The Unconquered City Read online

  And then the gnats grew and the storms shifted and that balance shattered. The desert that she and her brethren had cultivated and shepherded was spreading beyond their control. The water vanished. The gnats multiplied until they were more than a nuisance: they were a threat.

  And they had to be wiped out.

  Click.

  Illi blinked, disoriented. She was suddenly so small, so impossibly confined. The room was stifling and cramped. She couldn’t breathe. Her back was on fire, yet as she shifted her wrap clung to her. A wetness rolled down the back of her leg. But she was still early in her cycle.…

  Heru stepped away and the full weight of a second metal bracelet pulled Illi’s arm down, anchoring her. She breathed. Focused on the pain. Focused on the here.

  Her arms trembled as she held them up. On one wrist, a bracelet scorched black. On the other, a bracelet polished silver. All around her, shattered glass.

  Thin lines had been inscribed in the metal. Upon closer inspection, Illi could make out letters and words, although they were again in a language she’d never learned. Illi turned her wrists, feeling the weight of the bracelets as they slid across her skin, one cool and one still hot. She breathed. The numbness slipped away. Then—

  —pain. It flared through Illi as sudden and as hot as flames. A cry brushed the inside of her skull, reached her fingertips, rolled down her back, before withdrawing just as suddenly. But she could feel it now, could trace the sensation back to a point in her chest, small as a pinprick but pulsing with something alien, something that wasn’t her.

  The sajaami.

  “How are you feeling?”

  Illi blinked again. Heru was in front of her, his eye flicking between hers.

  “My back,” she managed to choke out, her throat still full of dust.

  “Yes, that will hurt for a while. I had to make the necessary marks to contain the sajaami.”

  “Marks?”

  “Runes from an ancient, powerful language that another en-marabi helped to create and I’ve since refined. Once the cuts heal, you shouldn’t feel any pain. At least, not from them.”

  Cuts. Illi reached behind and ran her fingers over the tattered cloth of her wrap. They came away smeared with blood. She stared at them for a moment, distantly calculating the cost of replacing this wrap, then her legs folded beneath her and she sat down on the warm stone floor with a heavy thud.

  “What did you do to me?” Her voice sounded so strange, so hollow.

  “Only what was necessary.” Heru stayed standing, but his gaze followed her down, watching her like an interesting experiment. Which, of course, now she was. “Unfortunately, since I was unable to prepare for this eventuality, my work is a little messier than usual. Ideally, I would’ve had weeks to compose the proper wording and ease the pain while encouraging the accumulation of scar tissue. What I lacked in time, I made up for through my own ingenuity. And a blunt knife.”

  Illi winced. Her back thudded along with her heartbeat, the pain blurring into a constant, dull ache. Already the wetness was beginning to dry, which meant the wounds were clotting. A weakness stole through her limbs. She didn’t want to think about how much blood she’d lost. Instead, she held up her wrists, the metal bracelets sliding down only half an inch. They could have been made for her. One charred black, the other liquid silver. They contrasted neatly with her skin, a shade of brown between.

  She swallowed and this time her throat hurt slightly less. “What are these?”

  “Binding rings,” said Heru. “I’ve been working on this model for years. Those are the third prototype. I tested them on the guul in the limited capacities I have available to me, but they have not yet been tested on a living specimen and, obviously, they’ve never been tested on a sajaami. If they work as I’ve hypothesized, then they’ll not only strengthen the binding on the sajaami, but help you to control it. Don’t try to remove them.”

  Illi ran her fingers along the edge of the burnt bracelet, and some of the char flaked off, revealing tarnished silver beneath. Everything felt as if it were happening to someone else. Her head spun and exhaustion crashed over her. But the exhaustion was beyond anything she’d felt before, a fatigue that hollowed out her chest and her bones, aching to be filled. She ran her tongue over her cracked lips.

  “Water,” she said, a request and a question and a hope.

  Something flashed across Heru’s face, there and gone in an instant. If Illi hadn’t known better, she would’ve thought it was worry. But no, Heru didn’t worry. He planned, he prepared, he acted, and then he reassessed.

