Join the Gunmetal Gods Ultimate Edition launch at: bit.ly/gunmetalgods

The post first appeared on Zamil Akhtar | Fantasy Author.

Herakon said he witnessed arms and legs and heads poking out of it. The priest, Yohan, swore he saw a giant human eye open in its folds. My tactician, Markos, was adamant that tentacles, bubbling with yet more eyes, grabbed at the sparrows passing by. But all I beheld was blood, coursing through the bulbous cloud as if through veins in a wrestler’s arm.

Thankfully, it did not rain upon us. An Abyad tribesman we’d captured said that a few years ago, a blood cloud had floated to an oasis oft frequented by desert travelers, where it then wept. Was the parched desert soil grateful for a drink of blood instead of water? According to the Abyad, mere hours after that blood rain, skulls with living eyes sprouted out of the ground. Such a place was cursed for all time, he said, until the “Great Terror remakes us all in fire.”

The Zelthuriyan Desert was cursed. Cursed with false faith. Cursed by the Fallen Angels themselves. But their tricks would not terrify me. I, the Opener, prophesied by the apostles in Angelsong, would not flee. No — I came to break and conquer, and no fright for lesser souls would turn me from my path.

And so on the very day the Apostle Benth was born, in the month of the angel Dumah — the Silent Destroyer — we arrived at the mountains of Zelthuriya. They were red, as if baked from blood-soaked clay, and steep and towering, stronger than any wall. The Latians believe that a tribe of Fallen Angels called the Efreet molded this cavernous city for them, so they could worship their demoness amid the safety of rock.

Today, we would prove that nothing is safe from divine light. That men of true faith can level even mountains. Our host, seventy thousand strong, would not be deterred, not by blood clouds nor desert heat nor a wall a league tall, chiseled by demons made of smokeless flame.

To face our seventy thousand, the saint-king cowering behind the mountain sent one: a young man, cool-eyed and fair-haired. A look more common to the icelands than this dismal desert.

He came alone, wearing a robe of chafed, carded wool grayer than a rat. He was barefoot, his soles unscorched by the fiery sand. His beard was light brown, his build wiry, and his stare without fear.

Whereas I was covered in chain and plate and helmeted like a true commander of legions.

The magus stood straight-backed, prayer stones in his hand. A light breeze whipped up the sand between us.

“Peace, Basil the Breaker,” he said in perfect Crucian. “That’s what they call you, isn’t it?” His voice rang like iron, yet flowed like honey.

“It is.”

“Why? What did you break?”

“A lot of walls. A few hearts, too.”

“But you’ve never broken a mountain.”

“I will if you don’t surrender,” I said, getting to the heart of the matter. “Spare your people a butchering. Should you defy us, we won’t leave a single soul alive in this wasteland. We’ve come a long way and are hungry to offer our lives and yours in service to the Archangel.”

“Then you will all die in the shadow of these hallowed mountains.”

I expected obstinance. But with age, I’d grown less willing to delight in it. If only they knew that they were destined to lose, we could all spare each other the suffering.

“I’ve just journeyed from Qandbajar, seat of your saint-king, who fled like a rat does from fire. History will say that we were merciful — soon as the city guard flung open the gates, we spared them and the common folk and even your shrines. Qandbajar will be all the better under my rule. The same conditions I gladly give to Zelthuriya.”

“You see yourself as a merciful man.” He clacked his prayer stones, which were on a string.

Was he scoffing at my words? “It is not my own mercy, but the Archangel’s. We are not here to eradicate you or your faith. We will spare your holy city and the tombs of your saints and the rights and lives of residents and pilgrims. But only if you surrender.”

“Zelthuriya does not have a door. You’re welcome to send your legions through the passage. It is always open. Always providing a welcome to the weary.”

“A welcome of iron, no doubt. Your passage fits — at most — ten men across. Surely the remnants of your saint-king’s army will be lying in wait. You could defend it against a million men.”

“And knowing this, you still came?” The magus spread out his hands. The faintest smile formed on his face. “Why?”

“Because I can surround your mountains from all sides. You aren’t growing any crops in there. How long before you all have to suckle on bone? Two, maybe three moons?”

“We won’t starve, Imperator Basil. You have a host of seventy thousand — I have a tribe of jinn who will fling lightning at you. Who will ensure we are fed and fine. All I need do is command them.”

“If you’re as mighty as you claim, where were you when I drowned the saint-king’s host in the Vogras?”

“I was here, fulfilling my duty. You’re not the only danger this city needs protection from. Speaking of — do take care whilst you’re camping in the desert. The Abyad tribes are given to feuding with each other. Poisoning water wells and hoarding desert game. Though they are a hospitable folk, they might not see you as guests. I give you one moon, and that’s without considering what the jinn will do.”

I snickered. “The Fallen Angels cannot be allowed to poison the hearts and minds of men. I, the Opener, will see them ended. By whatever power I can call upon.”

If only I could sense some emotion from him. Though from his twitching mustache, he did seem to be chewing on my words.

“Tell me,” he said, “did you see the blood cloud drift southward?”

“I saw it.”

“And did you take it as an ill-omen, or as a portent of victory?”

“More than a portent of our victory — it was a sign for you. The god who has kept you safe, the otherworldly powers that have aided you…” I pointed to the sky. “There is something more watching.”

The magus bit his dry bottom lip. “You speak of the Uncreated.”

“Indeed. I do.”

He sighed, long and sharp, the first real crack in his placidity. “When I was a child in the icelands, I beheld things that even now I struggle to put into words. The people there do not veil their gods with virtues and holiness. They worship them raw, for the power and the plainness of their signs.”

“Then heed me. To save ourselves, we must all dwell beneath the same tent. I am offering you shelter.”

“The tribes who lived near the Red River worshipped the Uncreated.” He kept prattling on, ignoring my generous offer. “I learned long ago to be afraid of it. Of what it could manifest into our world. Not by design, but merely by dwelling on its bizarre form.”

“Then you know why I am doing what I am doing. Zelthuriya stands against my mission to spread the faith that will save us all to the ends of the earth. I must clear all obstinance from my path.”

“As I recall, it says in Angelsong that the Uncreated appointed the Archangel and the Twelve Holies to rule this plane, before uncreating itself. Even it preferred lesser angels to be the sole objects of worship.”

A stronger gust sent sand whispering across my plate. I dusted it off. The magus let it cover his eyebrows and hair.

I didn’t want to discuss theology. I’d the patience for one final appeal, and hoped to make it a good one. “You Latians indulge in all manner of blood magic and demon binding. You sully your hearts daily with arcane teachings brought down as trials by the angel Marot. Do you think there is no cost to power? It is no wonder blood clouds find a home here. But I can save you from that. And only I can save this world from its creator. It is what I was chosen to do. I do not delight in death, but I will destroy all in my way — even mountains filled with jinn.”

The magus clasped his hands. I feared he was conjuring magic, so I stepped back.

“Be at ease.” He let out a resigned sigh. “It seems our conversation proved as fruitless as tilling the sand. Do your worst, Imperator Basil the Breaker. I await you in the Shrine of Saint Chisti. Oh, and I hope you and your legionaries won’t get lost on the way. Those narrow passages do go on and on.”

I could only smile at his determination. “One way or another, I will bring low your godless mountain.”

I returned to our camp, which we’d set upon a coarse bed of shrubs and watering holes that stretched for miles. My men were busy preparing for the siege. Hunting parties led by all the Abyad tribesmen we’d hired roamed the scrub for desert deer. Legionaries dug trenches around the perimeter, then filled them with spikes, so we’d suffer no raid at our flanks or back. The camp prefects surveyed the land for water, and ordered new wells dug where appropriate.

The truth was, if the Zelthuriyans did not surrender, we’d struggle to survive a siege as much as they. The desert was not bountiful by nature, and seventy thousand mouths could not guzzle sand. Worst of all — few of us were used to the rageful heat of the day, or the sudden shift to a bitter, biting cold come moonrise. Surviving the desert took special skills and an even more peculiar constitution, which us folk from fairer lands lacked.

We’d no shortage of zeal, though. The unshakable truth which we each stood upon. After a decade of succession wars in which I defeated three Saturni pretenders, none but I had finally united the lands of the Ethosians. And we’d united for one purpose: to push east to the waterfall at the edge of the earth, and to open all hearts we’d cross to the faith, as portended in Angelsong.

I walked into my tent and poured ice water into a silver cup. My throat had swallowed enough sand during my short conversation with the magus, and even more disappointment. He did not sound like a man willing to relent, unlike the guards manning Qandbajar’s circle wall. Some men are bought with gold, others with fear, and yet more with common sense. What the magus’ currency was, I could not say. If it was as my own — if it was faith itself that had hired him, then we were in for a long siege.

I sat on my unfolded stool and took the water into my mouth. I let it settle on my dry throat, crunched the ice with my teeth, and swallowed. The ice we’d brought would not last the length of the siege, so it was an enjoyment I ought to savor.

An iron-clad legionary poked his head in. “Legate Tomas to see you, Lord Imperator.”

I nodded. “Let him come.”

Tomas strode in, still wearing his regal robes, spun of wool from his lavish estate on the breezy seaside of Deimos. The fur accenting the collar of his silver and rose shirt seemed suffocating, as did that turquoise bauble around his neck. From how sweat-soaked he was, and from his pungency, he obviously had not acclimated to the desert.

“How did it go?” he asked.

“The Zelthuriyans will stay in their caves and resist.”

“No surprise. And have you given thought to my proposal?”

His proposal. I wanted to spit on his silver sandals. To simply march past Zelthuriya, into the eastern lands, and down unto the peninsula of Kashan — wherein it was said they worship blood gods even stranger than those of the Yunan icelands — was a cowardly tactic.

We’d already spent a year conquering Himyar and Labash. Though taking Himyar was a bloody struggle, the Labashites surrendered quickly, and their Negus even accepted the Archangel into his heart.

“We did not come for the wealth of the east,” I said. “We came for their hearts and souls.”

“But with their wealth — and ever more hearts and souls — we can return to Zelthuriya stronger. I hear the Kashanese have tamed mighty mammoths for use in war.”

“We are already strong. And Kashan will be no walk through a pleasure garden. They say wormrot plagues the land. Better to wait that out before marching through its jungles. At least a year.”

“A year in this heat. Watching the mountains and waiting for the Zelthuriyans to surrender. When it is said that many don’t even need to eat or drink. That their faith nourishes them.”

“I am committed to this course, Legate. Best you and the others expend every resource to ensure this siege a triumph.”

From Tomas’ ugly scowl, it was obvious he did not appreciate my resolve. He rarely did. During the succession wars, he was oft counted among one faction or another opposing mine. Except for that rainy summer — now twelve moons ago — when we briefly aligned to snuff out the Brine Lord of Dycondi. But even after that victory, Tomas rushed to align against me, until I was the only power left to align with.

Still, I added him to my stable of allies. You can never have enough. I’d witnessed others inflict vengeance for reasons both petty and noble, and so knew well the folly of punitive retribution — though some exceptions had to be made for terrible men. Ultimately, I’d triumphed by being a unifier. I called to the foundation we all stood upon, the Ethos faith, and made it the unshakable pillar upon which I hoisted my Eight-Legged Banner. And in doing so, I did not discriminate between enemies and allies. An endless war only ended the day all surrendered to crown me.

And then we pushed east. Men that for decades had slaughtered each other now together slaughtered the infidel. But even with unbelievers, I preferred to make common cause. It would not be faith that united us — yet — but a baser calling: safety in body and wealth. I would keep the people of Qandbajar safe, something their saint-king failed to do, and thus win their loyalty before our faith won their hearts.

“Tomas.” I snapped my fingers. “Where is my son?”

“Doran is helping build the trenchworks.”

“Getting his hands sandy, is he?”

“As you well know, the boy — or rather man, given how broad his shoulders have become — leads by example. Rather like his father.”

I beamed, despite Tomas’ obvious ingratiation. His tongue was oft honeyed. Whenever it wasn’t — like a few minutes ago — you knew he was expressing his true yearnings and fears.

“I would spend an hour in prayer,” I said. “After, I’ll take questions from all and hear any concerns. We will do this siege right, as we did when saving Kostany from the Saturni and their pompous pyromancers.”

That was a hard-won siege. Kostany’s walls might not be mountains, but they were the next best thing: high, thick, and worst of all, deep. The imperator who’d built them a hundred years ago was said to have drawn the designs himself, though he’d no background in engineering or wall works. Rather, the specifications came to him in a divine dream, in which the angel Malak promised him pillars as sturdy as his own. Those walls had kept Kostany safe from khagans and raiders. But they could not keep it safe from me, which further proved my chosen purpose.

“I don’t doubt your earnestness.” Given the softness of Tomas’ tone, he was ready to relent. While an ambitious man, he no longer let ambition outstrip practicality. Opposing me was simply bad for his health, and the health of his house and children, and he knew it well. Especially after I’d slain two of his sons in battle. He’d known it now for over a decade, and so had everyone in my assembly of prefects, legates, and priests. That was the only way to rule: show those with ambition their highest seat was just beneath yours, and to even attempt to rise would guarantee ruin.

“But you do doubt something,” I said. “What would it take to ease your heart?”

“I’m afraid after sighting that blood cloud, nothing can ease my heart save my featherbed in Deimos.”

“You’re not the only one shaken by such nasty omens. The east is darkened by sorceries. Beguiled by demons. We must be ready for worse. Our holy fire will chase all rats out of their roosts. We must armor our hearts with faith as we do our bodies with iron.”

“You are wise, Lord Imperator. But the Abyad translator…” Tomas shuddered, his jaw stuck in fear or hesitation.

“What did he say?”

“He said the blood cloud comes from a land deep in the Endless Waste. A cursed crack in the earth called the God Sea. He said those born beneath such clouds are blessed with the power to write with blood. And he said there are tribes of these bloodwriters nearby, in the Vogras, and that they will not leave us alone for attacking this unholy city.”

“The Vogras… that’s a few days’ ride. No matter. We’ll root out those who failed Marot’s trial.”

“And if we come against blood magic? What equal do we have?”

“‘Before faith, all darkness flees.’ So it is written in Angelsong.”

“I have found darkness to be unmoving. It is the light that comes and goes.”

He was anxious. No Crucian army had ever gone this deep into Latian lands, so we all ought to be wary.

“I know we are each uneasy to be far from our hearths and harvests. But I unified Crucis and the Ethos with this very purpose. To fulfill prophecy. Nowhere in Angelsong is it written that such things are easy. No, it will be a greater trial of faith than any before or after.”

Tomas nodded in his slow, thoughtful way. “Even the priests lack such reassuring words. I have always found it difficult to have faith, especially when faced with such bottomless suffering. But today, I will count myself among the faithful. I’ll do my utmost to reassure the legions.”

“Thank you, Tomas. Your service is ever appreciated.”

At that, he left me to my prayers. I knelt, closed my eyes, and pictured the Archangel in my heart, as I’d done since I was a boy. My faith was the only thing that had not changed, not since the day my father first took me to the chapel. It was still the faith of that innocent heart, and carried with it the same childish hopes.

And yet, now when I pictured the Archangel, his wings vast across the clouds, his many eyes watching the world from every possible angle, there was something else. Something dark in heaven above. Something that no light could illuminate. And it was vast, as if encompassing a thousand thousand leagues. Worse, it was growing. Growing and encroaching. Soon, it would cover everything, and no longer could we avert our gaze.

We’d have to face it.

That night, someone shook my shoulders till I woke from a dreamless sleep.

“Lord Imperator, the blood cloud has returned.” My son’s ever-deepening voice.

“Doran.” I sat up in my pallet and reached for my water jug, hoping to ease my nighttime dryness. But as soon as I sipped, I spat it out.

That was not water. Too metallic and viscous. And judging by the stain on my blanket, too red.

“Father, we must flee.” He was six and ten years, but the fear in his cheeks made him seem no older than ten. His dark curls dropped onto his bulging shoulders, hardened from laboring like any man in my army.

“Flee? From what?”

“The cloud. The cloud of blood and screams. Don’t you hear it, Father?”

I stilled and focused on the rustling breeze. Behind it lay something else… wails. Shrieks. As if an entire city were boiling alive. Men, women, and children, bathing in their own enflamed blood and innards. And it came from above.

I stood and grabbed my spatha, as if it could protect me from a cloud. Still, I felt safer strapping it to my belt. With my son at my side, I went through the tent flap and stepped onto the sand of the Zelthuriyan Desert.

The sky was a bulbous, bubbling red. It covered all corners, as if an evil god had unrolled a blood-soaked carpet above us. Now I saw those arms and legs, dipping in and out of the cloud, as if those suffering within yearned for escape, only to be pulled inside by whatever demons stirred that cauldron.

I swallowed, tasting the blood I’d sipped earlier. “That magus must’ve directed it back here. He means to chase us away. It is but a vain trick.”

“Father, this is no trick. All the water in the wells has turned red. Every morsel of food is bursting with rotten, black blood.”

“This is the evil we came to destroy, Doran. If I run from it, then how can I call myself the Opener?”

“How will we eat or drink? Would you have us sup upon something so vile?”

“There is worse in this world, my son. I have beheld such. I see it even in my prayers. There is a darkness vast, one that was not created, but rather is threaded into the fabric of everything.”

My handsome son scrunched his eyes and shook his head. How black his hair was, and yet it curled, unlike mine or his mother’s. Neither were we a family so broadly built as him, with such staunch chins and wavy brows.

“What would you have us do, Father?”

“Tell the men to stand upon the faith. This cloud will pass, as all do. Our zeal will outlast it. Then, we will commence our siege and put an end to such sorceries and demonic tricks for all time. Anyone — and I mean anyone — who runs will be hunted down, and shall taste their own blood in their throats. I will cut their necks slow, and I’ll proclaim their dishonor in every corner of Holy Crucis, such that even their own mothers will curse their names.”

I went about the camp shouting, “Steel your faith! These are but the guiles of the Fallen. Do not fear, for we have the angels at our backs!”

To the credit of my men, none fled. Many held hands with their brothers and hymned the holy verses of Angelsong, all while staring defiantly at the sky, as if their words could send that blood cloud on its way. But I knew it would be a harder trial than that.

I sighted Tomas on the back of a camel. The Abyad translator sat at the front as the camel raised its long neck. The beast was laden with wooden cases and fabric rolls.

“Where are you going, Legate?” I asked, my face level with his silver shoes.

“Lord Imperator, you must give the command to flee. We ought to make for Qandbajar and return here only once this cloud has passed.”

I sighed with disappointment. “If this is all it takes to make us flee, they’ll do this again when we return. The magus is playing his trick, and we must outlast it.”

“This is not a trick,” the Abyad translator said in his crooked lilt. He was a young man with a swirl-shaped scar beneath one eye, whom we’d employed because he spoke many languages of both west and east. “The magi are as much at the mercy of these things as us. Even the jinn flee in the face of such evil. My people tell a story — strange things that live within the God Sea are stirred every seven hundred or so years. This cloud was born from the God Sea itself, and so we are right to fear what it may bring.”

I drew my sword and brandished it at his kidney, the tip jutting into his tapestried robe. “I fear only the angels. And they fear nothing. You will cease inspiring cowardice, or I will water the sand with your innards.”

“Go ahead. I’d rather die than live through what’s about to happen here.”

“And what’s about to happen?” I asked. “All it’s doing is floating. Maybe it’ll rain some, but so what? We are each soldiers. Do you think we have not bathed in blood, our own and others? Do you think we haven’t suffered a symphony of screams? We have brought more screams to this earth than any cloud.”

“You’ve let your arrogance blind you.” The Abyad tugged one end of his jade turban. “Doubtless, this blood cloud is here to punish you. It is an ill-fate that sees me trapped in your orbit.”

“Get down off that camel,” I ordered. “The cloud is a fright, for true. But I’m far more terrifying. Don’t make me prove it.”

“Your blade will give me one death. I say that’s better than the many-fold deaths up there.”

I wound my arm to stab the camel through the neck before they could flee. But then the sky flashed, as if lightning had erupted across the blood cloud.

We all looked up.

The cloud billowed. It breathed. Its breadth extended for miles, and as the screams loudened, a haze drifted downward at speed.

“It’s coming!” Tomas shouted. “Archangel save us!”

Most of my legionaries stood in their irons, facing the descending blood cloud with prayers on their tongues. But for some, the sight of those oily, eyeball-filled tentacles slithering within it was too much. They ran, scattering across the sands, as if that would save them.

As for me, I’d been warned about these terrors. About what the Uncreated could conjure from its perch outside of time and creation. I’d even seen them in my prayers, of all places. I stared straight as red fog immersed us, thickening until it was as suffocating as smoke.

And for a moment, the screams and prayers ceased. Everything was silent.

Everything was still. I stood alone in a bloody haze, my lower half obscured by its thickness. A sudden chill breezed onto my bones, and as I shuddered, the stench of molten copper and ungodly rot assaulted my nose.

“So this is it,” I said. “Not such a terror. Let it pass. By the Archangel, let it pass.”

And then it began to thin, and we found ourselves somewhere else.

The post ELDER EPOCH | PROLOGUE | BASIL first appeared on Zamil Akhtar | Fantasy Author.

Get it at https://Books2Read.com/LB

The post Lightblade Launch first appeared on Zamil Akhtar | Fantasy Author.

Because pain, I’d been told, makes you strong.

To begin, I got a black-market modification on my dream crystal. Had to go beneath the bridge and trust this guy who said he also gave “perfectly legal haircuts.” Took an hour for him to finish the mod, which he did while asleep. That way, his consciousness could perfectly direct the creative energy flowing into the crystal. He changed it physically; he cut new edges and lines upon and within the crystal; he erased older, frayed ones. I prayed the camp police wouldn’t spot the difference.

Oh, and I handed him a pocket full of shiny emirils, six months of my salary. Earned from hard, bitter, soul-crushing labor.

It was the moment of truth. If he messed it up, fair chance I’d enter an unwaking dream and spend eternity reliving my worst memories. Or perhaps my soul would become trapped in its own tiny world, an island barely big enough to stand on; I’d be a god there, at least. Or maybe I’d boil in a new kind of hell.

I sat on my sweat-stinking mattress, clutched the fire-colored crystal in my trembling hands, and told myself that whatever waited, it couldn’t be worse than living in this coffin these past twelve years. I had six days left to live, and had to make them count.

I pushed the dream crystal into the empty slot in my chest. It snapped into place; it twinkled and sent a jolt through my bones and muscles, shocking me. So far, so good. I lay on my mattress, stared out my tiny window at the crimson sun, closed my eyes, and thought of the beach from a childhood memory — how the sand had warmed my calves as the waves of the sky lake kissed my toes. I heard the laughter of my sister and brother in the soulful breeze, and I turned to see them throwing seashells at each other…

That breeze took my soul. Carried it like a feather to the realm of the dream stone.

I washed up on a sandy shore. The surrounding palm trees grew human hands instead of branches, all clutching emeralds. A seagull sang a catchy song about the letters of the alphabet. Well, something had gone wrong, and this wrongness got me lucid quick.

I got up, brushed diamond dust off my puffy pants, and walked across the sand. A tribe of pale-skinned men without heads tossed spears at the sea turtles crawling to the shore. Then they ripped off the turtle shells, stood on them, and rode them into the sky.

So skyboards were turtle shells. Tree branches were human hands. Fruits were emeralds. Unsound dream logic, to say the least.

Did I just waste six months of soul-charring labor on this? I’d been to this island thousands of times, but it’d never been so bizarre. Too many glitches. But that didn’t matter so long as I got the one thing I’d asked for.

At the island’s center, past the palm groves, sat a log cabin. Another glitch: three dancing bears floated above its door. Worse, they were dancing upon flying sharks, and these sharks sang together in an epic symphony: a song only appropriate for a world-ending battle.

Now normally, a woman would be waiting for me inside on a feather mattress, and she’d be in her underwear, obviously. That was the purpose of the dream stone. They gave each of us prisoners one to make us happy, pliable, and better builders of Emperor Sanga Surapsani’s war machines.

But all kinds of dream stones existed. Literally anything imaginable could be contained in the more expensive ones that were illegal in the camp. And since one hour of sleep was one day here in the dream, I could accomplish anything if I put my mind to it.

I opened the door. A woman stood against the wall. Because she was only a mod, she still had my old companionship program’s pleasant almond-shaped eyes and proud nose. The only difference: this woman’s hair was wavy and blue instead of straight and brown. Also, her rigid posture made her look two inches taller. She wore an untucked white button-down shirt beneath her lapis blazer and flexible, velvety black pants, which seemed comfortable enough for fighting.

Most importantly, she was clutching a sword hilt in her hands. A beam of straight-edged electric fire shot off that sword hilt: a lightblade.

Her eyes widened upon seeing me. “You’re here to train?”

I cleared my throat and nodded. “Yeah, I am. So can you teach me to make one of those?”

“Of course.” She nodded back rapidly. Her lightblade sparked as she retracted the beam. Now she held a beamless sword hilt. “I’m lightblade training program zero-four… or was it three? No — zero-four-six-eight.” She scratched her chin and winced. “I think?”

Well, those numbers meant nothing to me. Still, struggling to remember her designation was hardly a good sign. Could I really rely on her to teach me, especially when I had so few breaths remaining in the real world? “I’m Jyosh. Wonderful hair, by the way.”

“Oh, t-thanks.” She tugged on a strand of her lush blue hair, as if surprised. “Here, have one of these.”

She tossed a piece of metal at me. I fumbled the catch and it dropped near my feet with a clank. I bent down and picked it up: a perfectly polished sword hilt.

I gripped it and held it aloft, like I’d always imagined doing, though there was no light beam projecting off it yet.

“All wrong.” The woman balled her hands into fists and stuck them against her hips. “Your stance is of immense importance. Beginners shouldn’t raise the hilt to eye level — you’re inviting your enemy to carve up your chest, where your heart and crystal are. And that’s how you die.” She pointed to the door. “Let’s take this outside.”

Well, this was delightfully different. It seemed she did have the knowledge to train me. Expectation welled up in my chest. I smiled to hide my nerves.

We left the cabin and walked some distance into a clearing amid the palm groves, away from the dancing bears and the weird song the sharks were singing.

“So, what’s your name?” I asked.

“I gave you my designation. But if you feel more comfortable with a name, call me… Zauri. Any other questions before we get started?”

“What year were you programmed? And where?”

“I was programmed in the floatland of Salkofy in Karsha, in the year twelve-seven-forty-one.”

