The sun was setting over Dhahara, the Desert City, when Herrith began his walk to King Ikajo’s chambers. The colors of the corridors brightened, then faded as the light grew dim. Groups of magicians scurried along, lighting the magical lamps with murmured words. One of the lamps turned on with a loud pop, far too close to Herrith’s ear. Inwardly he flinched, but he kept his face absolutely still, pushing his reaction down with the discipline he had honed since he was a small boy in the king’s court. Hiding his emotions had always been a matter of life or death.
Herrith was nervous. The king’s chambers were increasingly dangerous, with deadly currents gathering force within. Something moved in the king’s blood lately. Something changed him. The king was waiting—for what, Herrith didn’t know— and his impossible stillness felt like a growing storm.
Something stirred in Herrith’s blood as well. He felt as though he was standing on a hilltop, looking down at the moment he had waited and worked for all his life. And now he had to be very, very careful. He could see it, but getting there would be no small thing. Thinking about it, his heart beat faster and he felt ready to meet the king.
At the door to the king’s chambers, he stopped to pull his red hood up so that nothing of his face would be visible. He paused for three breaths before raising his hand to knock. His knuckles thudded onto the wood in a pattern that identified him, and the door slave opened the door. Herrith stepped in.
The chamber was large, with tables lining three walls, a dais with a throne, and cushions piled here and there throughout the room. The floor was black and shiny, bare of any rugs. The king paced in an indiscernible pattern. He barely slept these days, and it wreaked havoc on his temper. Slaves were scattered around the room, some involved in the never-ending chore of cleaning the magical black substance under their feet, some guarding the door, and many holding dishes of food for the possibility of the king’s hunger.
The king’s special female slaves attended him, wiping his bare feet when he paused, or his brow as he worked himself into a temper and sweat trickled out from under his hair and down his face. His women—wives, concubines, and attendants—were always at risk. Closest to the king, they were the first to bear the brunt of his anger. And yet Herrith knew that some of them loved him and longed for him. Some of the slaves were former wives who had angered the king and desired to be reinstated as wives. Some slaves wanted to be lifted up to the coveted position of wife for the first time. Herrith knew that the position of wife wasn’t really something to be desired. He felt a twist of pain in his gut as Amani’s face appeared in front of him. She had never wanted to be the king’s wife.
Herrith felt sorriest for the women who loved the king. He felt badly about their cloudy thoughts, for the way the king could confuse and tempt with promises he would never keep. But Herrith also felt sorry for the ones like Amani, the ones who were clear-headed but trapped all the same.
He stood waiting, face still hidden in his hood. He was one of only four red robes now. The fifth had perished on the journey back from Maween, when the king’s temper was at its worst. It was always dangerous to be close to the king, whether one was a slave or a trusted red robe. Herrith kept his back straight, though his head remained bowed. He had made a promise to himself to never be afraid. Now that he had finally seen her, finally set eyes again on Amani’s firstborn daughter, he felt so full of joy, he thought he might never be afraid again.
Wherever the king walked, colored lights spread from his feet and swirled across the shiny floor. He was taller than most men and wore no hood or crown, allowing his straight black hair to flow down his back with only a few braids as adornment. He was long, lean, and handsome, radiating power and anger. Herrith had known the king for his entire life, since they were just two cousins playing under palace tables together. But then Ikajo’s father had died and he had been made king. There was no more playing, no more friendship. Being the king’s cousin meant nothing in this great court.
“Herrith,” the king said, his voice a growl. A ripple of unease shuddered along Herrith’s skin.
“Yes, Brightness?” Herrith asked, careful to keep his voice at the gentle, quiet level King Ikajo preferred.
“She refused to come.”
Herrith sighed, silently. They were going to talk about this again. He kept his voice light.
“I know, Brightness. It was foolish of her.”
It was not foolish of her, but the king had summoned Herrith many times to tell him this exact thing. Ikajo was obsessed, not sleeping, barely eating and very, very dangerous.
“I have been thinking,” the king said.
