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The Black Khan
Ausma Zehanat Khan
Book two of Ausma Zehanat Khan’s powerful, unforgettable new series, The Khorasan Archives.Sides must be chosen.Truths must be told.Freedoms will be fought for.To battle the cruel and controlling patriarchal force named the Talisman, members of a resistance group, the Companions of Hira, risked their lives to procure the Bloodprint – a sacred text that holds the power to overthrow this terrifying regime. Though they harnessed the magic known as the Claim, their plans now lie in ashes and their number scattered – with the two women at the centre of the plot – Arian and Sinnia – left facing the most harrowing tortures.Yet hope flickers in the darkness.The Bloodprint survived, secreted to Ashfall, seat of the Black Khan. But the Khan’s court is built upon shifting layers of intrigue and lethal conspiracy, with enemies whose motives are steeped in the shadows. Can the Khan guard the Bloodprint when treachery lurks in the wings and the Talisman gather at his door?The Companions of Hira must reunite, break through Talisman lines, and infiltrate Ashfall to join their ally, The Black Khan. But can his word be trusted?
Copyright (#u110d2d8a-5131-57f2-8ba5-3a5159d504c3)
HarperVoyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2018
Copyright В© Ausma Zehanat Khan 2018
Cover illustration В© Shutterstock.com (http://Shutterstock.com)
Cover design Micaela Alcaino В© HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Maps created by Ashley P. Halsey, inspired by Alesha Shaikh
Ausma Zehanat Khan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008171629
Ebook Edition В© October 2018 ISBN: 9780008171643
Version: 2018-09-17
Dedication (#u110d2d8a-5131-57f2-8ba5-3a5159d504c3)
For Hema,
whose friendship, love, and decency
have saved me all these years
Contents
Cover (#u76db5dad-08db-5793-a029-f038a6a177e3)
Title Page (#ufdca0a22-5b69-54dd-9dda-07ca6ef861fc)
Copyright
Dedication
Maps
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Acknowledgments
Cast of Characters
Glossary of the Khorasan Archives
About the Author
Also by Ausma Zehanat Khan
About the Publisher
Maps (#u110d2d8a-5131-57f2-8ba5-3a5159d504c3)
1 (#u110d2d8a-5131-57f2-8ba5-3a5159d504c3)
IN THE DESERTED COURTYARD OF THE CLAY MINAR, THE BODIES OF BASMACHI fighters were gathered in a pile beneath a stunted tree in the shelter of a square stone base. White ribbons streamed down from the tree’s slender limbs, tied to its branches and twigs. The ribbons were bare of script: the people of Black Aura could not write. The ribbons were meant as a reminder of their sacred traditions; they were desperate, desolate prayers. The bodies piled beneath the tree formed the Authoritan’s answer to those prayers.
No wind stirred the ribbons or the dying branches. Sunlight blunted the edges of Arian’s vision, and she found her way around the tree more by instinct than anything else. She knew she was about to be taken inside the house of worship, just as she knew the Authoritan expected a demonstration of her power, a compulsion she had resisted with all the force and determination she was capable of as a Companion of Hira.
There were only three people in the courtyard: Arian, the Authoritan, and his consort, Lania, Arian’s older sister. Each night since she’d been captured in Black Aura attempting to retrieve the Bloodprint, Lania and the Authoritan had brought Arian to this place. They showed her the stunted tree and the bodies moldering beneath it, then coerced her into entering the blue-domed house of worship to test her abilities with the Claim.
Situated on the eastern side of the square, the dome was the pinnacle of a massive structure. Four arcades met at its doubled entrance, each lined with portals decorated with mosaics and glazed bronze brick. At the entrance to the main portal, a sand-colored octahedron with open arches could be reached by a set of stairs. Here great recitations of the Claim had once been addressed to the people of Black Aura, the Bloodless sharing the teachings of the Bloodprint, an ancient and powerful manuscript long believed to be lost. The manuscript that was the oldest, most venerable record of the Claim—the powerful, mysterious magic seeded throughout the history of all the lands of Khorasan, but lost to a people now condemned to a final Age of Ignorance.
Skirting the pulpit, Arian was taken through to the indoor galleries covered by dozens of smaller domes perched on a peristyle. Though well lit, the interior space was cold, and as quiet and deserted as the courtyard.
They stopped at a niche in the wall where multicolored mosaics were arranged in a magnificent declamation. Lania read the words first, verses commonly known to the Companions of Hira, though Lania’s inflection was different, the words gathered up in hubris and flung out, outlining the niche in a darkly radiant fire while the Authoritan nodded his approval.
Prodded by her sister, Arian repeated the same words, her strong voice giving them distinctions of grace that coaxed out their inner meaning.
The Authoritan looked down on Arian from the top of a flight of wooden stairs positioned beside the niche. He stood tall and thin, enclosed in his white robes, his ghastly crimson eyes flickering out from a bloodless white face, a nimbus of silver hair floating above the harshly etched bones of his skull. He seemed too frail to do her any damage, yet his hands and voice transmitted his inescapable power.
“Now the rest.”
His reedy voice was like a needle in Arian’s ear.
“That’s all there is,” she said.
“You know the conclusion of these verses from your training at the Citadel of Hira. Recite them for us now.”
The cold command in his voice whipped at Arian’s nerves. It was a compulsion to do as he asked or suffer intolerable pain. Yet she’d learned that though he could otherwise affect her, he could not compel the Claim to issue from her lips. It was a tiny point of victory that Arian held to herself, infusing her with a strength of self-reliance that was no reproof against the pain.
He raised a bony finger in the air and aimed it at the top of her skull. “Recite.”
The word stabbed at Arian’s temples, a sharp, probing injury. She reached for Lania’s hand, insisting that her sister acknowledge the injury being done to her. But Lania stepped back, her painted face impassive, the bonds of sisterhood sundered by the tortures she was forced to endure.
“Recite!”
Now the word thundered through Arian’s skull. The muscles of her throat seized up; Arian began to shiver. The Authoritan could visit pain upon her—this he had shown her night after night, cruel and imaginative in his punishments. Yet her training at Hira resisted him. Of greater significance, the Claim resisted him, refusing to issue from her throat, a pitiless battle of magic against magic that caused her palpable injury. It was no different this day: she was forced to her knees by the Authoritan’s power, pressure building in her skull. Teardrops of blood leaked from her eyes, a sickening residue on her skin. She choked on the scent of it, tainted and dark, and tasted it in her mouth.
She had exerted this power over men—the power of the Claim—but it had never been used against her—a battle of the occult against the uncorrupted. It was a setback, nothing more. She wouldn’t let the Authoritan twist the beauty and power of her magic. She fought to raise her head. She held on to her circlets, the two gold armbands that signified her status as a Companion of Hira, one of a group of women entrusted with the care of the sacred scriptorium at the Citadel. The Citadel was the stronghold of the Companions of Hira, a place where they sought to protect the written word from the devouring onslaught of the Talisman, men—and it was always men—who waged war upon all forms of knowledge, under the flag of the One-Eyed Preacher, a tyrant whose will Arian had spent a decade trying to subvert.
As a Companion, Arian had been charged with a mission to rescue the women of Khorasan from the Talisman’s efforts at enslavement. But then the leader of her order, the High Companion Ilea, had assigned her to seek out the Bloodprint as a means of unseating the Talisman. Arian had been chosen for this Audacy because of her exceptional gifts. She was Hira’s most accomplished linguist, fluent in the Claim and armed with the power of its magic. She was First Oralist of Hira.
And because of that—and despite the tortures the Authoritan inflicted—she should be able to resist.
Gasping at the effort, she tried to draw power from the inscriptions on her circlets. Her fledgling attempt failed, just as it had before. She was brought to a posture of submission once more, her arms stretched out before her, her forehead pressed to the floor in a perversion of the prayers of their people.
“Lania—” Her sister’s name came out as a croak, weakly demanding an apology.
“It’s a pity to watch you suffer.” Yet there was no trace of pity in Lania’s voice; a cool impassivity ruled her as she ignored Arian’s entreaty. Lania took her place at the Authoritan’s side, gliding gracefully up the stairs, her long robe trailing behind her.
The Authoritan brought her hand to his bloodless lips and kissed it. “She tires me,” he said. “If she will not share what she knows of the Claim, perhaps the Silver Mage can be put to better use than his trials with the whip.”
“No!” Arian’s courage flared to life again.
Lania ignored her. The crimson tips of her fingers ran along the surface of the niche, tracing the outer layer of white script in a gesture that was a caress. “My sister is less powerful than I imagined. The opposite may be true of the Silver Mage.”
“Why would you think that, Khanum?” Diverted, the Authoritan relaxed his grip on Arian, his blood-tinged eyes caressing her face, inflamed by her helpless submission. She crawled into the hollowed-out space of the niche, resting her hot face against the glazed tiles, grateful for the respite.
“You’ve seen his eyes. He is strongly marked by the birthright of the Mages. Who knows how his magic burns? Or what tricks he might attempt to secure my sister’s freedom.”
The Authoritan dismissed this with a contemptuous wave, the gesture as languid as a heron’s extension of its wings into flight. His movements suggested a weightlessness, as if he were a creature animated more by sorcery than by his physical form. His power resided in his voice.
“The Silver Mage can do very little on his own. I burned the Candour with a word; he did nothing to defend it.”
“He loves her,” Lania objected. “It may awaken depths within him.”
The Authoritan curled his fingers, the gesture enough to pull Arian from the cover of the hollow. She opened her mouth to venture the Claim in her defense. A viselike grip closed about her throat, swallowing the sound. She choked for breath on her hands and knees, struggling to protect herself against the Authoritan’s aggression.
The Authoritan and Lania stood breast to breast on the narrow landing. The rubies in Lania’s headdress glittered against the Authoritan’s white robes, striking sparks off the scepter in his hand. He decorously kissed the mask at her cheek, careful not to disturb it.
“For the Silver Mage to develop his skills, he would need to attend the Conference of the Mages. The Mages strengthen one another, not unlike your sisters at Hira. Without their congress, he remains unschooled. His is a rudimentary magic, perhaps because of his tenure in Candour.”
“It was his choice,” Arian gritted through her teeth. “He chose to serve his city.”
“So?”
“So do not belittle him for it.”
The Authoritan clenched his hand in a fist and brought it down. Pain seared through Arian’s skull. She couldn’t withstand it. Lania witnessed her pain without protest.
“Then we have nothing to fear from either of them,” she observed finally. “Perhaps these little experiments serve no purpose after all.”
“Not quite.” The Authoritan helped Lania down the stairs, seeming to glide within the careful arrangement of his robes. He paused beside Arian, extending a hand to touch her sweat-slicked skin. Her face was pale, her body drenched in perspiration. She recoiled from the skeletal finger he dipped in a teardrop of her blood. He brought it to his lips and tasted it, his tongue flicking his skin.
“Invigorating.” His red eyes rested on her face and drifted down her body, an assessment that stripped her to the bone. Arian shuddered in response.
“Lovelier than you,” he said to Lania, missing her grimace. “What a pretty prize she would make for Nevus, as he cannot have you.”
A smile played on Lania’s lips. “There’s no hurry, Khagan. I’ve yet to plumb the depths of my sister’s talents. I would know the secret to her fame. Why was she selected as First Oralist? Thus far, the showing is not as impressive as I’d hoped.”
“No,” the Authoritan agreed. “Keep your pet until you tire of her. But make certain she expands your knowledge of the Claim. You are useless to me without your gifts.”
“It shall be my first concern, Khagan, I assure you.”
The painted mask of her face echoed the Authoritan’s contempt for Arian’s abilities. “There is nothing to be gained by bringing her to this mihrab. I will find another way to unlock her voice.”
“You fail to understand, Khanum. I bring her to this place for reasons of my own.”
Lania shot him a glance, her pale green eyes long and narrow. “And they are?”
He raised both hands above Arian’s head, his fingers poised to strike. “Do you mark how close we are to the underground cells?” He turned his gaze to Arian, his rictus smile stretching the corners of his lips. “Sing for your beloved, First Oralist. He is eager to hear your voice.”
It took her a moment to understand. Daniyar was here—near to her, yet kept from her—and the Authoritan wanted him to experience the agonies of her torture, to suffer them with her … She closed her eyes in helpless protest. She could bear his cruelties herself, but she couldn’t access the magic that would shield Daniyar from this. And though she longed for him with a fervent desire, she wished him away from her now. She knew what her pain would cost him—what his love for her had already demanded of his strength. She had served him nothing but anguish, and now he would be broken again.
Heart of my heart, he had called her. When he shouldn’t have loved her at all.
“Please, no,” she whispered to Lania. “Do anything you wish to me, but I beg you—do not do this to him.”
The Authoritan laughed, his voice high and wild with triumph. Then the savage power of his magic blasted her from all sides.
Her screams went on and on, rising to the skies … penetrating the depths of the cells. The grace of Hira was ripped from her spirit and her thoughts. She couldn’t stand aloof and apart when she was writhing in blood at the Authoritan’s whim. The answer came to her too late.
She needed to summon new weapons against an enemy like this.
2 (#u110d2d8a-5131-57f2-8ba5-3a5159d504c3)
ELENA WAITED IN THE NEAR DUSK THAT ENVELOPED THE HAZING. A member of the Usul Jade had left a message for her at the house across from the crumbling blue dome, telling her Larisa needed her. She wasn’t used to ignoring her sister’s commands or to being away from Larisa’s side. But she’d returned to the Gur-e-Mir to see what had become of Ruslan’s body. She’d found her entrance at the pishtaq to the tomb. Ruslan’s head was on a spike, his body dismembered, his limbs littering the courtyard. The Ahdath had forced his jade green bracelets into his mouth, which gaped open in a perfect round.
The sight of him was like a blade cutting deep into the bone, exposing the marrow of her grief, yet Elena didn’t cry. She couldn’t cry, no matter how deep the wound. She had learned to guard herself through practiced dissociation, but now her emotions raged wildly. Would everything she loved be taken from her with such brutal and cold finality? She removed the bracelets from Ruslan’s mouth and slipped them onto her wrists. Then she kissed both his cheeks with a tenderness she had never expressed before.
I should have buried you, spared you from this. I should have chosen you above any emissary of the Black Khan’s, any Companion of Hira. As Larisa should have also.
What didn’t you do for us, Ruslan?
She wanted to ignore Larisa’s summons—her rage, her grief were still too new. But if Ruslan was lost to her, Larisa was all she had left.
She would return and bury her beloved, but time was against her now. It was foolish of Larisa to have summoned her to the Hazing. The streets around the Gur-e-Mir were swarming with Ahdath. After the First Oralist’s sundering of the Registan, the Ahdath had doubled their patrols. They hunted the Usul Jade with a singular determination. She hadn’t forgiven Larisa, but she needed to get her sister out of the necropolis of the Hazing. She had already sent orders to the Basmachi to retreat, knowing Marakand was lost. She’d told them to regroup at the ruins of the Summer Palace. Its rugged surroundings would shelter them until Larisa returned. Then they would be able to get word to the warriors of the Cloud Door in the mountains. The time to strike at the Wall was almost upon them now. She knew Zerafshan’s men were ready, just as she knew that without Larisa’s support, she could not prod them into action.
It was time for Larisa to remember that she led the Usul Jade—her duty was to the women behind the Wall and to the people who still upheld the teachings of their father. As the daughters of Mudjadid Salikh, they bore a responsibility unlike any other: resist until the battle was won or until their resistance atrophied into dust.
As leaders of the Basmachi, she and Larisa were not tools to be used by the First Oralist, no matter the nature of the bargain Larisa had struck with the Black Khan. The First Oralist may have dismantled the Registan, but she’d also delivered Ruslan to his fate at the gates of the Gur-e-Mir. Ruslan, her dearest companion, the one who’d rescued her from Jaslyk, risking agonies greater than hers. She closed his eyes with her fingers, his bracelets softly striking hers. Then she spat out her rage on the ground.
She was on the hunt for the First Oralist.
And she would take her measure of blood.
3 (#u110d2d8a-5131-57f2-8ba5-3a5159d504c3)
SEVEN DAYS. SINNIA HAD BEEN IN JASLYK SEVEN DAYS, EACH DAY BRINGING forth new torments, new reasons to pray for rescue. Not that she’d been idle—her first course of action had been to attempt to rescue herself. The wardens of Jaslyk seemed to have no memory or knowledge of the Claim, and she had been able to use it with some success, escaping a room, a ward, a building. only to run into Jaslyk’s guards or its impenetrable defenses. The watchtowers were like the eyes of a dragon-horse. Red and fiery and unblinking. No matter which route she took to steal from her cell, the watchtowers picked her out along the perimeter, setting off a collision of horns. Then the guards of Jaslyk would come, dressed in black, wearing blind-eyed masks, four crimson slashes marking their chests and spreading across their ribs.
They looked like they’d been clawed by demons.
She’d never seen their faces or heard their voices. She’d simply felt the grip of implacable hands covered with leather gloves whose palms were studded with tiny spikes. Her arms were marked with dozens of pinpricks that healed over, then formed again with each new attempt to escape. The pinpricks burned, but they were only a reminder of her failure.
And they were nothing compared to the mask.
On the third day, Sinnia had learned about the mask. Two of the guards had chained her to a bed in a locked room at the far end of a dismal corridor. At once she’d missed the cruel teasing of the Ahdath. When they’d turned her over to Jaslyk, she’d met an incarnation of their regiment more to be feared than the soldiers who guarded the Wall. They were called the Crimson Watch, a name given to the Ahdath elite. The crudely jovial soldiers of the Ahdath who’d handed her over to their care had fallen silent during the transfer. One had flashed her a look of regret, muttering to his partner. The other man shook his head. They spoke with surprising deference to the soldiers of the Crimson Watch. The masked men didn’t speak. They waved the Ahdath away.
When they’d chained Sinnia to the bed, her body had tensed in dread. The Claim coiled up in her throat. The scent of blood was fresh in the room. It oozed from every door in the ward, a patina that formed a pattern on the floor. Fear ripened in her mouth.
