She had never seen snow before. She had only heard of it.
The northern territories, where the air was cooler, saw snow once in a red moon. Ashallah had been on assignment to its cities a handful of times. Her favorite by far was Khirat, a trading outpost at the base of the Azarii Mountains. Built on the edge of a dry riverbed that would turn to rapids with the spring rains, Khirat was comprised of a series of wood and clay building that resembled the same mountains that surrounded them. Awash in white and glacial blue, the four and five-story structures housed spice traders, furs and pelts from the mountain tribes, along with herbs and spices from the high desert that would rarely make their way down to Yasem. With their many offerings, the street vendors of Khirat would share tales of snowy days and nights, when the town was blessed enough to receive the icy dust from above, the white leaves of winter.
The memory of such stories came flooding back to Ashallah as she sat in her cage. Her eyes stung with salt, as her tears had dried. Her body ached as though her joints and muscles had absorbed all the sadness of her mourning. She sat against the wall of her cell when the first flake came floating in to rest on her thigh. Only it was not white, like the snow from the tales of Khirat. Rather, the flake was gray. The tone of ash. Of charred flesh and bone.
More feathers of death entered her cage. They came one at a time at first. Then in waves. Past sunset and into the night they floated. As the sun rose and the servants readied the arena for the trial, Ashallah watched the flakes catch the early light to reflect hues of gold and amber. They continued their journey long after the doors of the amphitheater had opened to allow the first spectators inside. By the time the bulk of the attendees had taken their seats, a thin coat of ash had covered the corridor floor.
“Wake!”
Ashallah moved her head to the side as she sat limply on the floor. Seven guards, ones who still possessed their genitals, stood outside as the arena keymaster unlocked her cage.
“Your trial has come,” added the husky guard.
“What’s the point?” Ashallah asked. “Execute me in here and be done with it!”
The guard seemed less than tempted by the idea. “Up!” he yelled as he hit the shaft of his javelin against the cage bar.
When Ashallah failed to respond, he entered along with his cohorts. They jabbed at her with the blunt ends of their weapons, but Ashallah remained unmoved. Then they turned the points of their javelins and spears at her, piercing her leathery skin with little concern for the pain they caused. When their patience finally tired, two guards lifted Ashallah to drag her from her cage. She offered no resistance.
Ashallah squinted as the guards took her from the shadows of the corridor into the late morning sunlight. Although not yet noon, the grains of the sandpit burned with desert heat. Ashallah looked around to find that the theater’s attendees were faring no better, as nearly all fanned themselves or sought shelter under the awnings of the surrounding vendors. They are wilting like cut wildflowers, Ashallah thought. The heat should prompt a speedy trial.
Those in the marble gallery showed similar signs of distress, save the janissaries, whose training conditioned them to hide any sign of discomfort. The reserved section was full of Yasem’s elite. To the right sat the local magistrates in their flowing robes of silk and spun cotton, while to the left were the highest-ranking officers, dressed in gilded breastplates and other regalia. Not surprisingly, the only women in the gallery were those serving the men, whether with food and drink or as spectacles for their viewing amusement.
In the center of this display of male hedonism was Vizier Hyder. He wore a judicial robe of silver and scarlet, the colors of blades and blood respectively, as well as a necklace of polished jade, which bore the royal gemstones. His apprentice, seated on his right, wore a similar ensemble, though displayed less dignity and more discomfort with the weather. Between the two, on a cedar pedestal, sat the ivory horn the vizier had used the previous day.
The guards dropped Ashallah in the center of the arena. Two others proceeded to chain her to iron rings bolted to heavy stakes in the ground. Ashallah found the chains restrictive, yet she could raise her arms for a short time if needed. Not that it mattered. For there were no weapons within her reach, nor other items she could use to block advances or strike opponents. Only more iron rings and chains laid nearby, which would soon confine other accused enemies of the state, whose fates were already sealed.
Within minutes, five other prisoners shared the sandpit with Ashallah, four women, and one man. Although the male amongst them could hardly be considered a man. A thin tuft of hair clung to his head, which he hung low as he sobbed uncontrollably. His thin arms cradled his face, which appeared tired and worn, even absent the tears. The other women appeared distressed too, as none wore the standard niqab veils encouraged for day use, for their guilt had exposed them. In the tradition of Yasem, their faces and hair had no coverings, so that all experienced the same level of shame and disgrace. At least they bear their humiliation with more dignity than the man does, Ashallah thought.
