Twelve Kings in Sharakhai Read online

  Çeda never sold her petals—not to Dardzada or anyone else. She refused to even tell anyone but Emre about them. Being found with a single petal carried a sentence of death, but that wasn’t why Çeda hid the fact that she collected them. Or at least, it wasn’t the only reason. The petals, her trips out to the blooming fields, they felt like a secret she shared with her mother, and that was a trust she refused to break.

  She waited as well dressed men and women walked along the street. Even a pair of Silver Spears passed on horses, clopping past, chain hauberks chinking, as cocky as they were oblivious to Çeda’s half-crouched position in the shadows of the alley.

  Half an hour later Dardzada’s customer finally left. He caught Çeda watching him from across the street, and he frowned, as if by her very glance he’d somehow been exposed, but then he moved on. Çeda shouldered Emre’s satchel and limped across the street. As she parted the beads that hung over the entrance, Dardzada—heftier than he’d been when she’d lived with him, especially around the middle—looked up from his ledger. He frowned at her, every bit as deeply as his patron had done a moment ago, then returned to the scritch-scratch of his writing.

  She looked into his workroom and saw, brimming from an earthenware vase, a clutch of thick, green stalks with sharp thorns. “I need a bit of milk, Dardzada.”

  He looked up again, the space between his dark brown eyes pinching. He set down his black vulture quill and rubbed his hands over his brown-and-gold-striped kaftan. The top of his head was nearly bald. He was clean shaven, which somehow made him seem older, for it exposed the fatty rolls around his chin and neck. He took her in, noting the leather satchel under one arm. It felt for a moment as though he could see the hidden case within, but that was only her fears sparking fantasies.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked.

  “It’s not for me,” she said.

  She might have detected relief, but it was gone so quickly she couldn’t be sure.

  “Then get it from someone else.” He picked up his quill and began writing once more. “I’ve better things to do than patch up your beetle-headed friends from the slums.”

  “I can pay.”

  “I don’t need your money.”

  “I’ll mix it myself.”

  She heard a heavy-yet-resigned sigh. “Just hurry up about it.”

  She walked past him, through an open doorway, and into the workshop. The walls were lined from floor to ceiling with wooden shelves and drawers. He had hundreds of raw ingredients he used to make the tonics and elixirs and salves and unguents his patrons expected of him. Everything was exactly where it had been when she’d lived here. Dardzada had followed through on his promise to keep her after Çeda’s mother had died. He’d been strict at first, but as he found it more and more difficult to control her, he’d become cruel, especially when she’d started running with Emre and the other friends she’d grown up with near the bazaar, so eventually she’d left and moved in with Emre and his brother Rafa.

  Çeda took down one of the green stalks of charo from the earthenware vase and placed it thorn-side down on the broad worktable at the center of the room. After cutting off one end to expose the white flesh beneath, she used a rolling pin to extract the milk. This was one of the tasks Dardzada had always given her. She’d hated it then, but now, in a strange way, she missed it. It connected her to something besides shading and teaching swordplay and fighting in the pits. It connected her to the desert, and that always brought her back to her center. She milked three stalks, enough for four or five applications to Emre’s wounds, which should be plenty. She used a dull-edged knife, slipping it across the workboard, scooping up the thick milk and scraping it into a glass phial. She took a phial of Dardzada’s own healing remedy as well, a foul mixture of reduced oxtail broth, garlic, and boiled pistachio shells. It tasted rotten, but it would help Emre.

  After stuffing them into the leather purse at her belt, she looked to the front and found Dardzada’s nose still buried in his ledger. Quickly she spooned a bit of powdered nahcolite into a ceramic bowl and mixed in water until she could form a paste. Then she dabbed a cotton cloth into it and began rubbing it against her locket.