“Please,” she said, “don’t do this.”
A third guard entered the room, pushing a steel-framed cart before him. It bore a tray of instruments. Torture, she thought. They’ve come to torture me. For a moment, it seemed like a reprieve.
But the largest of the three guards lifted a bizarre contraption from the cart: a thick leather mask with sightless glass eyes that protruded like eyeballs distended from a skull. A long black hose at the back of the mask was attached to a dark green canister on the cart. It appeared to breathe on its own. At the base of the mask were six round nozzles, three to either side.
The guard wheeled the cart closer to the bed where Sinnia lay chained.
She wanted to scream, but the sound died in her throat. She wrestled with the chains they had fiendishly attached to the circlets on her upper arms. One of the guards held her down. The other raised her head so the third could fit the mask over her head.
Her body bucked on the bed. The inside of the mask smelled of horror and fear. It suffocated her. Her breathing constricted, she mumbled the Claim to herself. There would be words, there had to be words, to stop this.
In the name of the One—
In the name of the One, the Merciful, the Compassionate—
Ah, by the powers of the One, where were Arian and Daniyar? Surely they would save her from this … unless somehow they had fallen or been taken at the Ark. She wished she could think of them, pray for them … but in this moment of extremis, she could think only of herself.
She could see through the bulbous eyes of the mask. The guard at the cart flicked a switch on the canister. A terrible gurgling sound came from the hose at the back of Sinnia’s neck. She breathed in sharply, her mouth filling with the acrid taste of smoke. With her first inhaled breath, the nozzles at the base of the mask fastened to her neck. She felt a searing pain.
Inside the mask, she cried out. Her mouth and throat filled with gas. The three men loomed above her.
Burning tears scalded her eyes. When they misted over her skin, the tears seemed to catch fire. Sinnia screamed again. The men didn’t touch her, didn’t tear at her clothes. One of them produced a small bundle wrapped in a leather cover. He watched Sinnia with careful attention. Then he began to write.
He held a book in his hands.
A book that chronicled her torture.
Four days later, she was at the perimeter again. They had gassed her every day since, but when the mask had been removed, Sinnia had recovered consciousness to find herself alone, still chained to the bed by her circlets. Though they monitored her reaction to the gas, no one seemed to be observing her in the cell.
They didn’t know she drew comfort from the circlets that were the secret strength of the Companions. Whatever the gas had done to her, and it had done something, it hadn’t stripped her of the Claim. Over time, her use of the Claim had weakened the links of the chains. She snapped them with a surge of renewed strength, taking a moment to breathe.
The chamber reeked of the gas. Her skin smelled fetid and damp, a mix of the strange compound of the gas and the odors of sweat and blood. She knew now why the men of the Crimson Watch wore masks. They were shielding themselves from the consequences of their macabre experiments. The terror the masks invoked was a side effect of their work.
Sinnia ran a hand over her neck, feeling the tender areas where the nozzles had raised the skin. She shuddered to think of her disfigurement, but she tried to focus on the door. Each time she escaped, they added another padlock. She could see them now from the hole at the top of the door that passed for a dreary window. She had yet to see another inmate, but she sometimes heard painful, muted whimpers as she sidled past the other cells.
She should try to use the Claim to free the others. She doubted the strength of her skills; her failure might bring them to the same fate she faced—a renewal of the attentions of those who gassed her. She considered the risk and decided against it. She pictured her whip and bow in her mind and formed a resolution.
If she could discover a way out, she wouldn’t forget the desperate halls of Jaslyk. She’d find a way to return and do some damage, a vow she made to herself.
The red eyes of the watchtower settled on Sinnia again. Horns sounded like heralds of a hastening end, a palpable assault on her hearing. The scars on her neck began to throb in anticipation of the agonies of the mask. The guards dragged her by the arms, their studded gloves scoring her shoulders with dozens of bloody strikes.
She sang out verses of the Claim—the music of it seized up in her throat.
She had asked herself this question many times. Why did the Claim deliver Arian from every difficulty while she was able to summon it only in small bursts? What did this say about Sinnia as a Companion or as a member of the Council? Was she not worthy of the Claim? Had the Negus of her country chosen her as his emissary to Hira in error?
She made her body as heavy as possible, forcing the guards to drag her by the heels. They barely slowed their pace as she bumped along the bloodstained floor, pausing for a moment to study the shattered padlocks. Sinnia fought with all her physical strength, aggression and panic rising together as she heard the sound of the cart rattling down the length of the corridor.
She made a temporary break from the arms of her captors, leaping across the hall and crashing against the door of another cell. She fastened her arms on her circlets, holding fast to the strength of the Companions. She choked out one verse of the Claim, then another. For the briefest moment, the actions of the Crimson Watch were suspended—the cart held still, the guards with their bloody palms motionless in the air.
A moan sounded from behind the door. Sinnia glanced up. A man was standing at the hole for the window, his hair matted and wild, his thin face bloody. His eyes burned like two black coals. They fell to Sinnia’s circlets.
“Sahabiya,” he gasped. “You’ve come to us at last.”
At his words, there was a murmuring along the length of the hall. Other faces came to the doors of the cells, eager hands reaching through bars.
It was Sinnia’s turn to freeze. She should have fled during this strange suspended moment, but this was the first time she’d seen the other prisoners. “Who are you?” she whispered to the wild man. She was stirred by a fierce determination. “How do you know who I am?”
“You came for me.” His powerful voice filled with conviction. And then an urgent warning: “Sahabiya, behind you!”
The frozen moment ended. One of the guards caught Sinnia by the neck, squeezing down on her throat. A second man reached for her arms. He’d taken off his gloves to unlatch her circlets.
“No! Don’t touch them!” It was the man in the cell who called out. But underneath his words there was more—a strange, low thrumming through Sinnia’s veins that carried the sound to her heart.
Another guard rapped on the door of the man’s cell. A disembodied voice echoed through the mask. “Get back, all of you! And you there. Still alive? That will change,” he promised.
He shoved the cart toward Sinnia, pushing her back into her cell. Her leaping, twisting body was subdued by a company of guards. The cart was wheeled to the side of her bed. She looked at its surface in terror, only to notice that the dark green canister was missing, as was the mask with the hose. In its place was a tray that held a gleaming array of instruments, polished to a shine. The sound-touch inside her veins intensified—her heart rate began to slow.
The disembodied voice spoke again, the man in charge moving to Sinnia’s side. He held a long thin spike in his hands. “She’s ready for the white needle.”
Sinnia forgot about the sound. All she could do was scream.
4 (#u110d2d8a-5131-57f2-8ba5-3a5159d504c3)
THE DOUBLE CUPOLA WHERE ELENA WAS TO MEET LARISA WAS ABANDONED, its twin domes feathered with bird’s nests. A step at a time, Elena crossed Ahdath lines, weaving in and out of the city of the dead. The soldiers were quartering the Hazing. If she hadn’t known its shadowed passages better than she knew her own scars, the Ahdath would have captured her by now.
The Hazing sloped down a hill to an abandoned alley that branched off into several paths that led deeper into Marakand. One path led to the Wall, one to the cemetery of the Russe, another to the Registan. Fires burned on the ramparts, glowing from the Wall like the baleful eyes of demons. The night was dark and cold, and the Ahdath were armored against it.
The First Oralist may have burned down the Registan, but she hadn’t defeated the army at the Wall. Instead, she’d left the people of Marakand to the Ahdath’s bitter revenge. Screams sounded from the alleyways as families were dragged from their homes and accused of giving shelter to the Companions. Elena could hear the sound of furniture being smashed and the crack of boots against bones.
She waited for a patrol to cross the Tomb of the Living King. There was a small marking on the door that signaled the Basmachi had passed on her orders to abandon the necropolis. Basmachi often sheltered in the crypt below the tomb. It was a sacred site in the Hazing. Even the Ahdath had not dared to despoil it. The forty steps known as the Ladder of Sinners led to the underground depths of the tomb. Those who submitted to the One were to count the steps descending and ascending. If they missed a step, their pilgrimage to the tomb was incomplete, and the gateway to paradise was barred. Richly inscribed lapis lazuli paneled the tomb itself. The third level of the tombstone was tiled with a warning that gave the necropolis its name.
NEVER CONSIDER DEAD THOSE SLAIN IN THE WAY OF THE ONE.
NAY, THEIR LIFE IS ETERNAL.
Elena shook her head. Why had Larisa risked meeting her here? She was the one who’d taught them an overabundance of caution. Now she’d broken the rules she’d prescribed for a stranger she scarcely knew. Perhaps she’d been misdirected by the use of the Claim.
Elena passed the door to the tomb to take a step closer to the double cupola that housed the Mausoleum of the Princess. At the slight trace of sound—boots scuffing against stone—she turned to seek out her sister. She was caught by surprise by an Ahdath blade at her throat. The Ahdath clearly believed Elena was one of the Companions: he was ready to slit her throat to prevent her use of the Claim. The hand that caught at her wrist fumbled over her bracelets. For a moment, the soldier stilled. Then he shoved her into the mausoleum. She was pushed against a wall, her face turned into the stark light cast by the moon.
“Basmachi,” he said with satisfaction. “Even better for me.”
He was broad-shouldered and powerful in the manner of the Ahdath. With her arms twisted behind her, there was no way Elena could overcome his strength. He shoved a knee between her legs; Elena spat in his face. He slashed his blade across her torso; she fought back a scream of fury. The wound bled freely, darkening his hands, but it wasn’t enough to defeat her.
This wasn’t Jaslyk—she could fight him. She just had to wait for her moment. She sagged in his arms, forcing him to take her weight.
Another man entered the cupola and she groaned. One she could fight off. Two or more, and it was over.
“Who do you have there?”
“Join me,” the first man grunted. “She’s not one of the Khanum’s doves, but she’ll do.”
“Do you know who you’re speaking to?”
The Ahdath who’d slashed her across the torso swiveled halfway around, his right arm blocking her throat. He stiffened as he recognized the newcomer. “Captain, she’s a Basmachi fighter—she bears the signs of the Usul Jade. I was bringing her to the Wall.”
The captain’s eyes stayed on his man. “So it seems.”
The Ahdath relaxed at the captain’s note of humor. He shrugged. “I have no access to the Gold House.”
“Nor I,” the captain said. “Let’s have a look at her, then.”
“She’s not much to look at,” the Ahdath said.
“No,” the other man agreed.
A horn sounded in the street behind the cupola. Though she should have been thinking of herself, Elena’s heart sank. Had they captured her sister as well? Both men turned at the sound, and Elena seized her chance. She bit down on the Ahdath’s arm, sinking her teeth to the bone.
He dropped his arm with a roar of pain. Elena brought up her knee to shove him in the groin. She connected, but his leather was too thick. He slammed her back against the wall with both arms, her head crashing into brick. Stars danced before her eyes. A moment later she was slumped on the ground.
She didn’t see what happened next. Instead, she heard the sounds of movement: the ring of steel, a hiss of surprise, a thud. Then the sound of something being dragged.
For a moment the world was suspended upside down. Elena felt herself raised as easily as a child; she smelled sweat and felt the scrape of a man’s rough beard against her face. She was tossed onto his shoulder and carried away from the mausoleum, into the shadows of the Hazing.
Behind the mausoleum, the captain of the Ahdath set her down on a broken tombstone.
Her head reeling, Elena muttered, “Is it your turn now?”
“Take a moment,” the captain suggested, “before you lacerate me with your tongue.”
“I’ll scream,” she warned him, unable to see his face in the shadows.
“Then you’ll bring a patrol right to your sister’s hiding place.” His tone was matter-of-fact.
Elena went still. It couldn’t be. Of all the Ahdath who could have tracked her to the Hazing, it couldn’t be the one who knew she’d rescued the First Oralist from the Gold House, delivering one of the Khanum’s doves to this Ahdath in her stead.
The man stepped out of the shadows, showing her his face. A pang of terror struck at her heart—she had walked into an ambush. This Ahdath had come for their heads, using her to trap her sister.
But the captain from the Gold House spoke to her with unexpected kindness. “It’s not what you think, Anya. I came with Larisa to find you.”
Elena stood up, backing away from the man. She gave him a careful nod, wondering if she could outrun him even with the knife wound at her ribs. “Captain Illarion, you’ve made a quick return from Black Aura. I’d appreciate your escort to the Gold House.”
Illarion smiled at her, a rueful smile that didn’t lighten his cold blue eyes in the least. “So you can cut my throat on the way? I know who you are, Anya. Larisa asked me to find you—that’s the reason I’m here.”
Like a tiger of the Shir Dar, Elena sprang at him. Her hand snaked to the knife at his hip. A second later it was at his heart. “What have you done with my sister?”
He stood still, his arms at his side, his palms spread wide. “She’s safe, I swear it to you.”
Elena pressed the tip of the blade through crimson armor. “Liar.”
Illarion was much taller than she was. He seemed bemused by her actions, staring down at her, his blue eyes wide. “Anya—”
“Where is she?”
“Here, Elena, I’m here.”
Elena didn’t move at the sound of a new voice. She switched out of the Common Tongue to the secret language of the Basmachi. “Is this a trap?” she asked.
“No, let the Ahdath go.”
Larisa jumped down from the rock wall behind the double cupola, one hand on the sword at her hip, the other shielding her face from the white glare of the moonlight. She was unfettered and alone. “Let him go,” she said again.
Elena shook her head. She pressed the blade deeper into the Ahdath’s breastplate. His breath hitched in his chest. He held the same nonthreatening pose until Larisa moved between them, removing the knife from her sister’s hand.
“The only good Ahdath is a dead one,” Elena said, not taking her eyes off Illarion.
“I know. But he’s not Ahdath. He’s … something else.”
Illarion fingered his ruptured breastplate.
“Don’t be stupid. With Araxcin dead, Captain Illarion is now Commander of the Wall.” Elena’s eyes narrowed. “Let’s take him. Let’s ransom him for some of ours.”
It was Larisa’s turn to shake her head. “You know the Ahdath won’t ransom our fighters. They’re on a killing spree even now.”
Elena’s face tightened. “Then why did you call me to the Hazing? And why did you bring him with you? You’ve put us both at risk.”
“I need your help, Elena. I need to break a prisoner out of Jaslyk.” She said this in the Common Tongue despite Elena’s furious glare.
“What madness causes you to share your purpose with the enemy?”
“We have to hurry,” Illarion cut in. “It won’t take them long to find us.”
Elena’s rage boiled over. How dare this Ahdath speak of himself as one of them when he knew they shared no common cause? The violent urge to bury her blade between his ribs renewed itself. She spun around to face him. “Why aren’t you at Black Aura, Captain? I saw you leave for the capital myself.”
He shifted on his heels, scouting the Hazing with his eyes. “You were mistaken, Elena. I never went to Black Aura.” He stressed her name to emphasize that he now understood her earlier deception. “I turned the Khanum’s prisoner over to my men for escort. Then I arranged for your friends to travel safely through Black Aura Gate.”
“What friends?”
Larisa answered for him. “The First Oralist.” She seemed to search for words. “And her consort, the Silver Mage.”
Elena’s lips formed a snarl. “You watched the First Oralist abandon Ruslan, yet you risked yourself to deliver her consort? I don’t know you anymore, sister.”
Tears formed in Larisa’s eyes. “Yes, you do.” Her voice cracked. “Do you imagine Ruslan’s death is a loss you suffer alone? Do you think the Companion of Hira doesn’t have a list of losses as long as your right arm? A man she loved was blooded before her eyes.”
Elena faltered. “Blooded?”
“Yes. Her grief brought down the Registan.”
Elena remembered her primary mission. “And the Gold House?”
Illarion answered. “The Gold House wasn’t harmed. The Claim knew who to destroy.”
Elena repudiated his words with a wave of her hand. “Were you there? Did you see it?”
He nodded, waiting. Elena’s breath caught on a sob. “Then the Claim couldn’t have known, could it? Not if there’s a single one of you left to walk on this earth.”
The bitterness and grief in her eyes held him long after she’d turned away.
Larisa drew Elena into the shadows. Moonlight spilled over the curves of the double cupola’s domes. Beneath the chipped and feathered bricks of the domes, blue-glazed tiles formed calligraphic patterns that swam in the play of shade and light. The faintest breeze disturbed the shoots of grass sprouting from the brick. It stirred the hair at the back of Illarion’s collar. He watched as the sisters muttered to each other in secret. He’d wanted to smile when Elena had suggested taking him captive, but her rage was too raw to suffer his condescension. He rubbed a hand over the bruise on his sternum. He wouldn’t misjudge her again.
He was due back at the Wall. And he was due to report to the Khanum. But before he could do either of these things, he needed to get these sisters out of the city to Jaslyk. Though Jaslyk held other dangers. They would have to face down soldiers of the Crimson Watch. They would also be risking a run-in with the Technologist—the madman who supervised the prison.
But if there was a chance to save the Companion, Sinnia, the risks they were taking would be worth it.
Doubt gnawed at him: Could the Companion still be alive? And if she was, did Larisa and Elena stand any chance of successfully bringing about a rescue?
Larisa interrupted his thoughts. “Come with us,” she said. “We know how to circumvent the patrols. Unless you think you’ll be missed.”
He studied the two sisters standing side by side, each with a knife in one hand and a sword in the other. Larisa was by far the comelier of the two, but it was Elena he couldn’t look away from, Elena who burned with a volatile fury that reminded him of the First Oralist raging against the murder of her friend with a fury that had fired the sky.
“I can spare a day or two before I must return. The Authoritan will send a regiment from the Ark led by Captain Nevus. Nevus is to assume control and command of the Wall. If I’m not there to receive him, it will raise suspicions.”
“That sounds like they don’t trust you.”
He raised an eyebrow, as if to remind them both that his presence in the Hazing at their side gave the Ahdath reason to doubt him.
Elena snorted, then pressed on.
