The Emperors Knife (45 page)

“You lie!” And if he did not, Tuvaini would make it a lie; he felt no kinship with this desert man.

The Pattern Master spread his hands. “I would not expect my word to put me upon the empire's throne. There are paths to the truth, paths known by the holy and the wise. I am prepared to accept the judgement of your priests and mages, sworn before their gods and their duty to the people of Cerana.”

Tuvaini took a step back and felt the hard edge of the throne pressing behind his knees. His plans ran like sand through his fingers. He knew then what Beyon had felt in that moment before he fled. Tuvaini saw his enemy's plan as though it were laid upon a Settu board before him. The Pattern Master had made his Push, and the tiles were falling.

“Have you an objection to their judgement?” the Pattern Master asked. “Perhaps you wish to summon the council once more?”

Tuvaini shook his head. He reached out, touching the air before him, searching for anything, any straw to clutch.

“Your heir,” he said. “If it is true, then I am still your heir.”

“How fortunate, then, that you have no brothers.” The Pattern Master smiled and advanced on the throne.

Chapter Forty

S
armin had known of the Pattern Master's arrival before word came from Govnan. He knew it by the pricking of his thumbs, and by the ache in his bones. Govnan's voice came on the wind, blowing into the tower room. The Tower had tested the Pattern Master's blood and found his story to be true.

Sarmin shivered. This was a violation. Four lifetimes ago, the Pattern Master had paced this same room. He had been named Helmar then, second son of the Reclaimer's heir, spared the Knife by the Tower because of his latent talents and secured—
preserved
—against an uncertain future.

Sarmin had wasted away for fifteen years; young Helmar had spent only his childhood here, for in Yrkmir's final incursion the palace had been sacked and the boy prince taken. Records of his existence had been lost to all but the mages. Until now.

Sarmin wondered what had become of the men who took Helmar. He wondered what had passed from them to the stolen prince.
What did they make of you, Helmar? What did you learn in the cold mountain lands to bring back to the desert? How are you not yet dead?

“He is like me.” Sarmin didn't want to speak aloud, but the words needed space. He didn't want to talk to an empty room, or to Eyul's unconscious form. When you speak to no one, madness comes tapping at your door. “He is me—a me who was given a chance. A me who crossed the threshold and went outside once more.”

He reached under his pillow for the dacarba, the knife he'd taken from Tuvaini. It felt so long ago that he had set his hand upon the hilt and pulled it free. His fingers found only silk and for a panicked moment he scrabbled to find the knife, then he relaxed. Mesema had it. He had given it to her when she left him.

When she left him. She was Beyon's now. And Grada was gone, too, picking her way along the edges of the desert. He had sent her away. Now he was alone. Not even the angels and demons spoke to him.

“When did you find the pattern, Helmar?” Sarmin lay back and rested his head on the coolness of a pillow. “When did you begin the Many? What number of lives have you sewn into your plans?”

Sarmin thought of the pattern, marked across his brother's chest, spreading like a cancer, consuming him. He thought of the child who had spent so many empty days in this very room.
Did you watch the Sayakarva window, and imagine what you would see if it ever opened?

“I should be angry, too,” he said. “I should want to make them all my toys, to play with, and to break. You have a right, Helmar.” He thought of Pelar and his ball, of his brothers, almost blurred together now as memories frayed with time. “You have a right.”

Beyon whispered in her ear.

Mesema stirred against the silks, noticing his arm no longer cradled her head. Her legs were twisted together, instead of between his. No matter; she was hungry and tired and she wanted to dream about her mother's spiced lamb in a pot. She curled up, but Beyon would not stop whispering, gripping her shoulder tight and pulling her from her mother's longhouse.

“—can't keep him out. He is here—”

“What?” Through her eyelids she could sense the light of day. She didn't hear anyone else in the room. Her bladder felt heavy. She stirred some more, remembering the night past, feeling heat rise in her cheeks. Dirini had told her much of what to expect of men, but she hadn't expected Beyon. She had been advised that her first time would be unpleasant, but Beyon had been patient and considerate. She would not have guessed that of him when they had first met in the desert.

