The Black Khan Page 17

  A caustic voice cut through their quiet rapture. “It’s good to see the pair of you have finally come to your senses.”

  Startled, they broke apart, Daniyar’s face taut with unrelieved tension, his eyes a silver blaze in the austere beauty of his face. He couldn’t tear his gaze from Arian’s surrender as he strove to master what he’d given away of his own exorbitant desire. Time seemed suspended between them … precarious … limitless … as bright with possibility as the infinite symmetry of the stars. But only an instant passed before he was able to recognize Sinnia.

  Arian’s response was an uninhibited sound of joy as Sinnia’s eyes flashed at them in the dark with a brilliant, taunting fire. She was the same in every way—the same Sinnia who’d ridden at Arian’s side, her strong right arm, her dearest friend, the woman she loved more than any of the Companions, the sister whose unknown fate had been a source of unspoken anguish. The two women embraced each other, laughing and speaking eagerly over each other’s words.

  Then Arian noticed other things: Sinnia was thinner than she’d ever been, and there was a weakness, a wasting in her arms, and a gauntness beneath her eyes. She was struck by a pang of dread. She had made the wrong choice in Marakand. She should have gone after Sinnia and left the Bloodprint to its fate.

  “Sinnia, what—”

  “We’ve no time to linger,” another voice said. “There are Ahdath riders on our trail. I’m afraid we brought them here.”

  “Larisa!” Arian whirled around to face the leader of the Basmachi with a startled cry of welcome. They had last seen each other in the Registan, where Arian had stood at a crossroads and faced the most difficult decision of her Audacy—a choice between searching for Sinnia at Jaslyk or chasing after the Bloodprint as a means of saving them all. She had looked into the eyes of Larisa Salikh and known that Larisa was someone who would fulfill her oath. Now there was something new in Larisa’s face—beyond the hard alertness of a fighter whose strength was honed to the edge—a flicker of light or perhaps hope … as if she’d seized upon something momentous, but hadn’t yet puzzled it through.

  “First Oralist,” she replied, her gaze scanning the surround. “There’s a boy skulking in the graveyard on the other side of the ridge. Friend or enemy?”

  “He’s not a boy.” Daniyar intervened. “He’s a poet from your city, Black Aura. He led us here to Nightshaper.”

  “My city is Marakand, my lord, but I take your point. Come,” she said, with an air of command. “Don your armor, douse the fire.”

  There was no time to speak further, though Arian would have welcomed a moment alone with Larisa to express her sense of gratitude. The weight of grief that had lifted from her heart at the sight of Sinnia was a gift she could never repay. But Larisa was already moving, bringing their horses while Arian dressed and Daniyar kicked over the traces of their fire.

  “Give me a moment,” Arian said, thinking of Alisher. She climbed the ridge to search for him. He was resting inside a circle of trees the Talisman had left unburned. He knelt before a grave marker, a slender white stone with an image engraved on its surface.

  “It’s a miracle they didn’t find this,” he said.

  Arian examined the marker. A broken rose with a drooping head was etched into the stone. “Whose grave is this?”

  “My teacher’s. She taught me to write and trained me in the art of verse. She was young to be so gifted. She died too young as well.”

  Though Arian felt the press of the Ahdath’s pursuit, she wanted to know more. “How, Alisher?”

  “Just as you would imagine. She was brought to the Authoritan’s court so that he might bleed her knowledge from her in the bloodrites. Her body was returned to Nightshaper to be buried with the others, at the Khanum’s request.”

  “What others?”

  Alisher rose to his feet. A wide sweep of his hand descried the downslope of the ridge.

  Arian took a step forward, looking out over the edge.

  Tombstones were arrayed in motionless waves along the crest of the hill, fanning out in endless rows, each marked with a broken rose, the symbol of a young woman’s death.

  There were thousands of the stones.

  Arian choked in horror. “Alisher—”

  “The Khanum’s doves,” he said. “After the Authoritan bled them.”

