The Bloodprint Read online

  The thought made Arian smile.

  Despite her great reverence for it, much of the Claim was cryptic, unknowable.

  As she looked around the ethereal arches, she found the lantern a clumsy thing, immitigable by light. Her hand scraped the bottom of the lantern, the farthest she could reach. She paused. There were grooves in the base of the lantern. It took her several attempts to launch her body close enough to examine the grooves. Disappointed, she realized the grooves formed a handhold designed to lower the lantern, perhaps to protect it from intemperate weather, or to refill it with oil. But the handhold didn’t help. The lantern refused to budge, its chain welded to the rod by years of neglect.

  After several attempts at shifting the handhold, the brick around the brace began to crumble. The platform shook under Arian’s feet. She swiveled round, her hands releasing the handhold. She caught herself on the edge of the staircase, her toes slipping, her fingers catching at the brick. For a moment she was looking straight up, blinded by the light that arrowed down the staircase.

  “Arian!” Sinnia called. “Have you hurt yourself?”

  Arian didn’t answer.

  When her eyes refocused, she was able to see to the top of the tower.

  A line of script ran around the inside like a ring.

  She read it to herself.

  Hallowed is the One who has set up in the skies great constellations, and placed among them a radiant lamp and a light-giving moon.

  She looked back at the lantern and in that moment understood.

  “I think I know how the Golden Finger will help us. The lantern hangs there for a reason, the verse from the Claim is the clue to its purpose.”

  Sinnia was right—the Claim was as much part of them as race memory, buried beneath layers of consciousness, secretly held in their cells.

  The lantern was the lamp described in the verse.

  The moon would make it radiant.

  And through the lantern, a path would be struck through the hills, the safe passage into the lost city under the Turquoise Mountain. All they required was moonlight. But she chafed at the passing of time, conscious of Hira’s vulnerability at her back.

  So she made Sinnia rest while she circled the tower to study its graces. In this remote, inaccessible place, choked off by mountains, there was quiet except for the cries of sparrowhawks and harriers. She found it a soothing accompaniment to her study, this object of beauty molded from mud and clay. The stage of the starscope, closest to the base, was also the most decorated, the decoration divided into vertical panels, bands of inscription forming the borders of the panels. She read to her heart’s delight, marveling at the words, daring to trace them over with her fingers. This was the story of a woman, each word intact, the nineteenth chapter glorious and whole.

  She withdrew from her family to a place in the east.

  Alone and untouched, except for the presence of a guardian.

  Why this story? This woman?

  The tower had been built long before the wars of the Far Range, and though it cast a long shadow on the river, this story of the most venerated woman of the Claim, in lands under siege by the Talisman, was remarkable to Arian.

  She could stand and read the verses forever, the unadorned script more meaningful than any manuscript she’d held in her hands at Hira. The beauty was in the story.

  Far out of Arian’s reach, the turquoise tiles gleamed in the wintry sun. When she stalked away from the tower some distance, she could read a list of names and titles: the emperor of this valley, the architect who’d built the tower. Here the script was ornamented, magnified, terminating in a dense set of scrolls, a single palmette captured at the center of each.

  Its geometric patterns were of surpassing loveliness, stars, flowers, medallions, leaves, palmettes. She returned to the tower, tracing the script again.

  A hand moved beside hers, fumbling over the brick.

  “What is this?” Wafa asked.

  Arian had missed his approach. She smiled down at him, noting that he had cleaned his hands.

  “This is writing, Wafa. This is what the Talisman burn. The words pose a danger to the Talisman.” His eyes darted about the valley. He didn’t understand.

  “It’s why the Talisman destroy these inscriptions,” Arian said. “You see how we are speaking to each other using words? If we wanted to remember what we’d said, or what we thought about anything, this is what we would do. We would make symbols to take the place of our words, we would etch them into stone or paper.”

  “Paper? Like on the white flag?”

  The boy must not have seen a manuscript before.

