speaking in the dialect of Candour, an undertone of the Claim murmuring through his words. “Da zerra sara, I can bear this, but I need you to be strong. I cannot also bear your tears.”
“Jaan,” she had whispered in reply. It was all she’d been able to say. He’d heard the sounds of her struggle, but he couldn’t see the collar being fitted over her throat, suffocating Arian in the cruelest manner possible—the First Oralist, silenced and chained.
Then he’d felt the cool touch of a woman’s hand on his shoulder, her nails trailing through his blood, spreading it across his back in a pattern he couldn’t see. “Collect it,” she said to a servant at her side.
A vial was placed at the base of his spine, its warmth nearly intolerable against his ravaged skin. The Khanum was collecting his blood.
Briefly he closed his eyes.
She moved closer so he could see her, her lead mask reeking of poison. She dragged her bloodied fingers across her lips, staining her white mask red. “You taste better than I imagined.” Then she kissed him on the lips.
What can you tell me of the First Oralist of Hira?” He used the bars of the cell to support his weight, asking the question of Uktam, who was slumped against a wall of his cell.
Uktam’s head lolled in Daniyar’s direction, his eyes bulging from within his hollow skull. He raised a hand and let it fall. “The Khanum keeps her at her side. The collar prevents her use of the Claim. The Khanum has enchanted it somehow.”
Daniyar nodded. Though Uktam told him the same thing every night, he had yet to comprehend the full extent of Lania’s powers.
“She hasn’t been put to the service of the Ahdath?”
The possibility filled him with terror. The Authoritan threatened him with it each time Nevus whipped him, but he hadn’t seen Arian since that first night in the throne room. And Lania had refused to enlighten him, relishing the power of her silence.
He was devastated by the thought of Arian being given to the Ahdath: as the man who’d loved her for a decade, and as the Silver Mage of Candour. The violation of a Companion of Hira was a sacrilege, but he’d learned a critical lesson from the threat: no laws of honor bound either the Authoritan or his consort.
Yet Lania was Arian’s sister. Could she truly bring herself to give Arian to the Ahdath? Without her use of the Claim, Arian was defenseless against them. With the power of speech restored to her, he knew she would bring down the Ark, just as she’d razed the Registan.
No wonder the Authoritan feared her power. No wonder he sought to claim it for himself.
He focused on his questions for Uktam. “Why don’t they take the First Oralist to the throne room?”
Uktam was too weak to shrug. With an effort underscored by the Claim, Daniyar slid his bowl across the passage between the cells. Two of the yellow snakes raised their sleek heads with interest. Daniyar murmured to them; they lowered their heads again.
“Take it,” he said to Uktam. “You need it more than I do.”
Uktam’s fingers scrabbled weakly between the bars. He found the bowl and scooped up the rice it contained. Daniyar let him finish, then asked his question again. Uktam licked the bowl clean before he answered. “I shouldn’t have taken your ration.”
“You’re at the end of your strength.” Daniyar didn’t add that he held something of his own in reserve, despite his nightly sessions in the throne room. Since the Talisman’s ascent, he’d lived a hard, demanding life. He’d spent years honing his skills, testing the reserves of his strength against a desolate landscape. Though his trials at the Ark were brutal, he was confident he would be able to endure them. But if Uktam was an informant, it was wiser to keep this knowledge to himself. “Please,” he said again. “Tell me what you know.”
Uktam considered. “The Khanum is jealous of her sister. She does not wish the Companion of Hira recalled to your mind when she is present.”
“There is nothing they could do with the whip that would cause me to forget her.” That much was common knowledge.
Uktam nodded. “She is well aware. But she has some purpose for your blood.”
“Do you know what that purpose is?”
Uktam stared at the empty bowl as if it were an oracle that could divine the truth.
“Don’t trust him,” another voice whispered from the darkness. “He tells you that which the Khanum wishes you to know.”
Uktam scowled. “I would not betray the Silver Mage,” he said with dignity.
The other prisoner snorted. “You’ve betrayed each one of us in these cells. You’ve been kept alive these months for a reason.”
“And what of you?” Daniyar intervened. “You’ve been here some time yourself.” He needed Uktam on his side.
“A day before you, my lord. Tomorrow they execute me, but this one will still be here.”
Uktam slid the bowl back across the passage to the Silver Mage. His head fell back against the bars. “Even if I lied to you, I follow the Usul Jade. I’m a student of the teachings of Mudjadid Salikh. He trained many generations in the Claim—which is why the Authoritan destroyed him. But what he could not destroy was the flame of knowledge he lit, and now his daughters carry that light forward. With what I owe Mudjadid—my sanity, my life, my unsundered belief in the Claim—I would never betray the First Oralist.”
Daniyar read the truth of it in his words. He hadn’t told these men of his skills as Authenticate; he wanted them to speak to him freely.
And he wondered about Salikh, whose daughters Larisa and Elena had helped Arian to find the tomb that had led her to the safehold of the Bloodprint. Would Larisa and Elena Salikh be willing to aid them again? He kept the thought to himself, the merest hope in his chest.
Uktam was speaking again, and he forced himself to consider the boy’s advice. “You could use the Khanum’s interest to your benefit,” he suggested. “She is taken with more than your blood. You need not endure the whip. I do not know how you bear it.”
Daniyar softened his voice. “You were kind enough to tell me of the loess; it has served to ease my pain. I am grateful to you, Uktam. If you know a course of action I might take, I am willing to hear it.”
“No, my lord!” The cry came from a prisoner Daniyar couldn’t see. “You cannot trust him. You must not trust him. He is the Khanum’s man.”
“Who better, then, to know the Khanum’s mind?” He turned his silver gaze on Uktam. “What does she want?”
This time Uktam managed a shrug. “She wants you, my lord. But you will need to prove yourself to her.”
“And how do you suggest I do that? With the Authoritan’s eyes on us both, and Nevus’s hunger for the whip yet to be fulfilled?”
And my bond with Arian plain for all the world to witness, as we suffer each other’s torments?
“The
