A Veil of Spears Page 17

  “There they are,” Darius said, pointing toward the caravel.

  Emre spotted them beneath the pier: a dozen men and women in thawbs, dresses, and leather armor were emerging from the caravel’s lower hatch. Macide was at their head, his twin shamshirs hanging from his belt. In that same moment, the first ifin released a piercing screech and flew west, its mission fulfilled.

  “Slow the ship!” Hamid called.

  Adzin’s crew was ready at the Gull’s stern, lowering the iron-toothed rake. It thumped into the sand, digging deep furrows, slowing the ship, and throwing everyone forward.

  Macide’s confusion was plain.

  “Quickly!” Hamid called. “We’ve been betrayed!”

  A black arrow thudded into the back of the woman standing behind Macide. Another arrow took the man beside her in the thigh. And then suddenly the air was thick with them.

  Emre ducked behind the gunwales as arrows streaked in against the Gray Gull. Beyond the quay, fifteen Blade Maidens, wearing turbans and black fighting dresses, and a score of Silver Spears in conical helms and lapping chainmail hauberks surged forth from a warehouse. Many held bows and had stopped to launch volleys, but five of the Blade Maidens were sprinting ahead, ebon blades drawn. Emre wondered if Çeda was among them, but he had no time to look more closely. Darius was handing him a bow.

  While Macide ushered those following him toward the Gray Gull, Emre loosed arrow after arrow into the sprinting Blade Maidens. Emre had deadly aim, but the Maidens were amazingly quick and seemed to know exactly where he was aiming. Each time he released an arrow, they would dodge out of the way, hardly slowing in the process. So it was that with the first six shots, he managed only one grazing wound.

  The Maidens hurtled along the pier and dropped to the sand as the Gray Gull approached those fleeing the caravel.

  “Port side!” Emre shouted, waving frantically to them. “Move to the port side of the ship!”

  They took his meaning. Many flew across the sand and beyond the Gull’s prow, where they grabbed at the ladders and ropes that Frail Lemi had lowered for them. Others turned and confronted the Maidens rather than be cut down from behind. Swords clashed as the scarabs of the Moonless Host met the line of Blade Maidens. At first, the Maidens were severely outnumbered. Two dozen scarabs stood against their five, but the Maidens worked in effortless concert, moving easily with one another as if they were a single five-headed, black-skinned beast—a demon not unlike the ifin that had led the Gray Gull to dockside.

  Arrows continued to rain down, but now the Gull’s crew joined in the counterattack. All knew the grisly fate that awaited them if they didn’t escape this harbor. So they accepted the bows Hamid handed them and pulled arrows from the quivers stationed around the ship, loosing them with a zeal that matched Emre’s.

  Adzin was pointing madly to the second ifin, spinning in a tight circle near the mouth of the harbor. “Quickly! Pull up the rake!”

  The crew did, though one of them took an arrow in the arm for the trouble. Another arrow came screaming in and took the pilot straight through the neck. The woman grabbed it, trying to pull it free, but the moment she succeeded a torrent of blood gushed from the wound, and she fell writhing to the deck. Okzan grabbed the wheel, steering them back on a heading even with the ifin’s path while the rest of the crew set the boom for the coming change in wind.

  Emre and Hamid rushed to the stern to get a better view of the battle, to help if they could. Several scarabs fought around Macide, but two had already fallen. A third had his legs cut from underneath him as the Maiden he was fighting ducked and delivered a vicious two-handed strike across his knees. A heavy thud sounded to Emre’s right as the ballista fired. The bolt struck low, creating a burst of sand in front of the two Blade Maidens sprinting past Macide toward the Gray Gull. The sudden spray of sand slowed them, but not by much. If even one of them gained the ship, they could easily cripple it.

  Emre turned as Cenk, Adzin’s second mate, began cranking the ballista’s windlass again. By his side were more of the larger bolts, but also a grapnel and a coil of rope. It was usually launched across rigging to cripple enemy ships but the sight of it gave Emre a flash of inspiration.

  “Give me a turn,” Emre said.

  Cenk grudgingly allowed him to lay the grapnel and rope into the bolt groove.

  Emre aimed high and fired. As the grapnel flew and the coil unfurled behind it, Emre whistled sharply twice.

