The Emperors Knife (48 page)

“Impossible!” On the other side of the throne, Nessaket nearly jumped.

“I was assured of his death before I arrived here—and yet it appears you failed.”

“Govnan said—” Too late, Tuvaini realised his mistake.
Govnan.
Of course. The old man had protected his precious mage-born. Tuvaini spoke with bitterness. “He is most likely taking refuge at the Tower with the High Mage.”

“I think not.” The Pattern Master stood and paced to the edge of the dais. He was so like Beyon that Tuvaini caught his breath. “There is enough in the prince's old room to keep him there.”

Tuvaini found that ridiculous. He had spoken to the prince—he knew that the prince wanted nothing more than to leave that soft prison. But he remained silent.

Five Carriers entered the room and silently approached the throne. They always came in groups of five. They stood near Helmar, still saying nothing. It unnerved Tuvaini that they did not require speech to communicate. It made it difficult to spy; he felt crippled, robbed of a sense.

One of the Carriers handed Helmar a bundle the size of a loaf of bread. Helmar held it to his forehead in concentration. Then he threw it down and cursed in his Yrkman way, “Devil's hells! That's not the one.” Tuvaini felt a thrill of pleasure at the Master's frustration.

The Master kicked the bundle over to Tuvaini. “The assassin is dead. They say this belongs to you. You didn't happen to kill Eyul and take his Knife?”

“No.” Tuvaini unwrapped his gift. Inside the dirty linen lay his own dacarba, its bejewelled settings now crusted with blood.
Eyul
. He had been Tuvaini's faithful companion for many years, and despite his betrayal he still missed the man, his direct way of talking, his quiet observations. Now he would never see him again. “Where did you find this?” he asked.

“In Sarmin's room.” Helmar tapped his chin absently.

“Sarmin is dead.”
And nothing has changed.

“No.”

Tuvaini sheathed his dacarba, feeling a burst of excitement. His weapon felt good on his hip. Sarmin might be alive, and the Knife was missing; he didn't know why that made Helmar angry, but it was enough that it did. He glanced at Nessaket, who stared ahead, shaking. Helmar had not objected to her presence, but her behaviour now was strange. She would make it difficult for Tuvaini to decide what to do next.

I want to protect her—why do I want to protect her, even now?
Tuvaini's gaze flickered out over the assembled court: nobles, servants, soldiers, and slaves all bearing colourful marks, all of them eerily silent in their courtly poses. Several reclined stiffly on cushions, belying their relaxed positions. Others stood with goblets held to their mouths, though they never sipped their wine. One held, motionless, in the pose of a court dancer. Helmar had placed them all like dolls and he, like a child, played king before them.

All of a sudden, as if pulled by some hidden string, the Carriers turned as one to the ruined doors, a communal question in the tilt of their heads. The doors swung inwards.

Nessaket rose from her chair and stumbled forwards as Prince Sarmin entered the room, trailed by a yellow-haired woman.

Sarmin stopped just inside the throne room. It hadn't changed at all since his father's time, since before he'd been put in his tower. It was strange to think that nothing had changed, that courtiers sat on the same pillows he had jumped on as a child, that one of them might sip from the same dented goblet he'd dropped when he sat in his father's lap. Even his mother stood by the throne, just as she always had, with Tuvaini on the other side.

But the resemblance was only skin-deep. The courtiers all showed marks now, and the faces they turned to him were blank. No scheming or negotiation happened here, only obedience.

And his mother hadn't ever cried like that in Tahal's time. He wondered what had upset her so. He gave her a small bow.

The Pattern Master paced on the dais. He both looked and did not look like the old man Grada had killed. That had truly been Helmar; the ancient body he wore from his days trapped in the prison that became Sarmin's. He wore a new body now; perhaps the body of a relative, for he had the same hair, the same copper eyes. He was younger and stronger—had the Master sacrificed his own son or grandson to the Pattern?

He smiled now at Sarmin. “You've brought yourself, and the mage-girl, too. I thank you for sparing me the trouble.”

Carriers crowded behind them. Mesema clung to his side. Two moved forwards as one.

Helmar's eyes fell upon Mesema, and a cold rage rose within Sarmin. He spoke, trying to draw the man's attention. “You are like me, Helmar.”

