A Veil of Spears Read online

  Setting the bandages and salve down, he looked to the man sitting near the door, who watched Davud placidly, as he had every day of the seven weeks since Davud’s arrival. He was Davud’s primary watchdog, a soldier, Davud supposed, a stocky man twenty years Davud’s senior. He had a day’s growth of stubble and piercing blue eyes. Most of the guards who patrolled the palace were Silver Spears, sometimes Blade Maidens. This man was different. He was a foreigner, with lighter skin and a sharp nose. Malasani, perhaps. He wore fitted leather armor most of the time, and a hooded cloak when they went outdoors. He was special, though in what way, and why he’d been chosen to watch Davud, was unclear.

  “Are you ready to tell me your name yet?” Davud asked.

  The man sniffed. The chair beneath him creaked loudly as he uncrossed his legs and put both feet on the floor. “Never you fucking mind. That’s my name.”

  The same answer, more or less, he’d given Davud every day. “I heard one of the other Spears called you Zahndrethus yesterday.”

  The man glowered. “So why’d you bloody ask?”

  “Zahndrethus—”

  The man rolled his eyes, his bushy eyebrows pinching menacingly. “Nalamae’s teats, call me Zahndr if you’re going to call me anything.”

  “Zahndr. You’ve seen me do this a hundred times. There’s no danger. Couldn’t you give her some privacy”—he motioned to the woman lying on the bed before him—“just until I’m done?”

  Zahndr stared around wide-eyed, as if he were shocked at his own boorishness, then somehow sketched an elaborate bow while remaining seated. “Why, most certainly, my good lord. And when you’re done would you like me to fix you some tea and rub your feet?”

  “It’s for her benefit, not mine.”

  “Oh?” He made a show of looking over Davud’s shoulder. “Well, near as I can tell, she doesn’t care. So get on with it.”

  Davud heaved a sigh. He and Anila had been watched since the moment they’d arrived. What was there to do but suffer it until the Kings came to trust him?

  “Anila?” he said softly. The ends of the heavy curtains flapped and scuffed over the floor. “It’s time to change your bandages.” She didn’t stir, nor did she make a move to stop him as he pulled her up to a sitting position. She remained still while Davud, shielding her as best he could from Zahndr’s view, began to unwrap the bandages.

  Around her head he went, revealing a bald scalp. Her skin, once a healthy copper hue, was darkened—not like the asirim’s skin, which was a deep, deep brown, but more a mottled gray. And where once her skin had been smooth and supple, it was now uneven, dry as a sun-cracked riverbed, and nearly as hard.

  In the weeks after the devastating events in Ishmantep, where they’d chased the blood mage, Hamzakiir, Davud had hoped her skin would return to normal. Every night he’d prayed to Yerinde to return some of Anila’s beauty to her, or sometimes to Rhia that she might be made anew, as the goddess was each new moon. In one of his low moments, he’d even prayed to Bakhi to take her life that she might be granted a new one in the farther fields. He’d convinced himself that if Anila could speak, she would ask to be done with this remnant of a life. Why else had she been silent since the fire that Davud had managed to snuff using blood magic, at the terrible cost of Anila’s body?

  Over the days that followed he’d been ashamed by the very thought—that he’d considered making this choice for her, and worse, that he’d wondered if he ought to take matters into his own hands.

  He continued to unwrap the bandage, tugging it when necessary, wincing at the pain it might cause. He did her arms next, and then, after lifting her arms up, a position she held without comment, unwrapped the one around her chest. As always, he felt supremely conscious of her privacy, of the embarrassment she might be feeling, even if it was masked in silence. The Matrons had asked him if he would rather they do this for him, but he’d only accepted their help for the first few times, so he could learn how to properly tend to her needs. He’d done it every time since. This was his burden. He’d done this to her, and he would help her as much as he was able, at least until she was well enough to return to her family’s estate in Goldenhill.

