Blackguards Read online

  This was a man who took his position seriously, Çeda could tell, and it made her even more curious to know who his master was. “He did.”

  “It was you who delivered the package, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your name?”

  “Çedamihn Ahyanesh’ala.”

  He nodded as if knowing her full name had incrementally raised her status in his eyes. “Osman was to tell you our purpose here. Did he?”

  “To a degree.”

  A frown appeared on Kadir’s refined face. “Tell me what he told you.”

  “That the package I delivered had been poisoned. That it had been discovered early. That I was not under suspicion.”

  “The first two I’ll grant you. As to the third”—he swept the back of his damask coat as he sat—“let us see what we see.”

  Çeda bowed her head once more. “Forgive me if I overstep my bounds, hajib, but my master informed me that I had come to help you find the one responsible. Was he mistaken?”

  Kadir gave her the smallest of smiles, but it seemed genuine. “He said you were direct.”

  “My mother always told me there’s little point in waiting when a hare needs chasing.”

  “There are times when that’s exactly what needs to happen, but your mother was wise. So tell me, do you remember much from that day?”

  Çeda shrugged noncommittally. “I remember it, but I recall nothing amiss. I came for the box at Osman’s estate at nightfall as he’d bid me and, after the moons had set and full night had come, brought it to the drop near Blackfire Gate.”

  “Did you notice anyone following you?”

  “No, or I would have delayed and come the following night.”

  “Did you notice anything strange in the days before the drop?”

  Her mind went immediately to the strange, blue-eyed Kundhuni boy. She remembered where she’d seen him now: at the spice market just before Brama had nicked her purse. She’d seen him again at the river, and then a short while ago at the harbor. How many times had she missed him? Had he been watching her for days? Weeks?

  “What is it?” Kadir asked, his dark eyes suddenly sharper.

  “It’s nothing to do with your package. At least, I don’t think it is.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “There was a boy. I’ve seen him several times these past few days.”

  “He’s been following you?”

  Çeda shrugged. “I suppose he must be, though I have no idea why. I’ve never seen him before.”

  Kadir seemed eminently unfazed by this. “He’s a head and a half shorter than I, with closely shorn hair and cinnamon skin and bright blue eyes. And a scar”—he ran his little finger down the left side of his face, neatly bisecting the skin between temple and eye—“just here.”

  “Yes…But how did you know?”

  Kadir pursed his lips, staring down at the desk for a moment, then he took in Çeda anew, his eyes roaming her form, lingering not only on her face, but on her hands as well, which were riddled with small scars from her time in the pits. She balled them into fists and held them by her side, which only seemed to draw more notice to her scars. Kadir smiled a patronizing smile. “The boy you saw is from Kundhun, and the poison on the package you delivered was not meant for my mistress, but for Ashwandi, the woman who delivered you to this room.”

  Ashwandi had been beautiful, but she had also eyed Çeda uncharitably from the moment she’d stepped foot in the estate.

  “Why?” Çeda asked.

  “My mistress hosts social gatherings, and in these she has had cause to take on protégés. In her wisdom she took on a Kundhuni girl named Kesaea, a princess of the thousand tribes. Years ago Kesaea had come to Sharakhai with her sister, Ashwandi, and here the two of them have remained, vying for my mistress’s attentions. When Kesaea left our employ, there was some, shall we say, acrimony over the decision.”

  “She was forced from her lofty position….”

  Kadir nodded, granting her the smallest of smiles. “Just so, and as you might have guessed, Ashwandi took her place. You can see how this might cause more than a little bit of strife between siblings, especially one—may my mistress forgive me for saying it—as petulant as Kesaea.”

  “But to poison her sister?”

  Kadir shrugged. “Surely you’ve heard worse stories in the smoke houses of Sharakhai.”

  In point of fact, she doubted Kadir would be caught dead in a Sharakhani smoke house. “Yes, but from a princess?”

  “Are not those who wield the scepter most likely to strike?”

  “I suppose,” Çeda said. “What of the boy, though? Why should I still find him following me?”

