Beasts Made of Night Read online

  Is this why it’s so easy to order Baptisms? If a city where people live is small enough to fit on the edge of your nail, that must make it easier to send Hurlers to destroy those dahia and chase people from their homes. From this far away, you can’t possibly see how alive the city is.

  Arzu stands at her post near the entrance to the balcony. The way Arzu looks out at Kos right now makes me wonder if she has people from there. Maybe she comes from there.

  “What dahia?” I ask, popping a grape in my mouth.

  “Excuse me, sir?” she says, and it’s gone. Whatever memory she was walking through or whatever song she was recalling, it’s gone. And she’s all business again.

  “I was asking what dahia your family is from.” I wave my finger out at Kos in the distance. “Can you see it from here?”

  “I’m not from the dahia, sir.”

  “Where are you from, then?”

  She turns to face me. “I was born in the Palace, sir. I am from here.”

  “But you’re not like them.” I can’t keep the surprise from my voice.

  She doesn’t move from where she stands, but I can tell that her thoughts are somewhere else right now. “My mother was a servant to Princess Karima.”

  “Was she a sicario too?”

  A hint of a smile from Arzu. “No. Just a servant.”

  I take a seat by the table and gesture to the open one across from me, but Arzu shakes her head no.

  “My mother was not from Kos either. We came from elsewhere.”

  “From beyond the Wall?” My eyes widen.

  “She was a migrant, and she came here looking for work.” Arzu nods. “When she began her work in the Palace, she was already heavy with me. I’m sure some of the other Kayas would have wanted me sent away, or disappeared. Princess Karima kept my mother in her employ and allowed her to raise me within the Palace grounds.”

  Now I take a long look at Arzu, a real one. I notice the veins that thread the backs of her hands. The tightness in her calves where they come up out of her boots. She has the same skin as the princess, only tougher. In her leathers, she looks like the princess’s sister or cousin, maybe, kidnapped at birth and trained by sand kings like in a storyscroll I once read as a kid.

  “The Kayas wanted to take you from your mother. You don’t resent them for that? You’re still walking around as their servant?”

  “I am not their servant, sir. I am yours.”

  Just like that, she stops my anger. I can’t figure her out. Most people, I can tell what they want pretty easily. And usually what they want in the moment says something about what they want in life, but Arzu . . . how can she walk around and stand in the same rooms as the people who had wanted her mother to abandon her?

  “Where’s your mother now?”

  “Gone.”

  “And why aren’t you with her?” I’m angry again. My chest is tight, and I can’t figure out why. “Why are you still here?”

  “Why are you?” Arzu snaps, then quickly composes herself. “I apologize, sir.”

  She lets out a small breath, and it seems like whatever had bound her so tightly has loosened. “I must remain here in order to repay a debt. I serve at Princess Karima’s behest, because we are bound. My mother . . .” She stops, clenches her fists at her sides.

  When she speaks again, she speaks through gritted teeth. “My mother committed a sin in this house. They wouldn’t hire an aki to Eat her sin, so she was to be executed. I offered myself in her place.”

  “What does that mean?” A chill raises gooseflesh along my spine.

  “I was to take my mother’s place as Princess Karima’s servant.” The resolve has returned to Arzu’s voice, but her cheeks are shining. “To ensure that I never leave and that my life be forever bound to the princess, I was unsexed so that I may never bear children.”

  I try to imagine Princess Karima in that scene. I’m putting it all together in my head, but it’s a blur. Jumbled images of a fair-skinned woman in a servant’s clothes, maybe on her knees humbly begging for her life, forehead to the cold tiles wet with her tears. Does her daughter stand by her side? Does she glare at Princess Karima for what she is about to order? I can’t imagine that the same Princess Karima who would do this is the one who condemned the system that has aki ragged and poor and hungry in the streets of Kos. The same one who touched me so gently.

