The Kingdoms of Dust (14 page)

T
hey left Sherazad before sunset. Isyllt spent an hour scrying for Moth while Adam searched the inn like a hound, but neither of them met with success. Adam found no trace of the woman in the halls or through the windows, though he said she’d been in all three of their rooms.

The way his voice deepened on that
she
promised a story to come.

After that fruitless hour Asheris swore they could delay no more. He bundled them into a carriage over Isyllt’s protests and the innkeeper’s hand-wringing apologies. Asheris put on a good act of being injured; he’d let Siddir fuss over him in public, cutting out the bullet—lead, for mage-killing—and dressing the wound, but the bandage was for show. Isyllt had watched a copper bullet melt from his flesh in Symir, as easily as she might draw out a splinter. That was the first time she’d realized he was more than a powerful mortal mage.

The rented carriage took them back to its stable, where Asheris dismissed the driver and hired extra mounts. The manager wasn’t happy about letting his horses out unsupervised, but the gold Asheris pushed across the table—not to mention the imperial seal—soon changed his mind.

“We’re not taking the river?” Siddir asked, clearly unhappy with the prospect.

“I took a ferry down. Our watchers may be waiting for us at the docks. Besides, it’s slower upriver.”

“So instead you’ll kill the horses in the heat and leave us open to ambush on the road?”

“I would rather travel alone,” Asheris said, a quiet warning in his voice. “The fewer strange eyes and tongues around us, the better.”

Adam rode outguard while Siddir drove the carriage. Isyllt’s back was swollen and mottled with bruises and her shoulder was likely sprained; she sat entombed in cushions to spare herself worse bruising. Assar’s well-paved roads were scant balm for her aching flesh and pride, especially at the pace Asheris set.

“What’s going on?” she demanded as daylight bled away and Sherazad faded to a dusty blur behind them. “Siddir wouldn’t tell me what was so urgent that he had to pressgang me out of Kehribar. Someone was following me there, and tried to kill me—now I have the same reception here and my apprentice has been kidnapped.” She winced at the sound of her voice; pain and worry left her waspish and the stifling warmth didn’t help. “Not that I’m not glad to see you.”

Asheris chuckled, his eyes glinting in the gloom. “I’m only ever shot when I’m with you. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

“But you invited me anyway.”

“I needed more excitement in my life,” he said dryly.

Golden witchlight sparked between them, painting the walls with shadows. The air cooled as night came on but the coach held the heat of their bodies.

“I’m not sure where to start,” he said after a moment of silence.

“I’ve heard of your warlord troubles.”

Shadows exaggerated his frown. “They’re the least of our concern. Or so I thought, until our sniper gave you Hamad’s name.”

“Who is this general who wants me dead?”

“Don’t give him that title in the empress’s presence, if you please. Samael Hamad was stripped of rank, and she grows tired of people forgetting. He was enough nuisance as a warlord—if he’s taking orders now…”

“From this red lady?”

His jaw clenched. “If she is who I think, the trouble grows and grows.” He leaned close. “Something’s bothered me ever since Symir.”

Isyllt nodded slowly. “Who was buying Rahal’s smuggled diamonds?” The question had occurred to her more than once after she’d returned to Erisín.

“I’m starting to put some pieces together,” he said. “Though I can’t see the whole of it yet. I’ve heard whispers of a group called the quiet men.”

Isyllt frowned. “I’ve never heard of them.” Even as she said it a memory stirred, a dream of fish and shadows.

“Hardly anyone has, and most of the rumors are wild invention. There’s truth behind them, though, I’ve convinced.”

“What about this ghost wind?”

“It’s…a storm. But calling it a storm is like calling the Archeon Ocean a puddle. It’s a whirlwind of entropy. The touch of the void.”

Their eyes met and Isyllt swallowed. The void she carried under her heart. They had both felt its touch in Sivahra. With it she had destroyed the enchantments that bound him to the emperor’s service—and very nearly both of them as well.

“Is such weather common here?” She kept her voice light, but the idea chilled her through.

“No, thank every power. Most mortals thought it a myth, until it struck during Sebek. Even my people know little more.” It took her a heartbeat to realize which people he meant. “And now it’s struck twice in a month.”