So nineteen years ago — outdated by Karshan standards. But all she had to do was teach me to make a lightblade, which was a timeless thing. Still, a new program would’ve had better training features. I needed everything to go my way if I were to succeed.

Zauri came to my side. My hairs tingled upon sensing an unfamiliar, yet melancholic blue shimmer around her body. It flickered for a moment and disappeared. Was her frequency leaking?

“I’m setting the sun to create only red light.” Zauri opened her left palm; a terminal window appeared and floated above it. She tapped on the terminal a few times.

The sun turned from yellow to red, casting the sky and the island and even her in a dismal, ruddy glow.

I tried not to act surprised; I never knew that a program could change the settings of my dream. I always thought only I could.

“Given your age, I’m sure you already know that red light is used for combat,” Zauri said. “Here in the dream, we can amplify any wavelength of the sun we want — to make training easier. But eventually, you’re going to have to learn to inhale red light in the real world, where it’ll be weaker.”

True, I wouldn’t have the luxury of these beginner settings in the real world. It was nice of her to do all this thinking on my behalf. But how much could I trust her knowledge? “You a military program, by any chance?”

Hair got in her face when she shook her head. “I was scripted for children.”

Of course. Even the children in Karsha could form lightblades. That was why that country was so powerful. Meanwhile, all I got as a dumb five-year-old was a toy lightblade.

I sighed at a memory of me banging my toy lightblade against a tree. I’d imagined that poor cedar to be one of the Emperor’s enemies. How perilous that I’d now become what I’d once fantasized about fighting.

Zauri put her hand on mine. She didn’t feel like my old companionship program anymore; they were nothing alike in mannerisms or speech patterns. She even smelled different: no tangy perfume — which was my companionship program’s default smell setting — just a sour sweat, as if she’d come off a machinist shift. Strange, since we’d barely exerted ourselves so far.

She repositioned my fingers on the hilt. “It’s a basic thing, but you want your fingers looser, less tense. Wrap your thumb around the side.”

I did as she instructed. “Like this?”

“Yes, good. Now, inhale the light. If, for whatever reason, you can’t inhale enough red light, I can hold your hand and flow mine into you.”

“I’ve never inhaled red light. Plenty of green, though. Let me try on my own first.”

I stared up at the crimson sun. To see it so high in the sky instead of at the horizon, and even redder than the ever-dusk, was… ominous. If I were awake, I might think the world was ending.

I focused on the sun’s glow and inhaled. Red light flowed into the crystal in my chest. The light pulsed through my veins, accumulating in my hand. I pushed the light into the sword hilt, and then opened my eyes.

A faint red beam protruded from the hilt where a metal blade would be. But it bulged unevenly — not the right shape. I closed my eyes and inhaled more red light. I cycled it into my beating heart, through my veins, and pushed it into the hilt. It spattered like a leaking pipe off the end instead of creating a blade. I pushed even more in; it refused to straighten.

This bleeding, uneven beam certainly couldn’t cut.

“Allow me to help you.” Zauri put her hand around my wrist. Red light from her hand flowed into mine; her light was so uniform, so pure, so purposed.

I pushed it into the hilt.

A red beam about the size of my arm erupted, shimmering, shadows whirling around it.

I’d done it… sort of. I was holding a lightblade.

But when Zauri lifted her hand, it flickered, faded, and disappeared. I inhaled more of the sun’s red light, cycled it through me as quickly as I could, and pushed it into the sword hilt.

It got hot. Sparks fizzled off the end. I willed it to solidify and straighten, but it was like trying to move a numb arm. It seemed I couldn’t create a straight beam on my own. Dammit! I gritted my teeth and let out a frustrated grunt.

“It’s a start.” Zauri gave me a tepid smile.

That wasn’t how my companionship program would smile. It was still strange to look at someone who had her face, but not her soul. Although, I wasn’t sure if either of them had souls.

“Where did I mess up?”

“You didn’t mess up. You’re just inexperienced.”

“When you held my hand, you must’ve felt how I cycled the red light. Do I have any talent for it?”

She bit her lip in obvious apprehension.

“I’m no child. You need not protect my ego. I’m twenty-four years old — if I remember how to count. I’ve lived my entire adult life in a prison, scorching my soul seven days a week with green light. Green light used to power machines. I know it’s worn out my veins, nearly made me a husk. I’ve seen how the camp police dispose of those who can no longer conduct light.”

I’d never told my miseries to my companionship program. Probably because I knew how she’d respond: with fake concern. Maybe even a hug and a kiss. And I didn’t want to be comforted, to be told it would be okay. I was here to bathe in my pain, not pretend it didn’t exist.

“I know you’re not a child. The truth is, I think you can make a lightblade, but that’s not saying much.”

“Obviously it’s not saying much. I’m sure even an eight-year-old in Karsha can make a lightblade. But what I want to know is — can I make a lightblade that can kill?”

“Any lightblade can kill. It’s the skill of the user versus that of the opponent that determines whether it will kill. So that I can form a lesson plan, I’ll need to know — who are you trying to kill?”

I could tell her, couldn’t I? She was a program existing only in my dream, so why not? The prison camp guards never seized our dream stones for inspection, so the chance they’d learn about my intentions from Zauri was practically zero. Perhaps she could even help me plan the whole thing.

“I’m going to kill the Emperor. I’m going to kill His Holiness Raja Sanga Surapsani.”

Her eyebrows climbed into her forehead. “Oh… isn’t he the son of the Raja of Maniza, or is my memory outdated?”

“The bastard is the Emperor, now. Has been for the past fifteen years.”

“Emperor… weird, I’ve never heard such a lofty title used for the Manizan Rajas. Anyway…” She darted her fire-colored eyes around in hesitation. “You want my opinion on your chances?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Like any head of state, he’ll be surrounded by bodyguards and decoys. And they’ll be the most powerful your country has to offer. I’d guess a small army of highly trained combat conductors would only stand a small chance of killing him. You’ll barely have any chance at all.”

I knew that much. Still, it ached my heart to hear it. “Look, it’s not about actually killing him. Even if I did succeed, his son would just take his place. It’s more about sending a message. That he can’t do what he’s doing to us and just expect us to take it. Someone has to hit back.” I gritted my teeth. “I just want him to feel fear. If he feels fear, then I’ve killed something inside him, the way he killed the light inside of me. Then I’ve won a small victory — my first and final. Sure, they’ll behead me for it — or worse — but I died a long time ago anyway.”

Zauri scratched her head, her expression awash with disbelief. “So, if I’m understanding this right, all you basically want is to attempt to take his life with a lightblade. You accept that you’re most likely going to fail, but you hope it might, at the very least, terrify him. I… think we can manage that. But getting your lightblade stable will take weeks of training. How long do you usually sleep?”

“Four hours. The standard.”

“So it means we have four days in this session. I’m going to make it count.” Determination shone in her eyes. She grinned. “Sound good?”

After a few hours of failing to project a lightblade off the sword hilt, I almost regretted deleting my companionship program. Inhaling and circuiting red light, when your veins have only tasted green for twelve years, was exhausting. It was as if your blood had turned to oil. I wanted to lie down and give up. But someone had to send Emperor Sanga a message he would never forget.

I hoped I had enough time. I wished I had a deeper dream stone with more than one layer. I’d heard that in Karsha’s black markets, they sold illegal dream stones with ten layers, each layer taking you deeper into the dream and exponentially increasing the time you could spend there. And if you were wired with others in a conduit, you could all live entire lifetimes together, in a single night. But I’d also heard of terribly glitched dream stones that take you to strange, indescribable places where reality has different rules. Where things fall up, where the sun freezes, where clocks run backward. Most who awakened from such dreams, which sometimes lasted billions of years, couldn’t readjust to society. My father once told me that a man who reemerged from the deepest of dream layers even claimed he found the Originator living there.

“You’re so stuck in your thoughts,” Zauri said. I’d forgotten she was standing next to me.

“Guess I need a break. Hope you don’t mind.”

Zauri gave me a weak shrug. “You’re the boss.”

“Care to join?”

Another shrug. “Sure.”

We went to the beach and sat on the sand. Waves whispered toward our toes. The horizon had no end. The world of the dream stone seemed so vast.

“I should tell you something,” I said. Seemed the right time for an awkward truth. “You’re a bootleg program.”

Zauri raised an eyebrow. Hers looked a bit snakier than my companionship program’s. “So that’s why this environment seems so odd. It’s like I wasn’t born to be here.”

“I couldn’t afford to buy a new dream stone. And even if I did buy one, it’s illegal, so I’d be executed if found out. Instead, I had someone copy a lightblade training program onto the only dream stone I owned. Umm, the thing is…” My head itched. “Thing is, that dream stone had a companionship program on it. Aside from your blue hair — and maybe your eyebrows — you look exactly like her.”

“Oh.”

“But you don’t behave like her. It’s just weird for me, that’s all. I guess to save time, the modder kept your appearance mostly the same. I kind of wish he hadn’t. It’s distracting.”

“I understand. Thanks for explaining.”

“You’re really different, though. It’s odd. You feel almost like a real person.”

“Of course I do. My script is as large as yours.”

Was that a joke? I couldn’t help but chuckle nervously.

“It’s true,” Zauri said. “I’m guessing the companionship program you had me replace was much smaller by comparison. The inexpensive programs tend to have their memory and bandwidth artificially limited. Dream stones are quite cheap to produce, so to create demand for the premium tier ones, they make the cheaper ones worse on purpose.” She bit her lip. “I have no idea why I know all this, but it feels like the truth to me.”

Well, that made sense. Of course the camp minders would give us the cheapest dream stones possible. That was why the woman in my companionship program, whom I called Prisaya, felt like a program and not a person.

“So, then, how big is your script, exactly?”

“Like I said. As big as yours.”

“Does that mean… you’re alive?”

A wave surged into my thighs, leaving them cold.

“Am I alive?” Zauri shook her head. “I don’t think so. I’m a program.”

This was all a little too confusing. “Aha. So seeming alive must be part of your script, then. Now that I think about it, it took me a few weeks to exhaust my companionship program’s script. For a while, I felt like she was a real, breathing human being. But slowly, I saw her… repeat things. What I believed to be as endless as that ocean suddenly seemed nothing more than a puddle.” I nodded with understanding. “But in any case, I deleted her to make room for you. So I can learn to make a lightblade. And hopefully die better than I lived.”

Zauri’s chuckle endeared. It was almost soundless — mostly a concert of stifled breaths. “Well, I wasn’t programmed for philosophy or metaphysics. I attained a basic education, equal to a low Karshan noble. I was taught to train children how to form their first lightblades, and a few other useful basics. I’m afraid, if you weren’t shortly intending to embark on a suicide mission, you’d eventually outgrow my usefulness.”

“When you say ‘attained’ and ‘taught,’ you mean ‘programmed,’ right?”

She paused for a moment, obviously stuck in thought. Then she nodded.

“Do you have memories from before I came here?”

“They’re not memories like yours. It’s more of a… sense of self, and a knowing of who I am and my purpose. If I were like a newborn babe, I’d be useless to you, right? I merely exist to help you with whatever capacities I have.”

Oh. Well, now she was talking like a program, and that made me less unsettled but more… alone.

The seawater had wet her pants, and now they clung to her thighs. Such familiar thighs. My companionship program’s thighs.

“I should tell you that I don’t have genitalia.”

I snapped back to attention. “Why would you — why would you mention that?” My cheeks heated up.

“No need to be embarrassed. Just wanted to make that clear. I might look like your companionship program, but key things are… missing.”

“G-Good. Good. They give us those companionship programs so that we feel comfortable enough not to fight back. I’m done being comfortable while roasting in hell. I’m here to train, nothing else.”

“Let’s go train, then. Progress might inspire you. Throw off that melancholy.” Zauri stood, dusted sand off her thighs, and held out her hand. “Shall we get back to work?”

I guess it would take time to adjust to her. And speaking of adjustment — why the hell had the modder turned her hair blue? Not that I didn’t love it.

I grabbed her hand. She pulled me up as if I were made of air.

“I think you’re ready for a basic technique. Might help you form the lightblade.”

“Sorry for being so slow.”

“Don’t apologize. Helping you isn’t just my job, it’s my whole purpose. In that spirit, here’s what you’re doing wrong. You’re treating red light the same as you treat green light, but they’re totally different. Red light has a lower frequency and longer wavelength. It’s low energy. The distance between the crests and troughs on its waves is vaster. You have to be more patient when cycling it.”

I pinched my chin, frustrated. “You’re getting rather jargony. Listen, I might be twenty-four, but I have the education of a twelve-year-old. A twelve-year-old who skipped class to smoke cigars with his dumb friends. So spell it out in a way a braindead fool could understand.”

Zauri bit her lip as if pained by my words. “Sorry.” Considering her tone, it sounded as genuine an apology as I’d ever heard. “I think… I could show you? I can hold your hand, and you can feel and copy how I let the light flow through me.”

Sounded swell. I took her hand. There was this buzzing vibration that flowed from her into me. Or maybe I was just nervous.

I clutched my sword hilt with my other hand, closed my eyes, and focused on her frequency. Her inner light showed how she inhaled the red waves: as calm as a mountain breeze. She let it circuit through her heart in harmony; it pulsed and flitted as it went from her veins into mine. I did my best to slow down. I matched my breathing to hers. But when I pushed the red light, it lost cohesion and turned messy, like hair getting caught in a brush.

Only sputters and sparks appeared on my sword hilt.

“Keep trying,” she said in the softest voice. “It just takes practice. I swear.”

I hadn’t felt so mothered since I was twelve. How comforting to have a teacher. To have someone making you better.

After ten minutes of standing on the sand, holding her hand, and cycling the sun’s bloody light through me, I got into the rhythm of things. My heartbeat slowed, and a breeze streamed through the dreamscape, cooling my angst. More red light reached my hand. When I pushed it into the hilt, a light the size of my fist grew off the end.

“See?” An excited smile stretched across Zauri’s face. “You’re doing it!”

I imagined the blade: a long, slightly curved beam of deathly red. How glorious!

But when I pushed more red into the hilt, it was as if my hand choked. Sparks flew like birds taking off. One caught my hand and jolted me like lightning. I yelped from the shock and dropped the hilt.

“The hell!? There’s pain here?”

I never asked the modder to add pain to the dream stone. Puffy burns streaked across my palm, trailing from my pinky to my thumb.

Zauri took my sizzling hand. She closed her eyes and pulsed violet light into me. It soothed the burn. Lulled away the pain.

When she let go, my burn was gone. Good to know lightblade training programs could heal their students.

“There’s pain here, but it’s a lot less than what you would’ve experienced in the real world. That slip could’ve cost you your entire hand. In battle, it could’ve cost you your life.”

“I once fell off a mountain and it was like landing on a giant marshmallow. There’s not supposed to be pain here.”

“All lightblade training programs have pain. The modder must’ve added it. It’s necessary when training to feel pain, otherwise you won’t learn. Fighting is all about pain — how to avoid it, mostly. Get used to it.” She bit her lip again. Her nervous habit, I assumed. “Here’s the thing. You got the flow right. The light reached your hand red and whole, but your technique of pushing it into the hilt was… well, it was rushed. Once again, you were pushing it like it’s green light. A consistency of flow is needed with red.”

I sighed, annoyed with myself. There was much to learn. And even more to unlearn, it seemed. “All right. Can you do it, and I’ll hold your hand and feel how you pushed the light through?”

“Of course.”

She didn’t so much as push it through but rather gave it a gentle tap. And she timed her taps in a catchy rhythm so the light reached her hilt in even flows. Almost like she was pacing it to the beat of a sweet song.

“Gonna take a while for me to get that right,” I said. “When you’ve circuited light a certain way your entire life, it becomes mostly automatic. It’s hard to force myself to do it your way. And to be honest, I’m feeling a bit… burned out.”

Burned out was the perfect word. I’d been feeling burned out for the past year, but the camp police and the Surapsanis they answered to couldn’t care less about what any of us felt. In the dreamscape, I had respite from the real world, but by replacing my companionship program with a lightblade training program, I’d renounced that escape. I had to be as hard on myself as they’d been on me and the other prisoners.

“If you’re feeling burned out, take another break. It’s best to listen to what your body’s saying.”

I grunted and shook my head. “You’re too nice, you realize?”

“I’m supposed to be nice. I was created to train children… noble children, who wouldn’t have to use their lightblades in actual battles, just as a basic thing to know for the sake of their prestige. But if you want me to be less nice… I can try.”

Damn. This program showed more self-awareness than half the fools I knew in the waking world. Although I couldn’t blame my fellow prisoners; they were programmed by their fears, as I was. “Just do what you have to do so that I learn. We don’t have all that long.”

“Can I ask — when are you planning on executing your mission?”

“Sanga Surapsani will tour the factory I work at in six days. So six days, four hours of sleep each day, that’s — and I’m shitty at math — but I think that’s twenty-four dream days we have to train.”

“Is your factory so important that the Raja himself would visit?”

A good question. “It’s not important. I don’t know what would motivate him to visit us, of all places. But a camp warden said as much, and lying about the Raja would be suicidal, so I believe it.”

“It just really deviates from the norm. But if you believe it, I’ll believe it.”

I opened my left hand. The dreamscape control terminal appeared, floating above my palm. I tapped Order > Item > Cigar and hoped that the modder hadn’t removed cigars.

To my delight, a red-wrapped and sweet-smelling cigar materialized in the air in front of me, already lit. I grabbed it and took a puff.

Ah… like inhaling life itself. That spicy, black cardamom flavor — it so reminded me of home.

I continued tapping on the terminal. I flicked through the settings menu. Something made my eyes bulge — Sweat Setting: High. It was grayed out. I couldn’t change it. Why, of all things, was adjusting our sweatiness inaccessible? Was this the modder’s sly joke?

“Is it good?” Zauri asked.

I snapped my attention back to her and my cigar. “Definitely. You want one?”

“Yeah. Okay.”

I was expecting her to say no. Prisaya never smoked.

I ordered one and put it in Zauri’s hand. She took a long puff.

Then coughed it all out.

“Suppose my,” cough, “smoking technique is all wrong.” She grinned.

Wait… was that humor? Was she comparing her poor smoking technique with my poor lightblade technique?

Sharper wit than I was used to.

“You can make a lightblade, but you can’t smoke a cigar properly?”

“It’s not something I’ve ever tried before. What do you expect?”

What did I expect? Good question.

“I’m curious about something.” She stared into my eyes, as if probing my soul. “If you don’t want to explain, you don’t have to. But from what I’ve gleaned, your life is very difficult. It seems that you’re some kind of political prisoner, though you haven’t mentioned what you were accused of. Nowhere in the world are such prisoners treated kindly, so I can understand your desperation. But why resort to an assassination attempt, especially when it’s almost akin to suicide? Isn’t there something better you could do?”

I shook my head. Her understanding of me was so barebones. “Sure, I could just bear it. I’ve been a prisoner for twelve years, so what’s another twelve? You want to know what drove me over the edge? It all started when—”

Zauri flickered. For a moment, her face changed to one I didn’t recognize; only her blue hair remained the same. It was as if her form was now glitching, too.

Then my cigar flickered, turning into a soup of orange lines and bizarre, squiggly letters. The same happened to the palm trees. And the sky. Even the ground phased in and out of existence, replaced by lines and letters.

After a second, everything went back to normal.

“Did you see that?” I asked.

“See what?” She glanced around as if nothing happened.

“Everything got weird for a moment.”

Light-headedness overtook me. A shudder seized my soul. Now, it was as if my brain itself flickered. My mind went dark, and my sense of identity drained out of me. I couldn’t even recall my own name. “Ugh. I’m suddenly very confused.” I let the cigar fall out of my mouth. I stared at my hands. They were ghosting to white, as if I were disappearing. “What am I… even doing here?”

“What do you mean?”

The light of my mind switched back on. I regained my sense of self. I remembered who I was. But something was different.

“Wait a minute.” I scratched my scalp as if trying to dig at a memory. “What drove me over the edge? Why did I finally decide to try to kill the Emperor?” I pulled my hair just hard enough to feel a jolt of pain.

“You were just about to tell me.”

“I know. But because of all that flickering, I can’t remember. It’s like when you sometimes forget a name or a word, but I’ve forgotten an entire memory.”

I recounted the things I did remember. I hated Sanga Surapsani. He’d forced me to watch my own sister’s beheading. He’d seized me from my home on the sky island of Harska and exiled me to a labor camp on the surface. I hated him, but I wasn’t a violent person. So why did I suddenly decide to throw comfort to the wind and learn how to make a lightblade?

An image of me washing blood off my hands flickered in my mind. It was just before I’d entered this dream. Whose blood was that?

“Listen,” Zauri said. “It could be the mod. Bootleg, black-market modifications aren’t inspected for dangerous artifacts. Something might have affected your memories just now.”

I felt like a man standing in quicksand, unable to keep himself from sinking in self-doubt.

“I need to cut this dream short. I need to wake up. Suddenly, I don’t remember what made me want to attempt to take the life of a man impossible to kill, at the cost of my life. Without that memory, this is all wrong.”

Zauri took my hand. “I understand, Jyosh.” The first time she’d said my name. “If you’re missing recent memories because of this mod, you shouldn’t continue. It may only get worse. You can wake yourself up, right? Just open the terminal and do it. I’ll be here for you, if ever you decide to resume your training. Obviously, since I can’t go anywhere. But…” She smiled sweetly. It made my heart skip a beat. “It’s strange for me to say this, but I hope I never see you again. Because if you do decide to continue training with me, it means you’re set on this suicide mission. And I’d rather not see you die.”

“Really? You care whether I live or die?”

“Why would I ever want a student to die? I want them to learn and prosper. To use their skills to thrive. I want your success, not just in learning how to make a lightblade, but in everything in life.”

Hearing that and seeing her concern, it was like a second sun shone upon me. It had been a long time since I’d felt cared for. Not since my parents and my sister Chaya were executed. I mean, obviously the companionship program cared for me, but her caring was so… false. It was like, she cared about me without even knowing me. I could’ve been a serial murderer and she would’ve loved me unconditionally. I know we all want unconditional love, but conditional love is somehow… sweeter. It shows we have value.

“I can’t promise anything,” I said. “People die all the time where I’m from. When you’re no longer of use…” I mimed slicing my own neck. “That’s it. Maybe I know my veins will soon burnout permanently from overwork, like this cigar,” I crushed the dead butt with my foot, “and so I want to get ahead of it. Decide my own death. Yeah, maybe that’s it.”

I wasn’t certain if that was it, but it seemed to ring true. Anyhow, once I woke up, I hoped to remember what motivated me to do all this. It couldn’t be the execution of my family because that happened twelve years ago. Something else had happened recently, but I couldn’t remember what it was.

“All I can say is — good luck.” Zauri still had most of her cigar left. She took a puff, then offered it to me. I tasted her saliva with my final puff; weird, how intimate that felt.

I opened my left palm; the dream console appeared above it. I flicked through the commands and tapped Wake Up.

The post Lightblade | Chapter 1 first appeared on Zamil Akhtar | Fantasy Author.

Before that, I was a horror writer. I wrote cosmic horror and djinn short stories for Reddit’s NoSleep community. I had also just finished the first draft of a horror novel, but I wasn’t too happy with how it turned out, so shelved it for the time being (it’s still shelved).

So what inspired Gunmetal Gods? Well, the final season of Game of Thrones was on TV. In preparation for it, I’d rewatched the entire show in the span of a week. I had Game of Thrones on the brain. But still, I wasn’t about to write a novel inspired by it. Can you imagine how difficult that would be? How much planning it would require? How much sheer mental exertion I would have to suffer to dream up a story and world on that scale?

Horror writers don’t think up worlds and grand stories, we think up things to terrify. That was my forte, or at least I’d decided it was.

Then a friend of mine invited me over for dinner and shisha at the hazy shisha bar near his house. He’d also been watching Game of Thrones, and he had an idea: What if someone made Game of Thrones, only set in a world inspired by Middle Eastern history instead of English history?

Being a Middle Eastern history buff, I was more than pleased with the idea. Middle Eastern history is fertile ground to inspire the kinds of complicated characters, cynical themes, and grand stories found in the Song of Ice and Fire universe.

“I hope to see such a thing, some day,” I said with Lebanese pop music blaring in the background.

“You’re a writer, why don’t you write it?” my friend replied in between puffs of his hookah.

“Nah.”

The rest of the night we discussed what that could be like. The medieval Middle East was very different from medieval Europe: it didn’t have knights, serfs, and lords, which were foundational societal roles in the Song of Ice and Fire universe; rather, power was much more centralized in the Middle East, with sultans or shahs wielding direct authority over the lands they governed. And instead of armies composed of knights, most Middle Eastern armies used a combination of paid slaves, tribal and nomadic forces, and volunteers, many whom elected to join the fight for religious reasons. Dragons existed in the folklore, but other beings like simurghs and djinns were much more prominent. I’ll hopefully write a whole blog post about all the differences, later, as there are so many.

I remember going home and not thinking too much about it. The next day in the afternoon, I opened up Microsoft Word and just started writing. I imagined a middle-aged janissary being called out of retirement by his Shah, similar to how Robert Baratheon recalled Ned Stark into service in Game of Thrones. This became the first scene in Gunmetal Gods in which Kevah meets with Shah Murad, and though a lot has changed about it, the overall ideas in the scene are the same in the final version as what I wrote that day.

It’s difficult to describe how that one scene blew up into an entire book. I suppose I just followed the ideas — I wasn’t making things up, so much as these ideas were leading me to places I could never have dreamed. Within 30 days, I had completed a 140,000-word first draft.

And then the hard part began: making it good. I’ll save that for another blog post.

So here I sit, about a year since publishing the book, asking myself: did I succeed? Did I write Game of Thrones but set in the Middle East?

I would say: no. That was the inspiration and intent, sure, but Gunmetal Gods, Conqueror’s Blood, Death Rider, and the yet-to-be-published Gunmetal Gods Book 3 are quite different from A Song of Ice and Fire (and have a much heavier dose of cosmic horror). What they have in common are the epic scale, bleak themes, gray morality, politicking, grand battles, and complex, realistic characters. The fact that the Gunmetal Gods series contains all of that in a fully-realized world inspired by the Middle East is where I’d say I succeeded. I’m proud to have built a world so thoroughly enriched by the histories, cultures, beliefs, myths, lifestyles, and aesthetics of the Middle East, the region where I was born and currently call home.