  Daniyar brought Arian’s horse and helped her into the saddle with careless grace, betraying no sign of his damaged back or the five-point wounds of the bloodrites. His hand lingered at her waist, testing her supple strength. She turned her head and met his gaze, sinking into his touch. His silver eyes caught fire, mirroring the heat in hers. He reached one hand up to the back of her neck, to urge Arian closer. Sinnia rode up beside him, dark and powerful and fierce. Her sparkling eyes slid between them.

  “Another time,” she said as a warning. “The Ahdath won’t wait for this.”

  Daniyar shook his head at himself and left the Companions of Hira to each other’s company, to join Larisa ahead.

  Larisa circled the ruins, edging forward on a path southwest of the Poet’s Graveyard.

  “This was once a holy place. Many of our teachers were born here, including my father, the Qari of the Claim.” There was a curious inflection in her voice at her mention of her father.

  Daniyar set it aside for the moment. “How did you know where to find us?”

  “You left chaos behind you. In the capital, no one could speak of anything else.” She gave him a respectful nod. “You defeated the rites of the Qatilah, you brought the Authoritan down, and you escaped the Khanum. Your legend is not just a legend, my lord. Your deeds outshine any fable I have heard.” Returning to his question, she added, “A few of the Khanum’s doves are in the service of the Basmachi.”

  Daniyar shook his head at this. “Does the Khanum not Augur who among her doves are traitors to her schemes?”

  “The Khanum’s augury is a curious thing. No one fully understands it.” If she knew more, she chose not to share it with him. “I will take you to shelter before I return to Jaslyk.”

  “We could use your sword at our side.”

  She shook her head. “My sister is at Jaslyk. Our resistance is in our own lands. With the Authoritan defeated, this is our moment to take the Wall.” There was something more that urged her return to the Wall, but he couldn’t discern her secrets.

  “The Khanum holds the Wall now,” he said instead of pressing her. “You shouldn’t underestimate her ruthlessness.” Yet even as he said it, Daniyar was thinking of how Lania had released him from the Ark—how she had honored his desires instead of seizing upon her own, a selflessness he hadn’t expected.

  “We have no other choice but to face her. This moment won’t come again.”

  Larisa pointed ahead to a deeper blackness that formed an irregular shape on the horizon. “We can take cover there until the Talisman pass. Or we can use it to set up an ambush.”

  “What is it?”

  “The entrance to the Nightshaper mines. You cannot have forgotten.”

  But he had forgotten—he hadn’t been north in some years. Now memory returned. Just as the Sorrowsong mines yielded lapis lazuli, the mines of Nightshaper had long supplied turquoise to the capitals of Khorasan. Marakand, Black Aura, Ashfall, Maze Aura, even the Citadel of Hira—their fountains, domes, and houses of worship were adorned with the turquoise mined from Nightshaper’s depths.

  “The mines are dry,” he said.

  Larisa jerked her horse’s reins, guiding her black mare down a rock-studded slope. “That’s what makes them safe for our use. They’re wide rather than deep, so the shafts won’t frighten our horses. The main problem is the entrance to the mines: the mud will give our presence away.”

  “Then what do you suggest? What other means do we have of disguising our presence?”

  Larisa frowned at him. “Why do you worry when the First Oralist rides with us? She brought down the Registan with the Claim. Surely her gifts will serve to aid our pr
esent need.”

  “The Authoritan damaged her throat. She hasn’t recovered her use of it.”

  This news didn’t faze Larisa. She’d been fighting at the Wall long before they’d come to Black Aura. It was Larisa who’d guided Arian to safety in Marakand. And he’d do well to remember it was Larisa who’d delivered Sinnia from Jaslyk.

  She responded with a firmness enhanced by years of self-reliance.

  “I suggest we do what we’re best at, my lord. I suggest we fight.”

