BeneathCeaselessSkies Issue004 Read online

  Two sentries, young, wide-eyed, and alert, stood on either side of the arch. Nefaria, as exhausted as Khatire, loosed a small gasp of despair.

  Khatire squeezed Nefaria’s hand—it was hot and damp—and inhaled to still her own fear. Though Nefaria feared the sentries, Khatire was petrified of the prismed stone. She had passed this crystal archway with its shattered torchlight only once before, more through luck than skill.

  She focused on the flitting light—so fragmented!—and gradually, particle by particle, bent it to her will. If she could draw the sentries out of the arch and send them down the hallway, even a half dozen steps, she and Nefaria could slip through unnoticed. She reached behind them, shaped the light to form a human shadow, then bounced it off the sandstone.

  One sentry’s head snapped toward the movement, his eunuch’s earring chiming. Torchlight reflected off his waxy scalp and oiled topknot. “Did you see something?”

  The other sentry, equally alert after his companion’s reaction, shook his head.

  She concentrated harder, giving the shadow more form and sending it down the opposite corridor again.

  “I saw it that time,” the second guard said, taking a few steps in that direction. The first one came up and stood by his side.

  It wasn’t the half dozen steps Khatire needed, but she might not get another chance. She gave Nefaria’s hand a gentle squeeze. Tuamutef had abandoned her, but Nefaria was with her still. The farther she went, the more that mattered to her. Steadying herself with a quiet breath, she embraced the crazed light bouncing off the quartz, controlling and reflecting it to create an illusion of nothingness. With soft, measured steps they moved toward the crystal archway. Nefaria’s hand burned in hers, and Khatire dripped sweat beneath layers of clothing.

  The sweat on her forehead collected into a single rivulet. She felt it reach her eyebrow and trickle, cooler and wet, down the bridge of her nose. Her body’s liquid, refracting the light she oppressed, was its own tiny, unexpected prism.

  Khatire blinked.

  The first guard turned, peering through the spot where they stood in disbelief. “What is that?”

  The other drew both daggers from his thighs. His kohl-rimmed eyes swept the torchlit corridor, then the crystal entryway, even the dark fog of the room beyond.

  Khatire pulled Nefaria forward, faster now that she was losing control.

  “I’m not sure. A shimmer—there it goes!”

  Khatire crushed Nefaria’s hand in her fist, and the other woman stifled a small cry.

  But the sound was drowned out by the laughter of the second guard. “It’s only the empress’s ghost. I told you Tabia walks these halls to see that no one marries His Splendor.”

  The women were through.

  Khatire yanked them to the right, out of sight along the dark-enveloped wall. She fell to the stone floor, bruising her knees. Her mind fluttered between Gift and realsight, riotous color competing with comforting darkness while her stomach churned. Nefaria squatted beside her, reached for the criss-crossed ties at the neck of Khatire’s woolen dress. She yanked them apart, spread the collar wide, and fanned cool air against her breasts.

  “We must keep moving,” Nefaria whispered. “Or it will be our ghosts who haunt these halls.”

  Khatire squeezed her chambermate’s hand in thanks, then rose. Beyond the Bitter Chamber, the palace was guarded sparsely all the way to the outer walls. The emperor had learned centuries ago that his children were more malleable when they saw their mothers regularly, and Khatire had visited the nursery every day for three years as was her privilege. She traversed the familiar stone corridors with confidence, taking advantage of every shadow, every odd angle, and they reached the lower children’s level without illusion. Khatire needed the rest. After the pass through the last arch, she was not sure how much, or how soon, she could rely on her Gift again.

  The older children caused more mischief, especially at night, and were more heavily guarded to protect others as well as the emperor’s interest. But the nursing children were tended only by women too plain or powerless to be considered as concubines. So Khatire wasn’t worried about entering the nursery. The hall finally ended in double doors, burnt mahogany and twice her height, carved with sharp, brutal lines making a vast spiderweb of green and black. She placed her hand on the door.

  Nefaria clutched her wrist. “I can’t.”

  Khatire spun on her angrily. “It’s too late to have second thoughts now,” she hissed.

