The Black Khan Read online

  You must bear this. You must survive until we reach you. Else I risked my sister for nothing.

  The guard was doubled on this ward, two members of the Crimson Watch positioned at either end. Two more were guards stationed outside a door in the center of the ward. The Salikh sisters crouched low, inching their way along the wall. If the guards on either end of the ward turned, the sisters would be caught in a cross fire. They needed to take the guards by surprise.

  They never spoke of their fears or their memories of Jaslyk, but each action they took now was weighted with their determination to protect each other from the consequences of failure. The two women were at their strongest, single-minded with purpose. They had no choice: as leaders of the resistance and as sisters bound to each other’s survival, they couldn’t afford self-doubt.

  Larisa and Elena separated. Each moved in a different direction, their bows strung. They waited a heartbeat for the minzars to sweep the ward, then came to their feet and whistled. The guards at both ends turned. Two pairs of arrows found the weak spots in their armor. But they couldn’t catch the men at the door, who wheeled and drew their swords. The sisters were soon engaged in close combat, and they fought as they always did, back to back, using back-alley tricks against the size and strength of their opponents, utterly without fear.

  Elena grunted as a sword thrust nearly slashed her ribs. Larisa took her weight, flashing a sharp knife up and under Elena’s arm, stabbing the guard in the chest. Elena whirled around, taking her sister’s place.

  The minzars swept the ward again, catching the fierce and soundless tussle. Horns rose in warning. Two more men spilled from the inside of the cell guarded by the Crimson Watch, pressing the sisters back. It was Larisa’s turn to cry out. She dropped her knife as her sword arm was slashed. Elena stabbed her blade through the assailant’s eye. They were losing ground, losing strength. The Ahdath forced them back toward the stairs.

  A loud metallic clang rang inside the cell.

  Sinnia’s scream pierced the air again—edged with something new—something bold and eerily familiar.

  Prisoners came to the doors of their cells, shouting and banging at their doors, distracting the Crimson Watch. Elena tripped one man, then rolled with his momentum to stab through his armor with the full weight of her body. She lay on him for the space of a breath, wiping the sweat from her eyes. Boots stamped down an intersecting corridor, the sound drawing closer.

  In the courtyard below, the dogs began to howl.

  A guard grabbed Larisa by the hair, yanking back her head, his knife at her throat.

  A minzar’s light found her face, and the guard who’d seized Elena’s knife arm staggered around, Elena struggling in his grip.

  “Stop!” he shouted. The other man stilled.

  “Look at her,” he went on. “Look at them. Don’t you know who they are?”

  Now the ward was filled with soldiers, half a dozen members of the Watch clambering up from the level below and from the corridor that linked to another block. Larisa and Elena stood panting.

  Men shouted all around them, prisoners, guards, adding to the noise coming from inside the cell—a gurgling noise that petered out.

  Illarion appeared at the head of the ward, escorted by a handful of men, just as the door of Sinnia’s cell was thrown open. Elena caught a glimpse of the woman on the table. She was unrestrained. Somehow she had snapped the hose attached to a dark green canister. Blood leaked from her eyes, ears, and nose, glistening and sticky against her mulberry skin.

  What she’d attempted had nearly killed her, yet when she raised her head, her eyes blazed with a contemptuous conviction that said there was no man who could defeat her.

  A man taller than any of the others stepped out of the room, a nightmarish mask covering his face. Elena shrank in her captor’s arms, suddenly unable to breathe.

  Illarion strode to meet him, and the tall man unhooked his mask with sleek and raptorial movements. His face emerged into the sharp light cast by the sweep of the minzar. Beneath the mask, his ghastly skin was waxy, his lips without blood. His colorless eyes bulged from their sockets, a disfiguring effect of the mask.

  At the sharp clap of his hands, two of the guards lit torches.

  The tall man bent to look first at Elena, then at Larisa. A smile spread over the cadaverous planes of his face. He clapped his hands together lightly. “How beautiful,” he said with delight. “I’ve missed you.” His natural voice rasped like the spike-edged barbs on his gloves.

