Moontide 02 - The Scarlet Tides (18 page)

But suddenly he was the centre of attention as Emir Rashid Mubarak caught sight of him. ‘Kazim Makani! One of the heroes of the hour – come, brother!’ The emir pulled him into an embrace and his mouth curled into a smile, though his eyes were measuring. A beautiful blonde white woman with a wide mouth and sleepy eyes walked beside him. ‘The slayer of Francois Vertros, I am told, by dint of leaping on him from fifty feet up! Magnificent! Come, you must join us.’ Rashid turned to the blonde woman. ‘Alyssa, this is the youth I told you of, the slayer of Antonin Meiros – a true hero of the shihad.’

Rashid spoke loudly for the whole hall to hear, and more cheers resounded about him, his name passing from mouth to ear. The blonde woman purred something and Kazim found himself being led to a chair at the front of the queue, ahead of the dying and crippled, to have his bloody, throbbing head attended by her personally, while men came up and bowed, and touched his clothing to their lips.

It felt heady … and yet sickening, too. The heavy, metallic scent of blood was everywhere, clogging the air, cloying every inhalation. But it was also exhilarating, to be fêted, to have his courage proclaimed by the emir before all his men. The blonde woman smiled tightly at him, her fingers deft as she prodded and teased his nose back into shape, numbing the pain as she worked.

she told him silently.

Kazim jolted, looking up at the woman. Her face was radiantly beautiful, but her eyes were reptilian.

She masked the briefest scowl.

She cocked her head, looked at him intently.

He shook his head.

Alyssa smiled.

Kazim shut his emotions down, abruptly scared of this angel-bitch. The idea that she could be a friend of Ramita’s was utterly inconceivable. He wished he could leave, but she pulled him to his feet and showed him to the watching men as if displaying a pet tiger. Their cheers enveloped him.

So this is glory
, he thought uneasily.

After a minute or so he was allowed to rejoin the press, but men continued to slap his back and shout his name. He began to shove his way through the crowd, seeking solitude, but the next room was a ballroom, where several dozen people of many races milled about, naked, washing the blood and gore from their bodies. Some were in half-beast form, jackal and lion-headed men and women drenched in gore. He had begun to back away when he saw Huriya.

My Lord Ahm…
He clutched his chest as she sashayed out of the press of what he now realised were his kin – Souldrinkers. Her eyes were glazed over, as if she were high on opium – or death.

‘Brother!’ she called, holding her arms out to him. She was clad in a kameez of embroidered silk as if this were a lavish party, and was one of the few not stained by battle. But the scent of death clung to her as she pulled him into an embrace. She was tiny in his arms. ‘I hear you are a hero once more, brother.’

He pushed her away and dared to look with his gnostic sight. The whole room changed: imprinted over the bodies of the Souldrinkers were their auras, streaked with scarlet and alive with tendrils that reached out and plunged into each other. It was as if they were all one many-bodied being, feral, bloodthirsty and monstrous. Huriya’s aura was not quite a part of it, not yet, but her soul-tendrils were reaching for him.

He backed away. ‘What’s happening to you?’ he asked hoarsely.

She giggled. ‘Why, brother, I’m embracing what I am. Isn’t it time you did the same?’

He continued to retreat. ‘What happened to you, sister? You weren’t like this…’ He spread his hands helplessly. ‘I hardly know you.’

Huriya’s face changed a little. A kind of mocking nostalgia. ‘Sabele made me, brother.’ A sneer crept over her face. ‘Do you remember how proud you were, telling me about the fortune teller who’d told you that you would marry Ramita one day? How happy you were, and how you babbled it to anyone who would listen, though she expressly forbade you to speak of it?’

He nodded mutely, his face flushing.

‘Sabele came to me as well,
every year
– I am a child of Razir Makani also! The same blood flows in my veins! I have the same potential – and Sabele read a far greater destiny for me: to become a seeress, her apprentice, and then a queen.’ She stabbed a finger at Kazim. ‘The difference between us, brother, is that I can keep a secret.’

He gaped at her. ‘You told no one?’

‘No one! Not even poor stupid Ramita, though I shared her room all my life!’ Her face contorted with malicious glee. ‘When Meiros came for her she was terrified, but I knew that this was the moment I had been born for – you also, brother, for Sabele has seen you, sitting on a throne.’

