With Blood Upon the Sand Page 5

Çeda stepped into the ring. “Come,” she said to Yndris, but Yndris threw her shinai into the dirt and began walking away.

  “We were told to spar,” Çeda called.

  Yndris stopped and turned. “With a mongrel like you? I think not.”

  Chapter 4

  THAT NIGHT, a host of memories flooded through Çeda’s mind as she stepped into the Sun Palace’s grand central hall. Not so long ago, she’d been brought here herself as an aspirant and paraded before the Kings. A feast had been provided. Çeda had danced with Ihsan the Honey-tongued King. She’d been granted her ebon blade, River’s Daughter, and she’d fought Kameyl in what should have been a mock battle but which had nearly cost Çeda her life. Kameyl had hoped to slice Çeda’s neck and make it look like an accident, and Çeda, not yet having earned trust from the Kings or the Maidens or anyone else on Tauriyat, had been forced to defend herself, not just from the attempt on her life but from Kameyl’s accusations that she was woefully unprepared to become a Blade Maiden. To her surprise, Husamettín, the King of Swords, had stepped in and took Çeda’s side against one of the most storied women in the Maidens’ long history. It had been a night of roiling emotions, but in the end the Kings had approved her entry to the House of Maidens.

  And now Yndris’s turn had come. Many had gathered for a feast to honor her and to watch her perform in a mock battle of her own. No one who’d been to both, however, could fail to notice the striking differences. All twelve Kings had come to witness Çeda’s ceremony. How many would come this night? Since the night she’d stolen into Eventide, she’d seen only King Yusam and Husamettín. She’d heard no word of Cahil the Confessor King, whom she’d nicked with one of her poisoned arrows, but she’d been petrified to ask for fear they would suspect her involvement. Surely she would have her answer soon.

  As it turned out, she didn’t have long to wait. Husamettín was already in attendance when she arrived. Cahil came shortly after with Yndris at his side. Çeda was practically holding her breath as he walked in, but the moment she spotted him, her disappointment came out in one long sigh. In her heart she’d known he survived—the Kings would have given some sort of response if he hadn’t—but she’d thought surely the poison would have debilitated him. It was said to leave those who survived it unable to use their bodies as they once had. They shook horribly. They walked, if they could walk at all, weak-kneed, drunken, often needing help to go the smallest distances from their sickbeds. And yet here was Cahil, walking tall, looking for all the world like a man Çeda’s own age. He was smiling, beaming with pride over his daughter’s being granted her blade.

  Çeda thought surely she’d been mistaken, that she hadn’t caught him with the arrow after all, but when she came closer, she saw the light scar. Even knowing where to look it was difficult to see. How? How could he have survived with but a scratch to show for it?

  Yndris caught Çeda watching her father. She stopped her conversation with a bent old woman and stared until Çeda finally looked away.

  Curse the gods, Çeda thought. They were to blame for this. They’d extended their protection to the Kings, granting them long life, vigor, and even the ability to resist poison, it seemed. It was the only explanation that made sense.

  She stifled her feelings of despair, hiding them behind a mask of pleasantry. The last thing she needed was for anyone to think her particularly interested in Cahil’s presence, least of all Cahil himself.

  Only two more Kings came to the ceremony—King Ihsan and the stocky Zeheb, King of Whispers. Husamettín was honor-bound to attend, and of course Cahil would come to see his own daughter granted her Maiden’s blade. But to have so few attend was surely a grave insult. Making things worse, remarkably few others had come to fill this cavernous room. It had been brimming with guests on the night of Çeda’s induction, whereas tonight a hundred at best had come, and surely most of them were Yndris’s relations. It seemed a slight of some sort, but if that were so, Çeda had no idea what might have caused it.

  As the feast wound down, a beam of sunlight shone brightly from a device built high into the dome above. The crowd formed a border around the sunlight, creating a makeshift arena, Yndris strode across the floor in her bright yellow dress. She came to a stop before Husamettín, pulling the cloth-of-gold veil across her face. Husamettín pulled an ebon sword from its lacquered wooden sheath and shared the design etched into the blade with Yndris and others gathered near.

