Twelve Kings in Sharakhai Page 13

  “That it does, including more than its fair share of mystery.” Davud tilted his head toward her and lifted his brows conspiratorially—once, then twice, then a third time.

  Çeda tried to hide a smile, until a pent-up laugh escaped her. Davud was still young, only sixteen, if she remembered true, and yet he seemed twice his age. She knew his time at the collegia had changed him, but she’d had no idea just how much.

  “Mysteries that need solving,” Çeda replied, giving him her best impression of a collegia master’s frown.

  “Yes. About that . . .” He paused, watching not Çeda but the neighboring tables.

  “Easy conversation causes less distraction,” Çeda said softly.

  His cheeks reddened at that, but he still bowed his head incrementally toward her before speaking, “I searched a bit for the stone you mentioned, on my own at first, but I was getting nowhere.” He licked his lips, showing a bit of his age at last. “So I resorted to speaking with Amalos, as I mentioned I might.”

  “I hope you were discreet.”

  “Of course I was,” Davud replied. “He doesn’t suspect that it was for anyone but me.”

  Çeda reached out and took his hand. “I cannot stress it enough. The collegia has strong ties to the House of Kings. If anyone there got wind of this . . .”

  Davud nodded and lowered his voice until it was all but a whisper. “Don’t worry. Amalos has little love for the Kings.”

  Çeda squeezed his hand. It was something he probably shouldn’t have told her, but she was glad he did. Knowing who had ties to the households of the Kings was a life and death matter for many in Sharakhai.

  “In any case,” Davud went on, “I told him I’d read about a diaphanous stone in a text. And I wasn’t lying! I just didn’t share why I’d been reading the text in the first place. And besides, trust me in this, if nothing else; Amalos loves sharing the knowledge he’s collected. Little wonder, too. The things he knows amaze me. So if you ever have need of information, you’ll let me know.”

  Çeda nodded. “And what did he say, our good friend Amalos?”

  “Well. That’s where things become a bit difficult. There are several types of diaphanous stones, all of them very rare. Two of the three types Amalos was aware of come from mines in the mountains of Quanlang province in Mirea, and we suspect the third is from there as well, or from lands beyond. The Queen of Mirea safeguards the locations of those mines very carefully, lest anyone attempt to steal into them, or worse, gain control of them outright.”

  “Are the mines themselves important?”

  It was Davud’s turn to give her a master’s frown. “You never know what might be important. Amalos mentioned it to me, so I mention it to you. Now, the first stone is called mind’s flight. It’s a stone that’s relatively small, and polished to a high sheen, and when swallowed, is said to give one the ability to hear the thoughts of those around you.”

  “Hear their thoughts?”

  “So the story goes, though it comes with a great price. The imbiber inevitably dies within hours of taking it.”

  “What good is a stone that kills the one who swallows it?”

  “A fair question, and you can see why it would only be used only in special circumstances, but Mirea’s queens have been known to employ them in the past. Her agents volunteer for it and pass their discoveries to another, who records them carefully.”

  Interesting, Çeda thought, but if it were truly that rare, why would one be found here, and who would willingly offer themselves up for such an assignment?

  The answer was obvious, of course. There were many in the Moonless Host who would sacrifice themselves for their cause.

  “And the second?”

  “The second is called a breathstone. It is not swallowed, not initially, anyway. Instead, it is given blood.”

  Çeda sipped her tea. “You’ll forgive me, I hope, when I say I have no idea what you mean.”

  Davud laughed. “Don’t feel bad. Neither did I. Amalos wasn’t sure exactly how, but it apparently is fed the blood of the living, at which point it is prepared for its true purpose.”

  “Which is?”

  “When forced down the throat of the dead, they are brought back to life. How long it lasts I cannot say. Minutes, no more than hours, is my guess, but while in this state, the dead can speak, at least until the magic of the stone and the blood wears off, and they slip back to the land beyond once more.”

  “That’s grisly business, Davud, flirting with the domain of the dead.”