That surprised the Pattern Master.

I must keep him talking, keep him distracted.

“How so?”

“We were both trapped in that tower. We were both lonely. Now we want things. We're greedy.”

“I don't need to want,” said the Pattern Master. “Everything already belongs to me.”

“Not me. Not her.” They had crossed half the distance now. Sarmin didn't reach for Eyul's Knife, not yet. “Tell me, Helmar, did you leave that room? Did you step out, or were you dragged?”

The Master's open mouth quivered, but no words came.

“Were you taken?” Sarmin asked, “ripped from it? Did you leave something there—some of you? Something precious? The thing that made you whole?”

The glow of rubies drew Sarmin's eyes to the dacarba at Tuvaini's hip. Tuvaini inclined his head. His eyes sent a message, but what message, Sarmin could not tell. He kept walking, Mesema quiet at his side.

“I will wear your body, and she will bear my child.” Helmar had gathered himself, but his voice lacked its old conviction. His eyes flicked over his captive audience. Tuvaini for his part turned to Helmar and frowned.
Ah, so you didn't expect him to make his own heir.
Tuvaini was his heir only until a better one came along. Sarmin knew what that felt like.

Sarmin had crossed three-quarters of the way from the doors to the throne. Mesema straightened her shoulders and let go of his arm, as they had planned. He'd felt her trembling: he knew how frightened she was, and his pride in her courage chased his own fear away as she stepped forwards, head held high. “I will bear your child, Master, if you let Sarmin go free.”

Helmar laughed. “This is not your father's longhouse, girl. We do not make deals with wombs and weapons. I am the emperor, and the Master of this land. I will have both of you as I desire.”

“I am marked,” Mesema said, showing him her arms. “Perhaps you don't want me.”

“You'll do.” He was easy now, relaxing into his game.

He can't sense Beyon's child.
Helmar was not all-powerful. Sarmin stepped forwards, using Mesema's body as cover as he put a hand on the hilt of Eyul's Knife. Tuvaini took a step forwards and Sarmin froze, but the vizier did not betray him. Instead he turned his head away, affecting the Master's boredom.

An ally, then.
That gave Sarmin strength. Mesema took another step, and Sarmin followed behind her. As she dropped into an obeisance, Sarmin gripped the Knife-hilt harder and stepped around her. Someone whispered to him, a familiar, boyish voice: “Sarmin, we'll show you where his heart lies.”

At last Helmar turned away from his audience and focused on Sarmin, a curious expression on his face. “What—?”

At that moment Tuvaini drew his dacarba and plunged it hilt-deep between Helmar's shoulders. Sarmin's mother screamed and ran from the dais.

Sarmin felt the Carriers behind him surge forwards, reaching for him, as the Master turned and wrapped a hand around Tuvaini's neck. Shapes traced themselves along the vizier's cheeks and neck, flashing in jewelled shades of blue and red, and then faded. Both men dropped to their knees. Tuvaini was limp, Helmar wheezing—then Helmar collapsed.

The Carriers stopped as one. Sarmin felt their fingers slip from his shoulders and as he edged away from them, Tuvaini sat up and examined his hands.
No, not Tuvaini. Tuvaini is dead.
The vizier's eyes turned to him, and his face looked stronger and more handsome than before. “You cannot kill me. I am Carried.”

The Pattern Master got up and looked after Nessaket. Then he looked at Mesema, still prone on the floor. “This one is younger.” He glanced at his own dead body. “But which body do I want? Shall I keep this one?” He laid a hand on Tuvaini's robes. “It's healthier than yours, Prince. But you are prettier.”

Mesema stood quickly and moved in front of Sarmin again, hiding the Knife. He loved her then more than ever. She moved with sure, quick steps, turning one way then the other, holding the Pattern Master's eye, shielding the Knife. Sarmin caught an edge of her thoughts—
the hare, the hare, follow the hare's path
—and it puzzled him.

“Does that please you, Helmar?” he asked, “to play dress-up with others' bodies? To lose your way in strangers' flesh?”

“It pleases me to use and discard Cerani as they used and discarded me.”

Such a narrow view.
Again Sarmin felt disappointment in Helmar's lack of imagination. “You'll be alone once we're all dead.”

