The Kingdoms of Dust (17 page)

Her stomach growled at the smell of food, but a bath was the more pressing need. She felt better for the sleep—if she pushed herself hard enough she could sometimes escape the dreams. “What time is it?”

“Two hours before dawn.”

A new lamp lit the bath chamber, warming creamy marble. The tub was wide and deep, set into the floor; towels and a robe lay folded neatly beside it. The water steamed, hotter than even royal plumbing could usually account for, and she suspected she had Asheris to thank for it.

A gilt-framed mirror stood in the corner of the dressing room and she flinched at the sight of uncovered glass. In Selafai, mirrors were doorways to the spirit world, and opportunistic spirits and ghosts waited on the other side. Vanity was dangerous without strong wards. In this spiritless place, the only thing waiting for her was her reflection, gaunt and bruised and filthy. That was danger enough.

But her nape prickled as she studied the glass, as if more than her own hollow eyes stared back at her. Paranoia, perhaps, but she’d be sure to cover the mirror. At least it didn’t face the bathtub.

She climbed into the bath, sinking chin-deep and letting the nearly scalding heat soak into her abused muscles. When the water cooled, she ground soap and oils into her hair and skin, grimacing at the cloud of dirt and suds floating away. The water was cold by the time she felt properly clean, her fingers wrinkled. Burns and scoured scabs stung fiercely.

She emerged robed and toweled, leaving damp footprints on the tiles. The stone was cold underfoot—she’d have to buy rugs.

Asheris ceded the chair and rose to pace the room. Even the soft slap of bare feet carried through the chamber. Rugs, hangings, furniture: She started a list of things the room would need to feel less sepulchral. Assuming that she stayed, of course.

“What about Adam?” she asked, uncovering plates. She could hear him snoring in the other room. The food was still warm, despite her long bath. Pyromancy was a useful art. Maybe Moth could learn it.

Her jaw clenched to aching at the thought.
I’ll find you
, she promised, but the vow felt weak and useless even as she made it.

“Let him sleep.” Asheris unshuttered a window, letting in a draft that smelled of green and damp. “We can send for more food.”

Her stomach snarled as she slathered harissa across a piece of bread, and saliva flooded her tongue. She tried to eat slowly, but her body was tired of starving. Whenever she paused, Asheris pressed something else on her—dates, cheese, slices of egg. By her third cup of tea her stomach was full to aching, and he finally let her push her plate aside.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said at last. He stood by the window again, a teacup cradled between broad brown hands. “Dawn is coming, and the prayers. What happened on the road…I can’t risk that here.” His voice lowered, and he closed the shutters one-handed. “And if you try to bind me, I’ll fight. I can’t help it.”

“You know I hate it when we quarrel,” she said dryly. Her left sleeve fell back, revealing the glossy band of scars on her wrist. Asheris glanced away, lips pressing pale at the corners.

She turned the problem over in her mind, hard and slick as a pearl. “There must be a cause. You don’t have any other symptoms of madness, do you?”

“A certain sense of paranoia…”

She chuckled. “You live in a palace. They paint it into the walls. Let me look—we don’t have any better ideas.”

He set his untouched tea back on the table. “No, I suppose we don’t. What do you need me to do?”

Isyllt stood, discarding her towel across the back of the chair. Her hair fell in a damp snarl down her back, hours of combing if she let it dry that way. She shook the sand from the bed with a snap of the sheets and motioned Asheris over.

“Lie down. This may be…intrusive. Try not to burn me, if you can.”

He sat, swinging his legs onto the bed. His amber eyes were clear as he looked up at her. Human. “I trust you.”

So did Moth
, she thought bitterly.
And look how well that turned out
.

Focus on the problem at hand, she told herself, settling cross-legged beside Asheris. She tugged the robe closed across her thighs and twisted her hair up to keep it from falling in both their faces. A memory rose: her hair sweeping across his bare chest. Her cheeks burned and she prayed the room was dim enough to hide her blush. In Symir he’d seduced her to distract from uncomfortable questions. Only a ploy, the sort any spy knew to watch for, but it had worked embarrassingly well.

