The Emperor's knife

by Mazarkis Williams

  “Arigu will fetch me soon,” she said, and it was true; the carriage stopped, and the general rode up on his horse. Behind it came Eldra’s own horse, bedecked with bells and ribbons in the Felting way.

  “Come now, girl,” Arigu said to Eldra. He made Cerantic sound even uglier than it did already. His eyes were sharp as he glanced around the carriage.

  Mesema wanted to tell Arigu about the strange man she had seen, but she was frightened.

  Eldra giggled and jumped out of the box. Mesema could hear the horse’s little bells ringing, moving ahead of them. Soon the carriage lurched forwards once more.

  “Why does he…?” Mesema let her voice trail off.

  “He is a man,” said Banreh.

  “And so are you,” said Mesema. Changing to the softer, affectionate tone, she said, “Banreh, before, I didn’t mean-”

  “I know.” Banreh moved on the wooden bench, shifting his leg with one hand.

  “Will you forgive me?”

  He smiled. “As long as you promise to be nicer to Eldra.” She liked his voice when he spoke as family. It sounded soft, like the rustling of the lambskins he wrote on.

  The desert had already begun to cool. Mesema took Eldra’s place next to Banreh and put her head on his shoulder. “I will. I want you to be proud of me.”

  He turned his head towards hers, so close she could feel his breath blowing against the hairs on her temple. “I am proud of you.” He placed a gentle, ink-stained hand on her shoulder and pushed her away. “We won’t speak of it again,” he said in the formal tone.

  We carry on.

  Mesema slid across the bench to the other window. The west, beyond the desert, was a place of mystery: cruel fighting men who rode boats like horses, buildings bigger than her whole village, and an ocean so large that all of the Cerani and Felting lands could hide inside it. This was all true, if the traders-who-walked could be believed.

  Wind rippled the sand, and Mesema tried to count the grains on her arm. How many questions would she like to ask Banreh? They couldn’t be numbered, and she knew it. There was no way he could answer them all before he returned to her father and his war.

  It hit her, as hard as the desert sun: Banreh would be gone, and she would be alone. There would be no intermediary, no protector, no adviser. An image of the dead-eyed bandit arose in her mind.

  “Banreh,” she said, still looking out towards the west, steadying one trembling hand on the window frame, “let’s continue our lessons. I want to speak excellent Cerantic.”

  Sarmin moved through a darkened hallway. He passed a door to the right, two more to the left. He longed to turn and open one, but his body would not obey him. His feet moved forwards unbidden. Some force held his eyes fixed ahead to where, beneath shadowed tapestries, a man stood in a dim entryway. Above the man’s head, tiles depicted a battle in shades of brown-perhaps the famous Battle of the Well, where the Cerani had defeated the Parigols once and for all. Sarmin tried to judge for certain, but he was too close now to study the tiles. He couldn’t lift his head. Something forced him to look upon the man instead.

  Tuvaini. Sarmin would have smiled, but his face paid him no heed. A dream. He left his room so often in dreams, and yet it always took a second miracle to make him realise he was travelling through nothing more substantial than imagination.

  The vizier’s lips curled back, revealing small white teeth.

  He looked up rather than down at Sarmin, his eyes full of disgust, and held back, as if he thought Sarmin would make him dirty.

  Even Sarmin’s fever dreams had never seemed so strange. He’d never dreamed his body to be a traitor to his will-or taller, come to that.

  Tuvaini’s manner fascinated Sarmin. If everyone were to treat him with such disdain, he could move through the palace practically unseen. He tried to ask Tuvaini what had caused the sudden change, but his lips held still.

  “I did my part; you can hardly blame me that you failed.” Tuvaini held out a clean palm.

  To Sarmin’s surprise, he felt himself hand Tuvaini a rolled parchment.

  “You’ve put me in an awkward position, to say the least,’ said Tuvaini, tucking the scroll into his robe.

  “You have what you wanted,” Sarmin said. His voice felt odd, gravelly.

  “So I do. And next I will cleanse your stench from the palace.”

  Sarmin involuntarily glanced behind, to where he had started his walk. All lay dark. He turned back to Tuvaini. “I will leave, if it is in the design.”