  Keeping his eye on her, Heru reached for the water skin at his belt and unclipped it. He held it out to Illi and she took it with shaking fingers. It was all she could do not to rip the leather neck open and drain the skin dry. Instead, she fumbled at the knot until she’d undone it, then took several measured sips. Then several more.

  Only when the skin was noticeably emptier did she force herself to re-knot the neck and hand it back. Her throat felt better, but her thirst was far from slaked. She needed something else, something more than water, something that pulsed at the edge of her awareness, just out of reach.

  The room wobbled but steadied as she stood. The bracelets slid a half inch the other way, warm against her wrists. She stretched and, distantly, felt a sensation not unlike bubbles popping. She was beginning to feel a little better. A little more normal. Her gaze passed over the wreckage of the room again, a half-formed question at her lips. But she didn’t need to ask who’d done this. It was obvious.

  Ghadid had. Her city had turned against them, provoked by the words of an iluk, a foreign woman. But it hadn’t all been Merrabel’s fault. For years, Heru had barely been tolerated. All it had taken was a suggestion to ignite their simmering fear.

  “You will come with me,” said Heru. It was a statement of fact, not an order.

  Illi stared at the bracelets, her world slipping away from her. He was right. She held the sajaami now. She would only be endangering Ghadid if she stayed. A bitter laugh bubbled up her throat but died at her lips, tasting like rancid citrus. Of all the possibilities she’d feared, she hadn’t even thought to fear this one. At least they’d bought more time; but at what cost?

  “The sajaami—you kept it for seven years, Heru,” said Illi. “That’s over now. Promise me you’ll find a way to destroy it.”

  Heru had stepped away and was surveying the destruction of his lab. He stayed silent so long Illi thought he hadn’t heard. When he finally did answer, she wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or his broken lab.

  “I promise. None of this will be in vain.”

  9

  Illi slid through the open window and into her room, her sandals touching the floor with a whisper. She kicked them off and under her bed, then shut the window. Her back pounded with fresh pain from the climb, the cloth of her wrap sticking uncomfortably to the dried blood on her back. Fresh cuts itched on her palms from helping Heru clean up all the shattered glass. She hadn’t dared look in a mirror yet.

  First things first. She grabbed a bowl and opened her water skin. Sitting in the middle of her floor, she poured a fist of water into the bowl, then set the bowl in her lap. Eyes closed, she let her thoughts drift free, felt the pulse of the water as it settled in the bowl, felt the pulse of her wounds as her body tried to fix itself, achingly slow. She pushed on the water to help that process along, but it felt as if she were pushing on a wall.

  Relax, Mo would say. Work with the water. Don’t force it. We’re healers, not en-marab.

  Illi forced herself to breathe: in through clenched teeth, out through loose lips. She became keenly aware of the thud of her heart, the creak of movement downstairs, the murmur of voices in the street outside. But the water refused to move. Her broken skin remained broken.

  Illi dropped her hands and stared into the bowl of water. She looked worse than she’d imagined. Her eyes were a raw red and dust mingled with sweat and dried tears on her face, although she
couldn’t remember crying. She clenched and unclenched her fist, relishing the pain that blossomed anew, the blood that trickled free. Then she took a cloth and began cleaning the blood from her hands, her arms, her face, and what she could reach of her back.

  As she worked, she set aside her self-pity and guilt. After all, what she had done was done and what she had to do was simple. She’d leave with Heru and they’d find a way to destroy the sajaami. Meanwhile, she’d learn everything about guul and en-marabi magic she could from him. And when she returned, she’d take up where Heru had left off. She’d find a way to stop the guul.

  Destroying the sajaami would be like a contract, back when the city could still sustain contracts. Instead of a person, though, her mark was a powerful and immortal sajaami, but that didn’t change the rules. She still had to understand her mark, learn its routines, its life, its weaknesses. And Illi wasn’t just any cousin; the Serpent herself had trained Illi, before the Siege, before the end of contracts, before the end of everything she’d known.

