The Emperors Knife (20 page)

Outside, men were shouting. Weapons hissed out of their sheaths. Sand spilled under fast-moving boots.

Mesema thought quickly. “Gather yourself together, Eldra!” She reached out and slapped Eldra's cheek. Eldra fell silent, her eyes dazed and bloodshot. “Good,” Mesema said, buttoning her friend's nightdress with shaking hands.

“What's happening in there?” Arigu's voice.

“A nightmare,” Mesema called out, hoping he wouldn't hear the squeak in her voice. If it were Banreh, he would know instantly that she lied.

Eldra grabbed Mesema's wrists. “What are you doing?” she whispered.

“I don't know what they'll do to you if they find out,” said Mesema, too low for the general to hear.

“I'm dying anyway.” Tears gathered in Eldra's eyes. “I heard what he told you. The pattern kills.”

Arigu's shadow rose and flickered over the canvas. Mesema thought he had turned away and was surveying the camp. She covered her eyes with one hand. The Hidden God truly did not live in the desert. What terrible fate had befallen Eldra, without the guiding hands of rain and shade? And she herself—? Mesema gasped and ripped open her own nightdress, but she saw only the blue marks of her veins beneath pale skin. “Why—?”

“My bad luck.” Eldra tried to smile.

Mesema hugged Eldra, her throat burning with sorrow. Eldra patted her back. “I'm going to heaven.” But no matter where she was going, her hand trembled.

Mesema held on, her eyes squeezed shut. She wanted to go back to the morning, when they had picked the prettiest beads for their hair, back to when they had eaten figs in the light of dawn, before the pattern came, but there was no going back, no going home, and there was no saving Eldra. She looked back at Arigu's shadow, but he'd moved on. “I'll take you to your church,” she whispered.

“No. You will go to your prince—”

“No!” Nooria was a place of evil. She knew it now for certain.

“You must promise me—listen!—you will go to your prince and help him stop this pattern.” Tears continued unabated down Eldra's cheeks, but her voice came steady and sure. “Promise me.”

A promise to the dying held the sanctity of a promise made to the gods. Mesema sniffed and wiped her cheeks. She had been unkind when Eldra was scared and alone. Even after that, try as she might, she hadn't liked her as much as she could have. And then there was Banreh. Mesema owed Eldra a kindness. She tried to swallow, but her throat was too dry.

“I promise.”

“Good,” said Eldra. She turned and slipped a tunic over her nightclothes.

Eldra was leaving. Eldra was dying. Mesema could do nothing but watch.

Before going through the flap, Eldra kissed her on the cheek. “You will be a wise and brave princess,” she whispered. Then she was gone.

Mesema fell onto her side and lay staring at the walls of the tent. She heard nothing extraordinary, no threats directed at Eldra by the soldiers. She wondered where Eldra was now; mounting her horse, maybe, or disappearing behind the first dune. She buried her face in the desert sand. She heard a familiar sound, a saddle, creaking under a man's weight, and then laughter.

A short cry rang out: a woman's cry, frightened and sudden.
Eldra.

Mesema shot up. Outside her tent, shadows moved, and men shouted. She listened, frozen with fear, too frightened to look.

She thought of Banreh.
We are Windreaders. Our spears are coated with the blood of our enemies… Ever victorious…

The tent flap moved, and she screamed.

A young Cerani soldier peeked in, his brown eyes narrowed.

“The general says to stay in here. Hide. Don't come out for anything.”

She wanted to ask about Eldra, but her tongue had turned to stone.

He left, and Mesema took a deep breath and counted her fingers. Her mother had taught her counting when she learned to sew. She missed the feel of the hard bone in her hand, the tension of the thread as she pulled it through the wool. She thought of the designs she used to make: three stitches and then a cross for a bundle of wheat. Five circles for a flower, caught at the tips.

The shadows stilled. Voices lowered to a murmur. She could not bring herself to go outside.
Four and five, catch. Four and five, catch.
She'd just counted her fingers for the seventh time when Banreh poked his head inside. Something in his eyes made her afraid to ask.

“You should get dressed and come out now.” He used the intimate tone.

Mesema pulled on her clothes, kneeling on Eldra's empty mat. Something terrible had happened; she knew it in her stomach and behind her eyes. She crawled out and stood up in the bloody light of the setting sun.

