The Emperors Knife (33 page)

Tuvaini stood. One did not stand at council, and the guards beside the throne moved hands to swords, but the words he needed to say could not be spoken seated.

“We must strike close to home, my Emperor. Closer than any here would ever have wished.” The time to hold his peace had slipped away. In minutes and moments it had escaped him, beaten away by a pounding heart.

“The worm that has burrowed among us has been discovered.” Tuvaini raised his voice and found its power, and the men along the table watched him, some with surprise, some with concern, none able to look away. “The sickness must be cut out.”

Beyon took a step back.

“Emperor Beyon, blood of my blood, lord of all Cerana, before these servants of empire, before this council's witness, I declare you marked. I name you Carrier, slave to the plague that haunts us, and unfit for rule.”

Beyon took a second step backwards, one hand splayed wide across his chest. He stumbled as his heel touched the lowest step of the dais.

“Tuvaini!” Govnan launched to his feet, his chair toppling behind him. “You have—”

The words died on his lips as Eyul jumped up also, his hand on the hilt of his Knife. Master Herran put out a hand to stay him.

“Ask him!” Tuvaini pointed at the emperor. “Let him but show his chest, naked and without paint. Let him show clean skin, and I will bow my head to the executioner's sword.”

“I have heard the rumours.” Dinar's rumble cut the silence before it stretched. He laid his staff, black with Herzu's death runes, across the table. “Uncertainty is a sickness in and of itself.”

“My officers speak of it when they think I don't listen.” General Lurish pulled at his upper lip, his gaze upon the table.

“Emperor?” Tuvaini asked, voice quiet now.

Beyon backed towards the throne, his eyes wild, finding nothing to fix upon. His two sacred guards, peerless slave-bred warriors, took their places, one at his left hand, the other to his right. The royal guard held their positions at the walls, uncertain.

“Beyon, you carry the marks. You cannot rule. The enemy has killed you already.” Tuvaini could taste his triumph, a quiet storm rising within him.

For a moment the emperor found focus, as if seeing Tuvaini for the first time.

“Look at your hand, Beyon.”

He lifted it, turning his palm to his face. A pale-blue diamond marked both front and back, so faint one might think it a bruise, and across his wrist Tuvaini saw a slim red crescent.

With a cry Beyon ran. He made for the door, and his sacred guard ran with him, trailing their blades. The men of the royal guard stood as if rooted, their heads bowed, their sapphire plumes lowered.

“Eyul.” Tuvaini turned and held the assassin's gaze. “You know your duty.”

Eyul rose. The emperor's Knife gleamed in his hand. With a last glance at Govnan he left the table and followed Beyon from the room.

The great doors closed behind Eyul and for long moments all eyes remained upon them.

Govnan's voice brought Tuvaini back to the council table.

“The emperor is a Carrier and his brother is dead: what remains to us? Who will guide the empire and keep it whole?” The old man looked unsettled.

“The emperor may yet be healed.” The priest of Mirra drew his cream and gold robes about him.

“Has any Carrier yet been cured?” Tuvaini asked. “Any single one?”

Dinar studied his palms, stained black with the Tears of Herzu. “Beyon's own law requires the death of all Carriers, death by stone and fire.”

“Eyul knows his duty. Beyon's remains will be cremated before sunset.” Tuvaini felt his heart quicken. He reached for his scroll and resumed his seat at the table.

“We must look to the records,” General Hazran said. “Texts remain sealed in the royal treasury. Beyon's father worked to prune the Reclaimer's line for two generations, but there will be an heir if we reach back far enough.”

Lurish snorted. “Some minor noble from the outer provinces? Some half-savage who knows nothing of the empire?”

“Perhaps a solution lies closer at hand?” Master Herran spoke in a soft voice, but the table listened. He fixed Tuvaini with his pale eyes. “Have you a suggestion, Lord High Vizier?”

Tuvaini returned the gaze.
This man misses little.

“I have a document here. The Reclaimer's tree, taken from the Axus Library before the fire. It shows the line from the time of Beyon's great-grandfather.” He unrolled the tightly bound parchment and smoothed it out upon the table. The great and good of Cerana left their seats to crowd at his shoulders.

