The Kingdoms of Dust (8 page)

Ahmar’s hands bore the marks of her office: ink-stained nails and knuckles swollen with bee stings, as well as the blood-black ruby and honey-colored topaz in her rings. Ash streaked her fingers, smudged his skin in turn. At her touch he felt strength and quiet power—sanctity, the church would say, the Sun’s blessing. Asheris suspected it was merely a talent for magic turned inward with meditation. He also felt the usual frisson of being in the presence of the church; if the priests knew his true nature he would be banished or worse, and all who sheltered him cast out as heretics.

Another scarlet figure stood behind her, this one veiled and armed. The Khajirite Order—red pilgrims, they were more often called—was the strong sword-arm of the church. They guarded powerful clergy and poor faithful alike, and protected distant villages from the threat of demons or hungry spirits. And, more rarely, they gathered to serve the Illumined Chair’s will, a fierce red army that gave even imperial generals pause. This pilgrim stood silently with her hands clasped, but the sword-hilt at her shoulder and ivory-hilted jabiya in her belt spoke eloquently enough.

For one Khajiri to attend the Asalar was nothing unusual, except that Ahmar had visited the palace many times with far less deadly accompaniment.

“I came to speak to the empress,” Ahmar said, “but found her otherwise engaged. So now I wait.”

“Is there anything I can do to help, Your Radiance?”

“I’m afraid not, unless you wish to add your voice to our cause.”

For over a year, the church had petitioned the empress for a grant of land. Such gifts weren’t uncommon—the church owned farmland and forests and salt mines, the profits of which allowed it to thrive. This time, however, the Illumined Chair wanted part of the southern border, in the jungles of Iseth. Rich land, and well positioned to bring in new followers, which in turn meant fresh funds.

It would also mean more imperial troops needed to protect the new temples, and fresh unpleasantness with the native tribes. Samar had promised a halt to expansion when she took the throne, less money spent on war and fewer soldiers dying far from home. After three generations of emperors eager to expand their realm it was a welcome change, especially to poor families whose children swelled the army’s ranks.

Asheris had no desire to see the Unconquered Sun drive any more spirits from their homes. If the church’s power grew, the Fata would wither as dry and lifeless as the Sea of Glass.

“Mine is not a voice Her Majesty would give weight to in such matters,” he said. The taste of smoke and spices coated his tongue, and his pulse beat hard in his temples.

“False modesty doesn’t become you,” Ahmar said with a narrow smile. “All know you’re the empress’s closest advisor.”

Pet mage
was what he was more often called. He walked a careful wire in the Court of Lions, making friends and alliances so as not to draw dangerous rumors, but not letting anyone close enough to threaten his secrets. Some knew the sort of work he had performed for the last emperor in Sivahra, but many younger members of the court assumed Samar kept him close for the same reasons she did Siddir: pretty eyes and flattery. Asheris tried not to disabuse them of the notion.

It’s only the truth, is it not? A kept pet. Just because Samar doesn’t make you wear a collar doesn’t mean your wings aren’t clipped.

He shook his head against the bitter voice. Ahmar cocked an eyebrow. “Excuse me,” he said. “The sun—” He was a desert creature, more than any mortal could be, but today the heat seemed unusually fierce.

“Yes. It is scorching, isn’t it? Perhaps we should find some shade.” She rose, shaking her robes smooth, and started down the garden path. Asheris fell in beside her, while the silent Khajiri walked several paces behind.

“Have the temple apiaries recovered from the storm?” he asked, gathering his sunstruck wits.

Ahmar’s expression darkened. “Not yet. It was a terrible thing. We lost so many hives. But we have new queens—we’ll rebuild.”

Innocent enough, but the words disquieted him. The high priestess was old and frail, and as close to holiness as Asheris had ever seen a mortal come. She was shrewd as well, but he’d never known her to dabble in secular matters. Not all priests were so unworldly in their designs. When Mehridad died, Ahmar would be among the candidates for the Illumined Chair. Her election would not make for a placid relationship between church and state.

“I’m told you’ve taken an interest in this ghost wind,” Ahmar said, her eyes narrowing.

“I saw the worst of the storm. It was…memorable. I want to learn its cause.”

“Yes. I imagine so.” She slowed as they neared the gated arch that led back to the palace proper. “I hear you’ve sent for a specialist in such matters.”

Asheris’s eyebrows climbed and he slid his hands into opposite sleeves to hide his tension. It was no surprise to learn the church had agents in the palace, but he and Siddir had been very circumspect in their plans. “Your hearing is keen, Your Radiance. Yes. An old colleague of mine from Selafai. She has experience in these things.”

“A necromancer.” Her dusky lips pursed in distaste.

