The Black Khan Read online

  The sisters made an exchange, the canteen for the roll of timbaku. Just as Elena had done, Larisa sheltered the tip of the roll from giving away their position.

  “Do you smoke?” Larisa asked Illarion.

  “No. You shouldn’t either. Timbaku is a poison. It just kills you slowly.”

  He waited for Elena to pass him the canteen, though she looked as if she had no intention of ever considering his needs. Larisa prodded her sister. “Elena, I’m sure the captain would like to ease his thirst.”

  Not bothering to look at him, Elena held out the canteen. She held herself still as he brushed her hand in the exchange. He drank with evident thirst, then offered it back to Elena.

  “Thank you, Anya,” he murmured.

  She glared at him. He knew her name was Elena—he was taunting her with a reminder of their first encounter. She demanded the roll from Larisa and took another puff.

  “You will ruin your beauty,” he warned her.

  “You said I have no beauty to ruin.”

  “True,” he agreed with a smile.

  Larisa watched them, disquieted. The tension between her sister and the Ahdath augured uncertainty for their attempt to rescue Sinnia, now at Jaslyk ten days. But she needed them both if their plan was to succeed—a paradox she’d have to reconcile.

  Even if Elena and Illarion were in accord, the rescue could still go awry. She knew from her own experience that the Technologist would have been summoned, and if that had happened, Sinnia would be in no position to assist them. If she’d had the Claim at her disposal, she would already have freed herself.

  “Will you present us as your captives?” Larisa asked Illarion. “Will you say you’ve brought the daughters of Salikh for the Technologist’s trials?”

  “No.” With a casual movement of his hand, Illarion flicked the timbaku from between Elena’s fingers and ground it out beneath his boot. “I’m known as Araxcin’s second. They’d know I wouldn’t be escorting prisoners on my own—there’d be a full patrol with me. We should go under cover of night, if Anya is certain of the route. We can’t afford a mistake.”

  “Worry for yourself, Ahdath. Whether you return from Jaslyk is of no importance to me.” She spoke to her sister, impatience rising in her voice. “I won’t show him the passages. We must protect the resistance at all costs, and I won’t risk the Basmachi on the word of an Ahdath who survived the fall of the Registan. I doubt he was even there.”

  Derision colored her voice; Illarion stiffened at the imputation of cowardice. He turned to Larisa. “I don’t need you to guide me in. I’ll say I was sent by Araxcin to assess Jaslyk’s security after the attack on the Registan.”

  “Impregnability, not security.” But Elena wasn’t speaking to him. The words were prodded from some distant memory. She brooded over the sight of the prison, its black walls rising like a cliff against the night. Here there were no traceries of stone or iron, no glazed tiles or patterned bricks. No vegetation grew along the high stone walls, no creepers abloom with desert flowers. Jaslyk was a place whose ugliness couldn’t be borne, a place of unremitting death. And she knew each watchtower, each guard, each passage the Basmachi had tunneled underground like others remembered a lover’s face. The memory of it was suffocating.

  They discussed the plan once more. Finally Illarion said, “Let’s go.”

  But as they picked their way down the dune, he was left in no doubt that it was Elena who was in charge.

  11

  SINNIA NO LONGER NEEDED THE RESTRAINTS. HER LIMBS WERE FILLED with a wondrous languor, and the dark skin she prized was outlined with radiant flares of gold. Her arms were weightless. She was floating above the world, buoyed on a wave of inaudible sound.

  She smiled at the man in the gas mask, trailing her fingers along the tray of needles. The floor of her cell was crimson and gold, colors and patterns bobbing along the Sea of Reeds. Her hands were filled with delicate spiny shells. She flung them to the shore with a smile.

  “Please,” she said to the man in the gas mask. “It’s wearing off. I need more.”

  A thunderous sound filled her ears. It was Salikh and the others banging against their cell doors. Salikh’s oddly insistent murmurs whispered through Sinnia’s mind, shattering the needle’s delights. She knew the others were jealous. They craved the white needle as she did—they’d do anything to steal the tall man’s attention, but she was the prisoner of choice.