  “In the design.” Tuvaini’s voice mocked Sarmin’s.

  For an instant a pattern flashed across Sarmin’s eyes, overlaid on the scene, familiar, compelling and fearsome all at once.

  Sarmin tried to reprove the vizier for his tone, but he could not. Instead he turned away, into the darkness, where he felt something shift.

  The corridors melted away into night.

  “Dada?” A young girl looked up at him with wide eyes, her hair wild with sleep.

  Sarmin could see the pattern woven around his arm, spiralling to the hand that held the cleaver. A meat cleaver? Was Sarmin now a butcher in the Maze, chopping goat and mutton to sell in pieces?

  “Dada?” the girl asked again. “Are you still sick, Dada?” Sarmin thought the girl very pretty. She was dark, like his sister Shala. He felt the blood from the cleaver running warm and powerful across his fingers. Shouldn’t the man be practising his trade in his shop? But instead he stood in a dim mud-walled bedchamber, crammed with sleeping pallets pushed together. He had been sick. Patterned. Hidden away. Sarmin understood.

  The man-Sarmin-both of them-they caught the little girl by the hair and raised the cleaver.

  No!

  With every fibre of his being Sarmin commanded his hand to drop the blade. The hand, bloody and dripping, hesitated, trembled. A hundred faint voices rose at the back of his mind, a thousand, more:

  “The pattern finds no hold on her.”

  “The child resists. The wife resisted. The sons.”

  “She stands against the pattern.”

  “No, she is my child.”

  “She resists.”

  “Erase her.”

  And the cleaver swung, biting home with the wet sound of butchers’ work, a clean cut between the vertebrae.

  Sarmin howled, or tried to, but he didn’t own his mouth. He tried to look away, but his eyes watched the meat open and the blood spurt. He tried to leave-with all his being he tried to leave.

  Sarmin fell to his hands and knees, feeling sand beneath his fingers. No blood, no child. An unusual smell filled his nostrils and prickled his skin, but he couldn’t identify it, not until he felt sand beneath his fingers. Fresh air. He lifted his head and peered over the crest of a dune. Fifty feet away he saw an older man and a dark-skinned woman, both injured. The man held the woman, who sat with her shoulders hunched inwards.

  “Where am I?” he asked, but no sound came forth. The sun rose, fast and faster, and he stood beneath a different dune, watching a caravan go by. A young woman with wheat-colored curls stuck her head out of the carriage and looked at him. The world spun again and Sarmin was in his room, staring at the ceiling gods.

  “What have you wrought of me?” he asked them in his own voice. The gods did not have to tell him that his dreams were of his own making.

  Mesema’s lessons lasted until full moonlight, and her tongue and throat felt sore by then. Banreh asked for extra water from the soldiers, and when they brought it, she took a long drink and looked out of the carriage for the Bright One. He’d come halfway towards the moon since she first started watching. His inevitable journey, marking her own path from daughterhood to motherhood, was too short, but she knew there was nothing she could do to slow the stars.

  “Banreh,” she said, but stopped; she heard the slow breath of sleep. She bunched a cushion behind her head and tried to close her own eyes. She thought of her prince, and made him like Arigu, only younger, and with curly hair like Banreh’s.


  She must have dreamed of him, for the next thing she knew was the faint light of dawn and the shouts of the soldiers as they set up camp. Banreh had already gone. She threw down her pillow and took another drink. The water still felt cool against her tongue.

  She jumped out of the carriage and surveyed the wide landscape. Eldra was standing by her horse, facing the dark west, as she did every morning; she enjoyed watching the dawn spread across the desert. The Bright One hovered on Eldra’s left. Mesema scowled at it, willing the day to come and make it disappear. Then she took a breath and prepared herself. It was time to be friendly. She wasn’t doing it just for Banreh; when she got to Nooria, she would need a friend. She dragged herself to where Eldra stood, trying to think of a nice thing to say, but she needn’t have worried, for Eldra spoke first.

  “The sun comes from the east, as do my people. Soon it will light the entire world.”

  Mesema tried to think of a way to respond. Finally she offered, “I thought your people were to the north, like mine.”

  “God’s people live in the east.” Eldra closed her eyes, a faint smile on her lips.

