Tower & Knife 03 - The Tower Broken (25 page)

‘The sacrifice,’ said Dinar.

Mylo lay naked upon a great golden hand. His head rested in the crook of the middle finger and the wide palm cupped his hips. His feet hung at odd angles over the edge where the broad wrist rose from the floor. Sarmin took that in quickly and made a point of not looking at what lay between those three points. Blood dripped from the hollow of the thumb onto the tiles, and Sarmin moved his feet away, his eyes taking in cuts, stripped muscle and twisted fingers before he could turn his head to meet Mylo’s gaze.

Mylo looked back at him, his eyes calm.

‘Where is Adam?’ asked Sarmin.

Mylo looked at Dinar before he spoke. ‘Mogyrk will bring light to all of Nooria,’ he said.

At this Dinar made a sound of impatience and picked up a hammer. Mylo swallowed, but kept on, ‘There will be a rebirth. After the destruction—’

The high priest brought the hammer down on Mylo’s foot but the man did not scream. He tensed, then turned his head
to the side to allow thin yellow vomit to flow from his mouth. After several moments had passed he said, ‘After the destruction, we will go into the light.’

Sarmin closed his eyes turned away, his own mouth filling with bile. ‘You are right – he will tell us nothing,’ he said. ‘There is no point in continuing to torture him.’

Dinar led him into the hallway. ‘There is always a point to torture, Magnificence. These brave ones who last the longest – they come closest to Herzu before they die. Some even gain His favour. To offer two such men to the God in one month – this is a blessing.’ When Sarmin did not reply, he pressed him, saying, ‘When may I expect the other?’

Sarmin did not bother searching for Dinar’s features in the darkness. By ‘the other’ he meant Banreh. He swallowed the spittle that had collected in his mouth. ‘I have told you: when I deem it time.’

‘It will soon be time, I expect,’ Dinar said.

Sarmin wondered what he meant, but an emperor never asked such questions. He must never appear to lack knowledge. ‘High priest,’ he said, by way of goodbye.

But Dinar called after him, ‘Magnificence!’ and he turned as the darkness shifted, revealing the vague, wide form of a man. ‘I would have found it preferable to kill the Mogyrks – to root them out of their hidden churches and hovels and sacrifice them all to Herzu.’

Sarmin focused on where he thought the high priest’s eyes might be. ‘I made the decision to call their worship legal.’ As he was the emperor, that meant it was the correct decision. He turned away and left Dinar in the shadows. Herzu had been the patron god of the palace for more than a century, their priests gathering power and influence, their hands stained with
blood and their ears filled with screams. He found it difficult to believe no emperor had ever questioned their presence at court, or what benefits the empire had of such a cruel god.

Sarmin met his guards in the main temple. Anxious to leave Herzu’s domain, he led them swiftly out into the corridor and through the entryway into the Great Hall. There on the floor sat the scholar Rahim, parchments spread around him. He dipped a quill into a pot of ink and looked upwards at the dome, where men on ladders were still working on the repairs. As Sarmin drew close he saw drawings of the beams that supported the ceiling.

When Rahim recognised the emperor he leapt to his feet, only to fall immediately to the floor again and prostrate himself, nearly knocking over his inkpot. ‘Your Majesty—’

‘Rahim. What are you doing here?’

‘Your Majesty, with the plaster and mosaics having fallen from the dome, it is an excellent time for me to study its construction. This dome and the one in the throne room are so wide and tall that they are true architectural wonders. It is not in my skill to build such things and so I thought I would come and take notes.’

‘How interesting.’ Sarmin had never wondered about the construction of the palace before. He had always lived in it, and so for him it had always just been here. Now he looked at the broken staircase, the doors leading off into various wings, and he realised that the palace could have been built in an entirely different way – maybe even several different ways. ‘Are there other scholars in the palace, Rahim?’

‘Yes, Magnificence – many.’

The presence of other men of learning caught Sarmin’s imagination. ‘How many, Rahim? What do they study?’

‘There are fifty of us, Magnificence, and our research encompasses the heaven and the earth. The movement of the heavens is as of much interest as the making of the human form. But lately we have been particularly interested in the construction of machines.’

