Of Sand and Malice Made (15 page)

If Blackthorn was angry, she couldn't sense it in his movements. He remained composed, even as she managed to use the move again, this time striking his
shoulder, and a third time, connecting with his knee, a sharper blow that sent him hobbling backward for a moment. Each time it happened, the crowd roared louder, both eager, and not, for the end of the bout.

Blackthorn pressed, but he was playing into Çeda's strengths. She was a patient fighter. She had to be. Too many of her opponents were larger and stronger, so she'd reined in her impatience, and with Djaga's help had learned how to make it seem as though she were pressing without actually doing so.

Blackthorn's staff became a hummingbird, darting in over and over. Çeda blocked, retreated, twisted away, and riposted. She struck him again and again—light hits only, but he was becoming defensive. She disguised her next move well, leaving her defenses low to bait him. He tried a few simple snaps of his staff toward her head, blows she blocked, but then he struck low and reversed, putting his weight and brawn into the swing.

Stepping just outside the arc of the downward swing, she caught the top of his staff in the short chain between two sections of her own. She twisted the ends, catching the staff in a vice-like grip between the steel caps and chain. She dove forward and rolled, wrenching the staff away from him. She realized well too late that he'd been prepared to lose his weapon, that he'd likely been ready for the whole gambit.

As she was rolling away, she saw him launch himself
toward her even as his staff twisted away. He snatched her left wrist, then snaked behind her. She tried to keep her momentum, tried to roll again, even with him draped across her back, hoping to twist out of his grasp. But again he was ready for it, and soon they came to a stop, his arm around her neck as he craned her body backward.

“Well, well, well, Çedamihn. Had I known you were
this
good I daresay I might have arranged to come sooner.”

Gods, that voice.

The words had come out strangely slurred, but she knew as she knew her own name that this was Brama, the thief she'd taken with her to save Rümayesh. When she'd seen him last, he'd just written his blood on a piece of obsidian, one that had given Rümayesh new life, and Rümayesh had repaid him by possessing him, stealing his form with the help of her most loyal servant, Kadir.

She searched the stands as the rush of her own blood filled her ears. She found him moments later. Kadir, standing three rows up, the lone spectator who wasn't shouting or staring with an exhilarated expression. In fact, he was calm itself, as if everything so far had gone according to his master's plans.

Her mind spun with the implications. Brama was no lord from Goldenhill, but surely with Rümayesh's resources, not to mention the spells she might conjure, he
could have bought his way into a lord's good graces, perhaps convincing him that he was some long lost cousin who'd come to Sharakhai, a prince in his own right in one of the many desert tribes. It wouldn't be so difficult for an ehrekh to weave any tale she wished.

“Why?” was all she managed to ask.

“Why does the spider hunt the fly?” Rümayesh said with Brama's voice. “Why does the snake pursue the vole?”

The answer was so blithe it enraged her, and she fought all the harder, heedless of the pain. She'd been caught in Rümayesh's web for months, and this after the godling boys, Hidi and Makuo, had toyed with her for their own purposes. The very notion of becoming enthralled to Rümayesh, of becoming little more than a plaything, lit a fire of rage inside her. She had little leverage, but enough that she could push backward.

Rümayesh was put off balance for a moment, but countered the move easily. “And what shall we do now? There's no need for us to fight for the pleasure of others. Why don't you come to me? Let us talk away from this place, and I'll tell you what my heart truly desires.”

Çeda's answer was as clear as she could make it. She pushed violently backward, again catching Rümayesh off balance, then drove her legs like pistons, faster and faster until she'd slammed Brama's body into the wall of the pit.
She sent three sharp strikes of her elbow into Brama's ribs, then crashed her head backward into the demon-faced helm. His grip went momentarily lax. In that moment, she slipped from his grasp while slamming the back of her helm like a battering ram again and again into the mask of his helm. Then she bent forward, throwing his body over her hip.

