Chapter 1
Hand to God, we never meant to lose the ancient city of Muziris. If anything, I blame the peris. And more particularly, a certain one.
Because Khayzur certainly did not tell me about the fucking automatons when he instructed me to go after the second Transgression.
—Oh, stop sighing, Jamal. Your ancestors got us locked in a cave with a lunatic lunar spirit.
You are not permitted to judge. Recall that it was you who asked to come fishing with me this morning so that I could recount to you another adventure, eh?
And don’t get excited. I see the scholar’s gleam in your eye, but should warn you in advance: this tale results in the destruction of several dozen, no doubt priceless, historical artifacts.
So let me tell you, then, about our ill-fated mission to retrieve the Mortar of Mithridates.
Now, I am certain you know more than I did about Mithridates.
I was aware he’d been a king of antiquity, Greek or Persian—somewhere in the north; recalling faintly, as well, that he was said to be an enemy of the Romans, though what independent-minded ruler back then wasn’t?
But what I had heard about in far greater and more fabulous depth was Mithridates’s legend as the Poison King.
As a man so paranoid about assassination that he’d meticulously self-dosed with minuscule amounts of every toxin available since boyhood in hopes of making himself immune to all—succeeding so well that in a cruel irony he’d required a blade to kill himself when his kingdom finally did fall and vengeful Romans were breaking down his gates.
A scholar king who built a wondrous library and workshop, Mithridates supposedly ran experiments so advanced that even today’s greatest minds cannot reproduce them, including having invented his own preventative, a capsule of top-secret ingredients said to combat any poison known to man.
Khayzur had seemed well acquainted with the long-dead Poison King’s brilliance when we last spoke. “I will not deny Mithridates’s talents at pharmacology,” he’d admitted. “Though he was a brutal man in other matters. But the king may have had a slight advantage.”
“Which was?” I had inquired.
“His mortar had magical roots. My people are not certain of its exact origins—it might have been a Nahid healer’s misplaced tool or slipped into his workshop by a mischievous ifrit. Either way, it took quite a liking to him.”
Khayzur had started to confound me at whatever in the hells a “Nahid healer” was and finished the task by claiming that a mortar was capable of developing emotions.
“A fondness?” I’d repeated, flabbergasted.
“We are talking about a mortar like the tool, yes?” I’d asked, grinding my fist against my palm. “The mortar developed a fondness?”
“Indeed,” Khayzur had chirped sadly. “It’s a common affliction among supernatural items. Humans are just so novel, fragile, and clever!
They make our tools want to be on their best behavior.
Suffice to say the mortar took on some rather alarming properties under Mithridates’s hands, vanished after his death, and has been a cause of concern ever since.
” He’d smiled brightly, handing over one of his lime-green feathers.
“Once you find it, use this to summon me.”
The feather had shivered at my touch. “How?”
“A bit of your blood on the barbs. To my people, it is a siren’s call. Once used, I will be able to return to your side.” He had paused. “But only when you have the Transgression. Remember that I cannot help you, nor save you—not according to my people’s laws.”
The warning was a bitter reminder. Despite Khayzur’s kindness, his people saw me only as a tool. A pawn to be retrieved or cut loose as needed. “Understood,” I’d replied grimly.
Khayzur had tried to cheer me back up. “It should not be too dire of a quest. Indeed, we have a number of clues that make me hopeful this Transgression shall prove a successful hunt.”
The peri wasn’t wrong—at first. If anything, puzzling out the Mortar of Mithridates’s final location seemed a task designed specifically for my companions and me.
Khayzur’s clues indicated the mortar was likely taken to Muziris by victorious Romans after the king’s death, and ruins of the famed city—now centuries past its heyday—were said to be half buried in the jungles and rivers along the Malabar Coast. Tinbu was a native son of the region, Majed was talented at geographic mysteries, and Dalila was a skilled poisoner herself in case we had trouble identifying the dead king’s tools.
So it was easy to feel a bit of confidence as we paddled a canoe along a murky overgrown creek, easily spotting the moldy brick columns and crumbling stupas of what had once been an expansive harbor and well-planned city.
I was beginning to even fear that my own skills—chiefly seeing things no human should be able to see and then smashing them with a strength no human should enjoy—would be wasted.
Oh, Amina . . . you never learn.
