The Drowning City Read online

  That pulled her eyebrows up. She met his eyes—green-and-gold-flecked and terribly earnest. She envied him; she doubted she’d looked so innocent since she was ten years old.

  “What if they don’t?” Another step apart, another twirl. “We’ve only just met—are we to become enemies so soon?”

  “I hope not. But perhaps the risk is worth it.”

  She stepped back into his arms, wishing she could scent deception as some mages claimed they could. All she smelled was wine and sweat and the cloying mix of a dozen perfumes. “Are you prepared to tell me you’re plotting against the Khas?” she whispered.

  “No.” His breath warmed the side of her face. “I’m plotting against the Emperor.”

  She drew back, struggling to keep up with the dance steps while she looked at his face. If he was lying, she couldn’t tell. Choices dizzied her. But she had to do something, so why not risk?

  “We aren’t enemies, then.”

  Zhirin and her mother arrived unfashionably late, after the dancing had begun. Their argument over the proper amount of mourning-wear had lasted nearly an hour. In the end Fei Minh lent her a sari, deep green silk shot with gold and orange thread, still trimmed in gray since the death of Zhirin’s great-aunt two years ago.

  Lanterns and garlands dripped from the trees of the Pomegranate Court; rain bruised the flowers and decay tainted their waxy sweetness. Usually the court was open to guests, but now soldiers patrolled amid the trees and no couples sat in the rain-sheltered alcoves. They passed the wide lion fountain, twin to the one in the Kurun Tam, and climbed the steps to the council hall. The smell of sweat and wine and perfume wafted through the doors, mingling with the cloying flowers and the sharpness of the rain. Zhirin swallowed nervous spit.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” Fei Minh asked.

  Zhirin forced a smile. “Of course.”

  It wasn’t much of a crowd, she told herself as they stepped inside. Much smaller than other parties she’d attended here. But still too many; her vision blurred, marble rippling like water, the guests a shimmering haze of gold and silk and gems. No one else wore gray. How many of these people would feel like dancing if they’d watched a nakh sink its teeth into a man’s throat?

  Her courage nearly fled, but her stomach rumbled and the sharp edge of hunger cleared her head. She hadn’t eaten anything today but tea, and her body no longer cared about her grief. She grounded herself in the practical concern; she’d survived last night, she could survive a party.

  “Oh, look,” Fei Minh said. “Lu Zhin is here.” She waved to the matriarch of the Irezh family, bracelets chiming softly. “And Min is back from the university.”

  Zhirin barely stopped her eyes from rolling. That was a conversation she planned to stay far away from. “I’m going to find something to eat. I’ll join you later.”

  “Good idea.” Her mother’s eyes narrowed. “You’re looking a bit sallow—not that the color helps.” She flicked a fingernail against a gray ribbon.

  Zhirin pushed Fei Minh lightly toward the Irezhs. “I’ll see you later, Mira.”

  The dancing distracted people from the food, and Zhirin filled a plate with cakes and century eggs wrapped in pickled ginger. The finer red wines were nearly gone, but plenty of chilled white Mareotis remained, goblets sweating on the linen tablecloths.

  She found a chair against the wall and balanced her plate on her knees, nibbling a cardamom cream-cake and watching the dancers circle. She had no idea if Isyllt would be here, she realized. For all she knew Asheris had locked her in a lead-lined cell somewhere.

  Then the crowd shifted and Zhirin saw her. She nearly choked on a bite of cake and washed it down with wine. More specter than living woman, with her gown the color of ashes and bone-pale skin. Like something out of a play, the White Bone Queen stalking a ball for her next victim. It took a moment to recognize her dance partner—the man from the festival. At least he didn’t look as though he’d fall over dead anytime soon.

  Across the room servants opened the terrace doors; the heat of so many dancing bodies threatened to overcome the building’s cooling spells. Almost at once couples began to trickle out in search of privacy.

  The song ended and Isyllt and her partner moved toward the refreshment tables. Zhirin rose to join them—she nearly set her plate down, but the sight of Isyllt’s shoulder blades rippling beneath too little flesh made her hold on to it.