In a future post, I’ll detail more about the worldbuilding process. I especially want to talk about how I was heavily inspired by a rather underappreciated period in Middle Eastern history that happens to be my favorite: the Gunpowder Empires period, in which the great empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals vied for domination. But for now, that’s all from me. Hope you enjoyed this brief but sincere retrospective and inside look on the creation of Gunmetal Gods!

The post One year since Gunmetal Gods: my thoughts Part 1 first appeared on Zamil Akhtar | Fantasy Author.

I’d imagined this moment hundreds of times since our bloody, catastrophic loss yesterday. I’d not slept, choosing instead to feel everything in my yurt, from my horse-hide blanket to the tips of my arrows, just to appreciate how solid life was. And yet, life was slipping from my grasp, carried away by a sudden, ghostly gust. I’d died this death in my mind, as if I were practicing for it, but that’d made staring into the abyss no less painful.

When they pulled off the sack, I looked around, eager to taste life with my eyes a final time. I wanted to appreciate how smooth the mud looked and how dewy the grass smelled. But…was that Pervaiz, far to the right, also kneeling and swaying his head like a dervish? And behind him…Tanya, breathing like she was birthing, her eyes these terror-filled grapes.

I wanted to call out to them. But perhaps that could wait till after we’d died. Perhaps, as we ascended to Barzakh — where all souls go — I could reach out to them, and we wouldn’t be alone on the journey.

Ten paces afield, janissaries in plumed helmets and maroon robes stood in a row. They each clutched an ornate, executioner’s matchlock, upon which was chiseled To Lat and we belong and to her we return in Paramic calligraphy. Their prayer for us.

A pace behind them stood the Shadow of God, Shah Jalal. A black cape with golden calligraphy covered his shoulders. The overcast morning darkened his already sullen face. He seemed more sad than angry, not how I’d imagined him in this moment. Not how I’d feared. I knew my turn would come if we continued to fail. And we did. We couldn’t smash through the city wall, nor climb over it, nor undermine it from below. And now Heraclius the Hated was marching at the head of twenty thousand paladins to end our siege.

To win wars, you must punish your failures as much as the enemy’s. And so, I resigned to die with understanding, free of hatred for the man I served. Choking on remorse for how I’d disappointed him, our cause, and god herself.

Shah Jalal walked to the front of his executioners. He looked at us, swallowed bitterly, and said, “You know why you’re here.” I’d never heard sorer, more pained words. Each syllable seemed to burn. “You’ve all made oaths of victory to me and to god. You’ve broken those oaths. The punishment is death.”

When he spoke, even the clouds grew ears to listen. Such iron words — the tenor of a true king — from a man who glowed strength. And yet, I could taste the regret in his dark, worn eyes. He was as resigned to killing as we were to dying — a slave to the cycle — and as he clutched his caftan as if heart-wrenched, remorse seemed to bite him.

The moment he gestured to his executioners, I wanted to cry out, wait! I wasn’t so much scared of death as dishonor. Give me another chance to lead us to victory in the Shah’s exalted name. But then the janissaries raised their matchlocks. With flints, they lit the slow matches above their barrels and aimed. No one around me cried out, so I wouldn’t, despite yearning to.

I just shut my eyes and tried to pray, though my tongue was too stuck to even mutter god’s name.

I didn’t think I’d hear the shot that killed me. But for a moment, the world was a sulfur-charred boom. Naught but yelps and screaming smoke.

I opened my eyes, ready to greet the saint who’d carry my soul to heaven. Or perhaps the fiery jinn who’d bury it in hell. But I was still kneeling in the grass, and so darted my head in every direction. To my left and right: bodies with smoking head holes. Tanya and Pervaiz, my sister-in-law and the man who’d taught my sons and daughter how to ride, were sprawled and dead. They’d gone, so why was I still here?

The janissary in front of me palmed the muzzle of his gun, to no avail. He ejected the barrel, then plunged a ramrod into it.

A charred, smoking metal ball fell from the muzzle. The devourer of my death.

The janissary bent his neck before the Shah. “Apologies, Your Glory. I’ll reload it at once.”

Shah Jalal put his hand on the young, brown-bearded man’s shoulder. Then he gazed at me. There was not so much pity in his stare but weariness. “No, don’t. Lat has given her another chance, and I’ll not risk her wrath by defying it.”

Another chance. Another chance to fail. To disappoint. To lose. A part of me would rather have died, and yet a sip of this bloody air tasted sweeter than plums.

Shah Jalal, who’d once said I was a daughter to him, came to my front. I knelt in his faint shadow as a ghostly sunshine reflected on dawn’s dismal clouds.

“Darya.” Red lines zagged into his hard pupils, which seemed to be graying along with his hair. Like me, perhaps the Shah hadn’t slept, dreading killing as much as I did dying.

“Darya.”

I met his gaze. I could tell he was already mourning me with that frown, as if I hadn’t just survived. “Yes, My Shah?”

“Darya. I don’t want you to live past this day. You’re going to go where the fighting is thickest, you’re going to charge, and you’re not going to stop until you’re filled with bloody holes. That’s all you’ve earned from this. A better death.”

Good enough. I couldn’t hope for more than a few hours of life and a warrior’s death.

“As you command, Your Glory.”

“My father died in bed, Darya. It was awful to watch him shit blood.” He gestured to the nine bodies. Janissaries were standing near each, waving the crows away. “They went better than him. You’ll go better than them.”

I nodded.

Something changed in me when the sun broke through the clouds. Time hurried like a Kashanese mare as the janissaries began planting the shrines of the dead. I remained paralyzed on my knees, the weight of life crushing me, while shovels cut through grass and mud and nine graves were dug, occupied, and covered, all amid what seemed a single exhale.

And then everything stilled. One janissary’s glimmering bead of sweat hung in the air as if frozen. Another was poised mid-motion shoveling dirt onto a grave, his soundless grunt stuck on his face. I fingered a leaf suspended above my head.

I stared up.

An eye opened in the sky. Three golden rings swirled around the eye, interlocked at perfectly distanced angles. The rings, too, had eyes, all blinking and watching me.

I blinked too, and they disappeared. I touched my face: red and mushy. Whilst I was hallucinating, the sun had stared at me, burned me. I got up, wiped mud off my trembling forearms, and looked to the western tree line that blocked the city we were sieging from view. Put one foot in front of the other, I told myself. That was the only way I’d get back to camp where loved ones waited. Certainly, they’d already despaired of my death. Take a step.

I did. One step led to another, and as I walked through the stinking bog and into the forest with its harder mud and moss-ridden oaks, I began to breathe. Big breaths. Relieved breaths. I gripped myself again; I’d need to wield myself like a sharpened shamshir for the battle to come.

Perhaps the final battle of this campaign, one that would see us sack the richest city in the west, or flee in defeat. And I was to be fodder.

*

My son was penning a letter with a thin quill when I stumbled into his yurt.

He looked up, eyes bulging with the twin images of a ghost. “Amma?”

“Yasar.” I could only mouth his name with how empty I was. He put his arms around me, covered me in a sheepskin blanket, and sat me by the yurt’s fire stove. The warmth was a balm on my nerves.

“I heard them take you and the others,” he said. “I…wanted to stop them, but…” Gazing at his pain, I couldn’t see beyond the fretful, unconfident boy. Certainly, things change, but the seeds of what he’d become were planted in that boyhood — some by me, some by his father and elder siblings and others in the tribe, but most by experience, and it hadn’t been kind to him. He was a man with a boy’s shadow, one that loomed large.

“They took me, aye, but Lat didn’t. Only she decides life and death — never forget that.” I sipped from the waterskin he handed me. Cool, soothing kumis caressed my throat, perfectly sour. “What were you writing? A love letter, I hope?”

“A love letter to whom, my horse?” Sadness tinged his chuckle. “Rather, I was telling auntie…”

Such a dutiful son. My sister and I were close, so he wanted her to know I’d departed this world. But judging from her bleak eyes the day we left for the war, perhaps she already knew.

“Tell her. I won’t even get to see the moon and stars.”

Was this the final time I’d be with Yasar? I recalled how I didn’t want him. I wanted no more children, but he was a parting gift from his father, who’d died of sweating sickness the week before I learned I was with child. I begged Lat to return my husband, that I’d trade this new son for him. And I remained cold, for years, believing that his birth and my husband’s death were an unwilling trade.

My cruelty ached as I stared into my son’s fearful eyes. He’d grown taller and fuller than his older brother and sister, somehow, and resembled his father most.

“You shouldn’t have made those promises,” Yasar said, fire in his glare. “Always too confident for your own good, Amma. Always trying to be the tip of the spear.”

“Someone has to. Else we’ll be fighting without an edge.”

“There’re a hundred thousand in this army. So why you?”

I sighed and shook my head. Yasar was too timid to understand. No, that wasn’t fair — he was even-headed, wise beyond his years; timid was an unfair stab.

Now he gazed through me, fixed on my shadow dancing against the firelight. For him, I was a ghost. And for me, he and everyone alive were ghosts because we’d soon be inhabiting different worlds. Here was a field of ghosts fighting a city of ghosts. Death was the host and life an unwelcome guest.

“What’re you thinking?” I asked as he vacantly stared. Yasar resembled me in some ways. Soft hearted, quick tempered, stubborn. He had my curly brown locks, not his father’s straighter black, though like Alep, he could grow a mustache between sunset and the noon prayer.

“When I was writing to auntie,” he swallowed, “I remembered that dog she had. The black one. It looked like a shadow.”

We’d bought that dog together. She excelled at keeping the yaks from wandering off our pastures. But one day, a yak panicked and stomped on her leg. I brought the knife to put her down, but for some reason, my sister took pity on the animal and now, four years later, still cares for it.

“It hobbles well enough on three legs,” I said, nostalgia breezing through me.

“You remind me of that dog,” my son said. “It too lived beyond its death, in a way.”

He was right. But what remained of my life would be worse. “Yasar, why didn’t I see you on the field yesterday?”

He sighed, heavy and dispirited. “Because the Shah has forbidden me from fighting.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it has something to do with you. I wish you’d not promised him so much, Amma.”

He might as well have had holes for eyes, the way he stared at me. Not seeing what remained, but rather what was leaving.

“I really thought I could outflank the Crucians.” I punched my hands together. “They’d overextended on the assault, again. I was certain a cavalry charge at their backs would end it. End the war. Open the city. But…”

I was the spear-tip of that charge. Early morning, we hid in the forest, ready to hit the enemy. Once they’d poured out of the walls, and once Shah Jalal had feigned retreat, we’d strike from behind.

But, somehow, the enemy knew. I’d committed four thousand riders to this plan, and barely a third made it out of the mire of blood and guts and bombs and fire. The Crucians understood the land better, even though we’d been here eight months now, and had exploited that knowledge by luring us onto muddy ground, unfit for a cavalry charge with our agile, small mares.

“Nothing can change what happened.” I shook off yesterday’s memories. “I disgraced us. There’s no balm for my failure. I’ll die for it. You’re talking to a corpse right now.”

Tears glistened in my son’s eyes, not yet heavy enough to fall. “He put you with the death riders?”

I nodded and took his hand. “It’ll be a good death.” But was there such a thing? “I’ll see your father in Barzakh. I’ll give him your love.” But what if Alep wasn’t there? What if there were more than one castle in the sky, and I’d never find his? “It’ll be all right.”

Yasar hugged me. If I could give him my remaining breaths, I’d die this moment, but I didn’t have many left anyway.

“Yasar…can I ask a final thing of you?”

My son nodded. “Ask for a thousand things, Amma.”

“Let me hold you, for a while.”

He chuckled. “I won’t fit in your lap.”

“That’s all right. Just…stay like this.”

He smelled like the mountains of Tagkalay. Like the caves where bright-budded pileas grew. And he was cold like the breaths that descended from the peaks. He was not meant to die here, a thousand miles away. Good that it would be me.

*

Silence festered among the crowd outside the Shah’s palatial yurt as he squinted and read the scroll he’d pushed up to his face. “‘Whosoever brings me the head of Shah Jalal shall have my virgin daughter Niovi in marriage as a reward.’”

The commanders standing next to the Shah in their peacock-plumed turbans didn’t know whether to laugh or remain stern, some sporting fearful smiles and others astonished glowers. Finally, the Shah’s belly shook with laughter, and so everyone in the crowd enjoyed a relieving chuckle. He folded the paper twice then put it in the pocket of his black, fur-lined robe.

“I’m saving this. Going to show it to Aysi — she thinks I’ve been callous with our children.” The Shah laughed some more. “What kind of man tosses his daughter around like a trophy?” Shah Jalal’s grin was the brightest thing around — perhaps because his teeth were so golden. “A desperate man. A despairing man. Let’s break whatever tatters are left to hold his heart together. Let’s show him the might of Sirm, the fury of Lat, that we’ll never give up until his city is beneath our boots!”

I joined in the roaring. That was when I began to feel like an empty, lifeless thing: a blade floating in an angry breeze, cutting all in its path. Death cuts shallower when you don’t think about it, when it wasn’t so certain, one chance of many, a single face of a thousand-sided dice flung in the air by a tavern drunk.

Shah Jalal licked his finger and stuck it in the air. “A westerly wind. They’ll be fighting against it today. Have you seen how skinny their legs are? Brittle little sticks of cinnamon. We turn this wind into a storm and we’ll break them!” Another roar as the Shah stroked his lavish beard. “Know what? I’m going to do like Gregory. I’m offering each of you the same reward he just offered his men.”

A horrified, throat-aching silence. What did that mean? We treasured our daughters more than the Crucians did, so I doubted the Shah was being true.

Hormuz, the Shah’s chief general and a man with a most august mustache, cleared his throat. “But you’ve no daughters to give, my Shah. They’re already married.”

Shah Jalal chuckled as if he’d heard his favorite joke. “I don’t mean my daughters. Lat forbid such a thing. I’ll give Gregory’s daughter, Niovi or whatever the fuck her name is, to the one who brings me his head.” His smile permitted us to laugh now, too. So everyone did; even I found it funny, in a morbid way.

“What do they say about her?” Hormuz asked. “That she’s the most beautiful lady in Crucis?”

“I heard flowers grow wherever her feet kiss,” a young janissary replied.

“They say the angels themselves cannot turn their gazes from her,” said another.

“Even the trees grow eyes just to behold her.”

“Sensational drivel!” Jalal’s shout stirred the ravens perched on the palatial yurt to flight. All chatter ceased. “No woman is that good, and I’ve enjoyed my share. Remember one thing — death brings greater rewards than life!” Spittle flew from his mouth. “The dirt of the grave is a warmer sheath than some cunt. Forget Niovi. Have you earned that dirt? Earn your deaths by sending every Crucian you meet to hell!”

The usual roaring followed.

The Shah turned in my direction. The janissaries, khazis, and zabadar made way as he walked toward me.

“Darya, you know I hate seeing you cursed with life. You’ll be first among the death riders today. I’ll give you a Kashanese mare so you’ll glide faster than the wind. Show them we yearn for death as much as they cling to life!”

I neither yearned for death nor clung to life, and I couldn’t outpace the wind. It would carry me, disdainful of my wishes — this I was certain.

“Of course, my Shah!” I straightened my back, bent my neck, and lowered my voice. “May I talk to you later, in private?”

He swallowed as if something harsh had caught in his throat. “Yeah.”

Once the Shah finished pontificating, rallying the men and women, and giving orders, he inspected the merchants. I followed in the back. Our camp was a city in itself, and like any good city, a bazaar adorned the center, the stalls bustling. Most of the merchants spoke Crucian and hailed from Dycondi, an island in the Yunan Sea where children played with weighing scales rather than dolls. That made them difficult to haggle with, but in doing so these past months, I’d sharpened my Crucian, which I’d initially picked up from the slaves who worked our tribe’s pastures outside Tagkalay.

After, the Shah inspected the sea of yurts that made up our camp. White was the color of choice, but a few odd ones were yellow or red, and lions or dragons patterned some, too. Everywhere, soldiers dug graves for fallen comrades — how could the land eat so much dead? Sheikhs sang from the Recitals of Chisti, high-pitched and melodious, to send the departed on their ways to Barzakh.

Just past the hospital, which was a grouping of yurts with the eight-pointed star of Lat above the entrance flaps, soldiers sitting on tree trunks fletched arrows and shaved bullet-balls. Prayer lines stretched into the mud, the lamentations heavy. A group of seven khazis tossed cards at a crude, bone-built low table. Each wore a necklace of red beads, which told how many Crucians they’d killed. Three seemed the average, though one man, by far the most pained given the burns down his face and neck, sported at least twenty.

How long had we been living like this? Forever, I could’ve sworn. As if the water in the clock that determined time had turned to molasses and gotten stuck. A disturbing thought, but I was tired. Tired of being so far from home.

Once he completed his rounds, I met the Shah in his palatial yurt, alone. His divan was not of gold, like in the Seat of Kostany, but rather mahogany and silk. A red, velvety canopy covered his bed, adorned with golden dragons and the eight-pointed star of Lat. The Shah burned the sweetest incense: a lulling, cool tulip-flavor combined with cinnamon.

I kept my neck bent as the Shah came to my front.

“It’s tiring, pretending to be strong, all so the tribes and factions and khazis fear me more than the enemy,” he said. “I don’t know how you rule your tribe. Perhaps you have that illusive thing the scholars call inner strength. I say it’s a myth. What do you say, Khatun? Any parting advice for someone so unworthy of his seat?”

I raised my head but kept my eyes on his bulging beard. What advice could I give the Shadow of God? Was this a trick? “You’re not unworthy, my Shah. How can you say that about yourself?”

“Enough with the camel shit. You know if I don’t win this battle, it’ll be the end of Sirmian expansion into Crucis for a generation. The end of hundreds of years of conquest and triumph, all because I wasn’t as strong as my forebears. Might be the end of my rule considering the promises I made to anyone with a warrior to command.”

Why was the Shah telling me this? To someone he’d sentenced to die? Why show weakness to me?

“My Shah, my tribe numbers a few thousand. Your kingdom numbers in the millions. Any advice I give you would be like a child advising his father.”

“There is wisdom in the clarity of children.” He sighed, obviously disappointed. “Just as well, Khatun Darya. I’ll not trouble you anymore with my miseries. So, tell me — this meeting was at your request — what do you want?”

I gulped and turned to my meager concerns. “My son Yasar said you’d forbidden him from fighting. Why?”

Shah Jalal put his finger on my chin and raised my head. Our eyes met. For a moment, I saw only whites, as if he were a jinn from the stories our tribe elders told. My sister used to enjoy them — me, not so much. I suppressed my shudder, lest the Shah notice.

“Unlike you,” Jalal said, “and unlike your eldest son and daughter, your youngest hasn’t earned his chance at death.”

A veiny, blue discoloration covered the Shah’s forefinger. A putrid pus smell wafted from it.

“What chance?” I said, ignoring his sickly finger. “Everyone is fighting. Even the eunuchs are picking up spears. Last week, we tossed plague rats over their walls with the catapult — if the rats can fight, what about my son? And Yasar, he’s good with the bow and spear. He has his father’s strength and my swiftness. He’s like a scythe in the wind.” You’d think a mother would want her son as far from the fighting as possible. But being disallowed to raise your sword was a dishonor worse than death among us zabadar tribes. Only the strong could lead, and as my son was descended from khagans and khatuns, he was expected to show strength or die trying.

Shah Jalal grunted in obvious annoyance. He poured wine into a crystal-encrusted goblet and handed it to me. “If Imperator Heraclius overcomes the force we sent to slow him down, then your daughter and eldest son could die. And you’re going to die today. So who’ll inherit your tribe? Have you given it a thought, Khatun Darya?”

I took a gracious sip of the fruity, white drink. Not as heartwarming as kumis, but my tongue appreciated anything with flavor. “Why do you care if my bloodline leads the tribe? Someone else always could — a cousin, my sister, my brother-in-law.”

“I liked your father,” Jalal said, pouring himself a cup. “I like you. And I’d like one of your brood to accompany me in this awful fucking job of carving and ruling an empire. I’d rather not be jealous of all of you, lying peacefully in your graves or ditches or perhaps as heads on spikes somewhere. Yasar will stay with me, safe. I have plans for him, so don’t worry about his fight, only yours.”

In private, the Shah always seemed…oddly reasonable. Remorseful of what he had to do for the sake of Sirm. Mournful of the lost. But in front of everyone, he hid that side the way the sun hides the stars. It had never been plainer than today: how a need to be feared kept him from being loved.

I bent my neck. “As you say, Your Glory.”

A relief that the Shah considered my son so essential. My tribe had won its importance during the kurultais with other zabadar tribes on the slopes of mountainous Tagkalay. We’d been noticed for our strength, temperance, and wisdom, but it was always good to transcend that, and the Shah’s favor was key.

I wouldn’t live to see the heights my son would climb, surely.

*

Death riders fought with whatever could be spared. Wooden sticks hardly sharp enough to pierce an infant’s belly, broken metal shields with an edge like a bashed-in jaw, charred matchlocks that exploded in their faces. But their real weapon was the certainty of death.

Worse was their armor: patches of leather sown on their clothes over their hearts, bellies, and other soft spots. Stolen boots, still stinking of some dead Crucian’s fungal disease. Oh, and I once saw a death rider wearing gloves flecked with human skin.

Some poor khazis and zabadar, usually the hopeless ones, had drawn the short bone and been assigned to the death riders; but most here were being punished. For a few, especially those who could no longer sleep, who dreamed the horrors of war even while awake, joining the death riders was a reward: an end to pain and a good death.

We death riders would mount fast horses — usually geldings, not mares — and carry hand bombs. We’d throw them at an arm span, showing the enemy that we didn’t fear fire. And if you didn’t fear your skin melting like wax, what was left to fear?

Death rider men and women could bathe in the river together. No need to hide our nakedness, for no one ascends to Barzakh with a raiment, save for what our deeds bought. But some here, certainly, clung to life and its pleasures. Others had moved on in mind and soul before their bodies would follow. And those bodies…not a measure of fat. We were all bone and muscle and bruised skin. Gashes and sewn gapes and blood blisters. Even the dark-skinned suffered sunburns around the eyes and across the forehead, a mark that spared no one, Shah Jalal included.

But what perplexed me were the veiny, black-blue rashes that snaked down the spines, arms, and legs of too many men and women in the river. Perhaps every third person had such marks. The woman next to me was scrubbing such a rash on her knee. I sniffed a deep, suffocating rot from her, as if it bore to the bone.

“Rotbone,” I whispered, as if I knew the name of the disease. I couldn’t recall seeing it until today. How could it have escaped my notice? “Rotbone.”

After bathing, we death riders smelled like the river, which smelled like these perfumed stones I’d bought with my sister from the grand bazaar in Tagkalay. I used to scent myself with them before my husband and I would make love. All of us, upon leaving the river, smelled like love.

After clothing ourselves, we prayed in one row, the westward wind soothing our faces. We prayed that our homes in Barzakh, where all souls await the Great Terror, would be spacious, sweet-aired, and filled with our loved ones who’d fallen.

Then, as we sat in the forest, a stoop-backed apothecary came. He handed us mushrooms for the pain we hadn’t yet started feeling. Or rather, for the death fear a rider ought not to feel when charging the enemy. As I bit down on the supple flesh of the mushroom, I realized what it was: an invitation for the mind and soul to go first, before the body followed.

*

I didn’t remember anything between swallowing the mushroom and the blaring of our Sirmian war horns. The drumbeat matched the cadence of the marching janissaries, zabadar, and khazis. Stretching vast, perhaps across the earth itself, was the army of Sirm, come to take this fucking city.

To start, Exarch Gregory catapulted bodies at us. Worms slithered from their hollow bellies. Our alchemists tossed firebombs at the bodies to keep the wormrot from spreading. The worms screamed as they sizzled.

Meanwhile, armored defenders of Crucis stood upon the broad, bleak walls of Caecara, bows and matchlocks arrayed as if they meant to shoot down the sun itself.

The city gates opened and out poured mounted lancers, a sea of steel surging to drown us.

I was sitting on my mare, waiting for the command that would give me rest. After so many months, battles, and goodbyes, there was naught left to feel. I said a hundred prayers in a single exhale: a dozen for each of my children, even more for my husband’s soul, and one for mine. Then I stared blankly at a sight that now seemed trite: the thundering of the enemy, clad in iron and desperation.

My fellow death riders arrayed around me. We were to gallop close to the lancers, toss our hand bombs, then smash them with our horses and bodies, providing time for the other corps to get into advantageous positions.

Our splintered wood would crash against the enemy’s ravenous steel. They didn’t call us death riders because it sounded fearsome — we rode to our deaths for the cause. But the warrior in me wondered if I could find gaps in their plate and mail to impale with the spiked wood I was clutching.

Months of cannon shots and fire arrows had already charred the grass between us. Somewhere, perhaps in another world, a horn sounded: unmistakable in its low pitch and solemn hum. The sound we’d been waiting for.

My mare rushed toward the enemy. I’d given it a kick when the horn sang, without even realizing. Darya wasn’t here, only the edge of a swinging ax, one not sharp enough to cut, only bludgeon. Nothing in front but snarling armored horses carrying men come to kill.

It became real again when the hand bombs exploded. I’d thrown mine, without thinking, as if dealing death was now like breathing. They burned the air and the legs of horses and men and even incinerated steel as the front line of the charging lancers roasted and melted in a symphony of crackling and screams. But then it all went silent. All went white. I was deaf and blind, as if my soul were halfway to the next life. And yet I still breathed, taking in the charred, blood-spiced air.

My senses returned. I was on my horse, surrounded by a melee of friends and foes. The Crucian lancer opposite me stood on his horse, as if he were balancing on a wave, raised his lance above his head, and dove.

I dipped off my mare as he impaled it. I smashed into the black grass, then tumbled onto my side, ribs first. No pain, though. My soul was almost out of my body, it seemed. Some other soul, a savage one, naught more than an instinct, controlled me.

I jumped to my feet and pulled out my daggers. My fangs. All around, bombs exploded, steel sundered wood, and blood cascaded. Cannon shots boomed over our heads from Caecara’s walls and from Shah Jalal’s back line, an exchange of steel and fire that would, inevitably, find us.

I licked my lips and sipped my sweat. It tasted like the sea. Like the day when my husband Alep and I went fishing because we both craved the succulent flesh of sea bass. We went to the water while the stars still shown and returned when—

I sidestepped the dismounted lancer’s thrust. Dove at his knee and pictured his soft, inner thigh. My dagger met the gap in his leg plates, slicing sweetly through flesh, and he fell forward with a scream that never ended.