  “Princess—”

  “No, it was not Princess Karima who ordered this,” Arzu says. “Her cousin Haris decreed the punishment. Originally, I was to be murdered.” She stands taller, raises her chin so that she’s looking down on me. The sunlight, when it hits, makes her seem more than human. “Karima saved my life.”

  For a long time, neither of us says a word.

  I wonder if I should tell her to go after her mother. I’ll distract the Palace guards while she makes a run for it. I’ll sacrifice myself so that her family can be reunited; I’ll Eat her mother’s sin. Maybe I should tell her it’s OK, while I feel guilty that I still know where Mama and Baba live, that they are healthy for now. And safe. I don’t know what I can tell her that she hasn’t already told herself.

  “I want to show you something,” I tell her.

  “Where is it?”

  I nod in the direction of Kos. My city. “It’s OK. No peppered chicken-sticks this time.”

  This time of year, the days get shorter and shorter. I take her through Kos slowly, because I know I may not get another chance to wander like this. I wish I had more time to show her places like Gemtown. But the sun has started to set. And pretty soon, we’ll have to return to the Palace.

  We make our way in the dark, first through the backstreets, then up through the villages of the southern dahia. I know Khamsa is near. I can feel it, like a humming in my bones. Any time I’m near Mama and Baba, whether I’ve wandered there by accident or snuck there on purpose, I know where I am. Arzu falls behind me, and as agile as she is, she doesn’t know where the puddles are that she needs to step over or the thorny vines that wrap around the walls of some homes and shacks. By the time we make it to the rim of the Arbaa dahia, she has one slipper off and is shaking small pebbles out of it.

  The handholds and footholds are all waiting for me. I haven’t been here in a while, I realize, but my body knows this place. It moves all on its own. When I seat myself on a small boulder, I pull Arzu up, then I point to the roof of an abandoned shack just in front of us.

  “I cannot see it,” she tells me.

  “It’s right there.”

  “But I can’t see it.”

  I rise to my feet and check my pockets to make sure that everything is there. “OK, just follow me.” And I leap off into the darkness and land softly on the roof I know is there.

  “Taj?” Silence. “Taj!” She shouts in a hushed whisper. “Taj, where did you go?”

  Most of the dahia is asleep, so I lower my voice too. “I’m right here. Just jump. There’s a roof right in front of you. Metal. Just jump. If you slip, I’ll catch you.”

  “Taj,” she warns. She’s annoyed with me, but she’s also scared. She’s never called me by my name before.

  “Don’t worry,” I say, more softly. “I’m here.”

  “OK.” I hear her shift, hear her slippers scuff against the ground, hear her running, then I hear the soft whoosh of her feet leaving the ground.

  She lands with a tumble and nearly topples me over. It’s enough to make me start laughing, and even as she comes to her feet and stands over me, straightening her leathers and brushing the dust off, I roll on the roof, clutching my stomach in pain from the laughter. She’s completely silent, but I can tell she’s glaring, so I eventually settle down.

  “Here.” I pat the spot next to me. “Sit down. Turn around so that we’re both facing where we jumped from.”

  She does as instructed, and I pull out of the
pouch by my waist a fistful of marbles. Mostly blues and greens, but there are a few reds in there. And one yellow, if I remember correctly. I can’t quite see them in the dark.

  “You have a match?”

  She pulls a small matchbook out of her chest pocket, and I take one and light the candle I’ve brought with us. I smear some of its base on the roof so that it sticks at the angle I need it to be at, then I arrange the marbles in front of it. When I’m finished, rays of color splash against the rim of the dahia wall.

  Arzu’s eyes go wide in the light cast by the candle.

  The colors dance against one another. When a gust rushes by us, the dance turns into a fight. But they flow all the same. And for a long time, we watch the show without saying a word.

  The candle goes down to half its original length before Arzu says, “We came from the west. Well, my mother did.”

  I glance at her, but she’s only got eyes for the light show.

