A Veil of Spears Read online

  The urge to run was strong, but it would bring unwanted attention so she kept her pace steady, her head down, and returned the cordial bows of the servants as she wove through the palace toward the boneyard. She hadn’t been there since trying to speak to Bela. She’d been too afraid. What Davud had said made sense—she’d been toying with the domain of the gods—but she would ignore her power no longer.

  She walked to Bela’s family crypt, where the scent of decay had been strong but was now overpowering. Anila buried her nose in the fabric of her sleeve, collecting herself before continuing. She stood before Bela’s sarcophagus and laid her hands on the marble’s cool surface. She could feel Bela lying within, not her body, but the wisp of her soul. It was so faint she wondered whether she could summon her, but what was there to do but try?

  She drew the sigil on the marble, combining the signs for death and summon. Frost trailed in her finger’s wake, creating a kaleidoscope of tiny patterns that dissipated, devoured by the warmth. She drew it again and again, and each time the sigil persisted a little longer.

  “Come, Bela. There are things I must know.”

  She felt nothing like before. Bela was much more distant, so removed from her own death it was difficult to know if she would ever come.

  “Zahndr said it was an accident,” Anila said, louder than before. “Is it true, Bela? Or did he lie to everyone?”

  Still nothing.

  “Would you see him go unpunished? Your true death forever unknown, even to your father?”

  There was a stirring like a candle in a storm, snuffed before it could take. But it was something.

  Anila crouched and whispered to the crack below the lid. “How your father misses you, Bela.” It was an unspoken promise. Bela belonged to the farther fields, but if she could return, even for a short while, she might be warmed by love. It was a lie, and Anila felt craven for voicing it, but she needed Bela. Davud needed her.

  Bela’s soul brightened. Anila felt that weightless thing fill the space beneath the heavy marble lid.

  “Lift it,” Anila bid her. “Let me see you.”

  The lid shifted. Small hands wrapped in white gauze pushed the lid down toward the foot of the sarcophagus.

  “Enough,” Anila said. “Sit.”

  And Bela did. She was covered in funereal wrap—the white linen around her hands had been wrapped around her again and again until she was completely obscured by it. With tender movements, Anila pulled them away, revealing her eyes, her face. Her black hair was woven into a single braid. Her face was necrotic, peeling in some places, and her eyes were milky. They regarded Anila coldly, her face utterly still.

  Anila swallowed hard, momentarily at a loss for words. “My tears were a river when I heard . . .” She stopped. Those words were more for her than they were for Bela. “I’m sorry for your return to this poor world,” she began again, “but I must ask you some questions.”

  Bela took in the crypt around her as if she were in a deep, dreamlike haze. Her brows pinched as she turned back to Anila.

  “How did you die, love?”

  Her mouth worked. Her frown deepened. She drew one long breath that sounded like leaves being raked, then spoke in a scratchy whisper, “I went to see the man in the east tower.”

  The east tower was forbidden. “King Sukru?”

  “No.” She smiled, a piteous thing on her ruin of a face. “The bird man who looks like him.”

  A rush of fear tingled in Anila’s fingers and toes. She glanced through the crypt door, feeling eyes on her, but found the boneyard blessedly empty. “Tell me about the bird man.”

  “King Sukru’s brother. He sends birds all over Sharakhai, all over the palace, to spy for him.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve seen them. The birds. Firefinches and thornbills and saddlebacks and more. They always fly to one window in the east tower. I asked memma why and she told me to shush.”

  “But there are guards posted there. How can you know?”

  “I watched them.” Bela’s lungs rasped. “They saw me and told me to leave, but then I started hiding. They talk a lot, and sometimes step away from the door. When they did, I snuck in.”

  The whimsy in Bela’s features faded, replaced by a growing sense of dread.

  “What happened, Bela?”

  “I went up the stairs, and I saw him. He calls himself the Sparrow. He told me before . . . Before he . . .”

  “Did he strike you, Bela?”

