The Emperors Knife (6 page)

Amalya brought out pans, small jars filled with spices, strips of dried meat, a bag of grain, and slices of dried apricots on a string. Eyul placed his own contribution on the sand in front of her: five cakes of camel dung, dried and pressed.

Amalya gathered the dung between two fire-stones and blew on it, softly, as a musician might blow upon a singing stick. Flames licked at the fuel.

She was flame-sworn, Eyul realised, like Govnan the high mage. He had met Govnan once, by chance, in the dark halls beneath the throne room. Govnan had lit a flame in his bare hand and asked to see Eyul's Knife. Neither had queried the other's purpose in the secret ways; it hadn't seemed polite. That same sense of etiquette kept him from asking too many questions of Amalya, but he knew that within them all mages carried an elemental, air, water, earth or fire.

Amalya wrinkled her nose as she brought her pot to sit across the stones. “In the Islands we don't cook on dung,” she said. A gentle humour softened her words.

Eyul reached for a handful of sand and let it trickle through his fingers. “We could burn the dune instead, if you've the magic for it?”

Amalya did not rise to his bait. She poured water from her skin into the pot, careful, spilling none. “I'll save my magic for the sauce.” She sprinkled cornflour from a small bag. “Some things are best left to simmer.”

Eyul smiled. He yawned and leaned back against his pack. The sky shone with a faint shade of pearl, and as he watched it brighten he wondered who had sent Amalya, and why.
Get across the desert first. Then we will see.
He closed his eyes and breathed in the smell of her cooking…

He must have drifted off, because he opened his eyes to low sunshine and a bowl of stew. He accepted the dish, and Amalya crouched in the sand to eat her own meal.

“This is very good,” he said, rolling the mint and pepper together on his tongue. He remembered the foods he'd passed up outside the city wall; this tasted better than rose-camel.

“Island cooking,” she said with a smile.

“I should move to the Islands.” He took another bite.

Amalya blew on a small morsel of meat on her spoon. “I couldn't tell you what it's like there now.”

He nodded, understanding. “How long have you served?”

“Oh…” She tilted her head, fingers drumming a beat on the wooden bowl. “Fifteen years, just about. They told me I would protect the Boy Emperor. He and I are the same age, you know. I had romantic notions—Not that kind,” she said when Eyul smiled. “But the idea of children ruling and defending the empire—it appealed to me. It made it easier to leave.”

“They took you.”

She nodded. “They came for the tribute-children when I was eleven.”

Eyul scraped the last of the stew from his bowl. He remembered the terror of being taken by the guard, rough hands on his shirt collar, tears on his face. How old had he been? Seven? Eight? “You must have been frightened.”

“Not for long. Govnan saw me—he wasn't the high mage then; it was before his great journey through the desert, before Kobar chose him as the Second. Govnan pulled me out of the line and claimed me for the Tower.”

“And now you carry the Star of Cerana. You've come a long way. To think that Lord High Vizier Tuvaini himself would design a mission for you—”

Amalya put her bowl down in the sand and chuckled. “Nice try, Knife-Sworn. But I won't tell you who gave me the Star, or who didn't.”

“But you will give me your leftover stew?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Only if you tell me how you became an assassin.”

She meant it as banter, but the words cut, unexpectedly. How many years since he had thought of it? The cold stone floor, the stink of urine, his own voice, pleading… the pain. That broken boy reached out to him through the decades.
No.
“I… I can't.”

Amalya handed him her bowl without speaking, no doubt regretting her question.

Eyul took a few bites in the silence and she watched him, kindness in her eyes. It made him uncomfortable. “Why don't you get some rest?” he asked. “I'll clean the bowls.”

“All right,” she said. Was that relief in her voice? “I'll see you at sundown.”

“Sundown,” he agreed.

After she crawled into her tent, Eyul scrubbed the bowls clean with sand. His eyes felt dry and tired; his head ached. The memories were as fresh to him as his ride across these dunes, but the emotion felt ancient, rooted in him. The farther he travelled from the past, the more he lived in it, each day an inexorable step, closing the circle, bringing him back to what he'd left behind.

His work done, Eyul crawled into his tent. He dreamed of blood in a courtyard and a young emperor with dead eyes.

