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There were only three people in the courtyard: Arian, the Authoritan, and his consort, Lania, Arian’s older sister. Each night since she’d been captured in Black Aura attempting to retrieve the Bloodprint, Lania and the Authoritan had brought Arian to this place. They showed her the stunted tree and the bodies moldering beneath it, then coerced her into entering the blue-domed house of worship to test her abilities with the Claim.
Situated on the eastern side of the square, the dome was the pinnacle of a massive structure. Four arcades met at its doubled entrance, each lined with portals decorated with mosaics and glazed bronze brick. At the entrance to the main portal, a sand-colored octahedron with open arches could be reached by a set of stairs. Here great recitations of the Claim had once been addressed to the people of Black Aura, the Bloodless sharing the teachings of the Bloodprint, an ancient and powerful manuscript long believed to be lost. The manuscript that was the oldest, most venerable record of the Claim—the powerful, mysterious magic seeded throughout the history of all the lands of Khorasan, but lost to a people now condemned to a final Age of Ignorance.
Skirting the pulpit, Arian was taken through to the indoor galleries covered by dozens of smaller domes perched on a peristyle. Though well lit, the interior space was cold, and as quiet and deserted as the courtyard.
They stopped at a niche in the wall where multicolored mosaics were arranged in a magnificent declamation. Lania read the words first, verses commonly known to the Companions of Hira, though Lania’s inflection was different, the words gathered up in hubris and flung out, outlining the niche in a darkly radiant fire while the Authoritan nodded his approval.
Prodded by her sister, Arian repeated the same words, her strong voice giving them distinctions of grace that coaxed out their inner meaning.
The Authoritan looked down on Arian from the top of a flight of wooden stairs positioned beside the niche. He stood tall and thin, enclosed in his white robes, his ghastly crimson eyes flickering out from a bloodless white face, a nimbus of silver hair floating above the harshly etched bones of his skull. He seemed too frail to do her any damage, yet his hands and voice transmitted his inescapable power.
“Now the rest.”
His reedy voice was like a needle in Arian’s ear.
“That’s all there is,” she said.
“You know the conclusion of these verses from your training at the Citadel of Hira. Recite them for us now.”
The cold command in his voice whipped at Arian’s nerves. It was a compulsion to do as he asked or suffer intolerable pain. Yet she’d learned that though he could otherwise affect her, he could not compel the Claim to issue from her lips. It was a tiny point of victory that Arian held to herself, infusing her with a strength of self-reliance that was no reproof against the pain.
He raised a bony finger in the air and aimed it at the top of her skull. “Recite.”
The word stabbed at Arian’s temples, a sharp, probing injury. She reached for Lania’s hand, insisting that her sister acknowledge the injury being done to her. But Lania stepped back, her painted face impassive, the bonds of sisterhood sundered by the tortures she was forced to endure.
“Recite!”
Now the word thundered through Arian’s skull. The muscles of her throat seized up; Arian began to shiver. The Authoritan could visit pain upon her—this he had shown her night after night, cruel and imaginative in his punishments. Yet her training at Hira resisted him. Of greater significance, the Claim resisted him, refusing to issue from her throat, a pitiless battle of magic against magic that caused her palpable injury. It was no different this day: she was forced to her knees by the Authoritan’s power, pressure building in her skull. Teardrops of blood leaked from her eyes, a sickening residue on her skin. She choked on the scent of it, tainted and dark, and tasted it in her mouth.
She had exerted this power over men—the power of the Claim—but it had never been used against her—a battle of the occult against the uncorrupted. It was a setback, nothing more. She wouldn’t let the Authoritan twist the beauty and power of her magic. She fought to raise her head. She held on to her circlets, the two gold armbands that signified her status as a Companion of Hira, one of a group of women entrusted with the care of the sacred scriptorium at the Citadel. The Citadel was the stronghold of the Companions of Hira, a place where they sought to protect the written word from the devouring onslaught of the Talisman, men—and it was always men—who waged war upon all forms of knowledge, under the flag of the One-Eyed Preacher, a tyrant whose will Arian had spent a decade trying to subvert.
