The Emperors Knife (19 page)

“Now the hermit frightens you.” He focused on the flames, her flames. Her magic.

“I feel great power in the hermit, though he can't do the simplest tasks of a Tower mage,” she said. “I don't understand it, and it frightens me. Metrishet hides from him.”

“Metrishet?”

“My fire.”

Eyul had heard hints about the elementals, that they had personalities and thoughts of their own. “Does he— Does it think?”

“Yes, he thinks, and he communicates.” A dark look crossed her face. “He does not like our world.”

Amalya carried something alive inside her, while Eyul carried only ghosts. Did Metrishet resent Amalya? Did the elemental beg for his freedom the way his ghosts begged for justice? He cleared his throat, looking for a way to frame his next words. “The hermit says he can help Beyon against the Carriers.”

She took another bite, then said, “That would take a great deal of power, to stop the disease from spreading.” Clearly she knew nothing of Beyon's markings; the words held no special meaning for her.

“Would it? Perhaps it just takes some learning. He has old texts, documents, things that aren't available to everyone.”

“Could be.” Amalya leaned over her bowl, her brows drawing together in thought.

Eyul picked up his food and said nothing for a time. He didn't know how to broach the subject of Govnan. Amalya herself had told him to find the centre and use his Knife. The hermit had shown him the centre. And yet, when he opened his mouth to speak of Govnan, no words came forth.

Guilt filled him. Amalya had told him she trusted him, and yet he kept silent. Eyul put aside his bowl again. So many of his victims he knew nothing about. What use was it, when drawing a blade across a man's throat, to know his likes and dislikes? To know who had loved him, and who had trusted him? And yet he couldn't resist. “What about Govnan?” he asked.

It was Amalya's turn to be confused. “Pardon?”

“You trust me—what about Govnan?”

“Of course I trust him.” She put her empty bowl next to his half-full one. “We both serve Beyon.”

“The mages serve the empire,” he said, thinking of Tuvaini.

“People sometimes differ on what that entails.” She drew in her breath. “Beyon is the empire.”

“All right,” he said, taking the bowls and standing up.

“What do
you
think the empire is?” she asked. “The buildings? The army? The scribes?”

“No, you're right.” He took a handful of sand and poured it into her empty bowl. “We both belong to Beyon.”

“The Tower belongs to Beyon,” she said, “and Govnan is the Tower.”

“All right,” he said again, not sure why he was unable to say more. He scrubbed the bowls, watching her outline against the sky, and she watched him, not speaking, until at last she crawled into her tent.

Eyul could feel the morning's heat on his shoulders, weighing him down, the burden of another day. He missed working for Tahal, who had been sure and fair. He had never struggled with doubts under Tahal. He'd been a strong emperor, never weak, until the very end, and even then Tahal had taken steps to ensure the empire would remain whole. The deaths of his boys ensured a unified palace and a unified army…

And yet, what was good for the empire had been poison for Eyul. Tahal had loved him, and Tahal had destroyed him. He'd given Eyul the Knife, knowing what was to come. He had doomed him—

No; before Tahal there had been Herran, and before him Halim, and before that, Eyul himself. He had been chosen for his nature.

He threw the bowls to the sand and looked at his tent. The nightmares waited for him there. He did not wish for sleep, nor did he wish to wait here for the full light of the sun.

A sandcat appeared over the crest of the dune, its lithe body slinking towards him. Dawn gleamed along its yellow hide. A good hunter, it could overwhelm its prey in seconds—as could he. The animal watched him, its head low, its green eyes shining in the rising sun.

Eyul met its gaze, his shoulders falling in relief. “I am tired of hunting, my friend. If you want me, I am here.”

“No.”

Eyul was startled—had the whisper come from Amalya? The cat took one step towards him, then turned away, drawn perhaps by an easier kill beyond the dune. A flick of its paws, and it disappeared from sight. It was only then that Eyul felt his fingers on the hilt of his Knife, ready to draw.
Not so ready to die then after all.