  Elena’s sob caught in her throat.

  The tall man noticed Illarion. “Captain.”

  “Technologist.” Illarion nodded in return.

  Elena’s frantic eyes sought out Illarion’s face. The teasing warmth he’d shown her earlier had vanished—the mask he’d worn over his purposes as a soldier of the Ahdath, as a tool of the Technologist’s will. His high-planed face was set and hard. She hadn’t believed she had anything left to lose—anything to hope for or believe in—yet a savage sense of betrayal pierced her thoughts, and hard on its heels, a passionate, volatile fury. She would kill him with her bare hands.

  But Illarion had dismissed her without a glance, his eyes fixed on the Technologist.

  “You’re a man of your word,” the Technologist praised him. “You delivered the sisters as promised.”

  Illarion nodded curtly. “It was easy enough to deceive them—they were desperate to believe.”

  Elena made a throttled noise in her throat, thrashing against her captors, her hands scrabbling for a blade to plunge deep into his heart.

  “What beautiful misery,” the Technologist said, his smile deepening to a leer.

  “And now I require what you promised me in turn,” the captain said. “The talisman. The one that unlocks the Plague Wing.”

  17

  MEN, DOGS, PRISONERS SHOUTING, WEAPONS BEING SHEATHED—THERE was so much noise in the ward and along the watchtowers that at first Elena didn’t hear it. She’d failed her sister so completely, she couldn’t fathom it. She was swamped by a wave of panic and dread, watching the men who’d captured them now handle her sister with careless, bestial ease. A roar of outrage broke from her throat, climbing rapidly to hysteria.

  And then beneath it, she heard the sound again, strange and oddly familiar, a sound she remembered from childhood. It seemed to be coming from two places at once. From a door on the other side of the ward—she had a brief impression of wild eyes and matted hair—but also from behind the Technologist in the room with the shattered canister, where an instrument with curved blades lay twisted and deformed on the floor.

  It was the Malleus, a tool the Technologist used to sever the hearing of the followers of the Usul Jade, its tiny blades burrowing into their ears, tunneling ever deeper.

  The otherworldly sound grew stronger. Larisa’s head snapped up.

  She was hearing it too. And like Elena, some part of her recognized the sound.

  The sisters looked at each other. Larisa’s hands flickered with a subtle signal; Elena’s mirrored the gesture.

  Kill me, Larisa said. Kill me now, end it here.

  Elena gave her word.

  The sound warned her not to do it. The sound was lyrical and clear, poetic and soft, pliant yet also urgent. As dire as their circumstances were, some of Elena’s panic eased. She was able to think calmly, observing the men who had captured them. The Technologist and Illarion she marked off as dead men, but neither they nor the Crimson Watch appeared to hear the sound.

  Untroubled by it, the Technologist issued an order. “Strip them and take them to the Plague Wing. It’s time for me to chart their progress.”

  The Crimson Watch were slow to comply, the sound from the cells growing louder.

  “The talisman,” Illarion repeated, the words rasping in his throat.

  The Technologist tried to reach something covered by his robes. He frowned when he found he couldn’t. His bulging eyes moved from Illarion to the cell the captain was blocking.<
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  “Is this your doing?” he called. “I thought the white needle had silenced you for good.”

  A cell door slammed behind him. No member of the Crimson Watch moved, held in thrall as a dark arm snaked around the Technologist’s neck. The Technologist lurched forward a step, but was yanked back by the arm.

  A beautiful, throaty voice answered. “No, you monstrosity, it’s mine.”

  Elena found she was free, the guard who’d held her captive sinking to his knees behind her. She whirled around, scooped up her knife, and stabbed the back of his head. The movements of those who tried to fight her were sluggish and disjointed. Her blade found their unprotected necks, one powerful thrust after another. The two men who’d hurt Larisa, Elena stabbed through the heart.

  Larisa grabbed her sword from the floor. The prisoner in the cell behind Illarion took hold of him by the arm. He didn’t struggle in the prisoner’s hold, standing firm and strong.

  “Where … is … the … talisman?” he choked.

