The Kingdoms of Dust (7 page)

A murmur of voices rose from the hall, faded again. Heartbeats thudded by till she lost count. Her mouth was dry, and she drained half the cold tea in her cup. Her arm ached with the effort of making the movement seem relaxed. Even the new weight in her diamond didn’t reassure her as it should.

Isyllt imagined half an hour or more passed before she heard footsteps in the hall again. The door opened, and lamplight warmed the curve of Sahin’s skull. His face was calm, but his shoulders and jaw were tighter than they had been when he left. His smile was tighter still.

“It seems that not everyone wants you buried.”

Another set of footsteps approached—uneven steps, accompanied by the click of a cane. Sahin stepped aside for a hooded man. The light from the hall cast his face in shadow.

“My lord?” Sahin asked when the man stayed silent. He spoke in Assari, and Isyllt’s skin prickled.

“Excuse me.” One brown hand rose to throw back his hood. “I was waiting for an explosion.”

Adam swore under his breath a heartbeat before Isyllt laughed. A name rose to her lips and she swallowed it. “My lord. Imagine meeting you here.”

She had met Siddir Bashari in Sivahra, where he’d worn the guise of an insouciant nobleman, all silk and oiled curls. He wore plain linen now, and his dark hair was cropped short. He’d grown a beard, but the laughing hazel eyes were the same. An Assari spy shouldn’t be a comforting sight, but her smile made her cheeks ache. On the heels of her relief, a cold weight settled in her stomach. It felt like a snare closing.

Sahin watched them, sharp-eyed as the falcon that was his namesake. Assar had made incursions northward for centuries, first rebuffed by the Steppes horselords and later driven back by the navies of the Ataskar Caliphate. Subsequent generations had made peace, but kingdoms had long memories. Sahin might yield to an Assari agent, but he would never enjoy it.

“Lady Iskaldur.” Siddir offered a hand and she rose to take it, relief overpowering her misgivings for the moment. “A mutual friend sent me to find you. Will you come?”

Her smile sharpened. “I find myself with few options.”

He bowed, as gracious as if he hadn’t just backed her into a corner. “Thank you.”

“Convenient timing,” she said as they descended the steps of the Susturma Serai into the sticky night. Her kit was a reassuring weight at her hip. “Or did you orchestrate this all?” The scales of relief and distrust shifted every time she glanced at him; they would balance eventually, she supposed. They had to, in their work.

She snorted in soft disgust; how easily this became her work again.

Siddir’s eyes widened, all innocence. No grown man should have eyes like that. “We only arrived in port this morning. It’s both our good luck that one of my contacts heard of a northern sorceress being apprehended by the Friends this afternoon.”

“Very convenient.”

“Let’s call it
fortuitous
. And let’s be on our way.” The ferrule of his cane clicked against the stones. “Too much serendipity gives me a rash.”

Hours later, Isyllt stood on the quay with Moth and Adam, watching the
Marid
prepare to sail. The perfume bottle warmed in her hand, blown glass swirled with blue and violet ribbons, delicate as a soap bubble. The woman in black’s taunting gift. Isyllt wanted to fling it against the boards, or into the sea, but it was too lovely a thing to waste in pettiness.

“You don’t have to come with me,” she said, soft beneath the slow lapping of the tide and the sailors’ shouts.

Moth snorted contempt for the idea, but her eyes lingered wistfully on the skyline. It was Adam’s silence, however, that weighed on her. When it stretched too long Isyllt broke and turned to face him. Green eyes narrowed as he studied her in turn. Moth glanced at each of them and edged quietly away to talk to a young sailor.

The sea breathed over them, cool and damp and bitter with brine. Adam’s face was lost in shadow, save for the glint of his night-shining eyes. She read the tension in his shoulders, in the tightness of his hand on his sword-hilt.

“Will you come?” she asked at last, swallowing her pride. “I can pay you for a month of your time, longer if Asheris pays me.”

“I’ve wondered,” he said, the words coming slowly, “how the last three years might have been different if I hadn’t gone with you to Symir.”

Her jaw tightened, the name he didn’t speak leaving a bitter residue on her tongue. Xinai Lin. His partner and lover, who’d sailed with them to Symir and abandoned him there to rejoin her rebel family. Adam had left her behind at the end, choosing Isyllt and the mission over a chance at reconciliation.