I sheathed my fangs and grabbed his lance. A chilly, killing spike was better than two small edges. Still, I wished I had my bow, some distance, and a quiver of steel-tipped arrows.

A mounted rider surged to joust me, so I threw the lance at his horse. It struck a leg, and the horse cried and flung the rider off. He crashed on the dirt at my feet. I got on top and plunged my dagger in his neck four times, his spraying blood hot in my eyes.

As fire arrows rained, the death riders were dying or dead around me. Jalal and Gregory’s archers would heat up this melee and burn what little life remained. I picked up a bloody lance and rushed toward the thickest part, where Crucian riders minced and skewered the men and women I’d bathed with earlier.

I blinked, and I was in the air, flung away by a burning scream. Landed on my back, some bruised bone sizzling even my forgone soul. Still, lightning surged through my veins and forced me to my feet. I saw everything four times: blurry and without outline. Fire charred my soles — my shoes had burned away — and so I stumbled forward.

Into a shadowed mouth. I fell, then crashed in a pile of metal and flesh. Roasted horses were my bed and scalded armor my blanket.

“To Lat we belong and to her we return.” I don’t think I made a sound because I was choking on the blood drenching my gums.

The ground shifted as if balanced on a jelly sweet. A crater spread in all directions, one I was at the center of, with lancers and horses and death riders falling inside as if soup ingredients. It was hot enough to boil in here, so a soup of blood and guts we would be.

I jumped and dove forward as an ax came down where I lay. Who the fuck was trying to kill me in this fire? The ax missed and sliced off the leg of the death rider who’d broken my fall; his screams heightened into soul-shivering shrieks. The ax wielder was short and kept low, so I couldn’t easily swipe at the plate gap behind his knees. He trudged forward and swung at the air as I tumbled away, my skin burning on the scalding armor and torched flesh that had replaced the ground.

This nightmare was awakening my mind. The mushroom’s peace wore off and my soul tasted reality. The deathly objects around solidified, the pillow softening my senses burned away, and I realized: I was fighting an ax man in a crater of screams filled with the dead and dying. Char and blood dripped out my nose and mouth. Fire shot from the ground and more flaming arrows landed around me every hairy second. I wanted to shove more mushrooms in me, as many as it took to roast painlessly, but I decided to do what a death rider wasn’t to do. I decided to flee.

A poor decision. Soon as the ax man glimpsed the fear in my melting eyes, he flung his edge at me. I stood paralyzed, perhaps because any movement got me closer to flames. My soul shoved itself into my body, and it brought along a foolish, unneeded panic. The ax whirled toward my forehead.

And then it froze. In midair. Something had…caught it. Something I could only see the faint outline of amid the choking smoke. It threw the ax back at the man who’d hurled it. He let it strike his neck, tongue lolling in shock and horror as he fell without a scream. Blood spurted like a wondrous fountain.

“Alep,” I mouthed. The memory of the last time my husband saved me played in my head: he’d dove forward and blocked an arrow from piercing me with his shield, somersaulted to his feet, then bashed the zabadar archer’s head in one, smooth motion. I fucked him harder that night than I’d fucked him the night we married. Nine moons later, Yasar pushed out my womb.

“Alep.”

Whoever or whatever had saved me, I couldn’t see it anymore. Perhaps it was another death rider: those nearest to the afterlife could reach out and pluck miracles from beyond the veil. Or maybe it was the last gasp of mushroom juice in my veins, and I dreamed the whole thing. Whatever: I was still alive. I’d not done my duty to die and was thankful for even these burning breaths.

I took deeper and harsher inhales to stay alive as the smoke thickened. A new, contrary thought hit me: was this…hell? But the sheikhs said that a death rider would live a second life in Barzakh, free of pain and fire. That Lat would forgive all our sins, that naught could weigh against our sacrifice.

A flaming, armored horse thrashed about the crater, snarling fire. Considering how distant the daylight loomed and how we were deep enough to make climbing out impossible, it was more a sinkhole than a crater. Shah Jalal’s sappers had been tunneling around the city for months, so no surprise at the hollowness of the earth we fought and died on.

The flaming horse galloped by me and charged into a stunned death rider, tossing and setting her alight. She had my daughter’s wavy, black locks, but I couldn’t appreciate them through the blue flames. After her face melted and her screeching died down, I tried to think. Think about where I was and how to survive it. I yearned to climb out, sipping hope in the distant sky’s tepid glow. But there was naught to return to — if I lived past this day, the Shah would surely execute me. Here, in this cavern of fire and screams, I could choose one of several awful deaths, but at least I could choose.

Life or the afterlife, I was surrounded by enemies and would fight my way to my next stop. I pulled out my twin fangs and stabbed every Crucian I saw. Whether they were on the ground wailing or upright in a daze or crawling through flesh and fire, I just plunged. Scythed my way, spicing the smoke with blood and bile. Fiery arrows landed everywhere, but somehow, none pierced me.

I looked up: a shield floated above my head. It was crystal and imbued with heavenly rainbows. “Alep?” Arrows hit it and turned to ash. Was I dreaming? Was the mushroom still painting on my mind?

Within the smoke wall ahead, a pile of death riders and Crucian lancers wrestled and smacked each other with whatever they could. One Crucian clutched a broken helmet and deflected the desperate swings of a death rider’s chipped, blood-drenched short sword. Instead of helping, I trudged until I found the sinkhole’s wall, a mass of dirt and stone. Too steep to climb, so I leaned against it to steady my breaths and sip my tears.

They tasted like that day, in the Yunan Sea, the tide bobbing our little raft. That day with Alep, if only it had lasted forever. If only there were a god who could freeze time, I’d just watch him holding his net, leaning over the side of the boat, patient and smiling and joking about something too stupid to remember. An eternity of that, please.

A screeching wind launched flesh and bones and metal in my direction. It cracked the earth behind me, sending boulders tumbling into what now resembled a cave mouth. The gleaming rainbow shield, which seemed to float wherever I needed it, blocked the inferno and debris. But even the rocks were on fire. A white fire, so scalding that I wondered why I wasn’t steam. The steel around melted and my eyes yearned to become water. To live, I darted into the cave mouth.

I slid off something. Tumbled onto my knees, then rolled and banged and bruised my bones, as if I were sliding down a mountain. My clothes and skin tore against a jagged rock, and I yelped and coughed the blood surging up my throat.

No mushrooms to soak the pain. No light for the dark. I thought I would finally die, but instead I plunged into sleep.

The post DEATH RIDER | Chapter 1 first appeared on Zamil Akhtar | Fantasy Author.

“My dear, you haven’t touched your eggplant soup.” Tamaz’s butter-oil voice broke my anxious thoughts.

My gaze returned outward. Just Tamaz and I, at a low table in his supper chamber, surrounded by serving girls, beardless boys, and braided eunuchs. I’d only been here once before; with its bare, sand-brick walls and floor covered with the square-patterned rugs of some sand tribe, it seemed the dining room of an ascetic sheikh, not the glorious Shah of Alanya.

“Apologies, Your Glory,” I said, bending my neck. “Truth is, I haven’t lost all the heft from carrying the child.”

Now he glared at me, nostrils flaring and mouth hanging. The king of the land looked like an irate farmer — no turban, hair unkempt, caftan a mud-brown. “Zedra, you are as lovely as a red tulip plucked from the holy soil of Zelthuriya.”

How classical. Perhaps he ought to drag his dais to Laughter Square. “I’m afraid younger eyes are a bit more…discerning.”

“Has Kyars said something unkind?” Thunder rang in his voice. “That lout. I thought war would make him a man and—”

I shook my head. “No, Your Glory. The Crown Prince has been nothing but kind. Some of his other women, though…oh, I shouldn’t gossip.”

“Hmph. Jealousy. Not much else to it. Let them say what they will. The truth is, you are the mother of the future shah. You could be bulging as a laden camel or thin as prayer beads, and you’d still be the sultana of this harem.”

A beardless boy placed more softbread onto our floor table. The irony: neither I nor the Shah ate much. Every day, servants carted the palace leftovers to the poor living in the Alleys of Mud. I imagined a rag-wearing family sitting within mud walls, gorging on the eggplant soup and softbread. Good — they deserved it more than we.

“I fasted today, in honor of Saint Nora’s ascension,” the Shah said, “and strangely, I’ve no appetite. You know, my father passed at my age — peace be upon his soul. The dreaded gout. Nothing better than fasting, the Philosophers say, to keep gout away.”

I’d seen men die from gout — all oafs who could devour a lamb in a single sitting. No, Tamaz would not die that way.

“I heard a rumor,” I said, broaching the topic that really mattered. Even the mother of the shah-to-be had to ask weeks ago for this intimate supper. I feared the Shah would disdain to meet, given the Sylgiz arrival — who’d come days earlier than I’d wanted — though thankfully, the Shah kept true to his schedule. “Is it true someone beheaded three Sylgiz traders and that their khagan seethes for vengeance?”

Tamaz sipped his water and stared straight in silence, then said, “I supposed, with the entire Majlis apprised of the happenings, that everyone would find out eventually — but news has spread faster than I expected. Believe me, I’ve dealt with all manner of khagans — they come for one raging reason or another but always leave with their horses dragging chests of gold. And in that, we’re not lacking.”

“But I also heard they blame you. That there was a royal message, stamped by you, with the heads of the dead. This year, there’s already been an attempt on your life. That assassin was Path of the Children, too, was he not? I fear what these heretics are plotting for you…Father.”

Tamaz loved when I called him that. He told me once that he’d sorely desired a daughter, and Lat had blessed him with three, though all had been cursed to die in childhood. Well, that wasn’t entirely true — he didn’t tell me. I overheard him lamenting with the gholam commander, Pasha Kato.

“We all must die, dear Zedra. I pray Lat forgive me for what my hands have wrought. When I became Shah, I believed I would be better than my father. That I’d follow the Recitals of Chisti — word and spirit — in all I did. But only Saint Chisti carried both holiness and kingship with equal weight. For the rest of us, forgiveness is the only salvation, so we must not cease begging for it. ‘Forgive if you wish to be forgiven,’ a recital that I live by.”

That was why the people loved him. How many death sentences had he commuted this year alone? Dramatic moments: just when the executioner was about to swing, the Shah would appear and hold up his hand. Cheers and ululating and thigh-clapping followed — true, the people desired justice, but they loved mercy. The Shah was as clever as he was pious, for certain. You didn’t rule for two decades, otherwise. Of all three reigning House Seluqal shahs from the kingdoms of Sirm, Kashan, and Alanya, Tamaz’s was the longest, most peaceful, and richest reign.

And that only made my task harder. “You are so wise, Father.”

“Comes with the gray hair, my dear.”

Oh, I knew that well enough. “Will you recall the gholam?”

He huffed — seemed he didn’t want politics at dinner. But I had to press.

“Are you so keen to see Kyars?” he asked.

“I miss him dearly and worry what those Ethosian pirates may do.” Tamaz would be more pliable with that framing, surely.

“My dear, never forget that Kyars smashed a fully stocked and armored Crucian army at the Syr Darya last year. If not for him, Micah the Metal and Imperator Heraclius would’ve wiped our ungrateful cousins up north from history. What is a smattering of infidel pirates, compared to that?”

Meaning: I will not be recalling the gholam. Perfect. “You’re right. Of course. He’ll be back before the cold winds blow down from the End…from the Waste.”

“We can’t let pirates winter in our seaside towns and forts, cutting off trade with Ejaz, Sirm, Dycondi. Kyars and twenty thousand gholam will show them an Alanyan recompense for their crimes. By the coming of the desert chill, you and Kyars will be cuddling amid a coal-burning fire, surely.”

A sickening thought, for which I suppressed a shudder. Nonetheless, winter remained moons away, and so my window seemed wide enough. “A wonderful thought.”

I kept silent after that, allowing the Shah to grab a morsel of softbread. He chewed it for an eternity and gulped deep. Then he tossed the remaining piece of bread on a brass plate. His saliva moistened the part where he’d bitten.

“It’s been a wonderful supper,” he said, “but with age comes an early rise and an even earlier bedtime. And before I sleep, I would stand in vigil before Lat and her saints, so that this kingdom I tend may remain blessed and at peace.”

“I, too, will pray. For your good health, for peace, and for my beloved Kyars’ victory.”

As Tamaz stood and stretched, I reached over and grabbed the piece of bread he’d bitten, then slipped it into my sleeve. I looked around at the beardless boys, serving girls, and eunuchs, hoping none had noticed. They all stared straight in silence. Good.

As I walked toward my room, I thought about the Philosopher who’d engineered the Sand Palace. Last week, I borrowed his biography from the Tower of Wisdom so I could break from my serious reading with something pleasurable. He lived about five hundred years ago, just after Temur the Wrathful carved a blood trail through half the earth. Born in Tinbuq, the seat of the once Golden Kingdom of Himyar to the southwest, the man came to Alanya with nothing but a dream. He imagined a vast construct, made of baked clay and mud and sand, that stretched the breadth and width of the highest hill in the city.

And he imagined it to be opulent: today, encrusted jewels lined the walls of the halls. Hanging lamps encased in platinum, carpets of angora silk so soft you could safely wrap a baby in them, lenses that caught the moonlight so that entire rooms would glow silver — I could go on and on. Tamaz’s sanctimonious asceticism hadn’t poisoned the other Seluqals, who outweighed his simplicity with their indulgence. My beloved Kyars being the worst among them.

“Make way for Sultana Mirima!” a eunuch called.

I stood to the side in the hallway, bowed my head, and hoped the Shah’s sister wouldn’t notice me. Unfortunately, I’d worn a stunning blue and gold dress for my supper with the Shah, which resembled sunrays striking a river. The woman adored fashion. More than that, she loved to show her superiority over us concubines.

As expected, Mirima stopped her prance in front of me. She gazed at my dress, then caressed the brocade on my forearm with the back of her ring-studded hand.

“Who made this?” she said in a lofty tone.

I raised my head. “Sultana, it was a gift from His Eminence, Grand Vizier Barkam.”

She opened her mouth as if to retch. “He buys a size too small on purpose. A walking scandal, that man.”

True, and ironically, Barkam was one of the few men whose words I could stomach. Something about his obvious perversity rang sincere.

I kept silent, hoping Mirima would move on. But her gaze stayed on me like the midday sun.

“What do you do all day, Zedra?”

Oh dear, not an open question. Bait, coming from this woman. The black dye in her hair disguised the gray so well, and whatever soaps and creams she lathered hid wrinkles and pockmarks. A decent mask that gave her back ten years. But mine was better.

“Today, I went into the city,” I said, hoping to escape whatever trap she was setting, “with Cyra, my dearest friend.” Mirima loved Cyra. The older men and women here seemed to. “We inquired as to the feelings of the people concerning the siege.” I’d given my best answer, though I expected her to smell the lie.

“And what do the people say about the siege?” How bitterly she intoned people. Her disdain for them blinded her to my obvious deception. Good.

“Like here in the palace, opinion is divided. Some see it as serious, and others as a trifle.” Everyone knew that, though. Better to give obvious answers and reassure them that I’m dull.

“Fools. It is whatever we make of it. If we wanted it done, we’d end it today. Obviously, there’s some benefit to having these Sylgiz savages on our side.” By Lat, she used we and our so confidently. A trait I respected somewhat.

“I agree.” I glanced up and down her thick, flowery gown. How to end this agonizing conversation? “To be truthful, I was so scared. When I looked out from the balcony at the yurts and horsemen filling the horizon, I so wanted Kyars to be here to hold me.”

Sympathy glimmered in Mirima’s gaze as she put her hand on my shoulder. “My dear, you are like an unplucked flower which knows not the vagaries of the wind.” Decent verse. Another thing to respect, despite how wrong it was. “So young. So fragile. But you need not fear a thing. My brother is the greatest king alive.” She thrust her fist in the air. “Unshakable, unbreakable. A khagan from the Waste is but a fly on an elephant’s ass.”

I giggled. Didn’t expect such language from her. “You’re right, dear sultana. Thank you for reassuring me. I hope the years will make me braver.”

She finally went on her way. To be honest, that conversation wasn’t as terrible as I’d expected. Still, best to keep them short; Mirima was more perceptive than her brother, and I worried one day she’d see through me.

Back in my room, I took my son from the wet nurse and cradled him close. A sweet warmth flowed through me, as if I were one with the world.

“He’s feeding joyously,” the wet nurse, a dark-skinned woman from Himyar, said. I smiled and thanked her.

I gushed as Seluq fidgeted. Yes, that was what the Shah named him. Apparently, Seluq the Dawn had come to him in a dream the night my baby was born. I didn’t recall the details, but there was some nonsense about the sun and birds and fish. Kyars loved the name, too. As for myself, I couldn’t imagine a worse man to name my son after, but I had no say.

“You may go,” I said to the wet nurse.

I kissed my son’s scalp and inhaled his fresh, life-giving scent. He giggled. I laid him in his crib and marveled at his beauty. But the beauty of a baby to his mother can’t be described. It is like fanaa, like unity with god herself.

Words once spoken by my uncle and father-in-law echoed in my mind: “Don’t raise your children the way your parents raised you. They were born for a different time.” It couldn’t be truer with my son and me; I’d have to raise him for this time, this place, this mission.

I moved toward the balcony, which gave me an encompassing view of Qandbajar, its ancient quarters, the double-layered walls, and the yurts beyond. A stillness ruled the night — no breeze, barely any birds chirping.

A comfort to just stare at the world and not have to think. Grind and grind your mind toward whatever purpose you sought. A comfort I couldn’t claim because too much remained to be done. And only I was left to do it: carrying the truth on my shoulders, the survival of Lat’s beloved Children, and, ultimately, the fate of mankind. The world held up by one old woman.

“Father Chisti,” I prayed, “bless your daughter with your strength, your righteousness, your victory.”

I wiped a tear from my cheek. Holding up the world hurt. Carrying the pain of the lost, the dead, the annihilated only numbed me so much. It was these silent moments that I couldn’t endure, that I’d rather fill with anything: banal poetry, tawdry gossip, strolls through the pleasure gardens.

Or, best of all, my mission.

I often obsessed over one question: who was the most powerful man in Alanya? The obvious answer was Shah Tamaz, but thrones veil those behind them. A more astute answer was Grand Vizier Barkam because his hands plucked the strings. But that too was wrong. Neither Barkam nor the Shah held the minds of the people, and without them, a kingdom was nothing but ordered mud and stone. Then it was Grand Mufti of Alanya and Grand Sheikh of the Order of Saint Jamshid, Khizr Khaz, who tended the souls of all Alanyans…but if forced to choose one man to save my life, it wouldn’t be him.

So after dawn, I went to the man I would choose. An empty barrack is rather dull. Finches and sparrows — a rare sight these days — sang in its central garden, which didn’t deserve the name. More like an uneven and stony mess of plants and flowers. Beneath the shade of a bent cypress sat the most powerful man in Alanya: a slave named Kato. Or rather, Pasha Kato.

Grand title for a slave, but mine was better, and I wasn’t free either. He held an entire branch of dates in his chiseled forearm. Upon my arrival, he stood, said “Sultana,” then sat back against the tree bark in one careless motion. He had the coal-dark skin of the Himyarites and still spoke with their accent, which I always found melodic and pleasing.

“Go away,” I told my gholam escorts, not of mind to say more. Of course, Kato was the greatest of the gholam, so leaving me with him wasn’t supposed to be a danger. But the gholam guarding me were loyal to Kyars, not Kato. Still, they gave us space, standing near the arched entrance, out of earshot, though within eyesight.

Kato looked up with a date-speckled grin. “Would you whip me too with that firm tongue?”

“Here you sit, sulking.” I shook my head in disgust. “It’s despicable. Pick yourself up. There are enemies at the gates. Maybe it’s a blessing Kyars left you behind.”

He stared at me, tongue out. “Just the lashing I needed to feel better.”

I wanted to grab a stone and crack his bald head. But he was the one man my plan couldn’t do without, and so I suffered his obscenity. “You’re pathetic. Tamaz will notice your absence. You’ll lose your command.”

“Already lost it. My soldiers march west to fight the infidel without me. And I’d just been given the post after the death of my dear friend. You see, Barkam — and his shit son Hadrith, as well as a dozen or so viziers, I can name them all — detest me, all because I refused to do their bidding. Barkam, or perhaps Hadrith — if I’m really as weak as I think I am — will have me killed or sent to some metal mine to die, soon enough.”

No, he didn’t sound like the most powerful man in Alanya. Because he wasn’t…yet. I’d have to build him up.

“Oh? Would Kichak have sulked about it like a little girl?”

Now he pointed a finger at me, as if to stab my chest. “Don’t act like you ever met the man. He was a hero to us all. Saw his end at the hands of some debased sorcerer in Sirm.”

“And how will you die? Given it a thought? Because if you had, you wouldn’t be wasting today stuffing yourself.”

He stood and didn’t even wipe the grass off his caftan. “Nor would I be sparring with a little girl who looks a lot like my first,” he closed the distance, breath stinking of a bitter southern brew, “all those years ago, in a cottage overlooking the breathless Yam Sup Sea. How sumptuous were her moans,” he licked his lips, “I’d so like to hear them again before they kill me.”

I’d slap him, but only a fool slaps a cornered lion. “You do know I am the Crown Prince’s consort and mother of the shah-to-be. How dare you spew such filth?”

He laughed. “Want me to sultana you every time you break wind — shouldn’t have told them to leave,” he pointed at the gholam waiting near the entrance, “you’ll get only truth from me when no one is listening. Looking for flowers? You’re in the wrong square.”

Just why I liked him. Kato seemed loyal, but I wagered he’d take anything — everything — if he could get away with it. I counted on that.

“When you’re done feeling sorry for yourself, here’s what I suggest you do. There’s a man hiding in a sordid little reed-roofed hut in the Alleys of Mud. I’ll tell you precisely where he is. Arrest this man and bring him to the Shah. Do so, and you’ll be a hero once more,” I snapped my fingers, “just like that.”

Kato spat a date pit. “What man? Who is he? Why would I—”

“Do it,” I said firmly. “The last time I gave you a hint, the Shah promoted you to Grand Commander of the Alanyan gholam. Forgot already?”

“Some good it did me when it was your beloved who fell prey to the whisperings of my enemies and ordered me to stay. Think soldiers follow titles? Soldiers follow those who bleed with them, kill with them, shit in a ditch with them.”

Another thing I was counting on.

“I know a thing or two about men and what they’ll follow.”

“Not men — soldiers.”

I sighed. Kato was a blood-stained dagger, but I wore armor that shattered most edges. “All men are soldiers when enough is at stake. There’s one thing they’ll follow above even their brothers, their fathers, their kings, their god. Know what it is?”

“Hah, what are you, nineteen? At that age you think you know everything.”

I grabbed the date branch from his hand and flung it to the side. “They’ll follow the winner. And that’s what you’ll be, if you take my advice.”

Kato grinned, revealing date stains on his lovely whites.

As I walked toward the exit, I kicked at one of the date pits Kato had spat. Then I bent down to brush my shoe and picked it up in one smooth motion. Surely no one noticed.

For breakfast, I bit a peach and enjoyed sips of ayran: too salty, and it left me with a yogurt mustache. After bathing and wearing my brownest brocade, I got to work.

Before all this began, before I was ripped from my world and brought here, I was unfamiliar with the seductive lure of something so simple: privacy. Aloneness. With baby Seluq asleep and my room devoid of handmaidens, eunuchs, and wet nurses, I locked the door and crawled into the closet. The silk of my hanging clothes brushed against my face and hair. Sunlight beamed through the single hole I’d made, which also provided me with air to breathe.

Darkness, stillness, peace.

I shut my eyes and strained to hear it: the call of the black drongo.

Chirp-peep-peep-chirp. The call remained faint, but its flapping wings beat like a storm against my mind. Chirp-peep-peep-chirp.

I opened my eyes. And ears. At first, it was difficult to tell which was sound and which was sight. Both mapped the world. Both wrestled for that commanding spot among my senses. I saw and heard a sky so bright and endless. A city, tiny and mysterious. A desert, which seemed like a thin layer of sand on the back of a god. The river snaking through the desert and city, though a quarter-mile wide, seemed like a string I could pull and tangle around a god-sized finger. The cultivation at the riverbank blazed green and brown with rich, canal-irrigated soil growing the rice, millet, couscous, wheat, figs, and grapes that fed the city. But now, the warhorses of the Sylgiz trampled it. And those horses sprawled a great distance, roaming the thornbush-ridden grasslands to the south and even the scrub to the west, which was dotted with acacia trees, palms, and gazelle.

And everything was upside down. Above me, the city surged, a wart amid the sand upon the god’s back. I wanted to fall into the clouds below, but I was frozen in place. Instead, the city fell upon me, raging to smash me to pieces. But as it neared, it was as if I’d entered a bubble, and I now breathed air mixed with trees and sand and dust. An earthy taste.

The screech of a holy song scathed my ears, as if a wolf howled in my brain. I fluttered in trepidation, then landed on whatever was beneath me. My talons scratched at something solid. I looked down — hardstone. I looked around — Qandbajar’s skyline. Chanting and prayers and holy words rang. To Lat we belong…I beseech those beneath her throne…do what is beautiful…lay not upon us burdens we cannot bear…take us not to task for our error…bestow us your mercy, lest we be lost…

I flew off the yellow dome of Jamshid’s shrine and soared toward a palace by the river. Air rushed against the bottom of my wings, keeping me in flight. And yet, it always seemed like the world was moving, not me. Like a giant had tossed the city in my precise direction.

I flapped to slow my descent and landed on the flat roof. Already, voices sounded and bounced off the interior walls, forming a map of the inside. Divans, shelves filled with scrolls and books, hanging carpets, oil lamps flickering in the corner niches — so much sight from only sound. I dipped down to the windowsill; my left eye watched the men inside: Hadrith, Grand Vizier Barkam’s son, and Ozar, the spice master of Alanya. A man who, the rumors say, sacrificed a baby daughter for the blessing, or perhaps curse, of unending wealth.

Hadrith poured date wine into a crystal glass and said, “It’s fateful that Kyars is not here. Something of a wonder, perhaps, how the stars could align like this.”

 Ozar nodded, his plump form wrapped in thin, sky-colored silks. “Oh yes. But be honest — it’s your father’s absence that you treasure.”

