Free Of Sand and Malice Made by Bradley P. Beaulieu

top. “It’s almost ready.” He stood andwiped his hands self-consciously, eyeing Çeda. “And yes, I did. You’ve looked like death himself this past month.”
    â€œYou’ve looked like a horse’s ass your whole life, but you don’t see me making any elixirs for
that
.” Weeks ago he might have laughed, but today he stared at her with an uncomfortable expression.
Gods, he’s truly worried.
“It’s going to be all right,” she said. “It’s only a few nightmares.”
    â€œAt first, maybe. Then it was just a shout in the night. Then it was blood-curdling cries. But last night, Çeda, you screamed and screamed, even
after
I woke you.” His eyes narrowed. “You don’t even remember, do you?”
    A knife’s edge gleaming, coming ever closer. The smell of burnt flesh.
“I remember the dreams.”
    â€œBecause you’re fully in their grip.”
    He’d said as much before, that she’d been captured somehow. He was asking her without words—after his endless queries had gotten him nowhere—what had happened those months ago. She’d never told him of the ehrekh, Rümayesh, of her time with that ancient creature who had managed to hide herself among the warp and weft of life in Sharakhai. It had felt like a dream. It still did. She’d thought it a memory that would pass. But then the nightmares had come, and she’d lost sleep. They’d remained, and she’d begun mixing an elixir to help shake them. And now Emre was brewing them so she wouldn’thave to. What was next? Would he be spooning it to her while she babbled in her bed like old Ghiza across the way?
    â€œIt’s ready,” Çeda said, nodding to the simmering pot.
    â€œWhat
happened
, Çeda?”
    â€œThey’re only dreams.”
    â€œAnd they started days after you’d gone missing. Quite the coincidence, don’t you think?”
    She couldn’t really say why she wanted that experience to remain a mystery to Emre. Perhaps because she’d been so helpless, subject to Rümayesh’s every whim. Or perhaps because she’d come so close to dying. Or perhaps because the godling children, Makuo and Hidi, had made her fear to come near them again. It was all of those things to some degree, but she knew the primary reason she was hiding it was because she was embarrassed to admit it all to Emre. She knew it wasn’t so, but it felt like a thing she had done to herself.
And there’s nothing you can get yourself into,
her mother used to tell her,
that you can’t get yourself out of as well.
    â€œYou’ve made a good batch.” She motioned to the pot, breathing in its scent. “I can tell.”
    He stared at her, clearly struggling with just how hard he should push her, but then he let out a breath and shrugged. “I ought to. I’ve watched you make dozens of them.”
    â€œLet’s try it then.” She winked. “See just what sort of apothecary you’d make.”
    He sneered at her, then shook his head and fetched an earthenware mug and used a small piece of cheesecloth to sieve the solids from the pot and allow the bright red liquid to filter into the mug. It steamed as he handed it to her.
    She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you.”
    She collapsed into bed immediately after finishing the draught.

    Far into the desert, well beyond the borders of Sharakhai, a woman lies on a bed of stone.
    The sound of skittering comes. Of stone shifting.
    To her right, an open window yawns. A cold morning breeze steals into the room, the smell it carries like the cooling of the world after its making. The woman rolls her head toward the window and sees through it a steep ridge with rank after rank of trees standing sentinel along it. The trees are strange, though. They have no boughs, no branches, for they were turned to stone on the day of her making in