He unbuckled his belt. The leather, worn as it was, felt rough in his hands. He laid it out, checking it from buckle to pointed end. The Knife looked small, powerless in its sheath, the metal of the hilt twisting dark against the lighter color of the dune. A gusting wind kicked sand against Eyul's back, tiny needles pricking his neck, and he stretched, feeling light without his weapon.

Wrapping the bandage around his eyes, he counted fifteen steps to Amalya's tent. He dropped to his knees and scratched lightly at the flap.

A rustle, and then her voice came, velvety with sleep. “Eyul?”

“When we met, you asked me how I became an assassin.” She was silent, but he felt her listening on the other side of the cloth.

“There was a man—a cruel man. Jarek. I spent many days with him, weeks, maybe months.”

“He taught you to kill?”

The simplicity of her question caught him off-guard. “No—no, at the time I was just a boy lifting purses.” He remembered hiding in a doorway, slipping after his mark, the soft feel of leather against his fingers, and the shouts, the chase.

“The guards said I'd lose my hand, but first they put me in Jarek's cell.” For a moment he felt Jarek's breath on his neck, heard the shouts of the guards taking bets.
When will the boy scream?
Eyul cleared his throat. “He didn't know how to kill, at least, not on purpose.”

“I see.”

He drew his fingers through the sand, as he'd seen the hermit do, and closed his eyes against the morning light. “One day—I remember it was a cold day—they passed a sword through the bars to me. They said if I killed Jarek, they'd let me go. A visitor came and watched me try. He was young, well-dressed.” No bets were taken that day, in deference to the visitor with green robes and serious eyes.

Halim had always been serious. Each turn of the blade, every thrust and step, could save or end your life, he'd said. In training there had been no cause for levity. In the end, Halim had been a better teacher than an assassin. He'd died when Eyul's beard was still new and soft on his cheeks. Halim never knew grey hairs or creaking joints, but he had known regret. The one thing he never taught Eyul was how to live with it.

“Eyul?” Amalya's voice brought him to the present.

He shook off the memories. “I couldn't, even after all the things he'd done to me… When he was on the floor, pleading for his life, I couldn't do it. I had to tell the jailers to take my hand after all.”

“But they didn't.”

“No.” His right hand went to his hip, searching for the familiar Knife, and found nothing there. “It was a test. The assassins look for mercy in their young recruits. Then they show us how death itself is a mercy.”

She reached out to him then, soft fingers on his wrist. “It can't have been easy for you.”

Eyul thought of Beyon and his dead brothers; Prince Sarmin in his room, longing for death; a young Island girl, leaving her family for ever… “It's not easy for any of us.”

“No, so it isn't,” she said with a sigh. “It isn't.”

Eyul drew a breath. “Amalya,” he said, “the hermit wants—”

“No.” Her hand tightened, fingers digging into his skin. “You don't have to tell me,” she whispered, her voice so soft he had to press his forehead to the tent flap to hear her. “I don't want to know. But I beg you, as we are Beyon's instruments, to tell the emperor first.”

So it was Beyon who gave her the Star.

“Beyon doesn't like to speak to me,” he said.

“Do you promise?”

“I promise.” He wrapped his fingers around hers and squeezed. He felt relieved to have the decision taken out of his hands, but something nagged at him.

The white fabric shifted. He could feel the heat of her breath against his nose. “Eyul,” she murmured, “it means a great deal to me that you made a promise to the hermit. But I'm afraid it's too much.”

“Let me worry about that.”

A silence. “If you say so.”

“Thank you, Amalya.” He drew his hand away and stood up.

“Eyul?” She raised her voice now. He imagined her, inside, turning her face towards him. He imagined the sun lighting her features.

“Yes?”

“Do you have trouble sleeping?”

“Yes.”

“Me too.”

Metrishet.
The desert grew hot around him. He stood, the light driving long nails through his eyes. He watched her tent so long that he wondered if she still listened. “I'll see you at nightfall.”

She answered. “At nightfall, then.”

He climbed into his tent at last, leaving his Knife in the sand. Today he would not sleep as an assassin.

