With Blood Upon the Sand Page 4

  “Of course,” Ramahd said, and lifted her from her chair.

  Chapter 3

  A BROAD BLUE SKY HUNG over Sharakhai as Çeda headed down along King’s Road toward the House of Maidens. She rode her mare, Brightlock, a beautiful akhala with a copper coat and a tail and mane of sanded brass.

  Nearly three weeks had passed since her failed assassination attempt, and the days that followed had unfolded in a strangely surreal manner. The Matrons had questioned her about her involvement that night, but seemed satisfied with the story she gave them: that she’d been out for a walk, that she’d heard the bells, that she’d come running as fast as she could to join the hunt. Dozens of other Blade Maidens were questioned, but what might have come of them, Çeda never learned. Life seemed to go on as if little had changed. The Maiden who’d died had been given a night of honor, one in which those who knew her had sung songs, had told stories around a fire, but few others would have guessed a Maiden had been killed. Even in the city, where the Spears were searching for clues, Çeda heard rumor that it was not as exhaustive or cruel as it might have been.

  Çeda could think of only two reasons the Kings would suppress the knowledge that an assassin had gained the walls of Eventide. The first and most obvious was that several of the Kings had nearly been killed; surely they had no desire, so soon after King Külaşan’s assassination, to reveal weakness of any sort. Could it be, then? Had Cahil lost his battle against the poison? She regretted the deaths of the Silver Spear and the Blade Maiden, but if Cahil had died then it would have been worth it.

  The only other possible reason for their uncharacteristic ease was that they wanted no scrutiny brought on the grizzly ritual they’d performed. All in Sharakhai knew of the asirim, but precious few knew much beyond the story the Kings had fed them: that they were holy defenders of Sharakhai, that they’d sacrificed themselves on the night of Beht Ihman to save the city from the might of the desert tribes. Certainly they wished for secrecy. They’d sacrificed a woman. Created an asir in the bargain. Çeda had wondered often who that woman had been, and the only reasonable explanation was that she’d been a daughter of the thirteenth tribe. They’d taken someone with the blood of the lost tribe and used her to create another asir, a slave, a weapon to wield in their war against the Moonless Host. It made some sense in the context of the poem Çeda had discovered in her mother’s book, which she had little doubt referred to King Mesut:

  The King of Smiles,

  from verdant isles,

  the gleam in moonlit eye;

  with soft caress,

  at death’s redress,

  his wish, lost soul will cry.

  Yerinde grants,

  a golden band,

  with eye of glittering jet;

  should King divide,

  from Love’s sweet pride,

  dark souls collect their debt.

  The golden band on Mesut’s wrist. He’d somehow summoned one of the dark souls with that bracelet. Or released it after it had been trapped within. Gemstones could be used to trap souls. Everyone in the desert knew that. Could Mesut not have been given one such on Beht Ihman? Perhaps. But there would be precious few ways for her to learn the truth of it for the time being.

  All too soon the machine that was the House of Maidens had returned to normality. Maidens patrolled the city or guarded the Kings. Others, Çeda among them, were sent on specific missions for their King or for the wardens who guided them. King Yusam had called Çeda to his palace several times for new tasks, and never had he or anyone else mentioned that four of the Kings had been in danger.

  Still, Çeda knew better than most how quickly things might turn. King Yusam might see something in his mere that would implicate her. King Zeheb might hear whispers that would put him on her trail. They might find the disguise she’d used and find something she’d missed that might lead them to her. So Çeda watched everyone and everything warily. She’d been sleeping only a few hours each night, wondering when they’d wake her and drag her before the Confessor King, Cahil, for questioning.

  Reaching level ground at last, she headed west toward the House of Maidens. As they did most days, the keep’s inner gates stood open. She waved to the Maidens atop the wall as she neared. Shortly after, a young girl, a page, blew a whistle, and those traveling through the gates and into the House of Kings proper made way for her.

  She rode to the stables, prepared to find her sword master, Sayabim, for more training, but the stable girl, a thin wisp of a girl, had a surprise for her. “The First Warden wishes to see you, Maiden Çeda,” she said as Çeda slipped down from Brightlock’s saddle.

