Conqueror's Blood (Gunmetal Gods Book 2) Read online

  Conqueror’s Blood

  Gunmetal Gods Book 2

  Zamil Akhtar

  Cover by Miblart

  Edited by Fiona McClaren

  Special thanks to Salik and Robert

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 by Zamil Akhtar

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions,” at the email address below.

  [email protected]

  Fun Stuff

  Head to ZamilAkhtar.com and join my mailing list for cool cover reveals, early chapter releases, and free short stories. I’ll even be running the occasional giveaway. Stay updated on my upcoming releases, learn about my writing process, and find out what I’m working on. No spam, I promise!

  In loving memory of my big brother Jon, who introduced me to fantasy and inspired those near him to reach for the stars.

  Contents

  Quick Glossary

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Epilogue

  Want More?

  Quick Glossary

  For a quick glossary of terms used in this novel, head to ZamilAkhtar.com/Glossary2.

  1

  Cyra

  The sand tribes claim that a jinn with eleven fiery horns, born before time began its flow, climbed a ring in the seventh heaven and — overcome by some mysterious, primordial rage — hurled a thousand and one pearls at the earth. A thousand of those pearls burned as they surged toward the ground, becoming the stars that still blaze. Only one pearl landed, and it created this city: Qandbajar.

  Which was, at this moment, besieged. By my brother. From high on the palace balcony, I stared beyond the sand-colored city walls at the colorful yurts dotting the desert and shrubland. Our besiegers would find their yurts too warm in the Qandbajari summer — ovens heated by the sun’s gaze. Though fertile, the pastures by the river and its canals couldn’t support them and the tens of thousands of warhorses they’d brought. But that wouldn’t deter them. Little could deter the warriors of the Sylgiz when they’d set their arrowheads upon something; little bother it happened to be the capital of the richest and most powerful kingdom in the east.

  Like Qandbajar, I have a fanciful origin story. It begins with my brother and me huddling in a yurt, covered by a harsh, moth-holed blanket. I’d let him have the last bits of horseflesh, knowing Father would lament his death more than mine, him being the heir of a line of khagans that stretched to the time of Temur, and me being an ungainly daughter; my belly ached from the rotten broth I’d scarfed down instead. We held hands and resisted the Waste’s deadly winter as best we could. Then, as we inched closer, his bony knee jutted into my belly, worsening the ache. Still, I welcomed any warmth as my flesh numbed.

  A screaming wind beat against the eight walls, and soon my brother would have to rush outside to hammer the nails lest our yurt collapse, despite his toes almost having frozen yesterday, rescued only by the heat of our stove’s final embers. So, to save us, as well as our baby brother in his bone-built crib, I shut my eyes and prayed.

  The memory unnerved me. Had that really been my life before coming to the paradise that was Qandbajar?

  “Today is not for reminiscence,” Shah Tamaz had instructed when he debriefed me an hour ago in the great hall. “You’re the sand-brick bridge connecting us and the Sylgiz,” he’d said, sitting straight-backed on his golden divan, his usual kind smile stretched across his face.

  I bent my neck and replied, “I’m more of a…bridge-left-in-disrepair-for-eight-years-because-the-treasurer-didn’t-care-about-the-people-on-the-other-side…but I see your meaning, Your Glory.”

  So I took a carriage to the city gate. As I’d requested, a warhorse waited there. The saddle was sheepskin, the stirrups almost wire-thin iron. I patted its head — it huffed and snorted. A typical mare from the Waste: slightly bigger than a pony, with slender legs and light hooves that barely disturbed the grass. She didn’t belong in this city, surrounded by marble palaces, cobbled streets, and heaped-up mud houses. But perhaps the Sylgiz would regard me as one of their own if I trotted over on a worthy steed.

  The glittering, golden gholam warriors on guard raised the portcullis, and I galloped toward the Sylgiz camp. Though it’d been years since I’d ridden a horse, I’d learned to ride one before learning to walk, so said the stories. Judging by how swiftly I bolted against the wind and how natural it felt to sit so high, I almost believed them.

  As I galloped into the forest of yurts, Sylgiz men and women gazed upon me. The Sylgiz were, on average, smaller than the Alanyans. They fit their mares well and drank deeply of the milk, whereas the Alanyans drank from camels, some as large as elephants. I think I’d grown a few inches after coming to Qandbajar, despite being fifteen at the time.

  Around me, men hauled water in horsehide sacks, while others tempered steel over fire pits, the clank-clank of their hammers a perfect beat for the throaty and harsh Sylgiz tongue. Their sheep, goats, cows, and camels devoured the fruits, crops, and even the reeds that grew by the canals that snaked from the Vogras River. I imagined what followed such rapid consumption: cold, bones, and despair.

  Hardy, though short men clutching matchlocks guarded the imposing sun-colored yurt at the camp’s center. I climbed off my horse, dusted my silk caftan, and readjusted my plumed hat. A million thoughts raced: who waited in that yurt? What would they think of me? And most crucial, would they tell me what they wanted?