He took long strides over the surface of the black floor. Herrith shuffled his feet away from the rays and coils of light that spread from the king’s feet. He didn’t want the king’s magic to touch him.
“She has to come of her own will,” the king went on. “She cannot be coerced or kidnapped. We cannot steal her, like my father did with the Maweel queen, because it will decrease her power. But I need her here, Herrith.” His dark eyes were trained on Herrith’s hood. “I know you understand how important she is to our plan.”
His voice was very silky and soft. To Herrith, he felt more dangerous than he ever had before, even after Amani left and they couldn’t find her, even after word had come back that the girl was in Maween. Herrith stood with his body like stone, looking back at the king, thinking quickly, thankful the king still could not see him.
“Show your face,” Ikajo said.
Herrith sighed another inaudible sigh even as he reached up to pull back his hood. He lifted his head and looked at the king, trying to keep his features as still as possible. The king hated it when his subjects showed emotion.
“I do understand how important she is to our plan, Brilliance,” Herrith said. Of course I do, he didn’t add.
“Good,” the king replied. He began pacing again, his feet slapping the floor, barefoot as he always was, reading the depths of the floor as he paced. “She must come here. It is unacceptable that she refused.” He was growing agitated again, and Herrith shuddered. A slave approached with a damp, fragrant cloth to wipe the king’s face, and with one swift move, the king turned and backhanded her. She fell to the floor and let out a tiny cry.
“Don’t make that noise!” the king roared. “I barely touched you, it didn’t even hurt!” He looked away from her and up at the ceiling. His face grew darker as he held his breath. Chains of gold and gems hung from the high reaches of the immense room. “I need her!” His voice roared and the chains clanged together, ringing against the crystals as the king’s magic strained at its bounds. Herrith stood stock still. It was destructive magic, something that could bring the palace down on them. It could destroy them all.
“Brilliant one,” he began, a breeze of fear blowing over him as he spoke. He ignored it. Amani’s children were alive, and he could throw himself in harm’s way in order to protect the people of the palace. “Surely there is some way we can bring the girl here.”
The king stared at him for a long moment. “Do you not think I have looked into every possibility?” he asked, finally.
Herrith bowed his head. He had angered the king, and he needed to tread very, very carefully. “If we cannot kidnap her,” he said, “perhaps we can draw her to us with something she loves.”
The silence was so complete, all Herrith could hear were slight dings still coming from the leftover motion of the king’s magic. After a few moments, Herrith dared to look up. The king was staring, not at Herrith, but at the high ceiling where the hanging gems and crystals continued to shudder and ripple. The gems swayed without anger now, with something like thoughtfulness. Herrith let out a breath.
“Draw her . . .” the king breathed, his voice a low drone. “Draw her . . .”
He looked down at Herrith suddenly, and Herrith was struck suddenly by the resemblance to his own face in his mirror. Ikajo, my cousin, he thought. Is there nothing left to you? On the floor, the slave the king had struck wiped her eyes and crawled away to a nearby table, where she picked out a fresh, perfumed cloth for the king.
“Wait,” the king said, putting out a hand to stop her as she walked back toward him with the fresh cloth. “What’s the third one called again?” he asked Herrith.
Herrith’s bones froze. He stood very still, electrified by hope, love, grief, and worry in waves.
“The third one, Brilliance?” he asked, his voice so soft, so gentle.
“Don’t play stupid with me!” the king roared, slamming a foot down so hard that red lines flew across the black floor, knocking every person in the room off his or her feet, including Herrith, who fell heavily onto one hip. Herrith took a moment to compose himself, rolling onto his hands and knees, then looked up.
“Aria,” he said. “Her name is Aria.”
Nobody breathed. The word echoed. Aria. Aria. Aria.
The king looked around the room, eyes burning, not seeing what was there, but something in his head, something far away.
“Aria,” he said, nodding. “That’s it. Aria. We bring Aria. We will draw her here, and the girl will have to follow. The warrior-whisperer will be ours, as she is meant to be.”