  As Çeda handed the reins over, the girl assiduously avoided Çeda’s gaze. “Why?” Çeda asked.

  “I couldn’t say.” The girl paused, then leaned in conspiratorially. “She’s in the barracks courtyard. There’s someone she wishes you to meet. Someone to”—her voice dropped to a whisper—“properly fill out your hand.”

  “I thought you couldn’t say,” Çeda said, smiling.

  The girl’s face reddened.

  Çeda laughed, but inside, she was taken aback. She’d been asking Sümeya about this for weeks. First Warden Sümeya’s hand stood at four Maidens: Sümeya herself, Kameyl, Melis, and Çeda. The opening left by Jalize, the Blade Maiden Çeda had killed in Külaşan’s palace, had remained vacant in the months following her death. Çeda had been secretly relieved that no one new had come to fill it, for in that lay uncertainty she didn’t need, but she’d known it would eventually be filled. The sort of woman Jalize’s replacement might be, Çeda had no idea, but if she was like most of the Kings’ daughters, Çeda would have to tread carefully around her. Very carefully.

  “Well, who is it?” Çeda asked.

  The girl shook her head. “I’m not to say.”

  “Well, I dare say you weren’t supposed to tell me the rest, either!”

  “I’m sorry, Maiden.” Her gaze dropped to the straw-covered ground, her ears now burning bright as her cheeks. “I’ve said too much.”

  With a rough of the girl’s hair, Çeda sent her away, then left the stables as a strange alchemycal brew of eagerness and unease began to stir inside her. Passing through the spartan buildings of the House of Maidens, she came to the barracks and its courtyard, where several dozen Maidens practiced swordplay with bamboo shinai. More sparred with padded spears or sent arrows biting into targets with quick, rhythmic pulls from their short bows.

  Sümeya, First Warden of the Maidens and the leader of Çeda’s hand, stood on the far side of the courtyard beside one of the sparring circles, watching two Maidens trade blows with naked steel. One of the Maidens was easy to recognize—Kameyl, a tall, imposing woman, the fiercest of all the Maidens, a wizard with blade in hand. The other was a young woman Çeda had never seen before. She had honey-blond hair bound into a long braid. She was seventeen, perhaps, and pretty in a composed sort of way, as if she might stop a fight to fix her hair.

  “You wished to see me, First Warden,” Çeda said.

  Sümeya glanced her way. “Çeda,” she said by way of greeting, then resumed her study of Kameyl and the Maiden-in-waiting. As well she might. She was likely judging the young, prospective Maiden’s preparedness for her initiation ritual, which involved the tahl selheshal, the dance she and Kameyl were performing now. Sümeya motioned to the young woman. “Meet Yndris Cahil’ava, your new sister.”

  Çeda caught the note of displeasure in her voice, which made Çeda wonder how much say Sümeya had in taking Yndris into her hand. She’d had little enough in Çeda’s case. Had it been up to her, she would have seen Çeda dead before allowing her to take up a blade and fight beside her, but Husamettín, her father, the King of Swords and Lord of the Blade Maidens, had demanded it. Had a similar demand been made here?

  As Kameyl and Yndris continued through the prescribed steps of the dance, Çeda watched more
closely. This, the song of blades, was the ritual battle an aspirant would wage before the Kings in the Sun Palace before she was allowed to enter the ranks of the Blade Maidens. They were a study in contrasts, these two. Kameyl was tall and powerful, Yndris short and sinuous. Kameyl was as stoic as she was efficient in her swordplay. Yndris would occasionally give herself over to wild flurries of attacks—an attempt to impress, perhaps. Kameyl fought with Brushing Wing, her ebon sword, while Yndris fought with a blade of mundane steel that Çeda doubted had ever been drawn in battle. Yndris was not a poor fighter, but she was undisciplined. Even in these few minutes of sparring, Çeda caught Yndris glancing over at them, and each time she did Kameyl punished her for it, snaking in one slash, then another, each of them biting into the light leather armor of her fighting dress.