  The bandages removed, he proceeded to rough her skin with a brush made from the ridge hair of a bone crusher. Anila’s eyes reddened, her breath quickened, and tears began to stream down her cheeks. Davud continued to work methodically. The faster he moved, the sooner her pain would end. But he did whisper, “I’m sorry,” softly enough that Zahndr wouldn’t hear. He knew he said it too often, knew that if Anila could speak she’d most likely scream for him to stop saying it, but the words came practically unbidden. Silent, Anila kept her gaze focused squarely on the rough stone wall.

  He brushed all of her exposed skin, even around her face and ears, moving on from each section only after her skin had taken on a rougher, flakier appearance. When he was done, he set the brush down and began peeling. Like dried, sunburnt skin, swaths of it came off at once to reveal dark, shining, indigo skin. Snakeskin, Davud remembered thinking the first time it had happened. The gods have given her snakeskin.

  He buried the thoughts and continued, trying to minimize Anila’s discomfort and exposure. Her tears continued, twin rivulets glistening on the black skin of her cheeks. She became cold as the old skin came off every few weeks—indeed, she was starting to shiver already—but he didn’t skimp on the final step, which was to clean her with a wet cloth.

  When he was done, her skin gleamed.

  Like a black mamba. Like one of Goezhen’s children.

  Not for the first time, Davud wished he could speak to Master Amalos about all this. He’d been devastated to learn of his old master’s death. Murdered in the tunnels below the city, he’d been told. He missed the man’s calm intellect, his ability to reason through problems rather than become frustrated by them. It was something Davud could use more of; his guilt over Anila’s injuries was constantly clouding his judgment.

  Taking up the glass jar, he rubbed salve over her arms, chest, and back, and finished by wrapping her in fresh bandages. After laying her back down, he repeated the entire process on her legs and pelvis. “They say you’ll be done soon enough,” Davud said softly as he spread the salve. “That you’ll have healed. You can return to your family or, if you wish, remain here with me. The steward said it would be allowed as long as I’m a guest of the Kings.”

  Just how long that would be, his remaining here as a guest, Davud had no idea. The Kings knew he was a blood mage, knew that he’d been given some small amount of training by Hamzakiir. Surely they’d suspected Davud was one of his agents. They might still suspect that, despite all Davud had said to convince them otherwise.

  The fates will decide, Davud told himself while finishing with her calves and feet. I’ll spend no more sleepless nights wondering if the Kings have decided to murder me.

  In truth, he’d spent little time wondering what the future held. He wanted to make sure Anila was well cared for. There was time enough to worry about his own needs after that, and when she was healed, she would want to return to Goldenhill, not remain in the House of Kings, but in all honesty he couldn’t say what her family would want. He’d been present the first time her mother and sister had visited. Her mother had been horrified by her daughter’s reptilian skin. She’d taken Davud away to speak with him, grateful he’d been there to tell her what had befallen her daughter.

  “Has she been cursed?” she’d asked bluntly near the end of their conversation.

  What could Davud say? Of course she’s been cursed. And all because of me.

  “I couldn’t say,” he remembered replying. “Better to speak to a priest than me.”

  “Which, though?”

  It was an echo of his own fears, that cruel Goezhen had touched her.

  “Best to begin at Bakhi’s,” he’d replied.

  She’d visited twice more. Bo
th times, whatever small glimmer of hope she had in her eyes had been snuffed not only by Anila’s state, but her daughter’s cold indifference—to her, to Davud, to the world around her. She hadn’t returned. Anila’s sister hadn’t deigned to come again, and her father had never come, perhaps finding himself unable to stand before his daughter after the strange reports brought to him by his wife. Part of Davud wanted him to visit so he could call the man a bloody coward to his face, but another part wanted him there for Anila.

  A knock came at the door. Zahndr opened it, and in swept a woman in white robes. After giving Davud a perfunctory nod, the Matron, a terse, middle-aged woman named Kaelira, took in the state of the room. She looked, as always, as if she were the palace steward and had personally assigned Davud to ensure the space was immaculate.

  “King Sukru is on the way.” She said it so abruptly, and with so little warmth, that it took Davud a moment to understand.