“I know I’m not the safest person to be around…” She tried to make it a joke, but it was all too true.

Adam chuckled. “Stormcrow. At least I’m not likely to be bored.”

Hope sparked. She drew in a deep breath and let it out. “There’s another thing. Something I haven’t told you.”

“Only one thing?”

“I didn’t just leave the Crown’s service.” She hadn’t explained this to anyone. The words were slow to come. “I broke my oath of service. My magic was bound to that oath—my power broke too. It’s better than it was, but sometimes I have…relapses.”

He frowned. “When were you going to mention this? Before or after we were killed?”

She forced her arms by her sides when they wanted to wrap across her chest. She deserved the acid in his voice. “I thought you should know, just in case.”

“Any other secrets you want to share?”

“None that might get you killed. I think.”

He turned his head, jaw working like he meant to spit. “Spies,” he muttered instead, the word a curse.

She couldn’t argue with that.

“Lady Iskaldur.” She turned to see Siddir gesture toward the gangplank. “We’re ready.” Moth had already shouldered her bags, shifting her weight impatiently. The night was nearly spent, the eastern sky glowing with false dawn.

Adam sighed and hefted his own meager pack. “We can both try not to get each other killed.”

Isyllt felt every hour of the short summer night as she stowed her luggage, but the cabin’s narrow cot offered no comfort. Instead she returned to the deck, leaning against the starboard railing to watch the orange lights of Kehribar dim behind them. The eastern sky pearled with the coming dawn, and the mountains in the north faded from indigo to a whisper of grey.

She didn’t hear footsteps over the creak of ropes and canvas and rush of waves against the hull, but she felt the break in the wind as someone drew near, smelled amber and olibanum and bitter oranges through the ocean’s tang. Her shoulders tightened—even months after she’d tracked and killed the sorceress Phaedra Severos, certain scents brought back the weight of memory. She still couldn’t drink cinnamon tea. The wind changed, and all that remained was the bouquet of brine and decay.

She forced herself to relax as Siddir leaned against the rail beside her. “What happened to your leg?” She’d thought it an affectation at first, but though he’d abandoned his cane he still favored his left leg.

He grimaced. “Blown cover and a bad aim. The bullet was meant for my skull.”

“How long have you been looking for me?” she asked, sifting through the rest of her questions.

“My ship sailed from Sherazad fifteen days ago. We knew you left Thesme heading east. Kehribar was a lucky guess.”

Or a thorough web of contacts. Isyllt knew which one she’d put money on.

“Asheris might have sent a letter instead of a pressgang. I would have come if he’d asked.” She wasn’t sure that was true, but it sounded pleasantly indignant.

“I’m sorry.” If she hadn’t known better, she might have thought him truly contrite. “He felt the situation was too important to trust to the vagaries of the post.” He slitted his eyes against the wind. More grey threaded his hair than four years should account for. She didn’t think he was more than a handful of years older than she, forty at most, but their work could age a person. After the assassin and Sahin and a sleepless night, she felt twice thirty.

“What is the situation?”

He waved a hand. “Oh, the usual—trouble on the borders, unrest in the senate, pressures from the church.”

“You don’t need me for any of those.”

“No. There are…thaumaturgical problems also. I would prefer to let Asheris explain.”

She watched grey water foam against the hull. “How is he?” She had neglected their correspondence since Kiril’s death.

From the corner of her eye she saw Siddir smile. “Well.” He dipped on shoulder in a shrug. “Or as well as he can be, I suppose. He makes the best of his situation.”

Isyllt turned to study him, leaning her hip on the rail. He nodded in answer to her unspoken question. “I know. He told me.”

She cocked an eyebrow. Asheris’s secret, that he was a jinni bound in human flesh—a demon, as such meldings were commonly called—was a dangerous one. She had learned it by chance in Symir, and nearly died for it. “Who else knows?”

“Only the empress.”

The old emperor and his mages had been responsible for the binding. Their deaths had been one of the first things Asheris had done with his freedom. She’d been surprised to hear that he’d gone to work for the new empress, but only for a moment. As Sahin had said, leaving their line of work wasn’t easy, no matter what one’s intentions.

“Thank you,” Siddir said. “For freeing him. He isn’t the man he was, but I have a friend back all the same. For that I am in your debt.” He fell silent for a time, picking at the varnished rail with one fingernail. “I was very sorry to hear about Lord Orfion.”

