The Black Khan Read online

  Thus heedlessly joyful at the news of her betrothal, she’d cast aside good sense and sought out Arsalan’s company. She’d interrupted him at his task of overseeing Ashfall’s defenses, bringing him a garland she’d woven with her own hands.

  He’d dismissed the men in attendance to grant her a private audience. In the euphoria of the moment, she hadn’t seen that his demeanor was anything but lover-like or remembered that he hadn’t expressed the slightest interest in courting her. All she’d seen was the commander of the Zhayedan, attired in his finest uniform, treated with deference by the legions of men under his command, and loved without question by her brother—an immeasurable, respectful love that won her heart anew.

  Rukh and Arsalan had grown up as childhood playmates for each other. Together they had learned to ride, to fight, to read. Later, as they’d grown older, one had been chosen to govern an empire, the other to command that empire’s army. There was no one her brother trusted more, not even his Grand Vizier.

  To be married to a man held in such esteem by the Prince of Khorasan—there could be no greater honor for Darya. Nor was it a marriage contrived strictly for reasons of state, because Darya was wildly in love. And yet in the mad exuberance of love, she’d thought to extract from Arsalan the promise her brother had denied her, reserving his right to command every aspect of her life.

  High up in the Maiden Tower, she’d offered Arsalan the jasmine garland and broached the subject dearest to her heart, blushingly unable to meet his eyes.

  “My lord, I wondered if I might ask a concession of you.”

  When she’d bowed her head, the pearl amulet that indicated her rank had slipped to one side of her forehead. Mortified, she had pushed it into place.

  “Princess.” He had bowed in turn, a hint of surprise in his eyes at the offering of the garland. “If it is in my power, I will grant whatever you ask.”

  She had seen this as the declaration of an ardent lover, and—daringly—she had placed a hand on his wrist, looping the garland over their joined hands.

  “Though your offer of marriage honors me, it has always been my wish to study at the Council of Hira. My brother does not approve, thus will not grant me his leave.” She had smiled up at him then, a becoming dimple emerging from her cheek. “I wondered if you might seek his permission—he is far more amenable to your counsel than to mine.”

  Surprisingly, his hand had jerked in hers, crushing the garland’s petals. Shocked, she’d eased her grip.

  “Please don’t mistake me, my lord. I assure you I anticipate our marriage with joy. I would study at Hira for a short term—perhaps for the few months it would take for our wedding to be arranged.”

  She hadn’t been able to read the expression in his eyes, but when he still hadn’t spoken, she’d added softly, “A wife learned in the wisdom of Hira would be an asset to the honorable commander of the Zhayedan. I ask only that you consider it.”

  Embarrassed, Arsalan had released himself, the garland drifting to the ground. It would have been easier for him to turn his back to her, but instead he’d met her gaze, his handsome features grave.

  “Forgive me, Princess, you have me at a disadvantage. I made no such proposal. It is not my wish to marry.”

  Unabashed by his directness, Darya had persisted. “I cannot be mistaken. My brother told me just now that our marriage has been arranged. I assumed it was at your urging. I came to share my joy—to thank you for honoring me so.”

  A terrible empathy in his eyes, Arsalan had answered, “Princess, I regret that it was not. My responsibilities are too onerous. I have never thought of a wife.”

  And in that horrible moment, Darya had seen her reckless presumption … her eager self-betrayal. Scalded with shame, she had frozen in place, just managing to choke out an apology. “Forgive me, Commander. I’ve worried you without cause. I fear I’ve disgraced myself.”

  She would have fled the tower in tears, but Arsalan had taken hold of her arm. With his other hand, he’d raised her chin to force her to meet his gaze.

  “There is no disgrace in your affection, Princess—you have honored me by thinking of me in so favorable a light. Please believe my refusal is a source of regret to me.”

  Though words had trembled on her lips, Darya hadn’t been able to speak. She had wished herself locked away at Hira, never to set eyes upon any man again.

  But he wasn’t finished with her.

  “If you wish it, I will speak to your brother about your desire to train at Hira. It is a noble endeavor, and one well suited to your talents.”

