Of Sand and Malice Made (16 page)

Çeda swallowed, nodding. She took a deep sip from her tea, and launched into the tale from the beginning. How the twins had followed her, how she'd been pulled into a struggle between two women vying for Rümayesh's affections, how Rümayesh, in turn, had been drawn to Çeda instead. When she told Ibrahim of her dreams, they came back so strongly the room seemed to darken, and the cool breeze coming through the nearby window seemed to steal the warmth from her. She finished with Rümayesh's resurrection, her rebirth when Brama had marked the obsidian stone with his own blood.

“Brama named her—” Çeda began, but Ibrahim interrupted her.

“There was a day,” he said, “when I might have wanted to learn that name. I was a curious man when I was young,
too
curious at times, but I've long since reconciled myself with the telling of stories, not living them.”

Thalagir,
Çeda thought. That was the name Brama had given her. How very desperate he'd looked as he'd spoken it. Just as Ibrahim had said of his younger self, Brama had been curious and ambitious, but he'd overreached and paid the price for it. He'd also saved Çeda's life. Had he not done what he'd done, Rümayesh would
have possessed
Çeda
, not Brama, and
she
would have suffered everything he had.

“I only thought—”

“I know what you thought, but keep the ehrekh's name to yourself. Tell me instead about the fight in the pits.”

She did, starting with the incredible sapphire Rümayesh had used to bribe her and finishing with the battle and its strange ending. “What I can't figure out is why she would pay so much just to enter, and then bow out when she might have won.”

Ibrahim finished his first cup of tea and poured more. “What are sapphires but baubles to the ehrekh?”

Çeda shrugged. “True, but she's like a cat, Ibrahim. She enjoys toying with those she hunts. I know there are stories of the ehrekh, of them trapping men in jewels for a thousand years, of them using precious stones to draw the greedy to their desert lairs.”

Ibrahim nodded, his eyes going distant. “Modern fancies penned by clumsy storytellers.”

“Then what are the real stories like?”

“Who can tell anymore? Stories change over time, accreting new details like an ever-growing pearl that hides away whatever truth it might once have known.”

“But you know many stories. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Stories are like glimpses of a distant mirage.
See it from enough angles and surely you'll come to see the truth hidden behind the wavering falsehoods.”

A look overcame Ibrahim then, a fleeting thing, there and gone, but Çeda saw it: a look of shame. He recovered quickly, taking a deep breath as if he were considering her situation seriously. “Of the ehrekh, I know enough to know that they're dangerous, that they become fixated on things, as Rümayesh seems to have done with you. I know that they both love and hate man, for they yearn, as Goezhen does, for the touch of the first gods, and perhaps it is because of this that they so enjoy their games of cat and mouse. I also suspect that they are prone to overconfidence. Beyond this, Çeda, I don't know what you wish me to say. There is no magic I might give you, no bauble that might make the ehrekh forget, or make her cast her gaze elsewhere.”

Ibrahim seemed worried. He didn't want to get involved. And who could blame him? If she'd heard some sad story of an ehrekh from someone she barely knew, she might do the same.

Çeda stared into her teacup, then took a sip of it to hide her desperation. It was fine tea, but it tasted so very bitter. “Of course,” she said numbly. “I knew this was a fool's journey from the start.”

She stood to leave, but Ibrahim grabbed her wrist. “They are creatures made by the hand of a younger god,
Çeda, and so are imperfect. Remember their nature, and let that be your guide.”

She nodded. It was the sort of adage that sounded sage, but was actually meaningless, useless. “Thank you, Ibrahim.” She left his home then, into the cool morning streets, and headed home.

The sun had nearly risen by the time Çeda returned to Roseridge. She slowed, however, as she came near the doorway that would take her up to the home she shared with Emre. There was someone standing in her doorway.

The form stepped into the alley as she neared. She pulled her knife, holding it at the ready.

“Çeda?”

He came closer, and she saw that it was Tariq, his rakish handsomeness replaced by a haunted look Çeda had never seen on him before. There were specks of blood around his cheeks and eyes, and though the cloth of his kaftan was dark, she could see dark, misshapen blotches along the chest and sleeves. More blood, she reckoned, but whose?

“What's happened, Tariq?”

“I need you to come to Osman's estate. Right now.”

He took her arm and tried to get her moving back the way she'd come, but she was in no mood to be treated so,
least of all by Tariq, so she twisted her arm away and sent a hard palm into his chest, knocking him back. When he tried again, she blocked his wrist, grabbed two fistfuls of his kaftan, and drove him furiously back against the mudbrick wall behind him. Now that she was so close, she could see his bloody lip and a cut along his chin. “What are you
doing
?” she hissed. “What's happened?”

“It's Osman.”

“What about him?”

“He's gone mad, Çeda. I was in the yard, coming back from the stables when I heard him shouting at Sim and Verda.” He lowered his voice. “He was raging. I could barely understand him. He claimed they were after his money, his fortune. Said he'd seen them going near his strongbox. There was a tone to his voice, like they'd stolen his own child from his arms. I thought to leave them alone for a time, let Osman work this out undisturbed. He knows his business, you know that.” Tariq seemed to be trying to convince himself of something. “So I backed away, planning to return to the stables till it all cooled down, but then I heard Sim shout and go silent a bare moment later. Then Verda screamed, first in surprise but then in pain.”

