Twelve Kings in Sharakhai Read online

  Çeda was glad to make her mother laugh—it was a beautiful sound, so seldom heard—but all too soon the weight that had been building along her shoulders these past many months returned, heavier than before, and Ahya was stiff on her thwart once more, hand on the tiller, watching the way ahead with grimly set eyes as the wind bowed the sail of their sun-bleached skiff.

  “You’ll be a good girl for your mother, won’t you?” Ahya asked without looking at Çeda.

  Çeda thought at first she was speaking of their visit with Saliah, but her look was much too grave for that.

  In the span of a heartbeat, Çeda realized what her mother was planning to do. In the span of another, all thoughts of the desert witch vanished, and her world was reduced to herself, her mother, and this sandborne skiff.

  Ahya was going to leave Çeda there. She was going to leave her with Saliah and go somewhere, a place from which she thought she might never return.

  Çeda was desperate to press, to ask where she was planning to go and why she would leave Çeda behind, but just then all she wanted to do was show that she would be a good girl, so she nodded.

  “You’ll read the books I’ve given you,” Ahya went on. It wasn’t a question, nor even a request, but a fervent hope.

  “I will.”

  “Practice what I’ve taught you of sword and shield. I’ve never said so, but we both know you are gifted. Never take that for granted. Do you understand? And if you ever have need, you’ll go to Dardzada, and he’ll help.”

  Dardzada was an apothecary who lived in Sharakhai’s rich eastern end. Her mother took her to him from time to time, sold things to him—perhaps the petals she collected from the twisted adichara trees. The two of them would speak sometimes in the back room of his shop while Çeda was left to sit out front on a stool, told to touch nothing. He was always so cruel to Çeda, asking when she’d last bathed and telling her if she so much as looked at his plants he’d sell her to the wandering tribes. Why by the gods’ sweet breath would her mother tell her to seek help from Dardzada?

  Her mother must have known what she was thinking, for she went on. “He is blood of your blood, Çedamihn.”

  “He isn’t, either!” Çeda said, hoping to trample the very thought with her words.

  “He is,” Ahya replied calmly. “And you’ll understand that one day.”

  As they continued, Çeda begged herself to voice her fears, to ask her mother what she was planning to do. To ask her to stop. But she felt as though voicing them would make them real—that if she were to speak a word of it, it would make her mother do exactly what she feared most—and the more leagues that passed, the more she thought how foolish it would be to question her mother. Ahya had done dangerous things before, hadn’t she? She often went out on Beht Zha’ir, a night upon which it was forbidden for anyone but the immortal Kings and the Blade Maidens to step foot in the streets. She had done so again just last night. She would leave wearing her black fighting dress. Some days she would come home none the worse for the wear, but on others she would return with cuts and scrapes and bruises that Çeda would dress under her mother’s sharp instructions.

  She’d flouted the laws of Sharakhai beneath the noses of the Twelve Kings for years and lived to tell the tales. She was a woman who knew what she was about, and she would come home safe. Tonight and every other night. Çeda knew it would be so.

  Well after the sun had risen, a lone feature appeared on the horizon: a tall stone column that rose like an accusing finger pointing crookedly at a sky of cobalt blue. When they came nearer, Ahya pulled at the tiller and pointed them due west, and they chased the shadow of their sail several more hours. Çeda watched the horizon closely. She sat higher, wondering when it would appear.

  And yet it was the chimes she noticed first. The chimes, so clear and musical, that lay just on the edge of hearing.

  Like a dream, she realized.

  They reminded her of her dreams.

  Dreams she had forgotten until that very moment. And then, as if she were dreaming even now, Saliah’s home rose from the sands. It was little more than a mudbrick house with a walled garden, but it looked magical out here in the desolate plains of the desert.

