Sandstorm (35 page)

The pasha instantly forgot his meal and his guests. He leaped to his feet. “Excellent! Excellent news, old friend! Let him go, you fools!” The pasha rushed across the room and grasped the other man’s forearm. “I never doubted you!”

The other man laughed. “You never believed I would succeed for a moment. Their wills are legend. I wonder if you’ll be so happy when you learn how much of your gold I spent with the pasha of apothecaries.”

The pasha of games shrugged. “No matter. Your timing is exquisite. I have the perfect opponent lined up.” He whirled to the nearest slave. “Find Shahrokh. Tell him to send criers to the pits and messengers to the great houses. We will have a memorable game tonight!”

With that, he and the other man rushed from the room, leaving Cephas and Ariella to stare after them.

Cephas had learned much from the many people he’d met since he left Jazeerijah.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a liar or not, el Arhapan, he thought. It doesn’t even matter if you’re the man who sired me. What matters is that you’re the master of games.

Cephas shoved the table away and stood. “We have to find Shan.”

Corvus followed the halfling man down a circular staircase beneath a concealed trapdoor. At the bottom of the steps, they found themselves in a broad passageway floored and walled with drystone brickwork of a type unlike any Corvus had seen in Calimport Between.

He said, “
This
is Calimport Below.”

“Yeah,” said the maskmaker. “Good call, bird-head man. This is the Muzhahajaarnadah, or part of it, anyway. The genasi co-opted its most famous nickname when they built their city in the sky. Most of us call it the Muzad. We’re going this way.”

After many twists and turns, they came to an iron-bound door guarded by a pair of human men, only one of whom, Corvus noticed, bore a tattoo. They obviously recognized the halfling but still halted him with the tips of their spears. “You have to pay for entry, halfling,” the tattooed man said. “Same as always.”

The halfling shrugged and fished a copper coin from a pouch at his belt. “I have a coin,” he said to the guard. From his tone, Corvus decided the statement was something like a password.

“A coin has value,” said the tattooed guard, and palmed the copper.

The two humans turned their attention to Corvus, who reflexively reached for his breast feathers, then ruefully made a quick inventory of the sum total of his worldly goods. The sisters’ masks were in his pail, and Tobin’s larger mask was tucked beneath his arm.

“It ain’t the kind of exchange where you lose something,
bird-head man,” said the halfling. “The price of admission is returned, as long as it’s something you truly value.”

All three of the Calimien waited, having offered all the guidance they intended. Corvus considered the maskmaker’s words. He took the larger mask from beneath his arm and held it out awkwardly in one hand, balancing it against the weight of the pail he held out with the other.

“I have friends,” he said.

The man who accepted the halfling’s coin nodded. “Friends have value.” He set down his spear. He took the larger mask, holding it very carefully. “Especially friends like the Hammer That Falls.”

The other man opened the door as his partner returned the mask and the copper coin. The chamber beyond was lit with many lanterns, and carpeted with many rugs. A number of people sat inside, drinking tea.

“Corvus!” one of them called, and jumped to his feet. Tobin wore the same kind of shift as Corvus did and had a cushion tied to the top of his head with a length of twine. The cushion’s purpose became obvious when the goliath, on standing, knocked his head against the low stone ceiling. If he felt it, he made no sign. He rushed across the room and gathered Corvus in his huge arms. “I never doubted you would come!”

Corvus held his breath against Tobin’s hug for a moment, then said, “I have not always deserved your faith in me, Tobin Tok Tor, but I swear I will earn it now. I swear this on stone.”

A number of mutters and hisses from the others in the room caused Corvus to look to his halfling guide.

The small man nodded at Tobin. “That there’s the Hammer That Falls. We don’t know that name you used. We don’t want to know it.”

Corvus retraced his memory. “You never told me your name,” he said.

“And you never told me yours. I guessed it, bird-head man, and haven’t used it since. I got no plans to offer up mine or invite you to guess. We don’t use names. That man guarding the door, the one who didn’t talk? Been married to my sister for fifteen years and I got no idea what his name is.”

Corvus considered that. “Does
she
know his name?”

“How should I know?” the halfling answered. “Last I heard, they live down by the docks where I can’t go. I’d have to send a letter to ask, and I wouldn’t know who to address it to, now would I?”

Other than the two companions and the halfling man, there were a half-dozen people in the room, evenly divided by gender and representing a gamut of races and roles across Emirate life.

Corvus identified a man who bore no tattoo, but who did wear the symbol of the Crying God as a priest of Ilmater, a member of the only clergy still active in the Skyfire Emirates. A dwarf woman next to Tobin’s place in the circle was obviously a gladiator, and the man next to her wore silks like those of the courtiers in the el Arhapan palace. This man was a firesouled genasi, but Corvus had no doubt he expressed windsoul when he was in Calimport Above. The other three were all slaves, a pair of human women and another halfling man; this one with a demeanor so forgettable that Corvus was sure it had taken years to perfect.

Finally, he said, “You’re Janessar. A resistance cell.”

The maskmaker shrugged and took a cup of tea. “That ain’t a particular person’s name,” he said. “That’s a name lots of folks have heard.”

Fair enough, thought Corvus. He leaned over and removed the masks from his pail. “Whoever you are,” he
said, “if you are foes of the genasi of Calimport Above and dedicated to the freeing of slaves, you should know that my intention is to leave this city, and soon. When I go, I will take the Hammer here with me, and a windsouled couple now in the el Arhapan palace. And I will take the women whose masks these are.”