Chapter Seventeen

M
esema and Eldra prepared for sleep. They laid their mats side by side and ran bone-picks through one another's hair. It felt strange, after so long away from home, to braid Eldra's curls when they were so close to the colour and feel of Dirini's, and it was stranger yet to sit idle, doing girlish things, when the pattern waited. It felt so odd to fiddle with hair-beads while deceiving an emperor.

“What about Arigu?” whispered Mesema.

“He didn't come for me, and if he had, I'd have told him I still had the Woman visiting.”

They giggled as the sun burned its way through the tent.

“What is he like?” asked Mesema. No amount of worry could keep her from being curious.

“He's mostly nice, when it's just the two of us,” said Eldra, tilting her head to Mesema's fingers. “Gentle.”

Mesema remembered Arigu's hands on her arms, how he hadn't squeezed or poked when he'd looked for the pattern-marks. She thought about the chief coming to her mother in the longhouse, how his eyes went soft at the sight of her. “Sometimes strong men are soft in private.”

“And sometimes soft men are rough.”

Mesema thought of Banreh. “I suppose.” She secured a bead at the end of Eldra's last braid.

“There,” said Eldra, turning to face her. “Now we are both beautiful.”

“You're the pretty one, Eldra.” Mesema picked up her quilted bag and placed the pick inside. It also held bracelets and hairclips, the kinds of things she would wear on her wedding day. Would her husband like them? She didn't expect to know, nor would she ask. She wouldn't be able to talk with him as she could talk with Banreh. She couldn't tell him about reading the wind, or about the resin, carefully hidden in the bottom of her trunk.

She was learning that her life in Nooria would be about hiding: hiding the truth and, in turn, hiding from the emperor, and the pattern. Thoughts of the pattern had dogged her all day, just as the heat surrounded and suffocated her, but no matter what she tried to think about instead, a shape or path kept entering her mind. She was learning how to hold her tongue, but she didn't know how to keep her thoughts from turning.

“Have you ever seen a pattern like the one that came through the sands?” she asked Eldra.

“No, but I've heard of them.” Eldra leaned forwards, almost bumping noses with Mesema. “I wanted to go to that church.”

“Well, you couldn't,” said Mesema.

“When you're a princess, you'll command them to take me back.”

“If I can spare you.” They giggled together under the bright canvas.

Mesema yawned. Sleep dragged at her, but her mind wouldn't stop. Just as notes made no song without the touch of a musician, shapes and lines made no spell without the touch of a mage. A thought came to her, and the sweat on her back went cold. “I don't think that church is a good place to go,” she said, dropping onto her mat. “We should forget it.”

“What shall I make of myself, then?” asked Eldra, her voice sharp for the first time.

Mesema rolled to look at her. “Listen. If you had gone to the church, what would you have made of that, with no food and no water?”

Eldra sighed and turned her back.

“Let's go to sleep.” But in truth Mesema couldn't close her eyes. She tried to decide whether a pattern could enforce a man's will. How had it been created? Each shape seemed simple in itself, but together they created something beyond her ken.

Mesema rolled onto her stomach. She wanted to forget the pattern. She was meant to have a child. Her duty lay in that simple and difficult task. It didn't matter what the prince looked like, or how he treated her: when the Bright One came over the moon, she would lie with him. There were more frightening things than making a child. For the first time, she was not frightened of her prince.

She did fear his brother, the emperor. She wondered how long it would be before he died of his illness. But as much as he frightened her, she couldn't make herself wish for his death.

At last she drifted off to sleep, sung along by the sounds of sand and the familiar neighing of the horses. She dreamed of home, of the songs by the fireside and the women with their needles. She dreamed that the women embroidered her receiving cloth, a circle of white as big as the longhouse, in blue and yellow and purple; they employed the costliest dyes for the baby emperor. And when Mesema tied off her thread and looked at their work, she recognised the shapes and twisting paths of the sand pattern.

She screamed—no; she woke to a scream: Eldra was sitting beside her, tears running down her face, fingernails scraping at her own skin.

Pattern-marks ran across her chest, a spiderweb of color marked with moons and half-stars.