Twelve Kings in Sharakhai Read online

  Her arms flung outward to catch herself, a bare moment before her body slammed against the stone roof of the tower, rekindling the pain of her wounds. Osman had a fistful of her hair and was using it to drag her slowly but surely toward the edge of the parapet. She kicked and thrashed, her fingers scrabbling against the stone as she fought for purchase—something, anything, to prevent being hauled to the edge like garbage for the offal pit—but Osman had all the leverage he needed to drag her up and halfway over the roof’s stone lip.

  When she felt herself leaning out over open air, she went rigid, she was so frightened of being thrown downward. She clutched at his arms, grabbed his kaftan, but he could drop her whenever he wished, and they both knew it.

  She glanced to one side, saw the distance she’d fall before crashing against the unforgiving earth below. Breath of the desert, they were high up.

  The gods as her witness she’d never seen Osman look so furious, veins bulging, spittle flying from his mouth as his breath came heavy. When he spoke, however, he did not yell. He did not shout. He spoke instead with a quiet intensity that scared her far more than some violent outburst ever could. “First you break into a canister that wasn’t yours. Then you admit to doing it many times before. And now you tell me you’ve continued to look into the affairs of my patrons? Mine, Çeda! Not yours! This is none of your affair!”

  “It became my affair when Emre was nearly killed for the canister he went to pick up.”

  “Emre knows the risks, as do you. Or have you forgotten?”

  Years ago, she’d taken a blood oath to protect any and all of Osman’s packages she was entrusted with—with her life, if necessary—and Emre had done the same.

  “I remember, but there’s more to it this time.” She tried to gain a grip on the parapet, but Osman maneuvered her away from it. “Don’t you care that one of your own was attacked? That he was nearly killed?”

  “I care, Çeda, but that’s none of your concern.”

  “Emre is my concern. Did you really think I would let it go after he was attacked? I can’t go after them, but I can look into the package, if you’ll let me.”

  His hand was still tight on the back of her head. He shook her violently, his expression desperate, like a fighter in the pits who knew the end was near. “What am I supposed to do with you? Why do you always have to be so fucking stubborn?”

  Her stomach was spinning, but she stared coolly into his eyes, knowing that to show fear now might convince him to release his hold and be done with her once and for all. “I am what I am, Osman. That’s why you allowed me to fight in the pits. That’s why you hired me to shade for you.” He pushed her further. “There were tribesmen there! Did you know that?”

  The muscles along Osman’s neck tightened like cordage. “Of course I did.”

  Çeda was confused at first, but then she understood. Emre, you bloody ass.

  She hadn’t mentioned it to Tariq. Emre must have gone to Osman the other day, when he’d said he’d just needed to clear his head. “Did he tell you an asirim took one of the tribesmen?” He didn’t reply, but she could see in his face that he hadn’t known. “The asirim were thick in the streets that night. Surely you heard them. One of them hauled a dead tribesman up, threw him over its shoulder, and carried him away while I watched.”

  Osman’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps it liked the smell of him. Perhaps it was hungry. Or perhaps it thought he had the canister Emre was sent to deliver. Did you know there was a breathstone in the case? Do you even know what a breathstone is?”

  “Aren’t you listening?” He shook her, and her left leg slipped over the edge. “I don’t need to know, and neither do you!”

  “Osman, listen to me. Do you remember when I first started shading for you? You said that you’d ripped the reins of the shading business from Old Vadram. You said he hadn’t sensed the winds changing, that he’d been caught in the storm when the Silver Spears had decided they no longer needed to abide by old agreements.”

  “Vadram was half senile by that point. He’d been ignoring the crumbling ruins of his empire for years.”

  “And you?” Çeda asked. “Are you going to ignore the storm even when you see it billowing up along the horizon? Do nothing until the sands are howling over Sharakhai?”

  His fists were shaking by this point, not from exhaustion, but with rage and worry. For long moments he kept her right where she was, but she could see the fire draining from him. His shoulders slumped, and his expression changed to one that made it clear he already regretted what he was about to do. Releasing a long sigh, he pulled her up and shoved her away from him. “What’s a breathstone?” he asked as he stood, brushing the dust and dirt from his forearms and clothes.