“Who else would one call, for a ghost? Or a ghost wind.”

“The church also has its experts.” She tilted her head toward her Khajiri shadow.

Knowing how to destroy something wasn’t the same as understanding it. He kept his sharp reply to himself, but she read it in his face.

“I have only respect for the learning of the university mages, Lord al Seth, and for your judgment. But still I’ll risk a word of advice.” Her dark eyes pinned him, calm and cool. “The Fata is treacherous, as is necromancy and any traffic with spirits. Carelessness therewith is how abominations are made. Be judicious with your involvement.”

She knows
, he thought, and his blood chilled. How could she, though? And if she did, why not act? The church would never countenance a demon in the city, let alone one standing near the throne.

If she knew what he was, that knowledge was a knife at his throat, and at Samar’s.

“I should return to the temple,” Ahmar said, pausing at the gate. “As you’ve reminded me, the apiaries need my attention more than matters of land. My discussion with Her Highness can wait a few more days. A pleasure as always, Lord al Seth.” She offered her hand and he bowed over it once more; his lips were numb as he pressed them to her ring. “I’m sure we’ll speak again soon.”

“I’m certain, Your Radiance,” he murmured.

He resisted the urge to scrub sweat and ash off his hands. The Asalar and her guard vanished into the shadow of the palace, leaving him alone in the heat and haze of clinging incense.

A
fternoon brought Asheris no peace. The sun’s heat lingered in his flesh, and neither shade nor chilled wine nor flavored ices could soothe it. His limbs felt clumsy and wrong; the thought of food revolted him, as did the sensation of blood pumping through flesh. He hadn’t felt like this since Jirair and the emperor’s mages first laid the binding on him. The sight of himself in the mirror—wingless, soft, dull as spent cinders—made him want to scream. Only the knowledge that he would hear a human cry and not a raptor’s shriek kept him silent.

He should speak to Samar. The Asalar’s threat couldn’t go unanswered. He had sworn the empress an oath when he accepted her offer of employment. Not the sort that could break a mage’s power if forsworn, but honor meant something to men and jinn alike, and he had no desire to surrender his for cowardice.

But he couldn’t face another conversation with mortals. Another hour spent pretending to be tame.

Pretending?
mocked the bitter voice inside him.

When the midnight bells faded and the fever in his brain hadn’t cooled, Asheris wrapped himself in a threadbare burnous and spells of invisibility and left the palace through a servant’s gate. A visit to a night bazaar fetched him what he needed; a satchel swung heavy at his hip when he left.

He might be mad, but not yet foolish: He took a circuitous route through the city, twisting and doubling back till he was satisfied he wasn’t followed. Only then did he turn west, toward the outskirts of Ta’ashlan.

He would never have permitted himself an errand like this before the ghost wind struck. Should word of it reach the court, not even his position as the empress’s pet would protect him from the scandal. Although if Ahmar truly knew his secret…

What could they do against the Asalar, the second most powerful figurehead of the church? Assassins could find their way inside temples as easily as palaces, but a bloody schism between the Lion Throne and the Illumined Chair was the last thing Samar needed her reign remembered by.

Why did he care? The scheming of men had made him a demon, cast out of the glass towers of Mazikeen and anathema to the people he now lived among. The last emperor’s greed had enslaved him—why serve his replacement? Because she offered him scraps and a place to sleep?

Such kindness turned wolves to dogs.

He passed under the arch of the aqueduct gate, noting the drowsing guard with grim amusement. The smell of wet seeped through the stone. This was the final ring of walls. Beyond, houses and farms and shops swept out from the city, tattered as the hem of a beggar’s robe. Especially tattered here to the west—no one wanted a view of Qarafis. The dead city.

In the shadow of the outer wall he halted, stretching out his senses to be sure no one had crept up during his moment of distraction. He felt the dull spark of the sleeping guard, and hundreds of others clustered in nearby buildings—some brighter with health or magic, some flickering like fireflies as death drew near. He had grown used to the stench of the city, but now it rolled over him with the strength of a khamsin: warm flesh, washed and unwashed; the piss and excrement of men and beasts; spices and cooking grease; seared meat and plants; the pungency of hay and horse-flesh from a nearby stable.

Asheris shook his head against a sneeze and turned away. The breeze from the west smelled of old stone and old death, the distant sweetness of the River Ash. Clean and soothing after the miasma of the living city.

The necropolis began far from the last houses, a walled cemetery half a river-measure in length. Beyond the walls of Qarafis, scrubby hills rolled toward the Ash, and beyond that lay the burning expanse of Al-Reshara. And farther still, the shining towers of Mazikeen.

The city of glass was barred to him. The city of the dead was not.