He continued to speak. She pulled silk over her nakedness as she listened. His voice sounded strained, as if part of him didn't want to talk any more. “—the Pattern Master. I can hear him talking to me—”

Something cold slithered in Mesema's stomach and she fell still, barely breathing. She didn't want to open her eyes.

“I won't make it to Sarmin, Zabrina.”

We should have gone yesterday. Last night.

“The Pattern Master is strong; I can feel him. Find Sarmin—I can tell they don't know about him—”

“But we were all going to fight together.” She could still taste the salt of his skin, feel the wetness between her legs where he had been inside her. “You're the emperor.”
Perhaps the father of my child.

“Not any more.” He released her shoulder. “In the secret ways, go straight until you reach the double bridge. Then climb the stairs, turn right and cross two more bridges. Use your dagger to open the door.”

“Listen. You said that your men wait in the desert, in the hidden spot where the zabrina flowers. We can go—”

“Repeat the path to Sarmin's room to me.”

She let a sob escape, then repeated his directions. “Straight to the double bridge, all the way up, right, two bridges. Use the dagger.”

“Good.” She felt his lips on her forehead, warm and soft. Alive. “I'm glad I met you, Mesema Windreader.”

Silence.

“Beyon?” She kept her eyes shut tight. “Your Majesty?”

Now she opened them, and watched the sunlight play on Beyon's half-carved face upon the ceiling. He had turned the lid again, opened it so that she could get out and leave him behind. “Beyon. Listen.
Listen.
”

She heard a liquid sound that did not belong in this place of stone and silk.

“
Beyon.
” She did not want to look, but she had to.

Beyon lay at the other end of the tomb, one hand covering the gash in his throat. Blood pulsed over his robes and soaked into the silk that lay across their marble bed. The ruby-hilted dagger dropped from his other hand. He tried to wave her off, but it was as if his arm had grown too heavy. As their eyes met, his lost their focus and grew dark: Carrier eyes. Dead eyes.

“Beyon!” Tears wet her cheeks. There was so much blood, more blood than had come from Jakar or Eldra. It ran through the valleys in the silk and pooled around her knees. Even knowing it was too late to save him, she put her hands to his throat, pressing down, trying to keep the blood from leaving him. The pattern spiralled around her skin, climbing to her elbows, purple, red and blue—

She fell into it.

A roar filled her ears, grand and terrifying, like the sound of a flood coming down the mountain.

The Tower— Govnan— Find another way— Kitchens and hot bread— It hurts too much, so much— I was pretty, I had a lover— No way in, continue digging, always— The Tower— Beyon is gone— Find another way— My little girl ran there, among the— So much blood— The horsegirl—

Mesema reached out for a way back to Beyon's tomb, to find some thread to pull herself from the river of voices, but the current took her, careless of her strength, dragging her under and through the darkness, passing her from eye to eye, body to body, seeing corridor, desert, river, alley, and church. She tossed through a cascade of lives, searching for a set of words or images she could put together into a pattern that made sense. And then she heard a cool, amused voice, rising above the incoherence to address her.

“You have lost control, visitor. With Beyon's sacrifice my power has become too much for you at last. Come to me now and show yourself.”

She drifted, gathering the bits of herself together as the images paraded past her eyes.

The speaker became angry. “You can no longer hide from me, Govnan. My Carriers will find a way into your Tower. They will tear it down from the inside.”

He is guessing! He does not know who I—

“Not Govnan, then?”

Mesema was shocked into silence, afraid to think lest the Master hear her.

“It matters not.” The Master affected boredom, but she sensed something wrong in him—something had not gone to his plan. She did not allow her mind to reflect on what that might be. “Your self will soon disappear within us. You will take your form and your place as the design requires.”

“No,” she said, surprising herself, “I do not belong in your pattern.”

“A girl!” The Master laughed.

“What did you mean, Beyon's sacrifice?” she asked. “How did you make Beyon climb in his tomb and kill himself?”

“I didn't. He did that because it had to happen, because the pattern required it.”