Focus.

She laid a hand on his chest—mercifully clothed—and another on the curve of his brow. “This may tingle.”

“I’m sure I’ve felt worse,” he murmured. He still shivered like a fly-stung horse as the first tendrils of magic crept into his skin.

She’d never had an opportunity to examine a demon in such depth before. Arcanost scholars would give their teeth for a chance like this. Maybe the University of Ta’ashlan would accept a monograph.

Demon
was a simplistic term, a catchall that meant any melding of flesh and spirit. Common wisdom held that such a mingling led to madness and hunger, usually for blood and flesh. Demons were abominations to be put down with salt and fire. Isyllt had seen her share of horrors: animated corpses, violent possessions, the vengeful fury of the dead. But she had also met demons like the blood-drinking vrykoloi who lived in Erisín’s catacombs, who loved beauty and music and were no more mad or murderous than most of the living.

Demons like Asheris—trapped, two worlds and in between.

He was unlike anything she’d ever encountered. No death-echoes answered her questing magic, no hint of mortality. His heart beat strong and steady, speeding now with nerves. Closing her eyes, she felt the flame coiled amid meat and muscle, the heat of magic coursing with the blood in his veins. A whirlwind lay quiescent in his lungs. Inhuman fire tempering a mortal soul; flesh grounding a wild spirit.

It would have been beautiful, were it not his prison.

Entranced as she was by the alchemy inside him, she almost missed the foreign magic. It draped his skin like threads of silk, fine and nearly invisible. The touch of her power didn’t stir it, but left her with the impression of fire and smoke, all but undetectable against the furnace of Asheris’s own magic. Dark strands clung inside his lungs—whatever it was, he’d breathed it in.

Frowning, she reached deeper, digging ephemeral fingers under his skin. He convulsed at the intrusion, the fire of his heart flaring. The spell clung to her as she tugged, heat and stinging nettles. She yanked her hand away, shaking off the pain. Like a burr under a horse’s saddle—a constant, inescapable irritation.

With it she smelled cinnamon and clove, smoke and fresh dirt. The same scent she’d caught on the road. Her nose wrinkled; she’d never be able to drink spiced tea again if this kept up.

“You’ve been cursed.”

“What?”

She dug another skein of magic out of his flesh and held it between her hands like a cat’s cradle. “Look.”

The spell disintegrated quickly away from his skin. Within heartbeats the red-black glimmer faded, leaving only a faint smudge like ashes on her fingers, and the lingering scent of spice and incense.

Her vision focused on the solid world in time to see Asheris lever himself up on one arm, his mouth slacking and snapping shut again. A muscle jumped along his jaw, and sparks kindled in the depths of his eyes.

“You know who did this, I take it?”

“Ahmar.” The priestess he’d spoken of on the road. “She put it in the temple incense, for everyone in the palace to breathe.”

“But no one else in the palace has a second soul to prick into a rage. A pretty piece of sorcery.”

“Can you undo it?”

“No,” she said at last, peering closer. Not threads of magic but vines, sinking roots into his flesh, drawing nourishment from him as if he were soil and water. The deeper she looked, the more creeping tendrils she found. “It’s powered by your magic. I can’t attack it without attacking you. But—” She paused, squinting sideways at the lines of power. “I think I can dull it. Not a binding, but…a silence.”

“Will it dull me too?”

“It may. Dawn is coming—do you have another solution?”

“I could burn the Pillars of the Sun to the ground,” he muttered. “But I suppose that’s impractical. All right. Do it.”

It had been a long time since she’d had to improvise magic, she realized as she drew a deep breath and let it out. Too long. It was easy to fall back on a familiar set of spells—wards and bindings and knife-edged defenses—easy to make her power into a tool, locked into certain shapes. Useful, perhaps, but limiting. Boring.