They sat together at a glass floor table, maroon cushions softening their asses. Hadrith was so tall, he seemed to tower even when sitting. I never understood why he didn’t trim that unruly beard — was anyone buying the warrior facade? “I’ll tell you this — it’s too advantageous. Why would Kyars suddenly agree to leave Kato behind and bring my father instead? It’s not his style. Kyars didn’t win a thing by himself but rather on the backs of men like Kato. Everyone knows this — Kyars most of all.”

“You’re saying the idea didn’t come from Kato?”

“Someone closer is playing the flute and Kyars dancing to the tune.”

Ozar caressed his chin hairs. “Who?”

“I don’t know, but before proceeding, we ought to find out.”

“Oh, you’re just getting sweaty feet. Lat has given us an auspicious gift, something she doesn’t do often. My fleet is just beyond the river bend, ready and waiting. You have your father’s stamp. The Majlis won’t go against you because you are your father’s son. Give the order. Open the way.”

Hadrith eyed me through the window. He grabbed his glass and flung it at my face. I fluttered upward as the crystal arced and shattered on the grass below.

“Fucking drongos,” he said as I repositioned to the head of the window, just out of sight, “one pecked my cat to death last week.”

“A bird…killing a cat? Oh dear, what is the world coming to?”

“They don’t belong here. Ever heard of a place called Talitos?”

Ozar drew in a shocked breath. “Of course, the land beyond the sea mists.”

“I was in court the day an ambassador came, claiming to be from there. The woman wore bizarre clothes that changed color as you stared, the way a waterfall flows. She also brought a cage full of black drongos as a gift. In the sky above, you used to see hawks and eagles and doves. Now you see black.”

“Foreign plagues seem to be our bane these days.”

“Precisely. Foreigners. How many have the Crown Prince’s ear? His concubines from the Waste, his gholam from Himyar, none are truly Alanyans. What interests have they? What agendas?”

Ozar squeaked a sound of approval from high in his throat. “The great Eshkal once said, ‘your heart is with whom you share the battlefield and bed.’”

Hadrith, it seemed, had stronger suspicions than Ozar. I hoped none led to me.

“Eshkal — a eunuch who’d never thrust a spear, of any kind. I don’t share your admiration.”

“Wisdom has two founts — doing and observing.” How true.

The sun’s gaze heated the window head to a discomforting sizzle, but I clung on with my talons, hoping to learn something I could use.

“Anyway,” Hadrith said, voice ringing with impatience, “I’ll task my beloved little fawn with scouring the harem for enemies. There’s nothing she won’t do,” a perverse laugh bellowed from his chest, “nothing.”

“She’s a lovely girl, Hadrith. And more than that, her brother is at our gates, with a horde. Don’t even think of dishonoring her. You’d endanger us all.”

They’d brought Cyra into their schemes? Why would she work for Hadrith? How curious…and annoying.

“I don’t shit where I herd sheep, Ozar. Something you never learned.”

“I became the spice master of Alanya so I could shit wherever I wanted.”

SULTANAAAAAAAAA—

A crack formed in my consciousness and shattered it into a billion pieces. Back in the closet, sweating, eyes wide, staring up at the eunuch Sambal, his braids reaching his shoulders.

“Sultana! Oh, fetch the healer at once!”

Slobber moistened my left cheek. I blinked what must’ve been a thousand times, sat up, and heaved. Heaved every speck of air I could. It felt as if a barrel crushed my chest and heart, which beat a thousand times a second.

“I’m all right,” I muttered, unsure if I’d even made a sound.

Sambal slapped his own cheek. “Oh, she’s awake! Thank Lat!”

He and another eunuch pulled me up and onto the bed. Numbness and pain alternated through my bones and flesh, as if tossing me on waves. But worse than that, a nauseating rage built up inside. I’d been severed from the drongo, at the worst moment, just when I was about to learn their plan.

O’ Lat, heap your curses upon the saints.

The post CONQUEROR’S BLOOD | Chapter 2 | Zedra first appeared on Zamil Akhtar | Fantasy Author.

Which was, at this moment, besieged. By my brother. From high on the palace balcony, I stared beyond the sand-colored city walls at the colorful yurts dotting the desert and shrubland. Our besiegers would find their yurts too warm in the Qandbajari summer — ovens heated by the sun’s gaze. Though fertile, the pastures by the river and its canals couldn’t support them and the tens of thousands of warhorses they’d brought. But that wouldn’t deter them. Little could deter the warriors of the Sylgiz when they’d set their arrowheads upon something; little bother it happened to be the capital of the richest and most powerful kingdom in the east.

Like Qandbajar, I have a fanciful origin story. It begins with my brother and me huddling in a yurt, covered by a harsh, moth-holed blanket. I’d let him have the last bits of horseflesh, knowing Father would lament his death more than mine, him being the heir of a line of khagans that stretched to the time of Temur, and me being an ungainly daughter; my belly ached from the rotten broth I’d scarfed down instead. We held hands and resisted the Waste’s deadly winter as best we could. Then, as we inched closer, his bony knee jutted into my belly, worsening the ache. Still, I welcomed any warmth as my flesh numbed.

A screaming wind beat against the eight walls, and soon my brother would have to rush outside to hammer the nails lest our yurt collapse, despite his toes almost having frozen yesterday, rescued only by the heat of our stove’s final embers. So, to save us, as well as our baby brother in his bone-built crib, I shut my eyes and prayed.

The memory unnerved me. Had that really been my life before coming to the paradise that was Qandbajar?

“Today is not for reminiscence,” Shah Tamaz had instructed when he debriefed me an hour ago in the great hall. “You’re the sand-brick bridge connecting us and the Sylgiz,” he’d said, sitting straight-backed on his golden divan, his usual kind smile stretched across his face.

I bent my neck and replied, “I’m more of a…bridge-left-in-disrepair-for-eight-years-because-the-treasurer-didn’t-care-about-the-people-on-the-other-side…but I see your meaning, Your Glory.”

So I took a carriage to the city gate. As I’d requested, a warhorse waited there. The saddle was sheepskin, the stirrups almost wire-thin iron. I patted its head — it huffed and snorted. A typical mare from the Waste: slightly bigger than a pony, with slender legs and light hooves that barely disturbed the grass. She didn’t belong in this city, surrounded by marble palaces, cobbled streets, and heaped-up mud houses. But perhaps the Sylgiz would regard me as one of their own if I trotted over on a worthy steed.

The glittering, golden gholam warriors on guard raised the portcullis, and I galloped toward the Sylgiz camp. Though it’d been years since I’d ridden a horse, I’d learned to ride one before learning to walk, so said the stories. Judging by how swiftly I bolted against the wind and how natural it felt to sit so high, I almost believed them.

As I galloped into the forest of yurts, Sylgiz men and women gazed upon me. The Sylgiz were, on average, smaller than the Alanyans. They fit their mares well and drank deeply of the milk, whereas the Alanyans drank from camels, some as large as elephants. I think I did most of my growing after coming to Qandbajar, despite being fifteen at the time.

Around me, men hauled water in horsehide sacks, while others tempered steel over fire pits, the clank-clank of their hammers a perfect beat for the throaty and harsh Sylgiz tongue. Their sheep, goats, cows, and camels devoured the fruits, crops, and even the reeds that grew by the canals that snaked from the Vogras River. I imagined what followed such rapid consumption: cold, bones, and despair.

Hardy, though short men clutching matchlocks guarded the imposing sun-colored yurt at the camp’s center. I climbed off my horse, dusted my silk caftan, and readjusted my plumed hat. A million thoughts raced: who waited in that yurt? What would they think of me? And most crucial, would they tell me what they wanted?

“I am Cyra, daughter of Khagan Yamar,” I said in Sylgiz to a guard with thin eyes and a wing-like mustache. I didn’t recognize him — the tribe had grown since I’d been taken, so most here were new faces. “I’ve come to entreat on behalf of the Seluqal House of Alanya, and of His Glory, Shah Tamaz of Alanya.”

He looked up at me, then gestured his head toward the entrance flap.

Inside, the simple ways of the Sylgiz prevailed. Men and women sat upon sheepskin blankets and passed around a tree branch molded into a crude pipe. The stench of opium weighed heavier than air. In the center, an ice-filled stove barely provided relief from the swelter.

A familiar face stared back from the dais at the far end. Warm, wolf-like yellow pupils. Looking upon my brother, after eight years apart, he seemed both a stranger and the boy I knew. Tears bubbled behind my eyes, and I strained to keep them there. I wanted to hug him. I wanted to cry in his arms and ask about Father and Mother and baby Betil. But when he got to his feet, he towered and cast a cold gaze upon me.

“Cihan,” I said.

“Cyra,” he replied, as if my name had been boiling in his belly.

I trembled as he approached. He put a hard hand on my shoulder, then pulled me in. I barely reached his chest as we embraced and could no longer hold my tears. When I’d left, my big brother had been skinnier than a goat, and now he looked like he could rip a goat apart. The warmth and cold from so many memories flowed through me.

“Is it true that…Father died running from battle, an arrow in his back?” I asked. The Alanyans had rejoiced that day, relieved of a thorn in their side, though a worse one grew in its place.

He clasped my cheeks and studied me, as if he were as surprised by my appearance as I was by his. “Alanyan and Jotrid lies. Father fell honorably in battle. It’s true, the arrows were in his back, but he was feigning retreat and luring the enemy into a trap. Since then, Mother hasn’t left her yurt, or her bed, and I’m told her soul will have gone by the time I return. As for baby Betil…I wish there were more to it, but he got sick and returned to Lat.”

I choked on my sorrow and cried out. Betil was dead, too? Mother bedridden? There were others I wanted to ask about — aunts and uncles and cousins — but what did it matter? They’d all been dead to me, anyway, because I was certain I’d never see them again. But now, my brother stood before me, twice the width of his image in my memories. A man, fully grown. A khagan, like our father. A besieger of the city where I’d been a hostage for eight years.

“Why are you here?” I asked, struggling to shut out my tears. Though we’d hugged and talked of our loved ones, there was still an icy air between us, and the Shah had asked me to be quick and leave recollecting for later.

“Beloved sister, I think you know well the crimes your captors have committed upon your tribe, upon the Sylgiz.”

“But Shah Tamaz assured me he hasn’t been raiding Sylgiz land.”

“Raiding?” Cihan chuckled and shook his head.

Laughter bubbled from the men and women in the room, who still passed around that tree-branch pipe. That’s when I recognized the one laughing loudest: Gokberk, a cruel cousin who’d once stomped on a puppy’s neck for fun. Now he had a scar down his cheek, which created an ugly gap in his beard, and he was missing an ear, too.

Cihan said, “We are no longer sheep to be milked and sheared and slaughtered, like when our father was khagan.”

Of course, I’d heard about the battles my brother had won and the lands he’d captured. He’d brought the Sylgiz a new dawn, but to be so bold as to siege Qandbajar, the crown jewel of Alanya…

“Then what crimes do you speak of?” I asked.

A balding oaf of a man grabbed a woolen sack and handed it to my brother. He emptied it on the floor. Heads sloshed around my feet. Heads!

A twisted, half-decayed face brushed my ankle. I gasped. A shard of cranium stuck out where the eyebrow ought to be. A worm crawled out of the skull. I backed away toward the entrance flap and only just stopped myself from running.

Cihan said, “This is how Shah Tamaz paid three of our riders, whom I’d sent to trade spices and furs.”

“This can’t be!” I shook my head and slowed my breathing to inhale less death stench. “The Shah is a good man. A faithful Latian. He would never kill without cause.”

Cihan handed me a parchment. The simurgh seal of Alanya blazed at the top in wax, the Shah’s stamp.

Payment for your sins was all it said in Paramic. Perfect flourishes at the ends of the letters with deep, bold strokes — a royal scribe wrote this, or perhaps an imitator of one.

“Surely, a falsification,” I said after swallowing whatever shot up from my stomach. “I’ve lived under the Shah’s protection for eight years. He wouldn’t recompense sins with sins. Heads with heads.”

Red boiled in Cihan’s cheeks as dimples formed. I used to tease him for being so adorable when angry. But the ferocious, towering warrior glaring at me was anything but cute.

“Those men did not sin,” he said. “To even claim—”

“I didn’t mean it like that!” I took his calloused hands, remembering that in the Waste, you had to watch your words, unlike in Alanya, where they flowed freely. “You’ve come here for revenge, that I understand.”

“Not revenge. Each had wives and children, who now weep through the night. You think I wanted to come here? I came to silence that weeping with one thing — justice.”

“I understand. You must believe me. Shah Tamaz is a good man. He couldn’t have ordered this. It must be a deception.”

He huffed, then nodded slowly. When he stared into me, he was looking at something else: a memory, perhaps. “Seeing you again takes me back to happier times. Simpler times, like when father caught a red squirrel, and you wanted to keep it as a pet rather than skin and eat it.” He chuckled. That was a plentiful time when it seemed we’d never run out of rabbits and yaks and goats and especially horses. But ten moons of drought changed everything.

Cihan pulled on his beard. “When I heard they were sending you, I feared the worst. Feared I’d find a girl with no teeth and wrists as thin as reeds. But you…with your tanned skin and curled hair, you look like an Alanyan, and I mean that in a good way. They’ve treated you well, and for that, I’ll give them time to explain this.” He pointed at the decaying heads.

A heckle sounded from the back. Gokberk glared at me, his upper lip pushing against his nose in obvious disapproval.

I ignored him and nodded, pleased that I’d laid the first brick for what would hopefully be a bridge between the two sides. “Thank you, Cihan. I would always smile when news would reach me that you’d won a battle. And yet, it never sounded real, as if it were some other Cihan winning that acclaim. But now…seeing you…I finally understand.”

His chuckle trailed off into a melancholic sigh. “Tell me, Cyra, are you happy here, amid all this sand and clay and mud?”

A memory burst through my mind: Cihan and I sharing a bone, shattering our teeth on it because we were that hungry. “I’m content,” I said, “and grateful. Shah Tamaz treats me as a daughter. I couldn’t ask for anything more.” That last part wasn’t entirely true. I always wanted more. But the things I wanted, my brother couldn’t give.

As I approached the exit flap, a big-bellied warrior blocked it.

Cihan said, “He may have treated you like a daughter, but Tamaz isn’t your father. Here, in this yurt, you’re in the Endless Waste. We brought it to you. And yet…you’d just walk away. Back to your captors. Back to our enemy.”

I froze upon realizing what he meant. The chills of the Waste’s winters ran across my spine. “If you don’t let me go back, it’ll be bad. Shah Tamaz will assume the worst.” I turned in Cihan’s direction so he could see my pleading eyes.

“Perhaps that’s truly why I came, little sister. To take you back. We’ll ride away, to the Endless,” the tribes who called it home chose to shorten it to the Endless whereas others chose the Waste, “and be done with this country and its lies and cruelty. But I won’t go against your will. Taking you back — that’s recompense enough for those heads.” He paused, peering deeply into me, trying to see beyond whatever facade I was putting up. “What say you? Ready to go home?”

I turned away, went toward the exit flap, and said, “Qandbajar is my home, now.”

Back within the walls of the Sand Palace, gholam in shimmering bronze and gold plate surrounded Shah Tamaz, though I wasn’t sure which was him. His two body doubles wore the same dirt-colored caftans and thin chainmail, stood lanky, and slacked their jaws to the right. They even had the precise shade of gray hair and imitated his limp.

That voice, though, wasn’t so easy to imitate. Whenever Tamaz spoke, it was as if earthy syrup melted down your ears and cheeks.

“What did he say?” The real Tamaz wasted no time, huddling close to me with his gholam forming a wall of armor around us. Turned out, he was wearing the golden armor of the gholam, only his walnut pupils visible through his helmet.

“Your Glory.” I bent my neck, then whispered what happened in his ear so no onlookers could hear.

“A pretext to attack us?” he said with wide eyes.

I shook my head. “I don’t believe my brother to be lying.”

“But who would try to sow such calamity?”

“If we can prove we took no part in the beheadings, I think Cihan will turn around.”

Shah Tamaz put his anxious breaths to my ear and whispered, “Whoever did this timed it perfectly. A mere week after I’d sent most of the gholam to retake our sea forts, leaving this city under-defended. But anyway, you’ve done your job and done it well. Leave the rest to me, sweet one.”

I nodded, then turned toward the palace, which glimmered like golden sand beneath the rising sun. Before I walked out of earshot, the Shah said, “Seems your brother still trusts you. Be ready — I’ll needs call on you again.”

Stepping on the silk carpet in the palace hall, I cringed. I thought of those putrid heads rolling at my feet and yearned for another bath. I climbed the winding stairs toward the harem wing, then greeted the braided eunuchs guarding the bath chamber with a polite nod. Once inside, amid the blue, star-patterned tile, I stripped and entered the steam chamber. It was busy this morning, as usual, with a few eunuchs tending to their duties and more than a few concubines tending to themselves.

As I sat against the moist walls, the soothing humidity calmed my insides. Sorrowful memories played as I drifted between alertness and dozing.

Father, dead. Betil, dead. Mother, about to be dead. The saddest part of me wanted to steal the fastest Kashanese horse from among the Shah’s racing steeds and ride to the Waste, just to hold her hand. But I was no longer her daughter, truly. This palace was my mother now. Its walls were all the embrace I needed.

That day when the Jotrids raided us, their khagan had forced my father to make humiliating concessions, me among them. How terrible the moment when their warriors pulled me from my mother’s arms. The Jotrids were blood enemies to our tribe. They prayed to the saints, like the Alanyans, whereas we prayed only to the Children. Lat hears our prayers because the Children live beneath her throne while the saints roast within a chasm of flame in the thousandth hell for their falsehoods. That was what I’d been taught, though I didn’t believe it anymore.

The Jotrid khagan, who had even lived with us for a time and was barely older than my brother, gifted me to the Alanyans. Though it took me far from home, in the end, it was for the best. Now here I sat, in a bath chamber fit for the sultana of the world, my belly full. And yet, my heart still ached from all that had been severed.

The steam pressed against my chest, oppressive, so I soaked in the lukewarm pool in the center of the bath chamber. I always avoided the ice bath. Being so cold that I felt my veins freezing reminded me of those frigid, starving days in the Sylgiz lands. While I shivered just thinking about that time, concubines flowed in and out of the bath chamber — the ones that didn’t hate me smiled with polite greetings. The rest were careful to avoid my drifting eyes. To think, after all I’d been through, I’d end up here.

Zedra entered. Her black curls fell past her breasts as she removed her hair towel and joined me in the lukewarm water. I sat up, smiled, and mumbled a greeting — hopeful not to have bothered her with my lack of attention, though she’d always been kind to me. Kind to everyone.

“I’m so jealous,” she said, giggling. Her reddened cheeks made it plain that she’d been drinking. “You’re an ambassador, now. Nay, Grand Vizier!”

“Nothing of the sort. It’s just, the man at the head of that horde happens to be my brother by blood.”

“You’ve the blood of conquerors,” she said. “Another reason to be jealous.”

“You’ve no reason to ever be jealous of me.”

“Humble too, yet another thing to be jealous of.”

“Stop it.”

I splashed water on her face. She didn’t even flinch and took it with a grin. I remembered when she first arrived in the palace, barely a year ago; she wouldn’t even bathe. She refused to get in the pools, despite the pleading of the eunuchs, and would instead sit on the floor and dump water over her head with a pail. She told me that was how they bathed in the Vogras, where she was from, but the other Vograsian concubines didn’t do that. Sometimes I’d catch her staring at the pool water in a daze. Strange woman, to say the least.

Though I was, by law, a free woman and Zedra a slave, her status towered over mine. After all, she was the beloved of the Crown Prince, a man loved by the people as much as his father, Shah Tamaz. And, out of all his concubines, she was the only one who’d given him a son.

Eunuchs wearing maroon robes placed fresh incense in the corner burners — a zesty scent with earthy tones, probably aloeswood with musk.

“So what was it like seeing your brother after all this time?”

What did it feel like? As if I’d been smashed by a hammer, hugged by a bear, and trampled by a horde; I tried to find measured words instead. “He felt like my brother…and yet, he didn’t. It was like he was the boy I knew and a complete stranger at the same time.”

Zedra nodded. “Time and distance make strangers, yet blood bonds are forever. I’m sure he felt the same as you.” She was so wise for a nineteen-year-old. Her expression tensed. “So…tell me, what’s going to happen now? Should we worry?”

I didn’t notice bombards in Cihan’s camp, so they couldn’t easily get inside the walls. If it came to it, the gholam who’d been sent westward could be recalled to deal with them. But despite reassurances, ants still crawled through my veins; I didn’t want war between two peoples I cared for.

“I think we’re going to solve it, in peace.”

Zedra bit her lip. “Can’t lift the veil, can you? What ever will I gossip about at supper?”

I chuckled. “Don’t gossip about this, all right?” Secrets always spilled in the Sand Palace, but I trusted Zedra and needed to pour out my worries.

She zipped up her lips.

“Someone beheaded three Sylgiz traders and framed Shah Tamaz. We need to prove it wasn’t him.”

She gasped, holding her hand to her mouth, her ruby rings dripping. “Who could…who would ever do such a thing?”

I said the first thing on my mind: “The Jotrids. I mean, I don’t know if it was them, but they’ve every reason to foment war between us and the Sylgiz. Their khagan, Pashang, is as cruel as a broken slipper.”

Zedra chuckled, then splashed water on me. “By Lat, what is that saying?”

How embarrassing — my cheeks tightened. “Just something my mother would say. Us Sylgiz have the dumbest sayings.” I’d always tried to avoid showing where I came from. My tribe was not liked in Alanya — we followed a different path toward Lat, our language was bitter, our ways violent, and our customs savage.

The lukewarm water began to bore me, and I yearned once more for steam. I pushed out and wrapped myself in a star-patterned towel.

“Let’s go into the city later,” Zedra said, “just you and me. It’s been a bit dull around here. Oh, apart from the siege and all.” She laughed.

I was planning to go anyway, to tend to a certain scheme I was part of, so I nodded and went toward the coals.

Strange what a siege does to a thriving city. The food bazaars were bursting with haggling and desperation. Stall sellers had raised prices, a precaution if a long siege would choke their supplies. City folk sought to stock up on whatever they could: dried fruits, vats of well water, teeth twigs, lye. As for Zedra and myself, we rode together in a carriage surrounded by mounted gholam and watched the crowds from our windows. As we neared Laughter Square, the air of wealthier folk seeking a good time replaced the panicked atmosphere of the food bazaar.

Upon getting out, Zedra raised her hands and twirled like a Vograsian dancer — how carefree and fluid. The Vogras, where she was from, was a mountainous part of the Waste and a different world from that of the Sylgiz, Jotrids, and other lowland tribes, so I didn’t know too much about it. Strange that, until today, it had all seemed so unimportant. Though I’d learned about the world since coming to this city, the Philosophers who’d tutored me focused little on the Waste, its tribes, and its geography.

Today, Laughter Square lived up to its name. Men and women lined up before an array of poets, each poet standing upon a richly tapestried dais. The treasure chests at their feet overflowed with all manner of coin: Alanyan, mostly, but I noticed coins with the soaring falcon emblem of Kashan, the aggressive peacock of Sirm, and even some with blocky western letters.

Of course, Zedra and I went to the front of the line, ignoring the glares and foot-stomping of those we’d cut past. Her favorite poet, a man draped in so much green silk he resembled a pig covered in grass, glowed with an eager delight. “The moon has just risen,” he turned to me, “and with it the sun.”

“Ooh!” Zedra clapped. She tossed a silver coin into the treasure chest below his dais. It made a satisfying clank as it landed. “I hope that was merely a taste.”

I looked behind. Too many were staring, either upset we’d cut in front, or perhaps enraptured by the sight of women from the palace. Uneasy, I wrapped my veil over my face and turned back toward the poet.

The poet glowered. “The sun has just gone out, leaving us bereft! Oh lady of the sky, do not deprive us of your light!”

Clever. Begrudgingly, I loosened the veil.

Zedra said, “Hmph!” and shook her head. “I paid you to praise me. The moon needs adoration, too.” She grinned impishly.

“Radiance leaps from your sandstone cheek — ancient eyes full of love — a spirit that sails, piercing the mists with its bow…”

While the poet flung flowers at her from his tongue, I studied the square. Snaking lines stood before all the favorites: Babar of Zunduq, from a city deep in the jungles of Kashan, positioned himself near what I believed was a pleasure house and sat high upon a mechanical elephant. He rained warlike songs upon the gholam, pashas, and khazis who lined up before him. At the entrance to a coffeehouse, a beardless boy named Jilqees composed rhyming verses, mostly about magical, faraway places, which he’d learned about from the pirates and sailors who frequented his nighttime job. But the longest line belonged to a man I’d never seen before, who sat upon a brass throne studded with fake emeralds and rubies. A Himyarite, judging by his skin, which was the color of deep soil. Unlike the gholam around us, who were mostly Himyarites too, this man seemed frail of build. And he wasn’t shouting his verses, like the other poets, but writing them on parchment with a rather fat brush. Why was he so favored?

I interrupted some syrupy nonsense about how Zedra was a lioness on a mountain peak to ask, “Who’s he?”

The poet in green silk squinted at the Himyarite and said, “Oh, that fool. Been here a week and everyone is falling over his verse.” The venom in his voice could kill a snake.

“What’s so special about it?”

The poet huffed. “Toss a silver at his feet and he’ll spew the vilest insults — truly unholy, vulgar.”

“Insults? About whom?”

“About you, my dear. Whoever pays him.”

Zedra gasped. “You mean to say people pay him to be degraded?”

“Indeed!” the poet said with a growl. “It’s despicable and should be forbidden! What is this country coming to?”

“Sorry.” I touched Zedra’s arm with both my hands. “I’ve just remembered, I’m to meet someone at the Grand Bazaar. Briefly. Do you mind?”

“Of course, dear,” she said. “Go flutter about wherever you may. I’ll be here, wasting my time and money.”

I fingered the scroll in my pocket and let out a tense breath. I’d joined this scheme by choice, days before my brother arrived, and couldn’t back out now.

With an escort of four gholam, I proceeded on foot across the Bridge of Saint Jorga toward the Grand Bazaar. How much it’d changed in the eight years I’d lived in Qandbajar. When I’d first come to the city, it was an overstuffed series of lanes and stalls that sat stinking in the city center. Now it stood as a hollow, open-air stone pyramid with nine levels. Nine! A Philosopher had designed it, and it dwarfed even the Sand Palace. The only taller building in the city was the Tower of Wisdom.

