The Emperors Knife (46 page)

There should always be smoke, for cooking, for firing clay, for all the things a town needs. The shadows of Migido reached towards her, but no smoke rose from its chimneys, no lights shone from the windows. There were no beggars, no children, no dogs. Those were the outer layers of any town…

Grada reached the first house. It was dark, the door ajar.

“Hello?” Her voice sounded thin.

Don't go in.
Her thought, and Sarmin's.

She walked on, along the deserted street. A soft wind rustled the leaves of fig trees as she passed. Her feet shuffled in the sand that rippled here and there over the cobbles.

The twilight thickened. The heat of the day ran from her as the sun's glow died in the west.

Silence.

“You should go around,” Sarmin said.
No more pain, I can't—

“I don't want to see.” The horror of it crawled on Grada's cooling skin. She didn't want to see what the vultures were feasting upon, but she had to.

She moved towards the main square, the rough stone catching at her robes as she edged along the side of a building.

“I came through Migido when I was a little girl—my mother and I were on our way to Nooria. I remember a festival, and dancing. An old lady was kind to me.” She approached the building's corner slowly, one hand brushing over the stonework.

“You should go around…” Sarmin wavered. They both treasured kindnesses. They both held a store of such precious moments, and returned to them, time and again.
Please, you should go around
.

“I—” Grada spoke out loud, not meaning to, and a dark explosion burst before her in a great rushing and screeching. Grada screamed too—

Vultures. They are just vultures.

Somewhere in his distant room, Sarmin had shouted in terror.

Grada stepped around the corner, and more vultures launched themselves skywards, squawking their annoyance. They would return at first light.

The gloom hid all detail. Grada could see the town square, clear of stalls. One camel pulled at the tether holding him to a post, but no people. It looked for a moment as though a caravan had been unloaded with the sacks laid carelessly here and there.

“No.” Sarmin took it in through her eyes, and his dread and grief fell on her so hard that her legs sagged beneath her. She felt him try to turn away. “There is—” His voice broke. “There is a pattern to it.”

And Grada saw it: the pattern to the bodies. The vultures had disturbed it a little, leaving a spill of entrails here, an arm yanked out there. A small child had been dragged from her position, and half a baby had been left in the open, where the birds had been clustered.

Half a baby?
She felt Sarmin choking; he had seen death only twice before now. Once it had been at a distance, and the other had been a Carrier-dream.

All of a sudden the stench hit Grada, and she bent double, retching. It was as if she'd forgotten to breathe before now.

So many?

She wiped her mouth and straightened, looking around. She couldn't leave them and she feared to walk among them.

“Why?” she asked aloud. Twice a hundred corpses lay before her, arranged in a tiled pattern of square and triangle that spread out to form a circle, a mandala, like a stylised flower from a mosaic.

“The Grand Pattern needed it.” Across a hundred miles she could feel the tears roll down his face.

“I don't understand!”

Sarmin showed her the Pattern Master's design, how it pierced the world, how it spanned years and miles.

“It needs to be anchored.” His voice was slow now, like a litany. “The pattern needs to be anchored in the world if it is to stand; for it to endure things must be done, acts undertaken, moments that must fall just so. The patterns on the Carriers' skin are part of it, and so is this.

“And there is more.” Other deaths, other patterns on sand, on grass, in blood. Even Sarmin's brothers, the last one falling just today—the source of his great sadness—all to anchor the Grand Pattern, all to give it foundation. All so a lost prince could return in triumph.

Sarmin's anger rose, and the hairs on Grada's neck stood on end. She felt it grow, a quiet storm at first, within him, within her, and the beating of her heart became a drum, a pounding on the walls of her chest.

“Oh
Helmar
!” She backed away from the square, a snarl on her lips. “Oh Helmar.”

This cannot stand.
Her thought, and Sarmin's.

“How can it be stopped?”

“A magic of many parts.”

“Tell me,” Grada said, as she turned and fled from the square.

She reached the road and began her trek through the encroaching sands, circling around the dead town. “Tell me, Sarmin.”