  She made herself thank him, but his touch had become unbearable on her skin. When he released her, she escaped on trembling legs. Halfway down the tower, she’d collapsed on the stairs and wept. She had climbed the tower with such anticipation, on the wings of her radiant dreams. But she’d been forced to retreat in defeat.

  Now she experienced that same humiliation, and she raised her fist to her mouth, fighting back any further display of weakness.

  With a shuddering breath, she gathered herself, a sense of resolve stiffening her bones. She wouldn’t impose herself on any man, even a man she loved. She made her way to the Maiden Tower, to puzzle through her choices on her own.

  To escape damaging them both, she would need to find her own way to Hira. She would have a purpose at Hira—her words would be valued there. And she would know a freedom she’d rarely experienced at her brother’s pleasure-seeking court. Lost in these half-formed plans, she startled at the sound of footsteps approaching from the tower door.

  The Princess whirled around to face Arsalan, not quick enough to hide the longing in eyes that were brightened by the glimmer of the lamps. The night contained a subtle ingredient: the warm brush of the air against his skin, the smoky tang of watch fires, a tangle of velvet vines creeping up the white stone of the tower. The great square was in the process of being cleared, the last faint notes of the musicians awakening a memory of the halcyon days of the court when art and beauty were pursued at heedless cost.

  His head disturbed a cluster of satiny flowers. Their petals flew over his armor like falling stars. He plucked one to offer to Darya. Choosing a safer course, she tried to ease past him without speaking.

  “Princess.” He didn’t touch her, holding her with his voice.

  “Commander.”

  “Don’t go just yet. I need a moment to speak to you.”

  Her eyes found his. He read the flicker of hope in her expression before she turned away, leaning her elbows on the parapet. The city lay quiet below, the slumberous sky above threaded with galaxies of stars. Darya didn’t speak or move, the bells at her ankles silent.

  “You spoke to me once of marriage—I was discourteous in my refusal and have had reason to change my mind.”

  Darya went still, her slight figure hunched in on itself. She fingered the heavy cuff at her wrist with evident discomfort. “There’s no need to apologize, Commander. You were everything that was gracious.”

  “Please, Princess. Permit me to reconsider.”

  As he looked at her delicate profile, he caught the sheen of tears in her eyes. She was young, he thought, and easily overwhelmed. But her answer took him by surprise.

  “You mustn’t allow my brother to compel you against your better judgment.”

  “Princess—”

  “‘There is nothing about Darya that attracts me.’” She repeated his words back to him, her shrug a not-quite-careless gesture. “I’m sorry, I know I trespassed upon your privacy. But a marriage that was forced on you would not avail either one of us. You would find yourself unable to forswear the marriage. And I—”

  She fell silent.

  “And you, Princess?”

  Her throat moved convulsively. “It is not what I wish for, either—to constrain a man who doesn’t want me.”

  There was nothing Arsalan could say to this, though he was moved by her demonstration of pride. It spoke well of her. Yet neither the Princess’s awakening self
-worth nor his own painfully buried desires could be allowed to stand in the way of the inexorable needs of empire. Though he had no wish to marry Darya, his deepest allegiance was to Rukh.

  Unless he could determine a more significant means by which to serve his khan. “Do you still think of Hira?” he asked her.

  Surprise cleared away the hurt he’d seen in her eyes, to be replaced by a flare of hope. “My lord?”

  “Were you to achieve your desire to study at Hira, would you still serve the needs of Ashfall? Would you think of what was due your brother?”

  Darya turned away. In a defeated undertone, she murmured, “I had thought that at Hira, I might finally think of myself.”

  Arsalan bit back an angry retort. The outer ramparts were ill equipped for the urgently needed defense, the Talisman would overrun the intervening distance by nightfall, yet these were the thoughts that occupied the Princess. His bitter disappointment in Darya found its way to his tongue. “Then perhaps you are right, Princess. A woman who would think of herself when her city is at the edge of ruin would not be the woman for me.”

  Darya whirled to face him, an anguished cry on her lips.