Illarion followed the women through the double cupola, where the body of the soldier he’d killed lay hidden in the shadows. He prodded it with his foot. “They’ll take it for a Basmachi kill.”
“As it would have been,” Elena snarled at him. “I didn’t ask for your rescue.”
Illarion ignored this. His stomach had lurched at the sight of the man’s assault upon Elena. She’d been helpless, a fact she wouldn’t admit to him. Or to any man, he suspected, though she had let her sister tend to her wound with an indifference that spoke to what the sisters had endured.
He focused on answering Larisa as she led the way down the hill, moving in and out of the shadows of the Hazing’s once-graceful mausolea. She stopped for a moment at the Tomb of the Living King, adjusting a floral decoration on its faience. It rotated east without a betraying sound. He wondered if the Tomb of the Living King held any significance for these sisters beyond a place where they left messages for the Basmachi. He’d seen grown men fall to their knees crying at the door to the tomb, pressing their lips to its inscriptions. For himself, he was a man without religion. When everything was holy, nothing could be holy.
“Nevus is the Authoritan’s man. It was the Khanum who chose me as second to Araxcin. The Authoritan prefers his own men in command, but the Khanum will call me soon enough.”
“Then go to her.” Elena’s scowl was fierce. “We have no need of your escort.”
So she would go to Jaslyk. Despite the rift with her sister, somehow Larisa had managed to persuade her to rescue the Companion of Hira. “I’ll see you safely to Jaslyk,” he answered, keeping his voice even.
Elena gave a mirthless laugh. “We know Jaslyk better than you ever will.” She spat again at his feet, narrowly missing his boots. He suppressed the urge to yank her by the hair and offer her her blade in kind. But Larisa Salikh was watching him, her narrow eyes pale and intent.
Nor was Elena finished. “If you make it to Jaslyk, Ahdath, you won’t be leaving alive.”
The message Larisa had left wasn’t to abandon the Hazing. She trusted Illarion no more than Elena did, but he’d told her something she hadn’t known, something he wasn’t aware that he’d betrayed.
He didn’t have command of the Wall. And the new commander, Nevus, wasn’t due to arrive for another day or more.
She knew what the Ahdath were capable of. She was equally aware of their deficiencies.
For a day at least, the Wall was undefended, the opportunity she’d been waiting for—a chance for the Basmachi to weaken the Ahdath’s defenses from inside their own stronghold. A task she couldn’t accomplish on her own—not if she was headed to Jaslyk with Elena. She tipped her head to one side, weighing the risk against the gain. Strike too soon or miss the chance altogether? Success depended on timing. Her mission was to rout the Ahdath without allowing the Talisman to overrun them, exchanging one set of masters for another. To weaken the Wall as she hoped to, she’d have to take the risk.
She sent a message to Zerafshan. And prayed his men were ready.
5 (#u110d2d8a-5131-57f2-8ba5-3a5159d504c3)
“WELCOME TO THE EAGLE’S NEST, EXCELLENCY. I TRUST YOUR RIDE across the mountains was not too arduous, and that your treasure remains undisturbed.”
The Black Khan stirred from his perusal of a message delivered to him by hawk. His sister, Darya, had sent news of events at Ashfall, along with her wishes for his safe return. He read loneliness in her words, her genuine affection for him—an affection he used against her without the slightest remorse. To do so did not trouble his conscience: such was his right as Khan. More than that, it was his duty as Prince of the Khorasan empire. He’d risked the dangerous ride from Black Aura to the Eagle’s Nest in order to fulfill that duty. Darya’s desire to see him again was the least of his concerns.
The man who now addressed him remained a mystery to Rukh. He was dressed in a shapeless brown robe belted at the waist, with a hood that covered most of his face. A lantern burning in the limestone chamber illuminated his jaw and the bleak white line of his smile. He was known simply as the Assassin, and he might have been thirty or sixty. Rukh had never seen the Assassin without his hood.
He’d yielded the throne in the chamber to the Black Khan as soon as Rukh had arrived. The Assassin wasn’t one for the accoutrements of power; in this way, as in so many others, he was markedly different from the Khan—a difference that Rukh had never bothered to examine. It was enough that the Assassin was his, as loyal in his own way as Arsalan, the commander of the Black Khan’s army. He stowed the scroll inside the medallion at his collar, giving the man his attention without rising from his chair. It was for the Assassin to make an obeisance.
The man in the robe didn’t hesitate. He bowed low, hovering over the Black Khan’s onyx ring without kissing it. “Excellency,” he said again, “my fortress is yours.”
The Black Khan’s men advanced a step to either side of the throne. The commander of his army always rode at his side, and now he moved closer to the Assassin, who backed away from him, a smooth smile edging his lips.
“Hasbah,” Rukh greeted him. “Does the Eagle’s Nest stand ready to aid me at this hour?”
The Assassin nodded. In all his transactions with Rukh, he’d made only one request in return: that the Black Khan should never attempt to determine his true identity. The name he permitted the Khan to use in the presence of others was a cipher, giving nothing away of his origins. It was a reasonable price to pay for the skills of a man who would execute on command any of the Black Khan’s enemies.
The Assassin beckoned Rukh to a window that overlooked the valley below. Both men ignored the boy trussed up and gagged at the foot of the Black Khan’s seat. He whimpered behind his gag. The Black Khan nudged him aside with his leather boot.
“What do you see, Excellency?”
Rukh studied the valley in the moonlight that washed the glade. The Assassin had made some improvements. The climb to the top of the mountain formed a natural barricade against invaders, but Hasbah had taken steps to camouflage his position. The stone quarried up the path was the same smooth limestone of the fortress, indistinguishable from the landscape below.
Rukh strolled to another of the chamber’s windows, this one facing the river behind the fortress, a second natural barrier. Hasbah had terraced the fertile plains below, growing and storing his own crops to prepare the fortress against a siege. The storerooms that wound down into the mountain’s subterranean channels could have rivaled those of the capital at Ashfall.
“The Eagle’s Nest is an impressive fiefdom. Do you govern the north from here?”
The Assassin’s answering smile was bland, as if to say there were no borders that could contain him. “Up to a point,” he said.
“As long as you remember that you do not command the West.”
The Assassin raised two gloved hands in protest. The arms of his robe fell back, the strange black gloves that rose to his elbows fastened by the silvery laces of a fabric that seemed too insubstantial to hold them together. The laces were another of the Assassin’s peculiarities.
“Command does not interest me,” Hasbah answered.
“But power does.”
Hasbah nodded. “The power of words.”
One of the Assassin’s servants held up a lantern and swept its light around the chamber. Rows of shelves had been carved into the limestone walls, each holding a selection of manuscripts inside a film of the same insubstantial fabric that laced the Assassin’s gloves.
The uppermost shelf held a new treasure bound with the same gossamer material. There was a note of anticipation in the Assassin’s voice. “Twice now I have brought it to you.”
“Your trap was well laid,” the Black Khan agreed. “It was boldly done.”
The Assassin preened at the Black Khan’s praise. “I could have rid you of the First Oralist once the deed was accomplished.”
At his words, the trussed-up boy whimpered.
“Be silent, boy,” Rukh said, not unkindly. “I haven’t harmed a hair of her head.” He shook his head at Hasbah. “She’s more powerful than you suspect, old friend.” He gave an elegant shrug. “And I’ve no wish to attract the wrath of one such as the Silver Mage.”
The Assassin’s posture conveyed his surprise. “I could have dispatched him as well, Excellency.” A note of doubt crept into his voice. “You are the Dark Mage. The Mages are natural allies, your magics are closely bound.”
A reasonable interpretation of folklore, though not necessarily true at present.
What was true was that the Assassin knew too much about his affairs. Rukh suspected him of intelligence-gathering. The Assassin must have missed, though, that when the Conference of the Mages had last been held at Ashfall, it was Rukh’s half-brother Darius who’d acted as the Dark Mage. It was a birthright the brothers shared, though Rukh himself had had no luxury to study or awaken those powers. Nor would he humble himself before the other Mages. He’d attempted a rapprochement with the High Companion of Hira—Ilea, the Golden Mage. But she’d met those advances with scorn. He wouldn’t belittle himself again. Now that he had the Bloodprint in his hands, the others would bow to him. A small smile curled the edges of his lips: how little they knew of his schemes.
What he needed was to make his way to Ashfall. With that in mind, he’d come to the Eagle’s Nest to seek the help of the Assassin. The Talisman had cut off the road to his capital, under the thrall of the One-Eyed Preacher, whose animus against the written word had become the law of the land: an ignorance the Talisman sought to extend across Khorasan, under their bloodstained flag. The Talisman were marching on his capital to burn his scriptorium down. They would take the women of his city and sell them to the north as slaves. Unless he found a weapon to wield against them—and he fiercely believed that the Bloodprint was that means.
Now with the Bloodprint under his protection, he needed a safe route home. He also needed men—men who would relish taking the heads of those Talisman commanders who sought to bring his city to ruin.
The Assassin had those men in legions.
Hasbah snapped his fingers. Servants scurried to do his bidding. A carved table was brought into the chamber, numerous dishes arranged on its surface. Sherbet was poured into golden goblets. The Assassin himself placed a chair for the Black Khan at the head of the table.
Rukh nodded at the boy. One of the servants moved to undo the boy’s gag. The Black Khan passed him a goblet and a plate. “Your name is Wafa, yes? Prove your loyalty, then. You will dine, then I and my men.” His eyes sought out the Assassin beneath his hooded robe. “And when the boy has tasted my food, you will tell me what you seek in exchange, old friend. Currency, coin, or women? Whatever you ask shall be given, but I must reach Ashfall before the Talisman assault.”
Hasbah took the chair opposite the Black Khan. He steepled his gloved fingers, watching the boy eat with a ravenous hunger, oblivious to the fact he was tasting the food for poison.
“My needs are simple, Excellency. While you provision your men for the journey ahead, I require a candle’s length of time to read in this room on my own.”
Wafa stopped chewing, his mouth half-open, his amazement clear that here was another who could read.
The Black Khan signaled for the return of his goblet. He tipped it toward the light to study the liquid inside. “And what will you be reading, old friend?” He asked this even though he knew the answer.
The Assassin wanted an hour with the Bloodprint.
“Excellency, if you honor my request, I would offer a gift in exchange.” The Assassin indicated another wall of the chamber. Its shelves were broader and held a selection of treasures displayed in open boxes: gemstones, talismans, astrolabes, sextants. A silver light pulsed from a slender box at the far end of the room.
“What does that box contain?”
“The tokens of the Silver Mage. I … liberated … them from his safehold in Maze Aura. Would you like to take them for your own?”
Rukh fingered the symbol of empire on his hand: the onyx ring carved with a silver rook. It was token enough for him: whatever his reputation, the Prince of Khorasan wasn’t a common thief, though it intrigued him that the Silver Mage had set aside the symbols of his rank. He remembered the other man’s self-contained strength with a scowl, admitting to himself that perhaps the Silver Mage had no need of his tokens at all.
“I have no use for the trifles of the Silver Mage, and I am satisfied with the bargain we have struck. Take your hour, Hasbah. Then I must hasten to Ashfall.”
He looked to Arsalan, his closest adviser, who stood behind Hasbah’s seat, his hand on the pommel of his sword. But Arsalan’s state of alertness was futile. If it came to it, even Rukh’s fiercest commander would not succeed at besting the Assassin.
No one ever had.
6 (#u110d2d8a-5131-57f2-8ba5-3a5159d504c3)
A NEST OF SNAKES MADE THEIR PRESENCE KNOWN IN HIS CELL, BUT THEY left the Silver Mage to bleed in peace in the dungeons of the Ark, a desperate place called the Pit. Its blood-smeared walls were riddled with alcoves the Authoritan had converted into cells. No light penetrated from the great hall above to the dungeons that sloped beneath the palace, but some of its passages accessed the air aboveground, an ever-present torment to the Basmachi suffering below. The agonizing sound of Arian’s screams had floated through the passageways during his first week in the Pit, and he had nearly gone mad—powerless to reach her, ablaze with an incandescent fury matched only by his abject desperation. His fingers had scored the walls of his cell, the unyielding muscles of his shoulders bruised by his efforts to break free. He’d gained nothing from those efforts except the terror that followed from hearing Arian’s cries fade away.
Had the Authoritan killed her? Had he given her to the Ahdath? What did she suffer alone in the darkest reaches of the Ark?
He needed to clear his mind to resolve upon a path of escape. But Arian’s anguish made it impossible to succeed. He found himself floundering without agency, bound by the borders of the Pit, his ability to endure worn away. Then after a week had passed, Arian’s screams had ceased—leaving him free to focus on the depravities of the Pit, with none of his torments assuaged.
The humid air carried the stench of boiling flesh to the deepest corners of the pit, a scent further corroded by the odors of waste and blood. Then in the last hour of a man’s strength, a hint of peach blossom would drift through the Pit’s passageways like a promise of salvation. Peach and pomegranate and hope—false promises all.
Daniyar grunted, shifting his body along the wall to the bars that looked out along the passage. A handful of Basmachi were held in the other cells. He’d managed to speak with them over the past few days, learning what he could of the Ark. An emaciated youth with hopeless eyes had been the one to tell him about the healing effects of the loess that coated the walls. He hadn’t believed the boy at first, but after his first lashing, he’d been willing to consider any means of healing his wounds. Each time he was bled by the whip, he rubbed his back against the golden loess. As he did so, his pain decreased and the marks of the whip ceased to throb. When Nevus slashed his palms with a blade, the loess healed his hands in a night.
“It’s the secret of Marakand,” the boy said. “It may be the only one the Authoritan doesn’t know.”
A blessing in a place of despair.
The boy’s name was Uktam, and he’d been imprisoned in the Pit much longer than the others. He was kept alive because he was useful to the Authoritan as an informant against the Basmachi. He’d seen many of his compatriots come and go from the cells, each cursing him as a traitor. Daniyar set his distaste at the boy’s actions aside, as he needed information. So he asked Uktam questions, but shared no intelligence of his own, warned by the others to watch himself when Uktam was summoned to the palace. Not that he needed a warning—the proof of Uktam’s betrayal could be seen on his body. The boy may have been beaten and starved, but his back had been spared the whip.
Daniyar groaned to himself. The loess was less effective with each new flogging he suffered. Night after night, Nevus escorted him to the throne room for a display of the Authoritan’s sadism. It was Nevus who whipped him, a cold satisfaction in his eyes, and Nevus’s arm was powerful. The six-tailed whip was unlike anything Daniyar had experienced. Its filaments seemed to strike his most vulnerable places at once. The tails of the whip were barbed. They scored his skin with dozens of agonizing bites, mocking the strength and endurance he had honed since he’d come to manhood.
Perhaps worse than the whip was his degradation—his punishment had become an entertainment for the court. Ahdath bartered with Nevus to take a turn with the whip. On occasion, pretty young girls from among the Khanum’s doves would plead for a chance to bend him to their will.
Their blows didn’t land with enough force to hurt him. They couldn’t compare to the memory of his first night at the Ark, when the Authoritan had taken the whip into his hands, strengthened by an unholy magic.
Daniyar had tried to summon his knowledge of the Claim to meet the Authoritan’s brutality, until Arian’s screams had shattered the Ahdath’s merriment, and their attention had shifted from him. In that moment, his will had foundered. Chained to the wall, he hadn’t been able to see her. But he’d heard the sounds of Arian being subdued. She had fought the Ahdath like a wild thing, and when she could fight no longer, she had screamed for his deliverance, begging the Authoritan with a furious desperation, pleading with the Khanum to put an end to his torment.
Daniyar hadn’t been able to master himself. He’d shouted at the force of the blows, at the insidious incursions of the whip’s barbed tails. The whip had been devised to inflict maximum damage. At the end of it, he’d hung suspended from his chains, unable to support his own weight, his face wet with sweat and tears, the muscles of his back sectioned by trails of blood.
And with every breath he had summoned, he’d heard Arian’s broken pleading. “Leave him, leave him, take me.”
Better not to have betrayed their feeling for each other before the eyes of the Authoritan, but he couldn’t have done anything differently. If the whip had fallen on Arian instead, he would have gone mad with rage.
Gathering himself, he had turned his head to try to glimpse her. His token effort had failed. He’d offered her what comfort he could, speaking in the dialect of Candour, an undertone of the Claim murmuring through his words. “Da zerra sara, I can bear this, but I need you to be strong. I cannot also bear your tears.”
“Jaan,” she had whispered in reply. It was all she’d been able to say. He’d heard the sounds of her struggle, but he couldn’t see the collar being fitted over her throat, suffocating Arian in the cruelest manner possible—the First Oralist, silenced and chained.
Then he’d felt the cool touch of a woman’s hand on his shoulder, her nails trailing through his blood, spreading it across his back in a pattern he couldn’t see. “Collect it,” she said to a servant at her side.
A vial was placed at the base of his spine, its warmth nearly intolerable against his ravaged skin. The Khanum was collecting his blood.
Briefly he closed his eyes.
She moved closer so he could see her, her lead mask reeking of poison. She dragged her bloodied fingers across her lips, staining her white mask red. “You taste better than I imagined.” Then she kissed him on the lips.
What can you tell me of the First Oralist of Hira?” He used the bars of the cell to support his weight, asking the question of Uktam, who was slumped against a wall of his cell.
Uktam’s head lolled in Daniyar’s direction, his eyes bulging from within his hollow skull. He raised a hand and let it fall. “The Khanum keeps her at her side. The collar prevents her use of the Claim. The Khanum has enchanted it somehow.”
Daniyar nodded. Though Uktam told him the same thing every night, he had yet to comprehend the full extent of Lania’s powers.
“She hasn’t been put to the service of the Ahdath?”
The possibility filled him with terror. The Authoritan threatened him with it each time Nevus whipped him, but he hadn’t seen Arian since that first night in the throne room. And Lania had refused to enlighten him, relishing the power of her silence.