  Making the silver shine was perhaps unwise of her—it drew too much attention, especially west of the Trough, in the Shallows or the Well, or even in Roseridge—but she didn’t have the heart to leave her mother’s last gift to tarnish. “Do you remember the book you gave me after my mother died?” she asked as she rubbed at the stubborn tarnish.

  The sound of quill scraped against paper.

  “Dardzada?”

  “Have I not done enough for you this day?”

  “My mother’s book. Do you remember it?”

  He shrugged without looking up.

  “Did my mother ever speak of it?”

  Now he did look up. “What?”

  “Did she ever speak of it?”

  “No, why would she?”

  “Because it was one of the things she left me. I know she treasured it. I remember her reading it often late at night.”

  Dardzada’s face softened. If Çeda didn’t know better, she’d say he looked regretful. “She was a learned woman, your mother.”

  “Did she ever speak of the asirim?”

  Dardzada rolled his eyes, dipped his quill in its well, and began scratching away at his ledger once more. “Everyone speaks of the asirim, Çedamihn.”

  “Yes.” She finished her polishing. The locket shone like the first day she’d received it—the worst day of her life, the day Dardzada had given it to her. Çeda blinked away tears as she stepped into the front room. “Did she ever see any?” she asked as Dardzada scratched away.

  “How would I know?”

  “Dardzada, did she ever see any.”

  He must have heard something in her voice. He looked up and regarded her anew. “Why are you asking these questions? What’s happened?”

  He didn’t know anything. She could see it in his eyes. “Nothing. Never mind.”

  “I’m no fool. You come to me the morning after Beht Zha’ir, begging for milk and asking of the asirim? Leave the blooming fields alone, girl. It isn’t worth it. It got your mother killed, and it will get you killed as well.”

  “I didn’t go to the blooming fields last night.”

  “No?” Dardzada sat up straighter and used his quill to point to her neck. “Tell me, Çeda, what do you keep in that locket of yours?”

  She felt her face burn. “This is my mother’s locket.”

  Dardzada laughed. “Indeed it is, and perhaps I should never have given it to you.” He regarded her for a moment, surely seeing the hurt in her eyes, and then he returned to his writing as if she weren’t there. “Out. Go. Take the milk to your precious Emre.”

  And she did, but it didn’t keep his mocking laugh from haunting her through the hot city streets.

  ÇEDA WANTED TO RETURN to Emre as quickly as she could, but there were other things that needed tending to first. She took a small detour on the way home and headed for the great bazaar, where she stopped at a fruit cart and scanned the crowd for a certain girl.

  She handed over three khet for a handful of kumquats. “Never seen you here before,” Çeda said to the fruitmonger, a squat Kundhunese woman with wild, kinky hair.

  “Caravan here yestermorning,” she replied in a thick Kundhunese accent, smiling as if Çeda had told her some witty joke.

  “Where did you come from?”

  “Yestermorning.”

  “No. Where? Ganahil? Aldamlasa?”

  “Ganahil,” the woman replied, still smiling her overly familiar smile.

  Çeda took the fruit and moved on, limping her way through the bazaar’s imperfectly drawn lanes, savoring the sweet taste and chewy skin of the kumquats. She watched carefully as she wove through the stalls, taking note whenever she spotted children r
unning, especially the dirty ones, those unattached to adults. Just as she was popping the last of the grape-sized fruits into her mouth, she spotted a familiar group of children in the small plaza that surrounded the bazaar’s central well.

  Mala, her brown, curly hair flowing with the swirling wind, was standing with her sister, Jein, and a dozen other gutter wrens. Most were drinking their fill beneath the old pistachio tree by the edge of the plaza. Three of them were watching the crowd milling through the bazaar, choosing their marks with care, just as she and Emre had done almost every day when they were young, if not here in the bazaar then in the spice market or at the auction blocks or along the Trough. The city was always ripe the day after Beht Zha’ir, when dozens of raucous celebrations were held all over the city. After the rest and quiet—or for some, the unending stress—of the holy night, citizens and visitors alike flocked to the bazaar, to the spice market, to the unending food stalls, and coin flowed freely.