  She left unsaid the fact that the boy had likely been following her for quite some time, a logical conclusion that bothered her greatly, not merely for the fact that she hadn’t noticed him before today, but because she hadn’t a clue as to the reason behind it. If she was to become the unwitting accomplice to this boy’s plans, why follow her at all and give Çeda the chance to become wise to it? And for that matter, how would they even have known that she would be the one to take the shade from Osman that night?

  Kadir steepled his fingers. “Now that does give me pause. Have you no guesses of your own?”

  Çeda shrugged. “None,” she said. And then the strangest thing happened. A moth flew into Çeda’s field of vision. Where it had come from she had no idea, but it landed on her sleeve and sat there, wings fanning slowly. The top of its wings were the deepest indigo Çeda had ever seen, with a bright orange mark akin to a candle flame.

  Çeda was loath to shoo it away, partly from the sheer surprise of it, but more so from the realization that Kadir was staring at it as if it were about to burst into flame and take Çeda with it.

  “They’re called irindai,” Kadir said with an ease that made Çeda’s hackles rise. “Some call them cressetwings, and consider what just happened to you a sign of bountiful luck.”

  “Others call them gallows moths,” she replied, “and consider them a sign of imminent death.”

  “Well,” he said, standing and motioning to the way out, “as with so much in the world, surely the truth lies somewhere in between.” As Çeda stood, the moth flew away and was lost in the fronds of a potted fern in the corner. “I’ll only ask you for one more thing. Keep an eye out for the boy. I would not recommend you approach him—there’s no telling how Kesaea might have armed him—but if you discover that he’s following you still, return to this estate and inform me.”

  Çeda might have granted Kadir that if she’d been planning to leave this matter alone, but she refused to allow some Kundhuni child to use her as his plaything. She couldn’t tell that to Kadir, though, not leastwise because it might get back to Osman, so she nodded obediently and said, “Very well.”

  As Kadir joined her at the arched entryway, he held his hands out to her, as if asking her to dance. It was such an odd and unexpected gesture that she complied, lifting her hands for him to take. He did, then considered her with deliberate care. “They say scars have tales to tell, each and every one.” He examined not just her hands, but her face, her body, her legs, even her ankles, which somehow made her feel unclothed. “What would yours tell, Çedamihn Ahyanesh’ala?”

  “Tales are not told for free in this city, Kadir.”

  “If it’s money you want”—he leaned toward her—“you need but whisper the price.”

  “The price of their telling is something you cannot afford.”

  Kadir laughed. “You’d do well not to underestimate the size of my mistress’s purse, nor her will to follow a scent once she’s gotten wind of it.”

  “My tales are my own,” she said finally.

  For a moment, Kadir seemed prepared to press her, but then he raised her hands and bowed his head. “Forgive my boldness. A habit most foul, formed from years of service.”

  “Think nothing of it,” Çeda said, though somehow she doubted he would heed her words. No ma
tter what he said, his eyes were too hungry, too expectant of submission.

  Kadir raised his hand high and motioned to Ashwandi, who stood further down the hall. She came and put on a smile, motioning for Çeda to follow her. Her smile vanished, however, when the moth fluttered out from Kadir’s office to flitter around the two of them. As they walked toward the entrance to the estate, the moth continued to dog them, and it became clear it was fluttering around Çeda much more than it was Ashwandi, a thing that appeared to please the Kundhunese woman not at all.

  #

  The clack from the strike of wooden swords filled the desert air, strangely deadened by the surrounding dunes where Çeda and Djaga, her mentor in the pits, fought. The sun shined off Djaga’s dark, sweat-glistened skin. The sand shushed as they glided over it, a strangely calming sound amid the rattle of armor and the thud of their shinai as they engaged then backed away.

  Çeda fought with abandon, hoping to impress, pushing herself more than she had in a long while. When Djaga retreated, Çeda closed the gap. When Djaga pressed, Çeda countered as soon as the flurry had ended. When Djaga ran backward, Çeda flew after her. She thought she’d timed her advance perfectly, but just as she was lunging forward, Djaga did too, beating aside her blade and sending a nasty swipe of her shinai over Çeda’s thigh.