The words were nearly lost beneath the sound of the sea; she wished they had been. She nodded, the most gracious acceptance she could manage. Siddir turned away, leaving her alone with the salt and rising dawn.

A
cross the wine-dark stretch of the Caelurean Sea, the sun rose on Assar. Over the peaks of the Teeth of Heaven, across the flooded stretch of the River Nilufer, and finally to the domes of Ta’ashlan. As the first rays gilded the temple spires, bells and voices rose to greet the rising light. Paeans to the Unconquered Sun, gratitude for another day. Rich and golden as temple honey, but Asheris took no comfort in the sound. Every note and chime was a reminder that this was not and could never be his home.

Prayers sang out in the palace as well, and servants hurried to their chores, but in the royal apartments shadows and quiet still held sway. The royal family might sleep till noon undisturbed, if they wished. Asheris didn’t think the empress had slept at all.

The curtains were still drawn in Samar’s private breakfast room, though light and song slivered through them. A brass lamp burned in one corner, casting filigreed shadows across the walls.

“I appreciate your adherence to the letter of my command,” Samar said dryly, not glancing up as she poured coffee, “but sending my best agent to retrieve a foreign spy hardly follows the spirit. A spy who helped turn Symir into smoking ash.”

“That wasn’t precisely her fault. Besides, we could use a necromancer on staff.”

“It would keep the court on their toes.” She looked up, hazel-gold eyes narrowing. Bruised and tired without the armor of cosmetics; her sleep had been troubled long before the ghost wind blew. “But when I say I need your attention on more immediate matters”—a manicured nail tapped sharply on the parchments stacked on the breakfast table—“I mean it.”

“The storm may not return for decades,” Asheris said. He sat cross-legged on the far side of the low table, but had not yet touched the food. He wasn’t sure just how angry Samar was. “But return it will, I’m certain. And if it is a problem we can solve, wouldn’t you rather have one less trouble waiting for you? One less waiting for your heirs?”

He regretted the words as soon as he spoke, and prepared to have a cup thrown at him. Her only reaction was the thinning of her lips. Then her shoulders sagged, and she cast a rare unguarded glance over her shoulder, toward the wall that separated her suite from her niece’s. The room was dim, but inhuman eyes saw well in the dark, saw all the doubts and fears she could never bring before the sun.

Samar had been married once. No one at court spoke of it, but all knew the story. When her elder brother Rahal gained the throne, he’d been jealous and insecure in his power. Their eldest brother had already died under questionable circumstances, and no doubt Rahal feared the same fate awaited him.

The accident that befell Samar and her family was equally questionable, though no one could prove the emperor’s involvement. It was also unsuccessful, sparing Samar and claiming instead her husband and young daughter.

When Rahal died and Samar took the throne, the senate agreed she should be empress in truth and not merely regent to her brother’s daughter. But the Princess Indihar was still her best choice for an heir. The discomfort of the situation wasn’t lost on empress or princess, or anyone else in the court. With the birth of Samar’s child, Indihar stood to lose her inheritance again.

“All I want is peace,” Samar murmured, brow creasing. “For the empire, between my family. Why does that seem so impossible?”

Asheris kept his eyes on his empty plate until she turned her gaze to him. Then he shrugged. “Perhaps the nature of empire is inimical to peace.”

There had been no open war in their lives—his mortal life, at least—but conflict always seethed somewhere in Assar. Skirmishes with the tribes of Iseth, or Ninayan ships, or rebels in Sivahra. Bandits like their current plague of warlords harrying the borders. Princes and chieftains who flew the lion banner but kept their former colors bright in their hearts and nursed old grudges. And the constant dynastic infighting that left so many rulers and heirs with troubled sleep.

“If not the nature of empire, then the nature of the world.” Samar smiled wryly. “When did we become so cynical?” She sighed and poured a second cup of coffee.

Plates and papers competed for space on the breakfast table: bread and hummus, honeyed figs and goat cheese, labneh drizzled with mint and olive oil next to reports from border garrisons and sepats. The newest of the troubles that robbed her of sleep.

They ate in silence for a time, ignoring the papers and their news. Asheris appreciated the taste of food again, as he hadn’t for days after the storm. Though as honey melted over his tongue he couldn’t help but think of the ravaged temple apiaries.

