Black Dog Short Stories II Read online

  BLACK DOG SHORT STORIES

  II

  Stories Included

  1. Mothers and Sisters

  Before the failure of the miasma that hid all supernatural darkness from the sight of ordinary humans, brutal black dogs sometimes ruled as kings—sometimes for generations. In a country where black dogs rule and the Pure are despised, even a girl as fierce and determined as Keziah finds life a precarious struggle. But after her little sister is born, she has so much to fight for…

  This is a prequel novella, set well before the beginning of Black Dog.

  This novella is significantly darker than most Black Dog stories. Though content is not graphic, it may not be suitable for all readers.

  2. Unlikely Allies

  Ezekiel is on his own when he discovers an entrenched enemy with a particularly unpleasant plan to supplant and destroy Dimilioc. To defeat this enemy, Ezekiel needs an ally…even a man who might turn on him before the end.

  This novelette is set after the events of Pure Magic.

  3. Bank Job

  Living and working with a lot of stray black dogs is a real trial for Ethan Lanning, especially since not even the best bloodlines and training gave him the kind of strength a Lanning ought to possess. But when a mission gets complicated, Thaddeus might be just the right guy to have at his back after all…

  This novelette is set after the events of Pure Magic.

  4. A Family Visit

  Just an ordinary Christmas with his grandmother, that’s all Justin has in mind. Sure, it’s a little awkward that Grayson insisted Keziah keep him company on the trip, but everything will be fine once they get to know each other. But Justin never expected to arrive only to discover his grandmother has vanished from her home…

  This novella is set after the events of Pure Magic, directly before the opening of Shadow Twin (forthcoming).

  5. Witches and Witchcraft

  A peek into the secret history behind the world of Black Dog

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real people, places, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Black Dog Short Stories II

  First edition October 2016

  Copyright © 2016 Rachel Neumeier

  Written by Rachel Neumeier

  Cover art and design © by WillowRaven 2016

  Praise for BLACK DOG

  “It’s the kind of book that made me resent the obligations of ordinary life because I just wanted to keep reading.”—Sharon Shinn, bestselling author of the Samaria series

  Mothers and Sisters

  Keziah’s life changed on a still, hot noon; on a day drenched in heat and light and blood.

  She began the day kneeling with her cheek against the curtains that divided the women’s quarters, listening as her mother labored to bring forth the child, Keziah’s brother, the son that would be her father’s heir. Other women of the household had come to help with the birth, but only human women. A dhi’ba adhameyya, a black wolf girl, would bring the worst of luck to a birth, so Keziah knelt behind the curtains, present but not present, listening to her mother’s panting cries and the low, tense voices of the human women. Waiting for her brother’s birth and her mother’s triumph.

  Her father had other wives, other sons. But it was Keziah’s mother, Kalila, who made her father a prince. Hers was the royal line. It was Princess Kalila who must bear him a son of royal blood to be his heir. A dhi’b adhami son of royal blood: that was the need and the desire of Keziah’s father. For many days before this day, everyone had known the coming child was a black wolf. It would be a son, must be a son, because a son was so ardently desired. Her father had not prayed for a son, for only abeed—slaves—begged favors of God. Prayer was for women, and humans, and the weak. But he had commanded the human women of the household to pray five times a day for this child to be male. Keziah’s mother had prayed most fervently of all.

  Keziah had been Princess Kalila’s firstborn, a dhi’ba, even more worthless than a human daughter, for a human woman might bear useful sons to the masters of the family, but the children of a black wolf woman were of no value. Her sons were too strong in one way and not strong enough in another. The fury of their hearts was too strong; the man not strong enough to rule the dark shadow. They died young, the sons of such women. Or if they lived, their fathers put them to death when their shadows consumed them and they became uncontrollable.

  Or such a woman might bear black wolf daughters, and that was even worse, for what man would want such a difficult, disobedient daughter?

  After Keziah, Princess Kalila had borne first one and then another baby, both boys, but she had borne them too early to live. Now at last came this one, still early, but not too early. This child would live. It would be a son. The whole household had prayed for a son, and anyone could tell it was a black wolf child. Black wolves were far more often male than female because men were stronger than women, strong enough to carry heavy shadows and so worthy of power.

  This time the baby would be a son, and he would live.

  There would be a feast: mutton and eggplant, pigeon pies fragrant with spices, pastries with cheese and dates, wheat cooked with dates and rosewater. Even the women would be allowed their own feast. Keziah’s father would send her mother every delicacy, and the women would give her special foods to bring her milk in and to strengthen her blood. Princess Kalila would regain her strength and her health and she would nurse the child until he became too dangerous to put to her breast. Then Keziah would feed the baby from a bottle because even the fiercest black wolf child couldn’t hurt her. And she would have a brother. She knew just how it would be. She would feed him and protect him while he was a crawling infant; she would make him a friend. Thus when he grew up, her brother would protect her from their father and uncles.

  The air behind the curtains was very still and hot. The curtains smelled of dust and sunlight. There was not much blood; not then. The birth was easy enough, the child small and well-positioned.

