The Emperor's knife

by Mazarkis Williams

  Another step towards the doorway.

  “Herzu has his right hand upon Beyon’s shoulder, Nessaket.” Her name felt good in his mouth.

  She stopped again. Sweat ran beneath his robes, liquid trickles across his ribs.

  “Can Arigu find a child among the horse clans so young she is yet a virgin?” Tuvaini asked.

  At that Nessaket turned.

  Tuvaini felt his heart pound. “And if he can, will she reach Nooria? It’s a long road from the grasslands, and we live in interesting times.” He reached into his robes.

  Nessaket startled, arms rising, mouth ready to call her men He pulled the scroll out quickly. “No weapons-we are not barbarians, Nessaket.” He managed a smile. Their sins bound both of them to silence. Nessaket would not run to the throne room; she would stay and listen until he let her go. He held the scroll before him, level with his head. “There is an old man in the desert who remembers our history better than the most learned palace scribe. He holds treasures from the library of Axus, taken on the night it burned-papers, documents, books of record, sealed oaths, blood confessions spilled on cured skin.” And one has been stolen for me.

  Nessaket approached, a sway to her hips, silks flowing, a memory from dreams on nights too hot for sleep.

  “And what does your paper say, Tuvaini?”

  “I-” She had never spoken his name before. “I-” He looked to the scroll and its wax seals. His hand shook from wanting her. “It shows the lines of succession, back past the Yrkman incursion. Where we have speculation, it has names; where we have hearsay, it has dates. Fact in place of argument.”

  “And what is that to me? Or the emperor?”

  “Herzu watches us. May we speak of death, Nessaket?”

  She was close, her scents surrounding him. “I married the death of children, Tuvaini. I am no stranger to such talk.”

  Tuvaini lowered the scroll, unrolling it. “This page shows the path Herzu has set before me. It tells a tale of failed lines, premature ends, assassination. It shows how, with enough time, the seed that falls furthest from the tree can flourish.”

  She took a step closer, her head tilted in question.

  “Beyon will die soon, or become something worse than a corpse. And fifteen years’ solitude has broken Sarmin; he could never rule. Let that line end, and the next step is written here.” He pointed at the bottom of the scroll.

  Nessaket drew in her breath. “Treason.”

  “I do not speak of betrayal. I would never raise my hand against the empire. I love the empire.” He traced a finger down the longest line upon the parchment, reaching his grandfather’s name. “And it falls to me to safeguard the empire.”

  She was silent a long time, and he listened to her breathing, watched the light on her hair. She raised her head from the parchment and looked at him, truly studied him, as she never had before. What did she see, he wondered.

  “I very much enjoy being the emperor’s mother,” she said at last.

  He resisted the urge to wet his lips. “And how did you enjoy being the emperor’s wife?”

  “One of many wives.” She turned towards the statue. “It was tolerable.”

  “Tahal was a great man, deserving of many honours,” said Tuvaini. “But I am a humble servant of the empire, who has never once asked permission to marry.”

  “I see what you mean.” She fingered the pendant that hung between her breasts.

  Another silence.

  “Beyon has been to see Sarmin,” he told her. “He wishes to circumvent you and make Sarmin his own servant.”

  “He will fail.” She dropped the pendant and faced him.

  “They were close as boys. Apart, they are easily controlled, but together, they might be difficult.”

  “While you are not.” Nessaket showed him a slow, secret smile, and for an instant she was the girl he had loved in the happy days of Tahal: the graceful young girl who danced for the emperor in his private rooms, the boy at his feet forgotten. Tuvaini had always been overlooked. But no more.

  “While I am not,” he agreed. “A sick son and a mad son, Nessaket. There is no future there.”

  She stepped closer, so close he had to clutch the scroll to keep himself from touching her. “I will consider your words,” she said. “And your offer.”

  Tuvaini swallowed. “Nothing could please me more.”

  A brief incline of her head and she was gone, brushing past him and to her guards without another word.

  Tuvaini lowered himself to the stone and stared up at Herzu’s face. His breathing slowed; his fierce need abated. He gathered himself for his next confrontation. It was as he had told Nessaket: together, the brothers created a difficulty. It was time for Herzu’s fury to tear them apart.

  Eyul and Amalya rode through another night. Eyul slouched in the saddle, his mind clenched around the visions the ruins had shown him. Every so often he looked up, checking that Amalya still kept her seat. She swayed as though in her cups, jolting with every footfall.