  As much as Çeda enjoyed watching Kameyl’s form, she had trouble concentrating. A trio of Matrons in white dresses stood in a cluster on the far side of courtyard. They’d watched Çeda’s approach and were now talking in low tones. She tried to convince herself it was nothing, but she couldn’t help but think it was something to do with the assassination attempt.

  Sümeya noticed, looking Çeda up and down before resuming her study of the swordplay. “You look as though someone’s kicked your dog.”

  Çeda faked a smile as the Matrons, thanks be to Nalamae, strode together through a scalloped archway and into one of the barracks. “Dogs smell. And they sniff your crotch.”

  Sümeya gave Çeda that wry smile of hers, the one she reserved for her closest friends. “Is there someone else you’d like to have sniff your crotch then?”

  Now Çeda’s smile turned real. Emre would do. Or Ramahd. Even Osman, if he’d have me. “There might be one or two,” she finally said.

  “Tell me their names. I’ll have both sent to your room tonight.”

  Çeda couldn’t help it. She laughed. “When I want a man, First Warden, I’ll knock him senseless and drag him there myself.”

  “Charming. I’m sure the men of Roseridge were throwing themselves at your feet.”

  The two of them chuckled for a moment. It was a strangely intimate thing amidst the clash of steel and the shouts of sparring playing out all around them. They both returned their attention to swordplay, but Çeda’s mind had now drifted to Roseridge. Only that morning, a mission for King Yusam had brought her there. The mission itself had been simple. As simple as they could get.

  “Go to the city quarry,” he’d told her yesterday. “Reach it as the sun rises and study it until high sun.”

  “Nothing more?”

  “Nothing more. Study it carefully and tell me what you find.”

  She’d seen little more than the backbreaking business of pounding and cutting stone and hauling it on mule trains up from that great pit. But before she’d returned to the House of Kings, she’d taken the chance to ride through Roseridge, going to the very street where she used to live. Her stomach had twisted in knots as she reined her horse before a door, its paint faded and cracked with age. She’d knocked, and footsteps had shuffled behind it, Old Yanca coming closer. The wizened woman soon appeared, squinting at the sun. She raised her hand to shade her eyes and fixed her gaze on Çeda. When recognition came, she pursed her lips and shook her head, her regret clear.

  The knots in Çeda’s stomach had all unwound in an instant, making her feel lost and alone and angry. Yanca was her sole contact with Dardzada the apothecary. She’d been waiting for months to hear some news, any news, of Emre. That quick shake of Yanca’s head meant she’d heard nothing. The very notion made her sick with worry, as it had every time she’d thought of him since abandoning him in the crypts beneath Külaşan’s palace.

  Seeing Çeda’s reaction, Yanca took her hand and patted it. “Word will come, my darling child. See if it doesn’t.”

  “Of course,” Çeda said, though she was beginning to doubt it. Her mind was telling her to be patient, but her heart wanted to scream. Dardzada had had more than enough time to send out queries to the Host, but she supposed it would be difficult getting word to the right people. The entire desert, for five hundred leagues around Sharakhai, was under siege after all. Ships of war still departed daily from King’s Harbor, laden with Maidens and Silver Spears to hunt the Moonless Host and their sympathizers.

  “Is it bothering you again?” Sümeya asked, snapping Çeda back to the barracks courtyard.

  Çeda realized she’d been rubbing the puckered scar on the meat of her right thumb. It was a constant reminder of when she’d gone to the blooming fields to poison herself, to prove that she was a daughter of one of the twelve Kings. She'd later been saved when Dardzada, disguised as a foreign priest, had delivered her to the House of Maidens and Matron Zaïde had applied tattoos around the wound to control the poison. But just as Zaïde had said it would, there were times she hardly knew it was there and others when it ached horribly. Today, at least, it was only a minor irritation. “It’s nothing.”

  Sümeya didn’t seem convinced but made no further mention of it. “And our King? Was he pleased by your travels?”

  Sümeya had never approved of her hand’s missions for Yusam, but she had little choice in the matter, even as First Warden. In times of relative peace the Maidens often served at the whims of the Kings. It was a fluid thing, meant to protect the Kings’ interest, but more often than not it seemed to create a nightmare for Sümeya as she tried to keep up with it all. In the months since Çeda’s induction into the Maidens, Sümeya herself had been called away twice, Kameyl three times, and Melis over a dozen. Melis, in fact, had yet to return from her latest mission, the exact nature of which Çeda hadn’t been told.