“Here.” He laid a finger on Jemal, second of the Reclaimer's sons. “A prince set aside when his father died and his elder brother took the throne.”

“The child had talent,” Govnan said. “The Tower petitioned that he be spared, just as we sought to protect Prince Sarmin, but he was lost when the Yrkmen looted Nooria.”

“He was lost,” Tuvaini moved his finger down the scroll, “but not without issue. There was a girl, a servant, I suspect—she is unnamed—but there was a child born before the Yrkmen came.”

“How could such a child have been spared?” General Lurish asked.

Tuvaini shrugged. “The emperor had his own sons by then. Perhaps a younger, illegitimate, cousin was not considered worth killing.”

“And who was this child?” Dinar's deep voice commanded attention.

“My grandfather on my father's side.” Tuvaini rose from his seat. “We have an heir, gentlemen.” He climbed the first step of the dais. “And it is I.”

He took the second stair and turned to face them. “You have your heir: a man who knows the empire and its ways, a man who knows
you
and
your
ways.”

The throne-room doors swung inwards, so silently that none of the council noticed, or turned their heads.

Tuvaini stepped backwards, reaching the Petal Throne. “You have an heir: a man who will destroy our hidden foe and who will let this empire be greater than we have dared to dream.”

“I would follow such an emperor.”

The men of the council looked at the newcomer. From the doorway Arigu smiled and bowed.

Tuvaini returned the smile and sat upon the throne. He set his hands upon black stone armrests, amid silver flowers. It felt like coming home.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

F
ifteen paces, left turn, twenty paces, left turn. Sarmin trailed his fingers across the wall fabric, listening to the whispers beneath the hiss.

He thought of Tuvaini's door, of Grada coming from the tunnel, her knife in her hand. His walls were less solid than he had thought. The ceiling gods were paint and gold leaf, the work of deft fingers and a skilled wrist.

“There are no angels.” He set his hands across Aherim. “I could scratch you away, like an itch. A man could make a blank page of this room with a bucket of plaster.”

Silence.

“Answer me.” Silence.

“I will not die here. I can leave at my will.”

Sarmin crossed to the door. Govnan had said it would be left unlocked. He set his hand on the wood. His fingers trembled; his whole hand, his arm, his body shook.

“I can leave.” Bile flooded his mouth, burning the back of his throat.

He steadied himself against the wall with his other hand, head down. His hair fell over his face and a trail of sour drool extended from his lips. “I have opened doors before.” He gasped the words. “Doors where men don't go.”

His fingernails bit into the edge of the door. Ten breaths, deep ones.

“I… can… open…
this one
.”

He hauled, and the door swung inwards, crashing against the wall, shockingly loud.

And there it was: the world beyond, an area of paved stone six feet by six feet, empty now, but polished to a shine by the feet of hundreds of bored guards, and the tower steps curving down, out from sight in a tight spiral.

Sarmin tried to step through, but his legs failed him. He crouched on the carpet, retching dryly.

What would she think of him now, his horsegirl? Grada, Mother, if they could see him weeping and broken before an open door?

He tried to crawl forwards, though his tears had left him blind and his arms had no strength.

For an age he lay there, a wet cheek to the rug, the silk fibre tickling his lips, staring at those steps. The threshold was a precipice. It held all the terror of the fall from his window, the long drop to his dead brothers, before they sealed it again with a thin alabaster pane.

Out there they thought him dead—out there he was dead.

“I can't.”

He crawled back to his bed.

My bride.
Sarmin turned once more to his walls and what might be seen there. Among a million twisting lines he found the curve of her cheek. He traced it with a finger and found her smile. She watched him. She was close, he knew it. Out there, beyond the threshold, she was close enough to hear the call of the Tower mages.
Come to me. Please.

Mesema struggled with the pomegranate. Even the fruits here were strange and unhelpful. Still, her efforts had won her a small pile of segments, like pale rubies in her dish. They were beautiful, but disappointing in the mouth. She would have preferred an apple.

“Who was that man who scared you?” she asked Lana. The old man who had come out of the wall and spoken to Mesema as if he knew her.

Lana frowned and considered every word she spoke, as if picking her way through a field of secrets.

“His name is Govnan.”