He was devastated by the thought of Arian being given to the Ahdath: as the man who’d loved her for a decade, and as the Silver Mage of Candour. The violation of a Companion of Hira was a sacrilege, but he’d learned a critical lesson from the threat: no laws of honor bound either the Authoritan or his consort.
Yet Lania was Arian’s sister. Could she truly bring herself to give Arian to the Ahdath? Without her use of the Claim, Arian was defenseless against them. With the power of speech restored to her, he knew she would bring down the Ark, just as she’d razed the Registan.
No wonder the Authoritan feared her power. No wonder he sought to claim it for himself.
He focused on his questions for Uktam. “Why don’t they take the First Oralist to the throne room?”
Uktam was too weak to shrug. With an effort underscored by the Claim, Daniyar slid his bowl across the passage between the cells. Two of the yellow snakes raised their sleek heads with interest. Daniyar murmured to them; they lowered their heads again.
“Take it,” he said to Uktam. “You need it more than I do.”
Uktam’s fingers scrabbled weakly between the bars. He found the bowl and scooped up the rice it contained. Daniyar let him finish, then asked his question again. Uktam licked the bowl clean before he answered. “I shouldn’t have taken your ration.”
“You’re at the end of your strength.” Daniyar didn’t add that he held something of his own in reserve, despite his nightly sessions in the throne room. Since the Talisman’s ascent, he’d lived a hard, demanding life. He’d spent years honing his skills, testing the reserves of his strength against a desolate landscape. Though his trials at the Ark were brutal, he was confident he would be able to endure them. But if Uktam was an informant, it was wiser to keep this knowledge to himself. “Please,” he said again. “Tell me what you know.”
Uktam considered. “The Khanum is jealous of her sister. She does not wish the Companion of Hira recalled to your mind when she is present.”
“There is nothing they could do with the whip that would cause me to forget her.” That much was common knowledge.
Uktam nodded. “She is well aware. But she has some purpose for your blood.”
“Do you know what that purpose is?”
Uktam stared at the empty bowl as if it were an oracle that could divine the truth.
“Don’t trust him,” another voice whispered from the darkness. “He tells you that which the Khanum wishes you to know.”
Uktam scowled. “I would not betray the Silver Mage,” he said with dignity.
The other prisoner snorted. “You’ve betrayed each one of us in these cells. You’ve been kept alive these months for a reason.”
“And what of you?” Daniyar intervened. “You’ve been here some time yourself.” He needed Uktam on his side.
“A day before you, my lord. Tomorrow they execute me, but this one will still be here.”
Uktam slid the bowl back across the passage to the Silver Mage. His head fell back against the bars. “Even if I lied to you, I follow the Usul Jade. I’m a student of the teachings of Mudjadid Salikh. He trained many generations in the Claim—which is why the Authoritan destroyed him. But what he could not destroy was the flame of knowledge he lit, and now his daughters carry that light forward. With what I owe Mudjadid—my sanity, my life, my unsundered belief in the Claim—I would never betray the First Oralist.”
Daniyar read the truth of it in his words. He hadn’t told these men of his skills as Authenticate; he wanted them to speak to him freely.
And he wondered about Salikh, whose daughters Larisa and Elena had helped Arian to find the tomb that had led her to the safehold of the Bloodprint. Would Larisa and Elena Salikh be willing to aid them again? He kept the thought to himself, the merest hope in his chest.
Uktam was speaking again, and he forced himself to consider the boy’s advice. “You could use the Khanum’s interest to your benefit,” he suggested. “She is taken with more than your blood. You need not endure the whip. I do not know how you bear it.”
Daniyar softened his voice. “You were kind enough to tell me of the loess; it has served to ease my pain. I am grateful to you, Uktam. If you know a course of action I might take, I am willing to hear it.”
“No, my lord!” The cry came from a prisoner Daniyar couldn’t see. “You cannot trust him. You must not trust him. He is the Khanum’s man.”
“Who better, then, to know the Khanum’s mind?” He turned his silver gaze on Uktam. “What does she want?”
This time Uktam managed a shrug. “She wants you, my lord. But you will need to prove yourself to her.”
“And how do you suggest I do that? With the Authoritan’s eyes on us both, and Nevus’s hunger for the whip yet to be fulfilled?”
And my bond with Arian plain for all the world to witness, as we suffer each other’s torments?
“The Authoritan enjoys your pain. You must find a way to turn that to your advantage. You must divide the Khanum from her consort. Then she will rally to your cause.”
My cause is Arian. It will always be Arian.
But if there was a path to Arian through Lania—if Lania could be seduced, if her message to him through Uktam was that she would welcome proof of her powers of enthrallment—he would be a fool not to pursue it when here at last was a chance. A chance to break free of the Pit, and also to discover the reason that Lania hunted his blood.
“What must I do? Speak plainly.”
Uktam’s head lolled on his shoulders. As the boy dropped his tired eyes, Daniyar heard the truth in his voice. Uktam did not deceive him. “You must fight for her,” he said. “You must fight the Ahdath.”
7 (#u110d2d8a-5131-57f2-8ba5-3a5159d504c3)
“COME WATCH ME, SISTER.” THE KHANUM OF BLACK AURA SEATED HERSELF on a golden stool whose seat was inlaid with pearls. It was placed in front of a pearl-encrusted mirror before a table that held an apothecary’s treasure in colored jars, a mixture of paints and ointments and dozens of sweet-smelling oils. Filmy curtains stirred in the breeze from a pair of windows that looked out over Black Aura. Sentries patrolled the ramparts in the distance, but this side of the Ark was spared the grisly remains of prisoners or the stench that hung over the square.
Layers of blues shadowed an evening sky that blossomed with clusters of stars. Now that the Authoritan had finished for the day with Arian, a fragile peace existed between the sisters.
�Black Aura Blue,’” Lania said with a smile. “The name of a song my doves sing to the Ahdath in the evenings, a song of our twilight skies.”
Arian knelt on the ground beside her sister. When they were alone together like this, Lania removed her collar. She had no need to fear Arian’s use of the Claim: Daniyar’s life was bought with her compliance. Then too, Lania was gifted with her own magic, a dark sorcery she conjured to keep Arian in her place.
Now Arian pondered the opposite fates of the daughters of their house, daughters who were gifted in the Claim. They had been taught by parents who cherished the written word, linguists who had curated their own small scriptorium, guarding a treasury of manuscripts. When the Talisman had come to their door to proclaim the law of the Assimilate, her parents and brother had been murdered, and Lania stolen away. Only Arian had been saved by her mother’s quick action and by her deliverance into the hands of a Talisman captain named Turan. Turan had come to her aid again during her pursuit of the Bloodprint. And he had paid the price for riding at her side, when Lania—with her powers as the Khanum—might have chosen to save him.
But short of the darkest sorcery, Lania could not revive the dead. If Arian’s struggles with the Claim had taught her nothing else, this much she’d witnessed for herself. And she wondered with a pang of dread how Lania’s distortion of the Claim had caused her sister to lose her way.
Now Lania sat before her mirror, shorn of her intricate headdress, her silky hair brushed over her shoulders, her face bare of the wraithlike mask. Her slender fingers picked up a brush. She dipped it in a pot of lead inscribed with thick-lined calligraphy. It was charmed with incantations that promised power and protection. She settled in to paint her face.
“Why?” Arian asked. “Why do you wear this mask? Your face is beautiful unadorned.”
“You compliment yourself, sister,” Lania said coolly. “The mask is my shield. It warns my enemies to be wary of my power.”
They studied each other in the mirror. They shared the same felicitous arrangement of their bones, the same delicate hollows at the temple, the same quick mannerisms captured by a tilt of the head. Lania’s green eyes were flecked with spears of gold; Arian’s were darker and deeper. And where Lania’s pale skin had been unnaturally preserved by the mask, Arian’s bore the glow of frequent exposure to the elements. They looked of an age, but on closer inspection, one would never be taken for the other. And from the grim twist of Lania’s bare lips, she wasn’t pleased by the contrast.
Whereas Arian’s heart ached to find the mirror of her sister in herself.
She tried to urge Lania again, seeking a point of connection. “Come with me, Lania. Escape this place with me. Help me save you. Help me save myself.”
She’d made the same plea each night, seeking a means to return to her companions, desperate for deliverance from the misery of the Ark, wanting to find herself clasped in the safety of Daniyar’s arms. And to embrace him in turn, cleaving hard to his strength. She knew that she had squandered the time she’d been blessed to be given at his side, a lesson too painful to bear. She took an audible breath, reminding Lania that she waited for an answer to her plea.
With one last stroke of her brush, Lania’s mask was in place. The illusion of familiarity vanished: a stranger’s face looked back at Arian, remote and formidable with secrets.
“What do you imagine I need saving from?” Lania asked idly. “I am queen of an empire. Why would I seek deliverance?”
Arian hesitated. This was a new response. Though Lania fussed over Arian like a pet, she rarely provided answers. The question Arian’s words had brought to light might yet move Lania against her, a risk she had decided to accept. As it stood now, her future encompassed only two possibilities: her continued captivity or her public execution. To free herself from the misery of the Ark, she needed Lania to give herself away—to give her something she could use. To put an end to Daniyar’s suffering and the daily misery it evoked.
Lania’s silky reproach interrupted the racing of her thoughts. “I have many gifts, Arian, but reading your mind isn’t one of them.”
Arian forged ahead, sketching the outline of a plan. “You are queen because you are consort to the Authoritan. Do you not find your duties … onerous?”
Repellent, she wanted to say. Grievously injurious to Lania’s spirit, and hardly bearable to one once destined to be a Companion of Hira.
Lania understood her meaning without her judgment being voiced. Within the painted mask, her tilted eyes were cold. “The Authoritan does not importune me. He is beyond such desires.”
What Arian had witnessed in her decade of liberating slave-chains told her this couldn’t be true. She had hunted every kind of man, from the pious to the sadistic, and they had all desired to inflict their lust upon women. And in some cases, on children. The thought reminded her of Sartor—and of Wafa, stolen by the Black Khan.
Convinced of her conclusions, she asked, “If the Authoritan does not desire women, why does he barter with the Talisman for slaves? What of your dovecote? What of the Tilla Kari?”
What she most wanted to ask was if Lania would stand with her against the Talisman’s enslavement of women, given her firsthand knowledge of their trade.
Lania took her time choosing another pigment from the colored jars. This time she applied a searing crimson to her lips, in preparation for her nightly blood-feast. There was a purpose behind the bloodrites that Arian hadn’t fathomed, and she had very little time to work it out. She needed something to break her way, and it wouldn’t happen by chance.
As if sensing her urgency, Lania spoke up. “You presume a perfect equality between the Authoritan and me, and that is your own illusion. You understand nothing of how he rules.”
“Then teach me! Teach me what I do not know. Help me understand why you are here, when you could be at Hira, if you chose. You must have the power to free yourself.”
Lania whipped around from her mirror to face Arian on her knees. “You dare to describe me as a captive when you know nothing of what transpires here at the Ark!” Her long eyes narrowed. “And do not speak to me of Hira. Where was Hira when I was taken? Where was the Citadel Guard when I was sampled by Talisman commanders before I was sold behind the Wall? He killed every man who touched me, did you know? It was slow and cruel and beautiful, and he encouraged me to watch.”
A bitter smile lifted the corners of her crimson lips. “He has never touched me himself. If an Ahdath looks at me, he kills him on the spot. He taught me, he trained me—and he placed me above every member of his Ahdath, even the Crimson Watch. He saved me as Hira declined to do, when the High Companion abandoned me to my fate. Now I am his forever.”
There were so many things Arian could have said in response, so many dreams that had materialized into loss at Lania’s words. She had guessed at the fate Lania described. But she wondered at the construction Lania had placed on the Authoritan’s actions. Surely her sister could not believe that the Authoritan was responsible for her deliverance.
“I did not abandon you,” she said after some thought.
“Yes, I know.” Lania came to her feet. She rang a bell on the table, and two of her doves came to do her bidding. They brought her heavy gold robe. She raised her arms, standing slim and straight so they could close it over her dress. Her hair was arranged in an imperiously high coiffure, a selection of pearls woven through it. The headdress came next, fastened to her chignon and supported by the weighty collar at her neck. One of her attendants attached a veil to the headdress; the other took up a brush to darken her mistress’s eyebrows.
Lania held herself still throughout. A trace of affection underlined her words. “I know you defied the High Companion—you nearly broke with Hira because of your love for me. Each Talisman soldier you killed was a man you imagined had harmed me. Each woman you freed from a slave-chain was to atone for not having saved me. You blamed yourself for being rescued while I was taken by wolves.”
Tears shimmered in Arian’s bright eyes, turning them to crystal.
Lania’s smile sharpened. “You are beautiful, indeed, little sister.” She didn’t offer her approval.
“How do you know this?” Arian asked. “How could you know any of this?”
Lania reached up a hand to adjust the feathered plumes of her headdress. “You forget what you have learned here, Arian. The Authoritan told you himself. He trained me as his Augur.”
Arian took a breath. As much as she sought a weakness in Lania as a means of escape, she was entrapped by her memories of her sister. She needed to untangle the past. “If you knew—if you envisioned my search through your Augury, why did you never come for me? Why didn’t you let me know you were safe behind the Wall?”
Lania turned back to her mirror. Satisfied with what she beheld, she dismissed her attendants with a wave. From the table, she picked up Arian’s collar and measured it between her hands. A ring-bedecked finger beckoned Arian closer. “You still don’t understand me, little sister.”
She snapped the collar in place, choking off Arian’s gifts.
“You searched for me because you loved me. But I have always hated you.”
8 (#ulink_2fca841b-774d-5f0e-bae2-32e09656805b)
RUKH REFASTENED HIS ARMOR, NODDING TO HIS CAPTAINS TO LEAD THE way. He glanced at the Assassin, who kept pace at his side. The man’s movements were stealthy, dangerous, his footsteps making no sound and leaving no trace behind him.
“Will your men not accompany me to Ashfall?”
“You do not require them at Ashfall, Excellency. What you require is a means to break through Talisman lines.”
The Black Khan and the Assassin climbed to the top of the Eagle’s Nest for a vantage point over the Talisman army. Both men were cloaked in black, camouflaged against the night.
“You give me only a dozen men. I asked for ten times that number.”
“They are assassins,” Hasbah said, as if that were all the explanation needed.
Rukh’s snort of exasperation communicated his dissent.
“They will not be leading a charge through the enemy’s ranks, Excellency.”
“No?” The sky held little light, the campfires of the Talisman flaring up like matchsticks in the distance. The air was cold, its bite cruel, with turbulent clouds massed in smoky clumps overhead. The Black Khan feared for his horses. “What is their task, then?”
“I have dispatched them to their task. Twelve men for the twelve encampments spread across the plains. They will assassinate the commanders. It will throw the Talisman army into disarray. Your road ahead will be clear.” His gloved fingers stroked his bare chin.
Rukh considered his words. “I know your men are skilled, but you set them a fatal task.”
Hasbah bowed. “That is their mission. They will not fail.”
“They will die!” Rukh snapped. “Your best-trained men, used as so much fodder.” He wished he could see the other man’s eyes, to read his mood or his certainty. He wished he could believe that he hadn’t consigned the safety of his city to a devil.
“I have many others,” Hasbah answered him. “Trained with the same skills, loyal to the same end, loyal to me and this fortress.”
Rukh reined in his anger. To expose his emotion was a weakness—better to think and plan with cold, determined purpose. He needed the Assassin, and perhaps there was some viability to his plan. He had never failed the Black Khan, and yet … “The dead have no loyalty, old friend. The dead cherish only themselves.”
“You need not fear,” Hasbah said. “There is a thirteenth man as well.”
Rukh flashed the Assassin a sharp look. “What purpose does he serve?”
“The thirteenth man is an archer. He will bring down their hawks before they call for reinforcements.”
It was a good plan, he thought. It helped that he had witnessed firsthand the fanaticism of Hasbah’s followers. Whatever command he issued—even to the detriment of their own lives—they followed without hesitation. Perhaps Hasbah’s indifference to such recklessness should have troubled him more than it did, but he couldn’t afford to reconsider. The situation in Ashfall was perilous: the sooner he bore the Bloodprint back to the safety of his capital, the sooner he could begin his defense of the west. Hasbah’s hour with the manuscript had elapsed. The Assassin had done nothing more than study it, his gloved hands leafing through its pages, until he came to a verse that held him spellbound.
Another puzzle. What knowledge did Hasbah possess of the Claim? Was he an assassin or a librarian? Or both—the needs of one weighed against the deadly skill of the other.
Rukh thought of the trove of manuscripts in the limestone chamber. He hadn’t asked to see them, and Hasbah hadn’t offered him the choice. He wondered now if his lack of curiosity had been a mistake. Had he missed something that could be turned to his own advantage? His men were gathered at the base of the mountain, provisioned and impatient to be off. He had little time to wait on the answers he needed to find, but he ventured a question. “What did you seek in the Bloodprint?”
The Assassin clasped his gloved hands at his waist. “I sought a key, Shahenshah.”
The Black Khan frowned. Perhaps Hasbah meant to divert him with the title King of Kings. He enjoyed flattery as a commonplace due to a prince, but he kept at the forefront of his mind the favors the flatterer sought. “A key to what, precisely?”
Again that fleeting smile touched the Assassin’s lips. “Your enemies are my enemies, Shahenshah. Thus I sought a key to the Rising Nineteen.”
Rukh subdued a sense of panic. “The Rising Nineteen—why?” He knew well enough that the Nineteen were a force who’d overrun the Empty Quarter: another variant of the Talisman, influenced by the One-Eyed Preacher’s teachings, invested in an arcane numerology.
Above all these are nineteen.
An esoteric riddle of the Claim that the Nineteen worshiped like a cult.
A small sigh escaped the Assassin. Resignation? Or deceit? Rukh could have used the gifts of an Authenticate, but he suspected the Assassin would not be easy to read even had he possessed the ability. And he refused to consider his gifts inferior to those of the Silver Mage, who had made himself over into a guardian of rabble. He thought of his princely city with a fierce, possessive pride. What could compare to its grandeur? Certainly not the ruins of Candour.