He fell and rolled. His demon mask had come undone and now hung loosely from his helm. Çeda gasped. A rumbling came from the crowd as Brama's face was exposed. Everyone could now see that he wore another sort of mask entirely. The skin of his face, once so comely, was littered with scars—from burns, from cuts, she knew not what. She could hardly recognize the face of the boy she'd met by the riverside after he'd stolen her purse. Was that what had doomed him? It was no innocent act, but it had been the stone rolling down the hill that led to a landslide of events culminating in this: a boy possessed by an ehrekh, tortured even while she inhabited him.

“As the gods live and breathe, why?” Çeda asked, ignoring the strange silence of the crowd.

“Because he fought, dear girl,” Rümayesh said from Brama's ruined lips, “and the same will happen to you if
you
resist.”

The crowd grumbled. Pelam had been watching this
exchange with concern, but now he strode forward. “Fight, or I'll call a draw and the glory and winnings will both remain in the pits.”

Çeda stared at Brama. She wanted to free him from Rümayesh, wanted to beat the ehrekh from his body and his mind. But it didn't work that way. As far as she knew, nothing short of killing him—or Rümayesh's sudden disinterest—would free his soul. Whatever might happen in the days ahead, she knew she couldn't fight him, not like this. Not here. She opened her mouth to tell Pelam that she wouldn't continue, when Brama said, “I withdraw.”

Pelam's eyes shifted between the two of them. “You what?”

“I withdraw,” Brama said again as he stood. He used a finger to scratch behind his ear, an odd gesture, but then he blinked and nodded to Pelam. “The White Wolf has bested me this day”—he sketched a bow, moving his eyes to Çeda—“but perhaps there will come a day when
I
will have
her
.”

His look sent chills running through her.

Pelam paused, clearly wondering if this were some sort of joke, but as the crowd grew ever more restless, he announced Çeda as the winner. While a strange, half-hearted mixture of cheers and whistles of disappointment rose up around them, Brama replaced his mask, hiding
his scarred face once more, and now it was the demon that watched her, its face smiling, grinning, laughing.

Well before the sun had risen, Çeda waited with her back against a mudbrick wall, watching old Ibrahim the storyteller's house for any sign of movement.

She hugged herself to ward off the chill desert air. She hadn't slept all night. The realization that Rümayesh had returned, and that she'd set her sights on Çeda once again, had been gnawing at her like a rat trapped inside her skull.

She couldn't get those scars out of her mind. There had been so many, some old, some new. And they were so horrific. Somehow she knew that Brama had felt it all, and that Rümayesh had enjoyed his pain. Why she would be so sadistic toward him, Çeda had no idea. The ehrekh were not like the men and women of the desert. They were covetous things, crafted by the hand of a wicked god. It was said that each had been made by Goezhen himself, and that their personalities had been influenced by the mood of the god of chaos at the time of their creation. Some few were benevolent spirits, created when Goezhen was in a rare, charitable mood. Others were tricksters, inheriting the mischievous traits Goezhen was sometimes known for. A good many, however, were
vicious and sadistic, the qualities most often attributed to Goezhen, and it took no great amount of deduction to figure which flavor Goezhen had served up when he'd made Rümayesh.

But why come for Çeda? And why now? Çeda had been there in the desert when, with Brama's and Çeda's help, Rümayesh had been reborn, effectively freeing her from the clutches of Hidi and Makuo, the godling twins. Makuo had died in that struggle, but cruel Hidi had been left alive, and Rümayesh had taken him, surely to enjoy her revenge in as many inventive ways as possible. Likely weeks or even months had passed before she'd finally tired of torturing Hidi and given him back to the desert. She may have felt some loyalty to Çeda for her part in defeating the trickster boys, but all things fade, including feelings of debt and gratitude. Wasn't that a lesson taught again and again in the old tales?

And now here she was: prey once more. But she would play the part of the victim no longer.