With the last of them secured, Vizier Hyder rose to his feet. Out of obligation, the amphitheater crowd rose, as did the officers and magistrates around him. Even the prisoners in the sandpit rose, perhaps hoping that a show of respect would appease their judge to the point of mercy. Ashallah, though, continued to kneel in the sand, only raising her eyes to glare at the man who had issued the sentence on her kin.
Hyder motioned his audience to sit before turning his attention to the accused below. “You six are charged with crimes against the state and Jaha, ranging from blasphemy to high treason.” Hyder’s gaze fell on Ashallah with the last word.
His apprentice stood to address the prisoners as Hyder took his seat. “You will now have the opportunity to explain your actions, express your remorse and beg for forgiveness.”
Explain? Express? Beg? Ashallah knew this display was less about justice and more about conformity. She had never shown interest in the so-called law of the Court, mostly because the only women allowed inside were those designated to serve men. Only a handful of times were trials open to all women, and even then, the numbers were limited. Besides, Ashallah had always been taught battlefield justice, where a woman could issue her punishment or mercy without consulting a man. The process was quick and brutal, often unfair, but the players of that court were all equals. Here, though, women held no position, except those of submission.
The weak man at the end of the line was the first to speak. He stood and glanced at the apprentice before looking at the ground. He never raised his eyes again. The man muttered a few pitiful excuses regarding his crimes of theft and assault. He mentioned the lack of love and support he endured as a child, how he was on his own for much of his life. Then he went on to describe how he fell in with bad elements, whether it be drink or unscrupulous characters. By the end of his speech, the man had wetted himself almost as much as he had cried. Ashallah merely shook her head as he finished his time by falling to the sand, sobbing.
The next one to speak was a fair-skinned woman, accused of lying with a man during her husband’s absence. The woman, although scared, managed to keep her head raised as she explained that her husband was a merchant who had failed to return from his most recent trading expedition. Six months had passed since he had vanished. The woman feared him dead. Her neighbor, a young and ambitious merchant himself, took her into his care. She confessed to sleeping with him, which elicited jeers from the audience, but added that she had fallen in love with the man and was hoping to wed him. It was around the time of that consideration, to her shock, that her husband returned. Unsympathetic and enraged upon learning of his wife’s infidelity, he immediately branded her a harlot. The accused ended her speech with a solemn apology to both her husband and her lover, though she did not beg for favor or mercy from the Court.
The other three women were not nearly as bold. The next starting out begging for forgiveness and said little about her crimes. The next was a foreigner, uneducated in the common language of Greater Dyli. She was the most passionate of the charged though. She spoke as if she could be understood, raising her voice three times at the apprentice, who had the guards whip her for insolence, a move that stirred applause from the onlookers. She continued, tearing at her clothes as she spoke. Ashallah understood a few words from her harsh dialect, which she thought was a blend of eastern Nasian and islander Candar’e. By what she gathered, Ashallah suspected that the woman had been drugged and raped, but her tormenters had blamed the woman’s loose morals for their weak impulses.
The last woman in the line beside Ashallah endured the most heated and vile insults. The apprentice had to yell for order from the amphitheater five times before his superior Hyder finally rose to quiet the raucous audience. The woman hung her head low yet kept her back straight. She said nothing. The guards whipped her eight times, encouraged by the spectators. After the last beating, the apprentice demanded that the woman at least nod as he told her story, to confirm the events and the charges against her. The woman did oblige with a slight tilt of her chin.
The apprentice, his confidence bolstered by the crowd’s clapping, spoke like a poet of how the woman and her husband had wed some ten years earlier when the groom was forty-two, and the bride was but fourteen. He told of how the husband provided for her, blessed her with eight children, yet somehow the wife continued to show insolence. By the time of her ninth and last pregnancy, the wife sought the help of a disreputable apothecary, who gave her wine mulled with Lowland Nightshade. At the mention of the plant, gasps rose from the crowd, even though they knew of the accused’s crimes. Ashallah was all too familiar with the shrub, for her midnight comrades often ingested it to prevent or deal with unwanted pregnancies. While permitted for the military, Lowland Nightshade was forbidden for common use, as abortion among the masses was seen as an abomination.
