The Emperor's knife

by Mazarkis Williams

  Beyon was like a precious new book that he couldn’t keep. If he told Beyon about Tuvaini and their mother, Beyon would be angry and leave him here alone. But Sarmin couldn’t keep the secret for ever.

  “Sarmin,” said Beyon, with a wide-lipped smile, “you have just told the emperor that he stinks of dog.”

  “My apologies, my Emperor-”

  “No, no-don’t apologise.”

  Sarmin looked at the small scar on Beyon’s cheek, the stiff taffeta of his robes, the unadorned gold around his neck.

  Beyon’s hands moved to his sash. “I have something to show you. Don’t be afraid.” As his fingers moved, Sarmin tried to look away, tried to obey the cold hand that seemed to pull his chin to the side, but he could not. Blue-marked skin revealed itself, finger-span by finger-span.

  Beyon slipped the red silk from his shoulders and sat bare-chested before his brother.

  So Tuvaini had spoken true, after all. The emperor’s chest and shoulders were as muscled and hairy as their father’s once had been, but a curious patterning ringed his midsection with coils, concentric squares and halfmoon shapes. Pairs of triangles, one facing up, the other down, appeared at regular intervals. A band of blue underscored each string and behind that, in fainter blue, a complex geometry marched beyond sight into finer and fainter detail.

  Sarmin shivered. “But you look well.” He couldn’t take his eyes from the designs written upon his brother’s flesh.

  “I’m marked,” said Beyon. “It began soon after I took the throne. At first I could hide the shapes -they were small enough-but of late, I go to my wives only in total darkness. My body-slaves…” His eyes focused elsewhere for a moment. “I was forced to have them killed. Now I let no one into my rooms.”

  “Are you dying?” Something lurked in the pattern: a threat, the language unknown but the tone clear enough.

  “I don’t think so-maybe.” Beyon rubbed his chin. “You are my heir, should I be.”

  “So you’re-” Sarmin’s lips trembled around the word. He forced his eyes to the emperor’s face.

  “A Carrier? Not that I can tell. Everything I do is of my own will.” Beyon buttoned his tunic.

  Sarmin half-opened his mouth to protest as the pattern vanished behind silk. He forced himself to silence.

  Beyon flicked his hair out of the way. “The dreams scare me. In them I do things not of my choosing.” He looked at the stone window. “In my dreams, my body is not my own-but I can run away from the dream if I wish. I ran away when my dream made me threaten the vizier.”

  “The vizier?” Sarmin remembered the vizier’s words: The Carriers become bold, even attacking on palace grounds.

  “It’s getting late. They’ll be looking for me.”

  “Who? Who will be looking for you?” Sarmin’s throat seized with fear.

  “Slaves, administrators, wives, dogs.” Beyon smiled. “The denizens of the palace.”

  Like Tuvaini. Sarmin again considered telling Beyon everything; to confess about his wife, the vizier, and his secret treasure under the pillow. No. I have sworn to my brother, but I won’t let the emperor take what is mine. Not yet.

  The emperor’s commanding voice broke through his thoughts. “You have sworn. You will be summoned when it is time for you to serve.” His brother was gone; the latch clicked.

  Sarmin curled against the carpet until full dark, letting Ink and Paper step around him as they came to light his lanterns. Someone placed a tray of food beside his head. He smelled something new: the sour aroma of wine. Beyon’s favor, or Tuvaini’s, or perhaps his mother’s. Whoever sent it did not expect him to wonder. He laughed to himself against the purple threads.

  “Prince Sarmin of the Petal Court,” he whispered to himself. “Vizier Sarmin.” He thought another moment. “Emperor Sarmin.”

  Nobody answered.

  He didn’t know when Beyon would be back. How long would it take? Longer than a ride from the Felt? Longer than Tuvaini’s trips through the secret passageways? Longer than the reach of their mother’s arms?

  Sarmin stood and pulled his knife from beneath his pillow. I will not betray you, brother.

  He turned his desk upside down and hunched over it, intent. With fevered concentration he began to work. The point of the dacarba scored the wood time and again as he recreated the pattern: crescent moon, underscore, diamond within diamond, crescent moon, overscore. He missed no detail. Breath escaped him in slow rasps. There’s a secret here, for those with eyes to see.