Herrith’s skin tingled as he left the king’s chamber. He could barely keep his face under control. He kept his head high and walked through the palace, down the corridors his father had walked many times before, his father’s father before him. His family had been in this palace since before the emperor had made all languages one. Before the divide and the war that meant they rarely crossed the sea. Before Azariyah, or Maween, became what it was today. Herrith was of warrior blood, like the king, in a line that stretched back into the past as far as anyone could see. But the king prevented most warrior magic from being practiced in his reign. He alone wanted to hold power, so the other warriors practiced in secret, tiny ways that could not be perceived. Herrith was one of these.
He walked quietly, pulling his hood up. He left the palace silently, with a brief nod to the guard on the way out. Then he was outside of the palace grounds, walking into the city, surrounded by an instant rush of noise and crowds. Up on the hill the streets were clean, but as he left the higher streets near the palace and descended into the lower city, they grew dirtier, with shacks and beggars lining the roadways.
Herrith took his red cloak off, bundling it into a harmless shape under one arm. His long black braid swung freely, wrapped with a gold cord. Now that his cloak was off, people occasionally greeted him, touching the fingertips of one hand gently to their foreheads as they passed by. Herrith nodded and touched his forehead in response. At the entrance to the city garden he paused and bowed his head, touching the tops of his eyebrows gently, then walked on, lower and lower into the city. The buildings stretched high on either side of him, homes stacked on top of each other in impossibly precarious positions. Little children ran through narrow alleyways, playing, trying to pick pockets, getting cuffed on the head for getting in the way.
As Herrith descended the narrow streets, he tried not to trip over the beggars sitting in the road, though he was jostled by people behind and ahead of him. His red robe would have cleared the way for him, but he preferred not to wear it here. People were used to seeing him, and some of them possibly knew who he was, but he could count on them not to betray his presence here. There was no love for the king in the lower reaches of the city, and the king did not respect the people here enough to try to gain favor with them. There were no informants.
He stopped at the bottom floor of a many-layered building at a doorway low enough that he would have to duck to get through. The doorway was painted a deep blue and had a barely visible sign of a circle etched into its surface, though the circle had never been finished and was missing a large chunk.
Herrith tapped an intricate pattern on the door, one that he had invented himself, and waited, holding his breath until the door swung open. The woman on the other side of the door was old, her deep black skin creased with the lines of many years. When she saw that it was truly him, she smiled and swung the door open wider so he could see into the dimly lit room. A little group of people sat around a table in the light of a lantern, eating bowls of soup. The smell made his mouth water, and he realized he hadn’t eaten all day.
“Come in,” the woman said. “There’s some for you.”
Herrith knew the pair of bricklayers at the table. They nodded to him. He knew the scholar with the wild white hair, who barely looked up from his books. He also knew the tall, startling warrior woman, but she scowled when she saw him.
“He doesn’t want your soup,” she said to the old woman. “He eats at the palace.”
The old woman smiled at the warrior princess. “You don’t know him as I do,” she said. “Herrith has been eating my soup since he toddled around his mother’s legs at my table, eating bites from her spoon.”
Herrith felt the muscles in his shoulders relaxing. The old woman’s creaky, familiar voice settled his nerves and soothed his fear.
“You have news,” the warrior woman said in a flat voice.
He nodded and flicked his braid so that it fell in front of him and they could all see the gold cord wrapped around it.
“I do,” he said. He took a deep breath. “It is something for all of us. The king has decided to call Aria.”
There was silence as they looked at one another and at him. The old woman drew a shaky breath and put her hand on his arm.
“Will she come?” she asked in a whisper.
Herrith looked at her for a long while, then slowly nodded. “I saw her, back when we were in Azariyah. She bears marks of his poison. She will not be able to withstand his call.” He looked around at all of them. “She will be here soon.”
They gazed at him in silence. Herrith felt the hand on his arm tighten and looked down to see the old woman’s eyes flooded with tears.
“Aria,” she breathed, echoing the sound that was in all of their hearts.