“Mesema.” Banreh came and stood at her side. He always knew just where to be. He took her elbow and steered her to the left, where the horses stood over their barrels, and further on, where the scattered crates and tents of the camp gave way to the dry sea. There, in the trough of a wave of sand, Arigu stood by Eldra's horse.

Mesema walked closer, though her feet were as lead.

“Where—?” And she saw her: Eldra lay in the sand, an arrow rising from her chest. It looked just like the spear that had risen from Jakar's.

“No!” Mesema cried. Banreh took her hand.

“Why did you kill her? She was going away!” Mesema started towards Arigu, but Banreh held her firm.

Arigu looked down at Eldra with a tired, sad expression.

“Why would I kill her? I liked her well enough.”

Banreh squeezed her hand. “Horsemen came—I saw them, Mesema.”

“He more than saw them; he took Jouhri's bow and knocked one clean off his horse. Not an easy shot.” Arigu nodded at Banreh and then jerked his head towards the north. “Man's over there.”

She studied both their faces. They didn't know about the patterning. Someone else had killed Eldra. It was a cruel joke of the desert gods, to kill her twice.

“Why?” Mesema knelt by the still body. Someone had closed Eldra's eyes. Her hands, though, were still splayed across the sand. Mesema crossed them over her abdomen in the way of the Windreaders. The familiar smell of wrongful blood rose around her. She'd forgotten that smell until now. Mesema arranged Eldra's braids and touched the beads she'd placed at their ends. The arrow, of white wood topped with bright blue feathers, was strangely beautiful. She worked one of the feathers free and kept it in her hand.

Banreh answered the question she'd forgotten she asked. “I think they mistook her for you.”

“For me?” Assassins? Was that why she was kept inside the carriage, while Eldra rode with Arigu every night? She remembered thinking how she and Eldra looked like sisters. How nobody ever told her—or Eldra—why she was there…

Realisation brought anger. “You wanted her with us in case the emperor found out about me. You knew she might get hurt.” Banreh seized her shoulders, but Mesema didn't stop talking. “I suppose, since you didn't like her religion, that it was all right to let her die.”

“Guard your tongue,” said Banreh.

“She knew you didn't care for her.” Mesema looked into Arigu's black eyes. She saw anger there, but also pity, and that made her look away.

Arigu spoke. “This is an empire, little girl. Affection is costly.” With a look at Banreh, he added, “You can't let it change things, no matter what you feel.”

Mesema clutched the feather against her palm, felt the hollow spine snap beneath her fingers. “You play with lives.”

“I am not playing,” Arigu said. “In twenty or thirty years, when your son cuts his brothers' throats, talk to me again about the value of life. Talk to me again about affection.” He pivoted on his heel and walked away.

Mesema said, “I
hate
him. People are nothing more than instruments to him, like needles for sewing.”

“Did your father not use you?” said Banreh. “And does he not care for you?”

“That was for the sake of our people. You know it well, Banreh.”

“And Arigu does what he does for the sake of the Cerani people.” He sounded right. He always did.

Banreh stepped out before Eldra's horse. “What is its name?”

She hesitated, knowing his mind. But it was the Felting way. “Crimson.”

“Crimson,” he repeated, drawing his blade across the horse's throat, “lead your rider Eldra to the lands of summer.”

When the horse went still, Banreh and Mesema gathered what straw and rags they could, covered them with lamp-oil, and sent Eldra to the next life.

As they walked back to camp, hand in hand, she said, “You killed the man who did this?”

“One of them.” There was a measure of pride in his voice. He was Windreader, after all.

“Good.”

They said no more.

The camp was struck and the caravan was ready to go before the sun had managed to set. As Mesema and Banreh prepared to climb into the carriage, Arigu rode up to them. He was not a bad rider. His big shoulders stuck out on either side of his mount; she'd never noticed before, but he resembled the ancient statues of centaurs. He looked from Banreh to Mesema, opening his mouth to speak, but saying nothing.

She grew impatient. A man did not hesitate when something must be spoken.

At last Arigu said, “I am going ahead to the city.” He addressed Banreh. “My men will protect you as far as the river. There my man Aziz will meet you and lead you into Nooria.”