  “They’re given to the dead,” she said as she stood and faced him. “Fed to them, after which they wake for a time. In that state, they can speak, at least until the effects of the stone wear off.”

  “And how long is that?”

  “Bakhi only knows,” Çeda replied. “Bakhi and perhaps whoever sent it to Macide.”

  As she said these words, she prepared herself for Osman’s reaction. She expected him to shout with rage. To call her a meddling child. Perhaps even renege on his ill-considered bout of mercy and toss her over the side of the lighthouse. What she didn’t expect was for him to work through the implications of what she’d said, smile resignedly, and then begin laughing, low and long, until it had grown into a full-throated affair that half of Sharakhai could hear.

  “By the gods, you tailed whoever collected your canister,” Osman said when his laugh died down at last. “Çeda, we don’t take sides!”

  “No, you don’t take sides! Macide is a viper.”

  “He may be dangerous to the Kings, dangerous to others who oppose him, but not to his allies. We have little to fear.”

  “You’re wrong. He’s dangerous to his allies as well. You don’t know what the Al’Afwa Khadar are like.”

  Osman shrugged his shoulder, as if he were loosening his aching body after a bout in the pits. “I know them better than you. Macide is merely focused. He’s driven. I can admire a man like that.”

  “He’s too driven, Osman. Like a mule with blinders, he plods onward, regardless of what happens around him, regardless of who he tramples.”

  An incredulous look overcame Osman. “He is driven for the blood of the Kings, Çeda. Isn’t that what you’re after? Isn’t that what you’ve been striving for since your mother died? By all rights you should be allies!”

  Çeda spit onto the roof in the space between them. “Macide and I will never be allies.”

  Osman ignored her words. “What happened to your mother, Çeda?”

  “I can’t tell you that,” she said. The words sent a pang of regret through her, not because of any disappointment Osman might be feeling, but because of how poorly she’d managed to fulfill her promise to avenge her mother’s death. There were days that she wished she could go back and stand by her mother. She would fight by her side, and die by her side if that was how the gods willed it.

  As they stood there in silence, the sounds of the city dreamlike in the air around them, a change came over Osman. His gaze softened. “I could help you.” She’d never seen him like this. He’d always been the hardened warrior, putting on a strong face, never showing weakness. Even when they’d made love, he had been intense, rarely letting his guard down—perhaps for her sake, perhaps for his own.

  Suddenly she deeply regretted what she’d done to him, even more so than when he’d first caught her red-handed with the canister in the streets near the bazaar, and it made her realize what her answer had to be. She’d known long ago that—Emre being the lone exception—she couldn’t share her secrets. If others knew, it increased the chances that the Kings would discover her, and through her, her friends and those she loved. As muc
h as she believed Osman would help her, she shook her head and said, “This isn’t your battle.”

  At this, the stoic expression Osman usually wore returned, and he walked to the edge of the roof, holding his hands behind his back and surveying the cityscape of Sharakhai.

  Çeda moved to his side as the hot desert wind tugged at her clothes. Directly ahead, far to the south, was the southern harbor and its two lighthouses, and to her right, past the line of the winding Haddah and the tents of the bazaar and the slums, lay the western harbor, the one that held the smallest of Sharakhai’s ships. To her left was Tauriyat, with its own harbor—King’s Harbor, with the ships of war, impregnable walls, and a titanic pair of gates at its entrance. A dark line ran from the mountains to the walls of King’s Harbor—the city’s aqueduct, which fed the tree groves and plantations and the man-made lake that occupied a wide swath to the northeast of Sharakhai. The Haddah and Sharakhai’s numerous wells kept much of the city in water, but the aqueduct was vital, bringing so much precious water from its deep mountain reservoir. It had allowed Sharakhai to thrive and grow, even in times of severe drought, into the sprawling and wondrous beast that lay before them.

