Sandstorm

the fastest way to Calimport, and the surest way of finding our friends. They will treat us as prisoners at first, but when Cephas’s father learns he is in the city, we will all be taken to the arenas.” He stirred the fire with the tip of his short sword.

Unexpectedly, it was Ariella who spoke next.

“Past time to come clean, Ringmaster,” she said. “I believe I have divined what part I played in this game you’ve been up to with the WeavePasha.” She squeezed Cephas’s shoulder. “And I have no regrets, since I would have done nothing differently if I had met Cephas when he wasn’t chained in your coffle. But I don’t like being manipulated, or used. And I have been used less harshly than some.”

Corvus paused for a long moment before he began to speak.

“You’ve heard stories about the uprisings, Cephas. They’ve occurred in Calimshan for, well, essentially forever. There are countless instances in stories and songs, and in historical documents and other sources, as Ariella told us not long ago.”

Cephas thought back to that conversation. It seemed a long time ago to him.

“It is an unchanging feature of Calishite life. Slaves do not wish to be slaves. And they try to escape. They flee into the desert or take their chances on the sea. They flee into death, some of them. Too many of them.

“There are whole nations founded by people like Azad and his freedmen, did you know that? Tethyr is one, though I doubt their queen would take kindly to the comparison. And there are people all over the South who make it their life’s work to win freedom for enslaved peoples. Knightly orders and religious brotherhoods, secret societies, and even simple bandits when it suits their purpose.”

Cephas shook his head. “Why are you telling me all this? You mean to say you and the circus are some of these people? I’m to believe you’re a knight of some kind?”

Corvus said, “No, Cephas. I am not a knight. I am a spy. And I freed you because it suited my purpose.”

Mattias Farseer took a deep, deep breath, but did not speak.

Cephas tensed, growing angry. “What is your purpose, Corvus?”

Corvus made the ticking noise at the back of his throat. “A question for another day, perhaps.”

“That’s a day that’s been a long time coming,” said Mattias.

“That man you all talk about, Azad,” said Ariella. “He led an uprising in Calimport?”

“Azad the Free is not a man to lead an uprising,” said Corvus. “He simply led an escape. Before that, I have learned that for a ten-year period in the middle of this century, from the time the great djinni and efreeti nobles Calim and Memnon disappeared until twenty years ago, a human slave named Azad stalked the arenas of Calimport and Manshaka as no other gladiator in history has. He used a double-headed flail, he won over a thousand matches, and he ended his career when he was taken into the household of his owner, Marod el Arhapan.”

“The man the WeavePasha says is my father,” said Cephas.

“Oh, he is your father, Cephas,” said Corvus. “At least, it is his blood that runs through your veins, and that suffices as a definition of fatherhood for many. The records I consulted in Saradush, and earlier, in Airspur, suggest it. Then Elder Lin confirmed it when she examined your szuldar lines. You are a scion of the el Arhapan line, one of the oldest windsouled lineages on the planet.”

“Then Cephas’s mother was earthsouled,” said Ariella. “An unlikely match from what I have heard of the ruling classes of Calimport.”

“An impossible match, yes,” said Corvus. “And now we come to the key that turns the lock of our friend’s past. Who was the mother of Cephas Earthsouled?”

Cephas asked, “The pasha of games has no wife?”

“By all accounts, Marod el Arhapan is a remarkably focused man. His passion is the arenas his family rebuilt after the departure of Calim. He has enormous political power, but rarely uses it unless he is made to by his vizar, the djinni Shahrokh. Otherwise, he is content to be the master of games. The only times he leaves his floating palace or the arenas are when he travels to the training camps he maintains in the deep desert. He is known to have married just one woman and to have fathered just one child. They both disappeared from Calimien society decades ago.”

“When Azad led his freedmen north?” asked Cephas. “Bringing me with them? What of this gamemaster’s wife?”

“His wife-your mother, Cephas-died in the Year of the Malachite Shadows, twenty years ago. Not long after giving birth to an earthsouled boy.”

“Which the el Arhapans could not countenance,” Mattias interjected. “Why did they allow Marod to marry an earthsouled woman in the first place?”

Cephas, not Corvus, answered. “Because they did not know,” he said. “She wore a Second Soul.”

Corvus nodded. “Marod could not have known.”

“Why did she keep it a secret?” asked Ariella. “She had to have known the child might reveal her.”

“The answer to the first question is rooted in Southern genasi society. Even before the return of the djinni lords, the el Arhapan windsouled were involved with the earliest incarnations of the Firestorm Cabal. In the South, the sect is even more radicalized than in Akanul. They preach division of the various souls, yes, but with the renewal of the war between Memnon and Calimport, the different chapter houses proposed ranks. The genasi must be divided by their forms, because one form is naturally superior to the others. Which form is held supreme depends on where a given chapter house was located. In Memnon and Teshburl, they teach that the firesouled are foremost. In Manshaka and Calimport-”

“The windsouled,” said Cephas, studying the backs of his silver hands. “That is two. What of storm and water? What of the earth?”

“As with anything else in the Emirates, the interference of the Plane Below compels. Air and fire hold sway because the djinni followers of Calim and the efreeti followers of Memnon hold enormous power over the genasi and any others living in the Skyfire lands. Of all the aspects of the genasi, earthsouled are ranked the lowest. At least, that is what the ruling windsouled and firesouled say. It’s one of the few things they agree on.”

“Are we slaves there?” asked Cephas.

“Yes, some earthsouled live as slaves. This is what Elder Lin believes to be your mother’s story. The matrilineal szuldar she traced on you belong to an obscure family of earthsouled who have been held in slavery in Calimport for generations. They are not even recorded by the Firestormers in Akanul, or by the High Heralds. Marod el Arhapan married a woman who did not escape slavery into the desert or onto the sea, then,” said Corvus. “She found a Second Soul, and sought escape through it.”

Cephas stared at the kenku. “What was my mother’s name?”

“I do not know. Not really. As the pasha’s wife, she was known as Valandra el Arhapan, without reference to her own family name. That’s not unusual when the windsouled nobility marry someone from a low-ranking family, and she would have used a false name in any case. The Argentori have abandoned the naming conventions of the Emirates, but Lin said the most common name among earthsouled of your lineage is el Shelsper.”

“Valandra el Shelsper,” said Cephas. “Marod el Arhapan. Do you know, I never spent any time at all imagining my parents? My daydreams were all versions of the stories in Azad’s book, with me taking the hero’s part. But if there are any stories in that book about parents and children, he never read them.”

“I know a little more, yet,” said Corvus, quietly. “I know the end of your mother’s story.”

They all watched the fire, though there was little light in it. Even its heat was faltering since Corvus had ceased to tend it.

Cephas said, “Tell it.”

Corvus said, “A tenday after you were born, Valandra el Arhapan’s name was struck from the genealogies of every Cabal chapter house. And, though I did not connect them at first, the name Valandra inh Yikaria was entered into another set of records.”

“ ‘Inh’?” asked Ariella. “I do not know that article. ‘El’ is of the family and ‘yi’ is of the place. ‘Adh’ is the slave of.”

“It is rarely used,” said Corvus. “And when it is, it is considered an insult. It means ‘sister of.’ ”

“Valandra, the sister of Yikaria?” asked Cephas. The word was so familiar …

“ ‘Sister of the Yikaria,’ I believe,” said Corvus. “As to who they are, you know them. Or have seen them. You fought them. It is the name El Pajabbar use for their own people.”

“What?” asked Cephas. “My mother’s name was listed with those of minotaurs?”

“No, Cephas,” Corvus replied. “She was listed with slaves bound for the arenas.”