Tower & Knife 03 - The Tower Broken (17 page)

Azeem hesitated only a moment. ‘I was just on my way to speak to him, Magnificence.’ He bowed and retreated.

Sarmin sat on the steps of the dais, surrounded by his nameless guards. What plan Austere Adam hoped to set in motion by sending the wrong child he could not fathom, nor why the Mogyrks had attacked with a pattern more foul than Sarmin could ever have imagined when Helmar lived. Each day the Great Storm crept closer to the Blessing; after that it would stand at the northern walls. The pale sickness would be upon Nooria soon enough, draining his citizens of colour and life until they were empty enough for the djinn to ride – if an earthquake or Yrkmir did not destroy them first. All of this while Govnan’s Tower stood cracked, its mages few, and Mogyrk’s Scar stood in the east. There had to be a solution; there was always
a path through to preserving his empire, though it might be hidden. But this time there would be no messages from the past, no priestess or old woman to offer wisdom, no demons and angels to guide him.

The harpist chose that moment to begin plucking at his strings, a cacophony of twangs and vibrating sounds that served only to bring Sarmin’s hands to his ears. ‘Who let him in? Get him out!’ The series of clumsy notes came to an abrupt end, leaving a final orphaned chord hanging on the air. The sword-sons led the musician from the room and Sarmin followed after him. It was time to face Chief Banreh.

The Blue Shield guard opened Banreh’s dark cell and Sarmin entered, leaving his men in the corridor. They stared through the bars, weapons ready. Mesema had been here before him and he looked around, seeing what she had seen – dirty stones, a slop-bucket, a ragged pallet on the floor with the chief stretched out on it – and wondering what she had made of it. Seeing the emperor and all his sword-sons, the prisoner struggled to a stand, levering himself with a hand against the wall rather than using his damaged leg. When at last the man was standing straight and they were staring at one another, Sarmin motioned to the Blue Shield, who said, ‘You did not touch the floor, prisoner.’

At that Banreh lowered himself and made an awkward obeisance. Sarmin waited a minute, then another, the other man’s obvious discomfort giving him a strange satisfaction. His dislike for the chief unsettled him. With Kavic, he had thought they could be friends; he had felt a fondness for the Fryth man that an emperor is not meant to feel. It had not been allowed in the end: Kavic had fallen victim to the games of empire. Over the last months Sarmin had wondered if there were other men in the world who might become his friends. Banreh, though, would never be one of them. He held some part of Mesema that Sarmin could not reach, and he could not forget that.

‘Rise,’ he said at last, and watched the chief go through the difficulty of standing for a second time. He waited. In the throne room he had learned his silence disquietened those who sought to deceive him. It gave them time to sweat, to wonder what he knew, to imagine punishments to come.

‘Banreh,’ he said, discarding the honorific, ‘you will tell me where to find Duke Didryk.’

‘I cannot tell you, for I do not know, Your Majesty.’

Sarmin drew out the time between questions, watching the man’s drawn face. The chief felt pain from all the falling and rising, that was certain; but it was nothing compared to what Dinar could do. ‘I am confused, Windreader. You came to court to make an offer, and yet you give us no way to fulfil that offer.’

Banreh glanced at the men in the corridor, every one of them tall and gleaming with muscle, each with a wide hachirah at his belt. ‘It is my understanding, Your Majesty, that one cannot correct the emperor, for he is never wrong.’

‘That is true.’

‘And so I find myself unable to explain, Your Majesty.’

Anger drove Sarmin’s words. ‘Are we playing games now, Banreh? For I think you are losing. I cannot think this is what you planned.’ He gestured to the stone walls. ‘You would have been better off staying in the Grass.’

‘Duke Didryk sent me as a messenger, Your Majesty. A messenger is protected by certain protocols.’

‘You are a messenger who has killed a great many Cerani.’

‘That number has grown with time and the telling. More died fighting the Fryth or in the desert than ever by my hand.’

Sarmin gripped the hilt of Tuvaini’s dacarba. ‘Nevertheless.’

Banreh lowered his shoulders as if defeated.

‘Tell me your plan, or you will end on Herzu’s table.’

The chief lifted his hands palm up, the Cerani gesture of honesty, but it looked false to Sarmin, too practised, too easily won. He was all guile and verbal tricks, utterly unlike Mesema.