  29

  THE HORSES WHINNIED AS THEY PACED THE TRACKS OF THE MINES’ INTERIOR, a series of tunnels that riddled the hills surrounding Nightshaper. The air inside the mines was dank, yet strangely pleasant after the lingering stench of the bloodrites at Black Aura. Their passage into the mines was through tunnels crafted from sandstone and limonite walls, the scaffolding staffed by abandoned barrows and threaded with skeletal ropes. Bits of feldspar and quartz glinted through dark veins of stone, but there were no remnants of the stone of victory—the firooz turquoise of the mines. Daniyar’s recollection had been accurate: the mines of Nightshaper had run dry, depleted by centuries of kingly demand.

  Arian joined Larisa, their voices a low murmur that left the sandstone tunnel undisturbed.

  “I have no means by which to thank you for your courage.”

  Larisa noted the changed timbre of the First Oralist’s voice but refrained from commenting on it.

  “You’ve advanced our cause beyond measure: sundering the Registan, shattering the Authoritan to dust. You’ve given us reason to hope.”

  “Did you face opposition at Jaslyk?”

  “Yes.” Larisa’s face was set in lines of unholy satisfaction. “Another of the gifts you gave us. The chance to destroy the Technologist. And there was something more.”

  In a hushed and disbelieving voice, she told Arian of her reunion with her father. “They made us believe he was dead. They thought our despair would break us—we who were students of Salikh, students of the Usul Jade.” She snorted at the thought.

  “He was your father,” Arian said gently, leaning forward on her horse. “You were told he was tortured to death. It must have been hard to accept the proof of your own eyes.”

  “Or our ears. We were also told we’d been sundered from the Claim.” She turned her horse down a tunnel. “It was one of the Technologist’s tricks. My father made me hear it again.”

  Larisa recounted her efforts at Jaslyk. Of the many questions that crowded Arian’s mind, the one she decided to ask was “Where are Elena and Illarion now?”

  Larisa cast an uneasy glance over her shoulder at Alisher. She lowered her voice further.

  “Illarion’s sister is held at the Plague Wing. And though the explanation seems simple enough, Illarion seeks more than his sister at Jaslyk.”

  A stray bit of memory came to Arian. When she had left Hira in search of the Bloodprint, Psalm, the Citadel’s general, had taken Arian into her confidence.

  Ilea sends the Citadel’s senior commanders to the north—she sends them to the Plague Lands. I know not for what purpose. All I know is that no one has returned.

  A leap of intuition showed her the connection. “This Technologist you mentioned—he experimented on those the Authoritan exiled to the Plague Lands. Isn’t that what gives the prison ward its name—the Plague Wing?”

  They had come to a wider opening in the mines. Larisa looked over at Arian in surprise. “No, First Oralist, that isn’t it at all. I thought you understood the nature of Illarion’s mission—my father sent him to burn the Plague Wing.”

  “Burn it?” Arian whispered, aghast. “What of the prisoners held there?”

  Larisa shook her head. “There’s no hope for them. When the plague from the wars of the Far Range burned out, the Technologist revived it. The Plague Wing is where he tests it. This is the secret of Jaslyk.”

  30

  SHOUTS FROM THE AHDATH SOUNDED AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE MINES. They were determined to be revenged. What else had transpired in Jaslyk after their escape, Sinnia couldn’t say, but in the graveyard of the ships, she and Larisa had put up a fight worthy of a woman of the Negus. They had armed themselves from the prison’s armory, and Sinnia had felt her strength redouble with a whip and knife in her hand. More than that, her enormous respect for Larisa Salikh had flourished from that battle.

  For Larisa wasn’t just skilled at the use of a sword; she was also a strategist who mapped out the outcome of any step she took, planning against each one. When she and Sinnia had fought in the shadow of a ship teetering over the sand, cornered and outnumbered by a troop of the Crimson Watch, Sinnia had learned that the ship had been chosen for a reason.

  Larisa hadn’t been ceding ground to the Ahdath.

  She’d been leading them into an ambush.

  At a shouted word of command, Basmachi archers rained arrows upon the riders. Only one of the Crimson Watch escaped, riding to Jaslyk to call for reinforcements, a Basmachi arrow in his shoulder and two fighters on his heels.

