The needle on Shariza’s bone compass ground against its pivot with the screech of dry gears, trembling toward Nalhari’s hem before Javeda stepped bodily between them.
"The woman walked through a murder scene," Javeda barked, catching Nalhari’s elbow and hauling her back toward the carriageway. "Of course she smells of the gutter-stench left behind. Put that trinket away before the Solar Wardens take it for sedition."
She did not wait for Shariza’s answer. She dragged Nalhari across the basalt flagstones, past the gawking perimeter guards, until the gilded gates of the fourth terrace slammed shut behind them. Only when they reached the vaulted limestone corridor of the new manor did Javeda let herself breathe, though the pressure behind her ribs refused to yield.
Three years ago, Javeda had broken the wax seal on an unindexed registry in the Sunken Archive beneath the fifth tier.
The vellum had smelled of rancid tallow and dried bile. It was not a religious record, nor a scripture detailing the gods’ wrath upon the unholy. It was a ledger of accounts kept by the High Suncasters. Column after column cataloged the siphoning: thousands of ounces of black rot, drawn out from royal veins during every vernal elevation and forced into the flesh of branded wretches. The royal house did not possess flawless Light-Weaving because the heavens favored them. They were pure because they poured their putrefaction into captive vessels, generation after generation, turning children into walking cesspools of concentrated spiritual dregs.
Darshav was not cursed by fate. He was an overflowing chamber pot of royal rot.
And now the poison had grown teeth.
"Nalhari," Javeda hissed, pulling her toward an alcove beneath an archway carved with stylized eclipses. "Listen to me. The girl with the needle is right. We cannot wait for your desert passes. We leave tonight. Through the aqueduct vents on the western rim. I bought two mule passes from a water-carrier."
Nalhari was smoothing the pleats of her stole, her expression serene, distant, and utterly maddening. "Don't be dramatic, Javeda. Lady Vixia made enemies across three tiers. Someone finally slit her throat, that's all. Darshav was with the Quartermasters signing grain vouchers. He showed me the receipts."
"Receipts? He butchered her!"
"He brought me fresh pomegranates from the lower gardens on his way home," Nalhari insisted, her tone light, almost chiding, the bright voice of an aunt discussing a precocious schoolboy. "He is rough around the edges because the barracks made him that way. A mother doesn't abandon her boy just because the court gossips find his scars distasteful."
"He isn't a boy! He stands two heads taller than your father ever did, and he has killed men with his teeth!"
Nalhari smiled thinly, patting Javeda’s cheek. "You worry too much. Wash the soot from your skirts. We have roast fowl at dusk."
She turned and wandered down the sunlit wing, humming an airy, flat tune from her homeland that made no sense in Qamarioth.
Javeda leaned back against the cool basalt, nausea coiling in her gut. She had to fetch the archive slip hidden in her trunk. If Nalhari saw the royal seal, saw the recorded ink detailing the very day Darshav’s marrow had been blackened by the King’s uncle—
The air around her dropped twenty degrees.
The daylight pouring through the high clerestory windows didn't fade; it was eaten. Black, ink-thick tendrils crawled across the mosaic tiles, moving faster than spilled oil.
Javeda pushed off the wall, but her boots glued to the stone. A mass detached itself from the vault above, dropping without a whisper of sound.
Darshav blocked the hallway, his massive shoulders blotting out the high window glow. The scent of ozone and scorched copper rolled off his skin. On his jaw, the branded runes did not glow; they pulsed like bloated veins beneath thin ice.
"You talk too much, Javeda."
His voice was a gravel slide. Before she could draw breath to scream, the shadows at her feet surged up her ribs. They wrapped around her neck in bands of frozen iron, lifting her heels two inches off the flagstones.
Her windpipe collapsed under the vise. Black spots swarmed her vision. She clawed at the coils, but her nails met only icy vapor that held the density of forged steel. Her heels kicked uselessly against his greaves.
Darshav leaned down until his face was an inch from hers. His amber irises had completely vanished, consumed by an abyss of unbroken charcoal.
"She was packing linen," he whispered. The sound rasped like obsidian scraping bone. "Because of you. She looks toward the western gate because your mouth will not stop moving."
The shadow band constricted further. A dry click sounded inside Javeda's larynx. Air refused to enter. Her lungs burned, starved and flattening.
"If you whisper the word 'desert' in her presence again," he murmured, his breath brushing her ear with the chill of an open crypt, "I will pull your vocal cords out through your nostrils and feed them to the war-lizards. Do you understand me, friend of my mother?"
She managed a spastic twitch of her chin. Tears ran hot down her temples, freezing instantly as they neared the shadow collar.
"Darshav?"
A voice echoed down the gallery. Light, gentle, completely unburdened.
"Darshav, did you take the ledger from the pantry? The cook needs the oil tallies."
In a single blink, the suffocating dark collapsed back into the floorboards like a cut chord.
Javeda crashed down, knees striking the stone, coughing violently as air tore through her bruised throat. She doubled over, gagging on the copper taste of burst capillaries.
When she dragged her gaze upward, the monster was gone.
In his place stood the devoted ward. Darshav took two hurried steps toward the archway, his broad shoulders stooping slightly to diminish his towering height. His face smoothed into an expression of sheepish, clumsy contrition.
"I left it on the sideboard, Mother," he called out, his tone warm, mellow, entirely devoid of the grave-chill that had just crushed Javeda’s windpipe. "Forgive me. The ink was still drying on the steward's seal."
Nalhari rounded the corner, carrying a basket of dried figs. She stopped, glancing between Darshav’s bowed head and Javeda wheezing on the tiles.
"Mercy, Javeda," Nalhari sighed, shaking her head with mild exasperation. "Did you trip on the carpet again? I told the servants those fringes were a hazard. You must be more graceful, truly."
Darshav stepped between them, immediately offering Nalhari an arm with practiced gentleness. "Let me carry the basket, Mother. Your wrists are thin today."
"They are the same as always," Nalhari replied, preening slightly under the deference, leaning into his solid frame as they walked away together. She never looked down. She never saw the dark, bruised ring already mottling Javeda’s collar.
Darshav glanced back over his shoulder just before they turned the bend.
His lips curled into a tiny, mocking slant. His right hand rested lightly against the small of Nalhari’s back, guiding her, corralling her, claiming every inch of the air she breathed.
Javeda dragged herself up by the edge of an urn. Her bruised airway burned with every shuddering breath.
He was going to kill them both. First the court, then anyone who dared to stand within arm's reach of her, until Nalhari had nothing left in the world except his monstrous shadow.
There was no waiting for nightfall. She had to write the warning now, slip the parchment into Nalhari’s jewelry coffer where the brute wouldn't dare look, and flee through the western drains alone if she must.
Javeda stumbled down the north corridor, avoiding the servants, and slipped into the dim sanctuary of Nalhari’s private bedchamber. The heavy drapes of woven wool were drawn against the afternoon glare, plunging the room into cool twilight.
She reached for the desk, her fingers trembling as she reached for an inkpot.
A pale, brilliant filament pulled taut against her collarbone.
Javeda froze.
From the deep shadows behind the canopy bed, a figure stepped forward. The newcomer wore the white-gold silks of the Solar Wardens, a silver veil masking everything below the eyes. In their hand, woven from pure, blinding sunlight, was a garrote of condensed light, humming with enough heat to sever her head before she could scream.