  “You haven’t heard the worst of it. The third is called a saltstone. It can be swallowed, but is more often sewn beneath the skin of the forehead.” He touched the center of his forehead, just above the bridge of his nose, cringing as he did so. “There it slowly dissolves, bleeding away memories, slowly but surely, until none are left. Within a week or two, there is nothing left of the victim. They become books filled with empty pages. They have neither thought nor emotion. More importantly, they are completely and utterly docile.”

  Çeda shivered. “What use would they have for such things?”

  “The Mireans do not believe in killing as punishment, even for brutal and bloody crimes. They believe one’s soul always has a chance at redemption, so they avoid death whenever possible. But there are times when the offenses are so unforgivable that action must be taken. There have also been times in their history where the games of kings and queens has led to the use of the saltstone. In retribution, or even love.”

  “Love?”

  “Of a sort. A very twisted sort, I’ll agree. There is one story in which a king, finding his queen to be too unruly, made her docile by use of a saltstone.”

  Çeda shivered. “That’s grisly.”

  “Not to mention unspeakably cruel.”

  “And how can these stones be told apart?”

  Davud raised his cup and took a long sip of tea, savoring it as though it would help him forget the cruelties perpetrated by the use of these strange artifacts. “Little is known about their physical attributes, except that they are as you described—transparent to some degree with white striations running through them. A mind’s flight stone, however, has flecks of gold running through it. Did your stone have such?”

  Çeda shook her head. “Are the flecks large? Easy to see?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Çeda hadn’t seen anything like that. Then again, she hadn’t been looking for it, either. “Let’s assume it isn’t a match. What about the others?”

  “Amalos said that the text he’d read of saltstone specifically said it had a milky consistency to it.”

  Çeda shook her head, relieved in a way to rule that one out. “This one was very clear. There was white, but it was more like trails of smoke than milky.”

  “That leaves the breathstone. There were few enough texts that mention it, but, strangely enough, it is the only one whose use is forbidden by the Kannan.”

  The Kannan was the set of laws as written by the Kings and handed down to the Sharakhani. All who lived or came to Sharakhai obeyed them. The Kings had written the laws of the Kannan four hundred years ago, after Beht Ihman, the night the Kings had saved Sharakhai from the might of the gathered tribes, but it had adopted many of the strictures within the much older Al’Ambra, the laws the desert tribes had been using for thousands of years.

  “Why not the others?” Çeda asked. “Why not forbid them all?”

  Davud touched his fingers to his forehead, a sign that begged forbearance, in this case from any gods who might be listening. “Who can know the mind of the Kings?”

  The Kings, Çeda thought. The Kings can know.

  These smaller mysteries aside, Davud had done her a great service. Outside the teahouse, he hugged her briefly—Çeda wincing slightly from the pain it brought—and left for the collegia, while Çeda wandered the
streets of Sharakhai, soon finding herself walking along the Trough. She fell into her old rhythm of walking with a limp, made all the authentic since her left ankle was still tender from the beating she’d received. She told herself she was simply walking, that she was allowing her body to take her where it would, but the more she wove among the wagons and horses and carts and crowds, the more the sounds of the city washed over her, the more she realized she was headed toward one place in particular. Toward one man in particular. And why not?

  The breathstone—if that was what it truly was—was a mystery that needed solving. Emre had nearly died for it. And if Mirea was involved in some way, then there was a good chance the Kings were involved as well. As much as it pained her to admit, she had done little to harm the Kings in the years since her mother’s death. She had been a mere child then, barely able to avoid sinking beneath the sands of the city. She had seen the Kings from time to time. She had gone out of her way to learn what she could about them, but it had always felt so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. The Kings had painted a picture of themselves that was difficult, if not impossible, to see through.

  She’d always thought there would come a day when an opportunity would present itself. It had never happened, but she hoped this might be her chance, somehow, and she’d be damned by the gods before she would let this go, not until she’d exhausted every possibility.

