Of Sand and Malice Made (10 page)

“Come,” Adzin said.

With deft motions he swept up the coins and slipped them back into the same purse Emre had given him, then he stood and slipped past them, leading them out from the cabin, along the passageway that even in the darkness made Çeda's skin crawl, and up to the deck. The hulking deckhand dropped a rope ladder down to the sand, at which point Adzin, Çeda, and Emre climbed down and began walking toward a cluster of standing stones.

The sandy ground soon gave way to unforgiving rock. The evening wind was cool, but there was a strange scent upon it, like burnt wood and sulfur. As Adzin walked, he spoke. “There are still many of his creatures in the desert left behind from Goezhen's more active days crafting life of his own. They are much fewer after the great cleansing
before the elder gods left for the farther fields, but they can be found if one knows where to look.”

The twin moons were up, casting light bright enough to see two things: first, that there were giant stones set in a circle, and second, that within that circle lay a massive, gaping hole. Adzin led them past the stones, which were tall as trees, to the very edge of the hole. It dropped straight down, as if the elder gods had thrown a spear from the heavens to pierce the earth. The sulfurous smell became so unbearable Çeda was forced to cover her nose and mouth with her sleeve. Emre did the same. But Adzin merely kneeled at the edge of the hole and peered downward. What he might be looking for Çeda had no idea; it was so dark she couldn't see a thing.

Adzin was holding something now—their coin purse, the one filled with sylval—and he was whispering words to it.

Çeda tried to speak, but the smell made her choke.

“Be quiet,” Adzin said, and continued to whisper. He dumped the coins carefully into his waiting palm. And then flung them with one swift motion, into the hole in the earth.

Emre gasped. Çeda's eyes widened and she ran to the edge of the hole despite the caustic smell. By the light of the moons she could see the coins spinning down, each glinting like the surface of a tiny moonlit pond. Away
they fell, further and further, until finally they were lost from view.

Emre bristled. “By the gods, why would you—”

“Silence now!” Adzin barked.

He peered downward, leaning so far out over the edge Çeda thought he might tip over and spin, end over end like one of those coins, and be lost to the world forever more. He remained like this for a long while, long enough for Çeda to give up on seeing anything of note from where she stood, and she backed away, if only to grab a few breaths of comparatively pure air. Emre did the same. The two of them stared at one another, silently questioning what it was Adzin might be doing, and further, what they'd gotten themselves into.

That was when Çeda heard it. The flapping sound.

It was soft but soon grew until it sounded like the washer women in Sharakhai as they snapped their clothes before laying them to dry on sunbaked rocks. Something large flew up from the dark abyss. The creature's silhouette was difficult to discern against the gauze of stars, but it looked as though it had two sets of wings. Adzin raised one forearm like the falconer Çeda had once seen practicing for a show in the southern harbor. Moments later the creature flapped down and alighted on Adzin's outstretched arm, and he walked to where Çeda stood, whispering to the creature as he came. When he stood before
her, he motioned for her to raise her arm. She did, while some unspeakable worry ate at her insides over this strange, foul-smelling creature.

“They're called ifin,” Adzin said, pushing his arm against Çeda's until the ifin moved with ungainly steps onto Çeda's arm. “This one knows you now. More importantly, it knows this Kadir of yours. It knows his scent from the clues you've given me.”

Çeda stared at the creature, her upper lip raising of its own accord. She felt like a wolf, hackles rising at something she couldn't understand. The ifin had a sinuous neck and a sleek, eyeless head, like a lamprey she'd seen once in the bazaar. Where its eyes should have been were strange patches of mosslike skin. The ifin's mouth looked like a funnel of bone-white teeth. Its four wings were like a bat's, leathery with grasping claws at the end of each. “What by the gods do I
do
with it?”

Adzin laughed. “Why, you bring it to Sharakhai. The ifin will do the rest.”

With Emre by her side, Çeda staggered along a night-darkened street in Sharakhai, watching the ifin and the way ahead as carefully as her bleary eyes would allow. Adzin's ship had returned them to the city, and they were now making their way through its southeastern quarter,
in a well-to-do neighborhood cut off from the city's most affluent areas by the dry bed of the Haddah. Where the ifin might be taking them she had no idea. She just hoped the bloody thing would stop faffing about and
do it
.

She stared into the darkness ahead, then looked about in a panic. Fucking gods, she'd lost the damned thing again.

“There,” Emre said, pointing.

“Bless your sharp eyes,” Çeda whispered.

The ifin was little more than a dark stain against the mudbrick of a three-story building farther up the lane. When Çeda and Emre neared, it launched itself into the sky, which was slowly brightening with the coming dawn. The strange beast circled three times, then flapped down the next street, its body wriggling like a sidewinding snake.

“You shit!” Çeda shouted. “You bloody fucking shit! We've been that way three times already!”

“Quiet!” Emre hissed. Then more calmly, “Adzin said it might do that.”

“He also said the ifin would find Kadir by dawn if he could be found.”

They'd been at this for hours, and Çeda was ready to collapse from fatigue. A dozen times already she'd walked into walls or scraped her arms or legs because she could no longer see straight. Everything kept going wavy on
her, and sometimes she'd wake up paces from where she last remembered being, or on an entirely new street, not even realizing she'd fallen asleep.

“Nalamae's teats, Emre, I'm walking in my sleep.”

“What?” Emre asked.

“Never mind.” She stopped and put her hands on her knees, trying her best to wake up. “Maybe Adzin grabbed the wrong ifin.”

“Only one answered the call. Come on.” He took her arm, supporting her as he led her down the street where the ifin had flown. “One way or the other, it'll be over soon.”

