Tower & Knife 03 - The Tower Broken (10 page)

‘Yes, Your Majesty,’ she said. They had reached the door to his halls and he drew Tuvaini’s dacarba from his belt to work the lock. When it clicked open, he turned back to her, to say goodbye, to hear her voice one last time, to remember that bond that had once existed between them – but she had already shuttered her lantern and slipped away into the dark.

Farid sat against the wall, watching the floor in the flickering candlelight. It had taken him a few days – he thought it was days – to realise the stains were blood, then another to begin to see shapes in the light and dark of them. He watched the stains as a child watches clouds. That one looked like a mango; that one, a monkey. And beneath them, the whorls and eyes of the wood itself, drawing him in.

It kept him from looking at the unfinished pattern scratched into the wall. That pattern left him wanting more, like a song with no ending or the touch of an apple’s skin against his teeth. He had traced its shapes for many hours, followed its lines to their abrupt ends, and yet he had no sense of what it was supposed to contain. He had decided to ignore it. Adam had left him that puzzle, and to finish it would only please the austere.

He was a Cerani fruit-seller. His father would have come up the river already, his boat full of mangoes and lemons. He would already have heard of what happened in the marketplace. He probably thought Farid dead.

There was a shuffling outside the door, and then a burst of sunlight that made him squint. So it was day; he had guessed night because the baby next door had gone quiet.

Adam squatted at the threshold, watching him, and it struck
Farid that the man was always near to the ground, like a cat preparing to strike. Adam balanced his elbows on his knees and laced his fingers together. Farid noticed dark shadows under his eyes. ‘You have been calling water to yourself,’ he said.

‘I had to. If I didn’t, I would die.’

‘How did it feel?’

Farid did not reply. He did not want Adam to know how good it felt. He listened, trying to gauge how many men might be guarding the hallway.

‘I showed you the pattern only once, but you built it again, with nothing but your fingers.’ Adam looked at the scratches on the wall. ‘Most of my students take weeks to memorise that pattern, and they are all chosen for their excellent recall.’

‘I’m not your student.’

‘No, no you are not.’ Adam sighed and looked at someone in the hallway, who handed him a platter of bread and cheese. ‘I think you must be hungry.’ He put the food down on the floor. ‘Though the end is near, we must take care of ourselves.’

‘The end?’

‘Mogyrk comes to claim all of us, Farid. I have come nearer to the place where He died so that I may guide souls to His paradise.’

‘You mean to kill people.’

‘You do not understand. Here, eat.’ As Farid took a reluctant bite Adam said, ‘Everyone here will die no matter what I do. The Scar waits to the east and the Storm is coming. But it is foretold: Mogyrk will first shed light upon Nooria.’ He watched Farid eat. ‘You do not understand that, nor, does it appear, do my superiors.’

Farid pushed his plate aside. ‘Why do you hold me prisoner here?’

‘You can leave any time you wish. I want only for you to use what you have learned.’

‘By doing what? What will you make me do before I can leave?’

‘You don’t understand.’ Adam unfolded himself, standing to cast a shadow over the stains on the floor and the dirty pallet, and the shadows around his eyes deepened. ‘You
will
help me, but first you need to escape.’

Mesema descended a dark staircase in the Ways, one hand on the wall to steady her, the other clutching her lantern. In the distance she saw two other lights, both above her, their owners set to different missions. If they did see her own descending flame, they did not care to investigate. By long tradition, one did not indulge curiosity in this dark place. This she had learned from the Old Wives. Those who travelled the bridges and stairs and passed through the hidden doors in the Ways respected the secrets of others.

The cold pressed against the bottoms of her feet, which were protected only by her dainty sandals. So far from the light and heat of the desert the air was chill, and a slow drip sounded against the stone. These wet and creeping fingers did not belong to the wide, shallow Blessing. The lifeblood that ran down the walls of the Ways like tears did not come from the river; this water came from a deeper and more secret source. She found it comforting.