She drew stillness from the walls, from the night air trickling over the casement. She stole the chill from the stones, from the dew beading on the shutters. Numinous filaments shone between her fingers, fine as a spider’s web. Isyllt held her breath as strand wove to strand, emptied her mind of everything save silence and shadows.

Her magic was rooted in death and decay. She would never heal, never warm, never conjure life. A limitation, but one that drove her to creative solutions. And, though she often forgot it in her dealings with ghosts, death held much of peace.

Spreading her hands, she exhaled. The web floated free, pale and shining, and drifted over Asheris. He drew a sharp breath, pulling the spell into him as it settled like frost on his skin. He shuddered, and she felt his skin roughen beneath the cloth of his robe.

Otherwise
senses faded slowly, till Isyllt sat once more in shadows and faltering lamplight. Her hands tingled with the lingering thrill of spellcasting; her pulse beat hard and steady in her throat. Outside, larks and thrushes took up their dawn chorus.

“Do—” Asheris swallowed and began again. “Do you think it will work?”

“We’ll find out.” She climbed out of bed, staggering as blood returned to numb feet, and threw open the shutters. Beyond a trellis and a veil of trees, the sky pearled with the coming day.

They stood side by side, watching the leaves glow in the first orange light. With that vermilion kiss came the bells, and the glad prayers of the faithful, rejoicing for another night survived. Some mornings, Isyllt could see why that was worth praying for.

Asheris’s throat worked as the music rolled over them, and his eyes closed tight, creasing the delicate skin around the lids. Light gilded the tips of his lashes and warmed the mahogany planes of his face. Beads of sweat rose along his brow, glowing gold.

The song swelled to a crescendo and faded. Asheris slumped, steadying himself against the windowsill. Isyllt’s chest ached with a breath she hadn’t realized she held. She laid a hand on his shoulder and he leaned into the touch.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“I hate to spoil the moment with pragmatism, but it won’t last. A few days, perhaps, but the curse will burn through the cure.”

Asheris straightened, squaring broad shoulders. The light in his eyes was nothing preternatural, but a very human sort of venom. “Then we must deal quickly with this troublesome priest.”

M
elantha dreamed of Khalil, sunken and cold, frozen like an insect in amber. She woke sick and desperate to flee Qais, but that wasn’t an option. As an agent she had a great deal of autonomy, but cowardice ran counter to her oaths.

And having delivered Moth here, she couldn’t abandon the girl. Instead, she set out to gain her trust.

At first it was simple things: taking meals together; granting her the freedom of the kitchens; providing new clothes. The only books in Selafaïn she could find were heavy thaumaturgical texts, but she offered them anyway; Moth didn’t refuse.

On the second night, Moth tried to escape. She made it out of the Chanterie, only to be captured in the street by Salah’s guards. Since she neither harmed the maid she’d slipped past nor attacked the guards, Melantha didn’t speak of it.

On the fourth night, she tried the window. Melantha discovered her empty room at dawn, the shutters thrown wide. After a quarter hour of peering through shadows with growing concern, Melantha found the girl on the Chanterie’s roof, crouching between the low battlement and an empty stone planter. By then the shadows were too thin to step through, so she climbed the inside stairs to the rooftop entrance.

The trapdoor was harder to open than she remembered—when sheets of sand cascaded through the gap, she understood why. Dust and grit and pigeon droppings piled in ankle-high drifts. Sweeping the roof had been a task for slow apprentices when she was a child, but Qais had long ago run out of apprentices.

Moth glared as Melantha climbed onto the roof, a flush rising in her cheeks. Melantha fought down a laugh.

“It’s easier to climb up than down, isn’t it?” From the narrowing of Moth’s eyes, she hadn’t quite dulled the bright edge of laughter from her voice. “I learned that the hard way, too.”