Chapter Five

S
armin sat and watched the wall, listening for the telltale scrape within it. In the courtyard the Blue Shields made their first round of the evening, and beneath the regular tramp of boots on flagstones, Sarmin could hear the distant cries of moorhens on the river. He stilled his breath and opened himself to all the soft noises of the night: the creak of waggon wheels in the souk, tent poles straining under a sudden breeze, shouts and cries muffled and muted into an unintelligible hubbub. The Sayakarva noises, he named them, because he heard them through the window, where the name Sayakarva was engraved in a tiny, block-like script—the craftsman's mark, no doubt.

He stared at the alabaster pane: a window that let in light, but no meaning. He had broken that window once and been rewarded with a view of his brothers dead and dying. He let them keep him blind now. He looked away.

Sarmin watched the wall, following the scrollwork, tracing a single line through the complexity. In a strange way the hidden door felt as much a betrayal as an opportunity—a greater betrayal, perhaps, than even his mother's abandonment. The walls of his room had held him longer than ever she did. For nearly two decades, these four walls had been the certainty in his life—but now? Sarmin wondered where his certainty lay; not in painted stone, nor in those who hid inside it. He traced the line to its end and looked to the next wall. That hook, that flourish—had they been there before? He struggled to see the face that belonged to those brush-strokes.

A scrape, a scratch, and then a grinding of stone on stone. The door opened by feather-widths. Lamplight fingered then flooded through the crack as Tuvaini slipped through into the room.

Sarmin noted the careful way he scanned the chamber and found some assurance in the vizier's uncertainty. “Sit.” Sarmin gestured to the bed. He had pushed his small table close to it, and now he took his place in the single chair.

“Prince Sarmin.” Tuvaini gave a quick bow. He crossed to the bed with quick steps, took a last glance at the main door, and seated himself.

Sarmin inclined his head. He rested his arms upon the table and laced his fingers. He held his hands tight against one another, to keep them from wandering and betraying his own nervousness. “So, tell me of the general.”

“He is a passionate man, Your Highness, and a brave one. In military matters Arigu's prowess has been demonstrated on both the personal level and on the larger scale.” Tuvaini kept his voice low. His eyes strayed to the moon-glow of the alabaster window.

“You speak as if you know him, Vizier.”

“We knew each other as boys, Highness. We both come from Ghara, in Vehinni Province. Our fathers were friends.”

“And now your friend schemes with my mother to find me a bride from among the Felt?” Sarmin said. “Tell me, Vizier, why does such an alliance frighten you? Don't speak to me of cleanliness or besna nuts. These are not matters of state, and I am no child.”

Do I care that they drink sheep's milk? I know where I suckled my milk, and the bitter taste is with me still.

“He is no friend of mine, my prince.”

The edge in Tuvaini's voice convinced Sarmin.

“The general sets his sights too high.” A pause. “To broker a royal marriage and pick a bloodline for the empire's heir…”

He sets his sights too high for your liking, Tuvaini. He looks upon my mother.
Sarmin stared at the vizier and felt the stirrings of common feeling with him. They both had been denied the feel of her arms. Before he could stop himself, he laughed.

The vizier paid no notice. He waited, his face bland.

“And who would you have me marry, Vizier?” Sarmin asked after rubbing his lips. “Wherever there is objection, there is alternative.” From the
Book of Statehood
. Page two hundred.

For the first time Tuvaini managed a smile. “I would have you choose your own bride, Highness. From the Petal Throne.”

Sarmin took his hands from the table as if it burned them. More treachery, and beneath the canopy of the gods, no less.

“Highness, hear me.” Tuvaini leaned in, intimate across the smallness of the table. “Beyon has the marks. Within the month the patterning will kill him—or, if it does not, all who see him will know him as a Carrier.”

In the drawer beneath the tabletop Sarmin's fingers found the dacarba. The steel felt cool to his touch. He recalled the despair that gave him the strength to take it. He ran his thumb along the top blade. “I don't believe you.”

Tuvaini's eyes wandered to the window. “The emperor sent his royal body-slaves to the Low Executioner. He said they were marked. And yet their skin was clean when they stripped for the pyre, and each slave swore that it was the emperor himself who bore the pattern: from each man, the same story, until the Low Executioner brought me to bear witness.”