  Her full lips pouted. She was—what was she, again?—the words seemed difficult to recall. A woman of the Negus. A Companion of a stronghold on the banks of the High Road. She wore a pretty silk dress and—intricate bands on her arms. She tossed her head. It didn’t matter. Why should any of it matter when she was black and gold and weightless? She would soon be cast upon a sea of languid bliss. If she could ignore Salikh’s imperceptible cautions in her mind.

  “The needle,” she begged again. “Give me the white needle.”

  The tall man in the mask moved his head from side to side. He had three heads, each equally beautiful. He stroked a gloved hand down Sinnia’s arm, setting her on fire. When he grasped her upper arms, the tiny barbs on the palms of his gloves felt good. They scored a path on the place on her arms that had lately come to feel bare. Scarlet drops were added to the pattern of black and gold that engulfed Sinnia in an airless cocoon. Her dazzling smile indicated her sense of transcendence. But was it the white needle? Or did some other power soothe her senses? A power that was inexplicably familiar, as though rooted deep in her soul. She could feel it flickering before her—she needed to reach for its promise, knew it offered her salvation.

  “More,” she said. “Please, more.”

  A new sound reached her ears—not the clamor of the other prisoners. Nor was it Salikh shouting strange names at her, as he did with such persistence.

  “Companion, remember yourself. Remember Hira! Remember who you are!”

  It was the horrible sound, the sound that intruded on her daydreams: the sputtering hiss of the hose. The tray of needles was gone, replaced by the canister she had come to know with horror. She returned to her body with a thump. She gazed at the tall man in confusion. Now there were other men with him. Three men instead of three heads.

  “What’s this?” she asked. “What have you done with the needle?”

  A hollow voice echoed through the gas mask. “This is a test,” it said. “The white needle amplifies the effects of the gas. Some die on its first application; others last for months. We are attempting to accelerate its effects.”

  “No,” Sinnia whispered. “Give me the white needle. Can’t you see that I need it?”

  “Oh, yes, I can see.” She heard a sickening anticipation in the eerie throb of the tall man’s voice. “But this is my first experiment on a Companion of Hira. I want you to live through the night.”

  12

  AN INHUMAN SCREAM PIERCED THE WALLS. IT REBOUNDED THROUGH the prison’s courtyard, followed by a flurry of activity and noise. It sounded like an animal, twisted and broken in the savage rites of death. But Elena knew the scream—she’d heard it from her own throat, as a source of infinite horror, and also from Larisa, a sound that had almost killed her.

  The Technologist had come.

  The scream sounded again. It was a woman’s scream; it could have been one of the followers of the Usul Jade.

  But in her heart, Elena knew it wasn’t. She knew it was the Companion of Hira, the woman she’d never met—a woman she was risking their lives for. All at Larisa’s bidding, while Illarion paced like a hungry jackal at their side.

  “What’s that noise?”

  Elena looked at him with hatred in her heart. “That noise is you and everything you stand for. The Ahdath, the Crimson Watch. Torturers who now inflict their savagery on a Companion of Hira.”

  Illarion stared back at her, his clever face unreadable.

  “Go,” she muttered. “The lights will sweep from the tower in thirty seconds. If we run out of time, you must diver
t their attention at the door.”

  “I know what I’m doing, Anya. Whether you believe it or not.”

  Larisa and Elena waited in the shadows as Illarion crossed Jaslyk’s courtyard. Torches flared at the gate, men’s voices ringing out. Illarion showed them something from his pack. A pass? A document? Elena couldn’t guess.

  “Now.”

  She tugged at her sister’s hand, guiding her through the barricades in the courtyard, the secret hiding places, the small patches of cover, ducking out of the path of the lights. Dogs began to howl in the distance. A patrol shifted on the perimeter, doubling back to the gate. The Salikh sisters moved forward, darting ahead under the great weight of the ominously pooling shadows.

  The courtyard was as vast as the prison itself. Neither sister could look at its walls with anything other than despair. How many members of the resistance had been broken at Jaslyk? Drugaddled and pain-ridden, they had told the Crimson Watch everything they knew before they had died, painfully, pitilessly rendered from themselves. Based on their confessions, new prisoners had been captured, Basmachi hunted through the Hazing, and still there was no shortage of screams to shatter the sightless eyes that watched over Jaslyk.