Hasbah indicated the army on the plains—the threat he must now contend with. “You think of your eastern border, Shahenshah, and the threat your eyes are able to perceive. My scouts have returned from the west.”
“And?” Now Rukh could not conceal his apprehension. His army of Zhayedan had been ordered to defend the eastern front.
“You will confirm it for yourself upon your return to Ashfall. The Rising Nineteen have launched a force from the west. They will arrive at Ashfall almost on the eve of the Talisman.”
Rukh had left his family undefended in the capital, tarrying too long on the road. The Khorasan Guard would not suffice to protect them. A lack of foresight on his part, swayed by the judgment of the High Companion, who had urged him to seek out the Bloodprint. His jaw tightened with anger: if she had deceived him with Ashfall trapped between two armies, she would pay the price for her betrayal.
His journey suddenly urgent, the Black Khan strode to the carved stone steps that descended from the keep, Hasbah chasing at his heels. “You must send more men to Ashfall, men who follow after, for I cannot delay.” His voice firmed. “And you must come yourself. I cannot do without your assistance now.”
In the limestone chamber at the heart of the Eagle’s Nest, he ordered two of his men to gather up the Bloodprint and the boy. This time Wafa was left untrammeled.
“We are going through Talisman lines,” he warned the boy. “Any sound of betrayal will send you straight into their arms.”
Wide-eyed with fear, Wafa nodded his understanding.
Rukh grasped the Assassin’s arm. “Will you come?” he demanded. “Can I rely upon you?”
Hasbah quoted the Claim. “�Whoever rallies to a good cause shall have a share in its blessings. Whoever rallies to an evil cause shall be answerable for his part in it.’” He nodded at the Bloodprint, wrapped in its gossamer fibers. “Do not discard the protection I have sealed it in. It will have its uses upon my arrival at Ashfall.”
The tightness in Rukh’s throat eased; the Assassin was a man he could depend on, a man who would not leave him to fight the battle for his city alone. And with so much else to worry over, the Assassin’s support was critical. For though Rukh publicly scorned the Talisman’s brute strength, in truth he was gripped by fear by the unknowable nature of the One-Eyed Preacher, too formidable to defeat on his own. What bolstered him was the aid of men like the Assassin—and the belief it served no purpose to doubt himself. Not when he was armed with the weapons he’d risked so much to secure.
“I will count on every friend I have,” he said. “And when I have sent my enemies to ruin, you may ask me for whatever you wish—it shall be granted at once.”
The Black Khan had played many games with allies and enemies alike, acts that had kept him in power, his promises as elusive as the wind. This time he meant every word.
The Assassin’s head dipped in the direction of the Bloodprint. It was a gesture he checked, but not before Rukh had seen it. He glared at the man behind the hood.
Hasbah hurried into speech. “And what of the other task you assigned me, Shahenshah? You wished me to return to Black Aura, to deliver the First Oralist from ruin.”
Arian, so proud and delicate and sweet … with a spine of steel forged in flame. He had wanted to tame that fire, to taste her willing surrender. But he wanted the Bloodprint more, and there was no woman in all of Khorasan who would stand between him and his empire. She was a prize, not a means. And no prize—regardless how sweet—was worth more than his own ambition.
“Forget her for now,” he said. “Her fate is out of our hands.”
9 (#ulink_fec42689-fa7e-586c-a236-d4840942246c)
DANIYAR DIDN’T HAVE TO PRETEND HE WAS WEAKENED AND IN PAIN. As Nevus chained his hands to lead him from the Pit to the great hall, his steps faltered down the corridors of the palace. Nevus pushed him along with a callous hand, propelling him before the Authoritan’s dais, half-naked, bloodied, and weakened.
A murmur of interest sounded from the Authoritan’s collection of courtiers and courtesans, a gathering of Ahdath commanders and beautiful girls. He thought of what a single strike at the heart of the Ark could accomplish. Tension tightened his broad shoulders.
His eyes scanned the throne room, their silver brightness dimmed.
There was still no sign of Arian. What had Lania done with her? The sight of the painted face in the mask of white lead, so similar to Arian’s yet so utterly unlike, pierced him with a savage sense of helplessness. He was bereft—bereft of Arian, bereft of the Candour, bereft of his honor as a member of the Shin War.
But if Arian was alive, as Uktam had promised, there were worse fates. He thought of Turan, blooded at the Gallows, and Wafa stolen away to be used as bait. And of Sinnia, taken to Jaslyk, a prison Larisa had described with bleak and terrifying candor.
Sinnia, Wafa, Turan, and Arian. He’d failed them all as Silver Mage.
He raised his head, his thick dark hair matted with sweat and blood. He faced the Authoritan with hatred in his eyes.
Seeing it, the Authoritan raised one finger with a weightless gesture of his hand.
An unbearable pressure was brought to bear against the insides of Daniyar’s skull. His eyes and ears began to leak blood, settling in the hollows of his bones, causing his skin to itch.
Lania quickly raised a hand of her own. If he’d thought she would aid him, he was mistaken. She was making her own preparations for the bloodrites that passed in the throne room. Each night he’d observed that a vial of his blood was presented to the Authoritan to drink—not only to strike fear in his enemies’ hearts, but as the means to a fiendish end. The Authoritan used the blood to replenish his dark magic—and the blood of one so gifted as the Silver Mage was said to be an elixir that would hasten him to victory. Many of the Ahdath abased themselves before their master in hopes of earning a taste of Daniyar’s blood. But captains of the Ahdath were fed on the blood of the Basmachi, while the lower ranks were permitted only the taste of the blood of swine. An act meant to darken and degrade, yet even this, the Ahdath welcomed as a means of notice from their lord. These strict boundaries of rank were insisted upon by the Khanum, and it was Lania herself who jealously guarded the administration of his blood to her consort.
Now at the Khanum’s summons, a beautiful young girl with honey-colored hair perched on her tiptoes before him, one hand braced on his chest. She looked abashed for a moment, transfixed by the physical presence of the man she held at her mercy, her gaze slipping to the hard curves of his mouth. Then her free hand raised a vial to his chin, capturing his blood as it trailed down his face. He shook her off with a roar. The vial shattered on the throne room’s marble floor. The girl scooped up the shards, throwing a look of terror over her shoulder at the Khanum.
“No matter,” the Authoritan said in his high, thin voice. He lowered his finger and the pressure inside Daniyar’s skull subsided. He had a moment to think before the pain struck again. The Authoritan’s magic brought an association to his mind he wished he could ignore.
Was this how the Claim served Arian? With these manifest and multiplying tortures?
“Leave him, girl. We’ll have blood enough for the bloodbasin before the night is out. The Silver Mage begins to weary me.”
Through the pain the Authoritan inflicted, Daniyar struggled to recall Uktam’s counsel. He was finding it impossible to breathe, realizing the six-tailed whip was more bearable than the spasms caused by the Authoritan’s dark magic. “Lania,” he managed. “Lania, please.”
He remembered Uktam’s words. “This dishonors us both,” he bit out. “You have the Silver Mage before you. I would serve you, if you asked.”
Lania took the Authoritan’s hand. Again the pain subsided, this time the respite longer. Tears mingled with the blood that had leaked from Daniyar’s eyes to mat in his ragged beard. He was helpless to prevent this humbling before the court, scorched by the Authoritan’s malevolence. He prayed that an interval of time would return the strength to his limbs.
“You will address me as Khanum.” Her eyes were bold and curious, fixed on the proud lines of his face. “How will you serve me? You are the sworn defender of the First Oralist, I believe.”
Uktam’s counsel had provided him with an advantage. If he hadn’t guessed before, with the pain in his skull in abatement, he could read what the Khanum wanted from him, the depths of her sensual interest in the Silver Mage as a man. The test was to make her believe that he could desire her in turn. And Uktam had given him the key.
“Khanum.” He used the title to flatter her, caressing it with his voice. “I do not deny your words; my vows bind me to the First Oralist—it is for her sake you may command me. Set me to any service you wish. I plead with you for her safety.”
He thought he would find the words difficult to speak. But he was learning that all things were possible on Arian’s behalf, this stinging humiliation the least of what he would endure.
The Khanum’s eyes gleamed with a mischief that sat oddly within the painted mask. “I would see you on your knees, then.”
Nevus shoved him face-first to the ground before Daniyar could obey. For a moment he was consumed by rage, unable to think of anything save his desire to destroy the Ahdath who had taken such pleasure in his torture. His breath rasped from his chest, his powerful muscles shuddering beneath Nevus’s harsh grip. Then Nevus dug a knee between his shoulder blades, setting fire to Daniyar’s scars. There was no pretense in the sound of agony that fought free from his lips. He let the tears fall from his eyes, raising his face to the dais.
Struggling to remember his purpose, he whispered, “Please, Lania, I can’t—”
The Khanum blinked. After an uncharacteristic hesitation, she clapped her hands. Two of her attendants bowed before the pearl throne. “Bathe him,” she said. “It does not please me to see the Silver Mage in this state.”
Daniyar remained still as basins were brought to his side by two exquisite young women from the south. His face, his chest, and his back were bathed, washing away the stink of the Pit and easing the bloodmarks of the whip. Inadvertently, he glanced at the six-tailed whip hanging over the dais; the Authoritan’s laughter mocked his fear. Lania’s lips tightened.
“Soothe him,” she said to the attendants. The travesty of a smile edged her lips, her eyes tracing Daniyar’s face. Glancing at him demurely, the Khanum’s doves ran delicate hands over the ruined flesh of his back. The salve they used brought him a measure of relief. After a moment, his thoughts cleared. “Khanum,” he murmured, “I would dress.”
Her crimson lips stretched wide over her sharp white teeth. She waved a hand and her attendants whirled to obey her in a rustling commotion of silk.
“Not just yet, I think.” She rose from her throne and descended from the dais, nodding at Nevus to bring the Silver Mage to his feet. When she reached him, she trailed one scarlet-tipped hand down the expanse of his powerfully muscled chest, exploring its dips and ridges. Her hand lingered just beneath his ribs, tracing the hard planes of his stomach.
“You please me, Daniyar,” she said. She glanced up into his eyes and murmured beneath her breath, “You would please any woman who witnessed the gifts you offer.” Her explorations grew more intimate, her movements concealed by the outspread wings of her robe.
He could have mistaken her voice for Arian’s speaking his name, but he could never mistake her caress. When Arian touched him, he was brought to his knees by the honesty of her desire—by the trust in her eyes when she reached up to kiss him, aflame with an unexpressed love. But Arian’s bright innocence and shimmering hope were missing from Lania’s touch; what she offered him merely a shadow. She read the thought on his face and her sensual trespasses ceased. Her scarlet nails scored his chest, and grudgingly, he groaned.
She tilted her head back to meet his eyes, the plumed headdress swaying with the gesture. “Would you fight for me, Keeper of the Candour? Though my touch offends you?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Fight, then.” She let her hand fall, climbing the dais with an imperial majesty. She spared a cold smile for the Authoritan, who had watched her actions throughout.
“The whip no longer interests me. I would have the Silver Mage dance. Nevus,” she snapped at the Ahdath captain, “give the Silver Mage a sword and clear some room for him to fight.” She paused, directing her next words at Daniyar, an enigmatic warning in her eyes. “He is said to be skilled with his hands, though my sister will not answer to the point.”
A wave of laughter rippled through the room.
Daniyar didn’t rise to the bait. He felt a sense of relief mixed with an elation he tried to tamp down. With a sword in his hand, he was on his own ground again. A chance for deliverance at last. A chance to strike at the Authoritan, here at the heart of his citadel.
But he’d mistaken Lania’s intent.
She motioned to Nevus to choose a fighter to stand against him. The man who stepped forward loomed over Daniyar, twice as heavy in muscle. He wore his fair hair long, his features obscured by an overgrown beard. He brought up a double-edged sword, his eyes steady and watchful.
Daniyar extended his chained hands to Lania, searching for any sign that his life was of value to her. And regretting now that he’d missed the chance to express his response to her touch. “If you would have me fight.”
A peal of steel-edged laughter escaped from Lania’s throat. At her side, the Authoritan smiled. “My lord, do you mistake me for a fool? Would I unchain the Silver Mage even if I had a company of soldiers to stand against him, as I do?” Her smile hardened on her face, and any resemblance to Arian’s luminous beauty was erased. “No, my lord. You wished to fight for me, so you will fight. Exactly as you are.”
Daniyar tested the sword in his hands, running one hand along the blade to see if the contest was otherwise equal. The edge was sharp, the sword balanced in his hands. When he looked at Lania to signal his thanks, he sensed her apprehension.
“Your sword is well suited to your hand.” There was something in the words besides her honesty, yet he couldn’t deduce her meaning.
She nodded at the Ahdath. “You may begin, Spartak. Do not underestimate the Silver Mage.”
Anticipation whispered through the throne room. Spartak recited the ritual words of the challenge, and Daniyar echoed them back reflexively. He touched his sword to Spartak’s; they drew away from each other. With a surge of power, Daniyar raised his sword. He retreated a step and Spartak followed, silent and persistent, his own sword raised in one hand. He lunged and Daniyar ducked, missing his footing and stumbling into Spartak’s path. Spartak’s sword slashed down, glancing off Daniyar’s left arm. Spartak brought it around, slashing Daniyar’s other arm with his blade. Sweat broke out on Daniyar’s forehead. He retreated again, the pain of the wounds burning through his thoughts. Spartak stalked him across the floor, pushing him back toward the wall where the whip was poised below the Authoritan’s motto:
STRENGTH IS JUSTICE.
Daniyar knew he would lose this battle unless he could get the other man to speak. “What kind of warrior takes a double-edged sword into battle against an enemy who is bound?” He raised his voice. “How much protection does an Ahdath require against a prisoner?”
A rumble of anger met his words. Spartak nodded, accepting the gibe. “These are not my terms, Keeper of the Candour. But then, where is your Candour now?”
The anger melted into laughter. The Authoritan nodded his appreciation of the insult. A hiss of excitement filled the room as Spartak advanced again, pushing Daniyar back against the dais. Their swords met in the air, steel clashing against steel.
His tone conversational, Daniyar considered Spartak’s insult. “I suppose the Candour would be insignificant to an illiterate.”
A rustle of feminine laughter answered the words. Angry now, Spartak shoved Daniyar against the dais with a powerful thrust of his arm. “I read your death in your eyes.”
Now Daniyar had what he needed. Spartak had said he’d seen Daniyar’s death, but in turn the Silver Mage had read his opponent, discovered his vanity and arrogance, and understood his weakness. He called the Claim to answer it, his nearly soundless hum slowing Spartak’s speed, giving him the chance to meet each new parry of his sword with an answering feint of his own. They danced as Lania demanded, and Daniyar’s confidence grew.
But his enemy was not easily bested. He swung his weight around, one leg tripping the Silver Mage, forcing him back against the wall to recover his balance. Daniyar’s arm brushed the hitch of the six-tailed whip even as Spartak’s sword arm skimmed his throat. The crowd of courtiers gasped. The Silver Mage no longer had the space to maneuver.
Daniyar dropped his sword, backing up against the dais. Spartak raised his arm for the killing blow, a gloating pride in his eyes, the victory assumed before the battle had concluded—a hubris that served him ill. Caught by surprise, Spartak staggered back as Daniyar’s chained hands flexed against the wall, unmooring the six-tailed whip. A quick flash of his wrists coiled the tails around the other man’s throat, just above his armor. With a sharp yank, backed by all the strength his weakened body could muster, Daniyar collapsed the Ahdath’s larynx.
Spartak dropped to his knees, sputtering for air. Daniyar kicked their swords aside, yanking the whip tighter. He flashed a look of contempt at the Authoritan. The room fell as silent as the giant warrior before him. “Is strength truly justice?” he demanded. He eased his grip on the whip.
“No!” Lania called. “Do not release him, my lord. In the Ark, we observe the rites of Qatilah. One or the other must die. Here our custom is the sword. Bury it in his chest.”
Daniyar looked down at Spartak, humiliated and defenseless at his feet. Could this be the custom of the Ark? Had the Authoritan corrupted the High Tongue? For in the High Tongue, Qatilah meant “murderer.”
He knew he’d forsaken his honor to get himself to this point, but he would not kill without purpose. He threw down the whip, Spartak gasping at his feet.
“Do you dare to defy the laws of Qatilah?” The Authoritan glided to his feet, his robes whispering in the silence. He pointed a bony finger at his captain. “Bring her,” he said.
Daniyar waited, watchful and wary. Nevus disappeared, and in his absence the throne room seemed to hold its breath. He returned minutes later, thrusting Arian before him, and Daniyar drew a quick breath, joy hammering his heart. Then he realized she was dressed in transparent silk that bared her loveliness to the court in a manner he had never seen. It inflamed him—his desire warring with an anger fueled by the Ahdath’s speculation.
His emotions consumed him for the span of a breath, until his attention was claimed by a sight that shattered him. Fitted about Arian’s neck was a leather collar that tightened about her lower jaw and throat, leaving her face half in shadow. The exterior of the collar was studded with spikes and linked to her wrists by iron chains.
They had dressed the First Oralist of Hira as a slave, debasing her rank as Companion. Demeaning the Council of Hira. Demeaning the woman he loved.
He raised his head, his silver eyes pinning the Authoritan in place. Calmly he said, “This Ark will burn and you along with it.”
The Authoritan’s rigid expression didn’t alter. An unholy glee lit his eyes. He raised a narrow white hand in reply, tightening it into a fist. And unimaginable pain burst through Daniyar’s skull.
“No!” The curt command came from Lania. “The rules of Qatilah must be observed.” She lowered the Authoritan’s hand with her own, her skin whispering over his like the rustle of brittle parchment. “We will suffer no insult before our court. Pick up your sword, my lord.”
Reeling from the pain, Daniyar was unable to comply.