  Mala’s face lit up. “Çeda!” Then her face crumpled in disappointment. “But we’ve no swords!”

  “No swords today, my sweet.” Çeda waved her over, away from the other children. “Today, I have a job for you.”

  Mala smiled mischievously.

  “Do you know Tariq?” Çeda asked. “Can you spot him in a crowd?”

  She nodded.

  “Good.” Çeda crouched until they were eye to eye. “Come closer.”

  Emre was still unconscious when she returned home, and he remained so while she removed his bandages and slathered the charo milk over his wounds. He coughed when she forced some of the elixir down his throat but then fell asleep again.

  At least he’s breathing easier.

  Satisfied that it was all she could do for now, she moved through the room that served as hers and Emre’s kitchen and sitting room and into her own room.

  She slipped onto the chair at her desk, laid the satchel before her, and pulled out the scroll case. The bright yellow wax was of a shade few bothered to buy, as it was expensive, but Çeda had long ago stocked up on several such colors.

  From the hidden space behind the horsehair blanket above her bed, she retrieved a box and brought this to the desk as well. She flipped the lid back to reveal several deep compartments, one of which held a dozen sticks of colored wax. She tried three before finding two that were the closest matches. She’d mix them together and test it until she had the color just right. The wax was the least of her worries, though. The case also had the six ivory rings that she would need to set correctly before opening it. She couldn’t even attempt to open it until she’d solved the combination, lest acid ruin the contents within.

  She stepped into the sitting room and picked a wiry plant in a glazed cerulean pot from among the dozens she had sitting in the sun. After returning to the desk and setting the pot down with a thud, she ripped a healthy hunk of gray-green moss from the pot’s bed. She was just setting it over the ivory case when she heard footsteps in the lane outside, footsteps that stopped near her front door. A loud ticking came, a sound like the river thrushes made when cracking snails with an anvil stone. After adjusting the moss, she moved to the window and pulled the curtain aside. Mala and Jein were standing there. When Mala caught the movement of Çeda’s curtain, she reached down and dusted off her sandals. Then she walked with a deliberately fast pace away from Çeda’s door. Jein followed, looking at Mala as if she were a beetle-brained fool.

  Çeda sighed. She supposed it had been too much to ask for Osman to leave her alone until tomorrow. Jein was too young to understand, so Çeda had asked Mala to reveal nothing to her younger sister. The dusting of Mala’s sandals meant that Tariq was on his way, and the fact that she was walking away quickly meant that Tariq was coming with haste. At best she had another few minutes.

  She returned to the desk and set the moss back in the pot. Left behind, however, were dozens, hundreds, of bright red insects no larger than a speck of dust. Blood of the Desert, they were called, mites that lived in the roots of many desert plants. They were crawling all over the surface of the scroll case, over the images of jackals and leopards and falcons and other animals of the desert etched into the ivory rings. The mites tended to settle onto certain symbols, however, and soon it became clear what the combination was.

  In order to avoid mistakes, the artisans who made such things would mark the correct etchings with a bit of kohl to make the work easier and to avoid puncturing the bladder of acid by accident. They would rub it off when they were done, of course, but the kohl itself was made from the soot of a specially prepared cloth that was burned slowly for hours. And from ghee. The mites, for whatever reason, couldn’t get enough of ghee—something she’d learned while in Dardzada’s care.

  Çeda slid the rings into place as another ticking sound came, louder than before, and more urgent. Tariq was getting closer. She cracked the wax seal, pulled the top off the case and retrieved a tightly rolled piece of leather. She tipped the scroll case toward the light and looked down its length. Surprisingly, she saw no bladder of acid.

  She could hear footsteps now. Heavy footsteps. The footsteps of a man, not a gutter wren like Mala.

  Inside the rolled leather was a small velvet pouch. She tugged at the drawstrings and tipped the contents into her hand. And gasped.