  One day she’d burn the prison down.

  But not this night. She had no fighters or armory at her disposal. All she had was Larisa, and she could see Larisa was faltering, overcome by the memory of her time at Jaslyk. Both sisters had been drugged, raped, and tortured; both had suffered the full range of the Technologist’s experiments. Both had lost their ability to hear the Claim. Though the loss of it had once been unbearable, for Larisa’s sake, she had pretended to a strength she didn’t possess.

  “Don’t think of it, Larisa.”

  Another high-pitched scream scraped against the walls, spurring Elena on. The sisters found their way to the door that fronted the basin of the lake. There were dogs at the door, accompanied by guards. They had picked up the sisters’ scent, and now they began to howl.

  “Hurry.”

  Behind the outer rings of its walls, Jaslyk was composed of irregular shapes designed to maximize the interior space, while giving guards and staff the ability to transition easily between the courtyard and the prison blocks. This allowed the Crimson Watch greater vigilance. It also reduced the possibility of escape. Elena and Ruslan’s mission to rescue Larisa, a year ago, was the last time a prisoner had left Jaslyk alive.

  But the diamond-shaped construction of the prison also concealed a weakness. The Basmachi had been able to dig tunnels beneath the transition areas, and the Crimson Watch couldn’t cover them all, particularly as more and more men were being summoned to the Wall.

  The sisters skirted the barricades that had been erected over Larisa’s escape route.

  It was meant as a feint, of course. Elena pressed her sister’s hand, holding a finger to her lips. She had no intention of using the same tunnel. One of the dogs barked, closer than she expected. She stumbled against the barricade. Her hand pulled something from the pack she carried—a scented powder that she flung over the risers. The dogs began a frantic whining. She pulled Larisa around a corner. “Let them cover their ears for once.”

  She led Larisa along the south wall, away from the patrol. As they’d planned, the torches along the southern perimeter had been redirected to the gate, where Illarion engaged the guards. It was the first sign to suggest that perhaps Illarion could be trusted.

  Feeling her way along the wall, Elena stopped when she came to the stone she had etched with Basmachi signals. She’d imprinted each of the prison blocks with a series of directions, distinguishing the Technologist’s Wing from the others. She picked out the command center at the intersection of the blocks, a heavily guarded nexus she knew they needed to avoid.

  “It’s here.”

  Elena dropped to her knees, running her hands along the stone base of the wall. She looked over her shoulder at Larisa. “What’s our mission here?”

  She knew the answer; she was making sure Larisa understood the cost of what they were leaving undone: their friends in the resistance left behind to face the Technologist.

  Larisa hesitated. Then she confirmed her choice. “The Companion of Hira. Her safety is paramount now.”

  Elena shifted a stone. A narrow and airless passageway opened beneath it. She’d heard a dozen rumors about the fall of the Registan, yet she still didn’t know which of the rumors were true. “Why? Because you swore an oath to the Silver Mage? Did his comeliness bewitch you?” This had been rumored as well.

  Larisa slid into the tunnel first, Elena following behind, careful to shelter her ribs. She’d smoked timbaku to dull the pain inflicted by the Ahdath’s blade in Marakand, something she’d withheld from Illarion. She wasn’t in the habit of confessing weakness, especially to an Ahdath. Once they reached the corridors of Jaslyk, her injury would be the least of her concerns.

  “Don’t insult me,” Larisa answered. “You know what I think of men. I swore my oath to the First Oralist. And I would do it again.” She turned to face Elena suddenly, a cold and deadly warning in her eyes. “We have one purpose, Elena, one. And that is to free our sisters, a mission the First Oralist shares. Do you understand me?”

  Elena nodded, satisfied that Larisa hadn’t led them on a fool’s mission. Her sister was still committed to their cause.

  They moved along the tunnel, swallowed by the dark.