  They stopped before they reached the solid stone upon which Saliah’s home had been built, and then, in silent concert, Ahya gathered Çeda’s bag of clothes and books, while Çeda drew the sail into an efficient bundle atop the boom. Ahya dropped the anchor—a heavy stone tied to a rope to keep their skiff from slipping away in the wind. Before stepping onto the rust-colored stone, Ahya picked up a fistful of sand. She raised it to her lips and whispered a prayer, allowing the sand to fall in a windborne stream. Whatever it was she was asking the desert gods to do, Çeda couldn’t say, nor would she wish to. Such words were sacrosanct, meant only for the god to whom they were addressed.

  Çeda reached down and picked up her own fistful of sand, lifting it and letting it sift through her slowly opening fingers. “Please, Nalamae,” she whispered, “guide my mother, this day if no other.”

  Saliah was waiting for them near her door. She was a handsome woman. And how tall! She stood at least a full head taller than Ahya. In one hand, she held a crook with gemstones worked into the curling head; her other hand stroked the long braid of her hair, which hung over her shoulder and down her chest. She watched Ahya and Çeda approach, but she seemed to be looking through them, not at them.

  “Who comes?” Saliah asked.

  “It is Ahyanesh. And I’ve brought my daughter. May we speak, Saliah Riverborn? I bring to you a matter most grave.”

  “A matter most grave . . .”

  “I would not have come otherwise.”

  Saliah considered as the chimes continued to ring from the nearby garden. The time grew uncomfortably long, but at last, Saliah nodded and turned toward Çeda, her eyes staring well over Çeda’s head, as if she couldn’t see at all. She held her hand out, and although Çeda was afraid to take it, she did so, feeling compelled, though she couldn’t explain why or how.

  “Can you wander in the garden, little one?” Saliah asked.

  “Wait—” Ahya called, her eyes wide at this seemingly innocent request. “Çeda?”

  Saliah paused, tilted her head ever so slightly toward Ahya. “A matter most grave, you said.”

  “I did, but—”

  “Then it must be Çeda,” Saliah replied easily.

  Ahya considered her daughter, then glanced to the garden wall, then stared at Saliah, her eyes imploring. “Why not me?”

  “Because she is the one who will be wrapped in the cloak of your decisions. Because it is easier to sense hidden things when you look at that which lies nearest, not the thing itself. Go, now, Çedamihn. Let your mother and me talk.” Saliah released Çeda’s hand, then turned, regal as a queen, and strode toward her home. “Why don’t you see if the acacia will speak to you?” She was soon lost to the deeper shadows of the entryway.

  “Go,” Ahya said with a frown, guiding Çeda by the shoulder and shoving her toward the stone wall and the archway that led to the garden.

  Çeda didn’t understand what had just happened, but she felt suddenly relieved to be free to wander. As worried as she’d been in the desert, Saliah’s home felt like an oasis, a sheltering cave when the sandstorms came.

  If anyone might help my mother, Çeda thought, it would be Saliah.

  Çeda had wandered this place before, but as it had been with the chimes, the memories returned only after she’d passed through the arched entryway and into the garden proper.

  It was wondrous. Outside, the desert had been quiet save for the chimes that tickled the very edge of her hearing, but inside, new sounds came alive. Birds with bright beaks flitted among the bushes and across the path that wound through them. They chirped and chirruped and called all sorts of songs to the inexplicably humid air. The orchestral sound made Çeda thin
k of the River Haddah in the throes of spring, when the reeds were thick with nesting wrens and larks and wagtails. And the smells! Floral and fragrant and fecund. Valerian mixed with Sweet Anna mixed with the surprisingly acrid scent of goldenbells. And beneath it all an aged smell redolent of shaved amber. It made Çeda wonder if the world hadn’t been born in this very place. It was wonderful, and did much to ease the dark mood brought on by the voyage here.

  In the center of the garden towered an enormous acacia, its branches spread like a protective grandmother. Despite the way it dwarfed the garden’s wall, the tree hadn’t been visible until she’d passed through the garden’s gate. Çeda walked to the base of it, looked up at its green leaves and the many-colored shards of glass that hung from its branches.

  See if the acacia will speak to you, Saliah had said. Çeda knew Saliah would read the sound of the chimes when people came to her. But Çeda had no such abilities. That would take the skill of someone like the desert witch, someone who knew the inner workings of the world.