  She wasn’t looking forward to this meeting—Osman’s memory for those who had harmed him was long—but if her mother had taught her anything, it was that problems were like termites; they should be dealt with quickly and directly. Ignoring them would only allow them to multiply and spread, making it all the more difficult when you set yourself to rooting them out once and for all.

  ÇEDA FOLLOWED THE TROUGH as it curved around the bulk of Tauriyat and the House of Kings. After that, it ran like an arrow due north, ending mere yards from the sands of the harbor.

  The harbor was busy, as it often was after Beht Zha’ir. Ship caravans often timed their departures to reach Sharakhai a day or two after the holy night, hoping to profit from the celebrations that followed. A score of sandships were moored at the docks, some flying the red pennants of Mirea, others the ochre and brown of Kundhun. There were also three small caravels, docked next to one another, that flew no pennants at all. These were ships of the desert tribes. Few of them sailed to the city these days, especially with the number of sanctioned trade caravans being attacked by the rebel tribes, but there were still a handful of shaikhs granted favored status by the Kings of Sharakhai.

  After dodging past a wagon stacked high with bolts of bright cloth, Çeda headed along the quay that curved like a new moon along the bay’s inner edge. Three dozen piers reached out from the quay like combs into the sand. At the quay’s western terminus stood a tower made from bright white stone, its twin standing sentinel at the bay’s eastern edge. These were the northern harbor’s lighthouses and, just like the southern harbor and the royal harbor to the east, they were lit every night except Beht Zha’ir, guiding ships into the harbor. These two lighthouses, unlike the others, were run by Osman—one of the many ventures he’d gotten into years ago, after buying the pits.

  As Çeda strode along the boardwalk, her eyes were drawn toward the entrance to the bay, for just then a caravel with two lateen sails was gliding easily over the sand in the gap between the lighthouses. The harbormaster stood at an open pier, waving red flags to signal the caravel there. It adjusted course, the rudder kicking up sand in a tail. The crew was already working to pull in the sails, and eventually the caravel came to a rest fifty paces from the dock. A train of a dozen mules, led by the harbormaster’s young son, trudged out to meet her. A massive rope was hooked to the mules’ harnesses, and the young man called Hyah! Hyah! and whipped the mules onward, towing the ship to her assigned dock.

  “Oh ho!”

  Çeda turned. Ahead, sitting in the lighthouse’s desert-dry yard, was a flatbed cart with a scrawny mule harnessed to it. An ancient man with leathern skin and a wide-brimmed hat sat crooked as a crook in the driver’s bench. He smiled as Çeda approached, showing five yellow teeth standing proud as gravestones.

  Çeda was in no mood to joke, but Ibrahim’s smile was so genuine she couldn’t help but return it. “The moons shine on you, Ibrahim. How is your gem of a wife?”

  “Gem?” His face turned sour. “A piece of coal is more like it.”

  “If she’s coal, then she burns as bright as the sun.”

  “That’s why I wear my hat,” he shot back, flicking the brim.

  “Because you can’t bear her beauty?”

  “Because I can’t stand the sight of her.”

  Despite herself, Çeda laughed, but she stopped when she saw Tariq standing in the doorway, watching their exchange.

  With deliberation, she faced Tariq and unwrapped her shemagh from around her head and settled it over her shoulders. She wouldn’t have Tariq thinking she was hiding anything from him. “Good day, Tariq,” she said easily.

  Tariq walked past her—giving her a sidelong glance that was half bravado, half disregard—and headed for the wagon. Çeda stepped into the tower, momentarily sunblind in the darkness. Her eyes adjusted and she saw Osman’s tall form climbing down the stairs that hugged the tower’s inner wall. He wore a long golden kaftan and red sirwal trousers tied off halfway down his shins. His beard was ragged and unkempt, making him look like one of the sea gods Çeda had once seen illuminated in a book, except Osman seemed contemplative today, more diplomat than wrathful deity.