  13

  ILLARION WAS ESCORTED TO THE COMMAND CENTER BY THE WARDEN OF Jaslyk, a stooped-over man whose wisps of white hair covered his scalp like a crown. The Warden’s vision was distorted by a pair of goggles. From behind the goggles, his blue eyes scanned the room. He dressed in a long white smock, cinched at the waist by a thick metallic belt sectioned into chambers. As a functionary, he wore no crimson: he wasn’t a member of the Ahdath.

  Illarion scanned the command center. It was staffed by eight men, all members of the Crimson Watch, each with an area of jurisdiction patrolled with relentless regularity. Each man was junior to Illarion in the Ahdath’s hierarchy, and each accorded him the necessary signs of respect. He briefed them on the fall of the Registan, concluding by asking, “Could it have been orchestrated by prisoners held here?”

  “There have been no escapes and no communications, as far as we are aware. But a prisoner has just arrived from Marakand. Marat can tell you more.” The Warden nodded at the man responsible for the Technologist’s activities.

  The soldier named Marat saluted Illarion. “Captain Illarion. Or are you Commander of the Wall now?”

  “No. The Authoritan sends Commander Nevus from Black Aura to take command. We expect him any day.”

  The men in the room straightened at the mention of Nevus’s name. It was a name they feared more than Araxcin’s.

  “He won’t be coming here,” Illarion clarified. “Unless he has some reason to suspect your prisoner’s involvement in the attack on the Registan.”

  Marat considered this. “Perhaps he does. She was taken to the Technologist on arrival. She’s due to be moved to the Plague Wing tomorrow.”

  Illarion straightened. He placed his hand on the pommel of his sword. “When? If she’s who I think she is, she will need to be interrogated.”

  But the men in the command center had their own sources, and another man spoke up. “She’s not the First Oralist. The First Oralist and the Silver Mage were captured some days ago in Black Aura. The Authoritan has them now.”

  “I know that,” Illarion barked. “But your prisoner may be a Companion of Hira. She must have had some knowledge of the attack.”

  “She is,” the Warden conceded. “I thought as much—two members of the Council of Hira would not make their way behind the Wall without a purpose. If there’s anything to know, the Technologist will have the answers for you tonight.” He nodded at a heavy-lidded pewter bowl on the table behind him.

  “Why tonight?”

  The Warden lifted the lid of the bowl. “The Companion of Hira took longer to b
reak than one of the Basmachi. But once we removed her circlets, she fell to the persuasion of the needle.”

  He did not touch the objects in the bowl, even though he wore gloves. Illarion had no such qualms. He gathered the golden circlets in his hands. He’d seen them once before, on the arms of the First Oralist. This pair must be Sinnia’s. “A pretty prize to take to the Wall.”

  The Warden grabbed his arm. “The Technologist hasn’t finished with them.”

  Illarion shook off the Warden’s hand. His voice was low and dangerous. “I will present them at the Wall. If you wish otherwise, you may explain your wishes to Commander Nevus.”

  The guards in the room glanced at one another. No one intervened.

  His face pale with alarm, the Warden cleared his throat. “What is it you wish?”

  “I wish to be taken to the prisoner. You, man.” He snapped at Marat. “You will show me the way.” He slipped the circlets beneath his breastplate, taking the measure of the Crimson Watch. At last his gaze came to rest on the slack-mouthed Warden. “You may accompany us.”

  “The Technologist is in the midst of an experiment. You cannot enter the room.”

  Sinnia’s earsplitting scream sounded through Jaslyk again.

  “I’m well aware.” He jerked another object off the table behind the Warden. A mask with goggles larger than the Warden’s own. He tossed a second mask at Marat.

  “You’re coming with me. Before her mind collapses, I want to know what she knows.”

  14

  DANIYAR RESTED HIS HEAD AGAINST THE RIM OF THE GREEN-MARBLED tub. He was soaking in a bath prepared for him by two of the loveliest women he’d ever seen, slaves from the northernmost regions of the Transcasp, their skin translucent, their hair and eyes golden, their luxurious flesh softly rounded. They murmured to each other in dove-soft voices, and he recognized their tongue as the ancient tongue of the people of Russe.