  The east. Mesema imagined it as a place of snow and high keeps, tall men of Fryth and Mythyck and Yrkmir beyond, shaggy mountain beasts, and strange, halting songs. From them the traders-who-walked carried many things, useful and pretty, but their dead god had never appealed to any People on this side of the mountains except for the Red Hooves. Mesema thought a moment, searching for common ground.

  “I believe in the gods too.”

  “But there is only one god.”

  One god, dead, but with all the power of the many. It made no sense, but Mesema had to learn to guard her tongue. She switched to the intimate tone, a soft teasing between friends.

  “What does Arigu think of your god?”

  Eldra laughed. “Like any man, he doesn’t care what I think.” She spoke as a sister, crushing her consonants together like soft felt. “Anyway, God is not my god; he’s everyone’s god.”

  “Well, I understand that,” Mesema allowed. “Anyone can worship a god, even if he belongs to other people.”

  “Mesema, listen. My god is everyone’s god.”

  Mesema felt the heat of the sun on her back; she looked to the Bright One and was relieved to find him gone. “Why did your family send you to Arigu, Eldra? Are you to marry him?” Eldra glanced over her shoulder at the camp. “No… I never proved myself, and anyway, Arigu doesn’t really care for me. I can tell.” She turned back and squared her shoulders.

  “Then what?”

  “Never mind.”

  Mesema thought about Eldra’s arrival. Banreh didn’t appear to know why she was with them. Arigu had some design they couldn’t see. Instead of one girl from the Felt, Arigu was bringing two. An honest assessment forced Mesema to allow that Eldra was prettier and more womanly than she was, but Eldra had two points against her. She wasn’t a virgin, and she couldn’t bear children, so she couldn’t be meant for the prince. It bothered Eldra, the not-knowing; Mesema could see that now. All her jokes and flirtations served to disguise her worry.

  “Well,” Mesema said, taking Eldra’s hand, “you’re my companion, perhaps.”

  Eldra giggled. “I’d rather be Banreh’s companion.”

  “You’d have to talk to him about that,” said Mesema, hiding her stab of annoyance.

  Eldra looked over her shoulder. “The general.” She rolled her eyes and squeezed Mesema’s hand. “I’ll see you in the afternoon.”

  Mesema felt sorry for the girl. It was supposed to be fun, trying for a plainschild-or perhaps it was a sandchild in this case-but Eldra and Arigu didn’t have a real romance, and as long as Arigu dominated their caravan, Eldra could never be with the man she really cared for. Mesema’s cheeks grew hot when she realised she was glad of that. She wished the Hidden God had chosen a more blessed birthday for her, but instead she had been born selfish, under the Scorpion’s tail. He’d also chosen her fate, in being sent away; she had yet to understand if that was a punishment or a reward.

  She turned and looked for her tent. Banreh always tied a Windreader scarf to the pointed top so that she could find it. She crawled in and lay down on her mat, not bothering with her nightdress. She would ask for water to wash herself when she woke. The soldiers washed in the sand; they would consider it a waste, but they might allow it.

  And then, without quite knowing why, Mesema cried herself to sleep.

  Chapter Thirteen

  "Let me see it,” Eyul said. Amalya hunched in his arms, her back to him, as if even his gaze would sear her arm. He could see her pain, written into the lines of her neck and shoulders. He gritted his teeth as he drew himself up. Somehow he’d injured his own back.

  Amalya turned slowly, holding her elbow with care, like a brimming cup. The sand had given her a new skin where the flesh had been scraped raw; only here and there could Eyul see the glistening of stripped muscle in patches the desert had not yet found. “Have you magic for wounds?” Eyul asked. The flies would come, and with them the taint that would sour the arm.

  Her eyes held the glazed amazement of a man stabbed in the stomach.

  He knew that look. “Have you a cure-spell?” He reached for her shoulder with his unburned hand.

  She blinked, and some intelligence returned. “Herb law,” she whispered, “I know a little herb law. My true magic lies in fire and in smoke.” She managed a grimace and looked around.

  “Herbs seem to be in short supply.”

  Eyul was relieved: she had her wits, at least. A Tower mage could be relied on for a well-trained mind.