He laid them side by side, scowl and smile.

None of them, not even Tobin, responded.

Eventually, the maskmaker inhaled deeply, then sighed long and loud. “You were right earlier. When you said I’d think you a fool and that I’d heard all kinds of crazy escape talk before. Half right, anyway. I never met a fool quite so big, or heard talk quite so crazy.”

It was Tobin who answered. “We will do it without you, then,” he said.

The halfling looked at his companions. Again, he shrugged.

The dwarf woman next to Tobin leaned in and tapped her split fingernail on Shan’s mask. “This one is with the dressers—has been all afternoon. They’re measuring her for leathers and laying out blades for her to choose from. She doesn’t talk, like the first one, but she hasn’t killed any of the overseers. The stablemasters think they’ve been given a second shot at glory—this one is more like a gladiator than her sister. There are a lot of windsouled around her. Difficult to spring, but perhaps not impossible.”

The firesouled man said, “I can get a message to the heir and the Akanûlan woman, but little more. The master of games has allowed them their weapons, though, and they seem capable. Perhaps if there was a coordinated effort.”

Corvus clicked his tongue. “But this is excellent news!” he said. He pointed to the other mask. “What about Cynda?”

Tobin sniffed. “That is why I was here talking to them, Cor—bird-head man. I have come every day for five days.
They will not help me find her, because they believe she is dead.”

The maskmaker looked at Tobin, the expression of sympathy on his face the first sign of anything but artful distance Corvus had noted there. “The ones that get taken up to the Spiritbreaker always come back in a few turns of the glass, Hammer, a day at most. When did she kill that last overseer? Six days ago? Seven?”

Unaccountably, Tobin grinned at Corvus. “See, this is the sticking point, and they will not budge on it. You will be very impressed with me, Ringmaster. I have spotted a flaw in their logic.”

Corvus had as well. “I’m guessing that recalcitrant fighters are taken to some arcanist or dark priest who charms them,” he said. “The strongest of them last little time before they are returned and take up arms on the sand, but our friend never came back. You believe this means she did not survive whatever spells were laid on her.”

The Ilmatari priest spoke for the first time. “Or they killed her when her resistances proved too expensive to overcome. They would have measured her value in the arena against the cost of forcing her to fight. I am sorry, kenku. The Hammer That Falls has spoken of your friend at great length, and it is clear that hers was a rare and gentle soul.”

Corvus nodded. “Rare and gentle and possessed of a greater strength of will than all of us in this room combined. You believe she set a precedent in resisting them until she died. I tell you the precedent is something more than that. She resists them still. El Arhapan is a sadist and an obsessive, and probably the finest judge of fighters in all Faerûn. He will go to any length to break Cynda’s will, and she will go to any length to resist. And survive. She lives. I assure you, she lives.”

The maskmaker spread his hands. He asked, “What do you want us to do?”

Cephas and Ariella quickly established the boundaries of their luxurious prison. They were confined to one wing of the el Arhapan manor, but they soon learned that left a lot of room to cover.

“Four suites of private rooms, including our two,” said Cephas. “The dining chamber, two or three rooms full of couches and cushions, a half-dozen verandas and balconies. And whatever this place is.”

Ariella did not turn from her careful study of the map that made up the floor in the final room they had explored. It showed the city and its environs as far east as the Plain of Stone Spiders and as far west as a wavering line running from the Marching Mountains in the North all the way to the sea in the South. “The disputed boundary between Calimien and Memnonar influence,” she said.

At least they were no longer troubled by the slaves and servants who had initially followed their every step, offering refreshments, baths, or intimate companionship. These men and women greeted Cephas’s attempt to recruit them in an escape attempt with confusion that turned to anger when he persisted. Finally, he himself grew angry enough to chase the staff through a door he and Ariella were denied passage through by an implacable djinni sorcerer who, Ariella advised, was better ignored than engaged.

Now, once again wearing their armor over the simplest clothes they could find, they studied the contents of el Arhapan’s map room.

“I see where Manshaka is meant to be,” said Ariella. “And I suppose this glyph indicates the ruins of Schamedar. But what are these numbers in the deep desert east of the Calim River, beyond the Crying God’s Redoubt at Kelter?”

“I believe I know,” said Cephas. “Corvus said el Arhapan leaves the city only to travel to Manshaka or to training camps in the desert. And see, the glyphs for that city are the only ones besides the numbers picked out in gemstones. They look like the symbols around Corvus’s platform.”

“Of course!” said Ariella. “This is not a map. It’s a teleportation circle. An ornate one, designed for just a few locative combinations. That is, if we’re to believe what the kenku said about those camps.”

Before Cephas could answer, a windsouled courtier flew through the open window. Cephas brought his flail up into a ready position, but, to his shock, the man appeared to catch fire.

“He’s transitioning to firesouled!” said Ariella.

“Cephas Earthsouled,” the man said. “Listen. If you are your mother’s son and not your father’s, the house of el Arhapan must fall. Find the foundation stone, and remember the fire at Argentor.”

The man’s skin shifted from silver to burnished copper, and his crystalline hair burned away in flames that persisted around his scalp. “Ariella Kulmina. I am not the only firesouled hidden in this house.”