  “I am Cyra, daughter of Khagan Yamar,” I said in Sylgiz to a guard with thin eyes and a wing-like mustache. I didn’t recognize him — the tribe had grown since I’d been taken, so most here were new faces. “I’ve come to entreat on behalf of the Seluqal House of Alanya and His Glory, Shah Tamaz of Alanya.”

  He looked up at me, then gestured his head toward the entrance flap.

  Inside, the simple ways of the Sylgiz prevailed. In the center, an ice-filled stove barely provided relief from the swelter. Around it, men and women sat upon sheepskin blankets and passed around a tree branch molded into a crude pipe. The stench of opium weighed heavier than air. Opium and mushrooms were oft used in our rituals, to see beyond the Gate into the realm where the Guided waited.

  A familiar face stared back from the dais at the far end. Warm, wolf-like yellow pupils. Looking upon my brother, after e
ight years apart, he seemed both a stranger and the boy I knew. Tears bubbled behind my eyes, and I strained to keep them there. I wanted to hug him. I wanted to cry in his arms and ask about Father and Mother and baby Betil. But when he got to his feet, he towered and cast a cold gaze upon me.

  “Cihan,” I said.

  “Cyra,” he replied, as if my name had been boiling in his belly.

  I trembled as he approached. He put a hard hand on my shoulder, then pulled me in. I barely reached his chest as we embraced and could no longer hold my tears. When I’d left, my big brother had been skinnier than a goat, and now he looked like he could rip a goat apart. The warmth and cold from so many memories flowed through me.

  “Is it true that…Father died running from battle, an arrow in his back?” I asked. The Alanyans had rejoiced that day, relieved of a thorn in their side, though a worse one grew in its place.

  He clasped my cheeks and studied me, as if he were as surprised by my appearance as I was by his. “Alanyan and Jotrid lies. Father fell honorably in battle. It’s true, the arrows were in his back, but he was feigning retreat and luring the enemy into a trap. Since then, Mother hasn’t left her bed, and I’m told her soul will have gone by the time I return. As for baby Betil…I wish there were more to it, but he caught the pox and returned to Lat.”

  I choked on my sorrow and cried out. Betil was dead, too? Mother bedridden? There were others I wanted to ask about — aunts and uncles and cousins — but what did it matter? They’d all been dead to me, anyway, because I was certain I’d never see them again. But now, my brother stood before me, twice the width of his image in my memories. A man, fully grown. A khagan, like our father. A besieger of the city where I’d been a hostage for eight years.

  “Why are you here?” I asked, struggling to shut out my tears. Though we’d hugged and talked of our loved ones, there was still an icy air between us, and the Shah had asked me to be quick and leave recollecting for later.

  “Beloved sister, I think you know well the crimes your captors have committed upon your tribe, upon the Sylgiz.”

  “But Shah Tamaz assured me he hasn’t been raiding Sylgiz land.”

  “Raiding?” Cihan chuckled and shook his head.

  Laughter bubbled from the men and women in the room, who still passed around that tree-branch pipe. That’s when I recognized the one laughing loudest: Gokberk, a cruel cousin who’d once stomped on a puppy’s neck for fun. Now he had a scar down his cheek, which created an ugly gap in his beard, and he was missing an ear, too.

  Cihan said, “We are no longer sheep to be milked and sheared and slaughtered, like when our father was khagan.”

  Of course, I’d heard about the battles my brother had won and the lands he’d captured. He’d brought the Sylgiz a new dawn, but to be so bold as to siege Qandbajar, the crown jewel of Alanya…

  “Then what crimes do you speak of?” I asked.

  A balding oaf of a man grabbed a woolen sack and handed it to my brother. He emptied it on the floor. Heads sloshed around my feet. Heads!

  A twisted, half-decayed face brushed my ankle. I gasped. A shard of cranium stuck out where the eyebrow ought to be. A worm crawled out of the skull. I backed away toward the entrance flap and only just stopped myself from running.

  Cihan said, “This is how Shah Tamaz paid three of our riders, whom I’d sent to trade spices and furs.”

  “This can’t be!” I shook my head and slowed my breathing to inhale less death stench. “The Shah is a good man. A faithful Latian. He would never kill without cause.”

  Cihan handed me a parchment. The simurgh seal of Alanya blazed at the top in wax, the Shah’s stamp.

  Payment for your sins was all it said in Paramic. Perfect flourishes at the ends of the letters with deep, bold strokes — a royal scribe wrote this, or perhaps an imitator of one.

  “Surely, a falsification,” I said after swallowing whatever shot up from my stomach. “I’ve lived under the Shah’s protection for eight years. He wouldn’t recompense sins with sins. Heads with heads.”

  Red boiled in Cihan’s cheeks as dimples formed. I used to tease him for being so adorable when angry. But the ferocious, towering warrior glaring at me was anything but cute.