  The blood came later, after the child was born, and turned out to be another black wolf girl after all.

  Aunt Sofia brought the baby to Keziah after her father was gone from the women’s quarters. Princess Kalila was finally dead. After all the screams and then the weak, pathetic whimpers, the silence had been deafening. Keziah’s ears rang with it until she heard nothing else. But once her father had gone, the girl-infant at last began screaming angrily, and Keziah stirred and scrambled to her feet and went out into the cooler places of the women’s quarters to find the child. She could not tell whether she was bitterly angry or actually curious; whether she mourned or was merely afraid. It was often difficult to sort out what she herself felt and thought from the darker impulses of her shadow.

  The child had not cried until her father departed. Even the youngest black wolf infant knew when to be silent. Now she was screaming more and more loudly, a passionate demand for life, because Aunt Sofia was only human and could not frighten a black wolf baby into silence.

  But Keziah’s sister quieted when she felt Keziah come near. She was still angry, as a black wolf baby was always angry, but even mere hours old, she knew that Keziah was also a black wolf, and stronger. Keziah could not remember whether she had felt such things when she was as little as this. She could not remember her father coming to beat her mother after her own birth, though she could guess now just how angry he must have been to have been given such a worthless daughter.

  And here now was this other even more worthless daughter, tiny and wrinkled, still smeared with the fluids of the birth. But her infant eyes tracked Keziah’s approach with more than human attentiveness, and the way she grew quiet and still in the crook of Aunt Sofia’s arm made it clear she
knew she was in the presence of a stronger black wolf.

  “She is yours, if you will have her,” Aunt Sofia told Keziah. “Or if you will not, then she will die.”

  Keziah nodded. She knew that.

  One of the women, Zara, had plenty of milk. Her son—human, and thus almost as worthless as the new baby—was only three months old. But Zara was human, and no human woman would nurse a black wolf infant unless Keziah’s father or one of her uncles commanded it. A black wolf woman might more easily rear this child, this disaster of a girl-child, if her father permitted. But the only black wolf woman in all Riyadh was Aunt Ayesha, who lived in the tower in the middle of the city, not in the villa here at the northern edge of the city. Keziah knew Aunt Ayesha would not care if the child lived or died. Or perhaps she would wish her to die, lest someday she become a rival.

  Keziah was not certain herself whether she wanted this child to live or die. Part of her, the dark half, wished to kill the baby. That was to be expected. But her mother had taught her to recognize the half of her soul that was her own, and in that part of her soul, maybe she wanted the child to live.

  Or perhaps not. This angry baby had killed her mother. Keziah stared down into the small face, screwed up now in anger and fear, orange flecks in her cloudy infant eyes. Keziah could see nothing of their mother in her. But nothing of their father, either. Nor of herself. She was a new person: herself. Aunt Sofia had washed her and wrapped her in swaddling to stop her struggling to bite, but when Keziah touched her cheek, she did not try to bite, but only lay very still.

  This was Keziah’s sister, this little helpless thing. What use was a black wolf sister younger than Keziah? A girl who would always be younger and weaker than Keziah, who would never have any influence or power in the house, never win their father’s favor.

  “She did not kill your mother,” Aunt Sofa said. She was perceptive, for a human. But human women had to be perceptive to survive in a black wolf’s house. Now she nodded softly at Keziah’s angry stare and went on, unafraid. “Your father murdered Kalila. That is not the baby’s fault. She might live. If she has a sister who wishes her to live. Maybe you will be glad someday if you protect her now. Every dhi’ba adhameyya needs an ally at her back. Especially a girl. A brother would someday have turned against you or ignored you or dismissed you, for such are brothers. But a sister would be different. You will have each other, if you teach her and make her your friend. She might learn to be fierce and strong, if she has someone to teach her.”

  Aunt Sofia did not say, If you teach her, Keziah, your sister might learn to be more than a slave. No human woman would say such a thing. Not in this house, where all women were slaves, black wolf and human alike.

  But Keziah heard what Aunt Sofia had not quite said. She knew that what her aunt meant was, She might someday be strong enough to help you kill your father and your uncles.

  Aunt Sofia was her mother’s half-sister, neither royal nor valuable, but she was clever, and she had loved Kalila. She had begged to be permitted to leave her father’s palace in Madinah so that she might accompany Princess Kalila to this house and bear her company here. And here Aunt Sofia had learned how to hate in the way a woman hated: quietly and for a long, long time.

  Humans could not hate like black wolves. Not even Aunt Sofia. But slave women in a black wolf’s house learned to hate in their own way. Keziah’s father and uncles and brothers and male cousins did not even seem to know that. But Keziah was not so blind.

  Keziah took the baby from Aunt Sofia. She tucked the baby into the bend of her elbow and met her aunt’s gaze. Sofia, human though she was, she did not flinch.

  “My father did not name her,” Keziah told her aunt. “He will not. So I will. Her name is Amira. That is what she will be called, for she is a princess, even if no one but the women of my father’s household remembers it is so.”

