Tower & Knife 03 - The Tower Broken (36 page)

‘Adam claims to think differently.’

‘Some of them carry the light of their faith, others carry the sword.’ It was so with all things, not only gods. She knelt down before him and brushed a curl from his cheek. ‘Do not betray the trust of the duke.’

‘He nearly betrayed mine.’

‘But he did not, my love.’

He gave her a curious look.

She blushed, because it was the first time she had ever said the words. She hid her embarrassment behind teasing. ‘Is it too soft to speak of love? Does this palace tolerate such emotion, or does Herzu keep a tight hand on us now?’

‘I care nothing for Herzu.’ He leaned down and touched his forehead against hers. ‘I am looking for another god. I have been reading an old book that belonged to Satreth …’

She looked up at him in surprise. ‘Mirra touched me with her grace in Nessaket’s garden. Perhaps it was a sign.’

‘Yes.’ He frowned.

She knew Mirra was the goddess of women and not easily embraced by men, but Mesema must follow through with the sign provided to her. ‘What is it?’

‘The Megra said something to me before she died – she said healing the Storm would be Mirra’s work.’

‘She did?’ Mesema smiled and leaned in to kiss him. ‘Is Azeem waiting for you? General Lurish?’

‘No.’

She kissed him once more.

Sarmin pulled away. ‘I should – the generals …’

But she drew him close. The truce would last just a few days, and they had this time, so she would use it. He returned her kisses, his breaths heavier, his touches longer, and she stood, untied her dress and let it fall. Now she stood naked before him. She had never done that before; she had always been too worried about how she might compare to the more beautiful concubines, what he might think of the loose skin on her stomach from when Pelar had been born. But now she wanted him to see her, as she truly was. He stood and let his own robes fall, showing his thin body, his wide, bony shoulders narrowing into his hips, his pale legs. Together they moved to the bed. Though war waited not far away, they took their time, and when she finally trembled and shook above him the palace had gone quiet.

He put a hand on her stomach and smiled. She rolled to his side and put her head on his chest. ‘Dinar and Arigu will use me to move against you.’

‘Because you are Felt.’

‘Because I have seen Banreh, because I am Windreader, they will paint me as the enemy. But I do not know if they will move now, or after the war.’

‘They will not move against me if they are satisfied, if they believe victory is at hand.’

She watched the wall and said nothing. Victory did not appear to be at hand. Banreh’s death would have satisfied Arigu, but it had been Arigu himself who had advised Sarmin to keep the chief alive. She would not be surprised to learn that had been a trick, designed to make Sarmin look weak.

At last she said, ‘We need to talk about the worst. If Yrkmir breaks through, if they get to the palace, we need to talk about that.’

He said nothing so she went on, ‘Your mother has pika seeds somewhere in her room. Probably hidden among her cosmetics. I would rather do that …’ She rose up on an elbow. ‘Grada should go south to guard Pelar. He will be the true emperor.’

‘Emperor of what? If we lose, what is he?’

‘Alive.’

He caressed her hair. ‘Do not take the pika seeds unless you are sure there is no rescue for you – even then—’ He kissed her forehead. ‘Even then, think carefully.’

‘I will.’ She sighed. ‘I am thinking of those slaves, taken from the Grass. I wonder if they are still alive, and whether they will live through this. I wish I had been able to find them.’

‘I wish so too.’ They lay in silence for a time, and then he said, ‘Show me that cut-up poem again.’ She sat up and reached for the book of poems, retrieved the bits of paper and scattered them over the sheets. Sarmin cocked his head one way and then the other. ‘Govnan is tricking the Storm because it can’t see true fire. Mogyrk Named all things, giving them symbols, and in so doing, gave his followers patterns to work with. But I think he did not Name everything, for he did not know everything.’

‘How could a god not know everything?’

Sarmin sat up. ‘The Megra said something else to me before she died: “Just a man” – that’s what she said to me, and I thought she meant Helmar, but now I think she meant Mogyrk. He was not a god, but a man like Helmar – a man who thought he could remake the world and failed.’

Mesema touched a ragged edge of paper. ‘And yet they worship him.’

‘A man can ascend to godhood – many of our emperors have done so. Except that Mogyrk never died. He is both dead and
not dead.’ Sarmin frowned and looked towards the window. ‘Do you hear that? A buzzing sound, like a thousand bees, or a thousand people, talking far away.’