  Zaïde, the old matron who had saved Çeda’s life by corralling the poison in Çeda’s right arm, came to stand by Çeda’s side. “She asked to fight as you fought,” she said, nodding to Yndris and the King of Swords.

  “And was her request granted?” Çeda replied.

  “Should it have been?”

  Çeda wondered how forthright she ought to be, but reckoned there was no point in hiding Yndris’s brashness when it was so plain to see. “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’ll likely embarrass herself and our House.”

  “Likely you’re right, though you have to admit the urge to push herself comes from a place of loyalty.”

  Çeda turned to look at Zaïde. “What do you mean?”

  Zaïde’s brows pinched, distorting the worry lines and crescent moon tattoo on her forehead. “Did Sümeya not tell you how Yndris came to the Maidens?”

  “No.”

  “You no doubt heard of the fire in the spice merchant’s fort last year?”

  She’d been there, seen it with her own eyes. She’d been trapped there with everyone else until the Silver Spears had freed them. “I heard.”

  “The Maiden burned that day was Veliri Cahil’ava.”

  The image of the old fort’s interior bursting into flame suddenly returned to Çeda so vividly she flinched. Veliri had died while saving King Külaşan. The intensity she’d shown, breaking through the fort’s wall, had been almost inhuman.

  “Yndris,” Zaïde went on, “is Veliri’s sister. She may be young and she may be overly bold, but one can outgrow these things. The memory of her sister, however, casts a long and haunting shadow, and I wonder whether Yndris will ever fully step out from under it. Veliri was well-loved and died bravely. Now comes her younger sibling, a girl who never thought she’d be allowed to wear the Maidens’ black, hoping to take up her sister’s sword and continue her tale.”

  Hiding a grimace, Çeda hid her right hand behind her back and gripped it several times, trying to work away the pain that had suddenly returned. “Why choose her at all then?”

  “It is a point of honor to offer a blade to a family that has lost a Maiden. But beyond that, the Kings value many things in an aspirant. The will to strike, with revenge driving the sword, is one of the foremost.”

  “Do you agree with them?”

  By asking the question, Çeda had walked onto slightly dangerous ground—she still didn’t understand Zaïde’s place in this grand struggle for control over Sharakhai—but Zaïde merely tipped her head and gave Çeda an impotent shrug of her shoulders. “Who am I to agree or disagree?”

  Husamettín was holding Yndris’s blade, completing its story, which included, as Çeda suspected it would, Veliri’s valiant fight against the Moonless Host. Çeda wondered at the wisdom in it. Her sister had held this very blade. It made some sense that it would pass to Yndris, but how much weight would Yndris now feel when she swung it? How hard would she push to eclipse her sister’s deeds?

  Having completed his tale, Husamettín sheathed the blade and handed it to Yndris. Yndris drew it, admired its keen edge against the sunlight shining down from the center of the dome above, staring at it as if there were no higher honor. A moment ago Çeda might have laughed, thinking it an act, a preening display for the benefit of her father, who watched near Husamettín with little more than forbearance. But now that she knew more of Yndris, Çeda realized how sad it was. She had no idea the sort of woman Veliri h
ad been in life—whether she’d been honorable or not. Maybe she’d deserved to die a fiery death at the hands of the Moonless Host, the Al’afwa Khadar, and maybe she hadn’t. What Çeda did know was that dozens of innocents had been condemned to die that day, not only those in the fire, but also the girls the Kings had rounded up in retribution; girls who were then hung from the walls of Hallowsgate.

  It was a seemingly endless cycle of violence: the Kings against the Host, the Host against the Kings, each response emboldening the enemy, making them more desperate to even the scales. Sometimes Çeda thought both sides would only be happy when Sharakhai had been laid to waste. Even then . . . Sharakhai could be a city of the dead and still they would battle over hills of bones.

  As Yndris sheathed the blade and took her place in the mock arena, the crowd’s whispering fell silent. Not far from where Çeda and Zaïde stood, Kameyl stepped through the crowd and took her place at one end of the oval where she and Yndris would cross blades. Even here, in a mock ceremony that meant little in the grand scheme of things, Kameyl was intense. A desert asp, both deadly and graceful.

