The Emperors Knife (29 page)

Sahree sat opposite, her eyes averted; it had been so ever since Mesema's visit to the emperor's tent. Everyone thought she was his now, the property of the divine. The other girls no longer spoke to her; they only murmured to each other in awed tones. They did everything for her, without ever meeting her eyes. If she sighed, they fanned her. If she yawned, they offered her plump cushions. If she stumbled, they rubbed her feet and cursed the ground.

For the first time she realised how lonely the emperor must feel. And yet it kept her safe; they looked away from her, away from the blue mark on her finger.

She embroidered a pattern in her head. Somewhere, something burned; the smoke caught in her throat. Mesema tried not to swallow. If she swallowed, Sahree would think she was thirsty, leap from the carriage and cause the whole caravan to stop until the second-freshest water and second-best goblet could be found.
Almost there. Loop, stitch, stitch.
She kept her blue-tinged finger pressed against the cloth at her knee. She missed the feather from Eldra's arrow. She used to work it in her hand, but Cerani women had no pockets; she kept it in her trunk now, next to the resin Mamma had given her.

After a time, the stench of burning faded and Mesema smelled food, meat with heavy spices, flowers, the stale smell of wheat-brew. She heard chains swinging in the wind, and a baby crying. Why were there no voices? A glance through the window answered her question: mothers, traders, and soldiers all prostrated themselves as the emperor's caravan passed by.

Sahree held out a piece of sheer fabric. Mesema was to cover herself so that nobody could see her. She had come to know this in the last day. She shook it out and pulled it over her hair and it settled on her cheeks gently, like a butterfly. When she breathed, it pulled against her nose. Everything she looked at turned hazy-white.

A twinge shot through her finger. Beyon approached. She imagined him wending his way between the soldiers and pack-animals, careless on his mount, his eyes hard and tired. No sooner had the image crossed her mind than he leaned in, looking first at Sahree and then taking in her silken veil. She was relieved that he couldn't see her face.

“We will enter the city soon,” he said.

As if I don't know!
Mesema looked at Sahree, at her veined, thin hands, and wondered how many years Sahree had worked for the palace, how many emperors she had seen live and die.

He didn't wait for a response but drew away. She could hear him galloping towards the wall; she imagined the common folk dashing out of his way as he charged ahead, arrogant, heedless, as she cradled her finger in her left hand. It hurt now, when he moved far away. Sahree might see the tears streaming down her cheeks and think it was all for love of Beyon; better she not know the truth.

“What— Who am I?” Sarmin didn't think to ask, “Where am I?” Where would he be? Where had he always been? In his room. Through the blurred slits of his eyes he could see the only sky he had ever really known, the patterned gods of his ceiling.

“You are Sarmin, prince of Cerana. Grada remains in the mages' Tower. You are separate, again, and whole, or as whole as I can make you.” The deep voice had the crackle of age in it.

Sarmin rolled his head towards the speaker and realised he was lying flat, on his own bed. His fingers sought out the tear in his tunic, and the wound below, but they found nothing, just tenderness, and the crusting of dried blood on silk.

The man stood beside the bed. Sarmin's eyes refused to focus, giving him only a smeared impression of a figure wreathed in light, alive with the ghosts of flame. Sarmin kneaded his eyeballs and looked again, seeing an old man now, shadowed, with wisps of white hair haloing a bald head.

“I have no skills for healing,” the man spread his hands, and for a second the wraith-fire played across them again, “but I spent thirteen years in the desert, in the Empty Quarter. There is a rock there, a rock that bleeds. I used a little of that blood to knit your flesh and call you back to it.”

“I don't know you.” Sarmin felt weak. He felt empty. He wanted Grada.

“My name is Govnan. I am High Mage of the Tower.”

“You are two pieces. A puzzle of two pieces.” Sarmin still felt lightheaded; he spoke the words without thinking. “Fire and flesh.”

Govnan raised a brow at that and stepped closer to the bed. Sarmin struggled to sit.

“As the slave carried you within her, I too carry another. It is not the same magic, but similar—simpler. Ashanagur is bound within me, and his strength is mine. At one time he danced across the molten sea before the City of Brass where efreet dwell, but now he dwells in me, until the day comes when he consumes me and I will live inside the fire.”