  “I have no second thoughts,” Nefaria whispered. She could not look at Khatire—no, she could not look at the door. She was one of the mothers who had never visited her own children in the nursery, not even once. “I... can’t. Not there.”

  Khatire thrust Nefaria into a shadowed corner. “Wait here.”

  She turned to go, but Nefaria’s hand darted out to clutch her wrist again. “What if you’re caught?” she whispered low and urgently. “How do I escape the palace?”

  “We’re going through the spinrag’s bone-nest,” Khatire said, turning away a second time.

  Nefaria hiccupped a laugh and grabbed Khatire once more. This time when Khatire spun on her, Nefaria’s eyes glowed like two pale moons. “Oh gods, you’re not joking....”

  Khatire jerked her arm free, then grasped the brass handles of the web-swathed doors and pulled them open. No, she wasn’t joking. The spinrag’s lair was the only way out where they wouldn’t be seen or caught. But first she had to rescue Anut-ka.

  Within the receiving room, a marble likeness of the emperor’s face glowered at her from atop its spiraled pedestal. Tuamutef said it had been carved centuries ago, before the emperor marched his armies across the continent, before the gods had exiled him to this tiny demesne pinned between the desert and the sea. Even carved in marble, it made her knees weak and gave her the thought, for just a second, that she might scurry back to His Splendor’s bed and beg another chance.

  He was like a drug, potent even when diluted. She wrenched her gaze from the statue, and passed through the beaded curtain that covered the nursery entrance. Though she parted the strands slowly, carefully, the beads clattered like a tiny avalanche of pebbles.

  Within the vast room, no one stirred at the noise. She tiptoed across the polished mahogany floor, around scattered sleeping pallets, where the tiny children slept like puppies. Three small boys cuddled together around a stuffed lion. Lhare’s small daughter, the only blonde, lay in the embrace of an older sister, sucking noisily on her thumb. High, open windows cooled the air, so that many of them huddled under blankets. Khatire crept from bed to bed, face to face, searching the sleep-parted lips and sheet-clenched fists for something familiar. There! Dark, arched brows and long black lashes—the eyes that Anut-ka inherited from his father.

  Khatire reached out to grab the child, who twitched with dreaming, and froze. It was a girl, almost four. Khatire’s hand went to her throat. They were all brothers and sisters, all bearing mark of their father’s features. A lump, hard and stinging, grew in Khatire’s chest. There were so many!

  She could only save one.

  Stepping quietly around the room a second time, she found him at last, cozied into a corner where sandstone wall met mahogany paneling, arms wrapped around a sheepskin. She brushed his plump cheek with her fingertip.

  “Mama?” he murmured, reaching for her.

  “Shhh.” He always knew her, even in the dark. He hugged her neck, snugging his head against her shoulder until he found the right spot to go back to sleep. She could carry him out like this. It might work.

  Until they reached the spinrag.

  She rocked her hips back and forth to sooth him, while reaching for the vial of poison in her bag. A taste, no more, would keep him sleeping. The cork popped free under her thumb. She hesitated, then dabbed it on her finger, which instantly went numb. Hand shaking, she wiped her fingers on his lip.

  He scrunched his face, rolled his head away from her.

  “Shh, one little lic
k, Mama’s medicine,” she murmured. Unsure that he’d swallowed any, she reached into her pocket and tipped the bottle one-handed onto her finger again. She time she put her finger in his mouth and smeared it on his tongue.

  He began to choke, near to crying, but she rocked him and stroked his hair to settle him. One of the children was sitting up in her sheets, watching them. Khatire kept her back to the girl and walked toward the beaded curtain, hurrying away before the child called out for their nurse sleeping in the next room.

  She found Nefaria, backed into the corner where she left her. She jumped when she saw Khatire and her son, trying to retreat further into the shadows.

  “We must go,” Khatire whispered, walking past.

  “Khatire, I—” She choked off a sob.

  Khatire stopped, hugging Anut-ka protectively.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I was afraid, I’ve been so afraid. Ankha found the dead vaim, I had to tell her something—”

  “Ankha was here?” Anut-Ka squirmed, and she realized her grip on him had tensed. She relaxed her hold, but kept her other hand tight on the dagger.