  Çeda, thinking Djaga was going to press her advantage, slid quickly away as the pain blossomed, but instead the tall black woman stopped and stood, chest heaving, her face a sneer of disgust. “You invite me to spar,” she said in her thick accent, “and this is what I get? You’re not watching me.”

  Çeda opened her mouth to explain, to apologize, but Djaga abruptly turned away and headed for the skiff they’d sailed from Sharakhai’s western harbor. Together they stepped over the runners of the sandship to reach the ship’s side, at which point Djaga leaned over the gunwales, popped the top of their keg of water, and filled a gourd cup. “You’re distracted,” Djaga said after downing the cup and running the back of her hand over her mouth. She refilled the cup and held it out to Çeda. “Why?”

  There was no sense denying it. She was distracted. Çeda took the offered cup and drank down the sun-warmed water.

  “Tell me it’s a man,” Djaga went on, a smile making her full lips go crooked. “Tell me you’ve decide to take your Emre to bed. He’s disappointed you, hasn’t he? I knew he would. Haven’t I always said it? No man as gorgeous as that knows his the way to the promised land.”

  Çeda laughed. She shared a home with Emre, and he meant much to her, but not that—they’d probably never be that—yet it never stopped Djaga from digging her elbow into Çeda’s ribs every chance she got.

  “Come, come. What’s there to think about? He’s a pretty boy…You’re a pretty girl….”

  “Well, if you must know,” Çeda said, desperate to move the conversation beyond these particular grounds, “it is about a boy.”

  “A boy…”

  “A Kundhunese boy.”

  “Well, well, well…A Kundhunese boy…” Djaga laughed, then bowed and flourished her arms to the desert around them. “Then know this, oh Çeda the White Wolf. The desert is wide enough to hold your secrets. Tell us both your tale if you’re bold enough.”

  Where to begin? In the days that had followed her meeting with Kadir, she would swear by her mother’s own blood that she’d seen the blue-eyed boy a half-dozen times, but always from the corner of her eye, and when she looked with a keener gaze, she found someone or something else entirely—boys or even girls with similarly dark skin, lighter-skinned boys wearing dark clothes, even the simple swaying of shadows beneath the odd acacia tree. Once she’d even spotted him in the ceaseless flow of traffic along the Trough, but when she’d caught up to him and spun him around, it had been a Sharakani boy with closely shorn hair who looked nothing like the bright-eyed Kundhuni. The mother had shoved Çeda away, and Çeda had retreated under the angry glares of those standing nearby, wondering what was happening to her.

  She’d spent the next few days wallowing in confusion and fear while a small voice whispered from the corners of her mind—you’re going mad, mad, mad, you’re going mad. A fury born from her own helplessness grew hotter by the day, but what good was fury when there was nothing to direct it against? She needed a change. If the winds were blowing across one’s bow, one didn’t simply stay the course. One turned and tacked until the safety of port was reached once more.

  And who better to help steer this strange ship than Djaga? So much of this tale seemed to be wrapped up in the people of Kundhun, their customs, their norms, and Djaga was Kundhunese. She might see any number of things Çeda was blind to. So she told Djaga her tale. She spoke of the shade, of Osman’s confession after, of her visit with Kadir. She spent a long while describing the strange blue-eyed boy with the cinnamon skin, hoping Djaga would somehow know him, but there was no glimmer of recognition in her eyes.

  When she was done, she asked Djaga, “Have you heard of her, this princess Kesaea?”

  “No,” Djaga replied, “but you know what we say in the backlands. If you stand our princesses shoulder to shoulder with our princes, they will drown the land like blades of grass.”

  It was true. There were as many kings and queens as there were hills in Kundhun, or so it seemed. “It was so strange,” Çeda went on. “When I left, a moth followed me.”

  Djaga smiled her broad smile. “Good luck be upon you.”

  But Çeda shrugged. “So they say, but it was a gallows moth.”

  “An irindai? A cressetwing?”

  “Yes. Why are you making that face?”

  “Who did you say is this Kadir’s mistress?”