She listened. ‘I don’t hear anything.’ She rose from the bed and picked up her dress from the floor. ‘Dead and not dead,’ she repeated. ‘Here and not here.’ She pulled the silk over her body. ‘Come.’

‘Where?’

‘To see someone.’ She tied the silk inexpertly; since Tarub and Willa had begun dressing her she had regressed to a childlike incompetence. She pulled up on the fabric as Sarmin rose and slipped into his robes. ‘It’s not far,’ she promised, walking to the door in her bare feet.

She was surprised to find Grada waiting in the corridor. ‘Is there more news?’ she asked, but Grada only looked at Sarmin.

‘She is guarding me,’ Sarmin said. ‘Now, show me what you want me to see.’

Mesema glanced at Grada before leading him down the hall. She would not ask why he needed the Knife at his side – she did not want to know. Inside Nessaket’s room Rushes sat, singing a song to the child in the cradle.

Sarmin slowed and stopped before the doorway, shaking his head.

‘Just look at him,’ she said. ‘One more time, look at him.’ Now that he had his pattern-sight, things might go differently.

He gathered himself. She knew he resented this boy, resented the affection everyone showed him, resented that he was the only person who still searched for Daveed. All of that showed on his face before he finally entered his mother’s room.

Rushes leaped to her feet and he waved her off. ‘Sit down, Rushes. I am here only for a moment, to see the boy.’
And yet he paused again, just inside the door. Mesema took his hand.

Finally he moved and Mesema walked with him, never letting go. And there he stood, looking down for a long time, until finally he gave a sob. ‘It is him,’ he said, letting go of her hand and lifting the boy from his silks. ‘It is my brother.’ He held Daveed against him, all chubby legs and curls and fists. ‘I didn’t see him – I was looking at him the wrong way, like through a mirror, backwards. But it is him.’

He turned to Mesema, wide-eyed, the boy squirming in his grasp. ‘Now I realise— The letter! I must go and look at it again too.’

He meant the letter taken from Lord Nessen’s courier, the one he had said meant nothing. She reached out to take Daveed from his hands, but he paused, pressing the boy against his chest and inhaling his scent. ‘My brother,’ he said, his voice filled with wonder. But his hesitation was brief; no sooner had Mesema taken Daveed from his hands than he was already at the door. ‘I will see you in the morning,’ he said, his eyes focused on her but also past her, towards the next thing he had to do.

‘In the morning, my love,’ she called after him.

She replaced Daveed in his cradle and took a deep breath. ‘Rushes,’ she said, ‘I need to look for something among Nessaket’s things. Some seeds …’

Sarmin entered his room to find Azeem gone. He leafed through the papers on his desk, looking for the scroll from Lord Nessen’s courier. Rahim had sent plans for war machines – too late for the upcoming battle. He glanced at the designs and put them aside. There were some communications regarding the provinces, others about the delivery of swords for the Blue Shields; all of these could wait. Again he heard the same buzzing sound he had heard in Mesema’s quarters. He walked to the window, parchments in hand, but his view did not encompass the Scar. He felt it along his skin, prickling the fine hair of his arms.

He dropped the parchments on the desk, accidentally knocking free the scroll-tube he was looking for. It rolled along the wood and hit the rug with a soft whisper. He picked it up. Nothing had yet come of the surveillance on the man’s estate, though they still believed him to be a Mogyrk sympathiser. Sarmin had been certain the manse had something to do with his troubles, but this scroll had offered no clue the last time he read it. Now, as he unwound it again, he remembered the awkward handwriting, the spilled ink, the touching letter from a mother to her daughter.

But now he looked at it in a different way, just as he had looked at Daveed and finally
seen
him.

He unrolled it the rest of the way and scanned it. It still read like a fond note, but the ink that appeared to be so carelessly spilled served to underline particular letters. The missive was long, and much ink had been spilled – but Sarmin traced each letter with his finger as he read them aloud, and finally he cracked the code. All this time it had been sitting on his desk and he had not realised.

ARIGU’S MAN BROUGHT ALLIED SLAVES. LORD N REFUSED SHELTER. POISONED? APPROACH EMPEROR? RECOMMEND.

Sarmin sat back in his chair, amazed by what he had seen with his new eyes.

