Tower & Knife 03 - The Tower Broken (30 page)

Azeem climbed the steps of the dais and leaned close. ‘Your Majesty, the Blue Shields are reporting that the rebels have ceased their attacks, in the Maze and elsewhere.’

‘They have left the city to these pattern attacks,’ Sarmin murmured.

‘They are ragged souls, Magnificence. Refugees and … Untouchables.’ Azeem fought to keep from glancing at Grada.

Sarmin cleared his throat and spoke to the duke. ‘Rise.’

Azeem fell silent and took his place at his table with his quills and ink, but Didryk continued to face the throne. It looked like he had sent his guards upstairs without him – not that they would be much use in the face of Sarmin’s sword-sons. The duke looked as if he had not slept in a week. Grief – or guilt – was keeping him awake.

‘Are you well?’ Sarmin asked. ‘I can send for Farid to assist you this afternoon.’

Didryk gave him a bow. ‘That will not be necessary.’ In his fatigue his accent had become stronger.

Sarmin focused on Didryk’s blue eyes. ‘What can you tell me about the pattern used at the temple?’

‘Without having seen it, I would assume it was a simple destructive pattern, Your Majesty, set to destroy stone.’

Sarmin gestured for him to take his seat at the bottom step of the dais. The way Didryk had said
simple
interested him. A slip of the tongue caused by his exhaustion. If he had to distinguish one pattern as simple, it meant there were others that were not. He tapped the arms of his chair. He knew Didryk was more skilled with the pattern than he admitted.

The stream of slaves and administrators began, with Azeem calling out each name and Didryk formally marking each person. Sarmin clenched his hands on the arms of the throne, feeling the metal edges bite into his fingertips. His visit with Mesema this morning had been too brief. She had told him of her encounter with Dinar, leaving out no detail, which could not have been easy for her. It was no surprise to him that Dinar and Arigu were working together, that they planned to install the general’s niece in Mesema’s place. While that would never happen, he worried what else the two men might be planning.

They had also discussed Govnan’s mission. With Mesema he
did not need to hide his sorrow. The high mage’s efforts could soon mean his death – he had known that in the way the old man had said goodbye – and yet it still pulled at his heart. The Megra had already passed beyond; he was not ready to lose Govnan, not yet.

He ran a hand over his eyes. He could not wallow in his grief, not while Mogyrks drew their patterns in the city, the Storm approached and Daveed and his mother had yet to be found. He knew now that Adam had blinded Rushes so that she could not see Daveed had been switched with another boy.
What would he do to my mother?
he wondered.

He waited, wanting to end it, to take Didryk aside and ask questions about the austere who had taught him, but he could not; he needed to protect his people as much as he needed answers, and to protect them he needed to be sure they were marked. He waited the long hours until all the people on Azeem’s list had been marked and the dome had grown dark above him. Most of the nobles had not stayed, not even Lord Benna – after the initial shock of seeing a Mogyrk sitting on the dais, there was nothing interesting about watching a man draw on foreheads.

Azeem put away his ledger and his ink and straightened his desk while Didryk stood and bowed.

‘With your permission, Magnificence.’

Out of the corner of his eye Sarmin saw a Blue Shield slip through the side door and approach his fellows against the wall.

‘But first I—’

Before Didryk could finish, the soldier who had entered drew his sword. ‘For Mogyrk!’ he cried, and pierced his fellow through the heart. As two of the sword-sons ran from the dais, their own
weapons drawn, the man turned, smiling, and Sarmin shuddered at the sight of his eyes: they had turned completely black.

The Blue Shield raised his sword in a feeble attempt to stop the two hachirahs coming at him, but he could do nothing; Ne-Seth’s huge blade cut through his neck and thudded against the wall behind him.

Sarmin stood. ‘What manner of attack was that?’ It felt too close to an attack by the Many.

Ne-Seth turned to him and made a gesture of confusion. Behind him, blood ran down the wall and along the edges of the tile. Sarmin remembered Mylo’s blood in the temple of Herzu and he felt a weight upon him. He looked away.

‘He knows,’ said Didryk, his eyes on the redness creeping across the floor. ‘The first austere knows we are protecting ourselves and he is trying something new.’

‘But how?’

Didryk spread his hands wide, empty of explanations.

Azeem cleared his throat. ‘We have overlooked something, Your Majesty.’