  They took their positions, equidistant from the mosaic design on the floor: twin moons split by a spear head. Yndris held her blade high while Kameyl held hers crosswise, symbolically barring Yndris’s path to the House of Maidens. In that moment, when all was still, the column of sunlight made the air between them glow, lending an ethereal quality to the ritual. Soon the two of them began the dance of blades. Their swords rang. Some would say they sang, the very reason they referred to it as a song instead of a dance. It was a fine show. Kameyl’s form was perfect, and though Çeda could see Yndris’s minor missteps—small misplacements of sword or scabbard, the tightness in Yndris’s frame—few others would recognize them.

  King Cahil watched with little outward show of emotion, but there was a sense of pride in the way he studied Yndris’s every move, while others—King Ihsan and a good many of the courtiers near him—seemed to watch the crowd more than the ceremony itself. Indeed, when Ihsan saw Çeda watching, he smiled a handsome smile and bowed his head. Çeda looked away, but her eyes were soon drawn back, and Ihsan was still watching. He laughed, and Cahil noticed, regarding Ihsan crossly and then following his gaze to Çeda. In that moment, as Cahil’s eyes met Çeda’s, he seemed to weigh her. There was so much innocence in his features—in all but his eyes, which regarded her as a thing to be used and tossed aside. It sent chills along her skin, but she refused to look away. She didn’t want him to think she felt guilty, so she held his stare until he returned his gaze to his daughter.

  When the dance reached the point where the two of them would improvise, they did for a time, Yndris continuing to move with some skill if not grace, and when it finally came time for the end of the ceremony, the drawing of blood, Yndris held out her right wrist, and Kameyl drew a shallow cut along her forearm. Yndris did the same to Kameyl, and then the crowd clapped and whooped and stomped their feet.

  As the crowd closed in around Yndris, congratulating her, Çeda said to Zaïde, “Could we speak a moment, Matron.”

  Zaïde paused, but then nodded. “Very well.” She motioned Çeda toward one of the balconies that overlooked Sharakhai. The vast amber cityscape lay sprawled out before them with the desert laying claim to the expanse beyond. To their left, the horizon was lit a violent crimson.

  The two of them had spent very little time together since Külaşan’s death. That distance between them was the reason Çeda had taken things into her own hands the night she went to kill Kiral. Çeda was sure Zaïde’s silence was purposeful—it was risky, even dangerous, to speak—but they might not see one another for weeks or even months. And yet, for all her eagerness, it was Zaïde who spoke first. “You’ve come a long way with the blade since you entered our care.”

  “I’ve never felt clumsier.”

  The amused twinkle in Zaïde’s eyes hinted at how well she was able to read Çeda. “Sayabim is a harsh mistress. Believe me, I know. She was the warden of my hand for three years before she took the Matron’s white. But it takes steady effort on the part of teacher and student to unlearn bad habits. Better to do it now, for all else will build on that foundation.”

  Sayabim was constantly telling Çeda about her foundation while using her thin stick to adjust Çeda’s foot placement, her stance, her posture. You’ll never build a temple without it. Çeda believed those words—she’d said similar things to her own students in the pits—but there were times when Çeda wanted to snatch that thrice-damned stick from Sayabim’s hands and snap it in half.

  “Don’t forget, child, the others in your hand are some our most gifted Maidens. You cannot expect to learn all that they were taught in four months. Your bladecraft was bound to grow worse before it grew better.” She paused. “The rest of your studies. How fare you in those?”

  “Sayabim has been teaching me hand signs,” Çeda said, “and Kameyl has been guiding me on close-quarter tactics.”

  “Sümeya has informed you of your bonding?”

  Çeda nodded. It was something she’d been dreading for weeks. She’d been accepted by the asirim on the night she’d been taken to the blooming fields. They had come to her. They had communed. She’d learned many things that night, chief among them that the asirim were no holy warriors, as the Kings professed, but the remnants of the thirteenth tribe that had been sacrificed on the night of Beht Ihman. It had been that very sacrifice by the Kings that had secured them the favor of the desert gods. But the ceremony to which Zaïde was referring was something entirely different. She would soon be taken out to the desert, where one or more asir would be chained to her will—brought to heel, as Sümeya had put it. Knowing that the asirim were what remained of the thirteenth tribe, forced into service of the Kings by the gods themselves, it made her stomach turn.

