The Black Khan

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MEN, DOGS, PRISONERS SHOUTING, WEAPONS BEING SHEATHED—THERE was so much noise in the ward and along the watchtowers that at first Elena didn’t hear it. She’d failed her sister so completely, she couldn’t fathom it. She was swamped by a wave of panic and dread, watching the men who’d captured them now handle her sister with careless, bestial ease. A roar of outrage broke from her throat, climbing rapidly to hysteria.

And then beneath it, she heard the sound again, strange and oddly familiar, a sound she remembered from childhood. It seemed to be coming from two places at once. From a door on the other side of the ward—she had a brief impression of wild eyes and matted hair—but also from behind the Technologist in the room with the shattered canister, where an instrument with curved blades lay twisted and deformed on the floor.

It was the Malleus, a tool the Technologist used to sever the hearing of the followers of the Usul Jade, its tiny blades burrowing into their ears, tunneling ever deeper.

The otherworldly sound grew stronger. Larisa’s head snapped up.

She was hearing it too. And like Elena, some part of her recognized the sound.

The sisters looked at each other. Larisa’s hands flickered with a subtle signal; Elena’s mirrored the gesture.

Kill me, Larisa said. Kill me now, end it here.

Elena gave her word.

The sound warned her not to do it. The sound was lyrical and clear, poetic and soft, pliant yet also urgent. As dire as their circumstances were, some of Elena’s panic eased. She was able to think calmly, observing the men who had captured them. The Technologist and Illarion she marked off as dead men, but neither they nor the Crimson Watch appeared to hear the sound.

Untroubled by it, the Technologist issued an order. “Strip them and take them to the Plague Wing. It’s time for me to chart their progress.”

The Crimson Watch were slow to comply, the sound from the cells growing louder.

“The talisman,” Illarion repeated, the words rasping in his throat.

The Technologist tried to reach something covered by his robes. He frowned when he found he couldn’t. His bulging eyes moved from Illarion to the cell the captain was blocking.

“Is this your doing?” he called. “I thought the white needle had silenced you for good.”

A cell door slammed behind him. No member of the Crimson Watch moved, held in thrall as a dark arm snaked around the Technologist’s neck. The Technologist lurched forward a step, but was yanked back by the arm.

A beautiful, throaty voice answered. “No, you monstrosity, it’s mine.”

Elena found she was free, the guard who’d held her captive sinking to his knees behind her. She whirled around, scooped up her knife, and stabbed the back of his head. The movements of those who tried to fight her were sluggish and disjointed. Her blade found their unprotected necks, one powerful thrust after another. The two men who’d hurt Larisa, Elena stabbed through the heart.

Larisa grabbed her sword from the floor. The prisoner in the cell behind Illarion took hold of him by the arm. He didn’t struggle in the prisoner’s hold, standing firm and strong.

“Where … is … the … talisman?” he choked.

The Technologist watched the sisters’ actions, a sneer frozen on his lips.

The wild man in the cell spoke up. He whispered to Illarion, and the Ahdath captain went still.

Sinnia’s grip tightened around the Technologist’s throat. “Does this one matter to you? Because I’m planning to snap his neck.”

“No!” Larisa and Elena shouted together.

The horns on the wall sounded again, summoning reinforcements.

Larisa raced into Sinnia’s cell. She came back with the Malleus gripped in her hand, her young face hard with rage. Elena reached for the Malleus—Larisa held it out of reach. The sisters stared at each other for a lethal, weighted moment; then slowly Elena nodded.

“No!” Illarion shouted. “Ask him where he keeps the talisman!”

Without pausing to answer him, Larisa drove the Malleus into the Technologist’s brain. He slipped feebly out of Sinnia’s hold, his body sagging to the ground.

Elena kicked at his robes. “It’s not enough,” she said. “It will never be enough.”

Elena yanked out her broadsword and severed his head with a stroke. Then she advanced on Illarion, tossing her words over her shoulder.

“The Technologist was yours, Larisa, but this one belongs to me.”

Illarion met her eyes, a bewildering despair in his own. “Mudjadid, please tell them.”

The hands gripping his throat slid back into the cell.