“A magic of many parts,” he repeated, and his thoughts filled her, golden and complex. “Blood against blood. I've been gathering the pieces, and you've shown me nearly everything I need.”

“How can—? It isn't possible.”

“I will try—and you, Grada, you must find the Mogyrk church.” He sent images, vague directions based on what others had told him. “That is the source of his power. I need to see it.”

“Then I shall go.” A new determination rose within her and she returned to the town. She made her way to the camel. The memories she carried would show her how to ride it.

Sarmin listened: there it was again, a scraping on the other side of the secret door. He remembered when he heard the noise for the first time, so many weeks ago, when Tuvaini came through, bringing with him the promise and horror of the outside world. Then Beyon came. He felt Beyon's loss as a physical pain. He squeezed shut his eyes and gritted his teeth.

And then Mesema.
And what happened to Mesema?
The idea that she might be somewhere in the palace, afraid and alone, drove him close to madness. He was stuck here, and she…

He stood and passed Eyul's crumpled form on the bed. He'd put some wine into the man's mouth a little while ago, but he wasn't sure if it had been swallowed. He crossed the soft carpet to the hidden door and tapped, as a servant might.

“Hello? Is someone there?” He thought it safe to speak; an assassin wouldn't be fumbling with the switch.

Someone whispered, and he put his ear against the stone.

“Sarmin! It's me!”

Joy bloomed in him. “Mesema!”
My bride
! “There's a catch—Tuvaini told me once. You have to put a dagger in it, or a dacarba, right up to the hilt.”

“I have your knife.” After a minute something clicked and the wall swung wide. It amazed Sarmin, every time. Mesema ran in, looking wild as a legend, with a silken sheet wrapped around her, her hair hanging in tangles, and blood streaked across her cheeks. She held his dacarba in her right hand.

“Beyon's dead.”

“I know.”

“He took his own life to keep from joining the pattern.”

Sarmin sat on his bed. He hadn't expected that—an assassin, he'd thought, or maybe some Carriers—but to take his own life, as a final act of bravery… He felt the tears come once again and wiped them away. “But it can't be. After he died, the pattern was stronger.”

“Yes.” The way Mesema thrust out her chin told him that she hadn't changed her mind about fighting. “His blood raised a pattern all around him. The Pattern Master—” Her bravery was short-lived. She looked past him to the assassin and gave a little cry.

Sarmin watched her face, how the lines grew longer when she was worried. “I've been giving him wine,” he told her. “Do you have any healing?”

“A little.” She crossed to the bed, and as she pulled up Eyul's shirt Sarmin's gaze fell with shock upon her arms. Red and blue pattern-marks spiralled from her wrist to her elbow, each shape part of the Master's plan, each line drawing them closer to the endgame. She raised a hand over the assassin's wound, but hesitated to touch it. “This will kill him.”

“I think so.”

“You were hurt—who healed you?”

“Govnan, but I have no way to call him.” He felt it a lack in himself that he could not call on the mages, that he must wait and hope that they called to him upon the wind. And he felt a lack in himself that he could not reassure her.

Mesema took a breath and leaned over the assassin, reaching out to stroke his hair. “Poor man. Lucky he's not conscious, he can't feel the pain.”

Sarmin wasn't so sure of that, but he didn't say so. Her marks drew his eye and he wanted to touch them, study them, even now. “He killed my brothers.”

“Yes.” She looked away, her face troubled. “I know.”

“It's good to see you.”

“Is it?” She fell against him then, and he felt her tears against his skin. “It's good to see you, too.” They stood that way for some time, lit by the evening sun burning through the broken window, her breath tickling his neck, his hands feeling the warmth of her skin beneath the thin sheet. In all the years in this room only Grada had come this close, and that had been in a killing embrace. “The Carriers almost found me,” she said. “I crouched in the dark and watched them run into the tomb to kill me.”

“But you got to me,” he said.

“I did.”

She stepped away from him, and immediately he wanted her back again. “Sarmin, if I carried Beyon's child, would you still like me?”