Somewhere in the desert, a jackal yipped, a sound followed closely by the laugh of a bone crusher, the rangy hyenas that plagued the desert. A scuffle followed, then silence, though who the victor might have been, Çeda had no idea.

At last, within Ibrahim's house a lantern was struck, making the interior of the small mudbrick home glow with amber light. She saw Ibrahim's crook-backed
silhouette a moment later, the light dimming as he shuffled to the back of his home, perhaps to eat a bit of cumin bread, a bit of herbed goat cheese, before wandering through the city to collect coin for his stories.

Çeda stole around to the back of the house, then scratched at his back door. “Ibrahim.”

The sounds of scraping came, an old man shuffling over stone tiles. The door opened, and Çeda squinted from the suddenly bright light of the lantern he held in one hand.

“Who's there?”

This came not from Ibrahim, but from the shadowed form of a woman standing deeper in their home.

“Back to bed, my love. It's only a lost little wren.”

“Don't forget your limes today.”

“I won't,” Ibrahim replied.

“It helps with the gout.”

“I won't forget,” he repeated, his annoyance poorly concealed, and the dark form receded like an appeased revenant. Ibrahim turned back to Çeda and waved her in. “Come.”

“It would be better if we spoke outside.”

“I'll not speak without my tea.” Ibrahim glanced back toward the open doorway, then whispered, “As well as my lime.”

He motioned her to a table with three chairs around
it. The mosaic worked into the tabletop—an amberlark, its wings spread wide—reminded Çeda of Blackthorn's armor. She sat as Ibrahim stoked the coals in the potbellied stove and poured water into a copper kettle. He worked in silence, and for a time Çeda was glad for it. Her mind had been a fire running wild, each fear fanning the next, like embers on the wind, steadily widening the blaze. Seeing Ibrahim go through this simple morning ritual, and the smell of the fermented tea leaves as they steeped, gave her a sense of normalcy. She knew it to be false, and yet it was a place of calm, a respite from the storm, so that by the time Ibrahim set a cup of steaming, jasmine-scented tea before her, she actually hoped she might be able to do something about this.

After setting down his own cup of tea, and a small plate with a lime cut in two, Ibrahim squeezed one of the lime halves into his own tea and the other into hers. She was about to protest when he leaned down and shushed her. “It helps with the gout.” That done, he lowered himself into an empty chair, cradled his teacup in both hands, and regarded Çeda with expressive eyes and a gap-toothed grin. “Now, what can Sharakhai's oldest and wisest storyteller do for Çedamihn, daughter of Ahyanesh?”

Çeda didn't answer for a time. She held the tea to her nose and breathed deeply, allowing the name of her mother to tease memories of her first sips of tea years ago.
It was a sweet memory, more than enough to mellow the citrus taste of the brew.

Ibrahim studied her while sipping. His eyebrows pinched from time to time, but he said nothing. He merely waited.

“Do you remember when I came to you at the bazaar and asked you of the ehrekh?” she finally asked. As his smile faded, she continued, “I was being haunted by one in my dreams. I found her and freed her in order to free myself. I thought she might be grateful, that she might leave me alone, but now she's of a mind that I'm hers to do with as she pleases. She came to me as Brama only yesterday, in disguise, and said . . .”

Çeda stopped, knowing that she was moving too quickly, that Ibrahim wouldn't understand.

“Why don't you start at the beginning?” he suggested.

She wanted to. She wanted tell him everything. If there was anyone in the west end who might be able to help her, it was Ibrahim. “You can tell no one of this.”

“It is between you and me.”

“I'm deadly serious, Ibrahim. You can tell no one.”

Ibrahim reached out and brushed his hand against her cheek. “There are stories and there are stories, Çeda. Some are meant to be shared far and wide. These are the stories that lift. That bind. Or that cause fear where we should be afraid. Those sorts of stories keep us as one and
remind us of who we are. And then there are those that infect, that poison. Trust me to know the difference between the two.”