“But the pattern is yours.”

A pause. The Master's attention was briefly elsewhere. “I wanted a girl-mage, but she was taken from me. One more hides in the Tower. But you are not that one, I think.”

“I am not a mage.”

“Tell me, girl-not-a-mage, how do you plan to defy me?”

Talking with the Pattern Master allowed her to filter the other voices from her mind. Now she concentrated on finding her way out.
The hare's path
. So long ago, as she stood on the fence of her father's sheep-pen, the Hidden God had shown her the path through the Many. It began with an arc and two intersecting circles. The pattern's shapes, so terribly familiar to her eyes, could not be seen here, but she felt them brush against her mind like spiderwebs.

“I will defy you by living.” She felt her way along the strings, finding the form she sought. Like a path in a maze, it might not lead where she wished; she might have to search again, and again. But each one came with an image, the view from the Carrier who held it. She discarded all the unfamiliar scenes, hoping Carriers in a specific area were somehow linked.
Alley. Sewer… No. Corridor.
Yes. She felt out, hoping for two parallel lines. And then, quickly, as she would ride Tumble through the Hair Streams, knowing her way, gaining speed, she turned at a circle, nearly done, and directly through a diamond, sensing that Carrier's surprise, seeing the memories that rose in his mind, unbidden.
I had a son.
He was—
That man stood in the secret ways.
Yes
. And then she released the strings, disappearing into the web as the hare had hidden itself in the grass. This was the hardest part, letting go.
Believing.

She had the sensation of falling, and once again she looked up at Beyon's half-finished face set in the vaulted ceiling. She felt his blood against her back, cold and sticky.
How long have I been lost?
She wiggled her fingers.

“You have betrayed yourself,” said the Master, bringing back the conversation she had almost forgotten, “by speaking of our late, great emperor. I know where you are.” She felt him leave her, a rough, scraping sensation, like a knife withdrawing from a wound.

She jumped up and gathered a sheet around her nakedness. The markings still covered her skin from fingertips to elbows. Beyon lay before her, his skin grey, his head tilted back, and all around him glistened the pattern—half-moon, crescent, triangle, star, two lines, circle—all in shades of red, shimmering in the unstained silk and lighting the rubies of Sarmin's dagger. She grabbed the blade, found the bundle of food and drink, and stood over him. “Goodbye, Beyon.” A fierce memory of him, golden, vital, clutched her, but Beyon had gone beyond blood and broken flesh. Nothing held her to his remains.

She climbed over the side to where the pattern spread across the tiles and ran for the secret ways.

Sarmin felt it, the spilling of blood, the rushing loss of life, the death of his last brother. “Beyon!” he cried, rousing the assassin from his deathlike sleep.

“He is gone, then, the emperor.” Eyul's voice creaked. He did not open his eyes.

“My brother!” Sarmin tore at his hair, hit his forehead against the wall.

Eyul spoke again. “You are the emperor now. The Knife… evil. You must find the centre…” Eyul, near-dead, trailed off. He was as still as everything else in Sarmin's room.

“Do not speak to me of evil! I know what evil is!”
Where is Mesema? Is she hurt?
“My friend needs help—the empire needs help, and I am stuck in this room.”

Eyul didn't answer.

Grada is just one person.
The Master commands a multitude.
He could feel the pattern closing around him, suffocating him. It would not be long before the Master found him. With a groan he fled from the Master, from his tower room, from Eyul's pain and Beyon's death, from his failings and inabilities… He ran, and he found Grada.

Grada saw the vultures late on the sixth day of her journey: a distant spiralling of birds, black dots against the wideness of the sky. She watched them as she drew closer. So many. How many were dead, to summon such a host? The vultures circled and descended, and more flew in to take their place in the air.
Circle first, once, twice, then descend in a third loop.
A pattern.

The watchtowers of Migido came into view, black against the red eye of the setting sun. Grada walked on, her feet sore, her mouth dry, and an acid weight in her stomach.

No smoke.
Sarmin had joined her, though his mind darkened with grief. Who had died? He did not say.