‘I would like to see one of these machines.’

Rahim bobbed his head. ‘Of course, Magnificence.’ He frowned, and then added, ‘But as yet they exist only on parchment, Your Majesty.’

Of course. They would need workmen and materials and imperial permission to make any such works. Had his brother Beyon ever met with the scholars? ‘Send them to me,’ he ordered, and when Rahim had stammered his agreement, Sarmin smiled kindly on him and left him to his work.

The library was to be found in a forgotten corner of the palace. It was dusty, and filled with cobwebs. There were not as many volumes here as he had hoped. Perhaps over the years they had been borrowed or sent to scribes for copying and never been returned. He found several empty spaces. As for histories, he could find only two: one a recounting of Uthman’s founding and the other a detailed log of his father Tahal’s legal proclamations. He looked through it, curious about his father’s relationship with the temple of Herzu, but nothing was mentioned about that. He put it down and continued to search. He found nothing about Satreth or the Yrkman incursions. He was still wondering what Ashanagur had meant by
Mogyrk blinds the Tower
. Was it something the Yrkmen had done in the past, or something the Storm was doing now?

His brother Beyon had obviously been no scholar – judging by the state of this room it had been used seldom in the last twenty years; he doubted it had ever been guarded. So the
curious must have taken the books and scrolls that caught their interest and carried them off to the far corners of the palace to read in the comfort of their private chambers, then never returned them. The palace was large and whole wings that had once been inhabited now lay empty. Setting slaves to search every room for missing books was a demanding task, especially considering he did not have enough people even to meet the palace’s basic needs.

Sarmin tapped his fingers on a shelf and looked out at the sun, which had moved from early morning to late morning. Duke Didryk waited on him in the throne room.

‘Come,’ he said to Ne-Seth, but as he turned towards the door, a gilt-edged tome caught his eye. He picked it up and blew dust from the cover.
The Gods of Cerana
. He leafed through it. The gods painted upon the ceiling of his tower room had kept him company for so many years: Ghesh, walking between the vast spaces between the stars; Keleb, clutching His books of law; Mirra, watering a pomegranate tree, rendered in tiny sweeps of paint; Torlos, cutting down his enemies in bold, thick strokes. Herzu had been one of many looking down upon his bed, but here in the palace, he overpowered them all.

Mylo’s screams still made Sarmin feel sick from shame. Death in itself was not the worst; compared to his short time on earth a man’s time in heaven was endless, and a knife only brought it closer. But Herzu’s ways did not reflect the empire Sarmin wanted to shape, the man Sarmin wished to be. He should not have allowed it.

But what would the courtiers say – what would the army say – if they thought him soft?

With the book in his hand and followed by his sword-sons he walked to the throne room.

Didryk sat on the bottom step of the dais, blinking away his fatigue. His first day marking the palace workers was halfway done, and his second night in a high palace bed awaited him at the end of it, though he dreaded closing his eyes. His first night among those scented silks had brought him no sleep. Visions of his own burned city alongside a ruined Nooria kept him awake. In the dreams it was his own hand that sent the innocents screaming, his own hand that pulled down the stones of every building, and he could not blame Yrkmir or Cerana for the horror. He awakened with his heart pounding, unable to breathe.

In the cold light of the morning he did not know if he could follow through with his plan, but it was proceeding, whether he wanted it or not.

He had been prepared to manipulate the emperor, to nudge him towards his own goals – he had been raised in the court of the Iron Duke, taught from an early age that it was always better to let a man believe an idea his own. But it had not been necessary here: the emperor had taken all the clues and put them together in a fortunate way. The austeres responsible for the market attacks had helped his cause by showing the emperor how useful the pattern could be when it came to Yrkmir.

So now they were proceeding with the emperor’s plan of marking every person in the palace. He had taught the Cerani mage Farid how to do a simple ward against harm – but each time Didryk formed one himself he added a tiny hook, a trick the newer pattern-worker was too inexperienced to recognise, that connected each person to himself. The power in each connection was so bright it surprised him. Nooria, so close to the Scar, brimmed with Mogyrk’s power – and yet the Cerani were unbelievers.

