands he held a spear, which he used to catch Amile across the ribs with a sharp thrust, but then Amile was on him, pressing him down to the deck with one hand while the other reached across his throat. With one wrench, blood flew high, all across the deck. It pattered against Amile’s skin, almost hot to the touch. How satisfying it was to feel it, even as, deep down, it tore at the remains of the man he’d once been.

  Ramela’s breath came in terrified gasps. Her hands were at her throat. She couldn’t take her eyes from Amile, who stared up at her with a smile on his shriveled, blackened face.

  Amile! Çeda cried. Stop this now!

  She tried to force her will on him. It was something she was loath to do, but Amile was leaving her no choice.

  Except it wasn’t working. The vision dimmed. The sounds dulled. Somehow that only seemed to make Ramela’s terror increase.

  In the vision, Amile flew across the deck, launching himself off the hatch to fall on a cluster of women firing arrows and launching fire pots at the Kings’ galleon. One of the women, a crone with a shock of gray, wiry hair, tried to stab him with a knife, but Amile snatched her wrist and forced her down to the deck. Before she could cry out, his jagged teeth tore out her throat. Her lifeblood flowed, sending a sickening thrill through Amile. His emotions warred within him: glee at fulfilling the mission given him by his bonded Blade Maiden, fury at the Kings of Sharakhai, and an unending loathing for himself and his fate, a thing that spanned centuries.

  It was then that Çeda realized that Ramela, just like the old woman in the vision, had drawn her kenshar. She’d been so wrapped up in the memory that she’d reacted as if she were being attacked.

  “Ramela, watch out!” Çeda ran toward her—but Amile did too, and he was faster.

  Amile, I beg you, don’t do this!

  Her pleading seemed to amuse him. As in the vision, he grabbed Ramela’s wrist and bulled her down to the sand. Before Çeda could reach him, he ducked his head and tore out her throat.

  Çeda drove one shoulder hard into Amile’s side, and he was thrown off her. But the damage had been done. Ramela twitched, grasping ineffectually at her neck.

  The Shieldwives drew their shamshirs as Amile sprinted away. With only the loosest bond remaining to tie him to Çeda, he didn’t run toward open sand, but toward the other asirim. They parted for him, then closed ranks with Amile at their center, as if they expected Çeda and the Shieldwives to attack.

  Çeda dropped by Ramela’s side. Sümeya as well. The others closed in around them. Ramela blinked, took in Çeda and the others as her throat convulsed and a terrible, pained confusion played out over her features. Breath of the desert, she looked ashamed, as if she’d failed Çeda.

  Tears streamed down Çeda’s face as she gripped Ramela’s right hand. She tried to find the right words—a wish to send her off to the farther fields—but felt completely inadequate to the moment. As she knelt there, mute, Ramela’s eyes went glassy and her body fell slack.

  Chapter 9

  SEVEN KINGS SAT within the council room of the Sun Palace. Kiral and Husamettín, as they had for centuries, took the two central seats. To Husamettín’s left sat the youthful Cahil, the bent form of Sukru, and the resigned Beşir, who was still lost in grief over having been forced by Yerinde to take the life of his own daughter only a few hours earlier in Eventide. Along the far end of the table were Azad and Ihsan, who had been carefully measuring the mood of the room since this hastily arranged council had begun.

  In their centuries spent in council in this room, kings and queens had stood before them. Emperors and empresses had delivered impassioned pleas of kinship. Such visitors were welcomed, so long as they bent the knee. But others were met with distrust or even outright belligerence if they had not yet learned that the will of the Kings would not be denied. Never in all that time had one joined them as an equal. Until today.

  Occupying the seat to Kiral’s right, the seat formerly filled by King Mesut, was frail Queen Meryam. She held the same level of authority as the Kings of Sharakhai, or so Kiral would have them believe. None of them truly believed it, Ihsan wagered, not even Kiral himself. Ihsan certainly didn’t. But they were all aware how much they needed Qaimir and her resources. War was breathing down their neck, and Sharakhai, as they said in the city’s west end, was in dire need of cousins with sharp knives.