  “I don’t know her name.”

  Djaga’s expression pinched from one of confusion to outright worry. “There’s a woman who hides in the shadows of the lords of Sharakhai. A drug lord named Rümayesh. Have you heard the name?”

  “I’ve heard it,” Çeda lied.

  “I can tell you don’t know enough, girl. Not nearly enough. Those who enter her house pay fistfuls of rahl to do so—not the silver of the southern quarter, mind you, nor the coppers of the west end, but gold. Her clientele is exclusive. The lords and ladies of Goldenhill, those of noble blood, rich merchants and caravan masters that paid their way into Rümayesh’s good graces, and in return she feeds them dreams, dreams she summons and all share in. Dreams taken from the souls that Rümayesh herself selects.”

  “Why did you think of Rümayesh?”

  Djaga’s face was staring out at the sand, her eyes distant, but now she pulled her gaze away and stared down at Çeda. “Because she uses irindai, Çeda.”

  Someone, somewhere danced over Çeda’s grave. “How can you know?”

  “There was one in the pits, the one who taught me, as I teach you. Her name was Meliz, and one day she disappeared. For weeks we searched for her. She was found at the bottom of a dry well two months later, still alive, the crushed body of a cressetwing stuffed inside her mouth. We nursed her back to health, but she was never the same. Her mind was gone. She remembered nothing—not why she’d been taken, nor who had taken her. She couldn’t even remember who she was, not much of it, anyway. It had all been taken from her. She did whisper a name, though, over and over.”

  “Rümayesh.”

  “Just so. She took her own life two months later”—Djaga drew her thumb across her neck—“a crimson smile, drawn with her favorite sword.” She looked Çeda up and down, as if she were in danger even here in the desert. “You say he’s left you alone, this Kadir?”

  “As near as I can tell.”

  “Then make no mistake, girl, the gods of the desert have shined upon you!” Djaga took the gourd cup from Çeda and set it onto the keg. In unspoken agreement, they strode away from the skiff and began loosening their limbs. “Watch yourself in the coming days, and when we return to Sharakhai, go to Bakhi’s temple. Give him a kind word and show him a bit of silver, or gold if you can manage, lest he take it all back.”r />
  Çeda had no intention of doing so—she didn’t believe in filling the coffers of the temples any more than she believed in giving the Kings of Sharakhai their due respect—but she nodded just the same.

  “Now come!” Djaga brought her blade quickly down across Çeda’s defenses, a swing Çeda beat aside easily. “You’ve a bout in two weeks.” She swung again, and again Çeda blocked it, backing up this time. “People know we spar with one another, girl.” A third strike came, a thing Djaga put her entire body into, but Çeda skipped back, avoiding the blow. “I’ll not have it said the White Wolf is some poor imitation of the Lion of Kundhun!”

  Çeda retreated and bowed, arms and shinai swept back while her eyes were fixed on Djaga. “Very well,” she said, and leapt in for more.

  #

  The days passed quickly after that.

  Çeda saw the boy again—several times, in fact, and now she was sure it was him. Once, she was sure she’d caught him in the Well, the quarter of the city that held Osman’s pits. She chased after him, yelling for him to stop, and when she’d turned the corner, her hand nearly upon him, she found the alley ahead empty. He’d disappeared. At a whistle, she’d looked up and found the boy staring down at her with a wide smile. And then he was off, leaving an awkward knot inside her she couldn’t untie, a knot composed of anger and impotence and foolishness.

  He must be a warlock, she decided—it ran thick in some areas of Kundhun—and now for some reason he was toying with her. She vowed to find him, but for the life of her she had no idea how she would manage it. Every time she tried to lie in wait, she ended up spending hours with nothing to show for it.

  She lost herself in preparations for her upcoming bout instead—running in the mornings, sparring in the afternoons, lifting Djaga’s stone weights beneath the pier in the western harbor in the evenings. Osman had told her she’d have no shading work until after her day in the pits, a thing that had bothered her at first, but given that there was nothing she could do about it she threw herself into her training with an abandon she hadn’t felt in months.