“Nevus.”
At the Authoritan’s command, the captain of the Ahdath unsheathed his dagger. With a calculated flourish, he pressed its tip to Arian’s heart, his fingers lingering on the soft swell of her breast. A smile stretched the tattoo on his face. “If the Authoritan should grant me this prisoner, I will tattoo a matching bloodmark on her breast, so all might know who owns her.”
Propelled by a staggering rage, Daniyar threw himself at Nevus. He was brought down by half a dozen Ahdath.
The Khanum spoke again. “Bring the Silver Mage to his feet and place his sword in his hand. If he will not observe the Qatilah, let him taste the First Oralist’s blood.”
A pair of Ahdath dragged Spartak before the Silver Mage, forcing the Khanum’s champion to his knees. Daniyar’s eyes met Arian’s over Spartak’s head. A silent message passed between them, each offering solace to the other. Arian’s eyes blazed with purpose. And seeing her undiminished fire, desire set fire to his veins in a raw conflagration of need. There was no trial the Authoritan could devise that would keep him from reaching her side.
As if she’d heard the vow from his lips, her eyes became heated and dark. She made him a promise in turn. My love, these torments will pass. We will find each other again.
His gaze dropped to Nevus’s hand, with its cruel hold on Arian’s breast, and he knew there would come a time when he would sever it from his arm. Shaking off the grip of the Ahdath, he scowled at Lania on the dais. “You permit this offense against the First Oralist? With your insistence on protocol? I thought better of you, Khanum.”
Now he brought the full force of his attraction to bear, using the thrall he suspected he cast over Lania’s thoughts. The Claim hummed between them, turbulent and bold, urging her to remember herself as a girl stolen from her home, to be ravaged by Talisman commanders. The strength in her voice faltered. Her eyes locked on Daniyar’s, she jerked Arian free of Nevus.
Satisfied, Daniyar raised his sword. He murmured a prayer of the people of Khorasan. “From the One we come, to the One we return.”
He plunged the sword into Spartak’s chest, stepping clear of the path of the blood spray.
“Prepare the bloodbasin.” The Authoritan’s command didn’t penetrate the reality of what Daniyar had just done. What he would do, night after night, to purchase Arian’s life. He didn’t have time to upbraid himself for his choice; a strange white foam began to bubble at the corners of Spartak’s mouth. His breath rattled from his body on a gasp, his limbs twitching in their armor. The bloodbasin shattered at the first touch of his blood.
Daniyar had driven the sword tip-first into Spartak’s body. Aghast, he stared up at Lania.
A smile vanished from her lips so swiftly, he wasn’t certain he had seen it. In her weakness for him, she had meant to confer an advantage.
Your sword is well suited to your hand.
The tip of the blade was poisoned.
10 (#ulink_1c6a9262-b317-536a-a559-8c058bad0795)
LARISA AND ELENA CLIMBED A TOWERING RED DUNE, FEELING THE SAND shift beneath their feet. Shapes loomed out of the darkness, their edges limned by the light cast down by thickly tangled stars. The strange shapes shifted against the patterns of the desert as if they crested gold-flamed waves.
To the north, a giant nothingness claimed the horizon, a vast black pit whose farthest edge was outlined by a wraithlike blue, starlight reflected in a surface that shimmered like a huge silver mirror. It was an improbable note of beauty against the bleak walls of the prison.
Both women had covered their faces to protect themselves from the grit of blowing sand. Now they lowered their scarves to speak.
“What are they?” Larisa asked. “Some kind of weapon?”
“Ships of the old world, run aground some time before the wars of the Far Range.”
“Ships? Then that blue—
“It was once a lake. Ruined by the wars. What do you think he does down there?”
Elena brought a spyglass to her eye and scanned the rusted hulks of the ships. As light skittered over the helm of one, she caught a trace of movement against the night, a black shadow that darted between the keels. A circular light flashed against the bulkhead of a ship. A tangle of dead vines ran down one side, and rusting underneath it was a baffling set of runes.
“It’s Russe,” Elena told her sister. “They used to name these ships.”
Larisa looked at her curiously. “How do you know this?”
“It took months of preparation to break you out of Jaslyk. The Crimson Watch was loose in its talk.” She frowned as the shadow dipped under the hulk of another ship. “I should be down there, not him. I know the sands of the Kyzylkum better than he ever will.”
“You don’t know that,” Larisa answered. She was weary of defending a man she barely knew, a man she relied on only because the Silver Mage had used his gifts at the Registan to assure her Illarion could be trusted. “We don’t know that,” she amended. “We don’t know who he is or where he came from, or whose purpose he serves.”
The gritty fall of sand warned her they were not alone. Illarion had returned. He held out a canteen, encouraging the sisters to drink. Larisa took it from him with thanks. Elena turned away, striking a timbaku root, sheltering its burning end with her palm.
“It was right where you said it would be—stowed in the hold of the ship closest to the lake. They haven’t discovered your cache.”
Ignoring his words, Elena drew smoke into her lungs. She had yet to speak a word to Illarion on their journey, communicating solely with her sister. The peppery scent of timbaku wafted over the dunes, too remote from Jaslyk to betray them.
The sisters made an exchange, the canteen for the roll of timbaku. Just as Elena had done, Larisa sheltered the tip of the roll from giving away their position.
“Do you smoke?” Larisa asked Illarion.
“No. You shouldn’t either. Timbaku is a poison. It just kills you slowly.”
He waited for Elena to pass him the canteen, though she looked as if she had no intention of ever considering his needs. Larisa prodded her sister. “Elena, I’m sure the captain would like to ease his thirst.”
Not bothering to look at him, Elena held out the canteen. She held herself still as he brushed her hand in the exchange. He drank with evident thirst, then offered it back to Elena.
“Thank you, Anya,” he murmured.
She glared at him. He knew her name was Elena—he was taunting her with a reminder of their first encounter. She demanded the roll from Larisa and took another puff.
“You will ruin your beauty,” he warned her.
“You said I have no beauty to ruin.”
“True,” he agreed with a smile.
Larisa watched them, disquieted. The tension between her sister and the Ahdath augured uncertainty for their attempt to rescue Sinnia, now at Jaslyk ten days. But she needed them both if their plan was to succeed—a paradox she’d have to reconcile.
Even if Elena and Illarion were in accord, the rescue could still go awry. She knew from her own experience that the Technologist would have been summoned, and if that had happened, Sinnia would be in no position to assist them. If she’d had the Claim at her disposal, she would already have freed herself.
“Will you present us as your captives?” Larisa asked Illarion. “Will you say you’ve brought the daughters of Salikh for the Technologist’s trials?”
“No.” With a casual movement of his hand, Illarion flicked the timbaku from between Elena’s fingers and ground it out beneath his boot. “I’m known as Araxcin’s second. They’d know I wouldn’t be escorting prisoners on my own—there’d be a full patrol with me. We should go under cover of night, if Anya is certain of the route. We can’t afford a mistake.”
“Worry for yourself, Ahdath. Whether you return from Jaslyk is of no importance to me.” She spoke to her sister, impatience rising in her voice. “I won’t show him the passages. We must protect the resistance at all costs, and I won’t risk the Basmachi on the word of an Ahdath who survived the fall of the Registan. I doubt he was even there.”
Derision colored her voice; Illarion stiffened at the imputation of cowardice. He turned to Larisa. “I don’t need you to guide me in. I’ll say I was sent by Araxcin to assess Jaslyk’s security after the attack on the Registan.”
“Impregnability, not security.” But Elena wasn’t speaking to him. The words were prodded from some distant memory. She brooded over the sight of the prison, its black walls rising like a cliff against the night. Here there were no traceries of stone or iron, no glazed tiles or patterned bricks. No vegetation grew along the high stone walls, no creepers abloom with desert flowers. Jaslyk was a place whose ugliness couldn’t be borne, a place of unremitting death. And she knew each watchtower, each guard, each passage the Basmachi had tunneled underground like others remembered a lover’s face. The memory of it was suffocating.
They discussed the plan once more. Finally Illarion said, “Let’s go.”
But as they picked their way down the dune, he was left in no doubt that it was Elena who was in charge.
11 (#ulink_750f0617-2892-5a66-a0d5-1a5f8aa5c4d2)
SINNIA NO LONGER NEEDED THE RESTRAINTS. HER LIMBS WERE FILLED with a wondrous languor, and the dark skin she prized was outlined with radiant flares of gold. Her arms were weightless. She was floating above the world, buoyed on a wave of inaudible sound.
She smiled at the man in the gas mask, trailing her fingers along the tray of needles. The floor of her cell was crimson and gold, colors and patterns bobbing along the Sea of Reeds. Her hands were filled with delicate spiny shells. She flung them to the shore with a smile.
“Please,” she said to the man in the gas mask. “It’s wearing off. I need more.”
A thunderous sound filled her ears. It was Salikh and the others banging against their cell doors. Salikh’s oddly insistent murmurs whispered through Sinnia’s mind, shattering the needle’s delights. She knew the others were jealous. They craved the white needle as she did—they’d do anything to steal the tall man’s attention, but she was the prisoner of choice.
Her full lips pouted. She was—what was she, again?—the words seemed difficult to recall. A woman of the Negus. A Companion of a stronghold on the banks of the High Road. She wore a pretty silk dress and—intricate bands on her arms. She tossed her head. It didn’t matter. Why should any of it matter when she was black and gold and weightless? She would soon be cast upon a sea of languid bliss. If she could ignore Salikh’s imperceptible cautions in her mind.
“The needle,” she begged again. “Give me the white needle.”
The tall man in the mask moved his head from side to side. He had three heads, each equally beautiful. He stroked a gloved hand down Sinnia’s arm, setting her on fire. When he grasped her upper arms, the tiny barbs on the palms of his gloves felt good. They scored a path on the place on her arms that had lately come to feel bare. Scarlet drops were added to the pattern of black and gold that engulfed Sinnia in an airless cocoon. Her dazzling smile indicated her sense of transcendence. But was it the white needle? Or did some other power soothe her senses? A power that was inexplicably familiar, as though rooted deep in her soul. She could feel it flickering before her—she needed to reach for its promise, knew it offered her salvation.
“More,” she said. “Please, more.”
A new sound reached her ears—not the clamor of the other prisoners. Nor was it Salikh shouting strange names at her, as he did with such persistence.
“Companion, remember yourself. Remember Hira! Remember who you are!”
It was the horrible sound, the sound that intruded on her daydreams: the sputtering hiss of the hose. The tray of needles was gone, replaced by the canister she had come to know with horror. She returned to her body with a thump. She gazed at the tall man in confusion. Now there were other men with him. Three men instead of three heads.
“What’s this?” she asked. “What have you done with the needle?”
A hollow voice echoed through the gas mask. “This is a test,” it said. “The white needle amplifies the effects of the gas. Some die on its first application; others last for months. We are attempting to accelerate its effects.”
“No,” Sinnia whispered. “Give me the white needle. Can’t you see that I need it?”
“Oh, yes, I can see.” She heard a sickening anticipation in the eerie throb of the tall man’s voice. “But this is my first experiment on a Companion of Hira. I want you to live through the night.”
12 (#ulink_ce9b531d-0104-5c6f-ae81-6623620ca140)
AN INHUMAN SCREAM PIERCED THE WALLS. IT REBOUNDED THROUGH the prison’s courtyard, followed by a flurry of activity and noise. It sounded like an animal, twisted and broken in the savage rites of death. But Elena knew the scream—she’d heard it from her own throat, as a source of infinite horror, and also from Larisa, a sound that had almost killed her.
The Technologist had come.
The scream sounded again. It was a woman’s scream; it could have been one of the followers of the Usul Jade.
But in her heart, Elena knew it wasn’t. She knew it was the Companion of Hira, the woman she’d never met—a woman she was risking their lives for. All at Larisa’s bidding, while Illarion paced like a hungry jackal at their side.
“What’s that noise?”
Elena looked at him with hatred in her heart. “That noise is you and everything you stand for. The Ahdath, the Crimson Watch. Torturers who now inflict their savagery on a Companion of Hira.”
Illarion stared back at her, his clever face unreadable.
“Go,” she muttered. “The lights will sweep from the tower in thirty seconds. If we run out of time, you must divert their attention at the door.”
“I know what I’m doing, Anya. Whether you believe it or not.”
Larisa and Elena waited in the shadows as Illarion crossed Jaslyk’s courtyard. Torches flared at the gate, men’s voices ringing out. Illarion showed them something from his pack. A pass? A document? Elena couldn’t guess.
“Now.”
She tugged at her sister’s hand, guiding her through the barricades in the courtyard, the secret hiding places, the small patches of cover, ducking out of the path of the lights. Dogs began to howl in the distance. A patrol shifted on the perimeter, doubling back to the gate. The Salikh sisters moved forward, darting ahead under the great weight of the ominously pooling shadows.
The courtyard was as vast as the prison itself. Neither sister could look at its walls with anything other than despair. How many members of the resistance had been broken at Jaslyk? Drugaddled and pain-ridden, they had told the Crimson Watch everything they knew before they had died, painfully, pitilessly rendered from themselves. Based on their confessions, new prisoners had been captured, Basmachi hunted through the Hazing, and still there was no shortage of screams to shatter the sightless eyes that watched over Jaslyk.
One day she’d burn the prison down.
But not this night. She had no fighters or armory at her disposal. All she had was Larisa, and she could see Larisa was faltering, overcome by the memory of her time at Jaslyk. Both sisters had been drugged, raped, and tortured; both had suffered the full range of the Technologist’s experiments. Both had lost their ability to hear the Claim. Though the loss of it had once been unbearable, for Larisa’s sake, she had pretended to a strength she didn’t possess.
“Don’t think of it, Larisa.”
Another high-pitched scream scraped against the walls, spurring Elena on. The sisters found their way to the door that fronted the basin of the lake. There were dogs at the door, accompanied by guards. They had picked up the sisters’ scent, and now they began to howl.
“Hurry.”
Behind the outer rings of its walls, Jaslyk was composed of irregular shapes designed to maximize the interior space, while giving guards and staff the ability to transition easily between the courtyard and the prison blocks. This allowed the Crimson Watch greater vigilance. It also reduced the possibility of escape. Elena and Ruslan’s mission to rescue Larisa, a year ago, was the last time a prisoner had left Jaslyk alive.
But the diamond-shaped construction of the prison also concealed a weakness. The Basmachi had been able to dig tunnels beneath the transition areas, and the Crimson Watch couldn’t cover them all, particularly as more and more men were being summoned to the Wall.
The sisters skirted the barricades that had been erected over Larisa’s escape route.
It was meant as a feint, of course. Elena pressed her sister’s hand, holding a finger to her lips. She had no intention of using the same tunnel. One of the dogs barked, closer than she expected. She stumbled against the barricade. Her hand pulled something from the pack she carried—a scented powder that she flung over the risers. The dogs began a frantic whining. She pulled Larisa around a corner. “Let them cover their ears for once.”
She led Larisa along the south wall, away from the patrol. As they’d planned, the torches along the southern perimeter had been redirected to the gate, where Illarion engaged the guards. It was the first sign to suggest that perhaps Illarion could be trusted.
Feeling her way along the wall, Elena stopped when she came to the stone she had etched with Basmachi signals. She’d imprinted each of the prison blocks with a series of directions, distinguishing the Technologist’s Wing from the others. She picked out the command center at the intersection of the blocks, a heavily guarded nexus she knew they needed to avoid.
“It’s here.”
Elena dropped to her knees, running her hands along the stone base of the wall. She looked over her shoulder at Larisa. “What’s our mission here?”
She knew the answer; she was making sure Larisa understood the cost of what they were leaving undone: their friends in the resistance left behind to face the Technologist.
Larisa hesitated. Then she confirmed her choice. “The Companion of Hira. Her safety is paramount now.”
Elena shifted a stone. A narrow and airless passageway opened beneath it. She’d heard a dozen rumors about the fall of the Registan, yet she still didn’t know which of the rumors were true. “Why? Because you swore an oath to the Silver Mage? Did his comeliness bewitch you?” This had been rumored as well.
Larisa slid into the tunnel first, Elena following behind, careful to shelter her ribs. She’d smoked timbaku to dull the pain inflicted by the Ahdath’s blade in Marakand, something she’d withheld from Illarion. She wasn’t in the habit of confessing weakness, especially to an Ahdath. Once they reached the corridors of Jaslyk, her injury would be the least of her concerns.
“Don’t insult me,” Larisa answered. “You know what I think of men. I swore my oath to the First Oralist. And I would do it again.” She turned to face Elena suddenly, a cold and deadly warning in her eyes. “We have one purpose, Elena, one. And that is to free our sisters, a mission the First Oralist shares. Do you understand me?”
Elena nodded, satisfied that Larisa hadn’t led them on a fool’s mission. Her sister was still committed to their cause.
They moved along the tunnel, swallowed by the dark.
13 (#ulink_c76185af-1ad8-57f2-8bd5-a42aae88e2b2)
ILLARION WAS ESCORTED TO THE COMMAND CENTER BY THE WARDEN OF Jaslyk, a stooped-over man whose wisps of white hair covered his scalp like a crown. The Warden’s vision was distorted by a pair of goggles. From behind the goggles, his blue eyes scanned the room. He dressed in a long white smock, cinched at the waist by a thick metallic belt sectioned into chambers. As a functionary, he wore no crimson: he wasn’t a member of the Ahdath.
Illarion scanned the command center. It was staffed by eight men, all members of the Crimson Watch, each with an area of jurisdiction patrolled with relentless regularity. Each man was junior to Illarion in the Ahdath’s hierarchy, and each accorded him the necessary signs of respect. He briefed them on the fall of the Registan, concluding by asking, “Could it have been orchestrated by prisoners held here?”
“There have been no escapes and no communications, as far as we are aware. But a prisoner has just arrived from Marakand. Marat can tell you more.” The Warden nodded at the man responsible for the Technologist’s activities.