  Macide glanced back, then redoubled his efforts against the two Blade Maidens, his twin shamshirs flying. The grapnel flew by him, and would have caught the Maiden on his right across the head had she not somehow sensed it and ducked in time.

  The rope pulled taut and the grapnel raked the sand. It tripped the Maiden, who cried out as one of the grapnel’s sharp hooks tore through her foot, boot and all, and dropped her to the sand. It pulled her along as she reached for it, trying vainly to release herself.

  Macide gave one last flurry of sweeping blows from his shamshirs, then turned and sprinted for the Maiden being dragged ever faster by the ship. Sheathing one of his swords with practiced ease, he ran onto the Maiden, using her as a platform to launch himself forward. Grabbing the rope with his free hand, he sliced it clean through so that the Maiden was freed, and he was now being pulled along the sand.

  Emre and Hamid worked together, hauling Macide closer and closer to the ship as the remaining Maiden gave chase. Darius fired arrow after arrow at her, forcing her to alter her path, but it still wasn’t enough. She lifted her sword, preparing to leap and chop her blade down against Macide when another thud from the second ballista sounded and a bolt caught her straight through the chest. The blow was so powerful it knocked her backward and pinned her against the sand.

  Hamid and Emre were both beginning to tire, but luckily Frail Lemi rushed in to relieve them. Alone, he pulled the rope with his cordwood arms, drawing Macide closer to the ship with more speed than Emre and Hamid had managed together.

  Finally, Macide was up and over the edge of the gunwales, breathing hard, his legs bloody where sand and stone had torn through his clothes.

  Another of Adzin’s crew was felled by an arrow, but the Gray Gull was building speed now and heading toward open sand. The royal yacht guarding the harbor’s entrance had set its sails and was gliding toward the rocky area where the Gull had entered the harbor. They clearly thought to cut off their escape.

  “Where’s the ifin?” Emre snapped.

  Okzan, at the pilot’s wheel, squinted at the sand ahead, the sky above. “It was just there,” he said in a thick Kundhunese accent, “I swear it!”

  Before he’d even finished the words, Emre heard urgent flapping to his left. He turned and saw the ifin arcing toward them. It fluttered around Macide, then landed on one of his swords. It gripped the scabbard, its head twisting this way and that, as if it were confused.

  “Go!” Hamid shouted, waving his hands at it, but it only fluttered away and landed on the sword again.

  Only when Macide drew the sword did it fly, turning in a tight circle, and soar ahead of the ship directly for the center of the long chain spanning the mouth of the harbor.

  “What’s it want, Emre?” Frail Lemi asked.

  Hamid frowned at Frail Lemi and headed to the foredeck while staring at the ifin. “Does the thing expect us to just run past the chain? It’ll shatter the struts!”

  Emre watched the odd patterns of the ifin’s flight as Hamid grabbed Adzin by the front of his robes and shook him. “What does that ruddy thing want?”

  Adzin, practically ignoring Hamid, was staring every bit as intently as Emre. “I don’t know.”

  “It’s your bloody beast!” Hamid pressed.

  Adzin turned to him and replied as if he were speaking to a child. “I have no special insight into their minds! Once given a scent they follow it, trusting wholly to the winds of f
ate. How they reveal it is up to them and is for us to interpret.”

  “It wants us to break the chain,” Emre said.

  “What?” Macide asked, stepping alongside them.

  “Look at it. It wants us to break the chain.”

  The ifin was darting down toward one particular spot in the long, black chain, swooping up, then doing the same. Over and over it repeated the maneuver, a thing not unlike a sword cutting across it.

  Emre turned to Macide. “Give me your sword.”

  Hamid barked a laugh. “You’re mad!”

  But Macide had no humor in his eyes as he glanced between the ifin and his shamshir, which he still held in his right hand. It was a fine weapon, every bit as beautifully crafted as the Maiden’s ebon blades. It was darker than normal steel, the materials that went into forging ebon steel perhaps a part of its alchemycal making.

  The ship was getting closer and closer to the chain. The sound of the skis over the sand came like a hiss now that they were picking up good speed.

  Cenk, Adzin’s man, had come near. He was staring in awe at the ifin. “Best bloody do it if you’re going to.”