As a Companion, Arian had been charged with a mission to rescue the women of Khorasan from the Talisman’s efforts at enslavement. But then the leader of her order, the High Companion Ilea, had assigned her to seek out the Bloodprint as a means of unseating the Talisman. Arian had been chosen for this Audacy because of her exceptional gifts. She was Hira’s most accomplished linguist, fluent in the Claim and armed with the power of its magic. She was First Oralist of Hira.
And because of that—and despite the tortures the Authoritan inflicted—she should be able to resist.
Gasping at the effort, she tried to draw power from the inscriptions on her circlets. Her fledgling attempt failed, just as it had before. She was brought to a posture of submission once more, her arms stretched out before her, her forehead pressed to the floor in a perversion of the prayers of their people.
“Lania—” Her sister’s name came out as a croak, weakly demanding an apology.
“It’s a pity to watch you suffer.” Yet there was no trace of pity in Lania’s voice; a cool impassivity ruled her as she ignored Arian’s entreaty. Lania took her place at the Authoritan’s side, gliding gracefully up the stairs, her long robe trailing behind her.
The Authoritan brought her hand to his bloodless lips and kissed it. “She tires me,” he said. “If she will not share what she knows of the Claim, perhaps the Silver Mage can be put to better use than his trials with the whip.”
“No!” Arian’s courage flared to life again.
Lania ignored her. The crimson tips of her fingers ran along the surface of the niche, tracing the outer layer of white script in a gesture that was a caress. “My sister is less powerful than I imagined. The opposite may be true of the Silver Mage.”
“Why would you think that, Khanum?” Diverted, the Authoritan relaxed his grip on Arian, his blood-tinged eyes caressing her face, inflamed by her helpless submission. She crawled into the hollowed-out space of the niche, resting her hot face against the glazed tiles, grateful for the respite.
“You’ve seen his eyes. He is strongly marked by the birthright of the Mages. Who knows how his magic burns? Or what tricks he might attempt to secure my sister’s freedom.”
The Authoritan dismissed this with a contemptuous wave, the gesture as languid as a heron’s extension of its wings into flight. His movements suggested a weightlessness, as if he were a creature animated more by sorcery than by his physical form. His power resided in his voice.
“The Silver Mage can do very little on his own. I burned the Candour with a word; he did nothing to defend it.”
“He loves her,” Lania objected. “It may awaken depths within him.”
The Authoritan curled his fingers, the gesture enough to pull Arian from the cover of the hollow. She opened her mouth to venture the Claim in her defense. A viselike grip closed about her throat, swallowing the sound. She choked for breath on her hands and knees, struggling to protect herself against the Authoritan’s aggression.
The Authoritan and Lania stood breast to breast on the narrow landing. The rubies in Lania’s headdress glittered against the Authoritan’s white robes, striking sparks off the scepter in his hand. He decorously kissed the mask at her cheek, careful not to disturb it.
“For the Silver Mage to develop his skills, he would need to attend the Conference of the Mages. The Mages strengthen one another, not unlike your sisters at Hira. Without their congress, he remains unschooled. His is a rudimentary magic, perhaps because of his tenure in Candour.”
“It was his choice,” Arian gritted through her teeth. “He chose to serve his city.”
“So?”
“So do not belittle him for it.”
The Authoritan clenched his hand in a fist and brought it down. Pain seared through Arian’s skull. She couldn’t withstand it. Lania witnessed her pain without protest.
“Then we have nothing to fear from either of them,” she observed finally. “Perhaps these little experiments serve no purpose after all.”
“Not quite.” The Authoritan helped Lania down the stairs, seeming to glide within the careful arrangement of his robes. He paused beside Arian, extending a hand to touch her sweat-slicked skin. Her face was pale, her body drenched in perspiration. She recoiled from the skeletal finger he dipped in a teardrop of her blood. He brought it to his lips and tasted it, his tongue flicking his skin.
“Invigorating.” His red eyes rested on her face and drifted down her body, an assessment that stripped her to the bone. Arian shuddered in response.
“Lovelier than you,” he said to Lania, missing her grimace. “What a pretty prize she would make for Nevus, as he cannot have you.”