Tariq's eyes had gone distant. Haunted. She pulled him off the wall, then let go of his kaftan. “Go on.”

“When I heard those screams I went to help, but
when I reached his parlor, Sim was dead and Verda was bleeding from a dozen wounds all along her chest and arms, and he was staring at
me
as if I'd been in league with them.” Tariq swallowed. “The look in his eyes . . . it was murderous, Çeda. Dark, the sort you see on bone crushers before they bolt toward you, like he'd been possessed by a demon. I've never seen him like this. I've never seen
any
man like this.”

“Osman's a careful man,” Çeda said. “Vengeful when angered. You know this better than I do. So how do you know he
hadn't
caught them at something?”

“Çeda, he did the same to me. He stared at me with those black laugher eyes and asked me if I'd helped them open his strongbox. ‘Why would I do that?' I asked him. ‘For the jewel,' he said, and he charged me, grabbed me with his bloody hands and struck me and demanded I tell him where we'd taken it. And that was when I saw it, the sapphire. That gods-damned sapphire, just lying on the table beside his favorite chair. ‘It's just there!' I pleaded. And Bakhi only knows why he decided to listen to me. He turned his head, and I saw his gaze lock on that stone, the lantern light glinting off its surface. That's when the animal look drained from him. He stood and staggered over to the table. He picked up the gem and stared at it for I don't know how long. I was too terrified to say a word. He finally turned and took in Sim, dead not two
paces from him, and Verda, her blood leaked into a great pool in the corner of the room behind me. He looked down at his hands as if he'd just realized who had done the murdering. He fell into the chair, then stared at that gem, stared at it like it was the only thing in the world. ‘Go find Çeda,' he said to me. ‘Bring her here.'”

Tariq was seventeen, a year older than her, but just then he looked half that age, a boy lost in a city too large and much too dangerous for the likes of him. “So I've come, Çeda. He wants to speak to you, and I think you should obey, for all you owe him if nothing else.”

For all I owe him.

I owed him much already, but now I'll owe him much, much more, for surely this is more of Rümayesh's doing.

Osman had recognized that, else why ask for her, of all the people in Sharakhai he might call for help?

She thought of all the stories she'd heard of the ehrekh, how twisted they were, the games they liked to play. She felt like a fly caught in honey. The urge to flee was great, nearly overwhelming, but where could she go in Sharakhai to hide from Rümayesh? Where could she go in the Shangazi? Besides, she owed Osman too much to simply abandon him. At the very least, she would try to draw Rümayesh's gaze off him and onto her, lest more people she cared about be noticed and killed.

“I'll come,” she finally said.

Tariq was visibly relieved. “Good,” he said. He smoothed down his kaftan, running over the bloody spots several times, for all the good it did him. “Good.”

With the sun now risen, Çeda took the steps up to the stone porch that ran along the front of Osman's rich manor house in the northeast quarter of Sharakhai. The servants, a dozen of them, all stood away from the house, some near the stables, some in the garden, all watching her as she neared the front door.

Çeda found Osman in the parlor, sunlight slanting in on the two dead bodies. They were just as Tariq had described them. Sim crumpled near the hallway to the rear of the house, Verda lying face up, hands splayed ineffectually over a dozen stab wounds.

“Osman?”

He was sitting in that chair, head bowed, the bloody knife lying across his lap. He was staring at something in his hands, and of course Çeda knew exactly what it was: Rümayesh's sapphire, hidden from view, cupped like a nestling in Osman's large, battle-scarred hands.

“Osman, you should come outside”—she waved toward the dead bodies—“let us take care of them for you.”

“I've known Sim since I was a dirt dog, Çeda.”

Çeda did her best not to let her gaze slip to Sim's
unmoving form, but failed. She took two steps deeper into the room, feeling as though she were walking into a lion's den. “I know.”

“And Verda I met shortly after I left the pits, weeks before they were married in the desert.” He looked up at last, but in the darkness of the room his eyes were hidden in shadow. “They were beautiful, those two. Together, I mean. Like lemon and lamb, Sim used to say.”

“And Verda would always say no, like lemon and oil, grudging companions.” She took one more step, ready should Osman do anything strange. “Why don't you come outside? See the sun. Breathe the morning air.”

“I don't know what happened, Çeda.”

“It wasn't you, Osman.” She was by his side at last. She reached slowly down. She could feel her heart hammering like horse hooves in her chest. She reached her fingers between his hands, gripped the blue sapphire, now splattered with blood, and lifted it. “It was this.” She held it in a beam of sunlight, allowing both the facets and the blood to show.

Osman stared at it, tears streaming down his face. There was worry there, perhaps some remnant of the fears he'd had last night that this treasure might be stolen from him, but as Çeda stepped away, he merely watched her, a look of deep sorrow on his blood-splattered face.

Finally, his gaze lifted and met hers. He shook his head. “It wasn't cursed.”

“It was, Osman. By Rümayesh. You've heard her name in Sharakhai. You know her nature. What you may not know is that she's real. No legend. No myth. She's an ehrekh, and she holds the power of Goezhen in her hands.”

His gaze held hers as if he was afraid to look anywhere else. “
I
held the knife.”