  “King Sukru? But why would he—”

  She moved to the bedside and inspected Anila’s bandages carefully. She might have been pleased—had she not been, Davud would have heard about it—but you wouldn’t know it from the sour look on her face. “It isn’t yours to question the Kings, though I deem it probable he wishes to speak of your time with the traitor, Hamzakiir.” Moving to the same shelf where Davud had taken up the salve, she retrieved a bottle filled with lilac-colored liquid, which she poured into a teapot with a long, thin spout.

  Taking the teapot, she returned to Anila’s bed and trickled the distillation over the bandages—to hasten the formation of new, healthy skin, she’d told Davud weeks ago, though what help it might be providing, he had no idea. No matter what they did—debriding it with brushes, applying the salve to her skin, and a half-dozen different distillations to her bandages over the course of her weeks here—her skin retained its midnight hue, its strange, snakeskin feel.

  “When will he—”

  “Presently,” said a hoary voice from the door.

  Davud turned and saw a crooked man dressed in curled leather slippers and a simple black khalat. Simple for a King, that is.

  Both Kaelira and Davud bowed, but King Sukru waved the formalities away.

  Behind him, a girl with pigtails stuck her head in the room. “Leave us, Kaelira. Zahndrethus, you as well. And take Bela with you.”

  “Of course, Excellence.” And they left, Zahndr guiding the girl by the shoulder and Kaelira closing the door behind her.

  “Infernal girl,” Sukru said under his breath. As he shuffled closer to the bed, his eyes turned on Anila. “Well, well . . . The burned one I’ve heard so much about.”

  “She wasn’t burned,” Davud said. “She was—”

  “I know,” Sukru said, his small eyes narrowing. “Drawn thin like thread from wool in your attempt at quelling the flames in Ishmantep.”

  Drawn thin. Like thread from wool. He’d never heard it described as such. But there was some truth to it. Her body had suffered the effects, but it was Davud’s drawing on her soul that had caused it.

  As Sukru reached the bedside, Anila gave no sign she’d noticed them. She stared at the ceiling, blinking every so often. The King picked up one hand, examined her fingernails carefully. “She eats?”

  “Yes,” Davud replied, feeling awkward standing so close to a King.

  “Does she soil herself?” Setting her hand down, Sukru drew a short knife from inside his left sleeve, the sort cooks used to pare apples and the like, then tugged back the bandaged covering Anila’s shoulder.

  “No. She uses the pot we bring for her.”

  Sukru lifted his head and scowled at Davud. “But she does not speak?” He returned to his examination of her shoulder. After bringing his eyes close and squinting, he brought the blade close and scraped it along Anila’s scaly skin. He did so lightly at first, then in stronger, longer waves. Anila’s eyes pinched. Then they began to redden. She winced with every stroke of the blade.

  “Please, my Lord King,” Davud said, “there’s no need for that.”

  He turned his beady eyes on Davud. “I asked you a question.”

  “No. She hasn’t spoken since the incident.”

  “Incident . . .” A low rumble of a laugh escaped Sukru. “Tell me about it, boy. This incident.”

  Davud told Sukru everything. The voyage to Ishmantep after escaping the Moonless Host, the fire along Ishmantep’s docks, how Anila had offered her blood and Davud had accepted. King Sukru watched most intently when Davud spoke of using the power of Anila’s blood, how he’d caught the flame and smothered it, and how in doing so he’d burned Anila through their bond.

  He’d recounted this tale a dozen times since returning to Sharakhai. He’d even told it in this very room, but he’d never done so in front of Anila. It made the story feel weighty in a way it never had before, as if he now stood before a tribunal, and the King was preparing to render judgment for his crimes. He supposed, looking at this immortal man who stood proxy for the other Kings, it wasn’t too far from the truth.

  “I didn’t know this would happen,” he said at last, glancing uncomfortably toward Anila. “I’d been swept away by the fire, but the sheer power in her blood . . .”

  “Yes, yes.” Sukru waved his hand, brushing Davud’s words away like a platter of honeyed sweets. “When did she last speak?”

  “Ishmantep.”

  Did we finish it? she’d asked as they stood beside the still-smoking ship. She’d meant the men within the royal clipper, had she and Davud saved them . . .