  From here it was easy to see Sharakhai’s old walls. They circled the more affluent areas around Tauriyat—places like Goldenhill, the temple district, the collegia—but also the traditional heart of Sharakhai—the auction blocks, the bazaar, the spice market. The city had long ago grown beyond those walls, reaching out into the dry desert, especially westward, where many of the poorer in Sharakhai lived in hovels and ramshackle homes and tenements. Çeda felt fortunate to live where she did, near the old walls and the bazaar. Roseridge was at least moderately safe. Other districts were both crime- and disease-ridden, unable to afford the private constabularies that patrolled much of the rest of the city or the requisite bribes for the Silver Spears.

  “What do you suppose the Moonless Host would do if they succeeded, Osman? What do you suppose they would do if the asirim suddenly vanished, leaving Sharakhai defenseless?” She paused, waiting for the point to hit home. The asirim came for their reaping each night of Beht Zha’ir, but the Blade Maidens also used them to protect the interests of the Kings. Whatever Çeda might feel about them, she had to admit they had always provided a stabilizing influence in the desert, preventing not only the wandering tribes from attacking Sharakhai, but the four neighboring Kingdoms as well, all of which had coveted Sharakhai for their own over the centuries since its birth. “They’d pick up the war that ended when the Kings took power,” Çeda went on. “They’d raze the city and return the Shangazi to the ways of the wandering tribes.”

  “Do you really think so?” Osman asked. “It’s been four hundred years, Çeda. The mindset of the tribes has changed, even for those in the Moonless Host. Macide may be wicked with those swords he carries, but believe me, he’s just as sharp with a pen and a ledger. He has to be. It takes money to supply his host, to feed their horses and repair their ships. It takes money to find men who can supply him with a breathstone. Macide would no more tear this city down than he would the wandering tribes. There’s too much he likes about both. He just wants the Kings to be gone, to let the tribes live as they wish.”

  “What I hear is a man who doesn’t wish to know what’s happening in his own city. Who makes guesses when he should be learning more for himself.”

  “It isn’t my city.”

  For some reason, standing here like this with Osman, the whole of the Amber City laid out below, she felt closer to him than she ever had before. She wished she could love him. She wished she could stand by his side and rule some small piece of this place with him. He’d made the offer before, to marry her, but she had never been tempted; or perhaps it was her promise to her mother that held her back, for she knew that to join hands with Osman would mean abandoning her hopes of harming the Kings. Osman was too protective of the things he considered his own. The day they crossed the threshold of his home as husband and wife, she would become beholden to him, and sooner or later, he would insist she leave her vows unfulfilled.

  “You love this place,” Çeda said. “You love it as much as I do.”

  “That isn’t what I meant.”

  “I know. Sharakhai is in the hands of the Kings. And if not the Kings, then whose? Macide Ishaq’ava’s? The desert shaikhs?” Far into the distance, vultures were circling. Somewhere below them—not visible even from this vantage point—were the blooming fields, the places where the twisted adichara grew, the places from which the asirim rose each night of the dual moon. The places to which they returned after their long night sowing terror. The fields ringed the city, demarcating a border that the gods of the desert themselves had pledged to protect. “Tell me who sent the stone to Macide, Osman. You would risk too much looking further into it with your own men, so let me look in the shadows. I’ll be discreet, you know I will, and I’ll share whatever I learn.”

  He continued to watch over the city. Then his gaze turned to Tauriyat, where the House of Kings lay. He stared at it for some time, as though he could peer through the walls to see the minds of the Kings themselves. “Part of me thinks the Kings will never leave this place. The gods themselves granted them the city, and control of the desert with it.”

  “You would leave it to chance, then?”

  Osman turned to her. He looked her up and down, not as a lover, but as a man judging a warrior for the pits. “There’s a tourney being held at the pits in two days.”

  “I know.”

  “Will the White Wolf fight?”

  “The Wolf is wounded,” Çeda said carefully, “but she may scrap with the other dirt dogs.”

  “It would be good if she did.” He strode toward the trapdoor and swung it wide. “She might just learn a thing or two.” And then he took to the stairs, leaving her alone with the vastness of Sharakhai.