Elena’s sword flashed up. Illarion blocked it with his arm. She reared back and lunged again, and this time Illarion grabbed both of her arms and forced the sword from her hand. Then he pulled her close as she struggled, seeking out Larisa over Elena’s shoulder.

“How dare you use that name?” Elena spat at him, as Larisa asked more calmly, “Where did you learn that name? Who do you call Mudjadid?”

The prisoner in the cell came to the window. The minzar swept across the ward, throwing his features into sharp relief. His blazing eyes and craggy face were obscured by the tangled growth of his beard. A moment later the light from the minzar was gone, and neither Larisa nor Elena could be certain of what they’d seen.

A mirage, a ghost of the past, a specter of a man they’d known and loved.

The oddly familiar sound thrummed through the ward again. Sinnia stepped over the Technologist’s body, a transparent mist emanating from her mouth. It echoed the sound coming from the wild man in the cell. Was it a memory, or was it real? And if it was a memory, how could the Companion of Hira know it?

Elena fought her way free of Illarion’s hold. “Break this door. Do it now.” She was half-sobbing, half-pleading.

Letting go of her, Illarion smashed the lock with a thrust of his sword. If he’d been hobbled like the Crimson Watch, his strength was unfettered now.

The door to the cell unlocked, the prisoner within staggered out into the ward. A soft chant rose from behind the doors of the cells that lined both sides of the ward.

“Mudjadid. Mudjadid. Mudjadid Salikh.”

The wild man stared at Elena and Larisa, tears sliding into his beard, the Claim abating in his throat. It had done its work. It had called them here, and it had unshackled the gifts of the Companion of Hira, allowing her to acknowledge him as a teacher of the Claim and to accept his direction of its use. He’d subverted the workings of the needle to Sinnia’s great advantage. An advantage he’d whispered ceaselessly in her mind, expanding her knowledge of the Claim.

Illarion sank to one knee, his fair hair falling around his face. A palsy gripped the wild man’s hand. It shook as he raised it to Illarion’s hair. Illarion grasped it in his own and kissed the jade ring the man still wore on his finger.

Larisa gasped. “Who are you?” she asked in a strangled voice.

Sinnia stared at the sisters in disbelief. “Don’t you recognize your father?”

She reached for the old man, fastening her arms around his neck, ignoring the soldier at his feet. “Thank you, Mudjadid. Thank you for saving me.”

His thin frame trembled in her grasp, but he raised his head to meet Sinnia’s radiant eyes. “You freed yourself, sahabiya, with your mastery over the Claim.”

18 (#ulink_f6f9d48c-2f31-5078-998a-8775170aea5f)

LARISA TOOK HER FATHER IN HER ARMS, UNABLE TO COME TO TERMS with his rebirth. For so long she and Elena had believed that their father had met his death at the Authoritan’s hands. Searching his haggard face, she knew that his survival had been purchased at an inordinate cost. The far-seeing eyes were the same—kind and inspirited with belief—but something vital was missing. Perhaps that same element that had hardened inside Larisa after her detention at Jaslyk. Perhaps her father was looking at his daughters and telling himself the same thing.

I don’t know who they are anymore.

“You’ve come,” he choked out. “I told Captain Illarion I would see you again one day.”

Larisa’s face had lost all color. Her limbs trembled with disbelief and her voice was hoarse as she spoke. She looked like a woman who dared not believe her eyes, who dared not cling to hope.

Elena stayed quiet, the personal toll of discovery too wrenching for her to fathom. Her father was a ghost. He was nothing but a memory, a dream of what Marakand might be.

And who was this Ahdath who called her father Mudjadid? He had betrayed them—he might still betray them—or had she been wrong to doubt his loyalty all along? She was swept up in an excess of emotion, unable to separate her feelings.

Had she finally met a member of the Ahdath who’d earned something other than her hate?

She brushed a shaking hand across her eyes, unwilling to face Illarion—to witness his compassion at how deeply she’d been harmed by the knowledge of his treachery. His blue eyes were alight with concern, but she turned her face away.

“I was in the Plague Wing,” her father said. “The Technologist kept you away from me—I would never have let you suffer had I known. After you escaped, he transferred me back to this ward. He took pleasure in describing all that my daughters had endured.”