  “The symbol on the Talisman flag is the Bloodprint,” Arian told him. “The Bloodprint is a collection of words written down on parchment, sacred words we call the Claim. Have you heard of it?”

  He nodded, his blue eyes wary. “The words that killed Talisman? I heard you use them.” He touched his fingers to the inscriptions. “Is this—writing—what you used to kill them?” And at her nod, “Then isn’t it dangerous to us?”

  Arian sighed. How could she explain to a child of Jahiliya—the Age of Ignorance?

  “Do you not think that if we wanted to teach each other something of what we knew, what we’d learned through decades of struggle, it would be more dangerous still to take our words away? To steal your words is to silence you, yes, Wafa? Do you wish to be silenced?”

  The boy struggled to understand. He picked at the crumbling stucco with a finger. Arian stilled the movement by covering his hand with her own. He held his breath, looking down at their hands.

  At last he raised his head, his blue eyes suspiciously bright.

  “I want to speak,” he said. “I do not want Talisman to stop me.”

  Arian smiled.

  “I don’t want them to stop me, either. We are alike in this, you see. As are all the people of the Claim who wish to be heard, who wish to share their knowledge with the world.”

  She read the verses inscribed in the panels again, testing her memory of them.

  “These aren’t words that kill,” she said to Wafa. “These are verses that gave birth to hope.”

  It was difficult to wait for nightfall and moonrise so Arian scouted the surround, considered the different passes on the north bank of the river, some with broken ridges, others whose snowbound heights soared and dipped like the humps of dromedaries. There were a dozen different choices she could make, and from those choices ripples would spread, leading them astray, leading them away from the Bloodprint. Any mistake would cost her time necessary to Hira’s survival.

  The verses on the tower, the verses she had learned from her mother, renewed her determination to find the priceless book. As Wafa stoked the small fire, camped beside Sinnia in the twilight, she thought of Lania.

  Though Lania was older by a decade, she had never minded that Arian was the one gifted with the Claim. Arian was the one they spoke of at Hira, the Council endlessly patient, waiting for Arian to join their ranks. Arian was the one the friends of their parents had come to hear recite the Claim. Perhaps their brother had minded it more, withdrawing when visitors came to the house.

  But Lania had stayed, listening, encouraging, her hands weaving braids in Arian’s hair.

  “You will be First Oralist,” she would say. “Your name will be spoken in every corner of Khorasan.”

  Arian had been an anxious child, unwilling to accept a thing predetermined.

  “Then I will be alone, without any of you. I don’t want to leave, I belong here.”

  Lania had faced her young sister, her words weighted with warning.

  “The Claim is given to few as a charge, fewer still as a gift. You may choose to refuse your gifts, but you will never be safe from them. Hira will be your new home, in time. But you won’t be alone, I promise.”

  She had kissed the top of Arian’s head.

  “You will be under my care at Hira. That’s what they prepare me for—to act in your service.”
r />   The words had confused Arian. “But you’re older than me.”

  Lania had laughed.

  “I’m your sister, Arian. I’ll always be there to protect you.”

  How much I wish I could have done the same for you.

  “It’s time,” Sinnia said, waking Arian from her reverie, giving Arian a moment to gain her bearings.

  “You’ll watch from outside? In case we can’t see the path from above?”

  Sinnia nodded. Arian and Wafa rose and climbed one side of the staircase.

  The sky was cloudless and clear, stars winking over the mountains to the east, the air spiky with cold. Arian shivered. It was the perfect night for sighting a path, if the light of the moon was meant to strike the lantern. She and Wafa waited in silence. The moon moved over the horizon, a half-formed disc, its light unsullied, breaking against the spine of the mountains.

  She could see Sinnia marching away from the tower, a speck of movement on the ground below. Moonlight splayed over the platform through the glass. Arian stood on her toes to follow the angle of the light. Wafa waited for direction.

  There was nothing.

  The lantern glass shone dully above the stage.