“Then I would speak to the Low Executioner.”

Tuvaini shook his head. “That man speaks no more.”

“And the slaves?”

A whisper. “Burned.”

Murdered. All murdered. Sarmin felt the blood drip from his hand. “Beyon is my brother.”

“You had other brothers, Highness.”

Sarmin remembered them all, their chubby, laughing faces: Kashim and Amile, one too young to walk, one not yet talking. Asham, Fadil, and Pelar especially. Pelar and his red ball. He bounced it in the courtyard, in the tutor's room, and in the kitchen. He bounced it against his brothers' backs and his sisters' legs. Sarmin closed his hand around the dacarba, felt the flesh of his palm giving way. “Tell me of the man who killed them.”

Tuvaini startled. “It was Eyul's duty. He carries the emperor's Knife.”

Consecrated by my brothers' blood.

Sarmin didn't know how long he clutched the blade, thinking of the assassin Eyul, of the look he gave that dark night.
One more for the Knife?
He only heard Tuvaini saying, “My lord… my lord… ?”

Sarmin shook himself back to the present. “Carrier or not, Beyon is still the emperor.”

“No,” Tuvaini pressed on, eager to explain himself, “the Carriers are not what you remember, Highness, wandering the Maze and staying to the low places. They become bold, attacking even on palace grounds. They serve some purpose, some other enemy we cannot see. A Carrier cannot sit on the Petal Throne, Highness.”

The main door rattled; the handle turned, and Tuvaini almost knocked over the table as he stood. “I must go.”

It took a moment for Sarmin to understand his urgency; the guards changed at the same hour every night, and at every changeover they turned the handle to confirm that the door was locked. It was a pointless tradition in Sarmin's view; not once had the door ever opened to their test.

“Better run, Vizier.” Sarmin laughed again, though more quietly this time.

Tuvaini hurried for the secret door.

The last Sarmin saw of him were his jewelled fingers pulling at the stone. “Next time, Tuvaini. Next time.” Sarmin spoke the words to the narrowing crack, softly, but loud enough to be heard.

He leaned back in his chair in the darkness. Shadow hid the gods above him, but he knew they were there. The others were watching, too. He closed his hand around the cut he'd made, savouring the clarity of the pain.

Conversation, being rare, always left him buzzing. In the empty hours he would replay every word ever spoken to him, relive every moment, consider each nuance. But now—now the future held the excitement, not the past, and the possibilities left him intoxicated.

By two threads he was joined to the world, by his mother, and by Tuvaini, and each thread divided and divided again, spreading and reaching. The world came to him and he gathered his threads. He drew a circle with his palm, leaving a trail of blood on the wood.
A spider in my web.

He stood and crossed to stand at the secret door. He pressed his cheek to the smoothness of the wall, holding the dacarba in his crimson hand. “Eyul? Assassin? Can you hear me?” He brought the dacarba to his lips and kissed it. “We will have our reckoning soon.”

Chapter Six

M
esema folded her wedding dress, careful not to snag any of the quartz beads dangling from its heavy skirt. The alterations from Dirini's size were hardly visible; the tiny darts and shortened hems had taken only a week to complete. She'd spent those days by the fire, the murmurs from the sewing circle flowing around her like a stream. The waters whispered war, but Mesema was unmoved. The summer had already wound its way towards harvest time. Her father had clearly chosen the path of peace, and she was one of his two emissaries. The Windreaders would be expected to defend the empire, just as the Red Hooves had before finding their strange god. But the empire was not at war.

She hadn't tried to run again. Every afternoon, Banreh left her father's side to teach her the language of the Cerani Empire. She hoped that perhaps she would find a new way of thinking inside those rough words, some new way of considering herself a princess; but her understanding was too limited.

Not like Banreh's.

Mesema turned and placed the dress inside her wooden trunk. She covered it with a layer of felt before reaching for her quilt, a wedding gift from her mother. It was made from the finest wool, and boasted shining threads of copper, more tiny beads, and even some pearls, bartered from the traders-who-walked. The quilt caught the sunlight as she lifted it and ran her hands along the edge. Tiny bells rang, soft as ladysong. She put it on top of her dress and folded the felt over it.