  Color burned in Isyllt’s cheeks and she smiled at something the man said as they collected wineglasses, but it seemed strained. The pleasant expression fell away when she saw Zhirin.

  “How are you?”

  Zhirin shrugged. “All right. Considering. You?”

  “The same. Excuse me—Zhirin, meet Siddir Bashari.”

  Not a name she recognized—maybe her mother knew who he was. She nodded politely. “Excuse me, but I need to speak to Lady Iskaldur for a moment. Come outside with me?”

  Isyllt nodded and bade farewell to Bashari.

  The rain had stopped, save for the steady drip of the gutters. Lanterns swayed lazily, tongues of light lapping across the wet grass. Whispers drifted from shadowed corners. Zhirin left the terrace, moving toward a covered bench on the lawn. Damp seeped between her toes and stray blades of grass clung to her sandals.

  “Adam sent me,” she said softly. “He wants to know what he should do.”

  Isyllt sighed a little, as if in relief. “Tell him to get a mirror, a small one that will fit in a pocket, and carry it with him. Glass if he can manage, but brass or bronze will do. Beyond that, we’ll have to see. I don’t know yet if I need a daring rescue or not.”

  Across the yard, a stone platform shone pale in the darkness, each corner marked by a column. Zhirin grimaced at the sight.

  “The execution yard,” she said when Isyllt raised a questioning eyebrow. “The stones will be blooded soon, my mother says.”

  “Oh?”

  “Three members of Clan Xian have been linked to the Dai Tranh and will be charged for the attack on the festival. Never mind that they were arrested days before it happened.” She put her back to the square as they reached the bench. “What happened with Asheris?” she asked, testing the stone for dampness before she sat.

  “He’s keeping me close. It’s all very polite, but I can’t leave the Khas.”

  “What will you do?” Zhirin set her plate on the bench, nudging it toward Isyllt.

  Shadows rippled across the woman’s face as she frowned. “I don’t know. Escape would only give him reason to arrest me.”

  “You could leave, couldn’t you? Go home. You’ve done what you came to do.”

  “Not until the supply ship arrives and Jabbor has the cargo. I won’t leave the job half finished.” Isyllt took a pastry, tearing off a bit of crust.

  The job. Zhirin picked at a black-marbled egg. Revolution must be easier if you didn’t have to stay to watch. If you didn’t have to live in the ashes.

  “What is it?” Isyllt asked, watching her.

  She almost held her tongue, but she’d trusted the woman this far…“It’s more complicated than we realized.” Haltingly, she told Isyllt about the diamonds, about the warehouse raid and the conversation with her mother.

  Isyllt whistled softly when she was finished. “That’s quite a thing to keep hidden. And why bother, when the Emperor could simply claim the stones as tithe?”

  Zhirin shook her head; her mouth was dry and tepid wine did nothing to help. The sour smell of the eggs turned her stomach.

  She nearly dropped the goblet as Isyllt grabbed her arm, cool fingers digging into her flesh. She followed the woman’s nod in time to see a man and a woman cross the terrace; lantern-light flashed on long brown hair and the man’s familiar hook-nosed profile. They walked to a shadowed corner and the hedges blocked the sight of them.

  “Can we get closer?” Zhirin whispered.

  “I have an easier way.” Isyllt reached into her skirt pocket and pulled out a silk-wrapped shape. A m
irror—black glass gleamed as she unwrapped it. “Be quiet. Sound travels both ways.” She turned toward Zhirin and held the mirror between them.

  The surface shimmered like water and images rose and vanished one after another—strangers’ faces, lights and ceilings and floors, a dizzying series of angles and views. Finally one remained, a scattering of darkness and light. After an instant Zhirin realized it was water dripping into a puddle, as seen from below the surface. Looking closer, she saw a man’s outline reflected in the rippling pool.

  “What is it?” Faraj’s voice drifted faintly from the mirror, dull with annoyance or resignation.

  “The Laii girl has been snooping around.” Jodiya. “She may already know about the mine, and she keeps company with the Jade Tigers. I can make sure she doesn’t talk.”