  “Wait here,” he said, “I’ll bring the camels.”

  Amalya crouched down, slow and stiff, sheltering her arm as though it were the most precious infant.

  The stars lit Eyul’s path across the dunes and he found Amalya’s camel in the depths, between the starlit crests, where the darkness was almost tangible. He walked stiffly, dragging his wounded leg, as he scanned the ridges for the dappling of tracks left by his own camel. “An assassin wears the dark like a cloak,” he quoted from the Book of the Knife. Darkness had ever been his friend.

  No night terrors for Eyul.

  And yet his breath came unevenly and his heart’s rhythm guided his steps. For a moment he saw Pelar’s ball, bouncing with every beat. Behind him Amalya’s camel passed wind with unusual vigour, leaving the night’s silence in tatters.

  Eyul grinned and yanked the beast forwards by its tether. “You have the right of it, my friend.” The horror sank with the city. The echoes that remained would haunt him only if he let them.

  Eyul found his own camel a mile further on, waiting peaceably in the lee of a hundred-foot dune. He rode back, leading Amalya’s beast and navigating by the light of the moon. For the last half-mile of his return, Eyul could see her robes at each crest, white against the moonlit sand, and motionless.

  “You have magic for the pain?” he asked as he closed the last yards.

  She looked up, dark gleams for eyes. “Fire and smoke, nothing else.”

  He helped her onto her camel. She held herself upright stiffly, moving with slow determination. Eyul still found her beautiful, despite the taut lines of her agony and the grim slit of her mouth. He felt guilty for it, even as he breathed her in. “There. Hold to the pommel.”

  She gripped with her good arm. “Tell him to walk steady. I’d rather not fall off.” She managed a tight smile.

  Eyul studied her for a moment. In the ruins she’d feared him as much as the ghosts, afraid he’d slit her throat. In a day or two her arm would swell, and she’d beg for that mercy. The knowledge sat like a cold stone in his stomach. The keen edge of the emperor’s Knife would hardly notice her skin, but he noticed it. He didn’t want her death on his hands.

  “You never wanted any man’s death.” Eyul heard the words as if Halim were standing at his shoulder even now, risen from the grave and scarcely the more wizened for thirty years in the dry ground. “T
hat is what makes you the ideal assassin: patience. Your lack of appetite lets you wait. Duty will guide your hand to make the cut.”

  Amalya returned his gaze. “What are you thinking?” A lover’s question, asked through gritted teeth.

  “That we should put space between us and this place,” he said, mounting his own beast.

  Tuvaini waited for her in the temple of death. Herzu watched him from eyes oflapis lazuli in a face of carved jet. He returned the god’s stare as he approached along the central aisle. The sculptor presented Herzu as a thickchested man with the head of a jackal, six yards tall. When Herzu visited Tuvaini’s dreams, he came as a human youth, loose-limbed, robed, walking the dunes in the dusk, seen only in glimpses between the crests.

  “My Lord High Vizier.”

  Tuvaini turned. Nessaket stood behind him, close enough to touch. “My lady.” He brought his fingers to his forehead. “You have a silent step.” She waited, impassive save for the slightest furrow between her brows. Tuvaini moved aside, and as she passed he drew in the scent of her.

  Desert-rose, and a hint of honey. He watched Nessaket’s smooth back, the motion of her shoulders, the gleam of olive skin as she made her devotions. Her personal guards would be waiting by the door, but in the temple of death they were alone.

  At last she stood and turned. Tuvaini pulled his gaze from the sway of her breasts to the hardness of her eyes.

  “You are a pious man, Vizier?”

  “Only the foolish do not honour those with power over them,” Tuvaini said.

  “Herzu holds power in both hands.” She spoke from the scriptures. “In his left he brings hunger.”

  “And in his right hand, pestilence.” Tuvaini finished the line. A pause.

  “And the emperor fares well this morning, I trust?” Tuvaini smiled.

  Nessaket did not smile. “My son is well, I thank you.” She walked towards the entrance and her waiting guards. She always left him this way, wanting. Set aside.

  “But which son?”

  Nessaket stopped, her shoulders stiff. For the longest moment she neither walked nor turned. Tuvaini wanted to see her face, wanted to see what his words had written there.