They followed the ifin and found it atop a bronze statue of one of Sharakhai's Kings—she couldn't remember which. The statue stood in a dry fountain, shamshir raised high, the ifin circling the King's turban as if it were about to nest.
Or take a shit,
Çeda thought. Its twin pair of wings flapped slowly, its head swinging this way and that, smelling or tasting, or in some other way sensing its quarry.

“What if he's gone, Emre?” The very thought made her want to fall to her knees and weep. “What if he's dead?”

“The ifin wouldn't follow a trail that led to a dead man.”

“After those ridiculous questions Adzin was asking? I don't know.” Any confidence she might have had while
speaking with Adzin on the ship had long since vanished, replaced with a growing certainty that they'd been sent on a fool's errand, or worse, swindled out of a year's worth of pay.

She looked back up to the winged demon, wondering if it was actually sensing anything. Fucking thing was probably laughing at how much money it had helped its master to steal from them.

“It might not matter what the damned ifin does,” she said weakly.

“Why?”

Çeda swung her head toward Emre. “What?”

“You just said it might not matter.”

“Oh.” She pinched her eyes tight and licked her lips. “It's just . . . I'm going to collapse, Emre. I can hardly keep one foot plodding in front of the other. I can't take another night of those dreams.”

But Emre was no longer looking at her. He was staring at the statue. The flutter of the ifin's wings filled the cold morning air as it took flight. “Why don't you let me chase it? Go home, and I'll return when it's done.”

She shook her head. “Can't, Emre. What if it's using me to find Kadir?”

In the predawn light, she couldn't see Emre's face well, but she could tell he was frowning. “I hadn't thought of that.”

She pulled herself up and took as deep a breath as she could manage. “Let's go. I'll last for a while yet.”

They chased the ifin down another street, waited while it rested on a lamppost outside a tavern, then down a gap between two buildings so narrow the two of them had to sidestep through it, and along a paved walkway that hugged the dry southern bank of the Haddah.

When the ifin flew across the riverbed, however, a chill ran down her frame. The creature had been mercurial before, like a butterfly flitting here then there, but now it was flying straight, with purpose, it seemed to Çeda, and it was heading in a direction that Çeda thought would be one of the last places Kadir might be found. Why, though? Why would he have returned to that place?

Settle yourself, Çeda. You don't yet know if that's where he's gone.

They continued to a wide, well-kept road, the terminus of a winding street that ran between several of the city's smaller estates. If the Kings of Sharakhai could be said to draw wealth and power like roots drew water at the base of some grand tree, these families were the stout branches that benefited from it. Kadir had rubbed elbows with these people for his mistress, so the fact that the ifin was headed to the richest quarter of Sharakhai aside from the House of Kings itself wasn't surprising. What
was
surprising, though, was the fact that it appeared to be headed for the very same estate where Rümayesh had performed her strange ritual on Çeda. Indeed, in little time, the ifin flew over the wall Çeda had scaled to escape.

“This is it,” Çeda whispered, stopping at the iron gates and pointing to the estate house. The ifin sat upon a low hill like a sleeping jackal.

“Where she took you?”

“Yes.” Çeda peered over the grounds. The small guardhouse on the inside of the gate appeared to be unmanned. She searched for the ifin, but couldn't see it in the darkness.

“Kadir came back then,” Emre said.

“Yes,” Çeda said. “The only question is why.” She spotted the ifin circling in the sky. Far to the right, beyond a low stone wall, lay the mausoleums, the boneyard of the rich. “Come.”

She climbed the gate and dropped inside, only then seeing the form lying near the gatehouse. She approached and found a guard wearing light mail lying there, alive but unconscious. She and Emre shared a look. The sun would rise soon, and the gods only knew when the guard might awaken. They made their way quickly toward the peaked roofs, and soon they were weaving between the mausoleums, looking up to the ifin to find the one it had sensed for them.

Soon it became obvious. Ahead, the door to the mausoleum from which Çeda had escaped was cracked open. The moment she touched the door, the ifin released a short, piercing, skin-tingling cry and flew westward. It was soon lost beyond the stone roofs of the mausoleums. Çeda glanced at Emre, then stepped inside. Ahead was a hallway leading to the dark, open maws of a dozen crypts, while to her left was the set of stairs that led down to the room where Rümayesh's ritual had been performed. Soft, golden light rose from it like the coming of dawn.

Her heart beat heavy in her chest. For once, the exhaustion that had lain across her shoulders like a leaden mantle was gone—supplanted by fear.

They took the stairs down. Çeda drew her kenshar, gripped it tightly in one hand. Emre did the same, his eyes bright moons in the ghastly light. They reached the level below, where a room opened up before them, most of it lost in darkness. At the far side was a lone doorway, and through it Çeda could see a man leaning over an open sarcophagus, the very one that had hidden Rümayesh from the world as she wore the skin of the beautiful matron of this estate. Of the moths, thankfully, there was no sign. The very thought of them brought the memories of that harrowing night to Çeda's mind. She pushed them away and focused on the room ahead.

The man, of course, was Kadir. By the light of the lantern that lay on the sarcophagus lid, his lissome form was reaching inside, one arm making sawing motions.

Rümayesh couldn't still be here. The boys had her. Somewhere. Certainly not here. So what in the great, wide desert was Kadir doing?

Çeda strode forward. The floors and walls of the crypt were blackened—by blood, by fire, by the burnt remains of the irindai moths. Kadir jumped when she entered the light, then turned to meet her approach with a long, gleaming kenshar in his left hand. As he took her in, his eyes softened. He lowered his knife, but sent wary glances toward Emre when he stood beside her.

Çeda stepped closer to the sarcophagus. Inside was a woman's form, swathed in white gauze. Vials of amber and myrrh and vetiver were gripped in the woman's hands. Dried river flowers were sprinkled over her form. The cloth around her left foot, however, had been cut by Kadir, exposing her foot and ankle.