  “No. I need her mother’s ships, and if Fei Minh even suspects we hurt her daughter, she’ll make more trouble than Zhang could have dreamed of. I’ll tell Fei Minh to keep her quiet, but you don’t lay a finger on the girl.”

  “What about the foreign witch, the necromancer? She’s taking more interest in Asheris than I like.”

  “Her you can dispose of, if you need something to keep yourself occupied. But for the love of heaven, not here. The last thing I need is an international incident. Make it quiet, and quick.”

  “They’ll never find the body.”

  A moment later they were gone, and Isyllt wrapped the mirror again.

  “What are we going to do?” Zhirin whispered. Her hands shook and she clenched them tight in her lap.

  Isyllt shrugged. “Be careful. Watch our backs.”

  “I could go into the forest with Jabbor.”

  “And that will be exactly the excuse that little assassin needs to kill you when she finds you and blame it on the Tigers. And we still don’t know who murdered Vasilios. If it wasn’t Faraj or his killers, then even more people want to put knives in our backs.” Her expression softened. “Stay quiet and don’t draw attention to yourself.”

  Zhirin shook her head hard enough to shift a braid in its pins. “How do you do it? How do you live like this?”

  Isyllt smiled, quick and rueful. “I don’t remember any other way.”

  Clouds rode the jungle canopy, blurring the tops of the trees in gray. Not yet heavy enough to rain, but the air below was thick and sticky and clung to Xinai’s skin in a clammy false sweat. The ground was soft with rain, the soggy leaf-litter crawling with beetles and centipedes. Already plants half-dead from summer heat greened again, and the smell of jasmine and satinwood flowers threaded through the richer scents of wet earth and leaves, rot and moss.

  Shaiyung returned an hour or so after they left Xao Par Khan, her chill presence stronger than ever. She didn’t speak, and Xinai was happy not to be distracted. So many years away from home had dulled her sense of the jungle, and she struggled to keep up with Riuh as they moved through the dense vegetation.

  They took game trails when they found them, but much of the going was scrabbling up muddy slopes and slipping down the other side. More than once birds took flight at their passage, and once a long-tailed macaua flung a half-eaten pomelo at them in startlement. At least the lands north of the mountain were scarcely populated—most of the clansfolk had gravitated toward the river and the city, or fled to the northern highlands where the Assari rarely ventured. Xinai couldn’t remember which clans had lived in these hills, and shook her head at her own ignorance. How many villages lay in ruins, choked by the jungle? How many ghosts haunted dying heart-trees?

  They followed the ward-posts that circled the mountain, but gave the markers a wide berth. Xinai couldn’t read the nature of all the magic woven into them and didn’t want to risk tripping any alarms. Her lip curled at the sight of the things.

  They kept on till dusk settled and even tracker’s eyes strained against the gloom. The familiar fatigue of a forced march dragged at her, but the diamond’s pulse was stronger against her chest and she knew they were going the right way. Anywhere from two to five more days, she guessed, depending how far around the mountain they had to go.

  They slept in watches; neither had caught any sign of pursuit, but they’d crossed several sets of three-toed claw marks in the mud. Kueh tracks—flightless birds taller than a man and vicious if startled. And there were always tigers in the mountains.

  In the middle of the rain-soaked third watch, Xinai slipped out of their woven-leaf shelter to relieve herself. When she returned, the air beside her cooled. A nearby nightjar fell silent, though insects and frogs continued their songs; only animals large enough to attract attention feared ghosts and spirits. Only men were brave enough—or stupid enough—to seek them out.

  She crouched in a tangle of hibiscus shrubs and listened to the rain and distant thunder and Riuh’s soft snoring. Hunger sharpened in her stomach, till she fished a strip of jerky from her pouch. Dry and salty, but she always craved meat before her courses came and they had no time to hunt. The silence stretched and she shivered as her wet hair chilled.

  “Hello, Mother,” she murmured at last.

  Shaiyung materialized, shimmering and pale. Stronger now, clearer, the color of her skin less sickly. The wound in her throat still gaped—the unsung dead would always bear their death-marks while they lingered.

  “That stone you wear,” she whispered. “It’s an ugly thing.”

  “I know. I hope I won’t wear it long.” Xinai swallowed salt and a dozen questions. “Can you scout ahead for us?”