With each declaration by the apprentice, the shamed woman nodded. That is until he came to the part about her intention to lose the child. At that mention, the woman fell to her knees, put her forehead to the sand and shielded her face. The crowd hissed and booed as the apprentice extended his palms to them in an act of triumph.
“Do you not see how this one tries to hide her shame? Even in the arena of Jaha, before all his followers, no one can conceal their actions or thoughts from the full judgment of the Court of the Grand Sultan, who dispenses the full weight of the Law!”
At that, the spectators cheered, which seemed to please the vizier, who himself rose to applaud. The clapping increased tenfold. The apprentice lifted his palms to the sky, as though offering the noise to Jaha himself.
“What choice did I have?”
Ashallah snapped her head to look upon the shamed woman by her side, whose head stayed buried in her hands. She shifted her weight slightly, so as to speak to Ashallah in a hushed tone, audible only to her.
“My husband is a brute. I never wanted to marry him. He bought my hand in marriage from my parents. On our wedding night, when I hesitated to lay with him, he forced himself on me. Again and over and again, until I learned to submit to him. Every child I bore him he abused and ignored. Two passed into death by his hand, both daughters. Each birth was a struggle, every one harder than the last. Until the one they speak of now. Knowing he cannot torment that one has given me more peace and calm than I have ever felt in marriage . . .”
“Why tell me this?” Ashallah retorted.
The woman lifted her face from her hands. She turned to Ashallah. “Because you are a midnight warrior. Your feelings are numb. You are like stone. You do not care what I say. So you do not judge.”
The woman grinned at her. Ashallah raised her brows. She wanted to reply but stayed speechless. Until blood splattered her face.
The accused went limp. Her face dropped into the sand as blood seeped from the gash in the back of her head. Her eyes – amber pendants that had flashed brightly when she spoke of her peace – looked back at Ashallah, lifeless yet still brilliant.
Above the woman, a guard waved his baton in the air. Blood dripped from its tip. A horrific sight, even for Ashallah. In answer to the guard’s action, the spectators cheered, louder than they had ever before. The guard faced the vizier and the apprentice to receive further accolades. He grinned in response, lacking all humility. Proud.
That was too much for Ashallah.
She shot to her feet and rushed toward the guard. She stretched out her hands but found the slack of her chains lacking. Her fingers stopped within inches of reaching him. The guard jumped back, his pleasure gone, as he braced for her attack. Some of the spectators gasped, others laughed or snickered.
“You feral bitch!” the guard shouted. He brandished his bloody baton over his head.
“Come face a real enemy, if you dare!” Ashallah backed away from the guard, allowing the slack of her chains to collect at her feet. She wrapped some of the links over her knuckles as other guards stepped from the perimeter of the arena to surround her.
“Stop!”
The guards halted, turning their attention to the marble gallery. Leaning against the balustrade, Vizier Hyder looked down on them, his look as stern as ever. His eyes met every one of them before settling on Ashallah.
“You are charged with insubordination, abandonment of your post, treason, conspiring with the Shadya – known enemies of the state – and three counts of murder. You have this chance, this one opportunity, to beg for the mercy of the Court. Fail to do so, and you will be executed where you stand. Choose your next move wisely.”
The ash falling like snow. The burnt remains of her sister. Her mother. Possibly her sisters-in-arms. The other women of the city. None of whom were guilty, save of speaking their minds and demanding treatment better than vermin. All of it flooded Ashallah’s mind, blocking out any other consideration.
“Make your plea,” demanded the vizier.
No, Ashallah told herself. He will not have the satisfaction.
She spat on the ground. The audience erupted with cries calling for her death. The animals, pacing the cages that lined the arena, seemed to join their chorus as they roared. Hyder, unamused, nodded to the guards.
This is it, Ashallah thought. Today, I join my sisters. In Hell.
The guards, ten in all, tightened the circle around her. Closer they came as Ashallah dug her heels into the sand, watching over her shoulder, waiting for the first to strike.
Then he did.
He came not from the circle of guards but the corridor. The predators joined his assault, charging the guards with jaws agape and ready for feeding. The guards braced themselves for the onslaught. For many, it was too late. White daggers tore through skin. Black scythes ripped flesh from bone. Tigers and leopards clawed at the guards in fury and hunger. The assailant, however, was more precise in his actions. With expert skill, the masked one wielded its curved karambits knife. Its first strike found the neck of a guard, as did the second. The third move spilled open the entrails of the victim, cutting right through the boiled leather plate the guard wore.