  As his footsteps receded, Çeda remained where she was, considering his words. She looked out past Roseridge, to a section of the city known as the Well. Osman’s pits were there, a group of seven arenas where men and women fought for money. From here they looked like a dirty blossom, dropped and forgotten by the gods.

  She didn’t understand what he intended. Not yet. But she knew, as everyone in Sharakhai did, that this coming Tavahndi was one of the biggest fighting days of the year. Did he mean to test her in some way? Play some petty game in which she had to win in order to get the information she desired?

  If that were so, then so be it; and woe betide the dog with the ill fortune to face her.

  “EXCELLENCE?”

  Ihsan, the Honey-tongued King of Sharakhai, looked up from his desk and found the gaunt form of Tolovan, his vizir these past three decades, standing at the door.

  “He’s arrived,” Tolovan said. “I’ve taken him to the veranda.”

  Ihsan nodded, and Tolovan turned and left, his long indigo abaya trailing behind him.

  Ihsan dipped his quill into the ink-stained well near the ledger that was open before him and finished penning the last of the morning’s appointments. From an aged bronze well, he scooped a small handful of fine white salt and sprinkled it over the still-damp page. When it dried, he lifted the ledger, forcing the salt into the gutter between the pages, then tilted it, pouring the grains into another, nearly empty well. This salt, stained gray from the black ink, he would use later, with his meals. The notion that he supped upon his words was not merely a comfort. It gave him a sense that they were a compact, an agreement between himself and his own past. It was why he was so very meticulous about recording his days, his plans, his meetings with the other Kings, and so much more.

  And yet, before he rose, he made no entry for this coming meeting, nor would he do so later when he’d returned to his apartments. From the eyes of god and man alike are some things best left hidden.

  With his thread-of-gold thawb barely brushing the travertine floor, he made his way t
o the ground floor. There two doors were opened for him, allowing him entrance to the wide veranda that overlooked Sharakhai’s southwestern quarter and the endless desert beyond.

  Only one table was set out. A table with two chairs. A sturdy man with a trim beard and moustache stood beside one of them. Mihir Halim’ava al Kadri, son of Shaikh Halim, Lord of the Burning Hands. Mihir wore a red turban, a thing forbidden to the populace of Sharakhai but overlooked for the visiting son of a desert shaikh. Orange tattoos marked the olive skin along the bridge of his nose, his chin and cheeks as well, and especially the palms of his hands. Unlike the other tribes, the Kadri left the backs of their hands unadorned, marking their palms instead. When Mihir saw Ihsan approaching, he bowed, and then raised his open hands toward Ihsan. When we come in peace, the gesture said, you may read our tales, but when we come for war, we reveal nothing, for our palms will grip our blades. It was a gesture that stood in stark contrast to his red turban, which, while in the past might have indicated a man preparing to tread the paths of war, had changed in recent decades to one of almost childlike impudence. To the shaikhs and their emissaries it meant that they stood apart from Sharakhai, that no yoke rested across their shoulders, but to Ihsan it looked as though Mihir were clinging to a lonely rock in a storm-swept sea.

  “Tauriyat welcomes you,” Ihsan said, bowing his head in return.

  “My father sends his regards to the King of Sharakhai.”

  “Hardly the King.” Ihsan took the open seat and gave one quick wave of his hand for Mihir to take his.

  When Mihir sat, Ihsan gestured toward the doors, and immediately servants came bearing platters filled with grapes and pickled vegetables and grilled flatbread and smoked goat cheese—a fresh import from Qaimir—and bowls of hummus and herbed olive oil and a paprika-dusted eggplant puree that the kitchen knew Ihsan was favoring of late. Glasses were filled with a yellow tomato juice, filtered thrice so that it was crystal clear and glinted in the summer sun. As a box of deep-grained wood was opened, Mihir’s eyes widened. The servant used a pair of silver tongs to lift chunks of ice from the confines of the box and drop them delicately into the glasses of juice.