Didryk looked at the vizier, fear passing over his face.
Strange
.

Sarmin watched them both and said, ‘Have you, Azeem?’

‘Yes, Your Majesty: it is your own glorious person. You have not been marked. Nor have I, or the child upstairs.’ He did not say
your brother
or
the false prince
. Only
the child
.

‘I am not marked?’ Sarmin tried to remember the time of Helmar, of his binding to Grada, of all the things that happened afterwards. He looked at his arms.

‘I think you had best take the mark, Magnificence.’ There was urgency in the grand vizier’s voice as he looked at the bodies on the floor.

‘I …’ He watched the duke’s expression change from fearful
to curious. ‘Will it protect me against that?’ He motioned to the two dead men.

‘I do not think so,’ said Didryk. He looked shaken. ‘But it would protect you against other attacks by lesser austeres.’

‘I will go first,’ Azeem offered, and stepped before the Fryth duke, who stood almost a head taller. Didryk looked down at Azeem, and after a pause he bent down to pick up his pot of greasepaint, dipped his finger in it and marked Azeem’s forehead.

As Sarmin watched the black marks disappear into his grand vizier’s skin he felt uneasy.

‘If you are prepared, Your Majesty?’ Didryk asked, turning his way.

Sarmin waved him forward and Didryk touched his forehead with the cold grease. ‘Just a line here, and this one … There – finished, Your Majesty.’ Didryk stepped back and the world changed.

Sarmin blinked and the room came into focus, altered and beautiful. Tangled shapes and skewed lines revealed themselves to him, resolving in his vision, shifting into place with a flash of blue. Symbols shone from each guard’s forehead, bright and clean, finished with twists that led into tendrils of light, and beyond all that, the world itself, tangible and real but also defined by twists and curves, formations, structures.

Sarmin took a breath. The touch of the warding symbol against his forehead had woken his eyes to the pattern. He saw the mark gleaming on Didryk’s wrist and the sickly green that was Banreh’s health, weighing it down, and the duke’s wide, knowing eyes.

Now Sarmin knew what Didryk had wanted – why he had come here. All those tendrils of light led back to him. This was
what he had hoped for, to be allowed to mark everyone, to link each person to himself. But what he had meant to do with it – whether he had Helmar’s strength to twist each person’s will to his own – that Sarmin could not tell. Was Didryk responsible for the attack that had just occurred?

He raised a hand, intending to cut those tendrils away, to leave Didryk isolated – but he found he lacked the power to do so. To his dismay he found not everything had been returned to him. He could see the designs, but he could not alter them. He needed Didryk as much as he had before.

Sarmin stood, disguising both his new knowledge and his powerlessness. ‘Join me,’ he said. ‘I would show you something.’ With that he turned and led the Fryth from the throne room, Ne-Seth and the other sword-sons falling in behind them as Sarmin began the long walk to his old tower. He offered no explanation to the duke as they travelled through the palace, and his own mind wandered along other paths, including to Mesema. She had been right about this – the pattern had returned to him – but she had been wrong about trusting Didryk.

The damage done by the earthquake was not noticeable where they walked unless one knew where to look: here, a patched wall, there, a new pillar, carved with images of Mirra, set to right the floor above.

At the base of Sarmin’s old tower Didryk hesitated, looking at the charred steps and the gathered sword-sons, perhaps wishing he had not left his guards behind. ‘Where are we going, Your Majesty?’

‘I want to show you my room, where I met your cousin the marke.’ Sarmin waved the sword-sons off. ‘Wait here.’

‘Your Majesty,’ interjected Ne-Seth, tugging at his well-shaped
beard, ‘at least let me ensure the room is safe. After what just happened—’

‘Of course.’ Sarmin waved Ne-Seth ahead and he ran up the stairs. Very soon he was out of sight above them and Sarmin began his own climb.

Didryk followed him up the long, curving stair. Sarmin paused to rest from time to time, looking out of the narrow windows set into the curved walls. Each turn lent him a different glimpse of courtyard, wall or city, with no context in which to place the brief views. He thought that even when his view was constant and of wide breadth it did not give him any context either.

At last he reached the top, where Ne-Seth opened the door to him, letting him know the room was safe. He stepped in and looked about at the dusty carpet, the ruined walls, bare of gods, and the bed-ropes now hanging slack. Didryk followed him in, looking around curiously, and he shut the latch.