  The gemstone cupped in her palm shone like moonlight. It was transparent, but the light that glimmered faintly from within was gauzy, like the veil of the heavens. It was so delicate she thought it might give like a tuft of wool, but she found it to be solid, every bit the gemstone it appeared to be.

  By Tulathan’s bright eyes, what could it be? And what properties did it hold that it would be ferried across Sharakhai in such a way?

  The footsteps stopped outside her home. She heard the latch rattle and the door open, and then someone took to the stairs.

  She replaced the top of the case and then stuffed it and the two sticks of wax she’d chosen into the satchel, which she slung over her shoulder. She was no fool. She knew Osman was no man to trifle with. No matter that she bedded him from time to time; he would not treat her kindly were he to learn of this.

  After slipping the wooden box back into the alcove behind the horsehair blanket, Çeda moved to the window. The moment she heard Tariq’s footsteps outside the entrance door in the sitting room, she pulled the curtains aside and leapt to the ground below. Mala was watching her from around a corner a few buildings up, but Çeda shooed her off with an urgent wave before turning and heading south so she could weave her way toward the bazaar. She didn’t feel entirely comfortable about leaving Emre, but even if Tariq forced his way in, which she doubted he would do, he would do Emre no harm when he found nothing in their rooms.

  She needed to borrow a bit of flame to reseal the wax before going to Osman, so she turned onto the main thoroughfare west of the bazaar and the spice market. The sounds of the bazaar were high today, the calls of hawkers interrupted only occasionally by the bitter cries of barter. And the smells were already filling the cool air, smells of galangal and mace and roasting meats.

  She hadn’t known where she would go until she’d arrived here. She’d head for Seyhan’s stall, she decided. He kept several lamps squirreled away for late night selling. She’d borrow one and prepare the case and then she’d be off to—

  Çeda stopped in her tracks. The sounds in the street, so distant a moment ago, suddenly filled her ears.

  Osman was standing straight ahead of her, paying at a stall for a freshly grilled skewer of honeymeats and melon. He turned before Çeda could duck behind one of the closer stalls, and when he saw her, he smiled in a not-entirely-pleasant way and headed her way. “And there she is,” he said before biting off one of the steaming pieces of lamb and chewing it.

  Çeda smiled easily and gritted her jaw to prevent herself from licking her lips. “A strange place to find a man of good means.”

  He smiled easil
y, the old battle scars showing through his black beard in the afternoon sun. “A strange place to find someone who should have been coming to see me.”

  “I was stopping for a bite before getting ready. For tonight.”

  “Oh?” he asked, biting off a hunk of melon and chewing it noisily. He held out the skewer toward her. “Would you like some of mine?”

  He’d no sooner said those words than two of his men broke away from the crowd and stepped past Osman to flank Çeda. Neither looked like much, but she knew of them, enough to respect their skill with cudgel and fist. It she were going to run, now would be the time. But she didn’t.

  Osman’s reach extended far in Sharakhai—certainly to all the places Çeda might run. She had to face him, and now was as good a time as any.

  “I’ve given up goat,” Çeda said simply.

  “Have you?” He slipped another hunk of meat off the skewer and began to chew. “And why is that?” he asked as his eyes glanced over Çeda’s shoulder.

  She looked behind and saw Tariq exiting the same alley she’d taken here. He was Çeda’s age, but his cocksure attitude made him look like a little boy preening for the girls. She turned calmly back to Osman and looked him in the eye. “It’s too gristly, Osman. Especially the old goats Avam buys. Gets stuck between my teeth.”

  Osman laughed grimly, attracting the attention of a few men walking past. He ignored them and allowed his stony gaze to linger on Çeda. “Am I an old goat, Çeda?”

  She paused. Of course he wasn’t. He was much more than an old goat. But she wasn’t about to admit that here. Not like this. “If you need me to answer that for you, then perhaps you are.”