  At his involuntary movement toward her, she staggered a few paces back.

  “I knew I couldn’t please Rukh.” The tears in her eyes spilled over. “But I didn’t know how deeply you shared his contempt.”

  “Princess …”

  She put up a hand to stop him from saying anything more, the frantic chime of the bells at her ankles echoing her distress as she fled.

  The Talisman drums sounded a warning across the plains.

  And Arsalan let her go.

  28

  THE RAIN SOAKED THROUGH THEIR OUTER CLOTHING IN MINUTES, THE hooves of their horses sending splashes of mud up along their boots and legs. Even in the rain they rode at a furious pace, Alisher charging ahead. They rode through the night over dry hills and dusk-dark ridges, the path lit by the fires of Talisman encampments. Alisher knew the location of each one of these camps. When they had passed through the Wall and over the Amdar River, he’d gained confidence with every stride, ignoring the city that lay behind them—a city alight with confusion and activity as the news of Lania’s coup spread behind the Wall.

  The night sky pressed low and heavy against their passage, filled with the cries of birds and the strange growls of unseen predators. There was no shelter to be had, the landscape bare of places where they might have gained a respite. There was nothing ahead but an open road where Talisman scouts could appear at any moment.

  Two days of hard riding passed, their bones chilled by rain, before they reached the city to the south. The city had been left in ruins after the Talisman assault: sand-colored dwellings drifted into the landscape, a cluster of buildings sheltered under a barren ridge, stripped of the Marakand loess by an infelicitous pattern of winds.

  They slowed their horses on the approach, taking note of a fiery trail of scorch marks and the ruined fields of the harvest. The orchards that ringed the city had been felled. Broken stones littered the path.

  “We’ll find shelter on the other side of this ridge where it’s safe,” Alisher said.

  “How do you know?” Daniyar asked.

  Arian didn’t speak. She knew the answer, her knowledge fortified by her long campaign in the south.

  Alisher’s horse began its slow ascent of the ridge, its hooves slipping in the mud. After some time, he confirmed her thoughts. “The Talisman have already been here. They have no reason to return.”

  He pointed to an odd structure on the other side of the ridge. It resembled the waters of a fountain, if the rising play of water had been etched in cool gray stone. It reached upward, a hyperbolic cone, its many-planed surface intersected by panels of sky. The stone was inlaid with lapis lazuli tile, Nastaliq script smashed by hammers in a furious outpouring of hate.

  A standard had been planted at the entrance to the structure. It was sodden with rain and twisted by the wind, but Arian discerned its dismal emblem: a bloodstained page across a torn white flag.

  Apart from the stone structure, the house of worship, the garden of the tomb, the small surrounding enclosures embellished by tilework in a woodland of blues—all had been brought to the ground, the gravesite trampled over and burned for extra measure.

  Arian studied the scene: what was left to beautify the complex was the aching blue of the sky as the rain clouds began to drift away. She looked over at Alisher. Though his face was expressionless, his hands were clenched in fists.

  “You’ve brought us to Nightshaper,” she said in wonder.

  “The Poet’s Graveyard,” he answered. “It’s where I was trained.”

  They took shelter inside the structure. Daniyar lit a fire, the Talisman at too great a distance to worry if its light would give them away. Their small party was in dire need of warmth. Alisher produced provisions from his saddlebags and shared them out, noticing both of his companions were slow and careful in their movements.

  “Do you heal, sahabiya, or should I apply more of the salve?”

  Arian finished her small ration of fruit. The orange glow of the fire had illuminated the inner planes of the poet’s mausoleum—for this is what the stone structure was, and what the Talisman had destroyed were the poet’s legendary verses. Above her head, a resplendent array of blues asserted a perfect geometry intersected by the dull light of stars, silver picked out on a field of deepest indigo. The poet’s verses were known to the people of Khorasan; this monument was a tribute to his brilliance at mathematics.

  Alisher cleared his throat to remind her of his question. She nodded at Daniyar.

  “The Silver Mage needs your medicine more than I do. The Authoritan bled him, and the bloodrites have taken their toll.”