Qarafis housed more than old bones and jackals. Mortals lived in the northern tip of the sprawl of tombs. Morticians—funeral workers and those mages for whom the cold call of necromancy was too strong to ignore. They dwelled in repurposed tombs, raised livestock and crops between mausoleums; only here, with only each other and the dead for company, could they put aside the veils and wrappings that they wore among the living.

Would Isyllt retire here when the empress had no further use for her? Perhaps he would join her, when his unchanging youth could no longer be disguised.

The gates of Qarafis stood open even in the dead of night. Death, after all, could not be bound or barred. The twisted branches of a salt cedar tangled in one half of the tall iron gate.

Tombs clustered close inside, curving domes and beehives beside octagonal mausoleums and small square crypts, punctuated by the sharp spikes of obelisks. One broad avenue led into the center of the necropolis—the other paths were narrow and winding, treacherous with broken stones and tangled weeds. The moon was setting and a veil of dust dimmed the stars. Even to inhuman eyes, the cemetery was a collection of shadows and jumbled black shapes. A cat cried nearby, and the shrill warble of a jackal rose in the distance.

Asheris had often wondered why a people who feared the touch of death so much kept graveyards at all, instead of merely burning their dead. Of course, he also wondered why they bothered to fear death, when all mortals were born to it.

After several stubbed toes and unspoken curses, he reached the living quarter. The last milky moonlight bled away and the crypt-houses were dark and silent. Mortals didn’t travel after moonset if they could help it, without even the reflected light of the sun to keep hungry spirits away. If any Fata’im lingered in Qarafis, this was their hour.

In the sea of darkness, one lamp burned.

The lit house stood away from the others, surrounded by the widest yard. Lamplight fell from one small window, as did the smell of blood. Not human blood, as many rumors suggested, but his nape prickled all the same.

Asheris-the-man had heard stories about Raisa the butcher well before he gained a second soul, but discounted them as petty superstition. Afterward, Asheris-the-demon had wondered about the stories, but was too insecure in his mortal guise to follow up on them. The last thing he needed was to be caught speaking with a woman said to be inhuman.

The door of the narrow house stood open to the night, propped with a polished stone. Someone hummed inside. The humming stopped when Asheris rapped on the door frame, and a woman’s voice invited him in.

A curtain divided the long room. The front was clean and homey, if cramped. Rugs and cushions softened the floor, and a narrow couch lay against one wall. Dry herbs and polished chimes hung from the ceiling; the cracked plaster had been painted recently, a rich blue. Niches in the walls once meant for coffins were now stuffed with books and lamps and jars of beans and honey.

The curtain parted and a woman stepped through, bringing the smell of blood with her. A veil covered her face, though her sleeves were rolled up and her hands streaked with red. Gore smeared her apron, but her white robes beneath it were immaculate. Her skin was a pale brown, like tea with too much milk, her long eyes an indeterminate shade of sandy taupe, framed by thick sooty lashes.

“Well.” Her eyes narrowed as she inspected him; creases spread at their corners, but her arms were sinewy and firm. He couldn’t guess her age. “When the jackals told me a stranger was coming, I wasn’t sure what to expect. You’re not here to rob me, are you?” Her voice was low and smoky and veined with amusement.

“I’m not, mistress.” He bowed low, and his satchel slid forward off his hip. “In fact, I brought gifts, to lessen my imposition at such an hour.”

“Mistress? Gifts? Perhaps you have the wrong crypt. You do realize I’m an untouchable and a carnifex, not a perfumed courtier?”

“If you’re Raisa, then I have the right address. No one’s station is an excuse for rudeness. Though you must forgive me if I don’t kiss your hands.”

She looked down at her bloody hands and laughed; her nails were long and very thick. Asheris fought down an anticipatory shiver—if the stories were true, her human guise was one of the best he’d ever seen.

Soft parcels dented under his fingers as he knelt to unpack his bag. The bitter richness of organ meat perfumed the air. Sweetbreads—lamb’s heart and calf’s cheek and beef tongue. A carven box held incense, sandalwood and labdanum and sticky dragon’s blood. Blood and smoke, traditional gifts to the Fata’im.

“Lovely,” Raisa said, “but don’t you know that human meat is sweeter?” Her eyes glinted.

“So I’ve heard, but I’m afraid this was the best I could manage. They count the humans, you see, in case one goes missing.”

Raisa’s white-veiled head tilted with her laugh. The Fata rippled with the sound, a quicksilver flicker. Asheris’s heart climbed in his chest.

“Sit,” she bade him when her shoulders stilled. “I’ll put these on ice.”

She returned clean-handed and without the apron, carrying a bottle of wine and two goblets on a tray. Nothing rattled as she sank into a cross-legged seat. “You’ve brought me fine gifts, but not yet given your name. Would you think me greedy for asking it?”