  They’d spent much of their time so far discussing Yerinde and what her sudden appearance meant for their collective plans. Meryam had held her tongue for much of the discussion, asking a question only when the plans for Qaimir’s inbound fleet might be affected. But at a pause in the heated conversation, she turned suddenly to Ihsan and said, “Why did you speak to her?”

  Kiral’s muddled reactions had vanished shortly after Yerinde’s departure, and his typically imperious manner had returned. He seemed piqued at Meryam’s words, but said nothing against her, choosing instead to sit tall in his seat and address Ihsan as if the question had been his. “A fair question.”

  “The better question,” countered King Azad, “is why you didn’t tell us about your promises to the goddess. A god of the desert comes to you in the bowels of the House of Kings and you bind us all in a promise to her, and you never thought it worth telling us?”

  Ihsan and Azad had agreed to play certain roles in this conversation. Azad would be affronted. Ihsan would be the voice of reason, at least until the other Kings gave him cause to change course.

  Kiral, in a rare show of discomfort, scratched the stubble along his neck. “The battle in the desert with King Onur was already brewing. Malasan and Mirea were preparing their assault. There was much to attend to.”

  “And after the battle was won?” Azad pressed.

  “Things were already set in motion. You would be told when the Kestrels we’d sent to the desert returned.”

  The Kestrels were the Blade Maidens’ elite. Nine in total, they were master spies and assassins, gifted linguists, masters of subterfuge, trained in tactics and strategy like no other. They had taken orders from King Zeheb, before his bout with madness had forced them to choose another commander. Now they reported to Husamettín.

  “The Kestrels have returned, have they not?” Ihsan asked.

  Husamettín nodded and replied in that majestic manner of his that Ihsan found so annoying. “The last returned only a few days ago.”

  “A few weeks ago,” Ihsan countered.

  Husamettín shrugged, his annoyance showing in the way he shifted the goblet of watered wine sitting before him. “What of it?”

  Azad stood and stabbed a finger across the table’s curving expanse. “You dare ask such a question? Our right to know such things will not be denied!”

  “And if it is?” Cahil added blithely. “What will you do then?”

  The relationship between Husamettín and Cahil had been chilly of late, so it was strange to see Cahil come to Husamettín’s defense, but Cahil and Azad had ever been at odds. From the moment they’d brought up the idea, Cahil had been against Nayyan wearing her father’s skin, and Nayyan had never forgiven him for it.

  “It shall not happen again,” Azad said, “and you will reveal anything else you’ve hidden. The p
lans you’ve set into motion for Nalamae and for the thirteenth tribe. All of it.”

  “My good Kings,” Ihsan said with a raised hand. Cahil was working himself up to say something stupid and brash. Better to calm the argument now before things got out of hand. “What’s done is done.” He made a show of looking around the table. “We are but seven now, and Kiral has the right of it. There is much for us to do and—”

  “Eight,” Cahil cut across him.

  “What?” Ihsan said.

  “We are eight.”

  At first Ihsan thought he meant with Queen Meryam. But no. Cahil was alluding to Zeheb, and by his exclusion Ihsan had revealed just how little he thought of the Mad Bull of Sharakhai. Cahil had never loved Zeheb, but Ihsan could tell he harbored suspicions over the way Zeheb had first been implicated, and later turned up mad as a spring hare in Sukru’s dungeons. Now, however, Zeheb was in Eventide, under Kiral’s control.

  “Whatever our number”—Ihsan gave Meryam a polite tilt of his head—“we’ll accomplish none of our goals if we continue to bicker. Now more than ever, it’s important we combine our efforts lest we perish apart.”

  Kiral tilted his head, tacit agreement and the only apology Ihsan was likely to get for being left out in the cold. “You’ve thought about Çedamihn? About finding something of hers to give Yerinde’s bird?”

  “I have, but I need time to explore the possibility, and to talk with the Whisper King . . .”