A child!
Someone else to love. He thought of Beyon's eyes, the way he had laughed, his strong and powerful voice. He remembered trailing behind Beyon in the halls, his brothers around him, a laughing huddle, but always behind, struggling to keep close enough to see Beyon disappear around the next corner or beyond a door.
Don't leave me,
he would always think.
Don't leave me.
“Yes,” he breathed, “oh, yes.” He paused. There would be no secrets from his bride. “But I love Grada, too.”

She looked up at him. “That's all right. I love Banreh.” He smiled and took her hand.

Chapter Forty-One

T
uvaini tied his robes and stepped into his silken slippers. It was the fourth day of the rule of Helmar the Restorer. Azeem waited before him, as he always had, not yet marked, though the guards at the door showed stripes across the backs of their hands. He could not speak of anything with them there.

Tuvaini was now Prince Tuvaini, the descendant of the Son of Heaven, the heir to the throne. He was not entirely sure why Helmar had allowed that, or why he'd left him unmarked, so far at least. He wished for company, perhaps. He had left Nessaket free of the pattern as well, and Tuvaini was glad of it, for the sake of the child—if there really was a child. He could never be sure with Nessaket.

He slipped on his rings and bracelets, thinking of the sea. The sea came to his mind often now. With Lapella gone, all connection to his homeland had been lost. He had also lost the throne, and that was truly gone. Even if he did inherit after Helmar, this was not the city he loved, the empire he loved: thousands were already dead, and the rest were marked and silent. This was the centre of a doomed empire. It had begun its slow decline with Beyon, but Helmar's work was quicker.

He felt a lump rising in his throat, but feigned a cough instead. “Let us go to the temple.” Helmar had no interest in Cerani gods, so Herzu's temple might be safe from Carrier eyes.

Azeem led the way. Travelling the corridors no longer held any pleasure for Tuvaini. It had begun with Lapella's death, a vague distaste for the mosaics and tapestries that showed the way from one grand room to another, but with Helmar's ascendance distaste had solidified to aversion, and now Tuvaini longed for the simple whitewashed walls and the natural flower gardens of his old home. He approached the temple of Herzu with relief, for the dark and ugliness felt more true.

Nessaket waited on a bench, her hair shining and straight as ever, shoulders stiff. He took his place beside her and gazed up at the golden effigy of their patron god. Azeem settled further back, near the corridor, ready to alert them should anyone else enter.

“I wait for you every day,” Nessaket said.

“I have been quite busy, as you might expect.”

“The last time a new emperor took the throne, the wives of the old emperor died.”

“Ah, but you are not yet my wife.”

She fell silent, fiddling with the sapphire charm around her neck. “We should be grateful.”

“Should we?”

“Let me be frank. When one considers our treachery, this is one of the best possible outcomes. You are still an heir, and we are both unmarked.”

“I see your point.” He did not feel grateful.

“I want to come to the throne room today.”

“Your best plan is to stay unnoticed.”

She tugged at her necklace. “I am no ordinary woman, to wait in a gilded room!”

“He is no ordinary man—you think to charm him, to dazzle him with your beauty? I would guess him immune to such tactics. This is no game.”

“As you said, I am not your wife yet, and you cannot command me.”

“Your life is yours to waste, but our child—”
Truly, the last thing I have to lose.

“Our child's life depends on what we are able to do next, and that depends on knowing everything we can know about him—including whether he can be swayed by a woman!”

She thinks to betray me. She will marry the hermit if she can.
Tuvaini looked once more at the god-statue towering over them in the dark. “Do as you will. I care not.” The lie felt sour on his lips as he left the temple and made his way to the throne room.

Mesema crept along the kitchen corridors. Wearing a coarse sack and with her hair pulled back, she could pass for a toilet-keeper or offal-bearer. She left the marks on her arms exposed—all the servants bore marks now, and she would look suspicious without them. She held in her hand a bucket full of water. Cheese, bread, and dried fruits were hidden inside her rough clothes, secured within a filthy linen sash.