When Jackals Storm the Walls Read online

  A few of the work crews gave Çeda looks. One of the gang leaders, a scarred cuss of a man, even pointed back toward the stables and shouted at her to keep the yard free of trespassers. Çeda complied, but only until he returned to his work laying the decking on the far side of a half-completed galleon.

  The shipwrights were easy to spot. They were the ones others came to, the ones who gave orders, the ones using instruments to measure how true the masts had been set. She spotted ten shipwrights in all, six of them women, but none looked like the one from Çeda’s vision in the mere.

  “Oy!” Çeda turned to find the gang leader stalking toward her. “I thought I told you to get back to whatever shit work the gods cursed you with.” He stared at her clothes, then looked back at the stables, where Kameyl was leading the wagon into the stable’s cavernous interior while Jenise took up a shovel from the bed. The gang leader laughed. “The gods are just! Your shit work is shit!” All trace of humor faded in an instant. “Now get back to it before I spank your backside for the trouble.”

  Çeda sneered. “Try it and I’ll cut off your sausage and stuff it down your throat. I’d keep my lunch handy if I were you, though.” She glanced at his crotch while trudging past him. “That thing looks more mouthful than meal.”

  The gang leader stared, mouth agape, then barked a jackal’s laugh. “I like you, girl. You coming back tomorrow?”

  She kept walking, giving the ship yard one last scan as she went.

  “I’ll look for you!” he bellowed behind her.

  She was just nearing the front of the stable when a great bell began to toll, calling for the harbor doors to be opened. The mechanisms clanked. The doors groaned inward.

  “Çeda?” Sümeya called in a worried voice.

  Çeda turned to find her walking purposefully from the piers. She motioned to the far side of the harbor, where a brightly painted clipper was being towed from its berth by a train of black mules. It looked very much like the ship Çeda had seen in Yusam’s mere. Sümeya knew the vision well, as did Kameyl and Jenise. Çeda had shared it in great detail, and that clipper could very well be the one she’d seen. If so, Nalamae might be on it in her new form, the shipwright who’d managed the clipper’s construction. She would be taking the ship through its paces before declaring it sandworthy for the royal navy.

  “All could be lost if it sails beyond those doors,” Çeda said, more to herself than Sümeya.

  Without a word spoken between them, Çeda and Sümeya swung their gazes to the horses in the stables. There were many swift akhalas in the stalls. Çeda could ride one out to the ship. She could find Nalamae. They could flee through the open harbor doors. It would be like lighting a beacon fire, a warning to the entire harbor that something strange was afoot, but it was preferable to letting Goezhen find Nalamae.

  Çeda and Sümeya nodded to one another. Çeda whistled, and when Kameyl and Jenise glanced back at them, she made a series of hand signals. Advance to the enemy’s rear.

  Neither made an outward sign that she’d understood, but they took her meaning. To the complete and utter consternation of the stable master, Kameyl headed toward the rear of the stables, stopping and looking in each stall in turn, apparently judging the worthiness of the manure inside. Jenise, meanwhile, guided their plow horse so that his view of Çeda and Sümeya was blocked.

  “Bloody gods, just take whatever you want,” the stable master said, and stalked through a nearby door to the training yard.

  Çeda couldn’t believe her luck. A few stable hands were all that remained. She and Sümeya moved quickly toward a nearby stall, where an akhala with a copper coat and iron fetlocks stood waiting. It gouged the dirt with a forehoof as Sümeya swung the gate open and Çeda mounted it bareback.

  The horse was nervous but accepted the bit and bridle with little more than a shake of its dark mane, and when Çeda snapped the reins, it skipped sideways out of its stall, then calmed.

  In the center of the harbor, meanwhile, the mule train had been unhooked from the clipper. The ship’s sails were set, and it was starting to gain speed.

  “Hiyah!” Çeda called, and kicked the akhala into motion.

  The sun beat down as they cleared the stable doors. She was just heading for a ramp that led to the sand, ready to give the akhala free rein, when she noticed a group of four riders on akhalas of their own heading easily along the quay.