Mesema reached the door to the dungeon and used the simple hook-twist lock, relieved to find the bar had not been dropped against her. Until recently there had been no prisoners to keep inside – there had been nothing to guard. She stepped through, listening. Someone cleared his throat, and
she heard conversation – the guards talking amongst themselves. She covered her immodest top with a scarf, for it was not Felting custom to dress so, and eased around the corner. Six cells, three on each side, stood empty. She had heard they all were full when the Fryth prisoners had arrived and she tried to imagine how many people that had been, trapped here under the ground. It had been wrong, all of it had been wrong, but Sarmin could not say so; he could not admit any fault before the court.
Sometimes I need to say the truth
, he had said to her. But the greatest truths would remain forever hidden, eating away at the core of him.

Nothing had changed since the rebellion, not truly. Sarmin’s
Code for the Moral Treatment of Royal Slaves
lay unfinished upon Azeem’s table; the courtiers could not agree upon the merest detail. The fighting continued. The god’s wound continued to bleed into the desert while austeres cast patterns in the city. And now Banreh was here, the worst place he could be, for this was the place where they would kill him.

Five cells further down she found him. He stood against the stones at the back of the small space, his arms crossed over his chest. She gripped the iron bars. She had not thought of what to say; she had only wanted to see him, to find out his purpose in returning to her, but now that she stood before him found her words missing.

He pushed away from the wall. ‘Your Majesty.’

Something had changed. Banreh had been lame since Mesema was just a girl. It was part of who he was. Without his shattered leg, he never would have become her father’s voice-and-hands. He had used his lameness to persuade Mesema to marry Sarmin, to convince her that something that looked like a tragedy could be a defining event. Now he moved with ease.

‘Your leg,’ she said in her own language.

‘I still have my limp.’ When she continued to stare he said, ‘The pattern has many uses.’ In all this he employed the respectful tone, one used by two equals who did not know one another. ‘The duke is a better bonesetter than a killer.’

She matched his tone, though it brought a tear to her eye. ‘And yet the two of you killed those White Hats as they lay sleeping.’

He did not shrink from her gaze. ‘Yes. As Marke Kavic died in
his
sleep.’

‘Are you Mogyrk now then?’

‘No.’

‘So why?’ She needed to understand his reasons. He had brought her to Cerana and then betrayed it. One or the other, she could accept, but not both things together.

He lifted his shoulders. ‘To show what we were capable of. For revenge. A play for the land and the iron it holds. Take your pick.’

There was something he was not telling her. She looked around his bare cell. There were no parchments, no ink, no quills. He seemed naked without them, and without his pain. ‘I learned to read,’ she said, ‘Sarmin taught me.’ She had meant to write a letter to him in Fryth, to make him proud of her.

He looked at her as if she were mad. ‘Mesema – listen. Did the Felting slaves arrive in Nooria?’

‘There were no Felting slaves.’

His green eyes narrowed, gauging her truthfulness, and anger flashed within her that he would think her a liar for even a moment.

‘There were,’ he said.

‘No.’ For generations the people of the Grass had been exempt
from the empire’s tribute. Each chief promised to fight when called upon, which ensured no Felting parent ever sacrificed a child to the Cerani nobles.

Banreh stepped closer, and she watched the lines of his face as he spoke. He had always been handsome, even when his features were drawn with pain. ‘Arigu tells me they had converted to Mogyrk, that they had rebelled, but I know he just wanted them. Just as he waged his war after the emperor told him to turn back. This is a man who takes what he wants and afterwards provides a reason. You remember – he claimed you for Sarmin, though Beyon did not know.’

‘He lied to me,’ she admitted.

‘You see.’ Banreh now stood so close that when he wrapped his hands around the iron, inches from her own, the warmth from his body washed over her. He switched to the intimate tone. ‘I knew the Felt would never be free unless I showed both empires what we can do.’

‘You think you have earned freedom? Every day the court asks Sarmin to invade the grass, to punish our people, to put them in chains for a hundred years – because of what you did.’

‘That is why I am here.’

He was always calm. In the past it had given her comfort; now she wanted to hit him. Instead, she reached out towards his vest, grabbed a leather tie and gave it a sharp tug. ‘You always were a fool, Banreh.’ She laid her cheek against the cold, hard iron.

‘Yes.’ And with that he leaned forwards and pressed his lips against hers. He smelled like grass and sunshine and outside spaces and she lingered against him, taking it in. ‘I should never have brought you to this place,’ he whispered. ‘We should have had grass-children.’