  Wouldn’t it?

  Dozens of birds flew among the branches, but they never touched the chimes, nor the delicate golden threads that held them in place. The chimes were not low enough for her to touch, but she wished they were.

  It felt blasphemous, but the urge to climb the tree was strong and growing stronger by the moment. Saliah had given her permission, hadn’t she? Çeda swallowed, licked her lips, then stole a glance at the entryway. She could hear her mother and Saliah speaking softly, and with her senses heightened by the petal, some of their words carried.

  “I’ve found four of their poems,” Ahya said.

  “Four is not twelve,” Saliah replied.

  “It is a start.”

  “It doesn’t seem wise, despite what you’ve told me.”

  “Then show me another way!” her mother pleaded.

  “It isn’t so simple as you might think, and there is more to consider than mere Kings.”

  “So you’ve said. But the Kings must fall.”

  “I don’t dispute it,” came Saliah’s reply.

  “Then what else? What else can there be?”

  Çeda lost some of the conversation as she rounded the tree and was startled by two yellow-crested birds fluttering from a nearby bush. She stared up through the branches toward the blue desert sky, watching the chimes catch the light in a thousand different colors.

  “Take her,” Ahya said. “Take her, and I’ll return, or another will come.”

  “Patience,” came Saliah’s deep voice. “I would listen to the chimes.”

  Çeda heard nothing after that, and she had the distinct impression that it had been Saliah’s will that had allowed her to hear as much as she had, and Saliah’s will that had caused it to suddenly stop. This was, after all, her home, which meant much to those of godsblood. And there was no doubt in Çeda’s mind that Saliah was one of those ancient people, descended from the first gods themselves. What else could explain her power?

  Çeda waited for a time, peering up through the branches. She’d completed a full circuit of the tree. After one last huff of a breath, she jogged toward it, leapt off a round stone near its base, and swung herself easily around the lowest bough. She climbed higher, staying near the trunk to avoid the slim thorns of the smaller branches. As she neared the uppermost, she noticed the chimes were ringing differently. They sounded more urgent, somehow. More desperate.

  She listened for some time, haunted by the changing notes that reminded her of the sounds the sandstorms made when they blew through Sharakhai. She hung upside down on a branch for a moment, but it suddenly felt very, very wrong, so she pulled herself up and examined the chimes instead.

  She saw visions within their bright reflections. Momentary things, like silverscales flitting below the surface of a river, there one moment, gone the next. She saw a woman’s callused hand, pierced and bleeding along the thumb. She saw a beetle with iridescent wings land on a blindingly bright flower. She saw a woman in a diaphanous orange dress, dancing in the desert, sand flying high as she spun and kicked. She saw ebon swords raised in triumph, women in black fighting dresses charging over the dunes. She saw a man with oh-so-familiar eyes wearing the elegant garb of a desert shaikh. She saw this and much, much more, but she understood none of it.

  One vision, especially, confused her. She was standing before a King. Or she thought he was a King. He had piercing eyes, wore a golden crown and fine raiment, and he stood in a hall of endless opulence. The King’s dark eyes were intent, almost proud. He held a shamshir made of ebon steel in one hand, with a mark etched into the blade near the cross guard. The mark was a circular design of reeds at the edge of a river. She could almost see the herons wading through it, hunting for scarletgills. The strangest thing about the vision was not the King, nor the sword, nor even the fact of her in audience with one of the twelve immortal rulers of Sharakhai. It was that the King was holding the sword out for her to take.

  She was so captured by this vision she didn’t at first notice she was being watched. When she peered beyond the branches, she saw Saliah’s tall frame standing in the archway, staff in hand, through the golden threads and glinting chimes. Ahya stood two paces back, her face expectant, even hopeful. Saliah’s face, however, was infinitely different. She looked neither angry, nor kind; instead she was staring through the branches with an expression of awe, as if she were gazing into the eyes of Tulathan herself.