“No, mistress. But will you permit me to close the door? My business tonight is not for stray ears.”

Golden-grey eyes regarded him for a moment. “As you wish. We in Qarafis understand discretion.”

The room warmed quickly with the door shut. Raisa turned down the lamp flame and lit a candle instead. From that in turn she lit a cone of incense and dropped it in a brazier. Smoke rose in lazy coils, musky resin mingling with the scent of blood and wine.

The smell reminded him of Ahmar’s cold smile. Of Jirair’s smile so many years ago. His throat closed beneath the ghost of a collar as he knelt before Raisa.

“My name is Asheris al Seth,” he said, marking the quirk of her eyebrow. He was in this too far to back out now. “And I make one final gift to you, and pray you keep it.”

Bowing his head, Asheris uncased his wings. Their light rose to fill the narrow house, pinions brushing plaster walls. He waited for a scream, a curse, anything to prove him wrong, to prove him doomed.

Instead Raisa let out a long breath. “Oh,
serafi
,” she whispered. “What have you done?”

Serafi
. Burning one. Most jinn would say he was no longer worthy of such an epithet, but his heart-of-fire flickered all the same.

“It was not of my choosing.” He blinked prickling human eyes. “Now I merely make the best of it.”

“We tell stories of you in Carathis,” she breathed. “The lost jinni. I thought you were only a parable against mortal treachery.” Her veil rippled with an indrawn breath and she rocked back on her heels. “Or are you a lure for it?”

Asheris spread his hands. “No trap, I swear it. On the Tree of Sirité I swear.” The jinn oath came clumsy to his tongue, but Raisa relaxed to hear it. “I only want answers, and the pleasure of your company.” He tried to reclaim his easy tone; she was the first spirit he’d seen since he returned from Symir, the first to speak to him in far longer. He would have lain his head in her lap and wept, if either of their dignities could have borne it.

“Then sit and drink. But put those away,” she said, gesturing to his wings, “before you set the rugs on fire.”

“Yes, mistress.” Preternatural feathers furled and vanished once more into flesh, but he felt them still, like the phantom of severed limbs.

She snorted. “Call me Raisa.”

She poured wine, the line of her wrist as elegant as any courtier’s. Though jinn often made jokes about the grace and breeding of ghuls, Asheris remembered a delegation from the Bone Queen sent to Mazikeen. He had danced with a ghul maiden at the ball in their honor, and she had been as graceful as any jinni on her clawed toes.

The wine was a good one, a rich Chassut red. Raisa frowned at her cup before she drank, and finally reached for the pin that held her veil in place. “Since you’ve been so forthcoming with me,
serafi
, I’ll return the favor.” She drew the cloth aside, revealing the face of a beautiful woman of middle years, black-lipped like a dog. Her smile bared delicate fangs. Unlike his perfect human prison, a spirit’s guise would always have a flaw. “It’s such a relief not to drink under that accursed thing. Red wine stains worse than blood.”

“Asheris, please.” He paused. “How have you lived here so long? And why?”

“The fear and isolation help. My neighbors may suspect something, but they’re inclined to overlook any peculiarities. They certainly won’t invite the Unconquered Sun in to look for heretics. As to why—” She smiled over the rim of her goblet. “Would you like a sad, romantic story? Perhaps I loved the Bone Queen’s daughter, above my station. For my hubris I was exiled, to make my way on the surface alone. Or maybe I’m a spy.”

Asheris returned the smile, but the idea of ghul scouts advancing on Ta’ashlan sent a chill snaking down his back. He didn’t press the question.

They drank in silence for a time, until Raisa set down her cup. “You said you wanted answers. What are you hunting, besides the truth of me?”

“The ghost wind. And the mages called the quiet men.”

Black lips pursed. “Dangerous prey. Both of them.”

“What do you know of either?”

“Rumor and speculation. Legends and ancient history. And perhaps a bit of truth. My people are curious, after all, and less…insular than yours.” She shrugged apologetically, but it was true.

“A bit of truth is more than I have. Will you tell me?”

She touched her tongue to her upper lip in a pensive gesture. “Why not?” she said at last. “We have hours yet till dawn.” She refilled both their cups and sat back on the cushions.

“Centuries ago, long before the birth of Queen Assar, Al-Reshara was called the kingdom of Aaliban…”

Raisa filled the night with stories, till Asheris thought his head would split from their weight. Some were familiar tales, told to fledgling jinn in their rookeries, but with a foreign slant. Others were entirely strange. Some might indeed have been true, and those terrified him more than any retold haunting or cataclysm. The wine ran out long before her words.