She studied the wide expanse of roof, mazed with plant boxes full of dead earth. Even in her youth more of those had stood empty than not. “It must have been green up here once, and beautiful.”

“What happened?” Moth asked, brushing with little effect at her dusty trousers.

Melantha shrugged. “Time. Time and apathy.”

“How can you stand it here?” It was the most emotion she’d heard in Moth’s voice since the girl stopped fighting.

“I can’t. I hate it. But I endure because I have to, because I’ve sworn my service here, and Quietus’s work must be done.”

“Oh.” Moth took a few hesitant steps closer. Closer to the hook. “What work?”

“Did you see the ghost wind that came to Sherazad?” The girl’s wince was answer enough. “Quietus is sworn to keep the storm bound.” She raised a hand to forestall Moth’s sarcastic retort. “The seals are failing, faster every time we renew them. That’s why my mother wants Iskaldur’s help.”

“So you kidnapped me.” Moth’s eyebrows rose.

Melantha didn’t bother to hide her defensive shrug. “It was a bad idea. I panicked.”

“Why?”

“That’s not your concern.” This was a familiar game—the fine balance of truth and secrets, just enough of each to engage the target and prick her curiosity, but not enough to ring false. “Come on. We’re both sick of these walls. I can take you riding, if you’d like.”

Moth started forward, then stopped and folded her arms across her chest. “You haven’t even told me your name.”

She blinked. “Melantha.” Her tongue wasn’t used to the name yet, even after six months’ usage. It had sounded pretty when she chose it, but never quite took as a good name should.

Moth caught her hesitance. “Is that your real name?”

“No. Is Moth yours?”

The girl didn’t answer, but Melantha thought she caught a wry hint of a smile, quickly hidden.

Qais’s stables kept Tigras, short-backed desert ponies bred by the northern tribes. Not as elegant as their Resharan cousins, but with the same fire and stamina. Melantha avoided the stables more often than not—Brenna had loved horses the way Charna had loved the sea. The stablemaster cocked a curious brow as he saddled a dun mare and a grey, but offered no comment.

She’d guessed that a city rat like Moth would have little experience with horses, and the girl’s seat proved her right. That was convenient for the moment, since she didn’t relish the notion of a horse chase across the desert, but Moth’s stiff spine and awkward knees made her wince. She would have to convince Nerium to let them visit a proper training stable.

She led them in a slow circuit around Qais, though the short narrow valley that enfolded the town and temple, and down the narrow pass that led out of the mountains to the erg. An unobstructed view of Al-Reshara would convince Moth not to flee more than any warnings Melantha might give. Only early morning, but already the heat-shimmer off the dunes blurred the distant horizon.

The ride was peaceful. Moth asked about the myrrh trees and the wells, but for the most part was content to study her surroundings in silence. Melantha was happy to be out of the oppressive weight of the Chanterie walls.

“The white lady,” Moth said at last, as they started back to the stables. “Nerium? She’s your mother?”

“Yes.” They had met Nerium once or twice at meals, but had exchanged no more than a handful of words. Melantha had to bite her tongue every time to keep from demanding answers about Khalil.

“She’s…distant.”

Melantha laughed. “And harsh, and critical, and cold. To be fair, her work takes a great toll, but—” She shrugged, trying to seem careless. “We were never close.” But that wasn’t true, exactly. Her most distant memories were pleasant ones, when she and her mother had lived in Anambra, by the sea. Nerium had always been exacting, but the chilly disappointment had come later, after they returned to Qais.

Moth snorted. “My mother would have sold me to a brothel when I was born, if any would have taken me. I don’t have much to compare her with.”

With Iskaldur’s apprentice secured and the seals intact once more, Nerium concentrated on the necromancer. Scrying over such distance was taxing, but once she learned the trick to unraveling the other sorceress’s wards she had a clear view. Al Seth was harder to see—his magic was a clever approximation of human craft, but the heat-shimmer that blurred him from her sight left the taste of the Fata in the back of her throat.