The thought made him ill. ‘She said nothing to me.’

‘She knew you did not have the stomach for it. All you wanted to do was play kalikiti and moon after Ramita. She knew you would need to be led by the nose. But I will be her successor, and then I will exceed her!’ She posed as if at the end of an elaborate dance. ‘Isn’t it magnificent?’

He shook his head. He could see the tendrils of her aura reaching out again. For a moment his vision swam, then he instinctively slapped them away.

She recoiled as if he’d slapped her. and every Souldrinker in the room turned and stared at him with those same sated, venomous eyes.

He backed away, hurried from the room and ran straight into Jamil, waiting outside. His friend was staring into the room, his face pale and eyes afraid.

‘These are your kindred?’ he asked hoarsely.

‘They’re no kin of mine,’ Kazim snapped, storming past. His friend followed him, and though they only walked, inside they fled as if for their lives.

‘I saw Huriya,’ Jamil said, watching him carefully.

He turned and gripped Jamil’s shoulder. ‘If you value your soul, my friend, stay away from her.’

‘They fought with us – they slew many magi.’

The image of the Souldrinkers feeding on members of the Ordo Costruo filled his mind: repugnant scenes of mouths inhaling the smoky discharge of death. ‘Then they did it for themselves, not for Ahm.’ He licked his suddenly dry lips and redoubled his pace. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

But there was no escape. Rashid had ordered the surviving kitchen staff back to their ovens, and the servants started delivering brandy and wine. Even the most devout Amteh men followed Rashid’s example and began drinking as food began to arrive on silver platters. A sense of unreality filled the ballroom. The prisoners were gone and the tables had been set. Kazim and Jamil had been assigned places of honour, and stumbled disbelievingly to their seats as the first courses arrived.

For Kazim, the meal passed in a dream. So this was how the jadugara lived! The food was like nothing he’d ever tasted, so far removed from the plain dishes he’d eaten all his life that they scarcely seemed to be food at all, more like the sustenance of gods. And the drink was divine. He felt like they’d stolen their way into paradise and now they were feasting while heaven slept. But what he’d seen while with Huriya tainted the tastes.

Among the victors were around forty of the Ordo Costruo. Though most of them were half-breeds, with dark features, there were a few whiteskins, like the blonde beauty Alyssa Dulayne, and Stivor Sindon. They dominated the high table, toasting each other extravagantly, only occasionally glancing with disdain at the Hadishah part-bloods like Jamil and Gatoz; they might be half- and quarter-bloods themselves, but they’d not been bred in captivity like cattle. He could feel their suspicions whenever they looked at him, knew they saw him as a threat, for what he was. But at least the other Souldrinkers did not join the feast.

Alyssa seemed to be going out of her way to keep near him, though her relationship with Rashid clearly went deeper than politeness. The scent of her perfumed skin, the touch of her soft fingers brushing his arm, the lowered lashes and sideways glances, they were all a slow tease, but Kazim felt no attraction to her. There
was something corrupt about her, and not just in the way she sashayed about the hall earlier, careless of the gore and the cries for help, as if it were some kind of exotic hashish bar, not a place where such slaughter had occurred.

‘Rashid is welcome to her,’ he told Jamil as they made their excuses and left.

Jamil sniffed. ‘They say she lies with women as eagerly as with men, and spends most of her days in a hashish dream with Justina Meiros.’ He spat disgustedly.

Justina Meiros, Antonin’s daughter: he had seen her face in the outpouring of Meiros’ soul. ‘Is she here?’ he asked.

‘I have no idea, brother,’ Jamil said, unconcerned.

Rashid intercepted them when he saw them leaving. With a firm gesture he stopped his coterie of admirers from joining them. ‘Jamil, Kazim, I need a word,’ he started as he led the way to a curtained recess. From the window they could see the vast Zhassi Valley below, washed silver by the rising moon and dotted with orange lights, the glow of the refugees’ meagre cooking fires.

We did it
, Kazim thought.
We’ve actually ended the Ordo Costruo
. He could not muster anything but sorrow.

Rashid laid a hand on his shoulder, another on Jamil’s. ‘My brothers, I wanted to thank you both, alone and away from the others.’ He glanced towards the curtain. ‘The Ordo Costruo is broken and now my Hadishah can fight openly. For the first time the armies of Salim will have mage-support. Power is shifting, brothers. Until now, the Rondians have never known fear. That is about to change.’