  The Technologist watched the sisters’ actions, a sneer frozen on his lips.

  The wild man in the cell spoke up. He whispered to Illarion, and the Ahdath captain went still.

  Sinnia’s grip tightened around the Technologist’s throat. “Does this one matter to you? Because I’m planning to snap his neck.”

  “No!” Larisa and Elena shouted together.

  The horns on the wall sounded again, summoning reinforcements.

  Larisa raced into Sinnia’s cell. She came back with the Malleus gripped in her hand, her young face hard with rage. Elena reached for the Malleus—Larisa held it out of reach. The sisters stared at each other for a lethal, weighted moment; then slowly Elena nodded.

  “No!” Illarion shouted. “Ask him where he keeps the talisman!”

  Without pausing to answer him, Larisa drove the Malleus into the Technologist’s brain. He slipped feebly out of Sinnia’s hold, his body sagging to the ground.

  Elena kicked at his robes. “It’s not enough,” she said. “It will never be enough.”

  Elena yanked out her broadsword and severed his head with a stroke. Then she advanced on Illarion, tossing her words over her shoulder.

  “The Technologist was yours, Larisa, but this one belongs to me.”

  Illarion met her eyes, a bewildering despair in his own. “Mudjadid, please tell them.”

  The hands gripping his throat slid back into the cell.

  Elena’s sword flashed up. Illarion blocked it with his arm. She reared back and lunged again, and this time Illarion grabbed both of her arms and forced the sword from her hand. Then he pulled her close as she struggled, seeking out Larisa over Elena’s shoulder.

  “How dare you use that name?” Elena spat at him, as Larisa asked more calmly, “Where did you learn that name? Who do you call Mudjadid?”

  The prisoner in the cell came to the window. The minzar swept across the ward, throwing his features into sharp relief. His blazing eyes and craggy face were obscured by the tangled growth of his beard. A moment later the light from the minzar was gone, and neither Larisa nor Elena could be certain of what they’d seen.

  A mirage, a ghost of the past, a specter of a man they’d known and loved.

  The oddly familiar sound thrummed through the ward again. Sinnia stepped over the Technologist’s body, a transparent mist emanating from her mouth. It echoed the sound coming from the wild man in the cell. Was it a memory, or was it real? And if it was a memory, how could the Companion of Hira know it?

  Elena fought her way free of Illarion’s hold. “Break this door. Do it now.” She was half-sobbing, half-pleading.

  Letting go of her, Illarion smashed the lock with a thrust of his sword. If he’d been hobbled like the Crimson Watch, his strength was unfettered now.

  The door to the cell unlocked, the prisoner within staggered out into the ward. A soft chant rose from behind the doors of the cells that lined both sides of the ward.

  “Mudjadid. Mudjadid. Mudjadid Salikh.”

  The wild man stared at Elena and Larisa, tears sliding into his beard, the Claim abating in his throat. It had done its work. It had called them here, and it had unshackled the gifts of the Companion of Hira, allowing her to acknowledge him as a teacher of the Claim and to accept his direction of its use. He’d subverted the workings of the needle to Sinnia’s great advantage. An advantage he’d whispered ceaselessly in her mind, expanding her knowledge of the Claim.

  Illarion sank to one knee, his fair hair falling around his face. A palsy gripped the wild man’s hand. It shook as he raised it to Illarion’s hair. Illarion grasped it in his own and kissed the jade ring the man still wore on his finger.

  Larisa gasped. “Who are you?” she asked in a strangled voice.

  Sinnia stared at the sisters in disbelief. “Don’t you recognize your father?”

  She reached for the old man, fastening her arms around his neck, ignoring the soldier at his feet. “Thank you, Mudjadid. Thank you for saving me.”

  His thin frame trembled in her grasp, but he raised his head to meet Sinnia’s radiant eyes. “You freed yourself, sahabiya, with your mastery over the Claim.”