Scrying in such a way was like viewing a silent play. Voices were lost, but she read their lips and posture, the spaces between each companion. She’d used such skills every day in her youth, when she’d taken on names and lives like new cloaks. When she’d had the freedom of the world. For decades she’d had only the petty secrets and jealousies and endless numbing fatigue of Qais to observe.

The temptation to create her own narrative—to invent quarrels and loves and write her own lines for the silent puppets—was strong, but not one she could indulge in. She needed to understand Iskaldur if she was to court her to Quietus.

One thing she understood very well: The necromancer was lonely. She slept poorly and woke from unpleasant dreams. A finely drawn tension hung between her and her bodyguard, much akin to the tension she glimpsed between Bashari and al Seth. The strain of lovers, or merely the fragile web of secrets and alliances between spies?

As Iskaldur and her companions drew near Ta’ashlan, the pricking of Nerium’s wards roused her from the distant vision. Not the seals on the oubliette, but the lesser charms she’d hung on Khalil’s door. She let the sight of sunset over the City of Lions fade into the grey walls of her chamber and waited for the unpleasant conversation to come.

The light beyond her shutters cooled and dimmed and died before Shirin appeared at her door. By lamplight the librarian’s face was sallow and drawn, her mouth a bloodless line.

“I’ve seen Khalil.”

“I imagined you would, eventually. I thought about putting him in the basement, but all those stairs…” She lifted a hand as Shirin drew an outraged breath. “A bad joke. Spare me your righteous indignation, please, Shir. I know he deserves better—I cared for him as much as anyone.”

“Then how can you do this? Entomb him alive!” The lamp-flame glittered in Shirin’s eyes and threw her exaggerated shadow across the walls.

“He’s asleep. At peace. It’s more rest than any of us have had lately.”

“He’s your friend, Nerium! And you’ve turned him into—”

“Into a vessel, yes.” Her knees cracked as she rose from her chair; she read Shirin’s tension and spread her hands wide. Stories made mages’ battles into epic things, thunder and lightning and earthshaking magic, bitter struggles till the dawn. The reality of two old women squabbling like schoolchildren would be embarrassing for everyone. And Nerium had no desire to fight when persuasion would serve. “We serve as we must. If there were a better option I swear I would use it, but there are too few of us.”

“How can this be better than diamonds?”

“The diamonds merely imprison. Sleep and dreams will keep them quiescent. And the division between hosts lessens their power.”

“And if it doesn’t you’ve created demons worse than any false god or witch-king.”

“I have considered that, yes.” She abandoned her sardonicism and lifted a beseeching hand. “Don’t you want to rest, Shir?”

Shirin looked away. “More than anything.”

“That’s why this will work. They’re tired too, as tired of the fight as we are. Qais is slow death for all of us—I want to free our successors from that.”

“You’re mad,” Shirin whispered, but the fight had gone out of her voice.

“I would hope madness would be easier,” Nerium said. “Though that may be wishful thinking.”

The librarian caught her eyes again, the last of her defiance sharpening her gaze. “You’re willing to make this sacrifice as well?”

“I am. Have I ever shirked my duties?”

Shirin sighed. “No. Nor will I, if you’re certain this will work. I’m worn through. Everything is dust to me—food, drink, even the books I love. I swore to give everything to Quietus, and I have.”

“I know.” Nerium laid a hand on the other woman’s shoulder, felt the starkness of bone through thin flesh. “We all have. All of us have, except—” She didn’t finish the sentence, but saw the answer in Shirin’s face.

“Ahmar will never accept this, her or Siavush.”

“Don’t worry about them. Ahmar underestimates us, both our strength and the depth of our sacrifice. She’ll understand in the end.”

Shirin caught her hand, her grip light and brittle as glass. “If you mean to do this, please do it soon. While I have the strength.”

“Yes.” She enfolded the other woman’s hand in both of hers, squeezing as firmly as she dared. “Soon.”