Mesema added another segment to her pile on the silver plate. Something tugged at her: a memory of Beyon's? Imagination?

“And who is Govnan?” He was clearly someone important, for he had sought no permission to enter the women's wing.

“He is High Mage Govnan,” Lana said.

“A mage?” Mesema turned a seed in her mouth, thinking of the pattern. “What kind of mage?”

Lana kept her eyes on the floor, studying the mosaics. Juice beaded her nails as Mesema tore the remains of the pomegranate apart. The mage hadn't looked dangerous, he had looked tired and old—and yet he had called freely upon the emperor's time.

“What did he say to the emperor?” Mesema had seen them exchange words by the door. Govnan had spoken only once, and Beyon had nearly stumbled, putting a hand on the old man's shoulder, as if for support. They left together with no goodbyes.

“I don't know.” Her voice trembled, and she kept her eyes down.

“Has someone died?” Mesema didn't know why she asked it, but as the words came she knew them to be true. She felt the pattern closing in, stronger now.

Lana kept her head down, but the tears fell in a steady rain. Mesema felt her eyes prickle. It couldn't be Sahree; the high mage would not concern himself with a mere servant, nor would Beyon react so to her death. Nevertheless a sudden grief welled in her, blurring the lamplight that gleamed on her plate. She pushed it away.

“I'm sorry.” She put her hand on Lana's, her fingers pale against the dusk of the woman's skin.

Lana pulled her hand back. “I had a son, Pelar. They will be together now.”

For a moment they watched the floor together. From nowhere, maybe from memory, Mesema felt the tug of a cold wind, and with it a longing for the wideness of sky and the endless grass of home. Nothing here gave the eye peace; the walls, the ceiling, the floors, they were all worked and scrolled, all intricacy and convolution, like the essence of a lie without the substance.

“What happened?” She wanted to insist, but the words sounded faint, as if spoken into a vast cavern.

Lana ignored her, and Mesema wanted to take her by the shoulders, to demand an answer, but it would be useless. She put the remains of the pomegranate on the silver dish and rose to her feet. She walked past scrollwork and gold leaf, carvings and tapestries, until she saw darkness through the curved lattice of a wooden screen and found, beyond it, a balcony overlooking the courtyard.

The soldiers below were joking and shouting among themselves, relaxing in the torchlight, reminding her of the Riders back home, but when they saw her they fell silent and scattered from view. From up here she could see the courtyard's stones formed a diamond pattern of black and brown. Its far end pointed towards the city, a confusion of roofs and awnings illuminated by orange bonfires. Each fire was tended by a lone silhouette. Mesema shivered.

She ran her fingertip along the stone railing. Perhaps the rough surface would rub the mark away, but even without looking, she knew it clung to her still, telling her of Beyon's distant movements.

A wind blew up around her, hot as fire-stones and smelling of char. A flag atop one of the towers cracked and strained against its fittings. She pushed her hair from her eyes and looked at the Bright One, stepping near the top of the moon.
Just a few more days—a week, perhaps
. She put it from her mind.

Then she saw it: the highest tower in the palace, the topmost window gaping. Though the night was dark, the room beyond the window appeared darker still.

Something held her gaze—
there!
Something or someone was hidden there. She could almost remember, and the lost memory pulled at her, the half-formed image—something of both softness and cruelty. Beyon knew who or what crouched there alone, removed from the rest of the palace. Perhaps he had put it there.

Mesema rubbed her fingertip, trying to bring forth those things she had touched in Beyon, but she had lost this piece of his past, as she had lost so many others. She knew only that it felt like grief. She didn't know what the pattern meant for her or Beyon. She didn't know whether Arigu's games would change the empire, or what role Banreh would have in that, if he lived. She didn't know what had happened to Sahree.

But she could find out what was in that tower.

She left the balcony and passed the scrollwork, the tapestries, and the tasselled cushions. The floor mosaic caught her eye: the pattern seemed to flow, a slow rotation, with only one line constant, unmoving, like a single certainty, a thread, drawing her. She passed Lana, who did not even raise her head, and as she followed the line Lana made no move to stop her; she gave no sign of having seen her. A silence pressed on the room, so profound that even breathing came hard.