  18

  LARISA TOOK HER FATHER IN HER ARMS, UNABLE TO COME TO TERMS with his rebirth. For so long she and Elena had believed that their father had met his death at the Authoritan’s hands. Searching his haggard face, she knew that his survival had been purchased at an inordinate cost. The far-seeing eyes were the same—kind and inspirited with belief—but something vital was missing. Perhaps that same element that had hardened inside Larisa after her detention at Jaslyk. Perhaps her father was looking at his daughters and telling himself the same thing.

  I don’t know who they are anymore.

  “You’ve come,” he choked out. “I told Captain Illarion I would see you again one day.”

  Larisa’s face had lost all color. Her limbs trembled with disbelief and her voice was hoarse as she spoke. She looked like a woman who dared not believe her eyes, who dared not cling to hope.

  Elena stayed quiet, the personal toll of discovery too wrenching for her to fathom. Her father was a ghost. He was nothing but a memory, a dream of what Marakand might be.

  And who was this Ahdath who called her father Mudjadid? He had betrayed them—he might still betray them—or had she been wrong to doubt his loyalty all along? She was swept up in an excess of emotion, unable to separate her feelings.

  Had she finally met a member of the Ahdath who’d earned something other than her hate?

  She brushed a shaking hand across her eyes, unwilling to face Illarion—to witness his compassion at how deeply she’d been harmed by the knowledge of his treachery. His blue eyes were alight with concern, but she turned her face away.

  “I was in the Plague Wing,” her father said. “The Technologist kept you away from me—I would never have let you suffer had I known. After you escaped, he transferred me back to this ward. He took pleasure in describing all that my daughters had endured.”

  Her hatred so great that it engulfed her like a living skin, Elena drove the heel of her boot into the Technologist’s severed head. She heard the grinding of his bones with a savage satisfaction.

  Illarion flashed her a glance but didn’t interfere. He crouched down on his knees to search the Technologist’s body, coming away with a small object that he tucked into his belt.

  “I heard you,” Larisa murmured, disbelieving. “I heard the song of the Claim—the song of our childhood. I didn’t think I ever would again.”

  Salikh kissed the top of her head, his pale, rheumy eyes leaking tears. He hugged his daughters close, his thin frame shuddering with sobs.

  “Nothing is stronger than the power of the Claim. No matter the gifts of the Authoritan, he cannot override it.”

  She wasn’t sure she could believe that, despite what she’d heard firsthand, but there was no time to discuss it further. Reinforcements from the Crimson Watch were already on their way.

  “F
ree us!” The prisoners in the cells called out to their improbable gathering of allies.

  Sinnia moved to obey, but Illarion turned to Salikh. “What is your command, Mudjadid?”

  “If you unlock these cells, you will never reach the Plague Wing as you hoped. You must leave us at once.”

  “Must I also leave you, Mudjadid?”

  “I could only hinder you in your plan.”

  “Then flee with your daughters to the graveyard of the ships.”

  Salikh’s pale eyes were kind. “I cannot leave my followers to suffer when they’ve done everything I asked. And there is more to accomplish.”

  He spoke to the men in the cells in the dialect of Marakand—his instructions deliberate and fierce. “You’ve done so much of what I’ve asked, but my daughters must go free. Forgive me that we must remain.”

  He was using the Claim. The men in the cells grew calm.

  “As you command, Mudjadid,” promised one.

  Larisa’s protest was firm: she refused to abandon her father to his fate at the Ahdath’s hands. That she had found him was a miracle surely granted by the One; she wouldn’t leave him behind. “If you won’t come with us, Father, neither will we leave. We’ll make our stand here together.”

  Salikh shook his head, unable to explain his will or to describe his purpose. He gestured weakly at Illarion, who spoke in a cutting voice, to return them to the urgency of the moment.

  “Your father knows what he’s doing. You need to get out of Jaslyk while you can.”

  “You won’t make it to the Plague Wing alive,” Larisa warned him. “Come back with us to the graveyard of the ships.”

  Illarion shook his head. “I can’t. Not now that I have the talisman.” He turned to Sinnia. “Companion, follow them to Black Aura, where the First Oralist has been taken prisoner. She sent me to deliver you from Jaslyk, and now she has need of you in turn.”