  She wouldn’t let everything end this time. She’d destroy the sajaami before anyone got hurt. And if that meant leaving her home …

  Then so be it.

  She finished cleaning the blood and soot from her hands and arms, then turned to her wrap. She undid the knots, holding the fabric in place so it wouldn’t pull against her drying wounds. Once the knots were all undone, she took a breath, then peeled the cloth from her back.

  It hurt less than she’d expected, but it still hurt. She hissed through the pain. Then it was done and she stood mostly naked in her room, skin bubbling with goose bumps from the cold, the tattered remains of her wrap held before her. She might be able to salvage a few scraps, but most of it was a mess of gaping slashes and matted blood.

  She shoved the wrap beneath her bed to deal with later. Then she found her spare wrap, a length of fabric the color of stone, and draped it over her chair. First, though, she needed to clean her back. The water in the bowl was already a bright red, but she didn’t dare waste any more cleaning her wounds, so soon the red turned brown, then black. When she squeezed the cloth out over the bowl, red water dripped from between her fingers. Disgusted, she draped the cloth over the edge of the bowl and pushed it away. The worst of the blood was gone, at least. She could use oil for the rest.

  She sat hunched in the middle of her floor for a moment, letting the cool air dry her. She was acutely aware of every cut Heru had made. She’d traced them as she cleaned and now she traced them again onto her back in her mind’s eye. She recognized most of them: marks for binding, marks for quieting, and marks for strength. Some of these same marks adorned her sword.

  But the rest were entirely unfamiliar to her. She tried to fit them into a broader context with the other marks, but her thoughts stretched and frayed. She was too tired. Besides, she would have more than enough time to learn and understand what Heru had done in the days, weeks, months ahead.

  Even though all Illi wanted to do was sit here and gradually succumb to sleep, time was falling. She had to pack if she was going to leave with the caravan at daybreak. She uncurled from the floor and pulled her wrap around her shoulders, hissing as its rough fabric brushed across the cuts. Her fingers moved as slow as her thoughts as she knotted the clean wrap, careful to wear it high enough to cover all of the wounds. Thana couldn’t know. Mo couldn’t see.

  They might try to stop her. And she couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t let them.

  She cleaned her face last. Then she left her room and took the stairs as silent as a snake. The hearth was alive with the evening fire and Mo stooped over it, stirring a pot. The air reeked of cinnamon and sugar and cloves thickened with camel’s milk: sweetened porridge, her favorite meal. Illi’s stomach churned and she remembered the last time she’d eaten was at daybreak. Was it only this morning she’d failed to remove the sajaami and Merrabel had stepped into Heru’s lab?

  It’d been a long day.

  Thana sat at the table, a stretch of white cloth before her. Half of it was covered in scrawls of black ink. Thana dipped her pen in the inkpot and began to add more. Illi felt a pang of regret; she should be sitting with Thana, writing her own litany for her parents. Seven years dead, they’d be a part of this rite. And the prayers the survivors wrote would be even more important this time, since so much of the dead had already been lost.

  But what did it matter when their jaan were lost as well?

  Illi paused on the last step to compose herself. She was fine. Everything was fine. Holding that truth in mind, she drifted across the room, drawn toward the smell of cloves.

  Thana looked up from her writing, her fingers stained with ink. “Illi—when did you get home?”

  “I’ve been home for a while.”

  Thana’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah? Then why didn’t you come down when I called?”

  “I was asleep.”

  Thana folded the cloth and set it on the table with a sigh. “You should know better than to lie to me.”

  Illi looked to Mo for help, but although she’d stopped stirring the pot and held the metal spoon by its cloth-covered handle, porridge clumped on one end, she didn’t turn around.

  “You don’t need to sneak through windows unless you want to,” said Thana. “If it was a boy, just bring him by sometime. You know we don’t mind, as long as you’re taking all precautions. Mo can show you which herbs—”

  “It’s not a boy,” said Illi quickly, her face growing hot as she thought of Canthem. She passed Thana, hunger drawing her toward Mo and the porridge. “But I did meet someone at the market.”