  “I never saw our land, but my mother would tell me stories. It was harsh terrain, very dry. My people didn’t cut the earth for metals like they do here.” She brings her knees up to her chest and hugs herself. “We farmed. We raised cattle. We fled the arashi.”

  “You’ve seen arashi?”

  “In my mother’s time, the arashi visited the west frequently. There was no order to their visitations. But each time, they would tear at the land and turn it so that we would have to flee. It would take a year before anything good could grow from it, so we migrated. What you call nomads.” She looks at me, and it’s different from any other look she’s given me. “Your kind exist where my mother comes from.”

  “What? The aki?”

  “Yes, there are people in my homeland like you, but they are honored. They serve as arbiters of justice. And they are healers. We call them tastahlik. When a person’s sins render them ill, the tastahlik will cure them by taking on their sins. They are heroes, and they wear their markings proudly.” Her face softens. Or maybe that’s just a trick of the light. “When my mother told me of this, I thought it was strange that you aki walk in such shame all the time. That you hide your markings.” She turns back to the light show. “You sacrifice your body for the sake of others.” A breeze threatens to extinguish our candle, but the light persists. “Back in my mother’s land, your kind are buried in reverent fashion.”

  Feelings roil inside of me. So many feelings that I can’t figure out what to say. As the candlelight dies down, we head back to the Palace in silence.

  I wonder, had I said no to Izu, whether or not this dahia would have been the one he would have chosen for Baptism.

  CHAPTER 19

  I WAKE WITH a start. It’s dark. Still the middle of the night.

  No matter how hard I press my palms to my eyes, I can’t squeeze out the last traces of the dream. All darkness. But against the black, there were outlines of sin-beasts: a lion and a snake, silhouetted against inky night. Light shone in from somewhere, and I realized they were circling the source. A girl. Karima. They stalked her, the lion and the snake, in increasingly tight circles, and she had nowhere to go. I was frozen in place. I couldn’t do a thing to stop them. Then, just as they both lunged at her, I woke up.

  Other aki complain about it, night terrors that attack them when they close their eyes. The sins they swallow enter their dreams and torment them. When Bo and I had to share a room, he broke at least three bowls thrashing around in his sleep. It didn’t take us long to figure out we had to put the ceramics we ate from in a whole other room when it was time to sleep. But that only happens if you’re soft enough to think about the sinners. I get by because I don’t do that. The only way to Eat as much as I have, to maintain the Hunger, is to think only of yourself. Which doesn’t explain this dream with Karima.

  Then I realize that, no, that’s not what this is.

  I feel my heart drop. This isn’t a night terror. It’s not a side effect from Eating too many sins. It’s me being upset about a girl I’ll never make my heart-mate.

  I search my brain to try to figure out when it happened. How did she do it? Was it that first time she ran her fingers along my forearms? Touched my sin-spots and didn’t back away? Was it when she took my arm in hers and walked with me? When she held me and traced the lines of her brother’s sins on my body?

  And now I haven’t seen her since.

  I have to leave. I have to join the Mages in the forest and train the aki. Aliya is right. I can’t let them down, and whatever Izu has planned for them, they’ll need me.

  I feel stupid for thinking things could have turned out differently. It’s nonsense to think that I would ever be accepted here, or that someone like me could be treated with respect here. An aki’s duty is to Eat until they can’t Eat anymore. That’s what we’re here for. Sins are written on our bodies until the pain becomes too much and we go mad. We Cross over. Then, even dead, after our throats have been cut, our inyo hang around and wander the streets of Kos, leftovers.

  I’m just going to be training those young aki to be paraded through Kos for the Festival of Reunification. Only the Unnamed knows what sort of ridiculous spectacle Izu and the others will make of them, but at least aki are being given proper training now. Omar’s tear stained face flashes in my mind. His tattered clothes and wide eyes. I hope to go my whole life without ever seeing one of my own so frightened again. If joining the Mages prevents that, then so be it.