The soldier named Marat saluted Illarion. “Captain Illarion. Or are you Commander of the Wall now?”
“No. The Authoritan sends Commander Nevus from Black Aura to take command. We expect him any day.”
The men in the room straightened at the mention of Nevus’s name. It was a name they feared more than Araxcin’s.
“He won’t be coming here,” Illarion clarified. “Unless he has some reason to suspect your prisoner’s involvement in the attack on the Registan.”
Marat considered this. “Perhaps he does. She was taken to the Technologist on arrival. She’s due to be moved to the Plague Wing tomorrow.”
Illarion straightened. He placed his hand on the pommel of his sword. “When? If she’s who I think she is, she will need to be interrogated.”
But the men in the command center had their own sources, and another man spoke up. “She’s not the First Oralist. The First Oralist and the Silver Mage were captured some days ago in Black Aura. The Authoritan has them now.”
“I know that,” Illarion barked. “But your prisoner may be a Companion of Hira. She must have had some knowledge of the attack.”
“She is,” the Warden conceded. “I thought as much—two members of the Council of Hira would not make their way behind the Wall without a purpose. If there’s anything to know, the Technologist will have the answers for you tonight.” He nodded at a heavy-lidded pewter bowl on the table behind him.
“Why tonight?”
The Warden lifted the lid of the bowl. “The Companion of Hira took longer to break than one of the Basmachi. But once we removed her circlets, she fell to the persuasion of the needle.”
He did not touch the objects in the bowl, even though he wore gloves. Illarion had no such qualms. He gathered the golden circlets in his hands. He’d seen them once before, on the arms of the First Oralist. This pair must be Sinnia’s. “A pretty prize to take to the Wall.”
The Warden grabbed his arm. “The Technologist hasn’t finished with them.”
Illarion shook off the Warden’s hand. His voice was low and dangerous. “I will present them at the Wall. If you wish otherwise, you may explain your wishes to Commander Nevus.”
The guards in the room glanced at one another. No one intervened.
His face pale with alarm, the Warden cleared his throat. “What is it you wish?”
“I wish to be taken to the prisoner. You, man.” He snapped at Marat. “You will show me the way.” He slipped the circlets beneath his breastplate, taking the measure of the Crimson Watch. At last his gaze came to rest on the slack-mouthed Warden. “You may accompany us.”
“The Technologist is in the midst of an experiment. You cannot enter the room.”
Sinnia’s earsplitting scream sounded through Jaslyk again.
“I’m well aware.” He jerked another object off the table behind the Warden. A mask with goggles larger than the Warden’s own. He tossed a second mask at Marat.
“You’re coming with me. Before her mind collapses, I want to know what she knows.”
14 (#ulink_dd203779-a94e-59ad-bcce-5c2e7cb6bb61)
DANIYAR RESTED HIS HEAD AGAINST THE RIM OF THE GREEN-MARBLED tub. He was soaking in a bath prepared for him by two of the loveliest women he’d ever seen, slaves from the northernmost regions of the Transcasp, their skin translucent, their hair and eyes golden, their luxurious flesh softly rounded. They murmured to each other in dove-soft voices, and he recognized their tongue as the ancient tongue of the people of Russe.
His bath was scented with rose petals and a luminous gold powder that worked its way into the tissue of his deepest scars, easing his pain and healing his damaged skin. His forearms were wrapped in a soft leather binding, protecting his wounds from the water.
The Khanum’s maidservants hovered on either side of the tub, passing him lotions and oils, offering to scrub him from head to toe. He dismissed them with a frown, yet the instant they left, he missed their raillery, their utter absence of malice when everything else the Ark had to offer promised him unrelenting pain. And if he was honest with himself, the gentle feminine interest expressed by the doves’ attentions was a respite he welcomed as a man pushed too hard and too long by his trials.
He was forced to fight in the rites of the Qatilah, sometimes with a sword, sometimes with a club, oftimes bare-handed, falling back on his limited abilities with the Claim. Though each night’s trial concluded in hard-fought victory, his battered and bloody body was dragged back to his cell, his limbs aching from the effort it had taken him to resist, his thoughts inevitably darkened by the killing of so many men.
To be shifted from the Pit to Lania’s luxurious apartments was a contrast that weakened his resolve, testing the extent of his honor. He held fast to one thought in his mind—if he responded to Lania’s overtures, perhaps he might lure her to his side. If he could make her believe he was drawn in by her allure or her resemblance to Arian, an opportunity might arise: a chance to escape the Ark with Arian at his side.
He was half-dressed when Lania called him. Moving less stiffly now, he let her pull him down beside her onto a chaise cushioned in silk. Her feline eyes grew heated as she viewed his state of undress. She leaned close to him, resting a hand on the sculpted planes of his chest. “Another man would not deny himself the pleasures my courtiers offer.”
He met her gaze, his voice courteous but firm. “We’ve discussed this,” he said. “These girls from the north of the Transcasp are slaves. They’re compelled to your wishes by their servitude. I am the Guardian of Candour. I have never touched a woman against her will.”
Lania’s laughter sounded, low and quiet. When she was alone with him like this, she relinquished the adornments of the Khanum. She wore a plain silk dress and had left her face unpainted, her gold-flecked eyes soft and clear. She looked younger and more vulnerable, freeing the silk of her hair with a graceful movement of her arms. A traitorous thought slipped into his mind. He imagined her slender arms gilded by Arian’s circlets. Bound though he was to Arian, it was Lania who held his attention at this moment. Indeed, she looked so much like Arian, defenseless and unafraid, that his yearning and sense of loss expanded. Here was a woman who would grant him what he wanted, with a warmth he could take if he wished. She would gladly end the self-denial he’d chosen to endure too long, a temptation he’d thought himself immune to.
“You underrate yourself, my lord,” she answered him. “You would not need to compel my doves—they would attend to you gladly.” She moved from the chaise to kneel behind him. When he couldn’t see her face, she added, “As would I, if you asked.”
Her hand came to rest upon his bare shoulder, moving to the base of his throat. The air between them was fraught. He knew she could feel the racing of his pulse.
“Am I not teaching you?” she urged him. “Do I not gift you with the Claim and share with you the secrets of the Authoritan? Do I not heal your wounds with the mysteries I know?”
Daniyar tipped back his head. Their eyes met in a dangerously slow seduction. His glance raked over the unpainted curves of her mouth. He caught a handful of her hair in his hand and used it to tug her closer. An answering spark lit her eyes.
“The Qatilah is rigorous,” he murmured against her lips. She kissed him, and he let her feel his response, heat stealing through his blood.
“The Authoritan insists on it,” she said when she had the chance. “He is jealous of my … interest … in you. He takes his revenge through the Qatilah.”
“And you, Lania? Do you seek to punish me as well?”
She slid onto his lap in a whisper of silk, fastening her arms around his neck. “Does this feel like punishment?” she asked.
He kissed her again, the kisses slow and rough, her rich curves pressed against the hard lines of his body, appreciating anew how different she was from Arian—the pampered softness of her flesh distinct from Arian’s strength, the calculation behind her response instead of Arian’s honesty. He pushed the thought of Arian away and kissed Lania more deeply, grasping her head with his hand. When she was pliant in his arms, he murmured the question on his mind—the question he’d waited to ask.
“Your attentions to me are not as marked at the Qatilah. Do you fear the loyalty of the men who bring me here?”
Surprised but too languid to stir, she answered, “No, these men serve only me. Just as the doves are mine.”
“Then what do you fear? If the Authoritan does not claim you as his own, what is it that he wants?”
Irritation crept into her voice. “What does any man want? Territory.”
He traced his hand over the silk of her dress, gently squeezing. “Is this not territory enough? As it would be for me.”
Suspicious now, she asked, “Do you play with me, Daniyar? Or do you offer the truth?”
He sensed the uncertainty behind her words—her longing for his regard, and a deeper yearning yet to take him for herself. But he didn’t know if it was the man she wanted or the legend of the Silver Mage. Or whether she was more damaged than he knew, and she sought to strike at Arian where she knew it would hurt her most. Because unlike Arian, when Lania was in his arms, she resisted the chance to surrender. Beneath the luxurious entreaty of her kisses, she maintained a conspicuous control.
“You are an Augur, Lania.” He used her name to mitigate her mistrust, urging her to believe he respected her sorcerous gifts. “How could I hide the truth from you?”
Suddenly alight, she searched his face for confirmation. “Would you have me think you have given Arian up in the face of this trifling temptation?”
He took her hand and dragged it down his body, forcing her to acknowledge the evidence of his desire. “Do not disparage yourself. And do not think me a fool unable to see who you are.”
For a moment there was silence as Lania caressed him, pushing him back against the chaise. She leaned over to whisper in his ear, her artful tongue flickering inside. “I think you are a man who does not forsake his bonds, though why you have chosen Arian when she is beholden to Hira, I cannot understand. What power does she possess that you practice this self-denial?” Her eyes became hazy and slumberous, occupied by the work of her hands. “Why beg for crumbs from her table when I offer the banquet entire?”
Her clever, caressing hands nearly stole his resolve—it took him a moment to remember his purpose in this room. He shifted her off his lap on the pretext of stretching his back.
“I will fight for you,” he vowed. “But not for the pleasure of the Authoritan. Think of how he diminishes you, while I would be eager to serve you. If I am to stand at your side, why spend my strength at the Ark?” He dropped his voice to its lowest register, growling the words in her ear. “Don’t you wish me to claim the Wall?”
Lania drew away, as if something in his eyes made it impossible for her to hold his gaze.
He pulled her back, curling a hand around her neck, letting her feel the potency of his desire. She needed to believe he would fight at her side, unconquerable in his strength—her partner in all things.
“I see a man at the Wall,” she answered. “And that man is not the Authoritan. More than that, I cannot make out.” Her voice grew cool. “There is a woman at his side … a woman who commands the Wall.”
But Lania wasn’t certain, and Daniyar read the truth of this as well. “The woman must be you.”
“She is dark and fights like a man.”
She misread his frown, drawing away to stare out the window. Daniyar followed her, conscious of his state of undress. He needed to press her now—or all he’d risked to persuade her would be lost, his commitment to Arian forfeit.
“The man at the Wall could be me—it feels as though it should be.”
She touched her forehead to his. Daniyar misjudged the action, hurrying into speech.
“To stand at the Wall at your side, I would need the magic of the Bloodprint. Every moment hastens it away. Flee Black Aura with me. Set me on the Black Khan’s trail.”
Lania went still, in no doubt now of his intentions. With an angry grimace of dismissal, she freed herself from his embrace, spearing a quick glance at the upper galleries of the room, screened by lattices of stone. “I cannot betray the Authoritan. Not after everything he’s sacrificed for me. Besides which, the Bloodprint would not serve you. Why do you imagine the Authoritan was willing to trade it away? He was High Priest of the Bloodless. He studied it so deeply he twisted its meaning beyond recognition. He has mastery over the Claim. You cannot use it against him.”
But Daniyar didn’t believe this. Why else would Arian have been subjected to the humiliation of a slave-collar? The Authoritan feared the powers of the First Oralist of the Claim. Which meant that the Claim could still be used against him. He pressed her for an explanation. “Then why did you summon Arian here, if not to make use of her gifts?”
“I do not require Arian to teach me what she once learned from me,” Lania snapped. “I asked her to tell me of Hira.” She studied him, sensing something of his reaction to her use of Arian’s name—the longing that he was never completely able to suppress.
“Of Hira? Why?”
“It was the seat of my childhood. It was everything I aspired to. Can you not fathom that I have missed the sisterhood of the Companions?”
Daniyar schooled his thoughts. She was lying, an undercurrent of hate feeding the words. And though he couldn’t think why, there might be a way to use it. “Come to Hira, then,” he said. “Arian would aid you in any way you wished. If you help her against the Talisman, she will stand at the Wall by your side.”
“That is not what I have Augured. There is one man, one woman at the Wall. And I know I shall never leave Black Aura.” She said this without self-pity.
She left him and he knew he’d lost her. When she turned back to face him, she was robed in the premeditated power of the Authoritan’s consort again, his betrayal of Arian for naught.
“Are you imagining I would cede command of the Wall when I labored all my life to secure it? Can you possibly believe I would swear my fealty to yet another man, dependent on his intercession to save me from being ravaged by his soldiers?” She spat her next words at him. “Black Aura is mine; these are my men, my slaves, my prisoners. You will take your place among them. Or not, as you decide.” She let the words burn through him.
Daniyar bowed his head. He had moved too soon and lost.
She called her guards to take him to his cell, speaking with perfect indifference. “You will fight in the Qatilah tonight. I will send Arian to watch you.”
Daniyar risked another question, knowing he had nothing to lose. “What of my blood, Lania? Why do you collect it for the Authoritan? What use does he make of it?”
She moved to stand before him, raising her hand to his chin to tilt down his head. She gazed into his eyes, focusing her attention on the silver pinpoints. “Yes,” she murmured. “You have the birthright of the Silver Mage, just as the Black Khan shares the mark of the Dark Mage. I have often wondered how a Mage is chosen and marked. Your eyes give your birthright away. They are remarkable. They gift you with your powers. They keep you alive in the Qatilah.”
But that was only part of it, and Daniyar knew better than to share with her the rest. How he too had some small knowledge of the Claim to aid him in unobtrusive ways.
She smiled a secret smile suggesting she already knew. “Your blood is magic,” she said to Daniyar. “And you are magic, my lord.”
Though he needed to know how his blood was usurped, she told him nothing else.
How beautiful and lost she was, he thought.
As he had nearly lost himself.
15 (#ulink_fe608c1d-8a03-5700-9a0a-73c66bfe2887)
THE TECHNOLOGIST EXAMINED THE SUBJECT ON THE TABLE. SHE HAD passed out, her exquisitely dark limbs lying limp. Some of his men had asked to use her, but she was not a prize to be squandered on the base desires of rabble.
There was something about this Companion.
Though she craved the needle, the gas affected her differently than it did the others. When he gave her a respite, she thrashed with all her strength against her restraints, her liquid-dark eyes sharp with rage. She became clearer, more powerful, more certain of who she was. And though she couldn’t speak, her eyes promised him a savage revenge.
It was intriguing. It was exciting.
He bent over her, his barbed fingers tracing the thin white circles the mask had outlined on her tautened flesh. She was nothing like the women of the Tilla Kari, cosseted and indulged. Her limbs were lean and muscular, capable and well formed. A delicious sense of possibility curled through his awareness. What use could he make of this creature? How could he bend her to his will? How long would it take to wrench the beauty of the Claim from her throat?
He pressed his thumbs against her larynx. How easy it would be to silence her for good. He very much wanted to, but there was more to learn from the gifts of this Companion from the Negus. To her credit, between her screams she’d tried to calm herself by murmuring verses of the Claim. He’d increased the volume of the gas, and her voice had fallen silent, but it still preserved the strength the Companion contained within.
But perhaps this was too much too soon. He wanted to see everything the gas could achieve. He wanted her to know what she was losing.
He wanted to take from her, but he also wanted her to surrender everything she had to him. Everything she was, this remarkable, undamaged creature. He felt intoxicated by the thought.
He reached behind him for the tray, collecting an instrument he’d designed especially for members of the Salikhate. A generation ago, this had been the name taken by Salikh’s compatriots. The Basmachi were a far cry from what the Salikhate had once been, illiterate and ill schooled in the Claim. This Companion was different. He could feel the Claim shivering through her, its flavor musky and sweet. A frisson of pleasure spiraled through his body.
How excellent it had been to have both Salikh’s daughters under his care. How much he missed them now! Larisa he’d taken more easily than planned, but Elena—ah, Elena had resisted with a rare and beautiful fire. The memory of her impotent fury warmed his thoughts, just as her loss was like a winter of the soul.
But now he had another young woman under his care, a woman from the lands of the Negus, a Companion such as he’d never known, and he felt reborn, fire lighting his blood. If he could keep the Companion alive, and if the Khanum would send the First Oralist to Jaslyk, he would be able to use them against each other, just as he had used the sisters Salikh.
The Technologist held a peculiar double-pronged instrument up to the light in the room. His men shifted a step or two away from him—they knew the Malleus would reduce the Companion to a frothing mess of blood. They knew what the Technologist was capable of.
This Companion would soon be at his mercy. He bent closer to Sinnia’s head and applied the curved blades of the Malleus to her ear.
“You will learn,” he whispered.
16 (#ulink_804aced5-1b69-5b59-894b-4d359e932d1c)
THE HOWLS OF THE DOGS HAD SUBSIDED, THOUGH ELENA COULD HAVE wished now for their barking to cover the sound of their bodies wriggling through the tunnel. The space was narrower than she remembered, or perhaps it was only that she was better fed, fitter, and stronger than the last time she’d used the tunnel for safe passage.
Larisa found the end of the tunnel, pulling her sister up and out into the darkness of the prison block’s silent wing. The sisters worked without light, feeling their way along the walls. There would be a pair of guards at the end of the wing, but the guards would have grown lax in the absence of resistance. They knew the inmates the wing housed were too drugged to be capable of rebellion. Elena held her bow in her hands, a knife strapped to her leg. She anticipated using both. She passed ahead of her sister, using a hand signal to mark Larisa’s palm. The tunnel had led them a level or two below the place the screams originated from. Those screams had fallen silent now, and both women feared the reason for it. They had to find the stairs, quickly.
Elena brushed by the window of a cell. A prisoner within murmured at her. It was too dark for him to see her, but somehow he’d sensed her presence. His calls became more insistent, drawing the attention of the Ahdath.
Cursing to herself, Elena crossed to the ward with Larisa, and waited for the Ahdath to approach the cell. Both drew their bows, but only one man came. The sisters exchanged another signal. Larisa slid to the head of the ward while Elena put away her bow to use her knife. When the Ahdath rattled the door of the prisoner’s cell, Elena slipped up behind him and slit his throat. Before his body could fall, Larisa had loosed her arrow on the guard at the head of the ward.