  Aunt Sophia bowed her head as a human woman must to a black wolf’s command, even a girl, even one as young as Keziah. But she smiled, too, because she was not afraid. She said with satisfaction, “You are both princesses. There is not a drop of royal blood in your father’s veins, but from your mother you have inherited the blood of kings. That is something his sons will never have.”

  Keziah smiled, too, because she knew this was true. She knew exactly what Aunt Sofia meant. Aunt Sofia mean that if her father wanted grandsons whose veins ran with the blood of kings, he would have to get them from Keziah herself or from this new baby. That was safety, of a kind, for them both. For a while. She said softly, like a vow, “He will never see a living son of Kalila’s blood. Now he will never see a living grandson of her blood. He will die knowing his loins have failed to give him a royal heir.”

  “A dangerous vow,” murmured Aunt Sofia.

  “It will be so,” Keziah said fiercely. “Never while he lives will I or my sister bear him living grandsons. He will die without his desired heir, he who valued his wife so little he murdered all the possible sons he might have gotten from her.”

  “Will your sister die, then, to be sure she cannot bear a child?”

  Keziah looked down at the tiny, helpless body in her arms. She said, “My sister will live. Tell Zara she need not put her to suck, but she must give me milk for her.”

  And Aunt Sofia smiled and went away, soft-footed and silent, through the curtains of the women’s quarters.

  The baby lived, and grew strong. The women called her Amira, as Keziah had commanded, and kept out of the child’s way as she learned to crawl and then to toddle and then to run, swift and neat-footed as black wolf children were at an age where human children still staggered clumsily.

  The men did not call the child anything, for Keziah kept her sister out of their way. The woman’s part of the villa was separate from the men’s part; the women’s courtyards were so arranged that they were not subject to the view of men. This was so in both of Keziah’s father’s villas, for he had had them made just alike. He did not like change, so the villa in Riyadh was just like the one in Taif, to which the household retired from June to September in order to escape the dust. Indeed, the only difference was that the slaves had to repaint the villa in Riyadh every year, after the sandstorms turned the snow-white walls to a dimmer ivory, whereas the villa in the cooler mountains of Taif seldom had to be repainted. Both villas were furnished in exactly the same way and decorated with the same rugs and the same paintings. Whenever her father bought anything, he bought it twice and sent one of the things to the other house, so that he need not be troubled because one item or another had been accidentally left behind.

  In both villas, Keziah had a room of her own because she was her mother’s daughter and a princess, and in both she made room for Amira. Their father might have forgotten Amira had ever been born. The women did not remind him. Certainly Keziah did not remind him.

  Keziah fed her sister milk at first, and then, as Amira’s teeth came in, lamb minced very fine, and milk sweets, all such delicacies. She stole the meat from the kitchens, for such rich foods were not often given to women or girl-babies. No other girl dared steal the meat intended for the men’s table; women waited for the men to finish eating and then divided what was left, if any, among themselves in some way that no doubt made sense to human slaves. Keziah did not care how human women sorted out such matters, so long as she got the best of the food left from the men’s table, and so long as she could take what her little sister needed before the finished dishes left the kitchens for the men’s side of the house.

  The slave women did not dare so much as look at Keziah when she took food from the kitchen. Their fear pleased her. But they were far more afraid of her father, so she took only enough for Amira, lest eventually he might realize his portion had been scanted. In a way she did not completely understand, it pleased her to give her sister meat she might have eaten herself. Her dark shadow wished to eat all the best food, or perhaps all the food so it could laugh at Amira as she starved. But it pleased Keziah herself to give her sister the
best meat and the finest sweets, and take for her own the broken meats sent back to the kitchen.

  “You are kind to your sister,” observed Aunt Sofia, one day when Keziah had just turned twelve and Amira was nearly five.

  She had come to see Keziah in the room that Keziah shared with Amira, a room that opened onto the small woman’s courtyard. This courtyard was plain, without the lemon trees and pomegranates that leaned over the fountains in the men’s courtyard, but for a black wolf toddler, it was better than no courtyard at all. Keziah thought that soon Amira would need broader lands and a wider sky, at least when the swelling moon most strongly urged up the dark half of her soul. She wished she knew how to give her those things. Black wolf girls were not allowed to take their other shape and hunt in the desert...though there were ways to slip out and slip back in without being seen. Especially if one had a human woman who would be sure to keep windows open and sweep the sand off the floors.

  It would be harder for two girls together.

  But that did not matter yet. Now Keziah watched the child splash in the shallow fountain and chase after the lizard that had been hiding from the sun on the shadowy tiles, and thought that perhaps soon she would like to take her to the desert and teach her to hunt larger game.

  Perhaps it was kind, to have such thoughts while she watched her sister play. Keziah had never thought of it that way.

  Aunt Sofia must have seen her doubt, for she said, “You gave her your tiger’s eye bracelet to chew on when her teeth pained her coming in, and now that she is able to eat proper food, you give her the best portions. And she runs in your courtyard and sleeps in your room and is not afraid of you. You are her friend. But I wonder, have you also taught her to be your friend? Are you teaching her to be kind?”