“I remember the Tower. The high mage was Kobar, before… when I was a child. He made us laugh. He knew tricks, made talking faces in stone walls… He touched Pelar's red ball and it grew so heavy we couldn't lift it.” Sarmin smiled at the memory.

“High Mage Kobar was rock-sworn. The time came for the earth-spirit bound to his flesh to find its freedom. For ten years I have held the Tower for Emperor Beyon.”

“Beyon.” Sarmin remembered his brother, the patterns on his skin, the dead guards outside the door. “There are assassins—you must save him!”

“Grada came for you, Sarmin. There are no others. Beyon's enemy seeks to break him. If he fails to break him, he may try murder, but he is not failing. Even with all the protections we have woven around him, the pattern closes in.”

Sarmin stood. His legs felt strange beneath him. He walked on stilts once as a child, and this was not so different. He found himself taller than Govnan, an odd feeling, as he had been sure the mage would loom over him.

“You're wrong. Broken or whole, Beyon serves his purpose for the enemy. I have seen that enemy.” Sarmin's blood had turned black and clotted on his silks. For a moment he felt it again, running hot down his side. “I saw him behind the Many, the Carriers: a Pattern Master.”

Govnan bowed his head. He focused his gaze upon his hands, his knuckles large, and whiter than skin should be. “You have the talents of your line, Prince Sarmin. The throne was purchased with such skills in the earliest of days, and the potential runs through your dynasty. Beyon's potential has helped to keep the pattern at bay. Your potential kept the emperor's Knife from your throat.”

“
You?
You put me here? In this room?”

“No—the Tower spared your life, no more. Envy put you in this room: ambition.”

“How many?” Sarmin asked. “How many boys have lived out their lives like this, under this curse?”

“It is a gift, Prince. Life is always a gift.” Govnan met his stare, and Sarmin could feel the heat of the man. “And there have been no others in my lifetime. There was a child in the time of the Yrkman incursions, but his quarters were sacked when Nooria was overrun.”

“I want
Grada
.” And as he spoke the words Sarmin knew that he did want her, more than his lost years, more than close-held memories of stolen things, more than his mother or brother.

“Grada is at the Tower, and it is best that she remain there. She has been a tool of the enemy. I will return her knife and—”

“I want Grada.” Sarmin had seen with her eyes, spoken with her breath. He had held her whilst he was dying.

“Even if no taint remains, she is low-born, gutter-kin; she has her place, and you have yours.”

“You are a two-piece puzzle, High Mage.” A cold anger held Sarmin, iced fingers on his neck. “And even if I have no book on the subject, I am nothing if not a man of patterns.”

“Prince, you must calm yourself. I do not understand—”

“No!” They had held him too long; they had schemed in their corridors and towers, painted him into their plans, and at every turn they had thwarted him. Twenty paces, left turn, fifteen paces, left turn—

“No,” Sarmin said, “I am done with turning.”

He drew two symbols, one with the index finger of his right hand, one with the left, one symbol for fire, one for man, and they hung in the air between them.

“Sarmin, don't.”

“Your magic is wrong.”

Sarmin moved his hands apart, and the symbols with them. And in that motion, Govnan lit up like lamp oil before the taper. New flame flowed across old skin, pooling, pouring, building, and as Sarmin's hands parted, so Govnan parted from Ashanagur until the two stood side by side. Govnan was a dark twin to the being of light beside him, standing straighter now, more sound, as if something had been added rather than taken. Ashanagur wore his fire like a cloak, the lithe, long limbs beneath it the color of molten iron. Around his feet the carpet charred, but the fire and the heat did not spread.

“Ashanagur,” Sarmin said, “you are free.”

White eyes sought Sarmin's and something passed between them, warmth rather than heat. An understanding. There was a sound of cracking, perhaps the stone beneath the carpet, perhaps the foundation stone of the world. A jagged line of incandescence opened between them, and in a heartbeat Ashanagur was gone, leaving only a faint coil of smoke.

The angels and the devils watched from the walls and were silent.