With the god’s strength in his fingers it would be a simple thing to turn these men and women to his will – but once again he wondered if he could bring himself to do it, to cause harm to the palace that had offered such an unexpected welcome. He did not need to remind himself that Banreh had not received the same generosity. The chief’s pain ground against his mind at all times, flowing through the mark on his wrist. He had almost grown accustomed to it.

Farid had been sent to the Tower, not far from the palace, to mark the mages there; but Azeem had politely insisted Didryk remain in the throne room to do his work. Though he had spoken the words of alliance, he was not trusted away from the view of the emperor and his sword-sons; he had not been given the freedom to draw patterns throughout the palace. Considering his true motives, Didryk thought the grand vizier wise – though not wise enough. Not one of the men other than Farid could even identify a pattern-symbol, and Farid had been able to say only that the mark was a ward. Sarmin had examined it – though Didryk had been able to tell it meant nothing to him – and ordered the marking of his own Blue Shield soldiers.

The throne room held only a few courtiers, standing in small groups and whispering. Azeem had told him that on a
normal day there would be a few dozen men sitting beneath the emperor, or positioned on the cushions under the dome, but the current unrest had them hiding in their manses or even fleeing the city. Those who remained were either battle-hardened or foolish, or too close to death to worry about the timing of its arrival, and it was these men who huddled in small groups and talked in low voices, often sending dark looks his way. Didryk sat on a cushion on the lowest step of the dais, and anyone who came to be marked sat on another cushion, directly opposite and slightly lower. It made it easy to reach foreheads, that was certain, but for much of the time he had his back to the emperor and his sword-sons and it made his neck itch.

Not that he would have been able to read the man’s face. His grandfather, Malast Anteydies Griffon, the Iron Duke, had kept his face still as stone when sitting at court, and Emperor Sarmin was the same. In his private apartments Didryk had seen flashes of concern or curiosity cross his face, but here in public, sitting on the great Petal Throne, he neither moved nor spoke.

The grand vizier remained standing, his parchments before him, ticking off the names of every person marked by Didryk’s design. He spoke for the emperor, each greeting as crisp and clear as the last, commanding the workers to rise, to move forwards, to accept the marks. From time to time he reassured the hesitant. The work of the Pattern Master Helmar was their chief concern; they remembered the Many and wanted no part of it. Didryk had explained to Azeem that such a thing was impossible for him to achieve; the kind of pattern built by Helmar was far beyond his ability, and that was true. He would be using a simpler, rougher force against them.

A young girl approached them now, and with surprise he noticed her red hair and deep blue eyes. She was Fryth – and as she drew closer, her feet hesitating over the runner, Didryk realised she was also blind.

At that same moment the emperor spoke for the first time, his voice kind, almost fatherly. ‘Just a few more steps, Rushes, and you will feel a cushion with your toes.’

For this girl there would be no obeisance, Didryk realised. He watched her with interest.

Rushes smiled, stepped forwards and explored the floor in front of her with one small slippered foot.

‘Just one step more.’ Azeem left his parchments to take the girl’s elbow and helped her to sit. Didryk wondered who this young woman was, that she was treated with such consideration. Surely she could not be one of the Fryth slaves Adam had mentioned?

‘Thank you,’ he said to the vizier once the girl was settled, and their eyes met over her bowed head.

‘Of course,’ said Azeem, straightening. He walked back to his parchments and picked up his quill. ‘Rushes, also Rufynkarojna, nurse to the emperor’s own brother,’ he intoned. There was a pause, during which Didryk could hear the emperor’s robes rustling. ‘This man is of Fryth,’ Azeem said to her. ‘You need not fear him. It will not hurt when he marks you, and you will not become one of the Many. This is done for your protection.’

‘I am not afraid,’ she said to Azeem in Cerani, and then to him, in heavily accented Frythian, she repeated, ‘I am not afraid.’

Hearing his own language brought tears to his eyes. He knew so very few Fryth still alive. ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘Lift your head, child.’

As she did so he laid a finger upon her forehead – then pulled it back with a hiss as he recognised the hand that had blinded her. ‘You were with Adam,’ he said, still speaking Frythian.