  The noise of the harbor, so dull a moment ago, was suddenly deafening. Three of the riders were Silver Spears. The fourth was a woman wearing a sensible gray dress. She had piercing eyes, a flinty look, and graying hair pulled into a bun.

  She was the shipwright from Çeda’s vision.

  When Çeda had first learned how the goddess returned to life, over and over, each time as someone new, it had seemed so fanciful, a tale like those spun about Bahri Al’sir or Fatima the Untouchable. There, staring at the woman riding with the Silver Spears, it seemed doubly so, an impossibility. This woman was plain. She was ordinary. She couldn’t be Nalamae.

  As the woman rode past, she noticed Çeda’s stare and gave a sour look back. When she noticed Sümeya staring too, she reined in her horse. “You’ve nothing better to do than to gawk at your betters?”

  Çeda didn’t know what she’d been expecting. For Nalamae to recognize her, she supposed. But how could she? The goddess may have been reborn as this woman, but she had no memory of her past life. When I am reborn, Nalamae had told her, I find myself somewhere in the desert, naked and alone. I am blind. I know so little.

  “Well?” the woman said.

  Çeda cast her gaze downward. “Apologies, my lady.”

  The three Silver Spears accompanying her had reined their horses to a stop. “Is all well, Lady Varal?” their captain called.

  The woman glanced back at the other riders and in that moment seemed to remember her purpose. “Yes, all is well.” Sending a final withering stare in Çeda’s direction, she flicked the reins and headed into the stables with them.

  Çeda guided her horse to the side of the stables so that Varal wouldn’t find her any more suspicious than she already did. Sümeya met her there with two shovels in hand. “You’re sure it’s her?”

  “I’m sure,” Çeda said as she took one of the shovels.

  Sümeya nodded. “Kameyl and Jenise are loading the wagon. It’s up to us.”

  Çeda nodded back, and they headed into the stables together. Two of the Silver Spears, who seemed to be in a hurry, were handing over their horses to Jenise. The stable boys were nowhere in sight. Çeda had heard Kameyl ordering them about; she’d surely sent them on errands that would keep them out of the immediate vicinity. Varal was conversing in low tones with the captain of the Spears, who nodded every so often. When he left the stables, following his brothers-in-arms through the side door, Varal headed toward the front, toward the shipyard.

  Steeling herself, Çeda stepped into her path. For a moment time slowed. The two of them looked into one another’s eyes, Çeda hoping again for some glimmer of recognition.

  “Do you know me?” Çeda asked her.

  Varal stared with a confused look, but then her flinty gaze returned. “Get out of my way,” she said, and was just starting to bull past when Sümeya rushed up behind her and slipped a wet cloth over her nose and mouth.

  Her eyes went wide. She struggled hard, arms flailing, legs kicking ineffectually at Sümeya, but all too soon her eyes rolled back into her head and she went limp.

  By then Kameyl was steering their wagon toward them. Jenise, kneeling on the bed, pulled the tarp back. As soon as the wagon came to a stop, Sümeya and Çeda hoisted Varal up and set her onto the warped boards of the wagon bed.

  “Oy!”

  Çeda spun to find the gang leader from before, striding toward her like a cock in a hen yard. He was leering at Çeda with that nasty grin of his. The closer he came, however, the mo
re his grin faded. He’d been so busy trying to make eye contact with Çeda, the scene before him hadn’t fully registered. It did now, though. He had an utterly perplexed look on his face as Jenise covered Varal with the tarp.

  “What are you bloody doing with her?”

  Sümeya leapt up to the driver’s bench. Kameyl snapped the reins. Çeda, meanwhile, pasted a pleasant smile on her face and approached him. Releasing her breath slowly, she reached outward, feeling for the gang leader’s heart.

  The man’s confusion lasted only a moment longer. He drew the small knife at his belt and opened his mouth to speak or perhaps yell out a warning, but when Çeda pressed on his heart, he bent over and coughed. By then Çeda was on the move. He swiped once—a clumsy thing. Çeda let it swing past her before darting forward again. She hooked his neck, then transferred her forward momentum to him while lowering her center of gravity in a controlled crouch. She followed his movement, keeping hold of his neck.