  Arian moved around the circle, testing the different angles. Wafa explored the view from the arches. From the ground, Sinnia called up, “There’s nothing. No revelation of any kind.”

  Arian tilted her head back, struggling to make out the ring of inscription.

  A radiant lamp and a light-giving moon.

  Perhaps the lamp referred to the sun instead of the moon. But then what purpose would the lantern serve?

  “Let’s wait through the night. There must be something we’re not seeing.”

  It was a reasonable plan, and they set themselves to it, hoping to find the way from the valley. The moonlight bounced against Wafa’s eyes, silvering them, making them flash for a moment like antique coins.

  Arian pushed down a surge of longing.

  Why had she sought out Daniyar?

  Why had the Silver Mage come to her rescue only to ride away?

  Her questions remained unanswered.

  The sound of Wafa’s chattering teeth distracted her.

  “Go down. Fetch Sinnia from outside, too. I’ll call you if I see anything.”

  The boy scowled, shifting himself closer to Arian’s warmth, stopping shy of touching her. Arian gathered him close.

  “I won’t leave you,” he said. “Wafa is loyal.”

  Arian smiled, pressing a kiss to his curls.

  “Loyal in this case does not mean shivering to death at the top of this tower. Go down, stay warm. I will need your help in the morning.”

  She held him for a few minutes more, then nudged him down the staircase.

  She waited out the night alone, but the path did not appear.

  At sunrise, she was awake, hoping the sun would illuminate what the moon had failed to reveal. Her bones were brittle with cold, her joints stiff. She stretched her limbs, shaking a coating of frost from her hair.

  Wafa appeared at the top of the stairs, a metal cup in his hands. She drank the sweet tea he’d brought her, gazing out across the landscape. She spied a set of small ruins climbing the hill just north of the tower, a sight elusive in moonlight.

  “Watch the lantern,” she told Wafa. “I’m going down to explore.”

  Sinnia was asleep. Arian let herself out into daylight. The ruins were a short distance from the tower, crumbling blocks of stone, half-smashed, half-drowned by the river, forming a shape and a pattern.

  Arian paused beside a shelf of limestone marked with runes.

  A sister-script to the language of the Claim, known to the Council of Hira as the Everword. The people of the Everword were people of the Claim. Arian had read their histories at Hira’s scriptorium. She was shaken to discover this proof of their existence in the shade of this lost minaret.

  She read the markings on the stone.

  It was a headstone listing the names of those who had passed in a long distant time, before the wars of the Far Range. The outcropping was a cemetery.

  She pocketed one of the smaller stones, trying to understand the place of the tower in geography and history. An Everword cemetery to the north of the tower, and the story of the woman in seclusion inscribed upon the tower itself. How should she interpret the verse at the top of the Golden Finger? She looked up. Wafa was watching her from the platform, a tiny, dark figure poised at the edge of the starscope.

  Neither moonlight nor sunlight had given them an answer.

  She took the stone to show Sinnia.

  “We can’t afford to spend another night here,” Sinnia said. “The Talisman will be tracking us.” She flexed her arm, testing her strength. “It’s healing, Arian. Don’t linger on my account.”

  “I share your urgency, but which path would you choose?”

  “Something, anything.”

  “We could stray into a crevasse.”

  “Shall I scout the path ahead?”

  “No,” Arian said. “You need to recover your strength. And we must discuss the writing on the tower, there is something here—something prearranged.”

  Sinnia’s lush mouth formed an O.

  “What do you mean, prearranged? Do you speak of a thing fated?”

  Arian hesitated. “Wafa can scout, if he wishes. Let us work out the meaning of this tower. The verses, the graveyard—they have a purpose. But the key to the mystery is missing.”

  “Another night is the most we should risk, Arian. Then we must decide.”

  Arian’s answer was diplomatic. She felt the pressure of the Black Khan’s intercession, as much as the fear of the Talisman advance. Slave handlers, whipmasters, the lackeys of the ignorant—could they truly bring down the Citadel? But she was reminded that Daniyar had chosen to live in Candour, keeping the Immolan under surveillance.