“Hamad and his bandits have taken Mamarr Elizar,” Samar finally said, dipping her last triangle of bread into the labneh. “At least three caravans have been lost since. We’ve warned the merchants in the city to seek other routes for the time being, but we can only buy their complacency and silence so long.” She raised her coffee cup in a sardonic toast. “So enjoy this while it lasts.”

Asheris’s mouth twisted, but he raised his cup in answer and drained a long bitter swallow. The southeastern province Zelassa, reached by the Elizar pass, was rich not only in coffee plantations but also sugarcane, qat leaves, and grains. With warlords holding the pass through the Teeth of Heaven, markets in Ta’ashlan would soon feel the lack. Not enough to threaten famine, but shortages would mean rising prices and rising tempers.

“We still have coffee plantations in Sivahra,” he said. “And cane.”

“Yes. I imagine qat grows there well enough, too. That comes with the costs and dangers of shipping, though, and many caravan merchants are too set in their ways to buy ships. My finance ministers are fond of telling me so.”

Asheris sipped lemon water to rinse away the bitter taste of coffee. “Many things must adapt or die.”

Samar chuckled. “I do so love you when you’re ruthless. In the meantime, I suppose we could orchestrate a fondness for northern delicacies. Skarrish lokum, perhaps, though it sticks in my teeth.” Her amusement was short-lived. “I should have killed Hamad and his cronies when I had the chance,” she said, soft and vehement. “Why was I such a fool?”

Asheris shrugged. “Mercy was a welcome change after Rahal. It went over well at the time.”

“And now they’ve come back to plague me.”

Samael Hamad, once a general in the imperial army, had acted as an intermediary for the former emperor, fencing smuggled diamonds from Sivahra without the knowledge of the senate. Rahal, an expansionist like his forefathers, had used the money to fund his armies. One of Samar’s first acts upon taking the throne was to strip Hamad and his co-conspirators of rank and lands and exile them.

Who exactly had bought those diamonds was a question that had long troubled Asheris.

“Back, and well funded.” Hamad had been popular with his soldiers; nearly half of his legion had defected with his exile, joining their commander in outlawry. Asheris and Siddir had kept an eye on them, but mostly the warlord had laid low, robbing caravans now and then and vanishing into the desert wastes.

Until last year, when the bandits’ incursions had redoubled, fiercer and more cunning than ever, and better supplied than many imperial legions. Hamad attacked garrisons and prison caravans, recruiting any who would join him and slaughtering the rest. Merchants whom they didn’t kill they taxed. They seized salt mines and poppy fields, sometimes stripping them bare and riding on, sometimes ransoming them back to their overseers. Survivors from razed villages drifted into neighboring sepats in greater numbers, and the provincial governors demanded action. Samar had kept news of the troubles out of the streets of Ta’ashlan, but that elision couldn’t last.

Hamad, familiar with imperial tactics and with his enemies, had evaded or defeated all the troops sent after him. Age and experience couldn’t explain why no one could scry him out, though—neither Asheris nor any of the army’s battle mages. Survivors’ stories had grown in the telling to include chained beasts aiding the slaughters, or chained monsters. Having heard reports of the carnage from reliable soldiers, he was hesitant to dismiss the tales out of hand. Siddir had attempted to infiltrate a bandit camp to learn more, but his cover had been quickly blown, and he escaped with only an injured leg to show for his efforts.

Samar reached for a fig but set it down again, frowning as if at a sour taste. “This ghost wind. Do you suppose it would swallow up Hamad and his playmates if I asked nicely?”

She asked it jokingly, eyebrows raised, but her eyes were canny and cool. She would do it if she could.

“You’d do as well asking the khamsin or the simoom,” he said, matching her light tone. “We understand them better.”

She stood, pacing a restless circuit around the room before stopping beside a curtained window. “And this necromancer of yours? This entropomancer. Will she understand the storm?”

He read an invitation in the tilt of her head and rose to join her. “She might. And if not, I’ve merely recruited an agent from Selafai. I’m sure you could find a use for such.” Siddir’s message had come an hour ago, whispered to a flame across the sea: He was coming home, with Isyllt.

“Can you control her? I would rather not see a repeat of Symir.”

He drew a breath, tasting the fragrance of rosemary and shea butter in Samar’s hair. Pregnancy had altered her scent, made it richer and sharper, more pungently female. She had taken to wearing perfumes outside her own rooms.