  “No, no. I mindspoke to her. It’s my Gift. I told her you came back to the room, that you ran to hide in the servants’ quarters. Oh, gods, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

  Khatire’s mind reeled. The servants’ wing lay at the opposite end of the palace, nearer the public walls and not the spinrag’s nest. Nefaria had lied to buy them time, so why was she apologizing?

  She was apologizing because she had been Ankha’s spy all along. Ankha let Nefaria have a seat near the throne because she hid from the emperor and rarely tried to bed him anymore. Ankha had assigned them as chambermates when the emperor began to favor Khatire, after her son was born, just so Nefaria could spy on her. Nefaria had guessed the power of Khatire’s Gift and warned Ankha.

  Nefaria held up the hem of her dress, her hands shaking as much as her voice. “I sewed things into my nightgown, I stole from Tuamutef. I want, I want to go home, Khatire, I want to escape. Please. I lied to Ankha—”

  Khatire let go of the dagger and shifted Anut-ka’s weight to her other hip. He had grown heavy with the drug, unable to hold onto her. She turned and hurried down the hall. “Come if you want.”

  “Gods, thank you—”

  “Don’t you dare speak to me.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  If the guards were rushing to search the servants’ quarters they might have only minutes left to escape. Khatire tried to still her heart and mind to prepare for the spinrag. She had only approached it once before, when Ankha had thrown a slave girl to the creature and made all the concubines watch. The spinrag, already glutted and drowsy, had stung the girl then crawled off to sleep in its hole among the cliff-bottom rocks. Khatire, wrapped in shadows, the taste of vomit in her throat, had crept down and stolen poison from the swollen sting-lump on the dead girl’s body, to use on herself if she couldn’t bear to continue. Then, within days, she’d discovered she was pregnant, and her life had changed.

  Anut-ka sagged in Khatire’s arm, too heavy to carry much longer. She grabbed Nefaria by the elbow and propelled her through the kitchens, weaving through chopping blocks and stone ovens, past an enormous spit of thick poles over greasy sand. Beyond the spit lay a trap door.

  “We slide down the trash chute,” Khatire whispered, heaving on the metal ring. “You go first. Now, listen close!”

  Nefaria nodded, her eyes red, full of tears and uncertainty.

  “When you land, don’t move. The spinrag will see you come, but she strikes at movement. If you remain still, she’ll wait for you to move again.”

  “How will we get past her?”

  “Anut-Ka and I will slide down after, and I’ll create a flash to blind her. You must keep your eyes closed until I tell you to open them. That will give me time to form the illusion we need to pass.”

  The trap door lay open. Cooler air hit their cheeks, briny and damp and tinged with rotting vegetables. Nefaria sat on the edge, swung her legs into the hole. “Khatire, are you sure—”

  “Remember, don’t move,” Khatire said, and shoved her through with a slippered foot. Nefaria’s gasp faded as the silk swaddling whisked her through the chute.

  Khatire shifted Anut-ka’s body again as she sat on the edge of the chute. A drool stain soaked the shoulder of her dress. His face was slack, but his eyelids fluttered when she tickled his cheek. Gods, she hoped she had guessed the dose right. She had tested it only on herself, only once.

  Cerastes, spare my son, please. She had no candle to offer as she prayed, so she formed a flickering light in the air in front of her, hoping the goddess would forgive her for also using it to prepare her defense against the spinrag.

  A shriek clawed at her heart from far below, high and terrified. The light failed. Then pain burst across her temples; Nefaria was mindscreaming.

  Khatire reeled, falling into the chute, trying to clutch Anut-ka to her chest. Her head bounced against the fungus-lined wall, her leg twisted under her, and Anut-ka slipped from her hands. She tried to pull him back in, grasping frantically for her Gift at the same time.

  She fell into open air and slammed into soggy, putrid garbage. Anut-ka tumbled from her hands and rolled down the compost heap. The spinrag crouched over Nefaria—a shining black carapace, barnacle-covered, with twitching pinchers. It lunged at Anut-ka’s rolling body.