  She’d always thought this a strange place for Osman—a man of means—to spend his time. He could easily have others do this for him, but he liked the lighthouses, he’d told her once when they were lying together in bed. “They make me think of other places,” he’d said, “what they’re like, the people who live there, how they live differently from us.”

  “You could go there, you know. There’s nothing stopping you.”

  But he’d merely shaken his head. “I’ll never leave Sharakhai, Çeda.”

  “And why not? You’re a young man yet.”

  He’d pinched her at that, but then he’d grown serious. “I love this city too much to leave her. But it doesn’t stop me from wondering.”

  By the time Osman reached ground level, Tariq had returned carrying one of the barrels over his shoulder. For a moment, the three of them stood there, eyeing one another. The muscles along Tariq’s jaw worked, but that was the only sign of his mood. Osman didn’t seem pleased, exactly, but neither did he seem angry.

  “I thought it was made abundantly clear,” Osman said, “that you’re not welcome here any longer.”

  “We need to speak.” Her speech—Rhia be praised for small favors—no longer sounded as though she’d just been beaten in a back alley, but she was still painfully aware of Osman’s looking at the wounds on her face.

  “We have no business with one another. Not any longer. Now go, Çeda, or does Tariq need to give you another lesson?”

  “That would be unwise,” Çeda replied.

  “And why is that?” Tariq asked.

  She turned to him, ignoring Osman for the moment. “Because I deserved that beating. I may even have deserved worse, but I’m not willing to take another. Not from you, not from anyone else.” Tariq bristled, but before he could reply, Çeda turned to Osman. “There are things you need to know about that night.”

  “Anything I need to know, I’ll learn from Emre.”

  “He was unconscious for most of it, Osman. And there are things I’ve learned besides.”

  “About what?”

  “About the contents of the case.”

  Osman’s face showed the same look of betrayal he’d had in the alley before he’d ordered her beating, except now there was something more deadly in his eyes. It seemed to take some effort for him to tear his eyes from her, to pick up
one of the two dozen barrels stacked inside the door, and begin climbing the stairs. “Bring a barrel with you.”

  For a moment she and Tariq stared one another down. “You know, Çeda, one of these days, there’ll be no one around to protect you from yourself.”

  “And you think you’ll be there to see it, Tariq?”

  “If the gods are kind, I will.” He laughed, as if he’d made some sort of joke, and then sauntered to a small room at the back of the lighthouse.

  Çeda hefted one of the heavy barrels and followed Osman. Up and up they wound—twelve flights if it were one—and by the time she reached the top, she was well out of breath. She hadn’t worked herself hard since the beating—she knew her body well enough to know when she could push and when she couldn’t—but she was pleased at how good her joints felt from the movement. They were tight yet, but ready for more. Osman was breathing heavily too, though not as heavily as she would have guessed. In fact, he’d hardly broken a sweat.

  “Twenty years from the pits and still in fighting shape,” Çeda said.

  “I might lug a barrel or two around, but fighting? I left that all behind, Çeda. I have others to fight for me now.”

  She moved to set the barrel on the stack with the others, but Osman shook his head and pointed to the curving iron stairs that led farther up. He went first, swinging open the trapdoor that led out and into the blazing sun. She squinted against the brightness and followed, and when she reached the roof, he kicked the door closed and moved to the massive lantern that stood at the center. The glass globe atop the lantern had a lens built into it, such that when the globe was swiveled back and forth, a bright beam would sweep over the desert, signaling ships at night or during a sandstorm. The wick—a weave of coarse, sooty horsehair—ran down into a brass tank. Osman unscrewed the cap on top of the tank and set it aside, nodding to Çeda and her barrel. As Osman stepped back and stared down toward the harbor, she pulled the cork from one end of the barrel and began carefully pouring the oil into the tank. Its pungent scent filled the air as it glugged. When it was done she corked the empty barrel, and replaced the cap. And then there was a hand around her throat and she was flying backward, the sky tilting up to fill her vision.