  Kiral sniffed, considering the request. From time to time Ihsan had been granted leave to speak to him, to attempt to suss out secrets if he could, but each request had fallen under more scrutiny than the last. Kiral didn’t suspect that Ihsan had orchestrated Zeheb’s fall, but he’d begun treating the King of Whispers like their supply of elixirs: as a rare and exhaustible resource that needed careful supervision.

  “You may speak to Zeheb,” Kiral said at last, then moved on to their efforts to slow down the Mirean and Malasani fleets.

  Ihsan listened with only one ear until the subject of a particular alchemyst was raised. “Alu-Waled reports that his serum has now been tested on the asirim,” Meryam was saying, “and is ready for dispersal.”

  Alu-Waled was a gifted alchemyst who had long been in King Sukru’s employ. He’d been tasked, at Meryam’s urging and with Kiral’s blessing, with developing a plague that could devastate the incoming Mirean fleet. And now it appeared he’d succeeded.

  “I still think it too risky,” Ihsan said, “to unleash such a thing.”

  “Yes, well,” Cahil jumped in before Meryam could speak, “you’ve always had a tender stomach when it comes to war.”

  “It isn’t weakness that drives me, but simple prudence. This serum may well decimate the entire Mirean fleet, and perhaps they deserve it for waging war against the Amber City—”

  An incredulous bark of a laugh escaped Cahil. “Perhaps?”

  “Whether it does or doesn’t,” Ihsan continued, all but ignoring Cahil and the smile on his babylike face, “isn’t the point. We cannot predict what will happen when it reaches the city, and I’ll bet my palace that it will.”

  Meryam, who’d been rubbing the red beads of her necklace, the same tatty one she’d used in the wedding ceremony, let it fall and turned all her attention on Kiral. “Must we have this discussion again?”

  “It’s a discussion worth having,” Ihsan cut in.

  “It will all go as planned,” Meryam replied.

  “No. There’s too much riding on this to take your word for it.”

  “What would you have me do, go to the warfront myself?” Meryam had a penchant for turning cross when it suited her. This time, however, it didn’t seem premeditated.

  “If you insist on this course of action,” Ihsan replied easily, “I would have you do precisely that.”

  Kiral raised his hands. “Let’s not be hasty,” he said to Ihsan. “With Malasan on our doorstep, the place for our queen is right here in the city.” Ihsan tried to break in, but Kiral talked over him. “Your reservations have been duly noted, Ihsan, but we’ve all decided it’s worth the risk.”

  Duly noted, Ihsan mused. Duly tossed in a fucking midden heap, more like. Meryam had been winning far too many of these battles of late. Not surprising, he supposed, but galling all the same.

  Husamettín gave them an update on their progress to the north, where their fleet was moving to intercept Mirea, and an update on the state of the city’s defenses, which were being readied for the assault from Malasan. Soon their meeting was complete, each with their assigned tasks, none as important to their survival as Ihsan’s. Yerinde must be appeased, after all.

  After a ride up to Eventide, and a writ from Kiral to allow him in, Ihsan was led to a room deep in the bowels of the palace where two Silver Spears stood at attention. The room was a small affair with multiple layers of carpets on the floor and padding on the walls. They’d been installed not only to muffle Zeheb’s incessant screams but also to prevent further injury, a constant danger with the way he sometimes threw himself at the walls or writhed on the floor.

  As the door clicked shut, Ihsan sat cross-legged next to Zeheb, who was curled in a corner like a child frightened of a sandstorm. The irony of the scene wasn’t lost on Ihsan. It was a near complete reversal of the moment in Zeheb’s palace where a Kestrel had shoved Ihsan’s face into the carpet while Zeheb knelt calmly nearby. Ihsan wagered he was about as smug now as Zeheb had been then. Whether Zeheb was as scared as Ihsan had been, who could tell? The man’s eyes darted to and fro. The nonsense spewing from his mouth was ceaseless. The only reason he was still alive was that he was being force fed twice a day. Still, he’d lost half his bulk. His skin hung from his frame.