Chapter Twenty-Five

E
yul turned another corner of the Maze. Smoke from the Carrier-pyres overlaid the more familiar scents of blood and excrement, the flavours of his old home. The familiarity of the twisting alleys reassured him as much as the Knife at his hip. He felt more surety here than in Tuvaini's dark passages. The Maze was honest, in all of the ways most people didn't wish to see.

He moved towards his destination with confidence, memory guiding his feet for his vision was hazy behind white linen. The alley where he'd made his first kill ran alongside the ruins of an old Mogyrk church. These days he doubted anybody could have identified the fire-darkened, crumbling mortar for what it had been, but Eyul remembered from Halim, who knew it from his father. Only memories kept Satreth's victory alive, though here in the Maze, it hardly felt like a victory. The Mogyrks, Halim had told him in a hushed whisper, had given out food and clothes to the denizens of these twisting streets. The only charity they saw now happened on feast-days, when the palace discarded its old clothing and spoiled food, and expected the Maze-folk to be grateful.

Eyul paused at the final turn, listening to an altercation in the narrow street ahead: two men and a woman, and the woman was screaming. He felt a grim smile on his lips.
Don't let them run from me.
He touched his hand to the hilt of his Knife and moved forwards.

“Not this. Go to the palace.” The Knife-whisper, authoritative, for a child.

“Quiet.”

The low-born men turned. He could see the lines of their bodies, their heads turned attentively in his direction: they thought he'd been speaking to them. They had the woman bent over the lip of an old well, one holding her arms while the other was making ready to take his pleasure.

Eyul pulled his Knife free.

“Can you not spare the tin to pay for that?” Eyul's feet tingled with the pleasure of the upcoming dance.

“I'm no whore!” The woman's shadow quivered as she struggled.

“Liar.” One of the men punctuated his word with a slap. “This is no concern of yours, blind man.”

Eyul smiled. “True.” This would be too easy. Disappointment crept in. Maybe this wasn't what he wanted after all. “But I'd still like you to go.” He hefted the Knife in his hand. “I came to visit this place, and you're disturbing me.”

The men exchanged glances. The woman lay still and said nothing. He could guess at their thinking: either he could take them, against all logic, or he was mad. Either way, it was bad luck to fight him.

“Herzu take her anyway.” The man to Eyul's left backed off.

“Don't think we won't remember you, Khima.”

The second man followed him, and the woman, Khima, crumpled to the stony ground, a dark lump in the centre of Eyul's vision. He walked past her to the opposite wall and lifted his bandages. Decades of grime had obscured the arterial spray of his first victim. He ran his fingers along the brick.

The child whispered to him from the Knife, “Leave this place. You are needed at the palace.”

“Hey,” said Khima.

Eyul backed away from the wall to where he'd stood when he slit the man's throat. Yes; he remembered. The sun shot through his vision, a welcome pain.

“Hey,” she said again, and now he could feel her warmth, her breath on his arm. He could kill her as easily as scratching his nose, add her blood to the wall. He felt free, powerful.

“I could lift my skirts,” she offered. That would do.

She was not just skinny but wasted, not much in his hands, but his body didn't seem to mind. He finished, one hand against the brick where he'd drawn first blood, the other on her bony hip. Afterwards he offered her a drink from his waterskin.

“It's fresh, from a well in the desert.”

“Tastes sweet.” She smacked her lips together. They were still full and round, not cracked and bleeding as they would be in a few years' time. “What's it like outside the walls?”

“Same as inside the walls.”

She laughed at that. He let her keep the waterskin. Already his mind itched for something else, something more. Govnan.

He left Khima sipping the sweet water in the alley. He judged she had a few hours before those men came back and took their revenge. No matter; he had a revenge of his own to finish. He covered his eyes again and slipped through the Maze, his gaze on the Tower, cutting a shadow from the sun. He dodged a galloping horse on Palace Road, twisting back to throw a curse at its silhouette of a rider.

The Knife-voices spoke together at once, loud but unintelligible.

“Be quiet, or I'll throw you in the smith's fire.” It was no more than a whispered threat; Tahal had given him this Knife twice over. It was all he had left.