At the first level of the Grand Bazaar, cloth, sheepskin, and leather merchants draped their wares across wooden stalls, which were arranged like a maze. Barely room to walk, but everyone stepped out of the way of the gholam and myself. I’d not regularly worn such common materials since moving here, so stared straight as we ascended the stairs to the next level.

Fruits. As we walked through the slightly less crowded area, fruit sellers lowered their gazes, their hands outstretched with whatever ripe perfections they’d reserved for the palace that day. Before handing over the treats, a gholam would pick off a piece with a gold-hilted knife and test the taste. Soon, tangy grapes, spicy dates, and sweet oranges were falling into my hands.

I devoured a date. The spices danced on my tongue and burned down my throat — a rather Kashanese taste. Considering I could barely fit into this pearl-studded caftan Grand Vizier Barkam had gifted me last year, I declined the other delights.

The third floor was nothing like the others. In perfect rows, spices of every color — even sky blue — sat piled in polished glass cauldrons. Cinnamon, turmeric, ginger, saffron, sumac, cumin, caraway, coriander, cloves, cardamom — to name the ones I was familiar with. Every food smell imaginable invaded my nose, as if an army of kababs, lamb shanks, and mutton balls were on the march. And it was all the work of one man. He controlled Qandbajar’s — nay, Alanya’s — spice trade, and upon seeing me, he smiled with warmth. He bent his neck, despite his rank exceeding mine: he was a pasha, after all. And he looked like one; down the middle of his caftan, purple pearls twinkled as if stars burned within.

“When I awoke this morning,” he said, “I prayed Lat would bless my eyes. And by the sight of you, a humble man’s prayer is answered.”

“A humble man?” I looked around. “Has he run off?”

Ozar chuckled, a good-natured grin seizing his pastry-filled cheeks. “Sultana,” he said, granting me a title I did not possess nor deserve. “The clouds part when you arrive. The breezes burn with fire. The mystics fall over themselves, drunk and debased.”

“Keep your day job, pasha. You’ll be laughed out of Laughter Square with verse like that.”

He wagged a thick, ring-covered finger. “Not my words, sultana. The wise Eshkal himself breathed them to life.”

My ignorance of poetry laid bare. How embarrassing. “You need not call me that, pasha. I’ve not attained such rank.”

His face twisted. “Are you not the daughter of a Sylgiz khagan? Considering the men at our gates, I’d wager your rank on the ascent.”

“Yours may be, too.” I reached into my caftan pocket and took out the parchment, then handed it to Ozar.

“What’s this?” He snapped his fingers; one of his retainers brought him a spectacle. Ozar squinted through it as he unrolled the parchment and read its contents.

“Dear Lat,” he said, his eye enlarged and bulging through the spectacle. “I’ve been begging the Majlis for months. By the thousandth heaven — by the saints beneath the glorious throne — how on earth did you get this?”

So bombastic. “I have my ways,” I said with a curt grin, knowing it would drive him mad.

“My dear, do you not realize how valuable this piece of paper is? Barkam has been hounding me for years. ‘Ozar’s monopoly on spices must be broken!’ is the first thing he says when waking up, and his final prayer before sleeping. ‘Ozar’s price wars are against the laws of the Shah and the Fount!’ is what the Grand Vizier whispers in his wife’s ear when making love.” Ozar covered his mouth. “Excuse my crudeness, but I can scarcely contain myself. How did you get him to stamp a paper granting me exclusive rights to the Koa spice lane?”

Now he really was prodding me to bare myself. “The more important question is — what do I want in return?”

“I’ll give you half the world, and the other half too.”

“Wonderful. I like being owed favors by rich and powerful men.”

He raised an eyebrow in surprise. Perhaps he thought I’d ask for my return now. But, like any debt, it’s better to call it later — with interest.

“You know, sultana, you’re nothing like that girl they dragged from the Waste, eight years hence. Thin-wristed, stinking of horse manure, barely a legible word on your tongue. You’re truly a woman of the city, now. To see you climb so high has been a pleasure.”

To have the richest merchant in the land owing me a favor — that was the real pleasure. Or it would’ve been had this exchange been genuine. I couldn’t ignore the shudder in my bones when I thought about the parchment I’d just given him, and who had given it to me.

Zedra clapped as the little monkey danced on the red-tusked elephant’s back. She tossed a gold coin — how excessive — at it; the monkey caught it with its hard, red cap and then flipped it toward its owner, who beamed beneath his gray mustache.

“Our sultana is as generous as Saint Kali,” he said.

A deadpan expression seized Zedra’s face, as if she were insulted. Slowly, a smile spread across her cheeks, but her eyes remained sour. Strange. “That’s too much praise for a paltry gold. You’ve trained the creature so well — you deserve a thousand more.”

I gave the owner a polite nod, then said to Zedra, “Feeling a bit faint. Would you mind if I went home?”

“Been a long day for you, dear. Of course, go and rest.”

Wonderful, she’d bought my excuse. But the four gholam escorting me would be harder to trick. As we traveled by carriage toward the Sand Palace, we passed by the Shrine of Saint Rizva. Barely anyone beneath its sandstone arches — an almost-forgotten relic. Shouts and clamor from the adjacent coffeehouse assured worshippers would get no peace, anyway.

I ordered the carriage driver to stop and stepped outside.

“I would pray, for a moment,” I said to the gold-clad gholam captain, sitting high upon his horse.

“Mistress,” he said. Ah, at least someone knew my proper title. “This shrine is known as a gathering place for degenerates. You can pray at Saint Jamshid’s, up ahead.”

I shook my head. “Saint Rizva was a peacemaker. I would seek her intercession, so my diplomacy with the Sylgiz bears fruit.”

“We’ll come with you, then,” the captain said.

“Into the women’s section? That would be scandalous.” I raised my eyebrow. “I think I can survive five minutes in a shrine.”

The gholam captain nodded begrudgingly.

Elderly women sat on the faded sandstone in the women’s section, reciting holy words and flicking prayer beads. They ignored the tall and frankly stunning man standing behind them. Hadrith stood with his arms crossed; he’d cut his curly hair short, but his combed beard grew longer each day, now reaching his chest.

“You kept me waiting,” he said, obviously unamused, “and I only wait for good news and god.”

“He bought it,” I said. “Didn’t question me. Ozar truly believes the Koa spice lane is his.”

“Well done, little fawn.”

I made a fist. “I told you not to call me that.”

“My beloved. How’s that?” His false grin revealed perfect, glossy teeth. He’d once pontificated about how I ought to use teeth-cleaning twigs from the arak tree at least three times a day. Seemed they did work.

“What kind of man uses his beloved for his illicit schemes?”

He stepped closer — I barely reached his chest, which was broader than mirror armor. He’d clearly been out in the sun; his perfume-mixed sweat was at once overwhelming and intoxicating.

“If you’re to be my wife, we’ll be scheming illicitly till the dust of the earth washes over us. The foremost lesson I learned from my mother and father, so best get used to it.”

I didn’t know if I could. The thought of Ozar being arrested because of me made me feel so…unclean.

“Did you really use your father’s stamp? When they arrest Ozar, he’s going to tell your father that I gave him that parchment!”

“No one expects a little fawn to bare teeth, so you’ll be seen as an unwitting accomplice, at worst. Besides, I’ve been dealing with my father for twenty-five years. Very successfully, might I add.”

“The Grand Vizier isn’t known for his clemency — far from it. Can’t you see I’m worried?”

The praying women turned to look. I’d been too loud in this hallowed place.

Hadrith came to my ear with sweet and heavy breaths. “O’ little fa…my beloved. Trust is the bedrock upon which love grows. Ours will bloom into a wondrous cypress, stretching toward heaven itself.” His tongue was almost in my ear when he said, “I’ll have another task for you soon, my loveliest.”

At that, he left me. After doing something so wrong, I wanted to take another bath. And yet, I burned to know what he wanted me to do next. Whatever it was, I couldn’t stop now.

I did take another bath, my third one today. This time, I made sure no one was around, so I could cry. The eunuchs at the door must’ve heard, but a woman bawling in the harem bath was nothing new.

I even prayed. First, to Saint Rizva, begging her to forgive me for using her shrine for such sordid business. But the child within, awoken after so long because of my brother’s arrival, felt sinful for praying to a saint, so I prayed to Father Chisti. Or was he Saint Chisti? Ugh, what did it matter? He was the founder of our faith, regardless of which path you walked. The straight path or the path of heretics — which was which?

Mother, baby Betil, Father, Cihan — the child in me ached. Memories played. Why always these painful ones? Like the time my father didn’t return after a battle with an infidel Rubadi tribe — I would sit on his bed, smelling his sheets, even drinking his awful salt tea. My mother was almost forced into remarrying the new khagan, whom my father promptly decapitated when he returned, eight moons later. In all that time, I never ceased praying to Father Chisti and the Children so we could be a family again.

As I remembered such things, tears burned down my cheeks, heated by the steam that smothered the air. But the memories always left me cold and shivering. I needed more heat. More fire.

I fetched more coals for the steam from a bag in the back of the chamber. While piling the coals on the burning tray, one tumbled off the edge and fell on the damp floor behind the tray. Black water ran toward my feet. Sickening. I pushed the tray to the side to pick up the coal.

Across the wall, behind the tray, was a red handprint. No, a blood handprint. What the hell?

I brushed my wet hand against it, but it didn’t drip. The blood was caked onto the tile. Ugh, were the eunuchs not taking care of this place? Well, someone ought to. I grabbed my towel, wet it from the puddle on the floor, and rubbed the handprint. Harder and rougher, as if I were cleaning my horse. But when I pulled the towel away, the fabric was perfectly yellow and star-patterned, and the bloodstain remained undisturbed.

As I stared at it, whispers floated into the steamy air. But as far as I knew, I was alone in the bath. I pushed my hand toward the blood print. It fit…perfectly, as if it were my own hand that bled it onto the warm tile.

What the fuck?

Whispers. Just outside my steam room. I peeked outside — no one there. Was I going mad?

I pushed the coal tray back, blocking the blood print from sight. Had someone…bled in this room?

Died in this room?

Chapter 2

The post CONQUEROR’S BLOOD | Chapter 1 | Cyra first appeared on Zamil Akhtar | Fantasy Author.

“In the name of Imperator Heraclius — the Breath of the Archangel and Custodian of the High Holy Sea — lift your head,” the Ethos priest said. “And be reborn as Micah the Metal.”

That was my name now. I was born just Micah, the son of an innkeeper, who I’d watched cough bile as a lord’s hireling stabbed him six times in the belly. Why? Because that was the world. And now I was reborn in the name of the Archangel, into the same broken world, but this time I held the knife and aimed only for the deserving.

I didn’t even have to lift my head; the priest pulled my hair.

“I baptize you with heavy water and cleanse you of all sins, before the Archangel and the Twelve Holies.”

At the lakeshore, my army covered the horizon. Fifty thousand armored paladins watched the rebirth of their grandmaster.

The old priest grabbed my shoulders. “Do you believe in the Archangel and the Twelve he has appointed to guard the believers?”

“I do.”

“Do you reject the Fallen Angels and all their temptations?”

“I reject them.”

“Will you follow the will of your imperator, no matter where it leads?”

I hesitated, then said, “No matter where.”

Once the rite was over, I waded out of the water. Berrin, my second-in-command, handed me a loincloth, and I proceeded to the fire he’d prepared. I plucked a fig from a tree, sat at the fire, and enjoyed some warmth. Ah, how light it was to be a newborn — a blank parchment upon which holy script could be written.

“What’s it like to be Micah the Metal?” Berrin asked. He looked like a baby with those fat cheeks. But he was the first of my paladins and wore the black armor of our battalion as if it were molded onto him at birth. The red accents of the breastplate complemented the stray, ruddy hairs of his eyebrows, which now pointed downward in trepidation.

“Before I stepped into that water, my soul was covered in tar. And now, it’s sinless, shimmering like a star.” I spat a fig seed into the fire. “I don’t want it to darken ever again.” I raised my hands, palms up. “Berrin, will you help me be a good man?”

“My liege, you’re the best of us. That’s why you were given this honor.”

“No…I am no more deserving than any of you.” I pressed my eyes to shut out tears. “When the priest pushed me down, and the water surrounded me, I saw all that my hands had wrought.” Another image flashed of Miriam in the windowless room, screaming shrill from birthing pangs, surrounded by hateful one-eyed priests. How could I have left her there? “The things I’ve done…I should be flung into the deepest pit.”

“That heavy water washed it all away. This is your great day, my liege. Don’t sully it with melancholy.”

Berrin fidgeted and hid his hands behind his back. How unbearably standoffish. Yes, by being consecrated in the High Holy Sea, I was now equal to any lord, even the Imperator. But the last thing I wanted was for my men to think me superior. To see me like the villainous lords that had trodden upon them.

“It’s a great day for us all,” I said. “Any honor I’m given, I share with each of you. And Berrin…please don’t call me ‘liege.’ I’m not whipping you for wheat.”

“As you say, Grandmaster.”

“Much better.”

I devoured my fig, shrugged off the melancholy, and looked upon my men. They knelt as I passed: my holy swordsman, their longswords pounded from the metals of Mount Damav; my gunners, their matchlocks forged with dark steel melted from the Colossus of Dycondi; my alchemists and sappers, their faces burned and blackened by firebombs. The sailors I’d taken from the isles of Ejaz were not versed in our customs, but they too knelt with their heads high.

I climbed a rock on the shore. What a perfect place and day: pure blue sky, craggy green hills surrounding us, and the High Holy Sea’s turquoise water shimmering in the sunlight. I gazed upon my men, proud as ever. Every honor I’d earned was due to their steadfastness, piety, and loyalty. No commander could ask for a braver bunch; so how could I keep these blessings for myself? “At attention, one and all!”

They did as commanded and became a wall of black metal that stretched across the shore.

“The priest asked me three questions. I have three questions for you.”

A chill breeze blew through.

“Will you pledge your swords, your guns, and your fire to defend the true faith and all who follow it?”

Fifty thousand men shouted, “Yes, Grandmaster!”

“Will you follow me to the shores of our holy lands to take them back from the infidel?”

“Yes, Grandmaster!”

“Look to your left and your right. Look upon your brothers. Look at the fire of the Archangel burning in their eyes.”

My men did as commanded.

“Do you pledge to die before you turn your back on your brothers?”

“Yes, Grandmaster!”

“As I am Micah the Metal, so shall you all be reborn. You are my house, you are my kin, and each of you shall carry my honor.” I gazed at the Ethos priests standing beneath an olive tree in the distance. They were not going to like this. “Go, every one of you, and bathe in the waters of the High Holy Sea. Be reborn, warriors of the Faith, one and all!”

Fifty thousand men shed their armor and became naked as pealed pears. While my army swarmed the lake and bathed in its strange waters, I sat by the fire and endured protestations from the Ethos priests:

“They have not been permitted to enter the High Holy Sea!”

“Baptism is only for those chosen by the Imperator!”

“We honored you, and this is how you repay us? Bishop Yohannes will hear of this!”

I hated priests. I hated holy men who claimed to speak for the Archangel. When I wanted to talk to the Archangel, I opened my heart and prayed. I needed no intercessors. But I kept silent and let the priests protest. My fifty thousand could not be stopped.

One man who did not bathe in the water was my engineer, Jauz. Bald and bristled, he was from the Empire of Silk far in the northeast, where the ice melts and turns again into grassland. Though he and his engineers had taken to dressing in the paladin black and red, it seemed as foreign on him as armor on a pig. Jauz spent his nights burning incense and meditating before a jade idol. Because of his knowledge and skill, I tolerated it. At least he was not a worshipper of Lat, the wretched Fallen Angel and temptress.

“Compliments, Grandmaster.” Jauz stuck a knife into an apple and plucked out the seeds. Even how they ate fruit was strange. “I share the holy feeling of this day.”

“Are you not interested in the heavy water, Jauz?”

“It’s just water.”

“No, there’s something odd about it. It tastes like steel.”

“We had a lake like that back home. Dive deep enough, and you’ll find an underwater mountain full of iron and copper. You definitely shouldn’t drink it.”

“If that’s true, I wish we could mine it all.”

“Our emperor felt the same.” Jauz crunched a piece of apple. “He drained the entire lake.”

I couldn’t imagine the words he’d just said. “You can’t drain a lake. Where would the water go?”

“When you have a million men and the knowledge to mold the earth,” he tapped on his own head, “you can do anything. The Silk Emperor is, no doubt, the most powerful man alive.”

“Good thing the Empire of Silk is so far away.”

Jauz tossed the apple pit into a pile of ants. They swarmed it. “Good thing for you I’m not.”

Once I’d dressed, Jauz and I traveled by horseback to the docks. By the Archangel, Nixos was a paradise in an emerald sea. Were I a man who sought pleasantry, I’d settle here. But something more beautiful waited offshore: my five hundred ships. They filled the horizon.

“How much more time do you need?” I asked Jauz as we climbed off our horses.

My paladins had donned their work clothes. Some readied their carts to haul wood. Others took measurements of ship dimensions. Burly men heaved planks on their backs like oxen. Even on a holy day of rebirth, my men didn’t cease their righteous labors. I had to succeed, for them as much as myself. In the new world we would build, I pledged that each paladin would have his own fief and never endure a lord’s whip again. But for that we needed land, and the only land I’d not conquered lay east, defended by the sea walls of the holiest city on earth: Kostany.

Jauz brushed his bald head. “Modifying all the ships will take a moon.”

“Too long. The Shah’s spies must’ve sent word that we’re massing for an invasion. If we wait a whole moon, he’ll have double the men at his walls.”

We stopped at one of the ships on the dock. Work had completed on it, but all I noticed was the flatter angle of the hull. Jauz had explained how rebuilding the hull would increase upward pressure. This would allow a ship of a hundred men and thirty cannons to speed through the shallow strait that led to Kostany.

“Your men are not shipbuilders, and work like this takes time,” he said. “With the men we have to spare, we can do ten to fifteen ships a day. If you want the ships done faster, then we won’t have enough men to make guns and ammunition and armor and artillery and all the other things we need.”

“Finish in a fortnight.”

Jauz twirled his mustache, as if it were a crank by which he processed his thoughts. Were all engineers from the Silk Empire bald mustachios? “You know, I’ve studied the sea defenses of Kostany. Even with ships that can travel in shallow water, you won’t get through the seven sea walls. The Shrunken Strait is rather narrow. You can only confront each wall with seven or eight ships at a time, and they will endure fire from a few hundred cannons.”

“We have five hundred ships and the best sailors in the world. A shock attack on the sea walls would be unexpected.” Though the specifics still had to be drawn up, I had a gut ache the Sirmians would be unprepared. That if we got through the sea walls, we could easily scale the embankments that led to the Seat.

“You’d need a miracle to survive those walls,” Jauz said. “The Silk Emperor has a navy of two thousand and engineers more knowledgeable than me. Even he wouldn’t succeed. Our best course is to land at Demoskar, march inland, and put Kostany to siege from land.”

I’d imagined that scenario. The march from Demoskar to Kostany, dragging artillery, would take days. How many raids would we endure during that march? Though it was Crucian land, stolen by the infidels, we’d forgotten its secrets. The Sirmian horse archers would whittle us down without ever engaging in a real battle. By the time we reached the walls of Kostany, the zeal we’d gained from this holy day would be snuffed out by the realities of war. A siege could take years. To feed my army, we’d have to pillage the villages around the city, many of which still practiced the Ethos faith. That would turn the people against us and swell the Shah’s army. A protracted siege was not winnable.

“All five hundred ships should be ready to sail the Shrunken Strait,” I said, “in a fortnight.”

“Grandmaster, did those holy waters turn one man into two?”

“There are five thriving towns on this island, filled with the best shipbuilders on this side of the world. I will bring them to you.”

“How? With all the metal and ships we bought, we have no gold to pay them.”

“We won’t be paying them.”

Jauz grinned, turned his head sideways, and nodded. Did these heathens have to nod strangely, too? “And they say you have a kind soul.”

“Who says that?”

“Your men. You know, they would follow you off the edge of the earth.”

I shook my head. “We’re not going to the edge of the earth.” I pointed toward the ship-covered eastern horizon. “We’re going to Kostany.”

*

I ordered five legions to the seaside towns to bring back ten thousand shipbuilders by dawn’s light. We promised the guilds repayment, but the unwilling leaders wouldn’t press their own into my service. And time was too short for deliberation.

As the shipbuilders marched to my ships in chains, I cursed myself as assuredly as they must’ve cursed me. Dozens had died resisting, preferring death to working without pay. Instead of watching them herded like cattle, I returned to my flagship the Watersteel and begged the Archangel to forgive me for spilling Crucian blood. I’d just been cleansed of my sins and had now amassed many more. The weight of it crushed me, and I could scarcely lift my head off the moldy floorboards of my office. I trembled at the thought of the Archangel’s rage for each innocent Ethosian I’d hurt. How could I do this? How could I be like the lords we were trying to escape?

As birds chirped to welcome the morning, ten thousand men — including all the shipbuilding guilds of Nixos — were toiling to modify my ships.

Zosi, the youngest brother of my deceased wife, came to me as I watched the workers from a rocky hill. He’d led one of the five legions that I’d sent to round up the shipbuilders. Though barely a man, he had the valor of a veteran. His soft features betrayed his soft heart, which, from his sulking expression, seemed to be bleeding like mine.

“Is this truly right, brother?” he asked. It seemed he was growing a beard, probably to look older, but his almond-colored hairs were hardly noticeable on such fair skin. “The streets are filled with weeping children and wives praying for their husbands’ safe return. Can we bear this sin upon our backs and still expect the Archangel’s favor?” He couldn’t look in their direction, so heavy was his shame.

I too could scarcely watch. They were believers, and I forced them to labor ceaselessly. The noon sun blazed. It was a windless day, and the toil must have been crushing. The crack of whips striking flesh echoed through the hillside. I myself had suffered at the hands of more powerful men and could only empathize.

“Once Kostany is ours, I will reward them a thousand times over. I will open the vaults of the Shah and rain his treasures upon all who toiled for us.”

Zosi nodded and smiled. “I’ve never known you to be false with your words. But it’s not me you’ll have to convince.” His shoulders tensed up again. “An Ethos knight came to your flagship. You’ve been summoned.”

“By whom?”

“Bishop Yohannes.”

Of course. The people of Nixos were his flock, and I’d stolen them. I couldn’t refuse a summons from the second-highest bishop of the Ethos Church, so I made my way up the island’s second-tallest hill to the cathedral. The white brick structure had two purple spires, and stained-glass windows adorned every wall.

Inside stood a solid gold, towering likeness of the Archangel. Melted down, it could pay for five hundred more ships. Not that I would go that far. Perhaps I could be forgiven for acts against my fellow man, but to act against god himself? There’s only so much a man should do against his own soul, though it all be for the greater good.

The Bishop had me wait. That’s what pompous men do — waste the time of those they think are beneath them. He had me sitting in the pew for thirty minutes before he showed his gray face.

“Micah the Metal,” Bishop Yohannes said. His robe was gray too, as were his whiskers. “Welcome to the Holy Sepulcher of Benth the Apostle.” Even his voice lacked color. What was he hiding behind his plainness?

He led me to his office, a small room attached to the cathedral’s library. It was devoid of luxuries, with only a plate of figs on a stone desk and a well-stocked bookshelf.

“Have you heard the story of the angel Micah?” he said. “Your namesake.”

“Only a thousand times.”

“It is said that Micah’s wings—”

“Destroyed a star and burned the earth, then covered the sun for a hundred years until the earth froze. It did not warm again until all sinning ceased. While I love the scripture dearly, I didn’t come here to hymn with you.”

“Your time is precious to you. You want to be somewhere so fast that you can’t spare a moment to remember the Holies.” The Bishop grabbed a book from a nearby shelf and opened it: Angelsong, the chapter of Micah. “Recite it to me, from the first verse.”

I laughed so hard, the spot in my ribs that the Alanyan pirate had slammed with a hammer hurt. “I’m not one of your choir boys. And you’re right, my time is precious. Goodbye, Bishop.”

Before I could step out, the Bishop said, “Cross that threshold and I’ll declare you a heretic.”

That wiped off my smile. “You wouldn’t dare. Imperator Heraclius sent me here to receive your blessings.”

“You may be Imperator Heraclius’ favorite pet, but it would take several days for him to hear about my declaration. And in that time, well, what would happen to you?”

“Nothing at all. I have fifty thousand men on this island. How many do you have?”

The Bishop must have stared down dozens of upstarts with his beady eyes and thought I was another. “There are only two who hold a higher position than me in the Ethos Church — the Patriarch and the Imperator. As holy paladins, your men are devoted to the Archangel. You have willed them to commit acts against their own souls and the souls of fellow Crucians. How many already doubt you? And how many would refuse your orders once I proclaim you a heretic?”

“My men would never take your side.”

“We’ll see,” the Bishop said. “One thing I’m sure of — the work on your fleet will take far longer without the total loyalty of your men.”

I walked to his side of the desk. Bishop Yohannes stood and faced me, a filthy grin on his face.

“This is a holy land,” he said, “one of the few not defiled by infidels. And you came here and treated it like it was yours, and not the Archangel’s. You will answer for your crimes.”

I refused to blink and stared him down. “I’ve sent more men to hell than there are on your placid little island. Choose your words carefully, Bishop.”

“You are valued by Heraclius and thus beyond reproach.” He stopped grinning and looked away, his tone losing its sharpness. “But your soldiers are not. I must show my flock that I can administer the angels’ justice to those who have wronged them. I want the five commanders of the five legions you sent to our towns. They will face justice in your place.”

“You will never sit in judgment over my men. They will die on the battlefield, not in your noose.”

The Bishop closed the book of hymns and dusted it. “Well said. A true commander never forsakes his men.” He cleared his throat. “But true men forsake their commanders all the time. Loyalty is easy when you’re winning, but you cannot win against the Church. I will give you a recourse…”

I sat again and grabbed a fig. Rolled it in my hand. “Go on.”

“You’ve just returned from the isles of Ejaz, where they worship the accursed Lat.”

“Indeed. We sent many infidels to hell to be with her.”

“Ah, and you also took many infidels prisoner, didn’t you?”

He was referring to my shipmen, the Ejazi sailors. They stuck out with their eastern dress and manner, so of course the Bishop took notice.

“The Ejazi are the best sailors in the world,” I said. “Still, I executed thousands I’d captured. The two hundred I spared proclaimed their faith in the Archangel and now are our brothers. You can’t have them.”