‘Your Majesty, Duke Didryk knows he has few choices. He offers to train your mages in exchange for clemency. That is the beginning and the end of his plan.’

‘And your plan?’

Banreh held his palms out once again. ‘Only to help my people.’

‘Like Mesema?’ He imagined her standing at the bars, within this man’s reach. Had he touched her? Sarmin pulled Tuvaini’s ruby-hilted weapon from his belt. When he killed Helmar, his dead brothers had shown him where to find a man’s heart. He imagined running the steel between Banreh’s ribs, feeling the warm blood run over his hand. Would he find it then, whatever was in him that Mesema loved?

The chief stood motionless, his eyes on the blade, and Sarmin lowered the weapon. That was not the man he wished to be.

By inches Banreh raised his left hand, careful not to excite the wrath of Sarmin’s guards, and turned it out, exposing the wrist. On it Sarmin saw a diamond pattern circled with stars, and he knew what it was without asking. He and Grada had been linked by pattern-marks when she Carried him into the city and the desert: their thoughts had been shared that way during the long weeks when Helmar Pattern Master ruled Nooria.

‘I do not know where the duke is,’ said Banreh, ‘but I can find him. With this.’

Sarmin put away his dacarba, surprised to feel relief more than anything else. Banreh would go into the desert. He would not be killed – not yet. The day when Mesema would hear of
Banreh’s death at his hands or his word had been moved into the future. ‘Can the duke hear us?’ he asked, drawn in by the unfamiliar shapes.

‘No. He knows only where I am, and whether I am alive.’

‘Well, Chief,’ Sarmin said, turning away, ‘you shall live a bit longer. Do not become accustomed to it.’

Govnan laid a fifth parchment before Farid. Each was covered with an inked pattern different to the last. ‘This was transcribed from a spell cast by Yrkmir invaders in the time of the great defeat,’ the high mage said, ‘when Helmar was taken from the palace.’

‘I told you, I don’t recognise any of these.’ Farid slid back his chair and looked out of the window. They sat in an airy room near the top of the Tower, with a view spreading over the courtyard and the north quarter of Nooria. Between the Tower walls and the Worship Gate stretched long streets of houses and temples that crushed up against the Blessing, their dark alleys crisscrossing like the nets his sister once made with twine. The Blessing continued north, beyond the walls, towards the mountains. Farid had never been so high up. He felt like a bird soaring over the landscape and looking down – except that far in the distance, part of the northlands were obscured from his sight; they were greyish, as if covered by mist. He squinted and tried to see what was there, but his gaze kept sliding away from it like oil from water.

When Emperor Beyon’s tomb had collapsed, he had heard strange rumours about what had been inside: a nothingness, an impenetrable nothingness impossible to look at. And Govnan
continued to glance out the window, his eyes returning again and again to the same spot.

With an uneasy feeling Farid turned back to the parchments. All of these patterns were much more complicated than those he had learned in Adam’s cramped house.

Govnan was sending him to the desert, to a Fryth pattern mage. Farid knew the mage had offered to train him, but if he was anything like Adam, he expected to learn very little. Why the lofty Tower was showing interest in these witch-marks eluded him. Perhaps the Tower was sending him only because he was already stained by Mogyrk’s hand. The thought sparked anger – it was not his fault he had seen the pattern that day in the marketplace.

The high mage pointed at one of the shapes with a claw-like hand. ‘What does this shape mean?’

Farid folded his arms over his chest. ‘I don’t know what it means.’

‘Marke Kavic suggested that each of these formations names something. Water, bird, wool – is it like that?’ Govnan shifted the parchments. ‘If I could just learn the key to these patterns …’

Farid pointed at an elongated diamond near the centre. ‘That one I know:
Hiss-nick
,’ he said. ‘Adam only gave me the Fryth words.’

Govnan wrote down the word and placed a smaller parchment before him. This one was not so aged, and the design on it was thickly inked. ‘What about this?’

Farid turned it in his fingers. The shapes tickled his memory. ‘Where did this come from?’ he asked.

‘It was on our prisoner’s wrist.’

Farid turned it from left to right, but that was not the
problem. He needed a mirror. ‘I don’t know what it is, but I think it’s only half of something.’

‘You are correct. It is a binding. But what are its properties?’

Farid stared, then shook his head. ‘Maybe the Fryth mage will teach me.’ He meant it sarcastically, but Govnan nodded in his patient way.