  With a quick moment to regroup, Larisa had sent her men to Jaslyk in aid of Elena, on horses she had wrested from the Ahdath. Her swift, decisive victory had been a thing of beauty. And Sinnia thought of what she would give to see the rest of Larisa’s schemes come to swift and certain resolution. For it was Larisa’s intent to conquer the Wall and bring the Ahdath to their knees.

  Flashing a smile at her rescuer, Sinnia had proclaimed, “What a joy it would be to sail one of these beauties to freedom.”

  Larisa’s response had been curt and to the point. “There is no freedom to sail to anywhere in all of the lands of Khorasan. Come, I will take you to the First Oralist.”

  And then for the briefest moment, Sinnia had thought to question the fact that she’d been tortured in Jaslyk for nearly a fortnight and Arian hadn’t come to her aid. What could have been more important when Sinnia had risked her life for Arian time and again? What lesson could she learn from this of the substance of Arian’s love? She remembered the reproaches the Silver Mage had made.

  Arian had deserted them both.

  She quashed the traitorous thought, swamped by a sense of shame. The Audacy Sinnia had been assigned at Hira was to defend the First Oralist with her life. The Audacy Arian had vowed to undertake was to pursue the Bloodprint at any cost and bring it safely to Hira.

  What was Sinnia’s life when weighed against such a charge?

  She forced herself to brush the thought aside: Arian had not forgotten her. She had sent Larisa and Elena Salikh, leaders of the Basmachi, and they had succeeded at freeing her—what greater proof of Arian’s love did Sinnia need to see?

  They would tell each other everything once they had the chance, though Sinnia wasn’t ready to speak of Jaslyk in any depth. The pernicious nature of her torture had taken something from her, no matter what Salikh had given her in exchange. She felt less than the woman she knew herself to be—the woman who had trained long months to ride at Arian’s side. Sinnia—the sole Companion from the lands of the Negus—had not been without her resources. She wouldn’t allow anyone to assert that her strength was in any way diminished. Instead, she’d make light of her trials so Arian would laugh at her stories of their ambush of the Crimson Watch.

  Unaware of the doubt and confusion rolling through Sinnia’s mind, Arian looked over at Larisa. “Command us,” Arian said. “You know their tactics best.”

  A hard smile edged Larisa’s lips. “One day when I engage the Talisman, you’ll return the favor.”

  Arian smiled a matching smile. “Sister, you have my word.”

  Larisa jerked her head at the entrance. “They’ll be expecting an ambush like the one we set up at the ships. They’ll try to smoke us out of hiding, but they don’t know that there is a way out of the tunnels that will take us around the ruins. We’ll emerge on the other end of the Graveyard of the Rose.”

  “And if they follow?” Daniyar asked.

  Larisa’s eyes ranged over their face
s. “Can any of you use the Claim?”

  Arian and Sinnia glanced at each other in alarm. Each asked the other silently, Have you been severed from the Claim?

  “Not in a way that would help us now,” Daniyar said.

  “And you, First Oralist? Or Sinnia?”

  Sinnia shrugged. Her cloak fell back to reveal the stippling on her arm. She fingered the marks the gas mask had left on her throat. “You know about the white needle. My powers are unreliable.”

  But the mystery of what had been done to her had changed the timbre of her voice. And for the first time she looked away from Arian’s penetrating sight, troubled that she now had a secret she felt the need to protect.

  Larisa nodded briskly. She led them down another shaft, deeper into the gloom. Their horses balked at the blind path ahead. Daniyar murmured a reassurance that kept them moving.

  Arian leaned closer to Daniyar. She spoke urgently in his ear. They could hear the riders of the Crimson Watch entering the mines, a level or two above. Larisa had guessed their actions correctly. They were lighting a bonfire at the drift mouth, and soon the tunnels were filled with plumes of smoke that caused their eyes to tear in the dark. There were other sounds as well, the movement of horses that suggested the Ahdath knew better than to wait for Larisa to return to the opening of the mines.

  “They’re following us,” she said. “If we don’t take them here, they’ll be able to track our escape route, and that’s something we cannot give away. I’ll offer myself as bait—they won’t be expecting you.”