  “There was a very interesting meeting earlier today,” Ihsan began. Zeheb gave no indication that he’d heard. When Ihsan spoke again, he allowed some of his power to leach into his words. “With the goddess, Yerinde.”

  From Zeheb’s parted lips came a rustle of sounds, “Goddess, modest, oddest . . .”

  “She wants Nalamae’s head. Did you know? Did the whispers tell you?”

  “The Goddess.” The words were stronger now. “Yerinde. Nalamae. Tulathan. Rhia . . .”

  “Yes, Yerinde told us to follow young Çedamihn, told us that if we did, Nalamae would come to save her. We have a gift that will allow us to do it, a bird, but it needs her scent. Çeda’s scent.”

  “Scents, sends, rends . . . Goezhen may come.”

  “He may. But we must play this game out. The pieces are before us, and it’s our turn to make a move.”

  Zeheb’s entire body convulsed. “Move, prove, reprove . . . So many voices, Ihsan . . . There are so many . . .”

  “I know,” Ihsan replied. “Tell me. You spent months listening to Çeda. Listening to those who spoke to her. Who they spoke to in turn. Who might have something of hers, a thing that defines her?”

  “Asking, tasking, masking . . .”

  “Concentrate, Zeheb.”

  “Masking, asking, tasking . . .”

  As willing as Ihsan was to set the other Kings up for a fall, he couldn’t do so here. The chance that Yerinde would do something rash were they to fail was simply too high. With a wave of her hand, the goddess could undo generations of Ihsan’s careful preparations.

  He wondered again why she would be gone for so long, only to return centuries later and demand the Kings kill her sister goddess. He yearned to read Yusam’s lost journals, the ones that resided in Eventide, this very palace. Kiral had taken them, hoarding yet more for himself. Did the riddle’s answer lay there? There must be some hint of it, something that might help head off the worst of Yusam’s visions: a Sharakhai laid to waste.

  “Come, Zeheb. I need something of Çedamihn’s.”

  “Tasking, masking, fighting, striking . . .”

  “Zeheb!” Ihsan was loath to allow too
much power into his voice. He could already feel the effect of his power weakening. It happened when he used it too often on the same person, and he had on Zeheb. He wondered how long it would be before he’d need to arrange for Zeheb’s suicide. He prodded Zeheb’s ribs with the sharp toe of one boot. “Zeheb, lead me to Çedamihn!”

  Zeheb cowered, but only kept mumbling to himself. “Masking, unmasking . . . The master. The master of the mask.”

  Ihsan was ready to kick Zeheb in the gut if only to loosen his tongue, but then it struck him. What a bloody fool you are, Ihsan. Zeheb was giving him something; it was just that he was speaking in riddles again.

  “Who? Who is the master of the mask?”

  “The master of the mask . . . The master now taken, whispering in a cell of his own . . .” As Ihsan tried to puzzle out his meaning, Zeheb giggled. “A cell for a spell . . . Oh, how he fell . . .”

  Zeheb fell silent soon after, and would say no more.

  I’ll have to try another day, Ihsan decided, and left the room, wondering what in the great wide desert he was going to do about Yerinde. Behind him, the cell door closed. The lock clanked, the key ring jingled, and a memory sprang to him. In a burst of insight, he realized what the Whisper King had been trying to tell him. He felt foolish for not having thought of it himself, but then again, how often had he ever visited Sharakhai’s fighting pits?

  “Here, my Lord King!”

  As Ihsan strode along the pier toward a two-masted ketch named Yerinde’s Needle—the gods are not without their humor, Ihsan mused—the warden of his assigned hand of Blade Maidens waved to him from the hatch leading down into the ship.

  On the ship’s deck stood a woman name Djaga Okoyo. She was hemmed in by two Blade Maidens, who stood at the ready, hands on the hilts of their shamshirs. Djaga’s closely shorn hair, her angry look, even her stance, made her look like her one-time moniker from the pits, the Lion of Kundhun. Ihsan was tempted to have the Maidens wipe that defiant look from her face, or take it out on the surprisingly delicate Mirean woman she kept, but decided to question her a moment first.