The Bishop fingered the spine of the book. “I’m not talking about the sailors. I’m talking about your other prisoner.”

He couldn’t mean…I’d been careful to hide her from everyone other than my closest lieutenants. Though the Ejazi knew…but still…

I swallowed my dread and disappointment. “What other prisoner?” How bitter to think I’d been betrayed. Not just me, but every paladin who dreamed of freeing Kostany, who dreamed of being free.

The Bishop’s smile was so smug, I would have bashed it off his face were he not a holy man. “You thought I wouldn’t find out? To climb high in the Church, one must know where the limits of loyalty lie.”

“Who told you?”

“Just a lowly Ejazi — his limit was his large toe. I barely got a squeal from the small one.”

A righteous fire flared through me. “There’s nothing softer than the heart of a new believer. Are you so cruel?”

“Oh Micah, men don’t forsake their gods so easily. He screamed out for Lat when my inquisitor brought the knife to his throat.” The Bishop’s chuckle was as dirty as his grin. “Now give me the prisoner, and you and I will be as one.” He clasped his hands. “Of and for the Ethos.”

*

I didn’t give Bishop Yohannes an answer. He gave me one night. I had to know if this prisoner was of use or better on the Bishop’s pyre.

We kept the prisoner on my flagship, the Watersteel. I’d seized it from Alanyan pirates. Unlike Crucian galleons, it had a second deeper hold, which could only be accessed by a trap door and was meant for hiding gold from tax collectors. That’s where I kept the prisoner.

Save for my lantern, it was utterly dark. The mold-stench was stronger here than anywhere on the ship. The prisoner sat in the corner, chained by the ankle to an iron ball. She looked at me with eyes as green as the water surrounding the ship. Her face showed no fear, anger, or sadness, only an utter calm.

“How’ve you been passing the time?” I asked from across the room.

“In truth.”

Strange answer, perhaps she didn’t know our language well.

“I could make things better for you. A lot better. Would you like that?”

She stared in silence.

“Here’s my proposal,” I said. “Renounce your false goddess, proclaim faith in the Archangel, and join my crew. You’d be the only girl, but I’ll guarantee your safety and honor. The alternative is much worse. I give you to the Bishop and he burns you.”

“I will not renounce my goddess.”

“I am pledged to destroy her faith, as she is the enemy of my angel. You can’t worship Lat in my crew.”

I held up my lantern to see her better. There wasn’t a wrinkle on her face or a hair that wasn’t lustrous. She couldn’t be any older than eighteen — too innocent to be what the Ejazi insisted. I’d fallen for a few girls like her in my hometown, forever ago. The baker’s daughter. The butcher’s niece. The moneylender’s suspiciously young wife. They weren’t stunners — a bit pasty and narrow — but plenty for an innkeeper’s son.

“Understand this,” I said. “I will burn your shrines. Any who refuse the true faith, I will put to the sword.”

“Yes, you will do all that and more.” Her broad eyes stared straight ahead, as if looking at an invisible man behind me.

“We’re enemies unless you change your faith.”

“We are not enemies, who serve the Dreamer.”

Another language fumble? But she seemed to speak Crucian well enough.

“The Bishop will be pleased to have you,” I said. “Burning witches is his special joy.”

I grabbed the metal rung of the ladder.

“The seven sea walls of Kostany have never been breached in the history of the world. How will you cross with a thousand cannons raining death upon you?” Now it was obvious she spoke our language better than most foreigners. “Below Kostany, there are tunnels. I know the way through.”

“Tunnels? What tunnels?”

“Labyrinthos.”

“Impossible,” I scoffed. “Labyrinthos is the gate to hell. There’s no way through.”

She stood and walked toward me until her body recoiled from the weight of the iron ball. “Where did you find me?”

“In the titan mines of Ejaz,” I said. “You just appeared, as if a ghost.”

“Do you know where I was a day before?”

She pushed closer. The iron ball gave way. She lifted her legs and pulled it, as if it was air. I stopped myself from gaping in awe.

And then I could smell her breath. Like mint and ice and honey. She’d been locked in this dungeon for days and had little water for bathing. How did she smell so tempting?

“I was in Kostany, six hundred miles away,” she said. “In Labyrinthos.”

I sniggered. “I ought to spank you for fibbing like that.”

“I can lead you through the tunnels in hours. You’d appear beneath the Sublime Seat while the Shah and his armies sleep. You’ll butcher them and capture the sea walls. Once you sail your ships through the Shrunken Strait, Kostany will be yours.”

The Crucian flag flying over the city. Divine hymns bursting from our holiest chapel. It sounded too good to be true. But her words made the image of conquering Kostany so real.

“There is a cost,” she said. “One that heavy water cannot cleanse. Those who enter Labyrinthos don’t leave quite the same. Ahriyya touches them.”

Ahriyya was another false god, believed by Lat worshippers to be the embodiment of evil. As if sin wasn’t bad enough. As if you needed something evil to embody it. Yes, the Fallen Angels were evil too, but their sins were their own.

I laughed in her face. “Here’s how I know that my religion is true and yours false. You people take slaves. You believe a man can be owned. If anything is evil, it’s enslavement. It’s the sins we commit against each other that are evil, not some dark god who rules over hell.”

I swear she smirked, but it was so slight I might have imagined it. “And what is it you’re doing? How many men toil to modify your ships without a speck of silver?”

I winced in surprise. “Who told you about that?”

“I know a great many things, just as I know you’re not as unyielding as you pretend.”

“I am a man of faith. The first thing I’ll do when I sack Kostany is bring all its gold and silver back to this island to pay everyone who even so much as lifted a plank for me. And to the widows of those who fell in the heat, I’ll give a shipload of the Shah’s precious jewels.”

“You’ll have to conquer Kostany first. You won’t without me.”

The girl walked away, pulled the iron ball across the room as if it weighed nothing, and sat in the corner.

*

Two choices lay before me that night: give the Bishop the witch or my five lieutenants. I stayed huddled in the nook where I slept, in the office onboard my flagship, and covered my head with a sheet to drown out the world around me. I begged for guidance and deliverance from the one who heard all prayers. How could I ever entertain giving up my men? And yet, the girl’s promise of Kostany lingered in my heart. She had shown me a sign of her power by moving the iron ball, and I could not hand over such a promise to the Bishop and his inquisitors. By dawn, I was writhing on the floor, still covered in a sheet and crying for the Archangel’s forgiveness, because I knew what I had to do.

I called the five lieutenants who’d overseen the conscription of the workers to my office. I explained how the Bishop wanted them to face justice in my place but omitted mention of his offer to hand over the witch.

“We’re ready to die for you,” Berrin said at the head of the five. “Don’t hesitate because of your love for us. We know it’s the same love the Archangel has for mankind.”

I could only say, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, brother,” said cleareyed Zosi. The thought of him swinging at the noose made me tremble. “We’ve all just been baptized in waters that cleansed our sins. We’ll die with so few, and perhaps our books of good deeds will be weightier than our books of sin.”

“May the Archangel put all your sins in my book,” I said. “Let me carry them, as you have carried our holy cause.”

Orwo, my chief alchemist and sapper, put his burnt hand on my shoulder. “I don’t want to die. I’ve too many recipes to try. But I’d be honored to see the angels with this bunch.” The man had no eyebrows, yet his raw face was more beloved to me than that of the fairest maiden.

Edmar, who had as many scars as he had hairs, nodded in agreement. “You can name a bridge after me in Kostany. Nah, make it a bombard. The biggest bombard.” Each scar on his face was holier than a sacred hymn, for they were rent in service to the Archangel.

Only Aicard remained silent. Not just silent, but dismissive. He tugged at his blond goatee, a vain fashion that I hated. My chief spy changed his facial hair every week, and it seemed he was pondering what to grow next, as if he knew he would live.

“I will pray with my last words for your victory in Kostany.” Berrin smashed his fist on my desk, almost crushing my brass compass. “Crush the Shah beneath your boot and tell him my name!”

Just thinking about what the Bishop would do to him turned my blood to fire. I could not accept it. I was Micah the Metal — reborn in the heavy water of the High Holy Sea, servant of the Archangel and the Twelve Holies, conqueror of Pasgard, Sargosa, Pendurum, Dycondi, and Ejaz. In a decade of blood, I’d tripled the size of the Imperium. What had Bishop Yohannes achieved to presume authority over me?

I unsheathed my sword, threw it on the table, and looked into the unyielding eyes of my five loyal lieutenants. Men so brave that death was but a trifle. Nay, men so faithful they welcomed death.

“Today, it begins,” I said, “our war for a pure place, outside the grip of rotten priests and cruel lords. A land ruled by the Archangel and only for those faithful in word and heart.” I grabbed my sword and raised it in the air. “Onward!”

*

The six of us killed or maimed every Ethos knight guarding the Holy Sepulcher of Benth the Apostle, though Edmar did most of it. His throwing knives always found flesh, whether the underarm gap in the plate or the back of the knee. I was a big man with a big sword, so cutting down the knights was like rending armored children — not that I’d ever done such a thing.

Bishop Yohannes was counting tithes in his office when I burst in. I dragged him by the hair out of the cathedral, bound him with rope, and pulled him up the tallest hill. He’d built a pyre there — of all ways to deal death, burning was the most painful. Did he presume I’d give him the witch and so prepared a pyre? Or was he going to torch my men?

Either way, his fate was decided.

“You are lost, Micah the Metal,” he said as I tied him to the pyre. “I speak for the Archangel. Have you no sense?”

“Then seek his forgiveness. You’re about to be judged.”

Paladins gathered. My five lieutenants stayed close. Baby-faced Berrin, soft Zosi, Orwo, Edmar, unflinching Aicard — I would never again think to forsake them.

But there was another that I didn’t expect. My prisoner — the witch.

“Who freed you?” I asked as she strolled toward me, her expression plain as the clear sky.

She removed her yellow headscarf. Her pupils reflected sunshine as emeralds would.

The Bishop’s eyes bulged when he saw her. “This is the cursed woman! This is whom you are willing to kill for, Micah? Do you not know who she is? Do you not know what she is?”

“Whatever she is, she’s mine.”

“She’s a magus!” the Bishop shouted. “A sorceress with powers you cannot comprehend! You must kill her before she brings ruin to us all!”

Berrin whispered in my ear, “Grandmaster, this man is a bishop, consecrated in the name of the Archangel by both the Patriarch and Imperator Heraclius. He baptized the Imperator’s sons in the High Holy Sea with his own hands. Are you sure you want to do this?”

A good argument. Though I desired to see Bishop Yohannes burn and was furious toward his cruelty, he was still an Ethosian. I tempered my fury with mercy, as all good Ethosians should.

“I’ll give you a chance to save yourself, Bishop,” I said. “If you’re truly a believer, then answer me — in the story of Micah the angel, when he covers the sun with his wings, why does he let the righteous freeze along with the sinners?”

The Bishop spat in my face. “I will not debate theology with you, nor will I be judged by you!”

I wiped the slime off my eyebrow. “Because we’re all sinners.” I grabbed the flint from Berrin. “We all deserve a painful death. Ice cleansed the believers of sin in the time of the angel Micah. Now fire will cleanse yours.”

“You are a curse upon this land.” The Bishop began his final lamentations. “Imperator Heraclius will excommunicate you. He will declare you an enemy of the Faith, and all that you’ve done will be for naught!”

I struck the flint. It took a few tries to create fire with this wind.

“You’re right, Heraclius probably will,” I said. “I’ve committed grievous sins and will continue to. But all will be forgiven.”

The Bishop laughed for the last time. “How can you be so filled to the brim with hubris!? The Imperator will never forgive this! The Archangel will cast you into the deepest hell!”

I lit the pyre. Fire crackled up the wood. “I will be forgiven because I will give Imperator Heraclius what he wants the most. What he has wanted since he ascended the throne. I will give every Ethosian what they yearn for with raging hearts.”

The Bishop bleated like a dying goat as fire charred his feet. The stench of burnt flesh assaulted my nose.

“For the Archangel and all his worshippers,” I said, “I will cleanse the holiest land upon this earth. I will open Kostany. I will defeat the unbelievers and take the east back for the Ethos.”

I hoped the Bishop’s screams were heard through the island. I enjoyed each one. When it was over, I turned to the witch, who’d been watching without emotion.

“Who freed you?” I asked again.

“I was a prisoner because I wanted to be,” she said, her ashen hair messy in the breeze. “Now I’m free because I want to be.”

She gazed upon the Bishop’s charred remains. Her blemish-free, almost child-like face betrayed no feeling. Was death even a curiosity to her? More importantly, was it a curiosity to me?

I stared at my hands. What the hell had I done?

“He’s only the first,” the girl said.

“The first of what?”

She whispered in my ear, “The first of many you’ll kill for me.”

What a strange thing to say. No matter how pretty, a girl was not worth killing for, though she wasn’t just another girl from town.

My men began marching down the hill — silent, as if in mourning. Most of them admired priests, so they’d be shaken. I’d have to work hard to reaffirm the justice of our purpose.

The witch looked upon Nixos, her eyes shimmering like its emerald waters.

“You haven’t even told me your name.”

She came close and said, “You can call me Aschere.” And then she walked away.

[mc4wp_form id=”597″]

The post GUNMETAL GODS | Chapter 2 | Micah first appeared on Zamil Akhtar | Fantasy Author.

The walk through the grand bazaar left my ears ringing, such was the clamor of folks rushing to buy geometric carpets from Alanya, colorful Kashanese spices, and ghastly metal idols. The hollering and running and bumping awakened memories of clashing armies; already I wanted to flee to the countryside. To relieve the strain, I considered stopping at a coffeehouse to smoke cherry-flavored hookah and down a thimble of their strongest black, but I feared the Shah had waited long enough.

The Seat of the Sublime Palace was not the highest point in the city; that honor went to the Blue Domes. But the Seat sat on a hill and looked upon Kostany the way many imagined god would. It wore its green dome like a turban, and the rest of the palace shimmered like pearls under the midday sun.

The plaza was all fountains and gardens and white marble. Imposing spires overlooked the gates. They were watchtowers for the Shah’s loyal slave soldiers: the janissaries. But the young janissary guarding the gate in flashy yellow and rose-colored cottons didn’t believe I was the great hero Kevah, answering a summons from the Shah.

“You’re the janissary who jousted twelve armored cavaliers while on foot?” he asked, disbelief bulging from his eyes. “Were they drunk?”

“No, but when your mother sees what I’m going to do to you, she’ll drink herself into a stupor.” An old janissary taunt — harmless since we didn’t know our mothers. “I was guarding this gate at sixteen. By eighteen, I’d left bits of my flesh on seven battlefields. At twenty — you get the idea. I won’t waste breaths on you while the Glorious Star is waiting.”

The young janissary bit his quaking bottom lip, forced a smile, and said, “The legend returns. His Majesty has been expecting you.”

He ushered me into the great hall, where the Shah sat upon his golden divan. And above it, the golden statue of the Seluqal peacock stared down with its ruby — literally ruby — eyes.

“Kevah the Blacksmith,” the Shah said. “I’ve met eunuchs with better titles.”

He wore lavender brocade with the imprints of peacocks, the sigil of House Seluqal. The plumes of real peacocks augmented the crest of his golden turban, which he’d wrapped just above his shaped eyebrows. At least he had the beard of a warrior — trimmed but thick enough to evoke respect. Beneath the pomp, he still had the hard way about him.

“Your Glory.” I bent my neck. “A former slave ought to appreciate whatever title he can get.”

“Oh shut up.” The Shah rose from his divan as the whine of a cicada punctured the air. “I freed you and gave you enough gold so you wouldn’t have to lift a finger, and yet you bang a hammer in the heat all day. You’re an ingrate if I ever saw one.”

“I could say the same for you.”

The Shah laughed, his belly shaking. “That’s the Kevah I know. Sharp blade and sharper tongue.”

“It’s good to see you again.”

“But it’s not. I wish I never had reason to call on you.” Shah Murad’s sigh was like air escaping a leather sack. “Another magus is stirring up trouble. I’d like you to bring me his head.”

Not what I expected, but I kept my back straight and tone even. “No ‘welcome home’ feast. No parade. Just straight to business.”

“Apologies, I mistook you for a soldier. But if it’s a powdering you want, let’s walk.”

We left the great hall and strolled through a pleasure garden. A breeze blew against the pretty flowers. A hornbill fluttered above the veranda — its green and gold wings flapping too fast for the eye.

The Shah said, “I require every ambassador to gift a native bird from his kingdom. Now songbirds from the eight corners make a home here.”

The spear-like beak of the fluffy, round one on the branch above could poke an eye out.

“Can’t they just…fly away?” I asked.

“Hah! Even the birds know there’s no place greater. They’ve far more sense than you.”

“I hope you’ve the sense to find another plan,” I said. “I can’t kill a magus.”

“But you did kill one. You’re the only man alive who has.”

“I got lucky.”

“Luck doesn’t behead a sorcerer.” The Shah studied me. He surely saw hair that had thinned with years and a belly that my tightest belt couldn’t hide. “Tell me, Kevah, what is it you want?”

“I have everything I need, thanks to you.”

“It’s been almost ten years since Lunara. You should take a new wife.”

“We’re still married.”

“You can’t be married to the dead.”

I made a fist behind my back. How dare he say that? “She’s not dead.”

Black birds with silver beaks flew overhead, their dark pupils bathing in red. The Shah raised his eyebrows and looked upon me with pity. “A woman doesn’t show for ten years, she might as well be. The Fount have decreed a husband need only wait five years, and you’ve doubled that. You’re almost forty, aren’t you?”

“I’ll be forty in seven moons.” I unclenched my fist, hoping he’d get to the point.

“Gray hairs in the beard and no children. You need a young, fertile woman. I’ve got dozens in my court, from this tiresome family or that. You kill this magus, and I’ll let you choose whomever you like.”

“I don’t need a reward to fight on your behalf. You need only ask.”

Shah Murad’s snicker wasn’t very royal. It reminded me of a younger Murad, who ate the leather off his shoes during the siege of Rastergan. “You think I’m sending you to your death.”

“I’m ready to die for your house. Always have been.”

“Fucking imbecile — I don’t want you to die for me. I want you to be the Kevah of ten years past and kill another magus.”

“Truthfully, I don’t know how I killed that magus,” I admitted. “Never have, really. I think about it all the time. The magus opened the clouds and rained hail upon us, each hailstone sharp as a diamond. One sliced into a man’s helmet and down through his groin, carving him in half. So many died.” I suppressed a shudder. “Then Lunara distracted the magus while I swung my sword. The next moment, his severed head and mask were at my feet.” Describing it was reliving a nightmare. One I’d never woken from.

“No-no-no.” The Shah glared at me with royal disdain. “I remember you boasting how you’d cut his head clean. You showed off that magus’ mask like it was an ear you’d cut off and hung around your neck. It’s too late to be humble.”

“That may be, but I was faster and stronger back—”

“You’re afraid!” The Shah’s shout startled a flock of parrots, sending them fluttering into the sky. The janissary guards straightened their backs. “I don’t ask. I command. You will kill this magus. Afterward, you will come to my court and choose the youngest, fairest, biggest-breasted girl and put Lunara out of your mind for good. Refuse either command, and I’ll feed your head to my birds.”

Had I left my countryside cottage and journeyed hundreds of miles to die?

I forced my neck to bend. “I’ve never refused a shah and won’t today.”

*

I couldn’t just march to the magus and lop off his head. I had to train. So I sought the man who had trained me when I was a boy.

Tengis Keep looked as I remembered: three floors of sandstone, a dusty courtyard, and the barracks with all its sour and sweet memories. Save for pigeons fluttering overhead, it was quiet. No janissaries trained in the courtyard, and no one fished at the lakeside. I swallowed nervous dread, which poured through me at the thought of seeing the family I’d abandoned ten years ago. I dusted my caftan, hands jittery, then pounded on the large wooden door.

I inhaled deeply and prepared to see Tengis’ shocked face, but a young woman answered instead.

She covered her mouth. “Papa?”

I had no idea who she was.

“It’s me, Melodi,” she said.

Now I saw it: how those cheekbones became lean and that stub nose grew pointed. She hugged me before I could say a word.

Then she reared back and slapped me so hard my ears rang.

“You never visited. Never wrote. And then you appear out of nowhere and fail to recognize the girl you adopted.”

I rubbed my raw cheek as the sting receded. Melodi stomped her foot and disappeared into the interior of the keep. I slipped inside before the door shut. The front hall was not as I remembered: faded, tribal carpets covered the floor. Dust kicked off them as I walked. A musty odor made me cough — was no one maintaining this place? A calligraphy-covered matchlock hung on the wall next to an unpolished scimitar. The stairs creaked as I climbed.

Tengis was in the solar, sitting on the floor at a low table and banging on a printing press. They imported them from the Silklands and were faster at transcribing than feather pens. He’d strewn metal trinkets and contraptions around the room — what a mess. The ancient man stared at me, mouth agape, and said, “You miserable goatshit.”

“Ancient” was a mild way to describe him, but all words were shade when it came to Tengis. His skin had so many spots, it resembled a carpet woven by a blind man. “How can you just stand there, gawking?” he said. “Are you a ghost? If so, know that fat ghosts are not welcome in my keep.” He stood and wagged his finger at me. “Get out, or I’ll fetch the exorcist this instant!”

After convincing him I was real, we went to the terrace for relief from the musty air. I took a seat on a floor cushion.

“Lunara was too good for this kingdom,” Tengis said. He gave me a mug of fermented barley water and plopped next to me. “Perhaps she’s better off…wherever she is.”

“I couldn’t keep her safe.”

Sitting in the house where I’d grown up, nostalgia flowed through me like poison.

“She didn’t need you to.” Tengis grunted in disgust. In ten years, his tangled hair had gone from gray to white. “I trained and tutored her for the same reason I did for you. Strength and intelligence are ladders for slaves. A girl as beautiful as her would’ve ended up in the harem had I not taught her how to think and fight. And where would you have ended up with those big arms of yours…a blacksmith?”

The sarcasm stung. “Come on, it’s not a bad profession.”

“I saw so much in the two of you. The day you married was a day of endless happiness for me. Melodi is lovely, but I wanted more grandchildren.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

“You don’t disappoint me,” Tengis said. “Lat does. Though we may pray ceaselessly for her blessings, she gives and she takes.”

“She mainly takes from me. She may take my life soon enough.”

Tengis took a deep chug, then sat back on his floor cushion. The crust around his eyes seemed permanent. “In the ten years you’ve been gone, the Shah has become…restless, to put it mildly. This dispute with the magus should be resolved in peace. The unholy Imperium of Crucis masses its forces to the west, ready to invade at the slightest unrest. A conflict with Magus Vaya and his sycophants would ripen us up.”

“So I shouldn’t kill him?”

“Kill him? Even you’d certainly not succeed. This magus is said to be far more terrifying than the one you killed.”

The chill of the hailstones that cut through my platoon ran through me. What could be more terrifying than that?

I rubbed my arms. “How do you expect me to disobey a command from the Shah of Shahs and walk out of Kostany with my head attached?”

“Say you’re training with me and let his viziers talk sense into him. A moon passes and he’ll rescind the command.”

“I hope his viziers are up to the task.”

Tengis nodded. “Grand Vizier Ebra is a prudent man. He’s vehemently opposed to conflict. Last year, Shah Murad wanted to invade the isles of Jesia because they stopped exporting his favorite cheese. The man is prone to impulses, which his viziers have learned to reign in.”

“Ebra is Grand Vizier now? That was quick.” I gulped barley water. “Did we put the wrong man on the throne?”

“Certainly not. His brother would have been the end of us. I’d take a bit of imbecility and impulsiveness over cruelty and lunacy any day.”

“So,” I said, “I’m on leave for a month with you and Melodi.”

“Oh no, this won’t be leave.” Tengis could dismiss your entire world with his snigger. “We’re going to train. War is never far. You’re not old like me. You‘ve no right to be weak.”

*

Melodi stood in a bog by the lake, which I now noticed had receded and was barely more than a muddy pond. The soil used to be harder, too. My adopted daughter wore the same yellow dress as when she’d answered the door — except now she held a shamshir in high guard above her head. The blade was thicker than both her arms. Her stance seemed to compress the ferocity of an army into one teenage girl, and her menacing glare the anger of a hundred forsaken daughters.

“You can’t expect me to fight her,” I said with a cockiness that failed to disguise my fear.

Tengis’ conniving laugh unnerved me. “I’ve trained her with sword. I’ve trained her with spear. She’s learned the mace and crossbow. And even the matchlock, something you never cared for.”

“I hate guns.”

“Guard up!” Melodi soared. Steel rang as she slammed my high guard and pushed me back. My adopted daughter was freakishly strong.

“Melodi, go easy,” I said, breathing fast, “I haven’t dueled in years.”

“Grandpa always said you were a complainer.” She charged, slammed into my middle guard, and staggered me. Would have drawn blood with her thrust had I not stepped back.

Wielding a sword in battle felt so…unfamiliar. It might as well have been a giant cucumber. Had I really regressed so much in ten years? What happened to the skills that made me a hero among the janissaries?

Tengis stood like a dervish in meditation, hands crossed. “You proud of your slowness? A pregnant woman would make a more fitting opponent.”

Melodi slid and swept my feet with her shamshir. I jumped and landed on half a foot, just missing an anthill. Instead I fell on my knees into mud.

“Can we do this somewhere with solider ground?” I said as Melodi put her sword to my neck, concluding the duel.

“You must be tired, Papa.” She clanked her sword into her scabbard and tousled her inky hair. “Hope you’ll do better tomorrow.” Her disappointed sigh sealed my humiliation.

Minutes later, I was scrubbing my boots at the lakeside.

“What the hell kind of girl did you raise?” I asked.

Tengis watched me, his nose ruffled in disgust. “A girl who wouldn’t care if her favorite shoes got some dirt on them.”

I chaffed at the boot’s sole. “I just had these made. Do you want me to trail mud through the Sublime Palace?”

“You’re a soft, well-fed ninny. When is the last time you fasted?”

I almost retched at the question. Tengis would make us fast from sunrise to sunset, in the way of the saints, at least ten days of the month. There were few things I hated more. I blamed fasting for why I was fat now — I had to eat enough to make up for all that. “I once went three days without eating in the caves of Balah.”

“So ten years ago, like every accomplishment to your name.”