Arigu’s captain had prevailed upon the hospitality of a Fryth sympathiser, who had refused to let him enter with his bounty of illegal slaves. Lord Nessen had ended up dead. But where were the slaves? If the captain had left them at Lord Nessen’s estate in the north, he thought that would have been in the letter. No, somehow the slaves had been brought to the city. Grada and the Grey Service had been watching Lord Nessen’s estate in the Holies. She had told him she saw nothing but food go in.

Sarmin stood and paced. Of course – the slaves were there. That is why she had seen nobody come out.

‘Grada!’ he called, ‘come! You will not believe what I found.’

She entered. Her face was not curious; that was not one of her usual expressions, but what she did show was patient interest. ‘You were right to watch that house and bring me this scroll. Mesema was right to investigate. The Fryth slaves are there.’

Azeem entered behind her, his hands folded around a leather-bound ledger. ‘Azeem!’ Sarmin beckoned him forwards. ‘Send a platoon of Blue Shields to Lord Nessen’s manse in the Holies. There are a number of Felting prisoners there who must be freed.’

As Grada took her place beside Sarmin and leaned down, examining the scroll, Sarmin looked up into the hall – and saw one of his sword-sons turn, place a hand on the hilt of his hachirah and begin to draw it.

‘Grada,’ he said, but it was too late for her to help; the man had already drawn his weapon and clashed blades with someone in the corridor. He heard Ne-Seth give a shout of surprise; in an instant Grada was at the door, the Knife in her hand. He heard a thud as someone fell to the rug in the corridor.

A sword-son entered, a bloody hachirah in his hand, his eyes black as night. A pattern, dark and malicious, had been laid over him, greasy, iridescent half-moons and circles rising from the floor to infect him like rot.

‘Ne-Seth!’ Sarmin called out, his stomach turning with worry, ‘Ne-Seth!’ He heard an answering groan from the corridor.

At the sight of Grada the infected sword-son slashed down at her, but hachirahs were heavy and slow to wield, and Grada was fast. She dodged away from his swing, spun and got inside the reach of his sword before he had even lifted it again. She slid the blade between his ribs with a grating noise.

The sword-son’s eyes cleared to brown as the pattern shrank away from him like a dying vine and disappeared into the floor. He blinked and looked at Sarmin, a question on his mouth, just as another sword-son came behind him and cut through his neck in a gleaming sweep of metal. His head toppled away and hid the floor with a thud, followed immediately by his body. Blood pooled around the man’s severed neck. Sarmin knew the sword-son had been himself in that last moment. He had not known what had been done with his hands, just as Sarmin had not known his own hands had murdered Marke Kavic.

Sarmin felt ill. He pressed a hand against his mouth, stood
and turned to the window, taking deep breaths. To his right he could see Govnan’s fires, rising over wall and building, blinding against the night. He knew the blankness lay beyond them, a void against the stars. He closed his eyes.

‘Has the truce ended?’ Azeem asked. Sarmin remembered Arigu’s recommendation to attack first. Would anything have gone differently if he had?

‘Azeem: go, do as I asked and send the Blue Shields to the Holies.’ He did not hear the grand vizier leave, but he knew that he had. The buzzing filled his ears again; he shook it off and ran into the hallway to check on Ne-Seth. The sword-son was alive: a line of red ran from his shoulder to his groin, but it was a shallow cut.

‘Take him to Assar,’ he commanded, and the remaining sword-sons lifted him in their arms and carried him away.

He considered the spray of red on the wall. ‘Grada, I can no longer wait to question the prisoner.’ Didryk had said he did not know how to stop this kind of attack, and Sarmin believed him. But Adam was a second austere, and he might know secrets that were beyond the duke’s rank. The leader of the Mogyrk church – the ruler of Yrkmir – might be testing the Tower, and only Sarmin knew enough to begin to answer the challenge. He would have to try to meet it with all the force the Tower might have had in a better time. If the first austere had known how few the mages were, and how helpless, he would not have held back, testing and evaluating their abilities with his small offensives. He would have attacked outright, and he would have won. But Govnan’s fires in the north must give an entirely different impression of their power. Twice now the high mage had saved them.

Sarmin led his Knife to the dungeon, past the tapestries and
mosaics and golden doorknobs, all of them two things now – what he saw, and the pattern that defined them – all the way to the servants’ halls and the steps down to the dungeon. The steps were long and dark and cold, and he remembered waking to himself in one of the oubliettes, a skull in his hand.