  Hamid looked incensed, but Macide nodded and handed the weapon to Emre, who headed for the prow, where he hopped up to the bowsprit. Navigating the foot of the jib, then the flying jib, he made it to the very fore of the beam and held himself in place with a stay line. He crouched and waited as the Gull approached the chain. Gods, how fast the ship was moving now, the waves of sand below accentuated by shadows from the sunrise.

  The ifin was still swooping, but as the Gray Gull came near, it flew beneath the ship like an arrow.

  Emre took a deep breath. Exhaled sharply.

  And leapt.

  Taking the sword in both hands, he brought it down with all his might against the black length of chain. He heard a metallic shearing. Felt the chain give way and the sword bite into the sand below.

  And then the ship loomed above him. The forward struts struck the chain. Chips of wood flew as the chain’s two halves were whipped to either side of the ship. But the struts held and the Gull sailed on.

  Emre knew what the ifin wanted him to do. The rudder was flying toward him with alarming speed. He tried his best to soften the blow as he threw himself across it, but it still drove mercilessly into his ribs. He heard something snap, and saw stars as he held tight to the ski.

  He was horrified to realize he’d lost Macide’s sword. It lay in the sand, falling away as the ship headed past the lighthouses. He nearly let himself slip off the rudder—he might be able to grab the sword and run back to the ship if they slowed for him. But he may as well wish to be King of Sharakhai. The pain in his ribs was already beginning to soar.

  Soon the access hatch on the bottom of the ship was being opened, and Emre was making his way slowly, gingerly toward it, using the handholds in the stout wood of the strut. He was practically yanked through the opening by Frail Lemi.

  “Careful, Lemi!” Blackness began to close in around him. “Broken ribs!”

  Frail Lemi hardly seemed to notice, smiling broadly, though he thankfully took more care after that, helping Emre up along two ladders and back to the deck. Everyone on deck was smiling. Even Adzin. Especially Adzin, though the man must know the hour of his reckoning was near.

  They sailed throughout the day, still following the ifin, whose job—with a capital ship, a clipper, having joined the royal yacht in chasing them—was not yet done. Over and over it led them across rocky terrain, but chose the safest path possible, necessitating that the yacht and clipper slow down or risk running aground. Over the course of the day they fell further and further behind, and were finally lost altogether.

  The Gray Gull sailed on through the night, the ifin still flying close enough that they could see it by moonlight, and when the moons set they followed the sound of its flapping wings.

  When morning came it flapped up and away, and Macide called for a halt. He ordered that Adzin and the five remaining members of his crew be brought before him on the sand. They were lined up, surrounded by the Host’s survivors, Adzin standing two steps ahead of them.

  “I’ve heard the whole tale,” Macide said simply. “You betrayed the Moonless Host.”

  “One might look at it that way,” Adzin replied. His words were deadened in the cold morning air.

  “There’s no other way to look at it,” Hamid broke in.

  Macide raised his hand to him. “Is there another way?”

  Adzin spread his hands and bowed his head, a supplicant before a mighty king. “To truly know, you’d have to see all the other possible paths of fate.”

  Hamid frowned. “And you saw them, these other paths?”

  Adzin gave him a placid smile. “For you and those gathered here, there were few enough to see.”

  “You knew it would come to this,” Hamid said. He was gripping the hilt of his shamshir. The deep-seated rage in him was clear, but Macide seemed to discount it; he merely raised one hand to forestall Hamid, keeping his eyes on Adzin.

  Adzin, meanwhile, nodded. “The other paths were less agreeable than this one.”

  In that moment, Hamid gripped his sword and drew, closing the distance between him and Adzin as he did. Macide moved to intercept, but his hand reached for his favored shamshir, the one that was now lost because of Emre. Hamid roared as he brought his blade, flashing in the sun, against Adzin’s throat.

  Blood flew. For a moment, everyone stared. Adzin fell to his knees, gripping the wound, his eyes wide, disbelieving at last. He collapsed quivering to the sand, his lifeblood spilling crimson down the slope of the amber dune.

  “You bloody fucking goat!” Macide yelled at Hamid, who hadn’t yet taken his eyes off of Adzin. “Go!” Macide yelled again, shoving him into motion. “Go!”