  A viscous green substance leaked from Bela’s eyes. It crept like honey down her cheek, the slow pace somehow intensifying the hopeless look on her face. “Yes.”

  Anila heard running footsteps and a moment later, Zahndr loomed in the crypt’s entryway. He stared at Bela, his face a mixture of shock and rage. “You dare!”

  Anila took several steps back. “You have much to answer for. Her death to begin with.”

  Zahndr’s brow furrowed, and he shook his head. “I didn’t kill her!”

  “You played your part. You let her mother and father think she died from a fall.”

  Bela was staring at them both, confused, but Zahndr spoke as if he hardly knew she was there. “Sukru is a cruel master. More cruel than you will ever know.”

  “A coward’s words.”

  “Then I am a coward.” He stepped toward her, regret plain on his face as he drew his knife. “I’m sorry, Anila.”

  Before he could take another step, she drew upon his sickness, putting all of herself into it, knowing that half-measures now would cost her her life.

  Zahndr coughed. His eyes turned bloodshot and started to tear. He seemed to master himself, his whole face going red. He made a fist and lifted his gaze until it rested on her. The look of regret was gone. Now there was only anger.

  She tried harder. As she backed into the corner of the crypt, she tried to deepen the sickness running through him, to make him go to rot, just like the door. She guided it to his heart, to his mind. He stumbled as he came for her. His lips drew back like a feral dog, revealing clenched teeth and spittle. He was somehow fighting her power, and she was losing the battle.

  And then he was on her. He blocked her blows and snatched her throat. She tried kicking him, but he hooked one of her ankles and twisted her down to the stone floor. Her head struck stone, and her world became stars. She couldn’t breathe. She saw only Zahndr’s face, shivering, eyes maniacally wide as he used both hands to choke her. A keen ringing sound filled the air, then grew and grew and grew, a sound the dead must hear as they rushed toward the farther shores.

  Among the near-deafening ringing, she heard a crack. A crumbling. A wheezing grunt.

  The hold on her neck eased. “No!” Zahndr cried.

  Through the twinkling gauze of a thousand flecks of light, she saw Zahndr raise his hands. Saw a bronze statue arc through the air and sweep through Zahndr’s defenses to strike him across the head, driving Zahndr from Anila’s field of vision in a mass of flesh and blood and bone. It was as if Thaash himself had struck Zahndr down.

  Anila coughed. She rolled over, holding her throat as she fought to regain her breath.

  She lifted her head and saw Bela standing there, still holding the bronze statue of a winged goddess, now covered in blood. As anger and fear and confusion warred on Bela’s face, Anila stood and took the statue from her. When Bela let it go, it was so heavy it practically fell to the floor. The anger was fading from Bela as she stared at Zahndr, her hands covering her mouth. Zahndr lay twitching, the crown of his head a mottled, broken mess.

  “Quickly,” Anila said, leading her from the crypt. “We may already be too late.”

  * * *

  Davud stared, mouth agape, as Sukru shuffled into the room. “By the gods. You’re . . . My Lord King!” He bowed, which made the pain in his head intensify.

  “Rise,” the Sp
arrow said. “I am no King of Sharakhai, though only by dint of being born second.”

  Understanding dawned. “You are his twin.”

  He didn’t require the Sparrow’s nod to tell him the truth of it. His lank hair. His bald pate. His hooked nose and rat-like eyes. The two looked so similar the Sparrow could easily pass for Sukru.

  “But how . . . ?”

  Just then a firefinch flew through the open doorway to land on the Sparrow’s shoulder, the triangle pinched in its beak. But how could it be here so quickly? The Sparrow took the golden device, then carried the bird on an extended finger and put him in a nearby cage filled with a dozen other firefinches.

  “You wish to know how I ended up here.” The Sparrow tied the triangle to a leather cord, then wore it like an amulet. “How I came to peck at the corpse of my brother’s rule.”

  Davud could only nod.

  “Let’s return to that in a moment.” As he came nearer, he stared intently at Davud’s head. “For now, there’s something that needs fixing.”