“I believe I can trust her,” he said slowly. “She needs work and safety—we can provide those.” It was a familiar bargain to both of them; he had given Samar the throne, she gave him shelter and purpose.

“Safety?” She snorted indelicately. “You know better than that.”

Asheris shrugged. “I am in her debt.”

The corners of her eyes creased, flecks of amber and tourmaline glinting in her irises. “As I am in yours.” She stroked her knuckles across his cheek, a warmth of affection behind the teasing gesture. The touch lingered. Were he mortal, she might solve her problems by naming him consort. Just as well, then, that his nature made him anathema. His appreciation of women was in the main aesthetic.

Her hand fell. “We are all tangled in webs of alliance and debt, my friend. Never think I don’t value all you’ve done for me.” She tugged the curtain back, and morning sunlight clove the space between them. “But I won’t allow Assar to be threatened by foreign sorcerers any more than warlords or your desert storms. Bring Iskaldur here, and offer her all you wish, but keep hold of her leash.”

Asheris spent the rest of the morning pacing his chambers. He had found only a few more records of the ghost wind since his search began, most redundant or too muddled to be of use. His hunt for rumors of Jirair’s quiet men had fared no better.

He hadn’t yet taken his questions to the university mages, starting instead with the city’s black-market sorcerers. Sand witches and unlicensed vinculators, people who bound little spirits for sale, who would bind your enemy’s soul in a bottle for the right price. He had found answers there, of a sort.

“A myth,” one old woman said, waving a gnarled hand in dismissal. “Stories to frighten foolish thieves and wizards. ‘Keep your head down or the quiet men will find you.’ It’s all nonsense.”

“Don’t say that name!” hissed the next man, a shriveled, pallid sorcerer who might not have left his basement room in years from the look of him. “They have eyes everywhere. They know.” His own eyes had narrowed then, and he spat a warding spell. “This is a test, isn’t it? Get out.”

The last man Asheris spoke to had been saner, thankfully, but no more helpful. “Certainly I’ve heard of these quiet men.” The aging thief-keeper smiled and winked. “My wife’s cousin’s boy did a job for them once. They paid him enough to retire, but whatever he saw that night turned his hair white.”

Asheris had asked no more since, lest he draw attention to his inquiry. Whatever these quiet men truly were, though, he had to believe they existed. And that they knew his secrets.

When the noon prayers rose across the city, pricking him like thorns, he abandoned his fruitless paper chase and fled to the garden. The palace temple had changed incense; it drifted through the halls and arcades, filling his head with cinnamon and clove and bitter patchouli. Not an unpleasant scent, but cloying in its strength. He was grateful to reach the open air of the garden.

The royal gardens were lush and green despite the baking summer heat. Fig trees and pomegranates shaded manicured lawns, along with willows and sprawling tamarisk shrubs. Fountains fed fish-stocked ponds, and exotic lizards and small furred beasts from every end of the empire prowled the grounds. The last tame lioness had died months ago and not yet been replaced. Asheris was just as glad—watching wild things grow fat and slow in gilded collars struck too close to home.

He had thought to be alone in the rising heat; Samar sometimes entertained her courtiers beside the pools, but today she was closeted with advisors. But as he followed the winding, marjoram- and laurel-lined paths toward the center of the garden, he spotted a flash of red through a trellis. Curiosity drew him on, but he paused as he recognized the figure seated beside the pond.

The sanguine sweep of skirts belonged to Ahmar Asalar, keeper of the temple apiaries and personal secretary to the high priestess of the Unconquered Sun. Not someone he expected to find lounging in the gardens. Samar had said nothing of a meeting with her. He would have retreated to learn more, but the Asalar’s companion glanced up at his footfalls. He walked on, unstumbling, and came face-to-face with the priestess.

“Lord al Seth.” The Asalar smiled, as sleek and lovely as ever despite the heat. She was a tall, long-limbed woman with grace that rivaled Samar’s. The gilt-edged scarlet of her formal robes was too strong for her complexion, but her bright eyes and arching dark brows kept her from being washed out. More than faith brought crowds to the temple yard when Ahmar offered the honey alms.

“Your Radiance. An unexpected pleasure.” He bowed over her offered hand; incense clung to her skin and robes as well. The combination of perfume and the sun’s heat left him light-headed.