A smile played on Lania’s lips. “There’s no hurry, Khagan. I’ve yet to plumb the depths of my sister’s talents. I would know the secret to her fame. Why was she selected as First Oralist? Thus far, the showing is not as impressive as I’d hoped.”
“No,” the Authoritan agreed. “Keep your pet until you tire of her. But make certain she expands your knowledge of the Claim. You are useless to me without your gifts.”
“It shall be my first concern, Khagan, I assure you.”
The painted mask of her face echoed the Authoritan’s contempt for Arian’s abilities. “There is nothing to be gained by bringing her to this mihrab. I will find another way to unlock her voice.”
“You fail to understand, Khanum. I bring her to this place for reasons of my own.”
Lania shot him a glance, her pale green eyes long and narrow. “And they are?”
He raised both hands above Arian’s head, his fingers poised to strike. “Do you mark how close we are to the underground cells?” He turned his gaze to Arian, his rictus smile stretching the corners of his lips. “Sing for your beloved, First Oralist. He is eager to hear your voice.”
It took her a moment to understand. Daniyar was here—near to her, yet kept from her—and the Authoritan wanted him to experience the agonies of her torture, to suffer them with her … She closed her eyes in helpless protest. She could bear his cruelties herself, but she couldn’t access the magic that would shield Daniyar from this. And though she longed for him with a fervent desire, she wished him away from her now. She knew what her pain would cost him—what his love for her had already demanded of his strength. She had served him nothing but anguish, and now he would be broken again.
Heart of my heart, he had called her. When he shouldn’t have loved her at all.
“Please, no,” she whispered to Lania. “Do anything you wish to me, but I beg you—do not do this to him.”
The Authoritan laughed, his voice high and wild with triumph. Then the savage power of his magic blasted her from all sides.
Her screams went on and on, rising to the skies … penetrating the depths of the cells. The grace of Hira was ripped from her spirit and her thoughts. She couldn’t stand aloof and apart when she was writhing in blood at the Authoritan’s whim. The answer came to her too late.
She needed to summon new weapons against an enemy like this.
2 (#u110d2d8a-5131-57f2-8ba5-3a5159d504c3)
ELENA WAITED IN THE NEAR DUSK THAT ENVELOPED THE HAZING. A member of the Usul Jade had left a message for her at the house across from the crumbling blue dome, telling her Larisa needed her. She wasn’t used to ignoring her sister’s commands or to being away from Larisa’s side. But she’d returned to the Gur-e-Mir to see what had become of Ruslan’s body. She’d found her entrance at the pishtaq to the tomb. Ruslan’s head was on a spike, his body dismembered, his limbs littering the courtyard. The Ahdath had forced his jade green bracelets into his mouth, which gaped open in a perfect round.
The sight of him was like a blade cutting deep into the bone, exposing the marrow of her grief, yet Elena didn’t cry. She couldn’t cry, no matter how deep the wound. She had learned to guard herself through practiced dissociation, but now her emotions raged wildly. Would everything she loved be taken from her with such brutal and cold finality? She removed the bracelets from Ruslan’s mouth and slipped them onto her wrists. Then she kissed both his cheeks with a tenderness she had never expressed before.
I should have buried you, spared you from this. I should have chosen you above any emissary of the Black Khan’s, any Companion of Hira. As Larisa should have also.
What didn’t you do for us, Ruslan?
She wanted to ignore Larisa’s summons—her rage, her grief were still too new. But if Ruslan was lost to her, Larisa was all she had left.
She would return and bury her beloved, but time was against her now. It was foolish of Larisa to have summoned her to the Hazing. The streets around the Gur-e-Mir were swarming with Ahdath. After the First Oralist’s sundering of the Registan, the Ahdath had doubled their patrols. They hunted the Usul Jade with a singular determination. She hadn’t forgiven Larisa, but she needed to get her sister out of the necropolis of the Hazing. She had already sent orders to the Basmachi to retreat, knowing Marakand was lost. She’d told them to regroup at the ruins of the Summer Palace. Its rugged surroundings would shelter them until Larisa returned. Then they would be able to get word to the warriors of the Cloud Door in the mountains. The time to strike at the Wall was almost upon them now. She knew Zerafshan’s men were ready, just as she knew that without Larisa’s support, she could not prod them into action.