  He lifted one enfeebled hand to Davud’s forehead, closed his eyes and whispered words too soft for Davud to make out.

  When Davud was young, a snake charmer had come to the bazaar. He used no flute, like all the rest did. He didn’t sit before a basket and tease the snake out. Instead, he would wrap the cobra over one arm, then run his hand along the back of its black-and-yellow hood, whispering to it. As he stroked the cobra’s skin, the snake would stiffen. It became like a length of wood that the charmer would then place on the tip of one finger and balance in the air. He’d do this for as long as coins were dropped into the snake’s woven basket, and then he would nod to the boys and girls in the audience, whom he’d prepped before the show had begun. His assistants would clap their hands loudly, and the snake would wake, forcing the charmer to grab its tail before it fell to the ground.

  That was how Davud felt, like a snake being charmed. He knew he could move, he knew that to remain immobile was perhaps dangerous, and yet he was in perfect thrall to the simple touch of the Sparrow’s finger on his forehead.

  “Well, well,” the Sparrow said, smiling. “There is a taint upon you, boy. Laid by none other than the Honey-tongued King.” His smile widened. “Won’t my brother be pleased to hear it?”

  The Honey-tongued King? A taint? “How—”

  But before he could even form the question, memories returned. Ihsan coming to him in the morning’s darkest hour. Spelling out his role. And when Ihsan had left someone else had given commands. To kill Çeda, and then himself.

  To kill Çeda.

  And then himself.

  The urge was so strong that Davud was startled from the spell that had been laid upon him. He slapped the Sparrow’s hand away, ran to Zahndr’s knife.

  He’d just taken it up when the Sparrow shouted, “No! You must deny him!”

  Davud’s hand was stayed. The urge was still in him, but now it warred with the truth, that this was not his own decision. It took long minutes of the Sparrow’s whispering for him to deny the order from the mystery man who’d come to visit him, but gradually the urge became less like a need and more like a memory, still present but easily ignored.

  Breathing heavily, Davud realized the headache that had worn on him throughout the day was gone. It brought with it a sense of elation that was so strong he laughed from it, long and hard. It felt strange and wonderful to be himself once more, or nearly so.

  But then a disconcerting thought made his laughter vanish like rare winter snow. He stared straight into the Sparrow’s small, narrow-set eyes and said with certainty, “If you’re Sukru’s twin, then you’ve been alive since Beht Ihman.”

  “Very good, Davud,” said the Sparrow and placed his palm on Davud’s forehead.

  His legs buckled, and the world shimmered before him.

  * * *

  He woke lying on a bed, a blanket draped over him. The Sparrow was sitting by his side on a stool. The disorientation made him feel dizzy, as if not a single moment had passed between the time the Sparrow had placed his palm on Davud’s forehead and now.

  He tried to sit up, but realized he couldn’t move. He couldn’t even feel his body. Only his face. “What’s happening?”

  “I’m glad you’ve returned,” the Sparrow said. “It’s a sign of your strength.” He pursed his lips, as if chewing on a thought. “I often think those who come into my care would like to see the end of their days rather than wonder what happened when they reach the farther fields.”

  Davud couldn’t understand a word of what he was saying. “What are you doing?”

  The Sparrow turned to him. “I am preparing to consume my winnings, as they used to say in the betting parlors.”

  Davud shook his head. “You said you were going to help me. To shelter and train me. You said it was a rebuke against Sukru.”

  “It is a rebuke. Sukru deserves this for stealing the last several from me.”

  “Stolen . . .” At last, Davud managed to turn his head and see what it was the Sparrow held in his hands. A needle with a small channel along the top leading to a reservoir for blood. He was cleaning the metal with a cloth, making it shine. “You said Sukru wronged you.”

  “He did! He took my son from me. A long, long time ago now. He was a promising young mage. He would have been more powerful than I have ever been.”

  “You said you would save me.”

  The Sparrow turned sharply, his pinched face annoyed. “Of course I did, boy. You would hardly have come if I’d told you the truth!”