  Khatire screamed light; her voice, her terror, and her Gift as one. She lurched forward, stealing every particle of light from every star in the sky and exploding it like a shipful of fireworks.

  She blinded herself, bleaching the landscape before her eyes to layers of white and stained white, all of it a blur. The spinrag, only a pale gray now, clattered away, scattering rocks and bones in its rush to escape. Khatire fumbled on her hands and knees until she reached Anut-ka and scooped him to her chest.

  “Shh,” she whispered comfort, rocking his silent body against her chest. “Shh.”

  The spinrag lived at the ocean’s edge, hunting the vermin that picked among the garbage. She only had to make her way past the compost dumps, up the slope to sheltered places among the rocks where she could rest until her sight returned. From there, she could find a way out of the valley, past the boundaries of the emperor’s prison-demesne.

  Khatire staggered to her feet, took a few steps with Anut-ka. Panting, she glanced over her shoulder, prepared for the spinrag’s next attack, but it was like looking at the world through a thick veil. A stone tumbled behind her—she clutched Anut-ka to her chest and nearly screamed.

  But no movement followed her. Her feet left the layers of garbage and rot, and she began to climb up the rocks. She slipped, banged a knee, held Anut-ka with one arm, tore her fingers on the stones, always climbing, until she reached a little ledge where they both spilled flat. She lifted him and carried him between a narrow crack of stone to a wider ledge.

  Where are you?

  Khatire kicked herself upright, back to stone.

  Khatire?

  Nefaria was mind-calling her. The spinrag’s sting must have only grazed her. Maybe the stinger got stuck in all the layers of cloth, spilling its poison in the silk instead of flesh.

  Help!

  If Nefaria panicked, if she mind-called Ankha for aid, she would bring all the guards down on them at once, before they could escape.

  “I’m coming,” she whispered. Nefaria, wait for me, I’m coming.

  She rolled Anut-ka over to the wall. His body was nothing but dead weight, and she could feel no breath stirring in him. She feared she had given him too much poison, but she couldn’t stay to fix that now. She wrenched the dagger from her pocket, and, closing her mind to realsight, tried to see only with her Gift. From her vantage point, she stared down across the wet mounds of garbage at the spinrag’s hiding place, a lightless hole, black against the glistening mounds of rotting vegetables and slime-covered stone around it.

  T
he huge pincers emerged out of the darkness first, tapping the ground as they came, covered with barnacles that made them swirls of rough light. The body came forward in a rush, its stilt-legs carrying it with astonishing speed. The tail curved over the body, bouncing like a brawler looking to land a punch. Near the barbed tip of the tail bobbed a venom sac the size of a human skull.

  Help me!

  “Don’t move.”

  Khatire scrambled down the rocky slope, sliding to the bottom. Cautiously, she inched toward Nefaria.

  Behind the spinrag’s pincers, on either side of its knobby head, were thousands of tiny eyes. Drawing on her Gift, Khatire formed a silhouette against the ragged wall. She forced the shadow to scamper, like a frightened rat, into one of the many branching corridors away from Nefaria. The spinrag clicked its sideways jaws opened and shut as it stepped toward the false shadow, feet clicking tat, tat, tat. It did not go far enough. Khatire flicked a group of light particles against the wall.

  The tail lashed so hard it nearly pulled the spinrag over when it failed to connect. Poison shot out of the tip, making a shiny wet splash against the rocks. Khatire threw the light again, and the spinrag jumped at it, slashing with its pincers.

  Wrapped in shadow, Khatire ran to Nefaria’s side. “I’m here,” she whispered.

  “I can’t feel half my body,” Nefaria pleaded. “My left side is numb. I didn’t see it coming. I think I can walk, if you help—”

  “Shh, lie still,” Khatire said, kneeling beside her friend. The knife was hidden at her side. One sudden slash, just like she had done to the vaim, and Nefaria would be no more danger to them. She deserved it, deserved it for betraying Khatire’s trust, for revealing her secret, for putting her life and her son’s life in danger. She was a bad person, a bad mother who ignored her own daughters.

  “Can you make it quick?” Nefaria whispered, hiding her eyes in the crook of her arm. “I don’t want the spinrag to take me.”