Free Sandstorm by Christopher Rowe Page B

waved away Cephas’s concerns. “ ‘The pasha of Manshaka,’ you said.” The kenku’s voice was subdued. “What do you know of that place?”
    Cephas shook his head. “It is just a place in the stories, some of them. The man who ruled there was as fat as a gelded boar and went about the city on a litter carried by four just men. One of the bearers fell in love with the pasha’s daughter, and she disguised herself as a courtesan so she could smuggle a dagger of stone into the slave pens. He used this to free all the righteous among the gladiators of the Arenas of Blood.”
    “The
righteous
among them,” Corvus said. “What about the unrighteous?”
    Cephas shrugged. “They were left in the pens, I suppose—if there were any still alive at the end of that day’s games. It is the righteous who prevail.”
    Corvus took a long look at Cephas, then called out into the hum of the camp. “Tobin!” he said. “Find Shan and have her bring me the copy of the
Book of Founding Stories
she and her sister bought in Innarlith.”
    The goliath, who had taken to wearing a silk shirt died yellow and red and festooned with dozens of bright flowers, smiled and waved. “The
Book of Founding Stories,”
he said. “Yes, Corvus.”
    “Tobin,” called Corvus, interrupting the goliath’s long strides across the camp. “The copy they bought at Innarlith. Make sure you tell Shan that in particular.”
    “Innarlith, right!” the goliath replied.
    A moment later, Shan slid onto the bench between Corvus and Cephas, dropping down from the roof of the wagon behind them. She handed a worn leather-bound book to the kenku and waited, obviously curious.
    “You’ve seen one much like this, Cephas?” asked Corvus.
    The sight of the volume overwhelmed Cephas with memories of Jazeerijah; of Azad’s telling him he would never see the book again, never hear another of its stories. He spoke in a hushed tone. “This book was made on the order of Kamar yn Saban el Djenispool, the great human leader of all Calimshan in the … old days. It has the whole of the world in it.”
    Cephas reached his hand out and Corvus let him take the volume. He studied the cover, tooled with a single character, tracing its slashes and curves with the tip of one finger. “But this is supposed to be silver, with a blue stone set in this place here.”
    Corvus held out his hand and, after a moment’s hesitation, Cephas returned the book.
    “Yes, well, Azad yi Calimport read from a different copy of the same book,” Corvus explained. “He was right that his book, like Shan’s and Cynda’s, was made by the scribes and binders of the Djenispool dynasty. That’s the mark there, which lost its silver foil long before it made its way to the Innarlith bookstalls, or our friends would have paid quite a bit more for it than they did. The books were made a long time ago, as humans count things.”
    Corvus opened the book and turned the heavy parchment leaves. He stopped at a page that did not bear the lines of flowing script that covered most of the others, instead featuring a colorful drawing of a bold warrior brandishing a tulwar. The man stood with his back to the viewer in an endless landscape of red dunes, facing a giant with black horns and eyes of fire.
    “See the red ink the engravers used for the sand? How bright it is? The Calimien print shops didn’t learn that trick of the Shou until well after the start of the Ninth Imperial Age. And in fact, these books weren’t made until the Year of the Broken Blade, about, oh, two hundred and twenty years ago. Kamar yn Saban commissioned their printing in celebration of his twenty-fifth year on the Caleph’s throne. I’ve seen the pasha’s written order, actually, though the precious-minded antiquarian who owned it at the time wouldn’t let me touch it. The order called for one copy for every household in Calimshan. An impossible task, because in those days, the cities of the Shining Sea held
millions
of