  A hard lump had formed in Davud’s throat. He couldn’t seem to get rid of it. “And what is the truth?”

  Done with the polishing, the Sparrow laid the cloth on his lap, held Davud’s arm, and pressed the strange needle into it. Blood welled, flowed along the channel, and began to collect in the reservoir. It stung, but it was nothing compared to the feeling of helplessness before this mage, the brother of a King of Sharakhai.

  Staring at the needle, the Sparrow said, “I discovered my son was a mage shortly before the tribes came for Sharakhai. I offered myself and my son to the Kings before Beht Ihman, but they refused, seeing our power as too little to turn the tide of battle. It was true enough, I suppose, but the real reason was they didn’t trust the red ways. After Beht Ihman, they decided blood magi were a threat and less than a year after the tribes were turned back, they came for me and my son. My son was lost, but Sukru saved me, pretending I had been killed.”

  “How have you lived so long?”

  The Sparrow smiled, a grisly thing filled with misshapen teeth. “The favor of the gods did not shine on my brother alone.”

  “And your son? You forgave Sukru for his loss?”

  “Jabrar was taken from me, but it wasn’t in Sukru’s power to stop. Not truly. I will never forgive my brother for his part in it, but we have since come to an accord.”

  The reservoir full, he pulled the needle from Davud’s arm and, like a master vintner testing last year’s harvest, upended the crimson liquid into his mouth. He closed his eyes as a shiver overtook him, the picture of a man who’d taken a long pull from a shisha filled with black lotus.

  “Do you know, I think you might be as strong as Hamzakiir.” He caught Davud’s look. “Yes, I knew him. He was one of the few who knew of my existence here.”

  “But why am I here?”

  “Magi, from time to time, are found in Sharakhai or the desert beyond and given over to Sukru. They are not trusted, exactly, but the Kings are no fools.” He tipped the reservoir once more, swallowing the last of the blood. Another, more violent shiver ran through him. He arched his neck back, as if in the throes of pleasure. “They don’t flinch at making use of them so long as Sukru believes they’re no threat.”

  “But why pretend to be someone you’re not to lure me?”

  “I do not preten
d. I am the Sparrow. And this is a game Sukru and I play. I attempt to make the mage to come to me willingly, while he tries to prevent it, without either of us revealing the truth. If he keeps the magi for two seasons, they are his, and if I win . . . Well, you’re about to see what happens then.” He stood and set the needle down on a nearby shelf, and took up a slim steel knife with a razor-keen edge. “Sukru has won the last several times we’ve played our little game. But what I’ve lost in quantity I’ve now gained in quality.”

  Davud tried to struggle again, but it was no use. He was trapped in his own body, and would be forced to watch as the Sparrow drained his blood from him, or cut out his heart, or whatever it was he was about to do.

  But Davud had power in him yet. He’d taken Çeda’s blood before questioning her. It was still in him, and that was no small thing. He’d never cast a spell without a sigil before, but they were only a framework, weren’t they? A way to focus the mind? Did he truly need them?

  As the Sparrow used the knife to cut away Davud’s robes, Davud searched for a spell to use against him. Flame, unfocused, might burn Davud instead of his intended target, or harm the Sparrow but not stop him. Cold and wind were of no use. In his desperation, he concentrated on the sigils for harden and shatter. If the Sparrow sensed it he could stop it, but Davud could think of nothing else.

  Concentrating on the knife drawing near, he laid one sigil over the other and drew the combined image over and over in his mind’s eye. His fear was running wild. His breath wheezed through his nostrils, but he never took his eyes from the knife’s bright edge.

  It isn’t working! It isn’t working!

  But then, just as the knife sliced into his sternum, the blade shattered. The Sparrow’s hand shot up like he’d been stung, and the knife’s hilt, now bladeless, clattered to the floor. He stared at Davud’s chest, where a constellation of blood was forming from the myriad shards of metal that had cut his skin. For the first time, the Sparrow seemed consumed by emotion. He took one long stride back forward and backhanded Davud across the mouth. “That won’t help you,” he spat.