“Sneaking around like horse thieves,” Mesema sniffed. Arigu ignored her, addressing Banreh again. “If it is too dangerous for you to proceed to the city, Aziz will take you to my estate by the sea.”

There was fear in the general's eyes. The assassins had frightened him, and with good reason. The emperor would have his revenge. Mesema's skin prickled. She realised she might not live to meet her prince, but what of the prophecy about her son?
The Hidden God does not live in the desert,
her mother had said. Perhaps He hadn't seen everything.

Arigu pulled away, kicking his horse like a savage and galloping over the sand. Mesema watched until he was a dark speck against the horizon. She didn't like him, but she dreaded to see him go. It meant the end was near—the end of her journey, very likely the end of her life. She followed Banreh into the carriage, feeling the heat but no longer caring.

“Arigu's men rode to the body. A bandit, they said.” Banreh didn't wait for her to sit. “They looked like soldiers to me, or guards, Cerani.” He frowned. “But if the emperor knew of us, wanted us dead, he would send five hundred men, or a thousand, not three.”

Miles passed in silence and in heat. As the wide wheels turned in the sand, Banreh mentioned something about her language lessons. She ignored him, staring out of the window instead.

“Mesema.”

She watched the sand anxiously for a sign of the pattern, or further assassins.

“Mesema.” Banreh touched her arm.

His strength poured into her through that connection. She took his wrist in her other hand. “Banreh.”

“Are you well?”

She shook her head no.

He watched her, his green eyes thoughtful.

She wanted his thoughts. She wanted his calm. She wanted everything about him. “Will you kiss me again, Banreh, as you did before?”

He pulled his wrist from her grasp and pressed himself against the other side of the carriage. “I cannot.”

“Yes, you can. And nobody will know or care. Arigu's gone. Eldra's gone.”

“I will know. I will care.”

She knelt on the carriage floor, her arms over his legs, hands clasped as if in prayer. “This could be the last day we ever spend together. If that were so, wouldn't you want to hold me?”

He ran a hand through her hair, a different look on his face now: the look of a Rider just come in from the hunt. “Of course I would. But this is not our last day.”

She ran her hands up his chest and kissed the front of his shirt. Hard muscle lay beneath her fingers. Strength, but trembling, even so. “Please, Banreh,” she said, rising up on her knees, touching the back of his neck with her hand. He exhaled, a shaky, breathy noise, and she knew she had him then. He pulled her in with his strong arms and pressed his lips against hers.

She held to him, skin against skin. His chest firm, his neck soft, his cheeks rough. His lips fell over her arms and face; his fingers pulled at the lacings of her shirt. This was as it should have been. They should have made a plainschild.

“Lie with me, Banreh,” she whispered in his ear.

He slowed his kisses. His hands let go of her laces and went still. “No,” he said. He pushed her back and leaned against the side of the carriage, away from her.

“No?” She threw her arms around him and kissed his face. “Why not, Banreh?” His soft hair tickled her cheek.

“Mesema, you know why not. Stop. Stop!” He pushed her away and before she could say anything else, he hit the roof of the box with his fist, requesting a halt. He opened the door while the carriage was still moving.

“Banreh, what are you doing? Don't leave me!”

He jumped down into the sand. It hurt his leg, she knew, even though he didn't show it. He pushed the door shut and limped away from her. He would ride, then, with the other men. She would be alone. The carriage moved forwards, uncaring.

Mesema wiped at a tear. Banreh couldn't go against her father's wishes, not even for love, not even if this were the last day of his life. She hated him. He was no more than a thrall, and Eldra had been braver. She reached in her pocket for the blue feather, her reminder of Eldra's wish. She rubbed the feather against her cheek, wondering if she'd live to fulfil her promise. The not-knowing felt like torture. She wished she could jump out of the carriage like Banreh, run to the palace and the emperor, find out for certain.

At last Mesema pulled herself together. She sat up and settled on the bench. It was no use feeling sorry for herself; she would wait with dignity, like a woman. She sat with her own thoughts through the dark night, until the sun rose and the caravan came to a halt. When she climbed out of the carriage that morning, she held her back straight and her head high. Marry or die, she would do it like a princess.