  Daniyar brushed this off. “Lania’s bloodrite was a ruse to deceive the Authoritan; she alone tasted my blood.”

  Arian’s head came up at Daniyar’s use of her sister’s name. There was a softness to his voice that belied the horror of their experience at the Ark. Did he feel for Lania? Could he possibly wish their places were exchanged, so that he traveled with a seductive, provocative woman at his side, instead of what Arian was—a damaged and distant Companion? She had never considered the possibility that Daniyar might find her wanting, and now her throat burned with pain at the thought, a bitterly divisive emotion that she struggled to contain.

  Alisher turned back to Arian, throwing the straw he’d collected onto their dwindling fire.

  “You were scarcely there for a fortnight, sahabiya. Yet in that brief time, you brought the Authoritan down, when none believed he could fall. I still can’t accept that he did.”

  Not I, she thought. It was Daniyar … and Lania. I had nothing to offer save my false recollections of my sister.

  Interpreting her silence as pain, he gestured at her throat, setting the jar that contained the salve before the fire. “Are you certain I cannot tend you?”

  “You have already done more than anyone could ask. It was you who changed our fate, Alisher. You were there when we needed you most.”

  “It was Lania who changed all our fates.” Daniyar spoke over her, echoing her thoughts. “You and I safe from the Ahdath, the bloodrites, the doves—it was all done by Lania. Lania brought the Authoritan down, and Lania let us go.”

  A bitter seed sprouted in Arian’s heart. Collecting herself, she said, “You speak well of my sister, my lord. Her seduction must have pleased you.”

  Alisher sat rooted before the fire, afraid to look at either one of them.

  Daniyar motioned with a hand, and Alisher disappeared.

  Arian met Daniyar’s eyes across the glow of the fire. From the way his eyes sketched her face, she knew he was trying to read her. She raised her chin. She didn’t have anything to hide.

  “Now you know,” he said, his silver eyes molten in the firelight. “Now you know how jealousy burns—how it injures every sentiment, everything in which you’ve placed your trust.�
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  Arian flushed, both in shame and anger. “Daniyar—”

  “My love,” he said steadily. “Do you think so little of me? I kissed Lania, yes. I would have paid any price to keep you from the Authoritan or his men.”

  Arian couldn’t help her response. “It didn’t seem to me you found her attentions burdensome.”

  “Perhaps I didn’t.” His honesty was a whip that cut across her face, both a rebuke and an insult. His voice became bitter in turn. “I do not aspire to sainthood, and you have long denied me your warmth.”

  Arian’s mouth twisted. She came to her feet, clad in the linens she wore beneath her armor. The gold light of the fire danced off the surface of her circlets. She would have left him then, but Daniyar rose to meet her, taking hold of her arms and pulling her close against his body. She resisted for only a moment. Then she said with a note of regret, “When we find the Bloodprint—”

  He cut her off. “You’re in my arms, yet all you can think of is the Bloodprint?”

  “No.” Arian’s voice was low. She reached up a hand to trace the outline of his jaw through the soft fur of his beard. He held his breath at her touch; he rubbed his face against her palm, moving closer to catch her quiet words. “I thought there was nothing worse than seeing you in Lania’s embrace. But then I watched you suffer in the bloodrites.”

  “No,” he echoed, touching his forehead to hers. “There was nothing worse than seeing you gifted to Nevus and hearing him tell me he’d hurt you.”

  Neither needed to say more. His arms tightening around her, Daniyar sought her mouth with the thorough, sensual movement of his own. He pressed his lips to her throat with care, testing the bruises left by the collar. Arian burned beneath the tumultuous fire of his kisses. The sky, the stars, the cool and windless air—all of these were as nothing. She wanted him to kiss her until the world around them had narrowed to the shelter of his arms. He was breathing heavily, his features drawn tight as she strained to get closer, her hands tracing over the harsh restraint of his limbs. He was holding his will in check, but when she opened her mouth to taste him, his silver eyes went black and he took control of the kiss with a fierce and desperate ardor. A helpless cry of desire escaped her; his kiss became wildly reckless.