“Saving a shah. Killing a magus. Deposing another shah, ending a war of succession, and crowning his brother. I’d say I accomplished enough for a lifetime. It’s charitable to let someone else have a bit of glory. Who knows, Melodi could be the next me.” My eyes were closing. I needed sleep. I’d paid eight gold coins to the coachman to get to Kostany, and all that bought me was a bumpy carriage. Bed bugs plagued the caravansaries along the way, so I’d woken each night scratching. “Tengis, is she your last one? Will there be more like Melodi?”

The old man sighed and squatted by the lakeside. “The Shah retired me from training janissaries, and the Fount has disallowed women to serve in the corps, so Melodi can never take the vow. What to do with her, I wonder…”

A family of ducks floated by, quacking at the boot I doused in the water. The mother duck pecked it; I pulled it away before she could do any damage. My shoes would not be harmed by such a tasty bird. My stomach grumbled. There wouldn’t be any decent grub in Tengis Keep, and I wasn’t going to eat bone broth with barley. I’d have to catch something sumptuous at the bazaar tomorrow.

I smacked my boots together to dry them. The red leather was discolored at the base, but the green and gold embroidery glistened like new. They smelled funny though. Like the rest of Kostany — of fish and shit. A boiling bath could cure that. Another thing to do tomorrow.

Tengis told me to take the guest room upstairs: the softest place in the house, with a feathered mattress and cotton sheets instead of a bit of straw and hide like the barrack chambers I used to sleep in.

Melodi was sitting on the staircase in her yellow dress, still dirty from our bout. It was the most colorful thing in this dank keep. Her eyes said she wanted to talk, and I couldn’t ignore the daughter I hadn’t seen in ten years. We were all sons, fathers, or brothers to someone at Tengis Keep — blood didn’t matter to janissaries, and we bonded fiercely because of it.

She sulked. “Can I…ask you a favor?”

I craved a hookah pipe. Smoking cherry-flavored hashish before bed would’ve been the perfect release.

“Get me the hookah and I’ll give you the world.”

“Grandfather quit years ago. Threw them all out.”

I sighed. “Well, another reason to be disappointed.”

Melodi picked at the fake topaz in her bronze bracelet. “Are you sad to be here?”

I sat a step below her and reclined against the wall. “I’m sorry I didn’t visit or write. Truth be told, I’ve not been myself for a long time.”

“I know, Grandpa would always say it wasn’t your fault. That it hurt you too much to be here. I’m sorry I slapped you.” She took my hand. “I miss Lunara too.”

Tengis hadn’t painted his walls since I’d left. What was once white was now gray. I supposed houses got old like the men within them.

“Lunara loved to mother you,” I said to lighten my mood. “I’m surprised you even remember us. You were only five.”

“She should be here. Then it could be like old times.” Melodi squeezed my hand. “Do you pray for her?”

Grit roughened my voice. “I used to stand in vigil from dawn to the zenith hour and beg Lat to bring her back. All I got were swollen feet. Actually, they were already swollen from how long I’d been looking for her, through the forests and mountains in the countryside. When someone disappears in the night — not a clue, not a hint of where they went…there’s nowhere to look.”

“And yet, there’s everywhere to look.”

I pulled my hand away to scratch my beard. “So…what favor would you ask of me?”

Melodi gulped and pulled on her thin, dark hair. Whatever it was, it made her hem and haw. “Teach me everything you know.”

I laughed. “You’re better than me now.”

“I’m younger, faster, maybe even stronger. But I’ll never be as clever or experienced. I grew up in peace, mostly. You used to sleep with a dagger under your pillow, remember?”

Thinking back, it was a miracle I hadn’t cut myself turning in my sleep. It was easy to grab the dagger under my pillow and stab whoever was sneaking up on me. And during the conflict between Shah Murad and his brother, often fellow janissaries were trying to gut me as I slept, so divided were loyalties.

“I hope I never have to again,” I said. “Peace is its own reward.”

“Peace makes us weak.”

“You’re just saying that because you’re bored.” I rubbed her head.

“No, I’ve seen how people act in this city. Everyone just wants an easy time — without earning it.” She grimaced and swatted my hand. “Why’d you move so far from everything?”

“Because I earned my easy time. And I like being bored. After what I’ve been through, boring is the best I can hope for. Boring means no war, no fighting. It means the ghosts of those my blade bloodied won’t come back to dance.”

The glint faded from Melodi’s eyes. I hated seeing her sullen.

“Listen, Melodi.” I patted her back; her shoulder blades stuck out. I’d have to take her to the bazaar for a feast of pheasant marinated in yogurt or fermented dough stuffed with beef. “That old man made sure that if you want something, you have the strength to take it. He’s taught you everything you need.” I got up to go to bed.

“And what about you, Papa? What do you want?”

“I want a soft mattress for the rest of my life.” I’d have one tonight, at least.

My hope as I reclined on the mattress was that the Shah would see his error, make peace with the magus, and send me home. I prayed to Lat that I’d spend my days hammering trinkets and horseshoes and die with wrinkled skin and gray hair. And yet, as I stared at the guest room’s unfamiliar gray ceiling, I knew it was another prayer she would laugh and wave away, like a hornbill flying past her verandah in the heavens.

*

In the morning, I was devouring almond soup with buttered beef at the grand bazaar’s most overpriced establishment when some flashy courtier summoned me to the Sublime Seat. The warrior-poet Taqi called it the “Palace on the Shores of Time” because it outlasted a dozen dynasties and conquerors. I felt its green dome clashed with the white marble. Nevertheless, I trailed my slightly muddy boots through the Shah’s garden, where marigolds perfumed air cooled by a stone fountain. Black-feathered drongos chirped atop the trees that shaded me.

Flanked by janissaries in their colorful cottons, a slim man sat on the wooden divan beneath the veranda in the center. A glittering turban patterned with the eight-pointed star of Lat adorned his head. His beard and mustache were more manicured than the garden and evoked fashion rather than ferocity. I almost coughed at the astringent scent of myrrh flowing from his gown. Ebra, the Grand Vizier, was a far shade from how I remembered him in youth.

A yet more ostentatious man stood across from him, his head bowed, a pound of purple kohl around his eyes. His maroon silks were foreign, patterned with spades, and, dare I say, finer than the Grand Vizier’s.

“We’ll do something about those ruffians, rest assured,” Grand Vizier Ebra said to the man. “The Shah will compensate you from his own purse for the loss of your…what did you call it?”

“Palace of Dreams, Your Eminence. A place where no man could leave without a smile, his every yearning fulfilled. And now it’s just a husk. Boiled and blackened and burned. A dream in smoke. My fortune — ash.” Kohl streamed down his face with tears as a trembling overtook him. “We had twelve varieties of card games, wines from as far as Lemnos, beardless boys and pleasure girls versed in the techniques of Kashanese sutra. You would have loved—”

“No-no.” The Grand Vizier flushed and shuffled on his divan. “I am a worshipper of Lat and follower of the Fount. While it sounds lovely for some, such a den would be forbidden to me.” He crossed his legs and swallowed. “No one was killed, so there’s no blood money to be paid, but restitution there will be. For you and all others who have lost such fine establishments to these rabid fanatics. The Shah does not let criminality go unpunished.” Ebra looked to me and raised his eyebrows, a false smile spreading across his face. “And here is the legend who will make it so. It is with the grace of Lat that we meet after so long, Kevah. You’re a man who has done so much, and I now expect much of.”

“Your Eminence.” I bent my neck. “As I told His Glory, I’ll do as commanded.”

Ebra gestured for the pleasure house owner to leave. Once the tearful man had sauntered away, he said, “After much cajoling on my part, the Shah has wisely rescinded that command. Instead, you are to parley with Magus Vaya.”

Somewhat of a relief. I hunched my shoulders. “Parley? I’m no diplomat.”

“You are a respected and feared warrior. You are worthy to carry the Shah’s terms because you are one who can enforce them.”

“I’m sure there are many respected warriors in this city.”

“But only one who has killed a magus.”

A boast always catches up with you. I sighed with regret. “Your Eminence, the man who killed the magus ten years ago is gone today. I am not the warrior I once was. Yesterday during training, I was defeated by my daughter, a girl I once carried on my shoulders. Parleys can get messy, and as my father put it, you are sending a ‘well-fed ninny’ against the most powerful sorcerer in the kingdom.”

“Ah, us janissaries are so fond of calling those we love daughters and fathers and brothers.” The Grand Vizier laughed from high in his throat. “Perhaps one day I’ll call you ‘brother.’”

Ebra had trained under Tengis. I’d known him in those days, but he was shy and we didn’t speak much. Afterward, he was sent to a palace school for elite janissaries to be trained not in warfare, but statecraft.

“Did you not love the man who trained you and taught you everything you know?”

“Unlike most janissaries, I remember my real mother and father,” Ebra said with venom. “I remember the day they sold me for a pouch of silver. So…I find it difficult to call anyone else by those words.”

“And I find it difficult not to. What is a man without family?”

Ebra sipped the red liquid in his bejeweled goblet, then wagged his finger at me. “You’re blunt and persuasive, perfect traits to deal with a man like Magus Vaya. You leave within the hour.”

 Before the guards could usher me out, I said, “You don’t need me to make war, and I doubt you need me to make peace. It was a long carriage journey from Tombore to Kostany. Tell me truly, why was I summoned all this way?”

Ebra seemed so comfortable on his divan; it surprised me that he got off it and came close to my ear.

“The Shah has his eccentricities,” he said in a hushed tone, as if we were court gossips. “One day he wants this, the next day that. I don’t claim to understand it. Play your role, and you’ll be a passing fancy that he’ll toss aside and forget.”

Ebra sat upon his divan with a straight posture and high chin. He dismissed me with a backhand wave.

*

Magus Vaya preached at the shrine-town of Balah, ten miles east of Kostany. I traveled by carriage through the Valley of Saints, which was surrounded by the Zari Zar Mountains. It was also where I’d survived a hailstorm and killed a magus. I shut my eyes so I wouldn’t be reminded and to get a bit more sleep. The Fount insisted the hardships of the saint’s road be preserved, so rocks and broken patches jolted the carriage the whole way. I’m sure the horses hated it as much as I did.

After an hour, the hovels of Balah began to wrap around the mountainside. The path to the shrine of Saint Nizam, the only impressive sight in this pile of rocks, ascended the mountains. Too steep for carriages, so my janissary escorts and I continued on foot. We passed the cave where Saint Nizam had hidden, which some obscure scholar named the Bath of Stones. By the time we stood before the Shrine of Nizam, I realized I knew too much about this topic. It was thanks to Tengis, who made sure we had a thorough education and that our wits were as sharp as our skills.

At the shrine, the wailing of supplicants never ceased. While holy men chanted prayers, beggars cried for Saint Nizam’s intercession. All who entered the shrine wore white, except for me and the colorful janissaries.

The incense pots couldn’t cover the human smell of the place; skin-stench and sweat shot up my nose and burrowed in my brain. The janissaries clung to their matchlocks as we waded through the sea of worshippers. I’d neglected to even bring a sword.

We passed the mausoleum of Saint Nizam, where his shroud rested within a metal cage. Supplicants clung to that cage and pushed their arms through it, seeking closeness to the saint. I whispered a quick prayer, asking only for Melodi’s good health.

Stout men brandishing maces guarded a room behind the mausoleum. So these were the ruffians bringing disorder to Kostany — burning taverns and pleasure houses — supposedly on the orders of a magus. I displayed the Seluqal peacock seal and they let me pass.

A young man sat on the floor of the empty, tiled room, his face fresh and fair. Prayer beads in his right hand clack-clacked, and he whispered praises to Lat under his breath. In his cross-legged posture, he looked as unshakable as an anchor at the bottom of the sea. His hypnotic breathing seemed to inhale time, slow it down, and exhale serenity.

The young man gestured for me to sit. He snapped his fingers, and an elderly servant brought small, stone cups of tea.

“So you’re Magus Vaya.” I sipped the tea. It was so diluted, it might as well have been hot water. The faint taste of cumin did nothing to perk me up. And yet…the room seemed to tilt when I sipped. “Tell me, are you a man of peace?”

The young man locked eyes with me. I couldn’t read whatever lay behind his blank expression. How easily would he see the trepidation that hid behind mine?

The magus closed his eyes. “Anyone who claims to serve Merciful Lat must strive for peace.”

“Then let us guarantee the peace.”

“Without justice, how can there be peace?”

“And what injustice has been wrought?”

The magus sat up and straightened his back. “Below the Sublime Seat, in the place they call Labyrinthos, our sheikha is kept prisoner. Every Thursday, I used to visit her to record her sermon. And then on Friday during the prayer, I would recite that sermon, as if from her mouth. Tomorrow will be the third moon since we have not heard from our sheikha.”

I perked up in surprise. No one had briefed me on any of this. Was I sent here just to show that the Shah possessed a magus killer? Did my life matter so little that I’d been summoned across the country for such a paltry display? I hoped the magus didn’t notice the surprise and indignation in my eyes. I pushed those feelings down deep. “Why not seek recourse the proper way? Why agitate?”

“Have you been to Labyrinthos?”

I shrugged. “Can’t say I have.”

“When they put you there, they give you a torch and tell you to find your way out. The historians say that a Crucian imperator built Labyrinthos to confuse the demons coming out of the gate to hell. The tunnels go on forever, deeper, deeper, and twist in such ways that men go mad trying to get back to where they started. In the darkness, you hear the whispers of jinn as they prick your forehead with nails as sharp as knives. No one survives Labyrinthos…and yet our sheikha endured it for ten years.”

When I was a child, Tengis would scare us with tales of Labyrinthos. Hearing the magus describe it, a childhood fear shuddered through me. “How did she survive in a place like that?”

The expressionless magus pointed to his face, then covered it with his hands and opened his fingers so his eyes would show. “The wonders of our invisible masks and training allow us to survive without food, without water, without sleep — forever unaging.” He brought his hands back to his lap and clasped them. “But what kills in Labyrinthos is not the absence of those things. It is a madness that creeps like an assassin. Sheikha Agneya resisted it. She stayed by the entrance and never explored more of the cave.”

“Agneya…I met her once.” I recalled the pale girl, her hair wrapped in a bright scarf and body covered by a rough wool robe, standing before the throne in the great hall. “Twenty-five years ago, about. She looked younger than you. She refused to help Murad’s father campaign across the Yunan Sea and also to war against the Alanyans. Shah Jalal smashed a goblet or two but had the good sense not to throw one at a magus.” I could never forget her kind eyes as she walked toward me with the grace of a cloud. “I was fasting that day and sundown was far…she came up to me while I was guarding the palace, reached into her cloak, and took out the softest and whitest piece of bread that, till this day, I’ve ever eaten. Sometimes I wonder if I’d just dreamt it.”

“Our sheikha loved to feed the destitute. She was succor for the weak, wherever she went, in the spirit of Saint Kali.”

I grunted in dismissal of his platitudes. “And in whose spirit do you act? Name the saint that liked to burn things down. Tell me, magus, what is it you want out of this?”

There was elegance in the way the magus cleared his throat. “In the darkness of Labyrinthos, our sheikha heard the voice of Lat, like a breeze from paradise. And without her sermon, we are deprived of that heavenly breeze. Restore our right to see and speak with Grand Magus Agneya — that is all we ask.”

Reasonable enough, but I’d only heard one side of the story and was eager to hear the other. “I will convey your request to His Glory.” I got back on my feet. “Show good faith in the meantime. Have your followers take a break from assailing the card dens, taverns, and — yes — even the pleasure houses in Kostany.”

“Everything has a reason.” The magus gazed through me. Staring back, I was almost entranced. “Even a piece of bread given in kindness to a palace guard.”

I shuddered and returned to the janissaries waiting at the doorway.

*

An hour into our journey back to Kostany, the Balah stench finally left my nose. I could breathe air that didn’t stink of poorly washed, sweaty men. We rolled through the eastern gate toward the Sublime Seat. The smooth roads of Kostany let me doze off. It didn’t last — my carriage driver shook me awake.

“This isn’t the palace,” I said as I looked at the narrow street outside my window.

Yellow mud houses two-stories high lined the cobbled street. But why was it empty, save for our carriage?

My carriage driver beckoned me into a nearby coffeehouse, with its soft cushions and wooden floor tables, and guided me to the staircase. Upstairs, in a colorful room with two floor cushions and a hookah pipe, sat Shah Murad.

“Sit down and dispense with the courtesies,” he said. “We are here to talk frankly. You will be as straightforward and honest as with a dear friend.”

“Dear friends?” I chuckled with all the bitterness I’d been swallowing. “Would a dear friend send you to parley entirely disarmed of knowledge on the matter?”

“You misunderstand me.” Murad pulled the pipe out of his mouth and glowered. “I am the Shah, and you will tell me what happened, janissary.”

“Have you forgotten? You freed me from the janissary vows.”

“You’re still my subject all the same!” The Shah looked ready to strike me with the pipe. Instead, he puffed on it and closed his eyes. His breathing slowed. “I apologize, Kevah. It has been a trying few moons. Grand Vizier Ebra was supposed to brief you. You are a free man, one whom I respect, and that list gets shorter by the day. That is why you’re here. Now, please tell me what happened.”

“All right, I’ll give you your due.” I sat on the floor cushion and relayed what happened with the magus. The Shah kept silent and reflected. Hogged the pipe, too.

“Peace is a disease,” Shah Murad said after I concluded my report. Confounding words.

Finally, he passed the hookah pipe. I inhaled deeply. Cherry-infused smoke billowed in my lungs and out my mouth, calming me.

“Peace. Peace. Peace,” he said. “That’s all everyone wants. But I’m telling you, it’s a disease. Like leprosy or the pox.”

“Would war be better?”

Murals of lilies covered the walls. It seemed strange to talk about war in such a flowery room.

“Better or not, it’s coming.” Shah Murad let out a dry cough. “My spies tell me that a Crucian armada of five hundred ships and fifty thousand men has landed on the island of Nixos, only a few days away — with fortunate winds — from where we sit. Where do you think they’re going?”

One of the janissaries on guard handed the Shah a waterskin — the kind we’d use on campaigns. Murad guzzled from it like a warrior thirsty from battle, wiped his beard, and handed it to me.

“Demoskar, I’d imagine.” I chugged. It was just water. Even when we were young, I’d never seen Murad drink anything other than water and milk. So unlike his father and brother. “With five hundred ships, they’d take the port city in a day and march for a few more days through the lowlands to Kostany.”

The Shah winced as if pained by the picture of my words. “Our army is a shadow of what it was under my father. I was a fool to listen to my advisors, cowards like Ebra. ‘Build ten hospitals instead,’ he’d say.” The Shah heightened his pitch and spoke from his throat — a crude imitation of the Grand Vizier. “‘You’ll be the hero of the masses. The people will love you.’ The people are really going to love the Crucian imperator when he forces them to bow before cursed idols.”

I took this chance to puff out a billow of cherry-flavored smoke. “They’d never get to Kostany. No one wants to bow to Crucian idols. We would fight to the last man.”

“But what is a man worth these days? When my father was shah, everyone was a warrior. He led us across the Shrunken Straight into Yuna to conquer Crucian cities, and south beyond the Syr Darya to take Alanyan ones. The thought of a Sirmian warrior made Crucian imperators soil their sheets.”

Each word he spoke evoked memories of my service to Shah Jalal — some sweet and others sour. But too often, remembrance left me sullen. “And then when your father died, those great warriors killed each other.”

“Better someone was being killed. Better swords be sharpened daily for killing. You think I’m bloodthirsty? I say it to prevent worse bloodshed — the kind we’ll experience when the Crucians invade. Look at us. The magi stay in their holy shrines and obscure their minds by chanting and whirling. I hope to Lat you didn’t drink their tea.”

I held my tongue.

“And the warriors, look at our warriors.” He pointed to me with an open hand. “Our greatest one hides in a village on the edge of nowhere and distracts himself by banging on an anvil. What we need, Kevah, is a reason to fight that eclipses theirs. Never forget that Kostany is holy land to the Crucians.” Gray riddled Shah Murad’s beard. He tugged at its end, fingers tight. “Your wife Lunara was the kind of warrior we need today.”

Just hearing her name stopped time. Talking about Lunara was like bringing her back. “How well did you know her?”

Shah Murad smirked and nodded. “Don’t strike me, all right? I would have taken Lunara as a concubine, had I any sense. She was a lioness, and together we could have raised a litter of warrior kings, like Utay and Temur, who crafted this kingdom with blood and iron.”

My temper simmered. “You are a king. Why didn’t you?”

“Because I saw the way you looked at her, and I saw the way she looked at you, and realized I couldn’t rule without my head.”

I chuckled. The way he spoke about Lunara vivified her in my mind. What a strange woman, as if Lat made her from the clay of another world. Her hair outshone pure gold, yet she was tan from training under the sun and her small hands roughened from squeezing sword hilts.

A janissary went about the room and relit the candles on the ornate hanging lamps, giving us a bit more light.

“Kevah, she died.”

“How can you be certain?”

“Because she looked at you as if you were her prize. As if all the suffering and fighting were for you and the life you would build together. No way she ran from that.”

To the Shah, I must’ve seemed a feeble man forced to hold his tears.

“As I recall,” the Shah said, “she went missing mere days after my ascension. We all had too many enemies to count. Someone could have taken her unaware in the night, slit her throat, thrown her body in a pit.”

“No—”

“Wake up!” Shah Murad pounded the floor, almost toppling the hookah. “I’d strike you, but I’ve too much admiration for the man who got me where I am. This sulking will not do, not now, not when so much is at stake. If we don’t unite, the Crucians will roll us. That is what I want you to focus on — not some dead woman!”

The Shah could command my body, but not my heart. I didn’t want to care. I didn’t want to wake up. All I had was a dream of happiness.

“Why did you bring me here, to this abandoned coffeehouse, of all places?”

“Because Ebra controls the Seat. To the court and the janissaries, he’s painted me as an impulse-driven fool and himself as the wise and steady hand that steers the ship. That’s why he didn’t brief you — he wanted you to fail, so I would have no one to rely on but his underlings.” The Shah took a moment to breathe. “When Crucis lands fifty thousand paladins on our shore, we’ll see who’s the fool then.”

“If you don’t trust Ebra, depose him.”

“Everything’s so simple for you, isn’t it? Metal isn’t straight,” the Shah pounded the air as if he held a hammer, “so bang-bang until it is. If I stripped Ebra of rank and privilege, he would throw off his silks and wrap himself in carded wool, then join the agitators. And if I executed him, his janissary faction would hang my head from the Seat gate and put the crown on my son. He’s been outmaneuvering me for years and must be dealt with carefully.”

I shuffled on my pillow; my behind ached. What did I care about the power games of the palace? These feuds were why I’d moved so far away. “What do you want from me?”

“I realize you are fat and soft and can’t kill the way you could. Truth be told, I asked for the head of the magus to test your loyalty. To fight our enemies, within and without, I need steadfast men — not sycophants. There’s a fine line.”

Not so fine. A loyal janissary knew the difference between a true tongue and a brown tongue.

“Here’s a way to solve your problems,” I said. “Let those pungent folks from Balah see their sheikha.”

“Oh, Kevah.” The Shah crossed his arms and sat back. “Do you think I’m such a fool? I would even free her…if I knew where she was.”

I stiffened my posture. There was more to this story. “Is she not imprisoned in Labyrinthos?”

The coals in the hookah had gone cold. Shah Murad puffed, but the smoke he blew out was like gray hair. “Labyrinthos is the end of all. Sooner or later, they succumb to the whispering jinn that climb out the gate to hell. The Fount throws the worst offenders in there, as a punishment worse than death.”

The Shah puffed again but exhaled no smoke. He reached inside his silk vest, took out a yellow scarf, and tossed it in my lap. It stunk…of decayed trees and grass. I stretched it out: a Zelthuriyan hex pattern, the kind worn by pilgrims returning from the holy city.

“Other side,” the Shah said, twirling his finger.

I turned it around. Words…written with…tar? Indecipherable because I didn’t understand Paramic.

“Well?” The Shah peered over it and glared at me. “Don’t tell me you can’t read it.”

“I was never good with foreign tongues.”

“Dear Lat, you trained under one of the greatest polymaths alive and you don’t know the holy tongue?” The Shah coughed smoke and soot with each laugh. “You’re as single-minded as they say. Allow me to translate…”

I drank from the cup.

And now I hear the hymns.

They say: Remake the world.

With the demons on your sword.

A shudder spread through my back and arms, as if I’d been pricked by a jinn. “Poetic…but dark. Let me guess — you found it in Labyrinthos.”

The Shah nodded. “Had my bravest janissaries search the entrance. They pulled it from under a rock. One of Grand Magus Agneya’s scarves. You love the warrior-poets, don’t you? This any verse you know?”

Taqi and the other warrior-poets never used words like “hymn” or spoke of “demons” and “remaking the world.” Neither did the saintly recitals. I shook my head. “It sounds more like an Ethosian verse.”

“Aye…that was a thought as well. But the Ethosian bishop swears it’s not in their books.” The Shah crossed his arms, made a fist, and rested his forehead on it. It was his thinking posture, as I recalled. He used to meditate like that for hours. “Kevah, something truly frightful is coming. My bones haven’t ached like this since the war of succession. Ten years of peace does not go unpunished. I need true men to see this through. Men that can do more than just obey orders and swing a sword.” The Shah stood and brushed soot off his silks. “You’re right — you are a free man. I may jape about feeding you to the birds, but I’m not my brother. Walk out that door if you want no part of this.”

I wanted no part. But then why didn’t I go? Why wasn’t I running back to Tombore? I’d put this man on the throne. I made him, and now his rule was being undermined by enemies within and without. Despite my long absence, I had a daughter that looked up to me and a father that expected much. And what the hell happened to Magus Agneya?

I stood and looked my shah in the eye. “My first memory was as a slave arriving in this land. I’m told that I came from a country far to the north in Yuna, beyond even the Crucian Imperium.”

“We all know that. You’re fairer than a clean piss.” The Shah laughed at his own joke.

I didn’t laugh. “I have no ties to any house but yours. My father taught me to be loyal to the Seat and the Seat alone. Know that I don’t plan to stay forever, but while I’m here, use me as you see fit.”

The Shah pulled the pipe off the hookah and blew the ash out. “Oh, I will.”

Chapter 2

[mc4wp_form id=”597″]

The post GUNMETAL GODS | Chapter 1 | Kevah first appeared on Zamil Akhtar | Fantasy Author.