A prisoner’s face showed at the bars of the cell. “Free me,” he begged.
A grim anger invaded Elena’s thoughts at the pitiless nature of her choices. She shook her head. “Not yet. Wait and be quiet.”
He sobbed to himself as they left him.
Pain struck her hard and deep. Were she here for any other reason, she would not have been able to bear leaving the prisoner behind.
This Companion had best be worth it.
Elena slipped after her sister, helping her drag the Ahdath to join his friend. Another signal passed between the sisters to indicate the passage to the stairs. They were careful with the heavy door, climbing the stairs in the dark.
They had reached the prison’s upper level, and now they could see the torches lit at the watchtowers. The ward was periodically swept with minzars, modified starscopes angled to face the upper levels of Jaslyk. They were stationed along the ramparts that linked the towers. This was the Technologist’s Wing. Sinnia’s screams had come from here. Elena’s thoughts flew to the Companion.
You must bear this. You must survive until we reach you. Else I risked my sister for nothing.
The guard was doubled on this ward, two members of the Crimson Watch positioned at either end. Two more were guards stationed outside a door in the center of the ward. The Salikh sisters crouched low, inching their way along the wall. If the guards on either end of the ward turned, the sisters would be caught in a cross fire. They needed to take the guards by surprise.
They never spoke of their fears or their memories of Jaslyk, but each action they took now was weighted with their determination to protect each other from the consequences of failure. The two women were at their strongest, single-minded with purpose. They had no choice: as leaders of the resistance and as sisters bound to each other’s survival, they couldn’t afford self-doubt.
Larisa and Elena separated. Each moved in a different direction, their bows strung. They waited a heartbeat for the minzars to sweep the ward, then came to their feet and whistled. The guards at both ends turned. Two pairs of arrows found the weak spots in their armor. But they couldn’t catch the men at the door, who wheeled and drew their swords. The sisters were soon engaged in close combat, and they fought as they always did, back to back, using back-alley tricks against the size and strength of their opponents, utterly without fear.
Elena grunted as a sword thrust nearly slashed her ribs. Larisa took her weight, flashing a sharp knife up and under Elena’s arm, stabbing the guard in the chest. Elena whirled around, taking her sister’s place.
The minzars swept the ward again, catching the fierce and soundless tussle. Horns rose in warning. Two more men spilled from the inside of the cell guarded by the Crimson Watch, pressing the sisters back. It was Larisa’s turn to cry out. She dropped her knife as her sword arm was slashed. Elena stabbed her blade through the assailant’s eye. They were losing ground, losing strength. The Ahdath forced them back toward the stairs.
A loud metallic clang rang inside the cell.
Sinnia’s scream pierced the air again—edged with something new—something bold and eerily familiar.
Prisoners came to the doors of their cells, shouting and banging at their doors, distracting the Crimson Watch. Elena tripped one man, then rolled with his momentum to stab through his armor with the full weight of her body. She lay on him for the space of a breath, wiping the sweat from her eyes. Boots stamped down an intersecting corridor, the sound drawing closer.
In the courtyard below, the dogs began to howl.
A guard grabbed Larisa by the hair, yanking back her head, his knife at her throat.
A minzar’s light found her face, and the guard who’d seized Elena’s knife arm staggered around, Elena struggling in his grip.
“Stop!” he shouted. The other man stilled.
“Look at her,” he went on. “Look at them. Don’t you know who they are?”
Now the ward was filled with soldiers, half a dozen members of the Watch clambering up from the level below and from the corridor that linked to another block. Larisa and Elena stood panting.
Men shouted all around them, prisoners, guards, adding to the noise coming from inside the cell—a gurgling noise that petered out.
Illarion appeared at the head of the ward, escorted by a handful of men, just as the door of Sinnia’s cell was thrown open. Elena caught a glimpse of the woman on the table. She was unrestrained. Somehow she had snapped the hose attached to a dark green canister. Blood leaked from her eyes, ears, and nose, glistening and sticky against her mulberry skin.
What she’d attempted had nearly killed her, yet when she raised her head, her eyes blazed with a contemptuous conviction that said there was no man who could defeat her.
A man taller than any of the others stepped out of the room, a nightmarish mask covering his face. Elena shrank in her captor’s arms, suddenly unable to breathe.
Illarion strode to meet him, and the tall man unhooked his mask with sleek and raptorial movements. His face emerged into the sharp light cast by the sweep of the minzar. Beneath the mask, his ghastly skin was waxy, his lips without blood. His colorless eyes bulged from their sockets, a disfiguring effect of the mask.
At the sharp clap of his hands, two of the guards lit torches.
The tall man bent to look first at Elena, then at Larisa. A smile spread over the cadaverous planes of his face. He clapped his hands together lightly. “How beautiful,” he said with delight. “I’ve missed you.” His natural voice rasped like the spike-edged barbs on his gloves.
Elena’s sob caught in her throat.
The tall man noticed Illarion. “Captain.”
“Technologist.” Illarion nodded in return.
Elena’s frantic eyes sought out Illarion’s face. The teasing warmth he’d shown her earlier had vanished—the mask he’d worn over his purposes as a soldier of the Ahdath, as a tool of the Technologist’s will. His high-planed face was set and hard. She hadn’t believed she had anything left to lose—anything to hope for or believe in—yet a savage sense of betrayal pierced her thoughts, and hard on its heels, a passionate, volatile fury. She would kill him with her bare hands.
But Illarion had dismissed her without a glance, his eyes fixed on the Technologist.
“You’re a man of your word,” the Technologist praised him. “You delivered the sisters as promised.”
Illarion nodded curtly. “It was easy enough to deceive them—they were desperate to believe.”
Elena made a throttled noise in her throat, thrashing against her captors, her hands scrabbling for a blade to plunge deep into his heart.
“What beautiful misery,” the Technologist said, his smile deepening to a leer.
“And now I require what you promised me in turn,” the captain said. “The talisman. The one that unlocks the Plague Wing.”
17 (#ulink_d0472214-bfc1-58bb-9709-fec0659687dc)
MEN, DOGS, PRISONERS SHOUTING, WEAPONS BEING SHEATHED—THERE was so much noise in the ward and along the watchtowers that at first Elena didn’t hear it. She’d failed her sister so completely, she couldn’t fathom it. She was swamped by a wave of panic and dread, watching the men who’d captured them now handle her sister with careless, bestial ease. A roar of outrage broke from her throat, climbing rapidly to hysteria.
And then beneath it, she heard the sound again, strange and oddly familiar, a sound she remembered from childhood. It seemed to be coming from two places at once. From a door on the other side of the ward—she had a brief impression of wild eyes and matted hair—but also from behind the Technologist in the room with the shattered canister, where an instrument with curved blades lay twisted and deformed on the floor.
It was the Malleus, a tool the Technologist used to sever the hearing of the followers of the Usul Jade, its tiny blades burrowing into their ears, tunneling ever deeper.
The otherworldly sound grew stronger. Larisa’s head snapped up.
She was hearing it too. And like Elena, some part of her recognized the sound.
The sisters looked at each other. Larisa’s hands flickered with a subtle signal; Elena’s mirrored the gesture.
Kill me, Larisa said. Kill me now, end it here.
Elena gave her word.
The sound warned her not to do it. The sound was lyrical and clear, poetic and soft, pliant yet also urgent. As dire as their circumstances were, some of Elena’s panic eased. She was able to think calmly, observing the men who had captured them. The Technologist and Illarion she marked off as dead men, but neither they nor the Crimson Watch appeared to hear the sound.
Untroubled by it, the Technologist issued an order. “Strip them and take them to the Plague Wing. It’s time for me to chart their progress.”
The Crimson Watch were slow to comply, the sound from the cells growing louder.
“The talisman,” Illarion repeated, the words rasping in his throat.
The Technologist tried to reach something covered by his robes. He frowned when he found he couldn’t. His bulging eyes moved from Illarion to the cell the captain was blocking.
“Is this your doing?” he called. “I thought the white needle had silenced you for good.”
A cell door slammed behind him. No member of the Crimson Watch moved, held in thrall as a dark arm snaked around the Technologist’s neck. The Technologist lurched forward a step, but was yanked back by the arm.
A beautiful, throaty voice answered. “No, you monstrosity, it’s mine.”
Elena found she was free, the guard who’d held her captive sinking to his knees behind her. She whirled around, scooped up her knife, and stabbed the back of his head. The movements of those who tried to fight her were sluggish and disjointed. Her blade found their unprotected necks, one powerful thrust after another. The two men who’d hurt Larisa, Elena stabbed through the heart.
Larisa grabbed her sword from the floor. The prisoner in the cell behind Illarion took hold of him by the arm. He didn’t struggle in the prisoner’s hold, standing firm and strong.
“Where … is … the … talisman?” he choked.
The Technologist watched the sisters’ actions, a sneer frozen on his lips.
The wild man in the cell spoke up. He whispered to Illarion, and the Ahdath captain went still.
Sinnia’s grip tightened around the Technologist’s throat. “Does this one matter to you? Because I’m planning to snap his neck.”
“No!” Larisa and Elena shouted together.
The horns on the wall sounded again, summoning reinforcements.
Larisa raced into Sinnia’s cell. She came back with the Malleus gripped in her hand, her young face hard with rage. Elena reached for the Malleus—Larisa held it out of reach. The sisters stared at each other for a lethal, weighted moment; then slowly Elena nodded.
“No!” Illarion shouted. “Ask him where he keeps the talisman!”
Without pausing to answer him, Larisa drove the Malleus into the Technologist’s brain. He slipped feebly out of Sinnia’s hold, his body sagging to the ground.
Elena kicked at his robes. “It’s not enough,” she said. “It will never be enough.”
Elena yanked out her broadsword and severed his head with a stroke. Then she advanced on Illarion, tossing her words over her shoulder.
“The Technologist was yours, Larisa, but this one belongs to me.”
Illarion met her eyes, a bewildering despair in his own. “Mudjadid, please tell them.”
The hands gripping his throat slid back into the cell.
Elena’s sword flashed up. Illarion blocked it with his arm. She reared back and lunged again, and this time Illarion grabbed both of her arms and forced the sword from her hand. Then he pulled her close as she struggled, seeking out Larisa over Elena’s shoulder.
“How dare you use that name?” Elena spat at him, as Larisa asked more calmly, “Where did you learn that name? Who do you call Mudjadid?”
The prisoner in the cell came to the window. The minzar swept across the ward, throwing his features into sharp relief. His blazing eyes and craggy face were obscured by the tangled growth of his beard. A moment later the light from the minzar was gone, and neither Larisa nor Elena could be certain of what they’d seen.
A mirage, a ghost of the past, a specter of a man they’d known and loved.
The oddly familiar sound thrummed through the ward again. Sinnia stepped over the Technologist’s body, a transparent mist emanating from her mouth. It echoed the sound coming from the wild man in the cell. Was it a memory, or was it real? And if it was a memory, how could the Companion of Hira know it?
Elena fought her way free of Illarion’s hold. “Break this door. Do it now.” She was half-sobbing, half-pleading.
Letting go of her, Illarion smashed the lock with a thrust of his sword. If he’d been hobbled like the Crimson Watch, his strength was unfettered now.
The door to the cell unlocked, the prisoner within staggered out into the ward. A soft chant rose from behind the doors of the cells that lined both sides of the ward.
“Mudjadid. Mudjadid. Mudjadid Salikh.”
The wild man stared at Elena and Larisa, tears sliding into his beard, the Claim abating in his throat. It had done its work. It had called them here, and it had unshackled the gifts of the Companion of Hira, allowing her to acknowledge him as a teacher of the Claim and to accept his direction of its use. He’d subverted the workings of the needle to Sinnia’s great advantage. An advantage he’d whispered ceaselessly in her mind, expanding her knowledge of the Claim.
Illarion sank to one knee, his fair hair falling around his face. A palsy gripped the wild man’s hand. It shook as he raised it to Illarion’s hair. Illarion grasped it in his own and kissed the jade ring the man still wore on his finger.
Larisa gasped. “Who are you?” she asked in a strangled voice.
Sinnia stared at the sisters in disbelief. “Don’t you recognize your father?”
She reached for the old man, fastening her arms around his neck, ignoring the soldier at his feet. “Thank you, Mudjadid. Thank you for saving me.”
His thin frame trembled in her grasp, but he raised his head to meet Sinnia’s radiant eyes. “You freed yourself, sahabiya, with your mastery over the Claim.”
18 (#ulink_f6f9d48c-2f31-5078-998a-8775170aea5f)
LARISA TOOK HER FATHER IN HER ARMS, UNABLE TO COME TO TERMS with his rebirth. For so long she and Elena had believed that their father had met his death at the Authoritan’s hands. Searching his haggard face, she knew that his survival had been purchased at an inordinate cost. The far-seeing eyes were the same—kind and inspirited with belief—but something vital was missing. Perhaps that same element that had hardened inside Larisa after her detention at Jaslyk. Perhaps her father was looking at his daughters and telling himself the same thing.
I don’t know who they are anymore.
“You’ve come,” he choked out. “I told Captain Illarion I would see you again one day.”
Larisa’s face had lost all color. Her limbs trembled with disbelief and her voice was hoarse as she spoke. She looked like a woman who dared not believe her eyes, who dared not cling to hope.
Elena stayed quiet, the personal toll of discovery too wrenching for her to fathom. Her father was a ghost. He was nothing but a memory, a dream of what Marakand might be.
And who was this Ahdath who called her father Mudjadid? He had betrayed them—he might still betray them—or had she been wrong to doubt his loyalty all along? She was swept up in an excess of emotion, unable to separate her feelings.
Had she finally met a member of the Ahdath who’d earned something other than her hate?
She brushed a shaking hand across her eyes, unwilling to face Illarion—to witness his compassion at how deeply she’d been harmed by the knowledge of his treachery. His blue eyes were alight with concern, but she turned her face away.
“I was in the Plague Wing,” her father said. “The Technologist kept you away from me—I would never have let you suffer had I known. After you escaped, he transferred me back to this ward. He took pleasure in describing all that my daughters had endured.”
Her hatred so great that it engulfed her like a living skin, Elena drove the heel of her boot into the Technologist’s severed head. She heard the grinding of his bones with a savage satisfaction.
Illarion flashed her a glance but didn’t interfere. He crouched down on his knees to search the Technologist’s body, coming away with a small object that he tucked into his belt.
“I heard you,” Larisa murmured, disbelieving. “I heard the song of the Claim—the song of our childhood. I didn’t think I ever would again.”
Salikh kissed the top of her head, his pale, rheumy eyes leaking tears. He hugged his daughters close, his thin frame shuddering with sobs.
“Nothing is stronger than the power of the Claim. No matter the gifts of the Authoritan, he cannot override it.”
She wasn’t sure she could believe that, despite what she’d heard firsthand, but there was no time to discuss it further. Reinforcements from the Crimson Watch were already on their way.
“Free us!” The prisoners in the cells called out to their improbable gathering of allies.
Sinnia moved to obey, but Illarion turned to Salikh. “What is your command, Mudjadid?”
“If you unlock these cells, you will never reach the Plague Wing as you hoped. You must leave us at once.”
“Must I also leave you, Mudjadid?”
“I could only hinder you in your plan.”
“Then flee with your daughters to the graveyard of the ships.”
Salikh’s pale eyes were kind. “I cannot leave my followers to suffer when they’ve done everything I asked. And there is more to accomplish.”
He spoke to the men in the cells in the dialect of Marakand—his instructions deliberate and fierce. “You’ve done so much of what I’ve asked, but my daughters must go free. Forgive me that we must remain.”
He was using the Claim. The men in the cells grew calm.
“As you command, Mudjadid,” promised one.
Larisa’s protest was firm: she refused to abandon her father to his fate at the Ahdath’s hands. That she had found him was a miracle surely granted by the One; she wouldn’t leave him behind. “If you won’t come with us, Father, neither will we leave. We’ll make our stand here together.”
Salikh shook his head, unable to explain his will or to describe his purpose. He gestured weakly at Illarion, who spoke in a cutting voice, to return them to the urgency of the moment.
“Your father knows what he’s doing. You need to get out of Jaslyk while you can.”
“You won’t make it to the Plague Wing alive,” Larisa warned him. “Come back with us to the graveyard of the ships.”
Illarion shook his head. “I can’t. Not now that I have the talisman.” He turned to Sinnia. “Companion, follow them to Black Aura, where the First Oralist has been taken prisoner. She sent me to deliver you from Jaslyk, and now she has need of you in turn.”
Sinnia nodded at him briskly, taken aback by this news.
“Yours is a fool’s errand,” Larisa persisted. “They will hunt you into the ground. Better that you escort the Companion safely back to Black Aura.”
“I can’t,” he said again. “I have a mission to complete. You needn’t worry—anyone who could betray me here I’ve already killed.” He touched the crimson splash at his throat. “This will get me into the Plague Wing.”
Elena cleaned her sword on the Technologist’s smock. “What is it you seek to find?”
His eyes met hers, a banked flame in their depths. “Did you never learn why these prisoners submit to the Ahdath’s tortures—why these Basmachi in particular were captured by the Crimson Watch?”
She frowned at him, unwilling to admit her ignorance of anything concerning her men.
“They keep the Technologist focused on themselves to draw him away from the Plague Wing. Each man here volunteered. Each has a loved one who suffers the torments of the Plague Wing. It’s what keeps them here, deflecting the Technologist’s attention.”
Her voice softer now, Elena asked, “And what of you, Ahdath?”
Illarion shrugged without meeting her eyes. “They have my sister. It’s why I joined the Salikhate. Now go. You’ve delayed too long as it is.”
Elena’s voice was matter-of-fact as she gathered up her weapons. She had shut her father out of her mind, to force herself to focus on their plan.
“Take the Companion to Black Aura,” she told Larisa. “Father must decide his course for himself, and you know the way back, so you won’t be needing me. I’ll meet you in Marakand. This Ahdath won’t make it to the Plague Wing on his own.”
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