“I have always been alone.”

Sarmin blinked. He heard the same sad note that had sounded for Eyul, for all the men the empire had used and broken and cast aside. Mesema didn't hear it; she rushed forwards, distracting the Master, the hare still in her mind—he glimpsed an image of it racing through the pattern in wind-blown grass. Mesema knelt before Helmar and clung to his knees. “Oh please, Master,
please
!” she shouted. A sharp terror ran through Sarmin: she was touching Helmar, skin to skin, and the Master could pass into her body if he wished it. She would die, and Beyon's child with her.

But the Master's face stretched in disgust and he kicked her away, and in that moment Sarmin set pity aside and finally leaped forwards with Eyul's Knife. The whispers guided him as promised, their words shaping his muscles, driving the blade. “Raise your arm. Aim to the left. Angle it up. Just so.
Strike
!” And the dagger plunged into Helmar's chest with a flash of light. Sarmin's arm vibrated, a buzzing that shook his entire body, took his legs from under him and set his teeth to chattering. Tuvaini's corpse fell backwards against the throne, but they remained linked, the Knife in Tuvaini's chest and Sarmin's hand on the Knife. Sarmin could hear Mesema talking, shouting, far away, yet he was unable to move. The light flowed into him, and with it voices, images, desires, regrets, memories—
lives
. Every life Helmar had taken flowed into Sarmin, filling his mind with so much pain and noise that he thrashed on the dais, screaming. And still the Knife held Helmar, anchoring him to Tuvaini's dying flesh.

Darkness.

Sarmin floated, watching the thin, wasted prince convulse on the dais, and the pretty horsewoman kneel over him. Tuvaini was dead, the Knife still in his heart. The Carriers had fallen like Settu pieces after the Push, no motion left in them. He floated over the Cerani in their throne room: a useless empire for a useless people. The chatter rose in his mind like a river after the rains, and in the midst of it all, a single voice found him. “Sarmin.” His father's voice. The Old Emperor, Tahal.

“Prince Sarmin is only within me. I am the Many.”

“You are Sarmin.”

That did not feel right, but he listened to the old man anyway.

“These lives are not yours. You must put them back.”

“I am the Many. These lives belong to Us. With them we can level this city, form an ocean, travel to the stars.”

“What for, Sarmin? What for? Below you lies the empire—my empire. You were saved for this moment. You must do the right thing.”

“The empire is naught but blood and cruelty, sacrifice and pain. An ocean is good. A mountain is good.”

“Think of all who will die.”

“They will join Us.”

“And the horsegirl?”

He looked down at the blonde woman and searched the Many for her name. He found the One who knew it and held that life in his mind as he spoke. “Mesema.” And then he saw that the mouth of the young prince moved, and the woman gave a cry of joy and kissed his brow.

“You have put yourself back. Now for the others.”

Put them back. A magic of many parts. A puzzle of many pieces.

He could feel her lips and arms, soft, nice. He remembered another woman, too. Her name was Grada. He reached out to where she trekked through the desert on camelback, the sun hot on her back, her mouth dry with thirst.

“Grada.”

“My Prince!”

“The Master is dead.”

Grada said nothing, only smiled in her mind and quickened her camel's pace. The other voices began to stir. The lives, the disembodied souls that he held within him began to pull apart, distinguish themselves against the Whole. The Many began to disintegrate.

He touched against them, found their pattern-places. He matched mind to body and built them again. He could not replace them all; some had been too long apart and were too broken, but he mended hundreds—a child's game of fitting shapes to holes. The men and women in the throne room stood and looked at one another in wonder. He reached out beyond that room, to the city, and then beyond to the desert, rivers and ocean. He mended thousands. Citizens returned to themselves throughout the empire. The joy rose from them and made his heart sing.

When he was finished, a piece of the Many remained in him: the ones Helmar had killed. Their lives' power persisted, their memories and regrets confused and muddled together.

“I'm sorry,” he said to them. “I can't do anything for you.” They did not hear him; they were dead. Helmar had stolen their lives, and now Sarmin held only an echo of what they had been. He kept their ghosts, the book of their lives written out beneath his skin, but he promised to use them wisely. They deserved no less.