  Craning his head back, Hamid spit at Adzin’s twitching form, then marched over the sand, sheathing his sword as he went. Adzin’s crew stared on with shock or barely suppressed rage. Okzan, the quiet giant, looked as if he were ready to explode in fury.

  Macide’s jaw jutted as he struggled to recover himself. He looked to each of the crewmen in turn, offering no apology but saying instead, “Your lives are worthless in Sharakhai. We’ll give you our skiff and enough food and water to reach a caravanserai, then you can see where your fortunes take you.”

  A beetle’s wings rattled in the distance. Okzan stood tall, meeting Macide’s stare with an expression of stony hatred. “The Host is a plague upon the desert.”

  For several long moments no one spoke. Emre was certain violence would erupt again, but then Cenk moved to stand in front of Okzan. He had no less hatred on his face, but his words were more politic. “We’ll take the skiff.”

  Macide nodded then turned to Emre. “See that it’s done.”

  Emre did, loading enough provisions for seven days’ sail, a map, and instruments to sail by. Adzin’s crew, meanwhile, were allowed to bury Adzin’s body in the sand. On the ship, meanwhile, a hellacious shouting match played out in the captain’s cabin of the Gull—Macide and Hamid coming to terms.

  Soon, Adzin’s five surviving crewmen were sailing away. As the sun rose in the east and the Gray Gull set sail for the eastern desert, the skiff was lost beyond the horizon.

  Chapter 19

  A WEEK AFTER VENTURING to the blooming fields with Sukru, Davud sat on his patio after dusk, penning a letter to his sister, Tehla, by lamplight. The day after his visit to the blooming fields, the palace steward had told him he could write a handful of letters. He was certain they’d be read before delivery, but he’d still be glad to get news to Tehla and his family—any news—since his return from Ishmantep. So far, all Sukru had allowed was a messenger to say he’d survived and was a guest of the Kings. He hoped that, if he continued to please the King, his family would be allowed to visit him. Or maybe he’d be able to visit them. Tulath
an’s bright smile, how he’d love to spend a day baking bread with Tehla. He’d thought it tedious when he was young, but he could do with a bit of tedium now.

  He stopped his writing as the nearby lamp shed light on a familiar bright-breasted finch flitting about the branches of the fig tree. As he set the vulture quill into the inkwell, he realized the bird had something in its beak. It wasn’t a bit of twig this time, nor a leaf; it was a small, perfect triangle. He beckoned and said, “Come, come, there’s no need to be shy,” and the bird flew down onto the mosaic tabletop and dropped the triangle near his wineglass. As it hopped away, Davud picked up the golden device and was stunned by how heavy it was.

  The finch spun, then tapped its beak on the tabletop. Then again, and a third time. Davud, brow furrowing, set one point of the triangle on the tabletop. The bird tapped and spun, tapped and spun.

  Curious, Davud gave the thing a spin.

  It spun and wobbled, looking ready to topple, but it didn’t. It continued to spin, a whisper above the table’s surface, glinting in the lamplight as it turned faster and faster like a child’s top. Slowly, it lifted into the air until it was nearly eye level.

  Davud shivered as the thing began to speak in a soft voice.

  “So we meet at last.”

  The voice had a strange vibrato. Was the spinning causing it? He wasn’t sure, but it made it impossible to determine whether the speaker was man or woman. After glancing about for signs of Anila or Zahndr or anyone else watching, he turned back to the spinning triangle. It felt strange to speak to it, but what else was there to do? “Who are you?”

  “You may call me the Sparrow.” With the speed of it increased, the vibrato had somehow lessened.

  “Very well. But who are you really?”

  “It’s too soon for such talk. Let me instead tell you what I know about you.” As the voice spoke, the triangle sped up and slowed down—faster when the voice was strongest, slower during lulls or when the voice had fallen silent. He decided the voice sounded male. “You are one of two scholars known to have survived the massacre on the collegia grounds. You either escaped or were spared in Ishmantep. The same is true of the woman, Anila, who shares your room in the Reaping King’s palace. You were awakened to the red ways in the desert, and I can only assume it was Hamzakiir himself who gave you that spark.”