We were examining the remnants of a villa, flakes of red gold still clinging to the walls, mosaics of sea creatures and divine dancers lying in shards beneath our feet, when Dalila stilled, clucking her tongue and pointing to a comparatively plain corner of the mosaic floor where the fanciful figures gave way to a floral border.
Upon the shattered facade of stylized leaves, tiny wrens chased bugs, and bulbous flowers bloomed in saffron hues.
“There,” Dalila declared, sweeping the ribbons of her headdress away from her glistening brow—the jungle’s humidity had us all sweating. “That is where we search.”
“The bush?” Tinbu asked, sounding skeptical.
Dalila tsked. “That ‘bush’ is alkekengi, and can treat everything from childbirth fever to liver maladies.” She nodded at what appeared to be an identical plant in the adjoining mosaic. “That bush will empty your bowels in both directions and kill you in a week.”
Tinbu blanched. “How do you tell the difference?”
“You study under a poison master for years.” She began tapping upon the stone flower heads with her staff in a pattern that made sense only to her. “I suspect if I . . . Ah.” With a decisive grunt, she pressed her heel into a junction of the mosaic and swiftly stepped back.
As though a puzzle box had been sprung, the mosaic gave a great shudder and splintered into four parts. The section depicting Dalila’s alkekengi bush fell away, dirt flying and roots snapping, to reveal a black, forbidding maw in the ground.
Majed spoke first. “Oh, good. A grave.”
I took a closer look. The hole was just big enough for a person to slip through, with rusty iron links that might have once supported wooden rungs vanishing into the darkness. “It appears to be a tunnel.”
“Oh, forgive me. A tunnel of uncertain stability beneath a ruined city marked by a riddle only a poison expert could solve,” Majed replied. “So: a grave. Namely, ours.”
Dalila seemed to agree, looking upon her revelation with trepidation.
“In my experience, anyone going to the effort to devise such a trick rarely leaves it at one. In Egypt, there is said to be an entire branch of the Banu Sasan who specialize in building similar contraptions outside ancient tombs. They use them to tempt and rob would-be treasure seekers.”
“Then how fortunate that we count a member of such illustrious criminal lineage as one of our own.” I stepped in front of her, putting myself between the tunnel and my companion as I kicked a piece of tile into the hole.
We listened to it fall, the distance not sounding dangerously deep. When nothing monstrous popped out, I drew closer, peering into the shadowy depths. Beyond the ring of disturbed soil and broken mosaic tiles, there was nothing but yawning darkness.
Five Transgressions. The memory of the peri court whispered in my head.
One—the Moon of Saba—retrieved and four to go.
The only way to be free of this burden was to move forward.
I lowered myself into the murky entrance, landing with unnatural grace on an uneven stone floor that would have broken both my legs last year.
Even so, my bad knee twinged when I straightened up, warning me it could misbehave, supernatural strength be damned.
Tinbu called down, “Amina?”
“I am fine, God be praised,” I shouted back. “But the three of you will need a rope. And lamps,” I added, trying and failing to discern anything beyond the gloom. “It is darker than a midnight sea.”
“Do not go ahead without us,” Majed warned as I went to do precisely that. “All your magical brawn is going to be for nothing if you fall into one of the traps Dalila said might be waiting.”
With a grunt, I obeyed. As my eyes adjusted to the lack of light, I realized that the tunnel walls were shored up with chunks of plastered coral, shot through with grasping tree roots long enough to catch my turban.
The fetid air was heavy with the smell of wet soil and rotting plants, and I could have sworn I heard moving water, perhaps an underground stream.
The space did call to mind a grave, and as I drew my cloak tighter, it was difficult not to imagine it a shroud.
After being trapped in the cave in Socotra, forced to duel a deluded Frankish sorcerer and a deranged lunar aspect, I would’ve preferred to avoid underground spaces for the rest of my life.
Even so, I closed my eyes. Taking a deep breath, I attempted to reach out in a way that still felt disquieting, to see if I could detect anything magical, anything resonating in al-Ghayb, the unseen realm of the supernatural of which I had reluctantly become a part.
There was nothing. Well, no . . . that wasn’t correct. There was a hint of warmth, a spark of sensation that couldn’t be described by any mortal senses, flickering somewhere in the distance. Could it be the Mortar of Mithridates?