  “I can never tell if he’s pleased or not,” Çeda said, referring to King Yusam. She’d told him what she’d seen in the quarry. When she’d finished, he’d narrowed in on the comings and goings of the pit foreman at the base of the elevator that brought workers up and down the eastern edge of the quarry. It seemed little enough, and indeed Yusam had simply nodded, taking it all in as if it meant something to him, and then dismissed her.

  “He is difficult to read,” Sümeya replied, “but he is also as straightforward a man as you’ll find among our Lord Kings.” Sümeya studied the sparring for a time. “Has he any further need of you?”

  “He said only to return and prepare for Yndris’s ceremony.”

  “Good.” Çeda couldn’t tell if she was pleased or not, though, not only from the indifference in her voice, but also the way she was frowning at Kameyl and Yndris.

  “You were speaking of kicked dogs earlier . . .” Çeda said, referring to how distant she’d suddenly become.

  Sümeya looked at Çeda with those intense brown eyes of hers, confused for a moment, but then understanding came. “It’s only, there’s always so much to do.” She waved to Kameyl and Yndris. “There’s peace to be found in the simple trading of blows.”

  Çeda couldn’t disagree. She could be angry or worried or fearful while living her many lies in the service of the Kings, but when she sparred with Kameyl or Melis or, rarely, Sümeya herself, those emotions faded. The blows of her sword felt like a smithy’s hammer, shaping her anew. “If it’s swords you wish,” Çeda said, placing her hand on the pommel of River’s Daughter, letting that movement finish her sentence.

  Çeda could see the eagerness in her, the wish to draw her sword and dance the dance of blades, but a moment later the look was gone. “Another time, young dove. Enough!” she roared when Yndris’s motions became wild enough to be dangerous.

  Yndris, however, fought even more recklessly, a thing Kameyl did not forgive. Kameyl blocked her blows with an effortless ease that Çeda had come to expect but was still impressed by. She stepped inside Yndris’s guard with a blurring advance, snapping a kick into Yndris’s chest. “Your warden said enough, girl.”

  Yndris tried to recover, but stumbled and fell. Kameyl stood over her,
sword at the ready should Yndris be foolish enough to strike again. Yndris coughed, grimacing as she rubbed one hand against her chest. As she did, she looked not at Kameyl, nor Sümeya, but at Çeda. As if Çeda were the cause of her pain. She stood, sending an embarrassed glance Kameyl’s way, then came to stand before Sümeya. She bowed, pointedly not looking Çeda’s way.

  “Yndris, meet Çeda, the fifth member of your hand. Çeda, Yndris Cahil’ava.”

  Çeda bowed her head, while Yndris merely stared, as if annoyed she’d been forced to acknowledge Çeda’s presence, or was waiting for Çeda to address her as Your Grace. A wonderful addition to our hand, Çeda thought, the daughter of Cahil the Confessor, a young woman no doubt as like to use a whip as her words.

  “What were you trying to prove?” Sümeya asked.

  Yndris pointed to the sparring circle with the tip of her blade. “I was dancing, siyaf, nothing more.”

  “I am not your siyaf. And you have much to prove tonight.”

  Yndris bowed. “Of course,” she said, though in a way that made it clear she felt entitled to the ebon sword that would be granted to her at the ceremony that evening.

  Sümeya seemed displeased, but made no further mention of it. She beckoned Çeda closer. “Since the two of you are so eager for swordplay, why don’t you spar awhile? I’ve things to discuss with Kameyl.”

  Kameyl sheathed Brushing Wing and picked up two shinai. “Go easy on her, Çeda.” She tossed one shinai each to Çeda and Yndris, then followed Sümeya, the two of them wending through the sparring circles. She called over her shoulder, loudly enough for the entire courtyard to hear, “I can’t have a dove with a broken wing if I’m to embarrass her in front of her father this evening.”

  Yndris stared at Kameyl’s retreating form until she and Sümeya were lost behind a gathering of Matrons in white abayas.