Jamil’s scarred face glowed with satisfaction. ‘All because of you, my lord Emir.’

Rashid acknowledged the praise as his due, and as Kazim inclined his head to show agreement, the emir turned to him, his eyes searching. ‘I know you did not use your powers, Kazim. You fought only as a common soldier would – and still you shone! Think how much greater your impact will be when you allow yourself to fight with all that you truly are.’

Kazim kept his face still, though it took effort. All his life he’d
lived with his heart on his sleeve, but the games Rashid played were changing him into someone more wary and secretive.

Rashid looked him in the eye. ‘Many have given their all for our cause, brother. It harms us all that you do less.’ When Kazim didn’t respond, he added, ‘Sabele asks to see you.’

When Kazim swallowed and shook his head, the emir said with an air of satisfaction, ‘Good. I would rather you were with us than her.’

That gave Kazim something to think about, but Rashid swiftly moved on. ‘My friends, for now we will tell the world I was elected head of the Ordo Costruo. If we maintain this fiction well enough, we can hold this fortress for a time, and still aid Salim. But I have a new mission for you two, with Gatoz’s team.’

‘Anything, my lord,’ Jamil said eagerly.

‘This fortress is on the southern border of Javon. Do you know the situation in Javon? The Queen-Regent declared for the shihad; she is betrothed to Salim himself. But recently there have been signs that she is wavering. A very dangerous Rondian spy has been seen at the royal court.’ Rashid drew them closer to him, his voice dropping. ‘You will go to Brochena, the capital of Javon. I want you to find and kill a man named Gurvon Gyle.’

*

Jamil led Kazim to a room, a fine one with two soft beds, which had been reserved for them. But before they had even undressed, Gatoz walked in, and gestured curtly at Kazim to follow. He threw an anxious look at Jamil, and with some trepidation he went with Gatoz. His friend shook his head, and didn’t follow.

Gatoz led him down a winding stair into the bowels of the rock. Dampness and the smell of stale air thickened about him, cloying his lungs. The Hadishah mage said nothing until they arrived in a small room where a guardsman stood beside a bolted door. He bowed, and at Gatoz’s gesture, immediately unlocked the door, revealing a corridor lined with more barred doors. It was clearly a dungeon.

Gatoz flicked his fingers and the door on the right unlocked and fell open. Bewildered noises came from within, and a tentative
enquiry in a strange tongue, a young woman’s voice. It was quickly echoed by others.

Kazim followed as Gatoz walked into the cell.

There were four prisoners, all female, all Keshi, chained to the walls by the hands; the manacles forcing them to stand. All had sun-blackened skin and poor clothing. The room stank of urine and faeces, the floor filthy and wet. Their eyes were hollow with fear, the presumption of suffering and death to come.

‘These maids tended the Ordo Costruo magi loyal to Meiros,’ Gatoz said in a cold voice. ‘They are collaborators with the enemy.’ He drew a curved dagger.

Kazim’s skin immediately formed a sheen of sweat. ‘How can a maid be a collaborator?’

Gatoz watched him warily. ‘They would not spy on their masters. Those not with us are against us.’

One of the maids, an older woman, raised her hand. ‘But we—’

Gatoz bellowed, ‘Silence!’ and backhanded her across the face. Her head cracked back against the stone wall and she whimpered weakly.

Gatoz jabbed a finger at Kazim. ‘You refuse to utilise all that you are for the shihad.’

‘I would die for the shihad,’ Kazim replied defensively.

‘Die, maybe, but you will not use the gnosis,’ Gatoz retorted. ‘You’re too squeamish to do what must be done for the glory of Ahm.’ He raised his blade to the throat of the woman he’d struck. ‘On the journey here you aided Molmar in flying. That is double-standards, boy. We must clarify your thinking.’ The woman shrank from his knife as he caressed her skin with it, ignoring her pleading eyes. ‘You need to replenish yourself.’

‘No.’ The word was out before he could stop it.

Gatoz’s eyes narrowed. ‘I see through you, Kazim Makani. You think with your gnosis depleted, you will not be tempted to use it. You wish to be the Souldrinker who does not drink, an empty vessel, freed from the option of using the power you fear.’