  As his ponderous weight was wrenched hard onto the stable floor, his breath exploded from him. Çeda immediately hooked one leg around his knife arm, pinning it in place, then tightened her arms around his neck as he struggled. It took only until the count of eight before he went slack. After dragging him into a stall and covering him with hay, she took a flying leap onto the back of the wagon. She’d felt so bloody tense before, but gods it had felt good to work some of it out on that vulgar man.

  Their wagon trundled along the quay, heading with speed, though not too much speed, toward King’s Road. With luck, the man would go undiscovered until they made it past the House of Maidens and returned to the city.

  Çeda cast a backward glance at the tarp, where the body of Varal the shipwright was outlined. The farther they went, the more she started to doubt her vision.

  The fates grant me this favor, she prayed. Let this woman be Nalamae.

  Chapter 12

  AS THE BLAZING SUN settled in the west, Davud and Esmeray stood side by side in the shadow of a portico. Amongst members of the Enclave, Esmeray was once the mage known as “the crazed one.” She and Davud had fallen in with one another, then fallen in love, after finding common cause in trying to bring King Sukru to justice for his many crimes, particularly against blood magi. Esmeray had since lost her ability to use magic—it had been burned from her by the Enclave’s inner circle—but the two of them had remained together. They were both still wanted by the powers of the city, the Enclave and Queen Meryam foremost among them, and they needed protection.

  The portico they stood beneath was the entrance to the only reputable moneylender in the quarter of the city known as the Well. The fluted columns out front were chipped. Graffiti was everywhere, though it was interesting to note that more recent gang symbols had started to eclipse the sign of the spread-winged scarabs of the Moonless Host.

  “Times change,” Davud mused.

  Esmeray, her thick braids wrapped in a head scarf so that they spread toward the sky like a potted fern, gave the wall a passing glance and shrugged. “Even mountains crumble, Davud.”

  Beyond the columns, an arrowhead-shaped plaza unfurled. The shadows of sunset were long. Only the ancient mudbrick building at the plaza’s opposite end, Sharakhai’s famed fighting pits, rose above it. The upper two floors stood brightly in the sunlight, a golden ship on a dark sea of iron.

  When a roar rose up from the pits, Davud knew the final bout had just been decided. Soon hundreds were spilling out onto the plaza. The sound of their conversations rolled like a wave through the neighborhood. Young gutter wrens flocked, hands cupped for handouts. Some few of the spectators—those addled by drink or naiveté or the high of winning a large purse—actually handed out a few copper khet, only to be rewarded with dozens more children swarming toward them calling for the same. Most, however, ignored the wrens and took to the oud parlors or shisha dens or brothels that bordered the pits, living off its riches like parasites.

  A group of boys climbed the base of the portico steps, perhaps wanting the space for their own, but stopped in their tracks when they noticed Davud and Esmeray already standing there.

  “Fuck off,” Esmeray said.

  Had it been any other woman, the boys might have used it as an invitation to start something, but Esmeray was not just any woman. The tribal tattoos along her cheeks and forehead gave her an angry look. And her eyes had a wild look about them, a look made all the more jarring for the fact that they were the color of ivory, evidence of her magic having been burnt from her by the Enclave.

  The boys slunk away, leaving Davud and Esmeray alone once more. As the crowd began to thin, a handsome young man with long, light-colored hair pulled into a tail stepped onto the plaza in front of the pits. His name was Tariq, and he was flanked by two massive guards with cudgels in their meaty hands. Many waved to Tariq or called in greeting, but Tariq passed them by with hardly a look.

  As they neared, Davud stepped out from under the portico. “A moment of your time, Tariq?”

  One of the guards moved to intercept, but stopped when Tariq raised a hand. “Davud?”

  Davud smiled easily. “How’ve you been?”

