The Emperors Knife (42 page)

Govnan led the way up thin, crumbling stairs. “What were you doing there, at the bottom of the burned-out tower?” he asked.

Eyul tested each step before giving it his full weight. “I was going to kill you.”

“But you saved me instead.” Govnan reached the landing and turned to face him, the darkness of the ways concealing his expression. “You did kill Amalya, though?”

“Not by choice.” Eyul felt momentarily dizzy and pressed a hand against his tunic, sticky with blood.

Nothing more was said as they crossed bridges and ascended more stairs; Eyul heard only Govnan's laboured breathing ahead of him and the distant sound of boots. He moved with care. He'd never been to the Tower through the ways and he was unfamiliar with the treacherous twists and narrow bridges in his path. For the first time the smell of rot that rose from the chasm filled him with nausea.

“They can't enter the Tower, can they?” That made sense to Eyul: in all the years of the pattern-curse, not one mage had been marked or killed by a Carrier—not until Amalya left the Tower's protections.

“No. Not yet.”

They traversed the blackness in silence. At last the high mage stopped and said, “This is the last stair. Beyond it is one more bridge, then the door to the Tower.”

Eyul heard the sound of metal touching metal and caught the stink of lamp-oil. There was a sizzle, then the old man's face was lit in shades of red. In the play of flame and shadow, Eyul remembered Metrishet and felt lightheaded.

Govnan replaced the lamp on the wall. “There are Carriers ahead and behind.”

“I will clear your way,” Eyul said, steadying himself on his feet.

“They think I am the one who works the old magics.” Govnan met Eyul's eyes, and Eyul understood what was left unspoken:
They don't know Prince Sarmin is alive.

Eyul would keep the secret. He would defend Govnan as if everything depended upon it, as if no one else mattered. He fingered the hilt of his Knife and spoke silently to the young brothers. “I could use your help.”

The Knife was silent a moment, and then Eyul heard Asham say, “We will help. It is almost the end.”

“The end of what?”

“The end of us.”

In the low light Eyul could see a crowd of Carriers, eight of them, standing at the foot of the bridge. Four held hachirahs. Two had daggers, and the others clutched makeshift weapons: a lamp-pole, a sack filled with something heavy—rocks, perhaps. Eyul felt his own blood sticky against his stomach.

Make it good, Knife-Sworn.

Eyul ran at them like a bull, and the first Carriers fell into the dark.

“Good,” said Asham.

That's two.
Eyul steadied on his feet and gripped his Knife.

Govnan had left for the Tower long before, leaving a burlap bag full of bread, dried meat, and olives. It was Sarmin's first food since Ink and Paper stopped coming, but he was not hungry. The screaming women in the courtyard had brought back the memory of little Kashim, both his cries and the terrible silence that followed. They had brought back his loss and his pain and his futile anger. And just as on that terrible night so many years ago, Eyul the assassin had done the killing. Govnan had called it a mercy, but Sarmin would not hear it. He knew the truth.
It is always wrong.

He leaned back against the pillows and felt the blood sinking into the courtyard tiles. And there was more: somewhere below him a battle had been fought, and the blood of many pooled into one.
Govnan?
He reached out with his mind, tried to guess who had died, but he could not.

Everywhere blood fell he gathered it to him. There was too much, far too much, and yet not enough to make his own design, to write his own will into blood and pictures and oppose the Master.

An anticipatory silence had fallen over the Carriers. The Master's hand drew their threads taut. He altered his pattern, tightening and twisting the threads until Sarmin felt the breath rush out of him. The spaces and ways he travelled stretched and narrowed; there was nowhere to hide. Sarmin lay trapped, a fish in the Master's net—unless and until he could step out of it and into his own design.

He thought he would lose this game. He had seen the Master's work. He had copied it, passed through it, admired its beauty. But now, when he was so close, and the need so strong, he doubted that he could create such a masterpiece of his own. He needed to learn more about the writing of a red pattern, a blood pattern. Grada's desert journey would help, if enough time remained. Perhaps in that Mogyrk church Grada would find the key.