‘This is where I was imprisoned during the time of my brother’s rule. On the night of my father’s death they brought me here, and from this window I saw my other brothers die in the courtyard.’ He stood at the still-bare window lined with pieces of jagged alabaster. Grada had broken this window more than a year ago, but he never had it repaired.

Didryk said nothing, just listened as Sarmin kept talking.

This was his moment to Push and hope the tiles fell in his favour. There was no more time. ‘When my brother died, my cousin Tuvaini became emperor and after him, Helmar, the Pattern Master. It was he I killed to take the throne for myself.’ Sarmin turned to face the duke. ‘But this was my room: it was where I was formed, where I became Sarmin the Saviour, where I first met my bride. And here I remained until the demands of
the palace forced me elsewhere. It was here I spoke with your cousin Marke Kavic, and hoped to become his friend. But he died before those hopes could grow into truth.’

Didryk blinked. ‘Azeem said that my cousin fell to the pale sickness that swept your palace.’

‘Kavic was murdered,’ said Sarmin, and the duke made a noise in his throat, his hand held open at his side as if readying for the touch of a weapon. Sarmin continued, ‘I thought that by killing Helmar I had vanquished the pattern, but it was not so. It used my hand to kill your cousin, and it opened a wound in the city that threatened to destroy us all.’

‘
You
… killed my cousin?’

‘Not me. One of the Many.’
My false brother
.

Didryk let out a breath and seemed to waver, his right hand still hovering near his empty sword-sheath, the left pressed over his heart. ‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘Because I do not wish to lie to you. Because I want you to understand the dangers we have faced – the dangers we still face. Yrkmir approaches, but we are threatened by much more now. I stretch out my hand to you in friendship, knowing that you may bite.’ He held out Tuvaini’s dacarba, hilt-first: an offering. ‘If you are going to bite, then bite now.’

Didryk took the weapon. First he laid it in his palm, then he flipped it in the air and caught it with a fighter’s expertise. ‘For a long time I have dreamed of carving open the Cerani emperor,’ he said, his blue eyes far away. ‘When my austeres were tortured to death, I imagined this. When my city burned, I imagined this.’

Sarmin stepped up to him and pushed his chest against the three-sided tip of the blade. He looked up at Didryk. ‘I must fix the god’s wounds. They spread through my empire like open
sores. I must find Austere Adam and those he has taken from me. I must hold off Yrkmir, protect the Tower and create a lasting peace so that my people – my wife, my son – may live. And to do so I must put all of my tiles on the board right now and make my Push. If I cannot succeed, if you will not help me, I might as well die, and at your hand as any.’

Didryk held the weapon against Sarmin’s chest, his gaze on the place where the metal pressed against skin. ‘This is not what I had planned.’

Sarmin did not move, did not back away from the sharp end of the blade. ‘What did you plan, Duke? You have all those people tethered to you – what would you have had them do? Was that attack in the throne room yours?’

Didryk looked into his eyes. ‘It was not. My plan was to destroy your city after you had destroyed Yrkmir,’ he said. ‘I would have had your people tear down every brick and stone with their bare hands.’

‘As Yrkmir did to Fryth after the defeat of the Iron Duke.’ It made sense. ‘Your cousin Kavic told me. Here in this room.’

‘Did he?’ Didryk’s breath whispered against Sarmin’s face. Sarmin nodded, and Didryk lowered the dacarba. ‘As soon as I met you, I knew – if you had been like Arigu, I never would have hesitated, but once I met you I knew that I would – hesitate.’ He flipped the dacarba, grasped it by the blade and held it out to Sarmin hilt-first. ‘Your turn.’

‘I would not kill you.’ Sarmin tucked the blade into its sheath. ‘I will not even pretend to that.’

Didryk fell to his knees, his hands over his eyes.

‘Will you help me?’ asked Sarmin.

‘Will you release Chief Banreh?’

‘I cannot – but he will remain alive for now; Arigu and I are in agreement on that.’

Didryk leaned back on his heels and lowered his hands to his sides. Sarmin had thought him in tears, but his eyes were dry. ‘When you were imprisoned here, you must have felt that your world had been lost – one day you were a boy, playing with your brothers, and the next, here you were, trapped in this room.’