  Saliah held her right hand out, made a fist several times, turning it over to expose the palm of her hand, then the back, then her palm again. She swallowed and seemed to regain a bit of herself. “Come down, child.” Her words mingled with the chimes, as if they were long-lost cousins. “Come down now.”

  Unbidden, Çeda’s limbs began to shake. She knew without knowing how that Saliah’s sightless eyes had seen the same things she had, but where Çeda was nothing but a bumbling child, Saliah knew how to read such things. The question was, what could she have seen that would upset her so?

  With reverent care, Çeda wound down through the limbs, and when she dropped to solid ground, she saw that Saliah was crying.

  “Is it true?” Çeda asked. “Will I wield an ebon blade?”

  Ahya’s eyes went wide. She swallowed hard, her gaze flitting between Çeda and Saliah. She was waiting for Saliah’s answer but was clearly afraid to hear it.

  Before Çeda could ask what was wrong, Saliah turned and strode toward her home. “There’s no room for Çeda here.”

  Ahya glanced from Çeda to Saliah’s retreating form and back, several times, a woman suddenly lost in a maelstrom. “Please,” she called, “there is more we must—”

  “Leave,” Saliah repeated.

  “If you could only watch her for a short while—”

  Saliah stopped and spun. She thumped her staff against the stone. The sound of it was low, and it went on and on and on, as if the desert itself were nothing more than a vast skin drum. “There are many paths we might take in this world, and in the next, but for you, Ahyanesh Ishaq’ava, this is no longer one of them. Now take your child and leave this place.”

  Saliah turned and strode away, her form swallowed by the shadows of her home.

  Leaving Çeda and Ahya alone.

  Utterly alone.

  Ahya turned numbly toward Çeda. It was strange how striking she looked just then. Piercing brown eyes, raven hair blowing in the breeze. She was not angry, simply dumbfounded. It seemed strange to say, but she looked as though her cares had been washed away, as if there were no true choices left, leaving the path ahead that much clearer. But then she snatched Çeda’s wrist and dragged her back toward the skiff.

  TWO STORIES UP, on the edge of the mudbrick roof of her home, Çeda rested on the balls of her feet, watching the alley that ran drunkenly from her house, up through the center of the bazaar, and on toward the Trough, the city’s central and l
argest thoroughfare. The wind might be gentle among the sheltered streets of Sharakhai, but up here it was strong enough to tug at the black thawb she wore, and the dust from the desert was thick enough that she’d pulled the veil of her turban across her face. Her mother’s silver locket hung around her neck, a weight that this night of all nights tugged heavily on her heart.

  The sun still glowed a brilliant and burnished gold along the western horizon, but the rest of the sky was a field of stars scattered across a vast cloth of inky blue. Most nights the city would be loud with the sounds of hawkers in the bazaar, of children running the streets, of wagons rattling along the Trough, but not tonight. Tonight the city was boneyard quiet. Tonight the city was boneyard still. For this was the night of the reaping, the night the asirim would steal into the city like dark hounds, baying and hunting for souls.

  Beht Zha’ir came once every six weeks, when the twin moons were full, and when it did, the city transformed from a thing bright and alive to the cowering beast Çeda saw before her. Not a single lamp in the great city was lit. Not a single word was uttered. Neither was expressly forbidden, but none would risk them for fear of luring the asirim to their home. Even the highborn, who considered it the highest of honors to be chosen, would follow custom. They would stand vigil in darkness, praying silently to the desert gods for favor until the sun rose once more. Even on Tauriyat, the hill where the Kings lived in their palaces, no lights shone, and none save the Reaping King and his deadly Maidens would venture out.

  And Emre still had not come home. He was out there, somewhere—who knew where?—perhaps in trouble, perhaps wounded. Perhaps dead.

  “Hurry,” she whispered, a word she hoped was carried on the wind to the gods of the desert themselves.

  As she watched the alley intently, she wondered with a morbid and growing fascination whether the asirim would be attracted to Emre’s fear. They might. She’d never strayed near enough to one of them to find out. She’d never even seen one. Not clearly, anyway. Just a shadow in the night years ago, a crooked form lumbering through the city like a wounded dog.