It was time for Larisa to remember that she led the Usul Jade—her duty was to the women behind the Wall and to the people who still upheld the teachings of their father. As the daughters of Mudjadid Salikh, they bore a responsibility unlike any other: resist until the battle was won or until their resistance atrophied into dust.
As leaders of the Basmachi, she and Larisa were not tools to be used by the First Oralist, no matter the nature of the bargain Larisa had struck with the Black Khan. The First Oralist may have dismantled the Registan, but she’d also delivered Ruslan to his fate at the gates of the Gur-e-Mir. Ruslan, her dearest companion, the one who’d rescued her from Jaslyk, risking agonies greater than hers. She closed his eyes with her fingers, his bracelets softly striking hers. Then she spat out her rage on the ground.
She was on the hunt for the First Oralist.
And she would take her measure of blood.
3 (#u110d2d8a-5131-57f2-8ba5-3a5159d504c3)
SEVEN DAYS. SINNIA HAD BEEN IN JASLYK SEVEN DAYS, EACH DAY BRINGING forth new torments, new reasons to pray for rescue. Not that she’d been idle—her first course of action had been to attempt to rescue herself. The wardens of Jaslyk seemed to have no memory or knowledge of the Claim, and she had been able to use it with some success, escaping a room, a ward, a building. only to run into Jaslyk’s guards or its impenetrable defenses. The watchtowers were like the eyes of a dragon-horse. Red and fiery and unblinking. No matter which route she took to steal from her cell, the watchtowers picked her out along the perimeter, setting off a collision of horns. Then the guards of Jaslyk would come, dressed in black, wearing blind-eyed masks, four crimson slashes marking their chests and spreading across their ribs.
They looked like they’d been clawed by demons.
She’d never seen their faces or heard their voices. She’d simply felt the grip of implacable hands covered with leather gloves whose palms were studded with tiny spikes. Her arms were marked with dozens of pinpricks that healed over, then formed again with each new attempt to escape. The pinpricks burned, but they were only a reminder of her failure.
And they were nothing compared to the mask.
On the third day, Sinnia had learned about the mask. Two of the guards had chained her to a bed in a locked room at the far end of a dismal corridor. At once she’d missed the cruel teasing of the Ahdath. When they’d turned her over to Jaslyk, she’d met an incarnation of their regiment more to be feared than the soldiers who guarded the Wall. They were called the Crimson Watch, a name given to the Ahdath elite. The crudely jovial soldiers of the Ahdath who’d handed her over to their care had fallen silent during the transfer. One had flashed her a look of regret, muttering to his partner. The other man shook his head. They spoke with surprising deference to the soldiers of the Crimson Watch. The masked men didn’t speak. They waved the Ahdath away.
When they’d chained Sinnia to the bed, her body had tensed in dread. The Claim coiled up in her throat. The scent of blood was fresh in the room. It oozed from every door in the ward, a patina that formed a pattern on the floor. Fear ripened in her mouth.
“Please,” she said, “don’t do this.”
A third guard entered the room, pushing a steel-framed cart before him. It bore a tray of instruments. Torture, she thought. They’ve come to torture me. For a moment, it seemed like a reprieve.
But the largest of the three guards lifted a bizarre contraption from the cart: a thick leather mask with sightless glass eyes that protruded like eyeballs distended from a skull. A long black hose at the back of the mask was attached to a dark green canister on the cart. It appeared to breathe on its own. At the base of the mask were six round nozzles, three to either side.
The guard wheeled the cart closer to the bed where Sinnia lay chained.
She wanted to scream, but the sound died in her throat. She wrestled with the chains they had fiendishly attached to the circlets on her upper arms. One of the guards held her down. The other raised her head so the third could fit the mask over her head.
Her body bucked on the bed. The inside of the mask smelled of horror and fear. It suffocated her. Her breathing constricted, she mumbled the Claim to herself. There would be words, there had to be words, to stop this.
In the name of the One—
In the name of the One, the Merciful, the Compassionate—
Ah, by the powers of the One, where were Arian and Daniyar? Surely they would save her from this … unless somehow they had fallen or been taken at the Ark. She wished she could think of them, pray for them … but in this moment of extremis, she could think only of herself.