  Mo had finally turned and now flashed Illi a smile, bright as the day. She swung the metal pot off of the fire and began gathering bowls.

  “A girl?”

  “No—” started Illi.

  “Then what’s this?”

  Quick as a cobra, Thana grabbed Illi’s arm as she passed. Thana jerked her arm up and Illi’s sleeve fell back, revealing the silver bracelet.

  “I didn’t know you liked to wear jewelry. Or is this a reminder of the person who gave it to you?”

  Thana’s lips curled in a mocking grin, but then her gaze tracked down the bracelet to Illi’s hands and her grin collapsed into a frown. Too late, Illi yanked her hand back and tried to fix her sleeves so they covered the cuts again.

  “What happened to your hands?” asked Thana.

  In a heartbeat, Mo stood on Illi’s other side, the porridge forgotten. She took Illi’s hand between her own and pushed back the sleeve. The cuts were still inflamed from washing, each of them a bright red gash across Illi’s skin. There was no point trying to hide them.

  “Shards,” said Mo, half curse, half assessment. She met Illi’s gaze, her eyes dark and wide. “You’ll have scars if these aren’t healed soon. Thana, bring me—”

  “No.”

  Illi pulled her hand out of Mo’s and stepped away. If Mo tried to heal the cuts, she’d sense the wounds on Illi’s back, too. Then everything would unravel and Illi would be too busy arguing with them to pack and leave on time.

  Mo’s expression hardened. “What were you doing? Those look like you stuck your hands in a bowl full of glass.”

  Illi sucked in a breath and decided a little bit of the truth couldn’t hurt. “Someone smashed Heru’s lab. I was helping him clean up.”

  “What?” Thana’s hand went to the sheath at her waist, but it was empty, her sword safely wrapped away elsewhere. “Amastan needs to know about this. It’s bad enough the Circle is forcing Heru out, but to let him be attacked like that—”

  “Amastan can wait,” said Mo sternly. “Illi needs healing.”

  “Really, I’m fine. We need to save water for the rite. They’re just cuts.” Illi held up her hands to show Mo, only realizing her mistake when Mo noticed the cuts on her arms and her eyes widened further. Illi dropped her hands, but the damage was done.

  Thana’s eyes narrowed. “Those bracelets—where did you get them?” Her voice dropped, beca
me dangerous. “Did Heru give them to you?”

  “I got them from the market.” Hoping to distract them, she added, “Canthem gave them to me.”

  But Thana’s expression only darkened further. “You forget I spent a long time with Heru. He was my mark, once, and I had to understand him better than my mother. Those are of his own hand. What has he done?”

  Illi stepped back, holding her arms to her chest as if she could protect the bracelets. As if she even wanted to. But she did, didn’t she? Because if something happened to the bracelets, the sajaami would be freed.

  Thana tried again, this time with more calm. “Illi—we don’t keep secrets in this family.”

  “Then why didn’t you say anything about the sajaami?” snapped Illi.

  Silence cut through the room like a sword. Mo took a step back, glanced at Thana. But Thana only stared at Illi, surprise, then hurt, then finally anger flashing across her face.

  “That wasn’t my secret to share.”

  “Wasn’t it?” pressed Illi. “You were there, as you like to say so often. You helped stop the sajaami. It was your secret as soon as you let Heru keep it.”

  “You know Heru as well as I do,” said Thana. “There is no ‘let’ involved with him. He does what he wants and we continue tolerating him.”

  “But a sajaami, in our city, all this time?” Illi spread her hands, now deliberately showing off her cuts. Mo winced, but Thana’s gaze didn’t waver. “Did you think the drum chiefs would never find out? You know they were always looking for a reason to get rid of him.”

  “I honestly thought they’d never know,” said Thana. “The sajaami was contained. What was the chance another en-marabi would cross the desert just to find Heru? If you knew how difficult it’d been to convince the drum chiefs to let Heru stay—”