  Chapter Ten

  Eyul woke with a start. The last of the sun’s heat sank through the cloth of his tent.

  Something is wrong. He knew it, blood to bone. Sometimes it was like that. He knew better than to startle into action. He lay at rest, straining his senses, reaching for the wrongness. The sand between his fingers felt warm and gritty. Wrong. He sat up and moved to the tent flap. Veins ran across the dune, faint but visible in the low light of the setting sun: lines in the sand, raised little more than the thickness of a coin, no wider than his hand. Hundreds of them were stretching out in geometric profusion, crossing, intersecting, repeating.

  He hurried out under a pink and orange sky. Amalya crouched by the remains of the fire, watching the lines at her feet.

  “Amalya.”

  “It’s a pattern,” she said, staring at the shapes around her, diamond, halfmoon, triangle, circle, square. “He has found us.”

  “Who has?” Eyul’s fingers tightened on his Knife hilt. He didn’t remember drawing it; his hands had made the decision.

  “The enemy.”

  “I thought you said we were safe.” Eyul stood scuffing at the lines of the pattern. They reformed as the sand fell.

  “I thought we were,” Amalya said. “My master told me he would hide us.”

  She sounded defeated.

  The pattern centred on the next dune, almost two hundred yards away.

  The heart was formed by interlocking diamonds arrayed around a sixpointed star. From each point, a design more complex than any palace carpet swept out across the slopes.

  Eyul gasped as an electric tingle ran through him. Amalya gave a low moan and struggled to her feet at his side.

  “The pattern is complete,” she said.

  The sands started to move. The entire facing dune began to flow, from the centre of the pattern, shifting with impossible speed, like water racing across a marble floor. He saw the tops of pillars first, then stone roofs, then archways from which the sand flooded, emptying long-buried halls. Within moments a lost city lay revealed before them, temple, tower and tomb.

  Sarmin scored a line across the wood. One more stroke and the pattern would be complete. In his mind’s eye he saw again the symbol-geometry emblazoned across his brother’s chest, blood-red and blood-blue. He laid his dacarba on the floor and stretched his hands, noticing the ache in his thumb, the blister on his forefinger, and the sting of the old cut across his palm.

  Sarmin’s carved pattern contained what he had seen on Beyon’s skin, but it reached out across the underside of the overturned desk to cover as much space again. He’d filled in the remainder as he would complete a circle twothirds drawn, or fill in a mouth missing from the sketch of a face.

  He sat back against his bed and rested his eyes on the more familiar intricacies of the walls. He’d long ago discovered all the watchers dwelling in the scroll and swirl of the decoration. Some of the faces he’d not found for the longest time, even after years of gazing, whole days spent staring, lost in the depths from daybreak to sunset, floating on strange and distant seas. He’d found them all before he’d grown his beard, though, the angels and the devils both. The wisest and most fearsome dwelt deepest in the patterning, hidden in plain sight, written in the most subtle twists. They had watched him grow, advised him, kept him sane.

  Sarmin sought out the grim-faced angel whose gimlet eyes stared from the calligraphic convolutions above the Sayakarva window. “What will happen, Aherim?” He took up his knif
e again. “Should I complete it?”

  Aherim held his peace. Sarmin frowned. The gods might watch in silence, but he expected answers from their minions at least. Aherim seldom missed a chance to offer advice if asked.

  Sarmin set knifepoint to wood.

  “It will be a stone dropped into a deep pool. No pattern can be made whole without a ripple.”

  He stared at Aherim. “Someone will notice? Who? Tell me who.”

  Silence. Sarmin felt unnerved. “I will ask Him.” It was not a threat to be made idly, but surely one that would coax Aherim to speak further.

  Sarmin waited. He pursed his lips. He had found Him last of all: Zanasta, eldest of the devils, speaker for the dark gods. He showed only as the light failed and grazed the east wall at its shallowest angle. Even then Sarmin had to unfocus his eyes to reveal Him.

  “Tell me of the Felting girl. The bride Mother has chosen.” There was time to kill before sunset.