With a jolt she remembered herself and let go the bars, putting a hand to her mouth. The guard station had gone quiet. ‘You cannot!’ she hissed, looking down the dark corridor. ‘They will kill you.’

He touched her cheek with a callused finger. ‘Not yet. They need Arigu.’

‘I cannot speak to you if you insist upon this foolishness.’ She backed away. She did not think it would be long before the guard returned.

He let go the bars and backed away into his cell. ‘Look for the slaves,’ he said. ‘You will find them. Then you’ll know.’

‘I will.’ Her lips still felt warm from his touch. She turned from him and walked towards the Ways, but then thought of another question and turned back. ‘Will the Fryth duke truly help us?’

He stood mostly in the shadows now, the edges of his curls lit with gold in the light of her lantern, but then he shifted and she saw his eyes. Always they had reminded her of springtime. ‘Yes. He will.’

She heard footsteps approaching and covered her lantern. She felt her way along the cells, moving quietly, but when the guard turned the corner and light spilled along the corridor she broke into a run, her sandals slapping against the stone.

‘Hey!’ the guard called out.

She whipped around the corner, hand on the stone, and pulled at the hook-twist for the door.
Hurry, hurry
. The guard’s boots sounded against the floor but he was not as fast as she, even in her dainty sandals. She won through and ran halfway up the wet stairs before covering her lantern. She pressed her back against the wall.

The guard opened the door and looked into the Ways, holding
his lantern aloft, but the darkness proved impenetrable. He craned his head towards where she hid and she held her breath as he stood listening. Surely he knew she was close by; it was only his laziness that prevented him climbing the stairs. His prisoner had not escaped; that was his main concern, and at last he grunted and retreated into the dungeon. She heard the bar fall on the other side of the door. That path was now closed to her.

She let out a breath, wondering what Sarmin would have said if the guard had caught her.

The Old Wives in the women’s wing gossiped that Nessaket had kept many lovers over the years, but Mesema didn’t see how that could be possible. There were rules for where a royal woman could go and with whom; for coming within the sight of a man, for speaking with him, and for touches both accidental and purposeful. While she knew a man’s punishment was death in almost all cases, she did not know what consequences a woman might face.

She let her lantern shine over the steps and began her long climb. She would have to speak with many men, census-takers and taxmen and money-counters, for one of them would surely know about an influx of slaves from the north. One of them would have collected a portion of a sale, written down a name or noted the addition of slaves to an important household. She hoped it was so; she did not want to discover that Banreh had lied to her. He had been a traitor, but let him not be a traitor to her.

Govnan lowered himself down the last step and faced the tower wall, taking a moment to catch his breath. At some point in the last month going down had become harder than going up. He placed his lantern behind him on a stair; it irked him, even now, that he required such a thing to light the dark. But he had lost Ashanagur that day in Sarmin’s tower, when Sarmin had seen him and his elemental as nothing more than two interlocking patterns and pulled them apart. Though he was old, some experiences were new to him – the sensation of cold, the frustration of conjuring flame like a novice, the touch of a lantern’s handle. The shock at seeing the crack in front of him.

It had grown since he first saw it two weeks before. Then, it had been about three hairs wide, looking as if someone might have drawn it there, and he had hoped that was the case. But now it had begun to yawn, showing teeth of crumbling stone, its throat a great rent in the Tower wall. He rubbed his finger along its rough edges. He knew an old building could crack; the rock-sworn always had fixed the foundations of old tombs and palace outbuildings. But the Tower had been created with the magic of Meksha herself and blessed by Her, and it had always been impermeable to time and weather. Until now.

Though the light was poor he could see this was not the
same kind of damage that had been done to Beyon’s tomb; that also had begun as a crack, but it had spread out into …
nothing
. That had been without colour or form, a blankness that drew the eye and demanded payment. It had been the result of Helmar’s work and the death of the Mogyrk god, and it had not yet ended; more wounds were growing. The one formed in Migido drew ever closer, called by the use of the pattern in the marketplace attack, and the place where the Mogyrk god had died loomed large in the east.