  Shaiyung shook her head. “It’s still hard for me to see when I’m not with you. Hard for me to leave the Night Forest. I can find spirits and ghosts, but not works of man.”

  “What’s it like, the twilight lands?”

  “Strange,” Shaiyung said after a pause. “Even after all these years. Before you came home, there was only the dreamtime. I saw things…distant cities…I can barely remember now. I hear the songs of our ancestors on the eastern wind.”

  “Will you go to them?”

  “One day, perhaps.” Her smile was kind and ghastly. “When Cay Lin is rebuilt. When I see your children playing by the tree.”

  “Mother—” Xinai shook her head, frowned at the half-eaten piece of meat in her hand. “I know how much this means to you, but what you did by the river—” Even now she couldn’t force the word past her teeth. Possession. “You can’t do that again.”

  “It would have been good luck, a child conceived with the rain.”

  “Worry about the Khas first. I won’t be much use in a fight if I’m pregnant.”

  Shaiyung’s eyebrows rose. “The northlands made you soft. I was leading raids a month before you were born. My mother still had enemy blood on her hands when I came. Your foremothers are warriors, child.”

  Xinai turned her head, cheeks warming. “I haven’t forgotten.”

  “It’s not the fighting, is it? You’re still thinking about that foreigner of yours.”

  She pulled a knee close to her chest, her heel digging a rut in soft earth. “I know I shouldn’t—”

  “Oh, darling.” A cold hand stroked her back. “I know. Your father wasn’t the first man I cared for. I know what it’s like to lose, to let someone go. You can’t help what you feel. But you can’t let it cloud your thoughts either, or dull your blades.”

  “I know, Mama—”

  Leaves rustled and Xinai stiffened. But it was only Riuh. He rolled over, propped himself up on one elbow. “Who are you talking to?” He blinked sleepily, but his knife was in his hand.

  Xinai let out a breath. “Just ghosts.” Her mother’s coldness faded.

  Riuh stared at her for a moment, the question—Are you joking?—plain on his face. But finally he rolled over and tugged the blanket back over his head.

  She wasn’t sure if she was grateful for the reprieve.

  Chapter 13

  Thunder came in the dead hours of morning, with wind to rattle the windows and arcs of blue lightning. Despite her bravado with Zhirin, Is
yllt barely slept. Twice she woke from nightmares of faceless assassins and cold blades, of seeing her body lifeless in the street as uncaring crowds stepped around her.

  As the storm eased into a gray dawn, she finally started to doze again, only to be startled awake by a knock at the door. Louder and more insistent than Li. Fumbling for her robe, she rose to answer it. Assassins didn’t usually knock first.

  “I’m sorry to wake you,” Asheris said when she opened the door, “but I have a favor to ask.” He wore riding clothes and carried two oilcloaks over his arm.

  She stepped aside and waved him in. “What is it?”

  “I’ve had reports that something’s happened in one of the villages on the North Bank.”

  “Something?”

  He shrugged wryly. “They’re sketchy reports. But I’m told people are dead, and that ghosts or spirits may be involved. You’ve no obligation to help, but I still don’t have a necromancer on staff.”

  She blinked sleep-sticky lashes. They’ll never find the body. “I’ll come.”

  They collected half a dozen soldiers before they left the Khas, and horses from the stable by the ferry. As they climbed the high road they left the rain below, a shifting sea of gray covering the city and harbor. Rainbows shimmered along the tarnished edges of the clouds as the sun rose, and Isyllt soon shed her cloak as the day warmed.

  They turned off the road to the Kurun Tam onto a narrower trail and met a group of local soldiers waiting at a bend in the path. The captain straightened, saluting Asheris. His skin was ashen and sweat stained his uniform.

  “What happened?” Asheris asked.

  “The villagers in Xao Par are dead, sir.”

  His eyebrows rose. “All of them?”

  “I’m not sure—we can’t see through that damned fog. Things are moving in the village, but I don’t think they’re alive. Forgive me, my lord, but we couldn’t stay in there.”

  “What fog?”

  “Up the road. You’ll see, my lord.”