  “She comes.” Aherim spoke again at last, his voice the dry whisper of fingers on silk.

  “Is she pretty? Is she kind? Does she smell good?” Sarmin sat up and leaned forwards.

  “She is sad, she is strong, she smells of horses.” Aherim fell silent. He only ever answered three questions, and generally not the ones Sarmin asked.

  “She is riding to me. That’s why she smells of horse.” Sarmin picked up his dacarba and sighted down the blades at one of Aherim’s faces. “But why is she sad? Perhaps they have told her bad things about me. Maybe I’m ugly. Or is she worried that she will have to stay in this room with me? Maybe she will miss her horse.”

  Sarmin remembered camels, though not with fondness. His father had horses, but the princes were never allowed among them. “They kick worse than camels,” he remembered a groom telling him. Still, he liked the way they looked. Perhaps a horse would be a good pet.

  “I will make her happy, Aherim.” Sarmin tilted the knife so that light danced along the blade’s edges. “I will…” He tried to think how he might entertain her. When they came at all, people came to him with a purpose. He couldn’t recall a time when someone had come to his room simply to speak, simply to be with him. “Perhaps I will not make her happy, Aherim. Maybe I will share her sorrow. I will listen and hear of her life in the sandless wastes.”

  Eyul took one uncertain step, then another. Under his feet a thin layer of sand covered something solid: old stone, undisturbed by the passage of time or the magic that brought it to the surface. Amalya kept by his side, moving so close her sleeve rubbed against his. Eyul touched her elbow with his fingers and they each took another step forwards.

  “Nothing could be alive in here,” she whispered.

  Neither of them wanted to test that idea too quickly. They took two more small steps. Sandstone houses lined the road. Square gaps in the walls showed where carved window-screens once had been mounted. Eyul could see nothing but darkness through them. Like Carriers’ eyes, they watched their guests with quiet malevolence.

  The sun was sinking towards the west, but still it blazed with heat. They wandered, separate from their shade and water. Eyul’s leg ached with every step. This was a fool’s game. He shook his head. “Let’s get our camels and leave this dung in our wake.” They turned in unison, for the first time moving with speed.

  A stone wall had risen behind them, ten feet high and scoured by sand. It stretched to either side, curving out of sight in an unbroken arc.

  Amalya let out a breath.

  “Is there nothing you can do?” he asked her.

  She blinked at the wall as if it had slapped her. “I can’t touch my elemental here,” she said. “It’s as if he’s gone.” She said it the same way Eyul would tell her that every well in the desert had gone dry.

  I have my Knife.

  “Come on,” he said, gripping her elbow and pulling her away from the wall. “They want us here, we’ll be here. But it won’t be that easy for them.” With his right hand he pulled his weapon free. They turned again and walked up the street, the sun now in their eyes.

  At a corner where the road split three ways, Amalya stopped.

  “I feel something,” she said. She leaned over and Eyul watched, spitting some fine grains from his mouth, as she ran the sand through her fingers. After a few seconds she said, “This way,” and set off to the left. He glanced behind, then followed her.

  They walked a hundred feet more. The road grew narrower.

  “Does this look familiar to you?” Amalya asked.

  Eyul shook his head before taking another look around. “Maybe.” He wiped the sweat from his face, leaving a layer of sand. They walked some more. The sun slipped further down the sky. At least it would soon be cool.

  “I want to get up high and see. If this was a city, there will be a gate.”

  “Not a good idea. These buildings don’t look sound.”

  Amalya turned away, into the nearest building.

  “Amalya, no!” Eyul ducked under the doorway after her.

  “It’s cooler in here,” she pointed out. It was true. The stone remained chilled from wherever it had been hiding beneath the sands, and the sun hadn’t yet found its way through the lower windows. Amalya pressed her forehead to a pillar and Eyul leaned against an interior wall.

  “I have to find a stairway,” she said, but neither of them moved.

  The beating sounded first, a thumping sound like a distant heart. A spilling noise like the fall of a dry river came with it, outside the window to Eyul’s right. Two beats later he heard a hissing through the window in the next room. Something or someone approached at a walking pace. He moved arrow-quick, grabbing Amalya by the waist. “Up, up,” he whispered, searching for the stairs as he pushed her in front of him.