  She pressed a hand to her forehead.

  There were too many questions.

  And hidden in this tower, an answer.

  15

  When Sinnia had rested another night, they climbed to the top of the tower together. The valley spread below them, the hardscrabble ground interrupted by the rush of water. The mountains rose on all sides in scarred and jagged lines. A whistle sounded from Sinnia’s throat.

  “Those mountains will be the death of us.”

  Arian feared many things on the journey ahead. The treacherous road was the least of her worries.

  “We’ll deal with that when we reach them. For now, do you see anything that might help us understand?”

  At the sight of the ring-verse at the top of the tower, Sinnia had bowed her head for a moment. Now she considered the lantern.

  “A poor thing, if its purpose is light.” She paused. “Is its purpose light? Or do we read the Claim amiss?” She read the ring-verse again, frowning. Clouds were gathering over the mountains to the east. “We should call Wafa back before the storm breaks over his head.”

  “He’s more adept at survival than either of us—but Sinnia, what do you mean? How do we read it amiss?”

  The woman of the Negus flashed her bright smile at Arian. She pointed to the verse.

  “This lantern hangs here, a useless thing. Neither sun nor moon is married to its purpose, neither gives it light.” She chewed her lower lip. “But if the lantern is the lamp, as it must be, perhaps the light it sheds is metaphorical, not literal—the light of truth.”

  “Do you think the verse is the key to Firuzkoh?”

  “I think it’s the key to the lantern.” She looked up at the rod above their heads. “They must have been tall, these gatekeepers, to hang it so high.”

  Arian followed her friend’s gaze.

  “No, I don’t think so. There’s a grip at the base of the lantern, but it’s locked in place. I couldn’t move it.”

  “Climb on my shoulders. It will give you more leverage.”

  “It’s too much for your arm. And I fear the platform is unstable. Pe
rhaps with Wafa, I could try.”

  “There’s no time for that,” Sinnia said briskly. “Here. Stand beneath the lantern, I’ll climb up.”

  Lithe as a gazelle, she vaulted atop Arian’s shoulders, reaching for the lantern. Her fingers scratched at the base.

  “Light-giving moon, indeed,” she muttered.

  Arian shifted beneath the other woman’s weight, grasping Sinnia’s ankles.

  “Do you have it?”

  “Hold on, I can feel it.”

  Sinnia fitted her fingers around the grip, tugging with one hand, then both.

  The lantern wobbled. The rod shifted in its grooves, scattering dust over their heads. Arian stumbled.

  “Steady,” Sinnia warned. The handhold didn’t budge but everything else on the platform began to shake.

  “You’ll bring the tower down,” Arian gasped, trying to keep her balance.

  “I’ve almost got it. Just—one more moment.”

  Sinnia yanked at the grip with all her strength. Her feet slipped on Arian’s shoulders. Arian staggered forward, falling to her knees, leaving Sinnia suspended midair.

  The lantern grip gave way with a groan. Sinnia fell, pulling the chain with her. The rod skidded down its grooves, skimming Sinnia’s head. She toppled back on her heels, the lantern swinging over the platform. Brick began to crumble around the arches. The platform shuddered, skewing wildly to one side.

  Sinnia grabbed at Arian, dragging her to the staircase.

  “Run!” she shouted.

  “Wait! Look at it! Look at the lantern!”

  “We don’t have time!”

  “It might be the only chance we get!” Arian scrambled to her feet. Twice she tried to grab at the lantern, twice she missed. Sinnia slid down the first few stairs. Arian caught her by the shoulders, throwing her body flat, holding Sinnia in place.

  When they both stopped moving, the platform shuddered once more, then went still.

  Sinnia opened one eye, her head and shoulders coated with powdered brick. She inched her way back onto the platform, where Arian knelt under the lantern, her face and hair covered in dust.