Her hatred so great that it engulfed her like a living skin, Elena drove the heel of her boot into the Technologist’s severed head. She heard the grinding of his bones with a savage satisfaction.

Illarion flashed her a glance but didn’t interfere. He crouched down on his knees to search the Technologist’s body, coming away with a small object that he tucked into his belt.

“I heard you,” Larisa murmured, disbelieving. “I heard the song of the Claim—the song of our childhood. I didn’t think I ever would again.”

Salikh kissed the top of her head, his pale, rheumy eyes leaking tears. He hugged his daughters close, his thin frame shuddering with sobs.

“Nothing is stronger than the power of the Claim. No matter the gifts of the Authoritan, he cannot override it.”

She wasn’t sure she could believe that, despite what she’d heard firsthand, but there was no time to discuss it further. Reinforcements from the Crimson Watch were already on their way.

“Free us!” The prisoners in the cells called out to their improbable gathering of allies.

Sinnia moved to obey, but Illarion turned to Salikh. “What is your command, Mudjadid?”

“If you unlock these cells, you will never reach the Plague Wing as you hoped. You must leave us at once.”

“Must I also leave you, Mudjadid?”

“I could only hinder you in your plan.”

“Then flee with your daughters to the graveyard of the ships.”

Salikh’s pale eyes were kind. “I cannot leave my followers to suffer when they’ve done everything I asked. And there is more to accomplish.”

He spoke to the men in the cells in the dialect of Marakand—his instructions deliberate and fierce. “You’ve done so much of what I’ve asked, but my daughters must go free. Forgive me that we must remain.”

He was using the Claim. The men in the cells grew calm.

“As you command, Mudjadid,” promised one.

Larisa’s protest was firm: she refused to abandon her father to his fate at the Ahdath’s hands. That she had found him was a miracle surely granted by the One; she wouldn’t leave him behind. “If you won’t come with us, Father, neither will we leave. We’ll make our stand here together.”

Salikh shook his head, unable to explain his will or to describe his purpose. He gestured weakly at Illarion, who spoke in a cutting voice, to return them to the urgency of the moment.

“Your father knows what he’s doing. You need to get out of Jaslyk while you can.”

“You won’t make it to the Plague Wing alive,” Larisa warned him. “Come back with us to the graveyard of the ships.”

Illarion shook his head. “I can’t. Not now that I have the talisman.” He turned to Sinnia. “Companion, follow them to Black Aura, where the First Oralist has been taken prisoner. She sent me to deliver you from Jaslyk, and now she has need of you in turn.”

Sinnia nodded at him briskly, taken aback by this news.

“Yours is a fool’s errand,” Larisa persisted. “They will hunt you into the ground. Better that you escort the Companion safely back to Black Aura.”

“I can’t,” he said again. “I have a mission to complete. You needn’t worry—anyone who could betray me here I’ve already killed.” He touched the crimson splash at his throat. “This will get me into the Plague Wing.”

Elena cleaned her sword on the Technologist’s smock. “What is it you seek to find?”

His eyes met hers, a banked flame in their depths. “Did you never learn why these prisoners submit to the Ahdath’s tortures—why these Basmachi in particular were captured by the Crimson Watch?”

She frowned at him, unwilling to admit her ignorance of anything concerning her men.

“They keep the Technologist focused on themselves to draw him away from the Plague Wing. Each man here volunteered. Each has a loved one who suffers the torments of the Plague Wing. It’s what keeps them here, deflecting the Technologist’s attention.”

Her voice softer now, Elena asked, “And what of you, Ahdath?”

Illarion shrugged without meeting her eyes. “They have my sister. It’s why I joined the Salikhate. Now go. You’ve delayed too long as it is.”

Elena’s voice was matter-of-fact as she gathered up her weapons. She had shut her father out of her mind, to force herself to focus on their plan.

“Take the Companion to Black Aura,” she told Larisa. “Father must decide his course for himself, and you know the way back, so you won’t be needing me. I’ll meet you in Marakand. This Ahdath won’t make it to the Plague Wing on his own.”