Then came the drums: their rhythm was a ponderous one, two close beats with a long pause between, the pulsing heart of the altar. It called to its sacrifice, and Cain could feel his own heart shouting back. Blood! it screamed, and his fingers fatigued squeezing the hilt of his sword. Kill the boy, he thought again, rising to his feet and unfolding his arms, the curved steel cold as it grazed his back, humming across the surface of the sand—music played to the tempo of the quickening drums. And as the rhythm reached its crescendo, his eyes flew open.
Before Cain lay the ancient place of worship, an arena twenty paces long and half as wide whose roof was the sky and whose walls were weeping brick risen up from the sand stained burgundy-black by the blood of countless sacrifices. The Pit, the Messaii called it—by right of conquest—just as they bastardized the city as Babylon. But the congregation remembered their home’s true name. Eemah, it had been for more than six millennia, since the first tribesmen were culled by the Old One. Hundreds had gathered then, yet that morning, only fifty stood atop the walls: the last of the native faith, withered by age and the harshness of the desert.
Cain’s gaze strayed from the congregation, to the altar’s far end where his opponent waited. Youngblood, a boy hardly broken into manhood. He wore a thin mustache atop a haughty grin and hair tied back in a wild tangle. Wilder still were his eyes, hazel pools of rampant youth, yet despite his age, his almond skin bore scars where blades had bitten him. Cain was no stranger to scars; both of his arms were littered with old lacerations, lessons written right into his flesh. They were the only letters Cain could read, but he read them well. “Recklessness,” said the one splitting the youngblood’s brow cheek to forehead. Another told of the cut across his chest, punishment for repeated abandon. The scar that caught Cain’s eye, however, was the thick white ring that wrapped his left arm. A wound so wicked would’ve engraved fear deep into his sinew. “Death,” Cain recognized as the drums died down and the congregation formed an aisle atop each end. Hastily, the crowd bowed their heads in reverence, praising, praying, and falling to their knees.
For the singers walked amongst them then, down the aisles to the wall’s crumbling edge where each woman would sing to her beloved as he spilled the other’s blood. They were old words, sermons sung since time immemorial, and it was said their lyrics mixed lust and longing with battle and bloodshed, that the words worked like magic, moving the muscles of men with subtle deviations in pitch and tempo. Blades would rise and fall with the rhythm, ceasing at the song’s end when a man lay dead. Then silence.
A singer did not mourn her lover’s death. It was forbidden. She must remember that he was never hers, that he was, in life and death, an offering—a sacrifice. His soul belonged to the gods, and her cries would be an affront to their claim. Those were the customs handed down by the Old One, and, amongst the faithful, they were still held sacred.
Though not by all, not the youngblood’s singer. She betrayed her native heritage, her cropped hair and ebon skin, with a sun-colored gown and gold glimmering around her finger. Messaii trappings—sacrilege—mortal sins accepted by the congregation in desperate attempt to preserve their dying traditions. Cain saw the poison for what it was, as did his singer as she sauntered in from the altar’s opposite end.
No woman in Eemah could compare to Jezebel. She stood tall as most men, strong and slender, with honey-brown skin and long, dark curls tumbling over her breasts. From her chest to hips wound the ancestral dress of the singers: a broad sash of white silk wrapped twice about her thighs, a length draping one leg, the rest sweeping higher, winding around her shoulders where it swathed the other side. Cain had wound and unwound that dress a thousand times, yet on the sacrificial sands, he forgot those silky folds and the soft flesh underneath. He saw only her eyes like black pearls in a foamy sea, lustrous against the high slopes of her cheek bones and the slight crest of her nose and her lips thick with blood—he could taste them on his own—feel the warmth of her breath on his swollen lips and flared nostrils, though it was not her who stood before him.
The drums returned with an undulating rhythm, a signal that the ritual had at last begun. Neither man made to move, however, but sized each other from opposing ends. Naked in the pit, there was little one could hide. Fear, anger, sorrow; each would rise in one body or another, and Cain had already seen what he needed to see. He allowed his gaze to stray, nothing more than a glance, though it was enough to catch her eye. He did not know her name, this woman who would watch her lover die, but she would know his. Kill the boy.
Her voice was first to penetrate the booming drums, dropping Cain’s gaze just in time to see the blade whirling inches from his face. By the grace of the gods, he lifted his own sword to parry. The steel shrieked, and Jezebel’s tone rose to match the pitch. But the youngblood followed close behind his sword, tackled Cain onto the flat of his back before it hit the ground. He gasped, mounted and choking,