“What does the ghost wind have to do with these quiet men?”

“I don’t know. And that troubles me a great deal.”

They rode through the night, changing horses twice to maintain speed. The Assari didn’t underestimate the danger of the desert—way stations and caravanserais lined imperial roads at regular intervals, providing water and fresh mounts and respite from the sun and parching wind.

Asheris took pity on them before dawn, and stopped to rest at one such serai. The square-walled courtyard was empty save for a sleepy stablemaster. Adam and Siddir flung their bedrolls down as soon as the horses were seen to, but Isyllt stopped them before they could follow.

“We’ve put this off long enough. It’s time we got some answers from our friend.” She stripped off her right glove. When she was sure the stablemaster was asleep once more, she led the others to the center of the courtyard. The moon had set, and dawn was at least an hour away. The night was deep and still.

Her diamond flared as she summoned the brown man’s ghost, bathing the gathered faces in milky light. Siddir’s expression was pinched and unhappy, but he stood his ground. Adam looked tired but curious, and Asheris’s dark face was smooth as a mask. A cold deeper than the desert night suffused the air.

The ghost was a washed-out shadow, all his living color faded to shades of blue and grey. His eyes narrowed as he scanned the night, marking the walls and the stars above. When he turned to Isyllt his lips curled in a smirk. She had to appreciate bravado that could withstand death and soul-binding.

“Good evening,” she said with a smile. “I hope your stay hasn’t been too unpleasant.”

“The accommodations are rather spare, and the service nonexistent.” His voice was rough and breathless; his death wound was a black blot on the side of his neck. “But I seem to have had a better time of it than you.” He tilted his head toward her sling-bound arm and scabbed face.

“Someone else tried to kill me. He didn’t have any more luck than you did.”

The ghost shrugged. “They won’t stop. Eventually that luck will change. All the spies and hired swords in Assar won’t prevent that.” He took in the three men with a contemptuous wave of his hand. Isyllt was sure much of his sardonicism came naturally, but she also knew a defense when she saw it.

“They?”

He snorted soundlessly. “I didn’t follow you all the way from Erisín for my own enjoyment, or the view. But you already know that.”

As defenses went, his was an effective one. Isyllt forced herself not to bridle at his tone, to keep her own casual. “So tell me about your employers. You said
they
, not
we
.”

“I did, didn’t I? My oaths were only unto death.”

“Then you can talk to me with a clear conscience.”

The smirk returned. “I could, but I don’t think I will. It’s more fun to watch you scramble about in confusion.”

“You’ll tell me one way or another. Why not keep this polite?”

“Compulsion, you mean? You can torture me, if that’s the sort of thing you enjoy, but I’ve probably had worse. And I don’t think you can truly compel me without my name. Do I understand that bit of thaumaturgical theory properly?”

Isyllt’s smile stiffened and slid away. “You do. And you’re right—torture is pointless. Eternity in a soulstone, though…” She lifted her good shoulder in a shrug. “That might be enough to change your mind.”

“It might. Why don’t you leave me in there for a few dozen years and ask again?”

She took a careful breath through her nose. “I’m amazed you weren’t murdered sooner.”

The ghost chuckled; it sounded like a death rattle. “So am I, most days. And yet that bitch still took me by surprise.” The words were wry, but Isyllt thought she heard real hurt buried beneath them. “I’m sorry she hasn’t caught up with you yet—you two deserve each other.”

Isyllt drew breath to reply, but Adam spoke into the silence first. “Brenna.” She didn’t recognize the name, but there was a weight of history in the flatness with which he said it.

The ghost turned, surprise flitting across his translucent features. Then he laughed, long and cold and hollow. The sound raised the hair on the back of Isyllt’s neck. “Oh, Saints,” he said at last. “Were you the one in Celanor, then? The one she was so miserable about? It doesn’t matter. Whoever you thought she was, she isn’t anymore. She never was. Stay away, or you’ll end up like me.” He lifted a hand to his neck and drew it away black. The stain faded from his fingers as he watched, and his hand clenched convulsively. All the bravado in the world couldn’t stand against death.

He pulled away, fighting her summons. Isyllt let the diamond swallow him once more.