  They found the stairs in the centre of the building. He was glad for her quiet movements, her lack of questions or fright. At the first landing he turned to survey the gloom below. “Stay to the side,” he warned Amalya, not believing the calm darkness before his eyes. He spread his feet and relaxed, watchful, the emperor’s Knife sure and ready in his hand. He was aware of everything at once: Amalya’s stillness at his left, the sun’s orange invasion through a hole in the ceiling, and the slow but steady approach of whispering sand.

  The heartbeat stopped. The silence ached for the missing pulse, and then it came again, smaller, closer, quieter, somehow familiar. Thump. Thump. And again, on the stairs, like the bouncing of a ball.

  A figure moved through the shadows. Eyul watched it climb the first steps. The red ball emerged into the sunlight first, then the boy’s hand that held it. The light caught black curls and a smile, a smooth boy’s face. “No,” Eyul whispered. The boy climbed closer, pushing his feet into each stair with force, though the only sound he made was that of sand blowing in the wind.

  Eyul forced himself to look into Prince Pelar’s eyes. Black and cold, they stared both at him and through him. This was no longer the chubby, laughing boy he’d killed. This was a tormented creature from the depths of Herzu’s hell itself. Dread soaked through Eyul’s robes like cold rain. At his side Amalya drew in her breath.

  “Kill it,” she whispered.

  “I can’t,” he said. This is my creation. Sorrow and horror weighted the Knife in his hand.

  The creature smiled then, a skull-grin, and raised its arm towards the west. As it pointed with one finger, the red ball fell and bounced down the steps.

  “Kill it!” Amalya had found her fright.

  Eyul threw. A sound like grinding pebbles filled the stair. Sand swirled and stung for an instant, and fell before him, leaving only a scattering of stone and black grit.

  “What- Was that real?” he asked Amalya, who crouched and ran her fingers through the dark grains.

  “I don’t think I saw what you saw,” she said.

  “What did you see?”

  “Brannik of the Tower. Rock-sworn-or would have been; he died during the ceremony.” She wiped her hands on her robes. “It wasn’t him. He couldn’
t-”

  He pulled her back from her memories. “Amalya, back at the camp you said the enemy put us here. Who is the enemy?”

  She looked at him and placed one hand on the pendant that hung from her neck. “The creature pointed west. Should we go to the roof and see what’s there?”

  Sarmin sat, and the light ran from his blade. The dying rays slid across the east wall. He waited, enduring Aherim’s silence until Zanasta came. It took more effort today, as if the devil had been hiding himself even deeper in the detail.

  “Zanasta, show yourself.” Sarmin furrowed his brow, squinting at the chaotic swirls where some long-dead artist had styled a rose from a froth of curling strokes.

  “Show yourself.”

  And the devil smiled. Zanasta always smiled.

  “This pattern is a key. Will something open when I set the final stroke?” Sarmin asked.

  “I speak for the dark gods.” Zanasta hated to answer questions.

  “I know. What will happen?”

  “I speak for Herzu, who holds death in one hand and fear in the other.”

  The light grew crimson as the sun plunged towards the dunes. Soon Zanasta would be hidden and silent.

  “Tell me.” Sarmin set his blade to score the last line.

  “I speak for Ghesh, clothed in darkness, eater of stars. I speak for Meksha, mother of mountain fire.”

  “And they watch us now. Speak, Old One, or have the gods found a new Mouth?” The wood splintered under Sarmin’s knifepoint. He began the line, his eyes on Zanasta.

  “No!” The devil’s smile vanished.

  “Tell me.” Sarmin cut half the distance. His hand trembled. Zanasta always smiles.

  “A door opens. A door to everything. More than you can know or want. Hell and heaven.”

  The light fled, and Zanasta with it.

  Sarmin held still, a hair’s breadth from finishing. Mother had opened one door, Tuvaini another, and Beyon yet one more. He knew the things he wanted could not be reached through such doors. He wanted lost moments, fragile-feeling half-remembered old joys, Pelar bouncing his ball. He wanted to know what to say when people came to speak with no reasons. He wanted to know how to make a horsegirl smile.