The pattern writhed around its axis, the centre, where the Master sat spinning his web. They were approaching the endgame. The Master's power was overwhelming; his plan was without fault. Except that he hadn't seen Sarmin. And the emperor's Knife remained unbroken. There was hope.
A hidden piece could spoil the Push.

Sarmin opened his eyes and searched for the hidden ones in the wall. “Will he find me, Zanasta, before I make my own pattern?” The moonlight slid over the calligraphy, a soft hand silencing any mouths that might respond. “Aherim?”

Silence.
They had turned their backs on him. He was friendless in his soft prison.

“Grada?”

Grada followed the road from Gemeth west along the banks of the River Blessing, passing rice fields and reed beds, villages, river ports, and the holiest of temples at the Anwar Quays. She had walked twenty miles on the first day, twenty-five the second. Days passed, and she kept on. The dust coated her legs to the knee and her skin looked almost as pale as Sarmin's. She thought of the prince often as she walked, and when she lay beside the road at night, wrapped in her cloak, she thought of nothing else.

“
Grada?
”

“Sarmin? Are you with me?” She huddled deeper into her cloak and coiled in the sand.

“Always. We are two and one. It is like the Many.”

Grada shuddered. “It is not like the Many. The Many was—”

It was rape.

“I'm sorry.” Sarmin's thoughts moved behind her eyes.

“The Many… You know when the blowfly bites you and lays its eggs under your skin, and you have to let the maggots grow and crawl around inside you before it's safe to cut them out?”

“No.”

“Oh. Well, the Many was like being bitten by a thousand blowflies, but knowing you'll never get the maggots out, no matter how big they get.”

Sarmin felt the crawling of blowfly maggots. He had never been bitten, but Grada's memories were there in his head and on his tongue as he lay on his bed fifty miles away in Nooria.

“I'm sorry.”

“But this—” Grada shaped the thought in bright colours, “the two of us, together, it's… grapes and honey, flowers, cool water.”

“Better.” Sarmin put a smile on her lips.

“Better.”

Eyul thrust out his leg and sent the fourth Carrier spinning into darkness. Asham's voice murmured, giving warning and advice, a soft and weary comfort in Eyul's bloody work. He could hear Govnan behind him, his breath quick. Eyul ducked under the bag of rocks and rolled to the side, coming to the very edge of the platform, almost losing himself in the chasm. He pushed himself up again, and his Knife sliced the artery it sought.

As he turned to the sixth Carrier, he heard the twang of a bow.

Chapter Thirty-Five

M
esema sat with her back against the wall, cradling Beyon's sleeping head in her lap. She tried to move her numb legs, to regain some feeling without waking him. She had passed hungry and passed tired. She had even passed beyond embarrassment when, a few hours ago, Beyon showed her where she could urinate into a chasm in the secret ways by straddling two slender bridges. When she was finished, he did the same.

As they waited for Eyul, Beyon fell into a restless sleep.

Above her reached the scaffold used by the artists who had been working Beyon's face into the vaulted ceiling of his tomb. Either fear or orders had caused them to abandon their trowels and picks and leave the tomb in disarray. Disembodied eyes and the bridge of a nose stared down at her in shades of topaz and amber. Though unfinished, it was a good likeness.

Beyon's coffin lay before her, as big as two horses and worked in gold and silver. It was the twin to the tomb of Satreth I, behind it. Stairs rose beside Satreth's tomb, for the common people to view the body of the Reclaimer. At the foot of Beyon's tomb, workmen had placed the first marble step.

She wanted to leave this place.

Eyul had not returned. Perhaps he had tried to rescue the women. Her idea to kill them had been cruel, but the assassin must have seen the necessity of it. He could not have been so foolish as to risk himself.

She shivered at the trail of her own thoughts. Hours ago Beyon's wives had been laughing and talking—though they were childless and trapped in the women's wing, their lives of no significance to the empire, still they had had meaning to themselves and to their gods. They did not deserve to die like that; it was wrong to let them—

—but so much was already wrong, and she could not change the cruel ways of the palace. Beyon should understand that; he walked those ways himself. Nevertheless, he had been strange with her ever since they left Eyul.