She could see through the bulbous eyes of the mask. The guard at the cart flicked a switch on the canister. A terrible gurgling sound came from the hose at the back of Sinnia’s neck. She breathed in sharply, her mouth filling with the acrid taste of smoke. With her first inhaled breath, the nozzles at the base of the mask fastened to her neck. She felt a searing pain.
Inside the mask, she cried out. Her mouth and throat filled with gas. The three men loomed above her.
Burning tears scalded her eyes. When they misted over her skin, the tears seemed to catch fire. Sinnia screamed again. The men didn’t touch her, didn’t tear at her clothes. One of them produced a small bundle wrapped in a leather cover. He watched Sinnia with careful attention. Then he began to write.
He held a book in his hands.
A book that chronicled her torture.
Four days later, she was at the perimeter again. They had gassed her every day since, but when the mask had been removed, Sinnia had recovered consciousness to find herself alone, still chained to the bed by her circlets. Though they monitored her reaction to the gas, no one seemed to be observing her in the cell.
They didn’t know she drew comfort from the circlets that were the secret strength of the Companions. Whatever the gas had done to her, and it had done something, it hadn’t stripped her of the Claim. Over time, her use of the Claim had weakened the links of the chains. She snapped them with a surge of renewed strength, taking a moment to breathe.
The chamber reeked of the gas. Her skin smelled fetid and damp, a mix of the strange compound of the gas and the odors of sweat and blood. She knew now why the men of the Crimson Watch wore masks. They were shielding themselves from the consequences of their macabre experiments. The terror the masks invoked was a side effect of their work.
Sinnia ran a hand over her neck, feeling the tender areas where the nozzles had raised the skin. She shuddered to think of her disfigurement, but she tried to focus on the door. Each time she escaped, they added another padlock. She could see them now from the hole at the top of the door that passed for a dreary window. She had yet to see another inmate, but she sometimes heard painful, muted whimpers as she sidled past the other cells.
She should try to use the Claim to free the others. She doubted the strength of her skills; her failure might bring them to the same fate she faced—a renewal of the attentions of those who gassed her. She considered the risk and decided against it. She pictured her whip and bow in her mind and formed a resolution.
If she could discover a way out, she wouldn’t forget the desperate halls of Jaslyk. She’d find a way to return and do some damage, a vow she made to herself.
The red eyes of the watchtower settled on Sinnia again. Horns sounded like heralds of a hastening end, a palpable assault on her hearing. The scars on her neck began to throb in anticipation of the agonies of the mask. The guards dragged her by the arms, their studded gloves scoring her shoulders with dozens of bloody strikes.
She sang out verses of the Claim—the music of it seized up in her throat.
She had asked herself this question many times. Why did the Claim deliver Arian from every difficulty while she was able to summon it only in small bursts? What did this say about Sinnia as a Companion or as a member of the Council? Was she not worthy of the Claim? Had the Negus of her country chosen her as his emissary to Hira in error?
She made her body as heavy as possible, forcing the guards to drag her by the heels. They barely slowed their pace as she bumped along the bloodstained floor, pausing for a moment to study the shattered padlocks. Sinnia fought with all her physical strength, aggression and panic rising together as she heard the sound of the cart rattling down the length of the corridor.
She made a temporary break from the arms of her captors, leaping across the hall and crashing against the door of another cell. She fastened her arms on her circlets, holding fast to the strength of the Companions. She choked out one verse of the Claim, then another. For the briefest moment, the actions of the Crimson Watch were suspended—the cart held still, the guards with their bloody palms motionless in the air.
A moan sounded from behind the door. Sinnia glanced up. A man was standing at the hole for the window, his hair matted and wild, his thin face bloody. His eyes burned like two black coals. They fell to Sinnia’s circlets.
“Sahabiya,” he gasped. “You’ve come to us at last.”
At his words, there was a murmuring along the length of the hall. Other faces came to the doors of the cells, eager hands reaching through bars.
It was Sinnia’s turn to freeze. She should have fled during this strange suspended moment, but this was the first time she’d seen the other prisoners. “Who are you?” she whispered to the wild man. She was stirred by a fierce determination. “How do you know who I am?”