  “Those men did not sin,” he said. “To even claim—”

  “I didn’t mean it like that!” I took his calloused hands, remembering that in the Waste, you had to watch your words, unlike in Alanya, where they flowed freely. “You’ve come here for revenge, that I understand.”

  “Not revenge. Each had wives and children, who now weep through the night. You think I wanted to come here? I came to silence that weeping with one thing — justice.”

  “I understand. You must believe me. Shah Tamaz is a good man. He couldn’t have ordered this. It must be a deception.”

  He huffed, then nodded slowly. When he stared into me, he was looking at something else: a memory, perhaps. “Seeing you again takes me back to happier times. Simpler times, like when father caught a red squirrel, and you wanted to keep it as a pet rather than skin and eat it.” He chuckled. That was a plentiful time when it seemed we’d never run out of rabbits and yaks and goats and especially horses. But ten moons of drought changed everything.

  Cihan pulled on his beard. “When I heard they were sending you, I feared the worst. Feared I’d find a girl with no teeth and wrists as thin as reeds. But you…with your tanned skin and curled hair, you look like an Alanyan, and I mean that in a good way. They’ve treated you well, and for that, I’ll give them time to explain this.” He pointed at the decaying heads.

  A heckle sounded from the back. Gokberk glared at me, his upper lip pushing against his nose in obvious disapproval.

  I ignored him and nodded, pleased that I’d laid the first brick for what would hopefully be a bridge between the two sides. “Thank you, Cihan. I’d always smile when news reached that you’d won a battle. And yet, it never sounded real, as if it were some other Cihan winning that acclaim. But now…seeing you…I finally understand.”

  His chuckle trailed off into a melancholic sigh. “Tell me, Cyra, are you happy here, amid all this sand and clay and mud?”

  A memory burst through my mind: Cihan and I sharing a bone, shattering our teeth on it because we were that hungry. “I’m content,” I said, “and grateful. Shah Tamaz treats me as a daughter. I couldn’t ask for anything more.” That last part wasn’t entirely true. I always wanted more. But the things I wanted, my brother couldn’t give.

  As I approached the flap to leave, a big-bellied warrior blocked it.

  Cihan said, “He may have treated you like a daughter, but Tamaz isn’t your father. Here, in this yurt, you’re in the Endless Waste. We brought it to you. And yet...you’d just walk away. Back to your captors. Back to our enemy.”

  I froze upon realizing what he meant. The chills of the Waste’s winters ran across my spine. “If you don’t let me go back, it’ll be bad. Shah Tamaz will assume the worst.” I turned in Cihan’s direction so he could see my pleading eyes.

  “Perhaps that’s truly why I came, little sister. To take you back. We’ll ride away, to the Endless,” the tribes who called it home chose to shorten it to the Endless whereas others chose the Waste, “and be done with this country and its lies and cruelty. But I won’t go against your will. Taking you back — that’s recompense enough for those heads.” He paused, peering deeply into me, trying to see beyond whatever facade I was putting up. “What say you? Ready to go home?”

  I turned away, went toward the exit flap, and said, “Qandbajar is my home, now.”

  Back within the outer walls of the Sand Palace, gholam in shimmering bronze and gold plate surrounded Shah Tamaz, though I wasn’t sure which was him. His two body doubles wore the same dirt-colored caftans and thin chainmail, stood lanky, and slacked their jaws to the right. They even had the precise shade of gray hair and imitated his limp.

  That voice, though, wasn’t so easy to imitate. Whenever Tamaz spoke, it was as if earthy
syrup melted down your ears and cheeks.

  “What did he say?” The real Tamaz wasted no time, huddling close to me with his gholam forming a wall of armor around us. Turned out, he was wearing the golden armor of the gholam, only his walnut pupils visible through his helmet.

  “Your Glory.” I bent my neck, then whispered what happened in his ear so no onlookers could hear.

  “A pretext to attack us?” he said with wide eyes.

  I shook my head. “I don’t believe my brother to be lying.”

  “But who would try to sow such calamity?”

  “If we can prove we took no part in the beheadings, I think Cihan will turn around.”

  Shah Tamaz put his anxious breaths to my ear and whispered, “Whoever did this timed it perfectly. A mere week after I’d sent most of the gholam to retake our sea forts, leaving this city under-defended. But anyway, you’ve done your job and done it well. Leave the rest to me, sweet one.”

  I nodded, then turned toward the palace, which glimmered like golden sand beneath the rising sun. Before I walked out of earshot, the Shah said, “Seems your brother still trusts you. Be ready — I’ll needs call on you again.”

  Stepping on the silk carpet in the palace hall, I cringed. I thought of those putrid heads rolling at my feet and yearned for another bath. I climbed the winding stairs toward the harem wing, then greeted the braided eunuchs guarding the bath chamber with a polite nod. Once inside, amid the blue, star-patterned tile, I stripped and entered the steam chamber. It was busy this morning, as usual, with a few eunuchs tending to their duties and more than a few concubines tending to themselves.