  Tariq stared at him quizzically, then glanced at Esmeray, who leaned against one of the nicked columns like a street tough. Tariq’s look turned calculating, as if he were already trying to figure out what their angle was. “I thought you were dead,” he said to Davud.

  Davud waggled his head. “A common misconception.”

  “I’ve got business to attend to,” Tariq ventured, though he didn’t seem overly insistent about it. He was curious.

  Davud flourished to the crowded street ahead of them. “And I don’t want to keep you from it. We can walk while we talk.”

  Once, when they were young, Davud had come across Tariq in the choked aisles of the bazaar. He’d been running the streets with Hamid and Emre and was in a right foul mood. Davud had been heading back to his sister’s bakery stall with a bag of fresh mint, but Tariq stopped him.

  “You’re smart,” Tariq said. “Settle an argument for us. Emre says the gods control what we do. Hamid says it’s the fates. I say they’re both beetle-brained fools. We’re the ones who control what we do.”

  Davud remembered thinking how enlightened a question it was. “Actually,” he’d replied, “one of the books Master Amalos gave me says it’s none of those things.” He’d said it more to spark conversation than anything else. He’d thought Tariq genuinely curious about the answer, when what he really wanted was for Davud to agree with him. “The philosopher, Kosmet, says that our every action is determined by all previous actions, and that we have no free will at all.”

  Tariq’s face had turned red. “Then it isn’t really me doing this,” he said, and slapped Davud across the face so hard he fell to the ground, spilling the mint from the bag.

  Tariq stormed away, being sure to grind the leaves into the dirt as he went. Hamid followed in his wake, sparing an unsympathetic look that said Davud should have known better. Only Emre stopped and pulled Davud to his feet, then helped to collect the mint. “You’re not in the collegia now, Davud,” Emre said under his breath. “You’ve got to learn to read your audience.”

  Tariq may have forgotten that day, but Davud never had. Tariq had always been full of bluster, acting like everyone was out to get him. It had only grown worse as he’d risen through the ranks of Osman’s organization—an enterprise that combined a number of legal and illegal ventures, including the fighting pits themselves—eventually becoming Osman’s right-hand man. Davud thought Tariq would look him up and down and tell him to fuck off, just like Esmeray had with the gutter wrens. He didn’t, though. For several long heartbeats he weighed Davud, then gave an even-handed nod, the sort Osman might have given years ago when he’d been running the pits. Was Tariq, dare Davud say it, growing up?

  “Tell me what you need,” Tariq said as Davud fell into step alongside him.
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br />   Esmeray followed. The two towers of meat Tariq used for protection came last.

  “I need to speak to someone,” Davud said.

  A flash of annoyance passed over Tariq’s face. “You badgered me into a conversation easily enough. You can do the same to them.”

  “Yes, well, they’re in your employ, and could use a bit of convincing.”

  They passed an intersection where a group of boys and girls were kicking around a ball made of old, patched leather. “Who?”

  “Your physic, Hayal.”

  “And what might you need from Hayal?”

  Davud had debated how forthright to be. Esmeray had argued against honesty, saying there was no way they could trust Tariq. In fact, she’d argued for ensorcelling him and taking the information. But Davud didn’t want to risk using magic, not only because it risked the Enclave’s finding them, but also because it was imperative he reach the blood mage, Undosu, an associate of Hayal’s, on peaceable terms. Force Tariq or Hayal to do what they wanted and Undosu might hear of it, and if that happened Davud’s chances of gaining him as an ally dwindled to practically nothing.

  “Hayal sells alchemycal ingredients to a man named Undosu,” Davud went on. “I’d like a meeting with him.”

  Tariq stopped dead in his tracks, ignoring the people staring from the tea house down the street. “Undosu . . .”

  “Yes.”

  His eyes drifted down to Davud’s left hand. He glared at the blooding ring Davud wore on his thumb, a ring with a sharp thorn, which he could use to gather blood when needed. “It’s true, then?” he asked in a low voice. “You’re a blood mage?”

  Davud nodded.

  “And you want Undosu for what?”

  “A bit of protection.”