  I think about what that apprentice Aliya said about sin-spots being poems, but here at night it’s too dark to read whatever might be written on me.

  Kos at night is invisible from the balcony. You can hardly tell it’s there. I see the Wall and almost nothing else. But if I close my eyes, I can see the Seven Scribes painting sins and writing their messages, tagging the Wall. I can see some of the aki, unable to sleep, like me, lying on the rooftops of their shanties, counting the stars.

  I miss them.

  Arzu’s standing over me when the morning prayer wakes me up.

  The rest of the Palace is praying right now.

  I wonder if Arzu’s mother ever prayed, or if they did that sort of thing where her mother came from. I can’t stop thinking about what it would’ve been like had Arzu been born anywhere else. Always an outsider, maybe she would’ve joined the Seven Scribes. Maybe she’d be tagging the Wall right now. She wouldn’t have been born with our Hunger, but maybe, as a child, she would’ve been swept up by prelates during a Baptism of her dahia and tossed back out into the streets when the Mages realized she couldn’t do what they needed her to do. Maybe she would’ve stayed with us anyway. Maybe she would’ve spent enough time in the dahia to get used to our dahia sauces.

  “Izu is ready to meet with you,” she says.

  “Sit with me for a little bit,” I tell her. “Please.”

  She sits next to me, both our backs against the marble. I slip my daga out of its band and flick it from my wrist to my hands, where it dances over my fingers, spins, twirls. It feels good to do this again. All the while, I keep the strap out of the way so it doesn’t get cut. It feels comfortable. I can’t believe it’s been so long since I’ve played like this.

  Arzu turns to look at me. “Have you made your decision?”

  “Yeah, this place is awful.” I remember Izu and his reason for wanting me out, to separate me from Princess Karima. Then I remember that Arzu is his spy. But a part of me doesn’t care about that anymore. Not a big enough part to keep from lying to her, though. “All I’m doing is getting out of shape here. Plus, I don’t need to be surrounded by all these people, all pure and sinless and boring.”

  “Sin excites you?”

  “No, but it’s just the world’s realer out there, you know? People living their lives. Trying to make it work. Telling the occasional lie or being jealous of someone or stealing a loaf of bread to feed their little sister. Fighting a cutpurse to protect yourself. It’s not just that it�
�s exciting, it’s . . . it’s life.” I wave the knife in my hand at the Palace, at everything inside it. “This isn’t life.”

  “The Unbalance is out there.”

  I tap my heart. “The Unbalance is in here too.” It’s not until the words come out of my mouth that I realize they’re Princess Karima’s. If I could, I’d bring Princess Karima with me. Show her what it’s really like out there. Surviving on scraps, wearing rags, and having to bathe using a bucket. Sleeping crowded, close to others during the cold season. Maybe I was only ever just a toy or something exotic for her. If Forum mud ever did really touch her dress, she’d change her mind about me.

  The image from my dream flashes in my mind again. The lion and the snake circling Karima. Just as they’re tensing to leap at her, they burst into clouds of smoke, then evaporate. “OK,” I say, sliding my daga back into my armband. I push myself up. “Let’s go see Izu.”

  When we get to Izu’s office, Arzu waits in the doorway. I walk in and know that I can’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me angry. With every nerve in my body, I school my face into an expression as cold as the stone floor beneath our feet. He’s got his hands folded in front of him and is already smiling like he knows my decision.

  Karima is waiting for me when I get back to my room.

  “Taj,” she says, excited and worried at the same time. She walks over to me, placing her hand on my forearm, exactly where the lion from her cousin’s sin is tattooed. “You’re going to the camps. Surely, there is something special planned for you.”

  “You know of the camps?”

  She smirks. “You think there is anything that happens in this place that I don’t know about?” She’s so close I can smell her lavender perfume. “Taj. I know it is Izu who is trying to separate us, but I can have you stay. He is not the only one here who commands my brother’s attention.”