  We did, he’d whispered to her. We saved them all.

  That’s good, she replied, her words soft as gossamer. That’s good.

  The King was staring at Anila uncharitably, the way one might at a thoroughbred that had developed a limp. He was weighing a decision he wouldn’t give a second thought to once it was made—he wasn’t called the Reaping King for no reason. Davud was trying to formulate the right words, to divert the King’s thoughts from Anila and her fate, when Sukru reached into the folds of his robes and drew out a small book, the very one Hamzakiir had penned for Davud.

  “Hamzakiir gave you this?”

  “He did.”

  Sukru thumbed through it as if it were nothing more than a curiosity. “You are a learned young man.”

  Davud stammered his reply. “You honor me, my King.”

  Closing the book with a snap, Sukru frowned, his uneven gaze boring deeply. “Do you wish to join the service of the Kings? To help us balance the scales of justice?”

  “I don’t understand, your Excellence.”

  Sukru’s small eyes sharpened, giving him a ratlike look. “Will you serve me as we hunt for Hamzakiir and drive the scarabs from the desert?”

  “I only thought . . .” He motioned to the book in Sukru’s hands. “I thought the use of blood magic was forbidden.”

  “The Kings decide what is forbidden.”

  “Of course, your Excellence.”

  At this, he withdrew a vial from his right sleeve. The vial was made of translucent green glass tipped with a silver cap, to which was affixed a needle. Within the vial was a dark liquid that sloshed as he flicked his fingers to Davud’s left arm.

  “My King?”

  “I require assurances from those who enter into my service.” He flicked his fingers again. “Given your nature, I’m sure you understand.”

  He wanted Davud’s blood. He suddenly wished he were anywhere but here, but what was there to do now? He held out his arm, and Sukru grabbed his wrist and pierced his skin near the elbow. He collected the blood, then swirled it around, stoppered it, and slipped it back inside his sleeve.

  To Davud’s surprise, and growing horror, he withdrew another vial and repeated the ritual with Anila. When he was done, her red blood spread from the wound, stark against the white bandages over her indigo skin.

  �
�But she’s no mage,” Davud said, powerless to stop him.

  “But she is,” he said while swirling Anila’s blood, “a rather unique specimen.” Davud didn’t like that word, specimen, nor the way he’d said it. Away the vial went, into King Sukru’s sleeve with the other. “Five nights hence, you will accompany me to the blooming fields.”

  The King waited with a curious look on his face. He looked rather like one of the masters in the collegia after they’d posed a particularly tricky riddle to his students. The answer came to Davud a moment later.

  “Beht Zha’ir is five nights hence.”

  Sukru’s flat expression made it clear he’d expected more.

  Gods, Davud had never been close to the blooming fields. Their legend was fearful enough, but it was the asirim themselves that made Davud’s knees quake. “If you’ll forgive my presumption, my Lord King, what are we to do there?”

  “Some of the adichara have been withering and are close to death. You’ll investigate.” Sukru tossed the book to Davud, who caught it, confused. “You’ll find more sigils in those pages,” he said. “Master them before we depart.”

  Gods, he means blood magic. “I cannot, my King.”

  “Ah, but you can.” He strode for the door. “Your King demands it.”

  He left, letting the door swing open behind him. When his footsteps had faded, Davud thumbed through the book, horrified at what Sukru was asking him to do. This was what had led to Anila’s disfigurement. He’d foresworn the practice entirely, except for that which kept him from pain as the change within him continued to settle. He soon found the pages to which Sukru had referred. Written in a scratchy hand—so different from Hamzakiir’s tall, elegant penmanship—were two additional sigils: one for flora and another for poison or decay, the text below wasn’t quite clear.

  Suddenly the hungry look on Sukru’s face when he’d questioned Davud about his use of blood magic made sense. It had been jealousy, not simple curiosity. That, coupled with the fact that he’d asked Davud to join him, implied two important things: first, that there was some puzzle Sukru desperately wanted to solve, and second, that he wasn’t gifted enough to do it alone.