The darkness was thicker than ever in the absence of ghostlight. The four of them stepped apart at once, as if a bond had been broken. Isyllt worked her dry tongue against the roof of her mouth. Before she found her voice, Adam turned away, sand crunching under his boots.

She let him go too.

Adam and Siddir fell onto their beds and into the heavy sleep of the tired and pragmatic. Pain and fatigue dragged at Isyllt, but the lingering rush of magic kept her awake. After she gave up trying to work the kinks from her back, she sat by the well, skin rough with chill, watching the eastern sky grey with the coming dawn. The fading constellations were subtly different from those in Erisín, just enough to remind her how far she’d come.

“You’ll be stiff as scorched leather if you sit there all night,” Asheris said, standing behind her.

Isyllt turned, wincing as her neck proved him right. “Do you sleep at all?”

He offered her a hand and a wink. “The servants would talk if I didn’t. Come on—the view is better from the walls.”

They climbed the stone steps leading to serai’s eastern watchtower. To the west, the swollen waters of the Ash rippled silver-black. The wind breathed damp against Isyllt’s cheek, sweet after hours of sand and baked earth.

“It’s so quiet,” she said at last, releasing a breath she hadn’t realized she held. An absence she’d felt in Sherazad was stronger here, without lights and noise to distract her, all the starker for having spoken with the dead. “Where are the spirits?”

Asheris turned his head, but not before she saw the sadness that passed like a shadow across his face. “Gone. Driven into the deep desert, or the mountains, or the jungles of Iseth.”

“How? How can they ward so well?” She nearly said
you
—from the quirk of his mouth, Asheris noticed her hasty catch. “Erisín is hung with protections but still spirits get through. And the roads—” She shook her head at the futility of the idea.

“Selafai may have saints, but it doesn’t have the Unconquered Sun.”

“How can one more church make such a difference?”

“Not one more. One.
The
church. The empire embraces saints from all its kingdoms, but all fall under the banner of the one church. And the one church preaches the ascendancy of man. Every paean that rises from the towers is a ward, the peal of every bell. The force of tens of thousands of prayers is more than the little spirits can withstand.”

“And the powerful spirits?”

He made a sound that wasn’t a laugh. “The jinn, who might have been able to fight the church, withdrew into the desert instead, and built their own walls against outsiders. The ghuls retreated to Carathis in the mountains.” He nodded east, where the serrated Teeth of Heaven chewed the sky. “The rakkash lost their tiger queen and scattered into the jungles. One by one all the spirit kingdoms fell or retreated or turned their backs on men. Only a few wanderers remain. And exiles like me.”

She reached for his hand and once again the sharp heat of his magic bit her skin.

“What happened?” she asked, rubbing her fingers. “You weren’t like this.”

“No. I wasn’t.” He spread his arms and light like a false sunrise rose around him.
Otherwise
, Isyllt saw the winged, eagle-headed shape of the jinni hanging over him clearly. She turned away from his heat, the smell of smoke and incense. “I don’t know what’s happened to me. For the past decad and a half it’s been harder and harder to keep control, to keep the fire inside the flesh. I hadn’t meant to meet you in Sherazad at first, but once this started I had to leave the palace. If the truth were known, I would have nowhere to turn.”

But turn he did nonetheless, casting a wistful glance to the west. Toward the darkness and the deep desert.

The next morning Isyllt cornered Adam as they broke camp, pressing a cup of sweet tea on him. He might have slept more than she had, but she couldn’t tell it from the bruised circles under his eyes. Light slanted through the serai’s high arched windows, picking out the dust in his cropped hair.

“You know the woman who took Moth. Tell me.”

His mouth flattened, and she thought he would refuse tea and conversation. A moment later he accepted the cup and leaned against the rough stone wall behind him.

“Thirteen years ago. In Celanor. She was”—his throat worked as he sipped his tea—“my friend’s lover. A mercenary, she said. A seamstress’s daughter who decided she preferred knives to needles. Her story was—” He shook his head, the gesture heavy with regret and anger. “I can smell lies, but never from her. A year she stayed with my friend. I was certain she loved him.” His voice strained, snagged on some submerged pain, then grew cool and clipped again. “It was all a ruse. She used him to gain access to the palace. When she’d stolen what she came for, she vanished.”