The apprentice on the gallery called for order. The masked assailant, hearing his cry, took a javelin from a felled guard and threw it at the apprentice. The steel-tipped weapon found its mark perfectly. The apprentice reached for his torso, where the shaft of the javelin protruded. Blood seeped from the corners of his mouth as he leaned before falling over the balustrade of the gallery, into the sandpit below. At that sight, the audience panicked. They rushed from their seats, trampling each other to reach the nearest exits.
Vizier Hyder shouted commands to his janissaries. “Kill that one! And the bitch it’s trying to save!” Ashallah watched as his guards shuffled around a bit. No sooner had he issue the directive when she spotted some of the animals in the stands, making their way through the galleries. Four hyenas hopped from one seat to another, closing in on the marble gallery. The janissaries drew their yatagan swords and retreated to form a protective circle around the vizier. They guided the vizier into the protective quarters of the inner corridor. All the while, Hyder eyed Ashallah, his gaze one of fearsome scorn.
Ashallah looked around her. The animals could not have gone up there without one of the arena gates being open to them, she told herself. As the masked figure finished off the last of the guards in the sandpit, Ashallah considered her options. She looked down to the iron rings and the stakes that held them. She pulled at them, but her efforts only confirmed that the rings were too strong, the stakes secured too deep.
She turned to the masked figure, who stood over its last victim. It was finally still enough for Ashallah to study. The mask it wore was grotesque in form but well crafted. Made of polished bronze, the mask reflected the desert sun so that the top half nearly blinded Ashallah. Seven eye slits stretched across the face – one a row of four, the other of three – and were so thin that Ashallah could not tell if any eyes were behind them. The nostrils of the flat nose were almost as large as the slits, further adding to the disturbance of its look. However, the worst feature of it by far was the mouth. Thick lips curled into a wide, devilish smile, made more unsettling by the blood droplets that had splattered on it. The garb of the figure – jet-black shirt, trousers, and boots, over which was a rosewood red tunic – hid any sense of gender. It does not move like a midnight warrior, Ashallah thought. Nor as a janissary. This is something different altogether.
The masked one made its way toward Ashallah. She wrapped both sets of her knuckles in the slack of her chains, ready to fight back should the situation call for it. The figure marched until it reached the first stake. With only three feet between it and Ashallah, the masked one paused, studying her as much as she was scrutinizing it. Then with only a hint of effort, the masked figure pulled the stake from the ground. It held the stake waist high before allowing it to fall. The figure strode to the other stake to do the same, freeing Ashallah.
The two of them stood across from each other, neither sure of what to do next. That is until a high-pitched wind, a siren call of sorts, commanded their attention.
From the portico that ringed the topmost portion of the amphitheater, beside a sandstone column, was a wind-swept vision in indigo and blue silk. Her outline was difficult to discern, as every breeze would whisk the tale of her skirt and shawl. Her niqab veil did not allow Ashallah the gift of admiring her face. Not that it mattered, for Ashallah had the privilege of gazing upon her eyes. Brilliant they were. Hazel, unlike any hue Ashallah had ever seen. Not quite emerald, nor jade, but some shade in between. Even from as far away as the sandpit, Ashallah was able to appreciate them.
The woman. From the brothel. Ashallah glanced at the masked one, then back to the hazel-eyed. Why is she here? she asked herself. Who are these two? What is the meaning of all this?
The masked figure turned to the marble gallery. Ashallah followed his gaze as the both of them glimpsed one of the janissaries slipping back into the corridor, with the ivory horn in hand. The masked one looked to Ashallah once before breaking out into a run towards the woman. Ashallah watched him leave her side. She stared at the iron shackles that still bound her wrists to the chains, rings, and stakes. She looked around her – at the mangled bodies of the guards, at the carnivores that traversed the arena, and the emptied seats. She imagined the masses swarming the adjacent streets, the extent of their panic. She could see the city guards of Yasem receiving word of the distress, summoning fellow soldiers – and the vizier climbing to a neighboring rooftop, with his horn, to summon the jinni once more.
What options do I have? What is left for me?
The answer was clear.
Ashallah wrapped her chains. Heavy though they were, she could bear the weight. She hurried after the masked one, who in turn moved toward the woman above.178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbPEbNSmO4c