But I can understand if he is afraid of me. I am afraid of me too.

Beyon stirred and sat up. He met her eyes, then turned away.

“Eyul?” he asked, and when she shook her head, he said, “Then we should go to the desert. My men are waiting. I don't know how many…” His voice trailed off. He stood and straightened his robes.

She wondered how many men had stayed faithful after hearing of Beyon's marks. Her father had always had to remain strong; he could never betray any doubt or any hint of illness if he wished to maintain his Riders' respect. She wondered if even Banreh would stay by his side if he showed himself to be weak.

Some of those waiting in the desert could be twice-treacherous, pretending to betray the new emperor, but instead turning upon Beyon. That would be the best way to kill him—to gain his trust, get in close.

Just as she had. The vision reappeared in Mesema's mind, tracing Beyon's lifeless form in sand and blood, putting the knife in her hand. It would come to fruition, and soon. She had the feeling of running downhill, speed overtaking her, compelling her feet to rush headlong. She almost turned her arms in a pinwheel to slow down, but instead, through long practice, she calmed herself by counting stitches. Beyon pulled a pouch from his belt and shook the contents into one hand.

“I have honeyed nuts. I forgot about them until now.”

She plucked one from his palm. It was shiny, golden, hard; it barely looked like food. At home, honey kept the consistency of butter, not stone. She popped it into her mouth and rolled it on her tongue, tasting sweet and salt together. She reached for a second, but found herself thinking of Beyon's wives instead, and no longer felt hungry.

“I can see why you keep these in your belt,” she said. “They're delicious.”

“They're not for me. I usually give them to the slave children.”

“You like children?” she asked. The Bright One rose in her mind, though she couldn't see it.

He frowned, studying the floor, where a god Mesema didn't recognise held a hammer aloft. She realised with a pang that Beyon did not wish to discuss children with her now that his wives were dead, now that she had told Eyul to kill them.

But he forgot his own nature. He had threatened to behead Banreh; he had made Sahree, Tarub, and Willa disappear.

“Beyon,” she said, wiping salt from her fingers, “listen. What did you do with Sahree and the other body-slaves from the desert?”

“The dungeon.” He frowned again. “Probably still there.”

“With everything that's happening, will the guards remember they have them?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

Mesema imagined the kindly old servant starving to death on the cold floor of a stone cell.

He must have seen something in her expression, for he raised his hands in a defensive gesture. “They could have seen your moon-mark. I did it to protect you.”

“Exactly,” she said, meeting his eyes. “Beyon, listen. I didn't want your wives to die. Cerana brought me here, and Cerana brought the marks to you and me. Cerana has its terrible gods and the prices they demand. The rules of this game were made long before I started playing.”

“I know that.” He sat down beside her again. “But it's not just Cerana. The rules of Settu are the rules of the world.”

She thought about her father, surrounded by the men in his longhouse. He and Banreh huddled together over ink and lambskin, planning war and alliances. There was always blood to pay, always a sacrifice. “I don't know,” she said, but she thought she did.

“You think I'm angry at you because my wives died?”

“I thought, maybe.” Tears welled in her eyes. “It was a terrible thing.” Atia of the haughty eyes, Chiassa of the golden curls, Hadassi of the pouting mouth and her attention to rank, Marren of the wink and the joke.

He took her hands. “It's true, but not the way you think. If my wives had been kept alive and screaming, I would have gone to save them—not because I loved them; I didn't. They were my mother's creatures; all of them spied on me from the moment they came to the palace. But they were my women, and my responsibility. Tuvaini knows me well. He knows what will draw me out.” He drew a breath before continuing, “You were right to protect me from charging in. It's only… When I heard you say the words, I couldn't help but think that the palace had corrupted you—that I had corrupted you—and I was sorry for that.”

She looked at their joined hands. “The palace corrupted you as well.”

“I was born to it. Sometimes I think that's what the pattern is: the palace's own stink, written on my skin.”