  “When will it begin?” she asked.

  “Soon, I think. King Mesut is eager to see you bonded, to weigh your abilities.”

  “And this?” Çeda showed Zaïde her poisoned hand. “You said you would teach me how to fight it.”

  Zaïde took Çeda’s hand in hers, looked more closely at the scar. Deep pain ran along Çeda’s arm as she did so. Zaïde pressed the scar on the meat of Çeda’s thumb, then along the words Zaïde herself had tattooed there. Bane of the unrighteous, and The lost are now found. Those tattoos, not only the two phrases but the elegant symbols and traceries on her palm and the back of her hand, had effectively hemmed the poison in, rendering it something Çeda could manage if not master. “Does it bother you often?”

  Çeda had been about to ask the questions burning inside her. Do you know Dardzada? Did you know my mother? She wanted to confess her mission to Eventide, her attempt to kill the King of Kings, her utter failure to cripple even one of them. She wanted to tell her about the woman she’d seen in the courtyard that night. How could they have done such a thing?

  The roar of laughter filtered out from within the palace, a reminder that this was neither the place nor the time. How could she speak of things with the Kings so near, especially Zeheb, the King of Whispers? “There are days when I hardly feel it,” she finally said, “others when it aches terribly, but it’s grown worse in the months since you gave me the tattoo.”

  The Matron nodded. “I’m sorry for the pain, but there is time yet. Come to me for herbs if you have need, but for now, continue to work with Sayabim. We can speak again on the way back from your sister Maiden’s vigil.”

  Yndris’s vigil. The very thought of seeing the asirim’s plight firsthand somehow made Çeda’s thumb flare even worse. But it also emboldened her, reminded her that while she waited and plotted, the asirim suffered.

  “Matron?” Çeda’s gut was turning somersaults.

  Zaïde’s brow knitted, perhaps sensing something in her voice.

  Çeda grit her jaw, willed herself to speak the words—Do you know Dardzada? Is he your ally?—but befo
re she could force the words out, she noticed someone walking onto the balcony, a tall man with bone-white skin and ivory hair. He held two narrow flutes filled with golden wine, one in each hand. He came to a stop, bowed to Zaïde, and spoke with a soft Mirean accent. “Forgive my interruption, Matron, but your good King Ihsan has need of you.”

  Zaïde tilted her head in assent. “Well then, since you’ve come only to send me away, perhaps you’d be so kind as to occupy our young Maiden.” She motioned to Çeda. “Juvaan Xin-Lei, I’m pleased to introduce one of our most promising Maidens, Çedamihn Ahyanesh’ala.”

  Juvaan faced Çeda with a mischievous smile and bowed his head, a practiced, elegant gesture. “We’ve met.”

  The surprise that touched Zaïde’s features was quickly hidden. “Well, then,” she squeezed Çeda’s arm, “I leave you in good hands.” And with that she strode back into the palace, leaving Çeda alone with Queen Alansal of Mirea’s chief ambassador in Sharakhai.

  Juvaan held out a glass of wine. She accepted it with a smile and sipped, the sparkling wine bubbling along her throat as she swallowed. Notes of plum and pear and jasmine underscored a bitter mineral taste.

  “A new import from the Austral Sea,” Juvaan said, leaning against the marble balustrade. “It’s rather taken the city by storm.” When Çeda laughed, Juvaan went on, “You don’t agree?”

  “I rather doubt that any new fashion in liquor has swept through more than the House of Kings. The oud parlors will still sell araq. The tea houses will still sell their tea.”

  “I rather think the taverns and shisha dens along the Trough more forward thinking than that.”

  “Yes, but the ones that can afford this”—she lifted her glass—“serve clientele from the palaces and the Hill and the dandies who have come to taste the riches of Sharakhai.”

  Juvaan’s smile widened, revealing perfect teeth. “Am I a dandy, then, Çedamihn?”

  “You’re no dandy, but I hardly think you venture into the hidden byways of Sharakhai.”