‘How many symbols did Adam teach you?’

Farid could take no more of sitting. He stood and paced to the end of the table, feeling his new robes swirl around his feet. He felt naked in them, with the air brushing against his skin with every movement. He thought for a moment, then said, ‘Fifty-two, and I guess that wasn’t even a tenth of them.’ When Govnan frowned, he said, ‘I never wanted to learn these evil things. I still don’t. But words are not the key.’

‘What is the key?’

Farid turned it over in his mind. Finally he picked up one of the complicated designs drawn by the ancient Yrkmen. ‘It’s the way they work together,’ he said, running a finger along a line of triangles. ‘No single part can hold the spell – they need to work together.’

‘Words have no meaning, then?’ asked Govnan, frustrated, but Farid kept his eyes on the parchment. He had been looking at it wrong. These symbols were not meant to rest on a flat plane. Instead they ordered themselves above and below, forwards and backwards, into the storied ages of Nooria itself. The parchment set his fingers tingling and a longing to imitate the pattern on the stones around him almost overcame him, the need to surround himself with gleaming lines and interlocking shapes.

Feeling disgusted with himself, he dropped it.

Govnan took it as resignation and sighed. ‘We do not have
much time, but you may visit your father. My mages usually have no family contact, but since you have lived in Nooria …’

Farid sighed with relief. ‘So he knows I’m alive.’ He picked up another parchment, and itched to draw its pattern.

‘Of course he does,’ said Govnan, ‘he has been enquiring every hour if he may see you. He is in the courtyard.’

Farid wanted to run towards his father, but he could not tear his eyes from the patterns. He touched one of the symbols with two fingers. ‘Fire, I think.’
Shack-nuth
. He could give the old man that much. Before leaving he walked to the black basin where Govnan had built a sacrificial fire to Meksha. ‘
Shack-nuth
,’ he said, but the flames did not alter. Of course it would not be so simple.

Mage Mura opened the door behind him. A breeze followed her into the room, brushing against Farid’s cheeks, and he turned. She looked at him and the parchments with curiosity, and he looked back with no less. ‘Captain Ziggur is ready now,’ she said, and Govnan sighed.

‘We are out of time,’ he said. ‘Hurry and say goodbye to your father.’

Farid leaned closer to the old man. ‘Can Mura – can she fly?’

Govnan put a hand on his shoulder and gave a nostalgic smile. ‘No, my son,’ he said, ‘nobody can.’

‘What if she held more than one spirit? Could they lift her then?’

‘Well, that has been done,’ said Govnan, ‘during the glorious past of our Tower. Controlling an elemental is a matter of will, and two are infinitely more difficult to control than one. In the time of Uthman and his descendants, we had many mages commanding two or more. But not today.’

‘Oh,’ said Farid with disappointment. ‘I thought one day I might fly, or swim in the ocean, like they do in the old tales.’

‘So did I, Farid,’ Govnan said. ‘So did I.’ He gave Farid’s shoulder a pat and then pushed him on. ‘Hurry, now; they are waiting for you.’

In the courtyard Farid met Captain Ziggur, a gruff man in his later years of soldiery who believed him a mage and treated him with deference he had not earned. Dozens of people stood around the statues, mostly soldiers, too many to greet, and so he did not – but he soon heard his father’s voice.

‘Farid!’

He turned and saw him, a plainly dressed man with rich brown eyes. ‘Farid,’ his father said again, holding his big hands in front of him as if in prayer.

‘Father.’ He smiled. ‘I am so glad to see you.’

His father looked away humbly, as if he were in the presence of a noble or a wealthy merchant. ‘I’m overjoyed you’re alive. I know you have great things to do – Tower things – but perhaps we’ll see each other again when you return. Sir.’

‘Father, you don’t have to—’

But his father had bowed and turned away, leaving him shaken. Why did his father treat him like a stranger? His mother had died of the pattern-sickness – had he now lost his father too, because of the pattern? He hoped his sister would not shrink from him as well – and he started to wonder who Adam had lost during his long years as an austere. Had he become so alone, so emptied of love, that Mogyrk had filled every part of him?

Captain Ziggur spoke to him and handed him the reins of a horse, but Farid barely heard his words. He had gone from fruit-seller to Tower mage in a matter of days and perhaps he would be dead in a few more – but he would die as Farid, not as some mage his father did not know.