  A chill wind picked up two hours before dawn, snatching sand from the ridges to give each gust a stinging edge. Eyul wrapped his desert scarf in the manner of the nomads to hide his face, reducing his view to a slit. In the palace treasury Eyul had seen the iron helms taken from the Yrkman invaders; those men had chosen to confine their vision to a slot, showing as little of the world as Eyul saw now. Perhaps such helms sat well on men whose narrow view of the world led them across treacherous seas to impose their will and die at such a distance from their homes.

  For a while Eyul rode beside Amalya. “We were meant to die in that city,” he said. “That pattern was set to crush us.”

  “Yes.”

  “But something went wrong with it-something changed. Somehow a door was left open, or forced open, and an old ghost found his way in.”

  “Old ghost?” Amalya spoke through teeth gritted against the pain.

  “The Emperor Tahal. He showed me how to break the pattern. I thought it would be difficult, or complicated, but it was simple.”

  How is evil destroyed? With the emperor’s Knife.

  Amalya managed a tight smile. “The solution is generally simple when you know what it is. Strike at the centre. But sometimes that’s most of the problem-finding the centre.”

  They rode without speaking from one dune crest to the next, until he asked, “What did you fear in the Mogyrk temple?”

  She turned. Her eyes rolled white in her head for a moment before she found focus. “Everything.”

  “What’s to fear in a new god? The invaders, men of Yrkmir and Scyhtic and other places you can’t say without spitting, they carried Mogyrk with them. What’s to fear in that? There’s no magic in their lands, just coldness and mountains without end. All peoples bring some or other god with them and Cerani swallows them whole.” Eyul realized he was quoting Tuvaini, and stopped.

  “The Mogyrks see no shades,” Amalya whispered. Her camel jolted and the pain sharpened her voice. “They see only one path, one design, and they have just one evil. Think of that, assassin: one temptation, one Lord of Hell, with dominion over all things dark. The devil the Mogyrks carry on their back can turn the hearts of many men.” She straightened in the saddle and watched him with a quiet intensity. For a while only the creak of leather and the soft noises of padded feet in sand filled the space between them.

  The wound on Eyul’s leg burned as if new. “You think such a devil would find easy meat in the Knife-Sworn?”

  “You’ve taken scores of lives.” The moonlight caught her cheekbones, sculpting her beauty. “Women and children, perhaps?”

  We live in a world of sorrow, of pain and hard choices, Eyul wanted to say. Somehow the words that had always brought him comfort felt too hollow to speak here in the desert. “I-” I bring peace. I send souls to paradise. I give an end both swift and kind. Few in this world have one at their side strong enough for mercy in their final moments.

  He said nothing.

  “You think
loyalty will hold you safe against corruption?” Her words stumbled and she swayed. Already the wound was poisoning her blood.

  “I am loyal to the empire,” Eyul said, “if nothing else.”

  Amalya coughed a laugh and then muttered, “Loyalty is the easiest of all virtues to subvert.” Her words rang like steel on steel.

  Caution bent Eyul’s lips. “Who gave you the Star of Cerana?”

  She struggled to lift her head. “Are you loyal to the Star? Or the honesty of its delivery?”

  “Who gave it to you?” Eyul fought the impulse to shake her. Amalya bent over the pommel of her saddle, the breath harsh in her throat.

  “Who!”

  “Ask me again, at the end.” And she would say no more. The moon dropped in the sky and still they rode on, an hour of ups and downs, punctuated by grunts and winces. “We could rest.” Amalya’s voice came dry and cracked.

  Eyul pulled up his camel and dismounted. A lost hour held no water. It made no difference whether Amalya found her end on this dune or on the sands another day to the west. He told himself it made no difference.

  Amalya dismounted like an old woman. Something had broken in her, to make that plea for rest. Eyul felt it break when she spoke. She caught his eyes in the grey light and manufactured a smile. “I could make us a fire,” she said.

  “Are you cold?”

  “Burning up.” She tried a grin, but sudden pain erased it. Eyul imagined he could feel the heat coming off her. At sundown, when he had lifted her onto her camel, he had smelled the wound and felt the fever on her skin. Why? he almost asked aloud, but the answer closed his mouth. She didn’t want to die useless.

  “A fire would be good. It will be a while before the sun finds us,” he said.

  Amalya’s brow glistened where her sweat ran in trickles. He started on the straps to his saddle-pack. “I’ll find us something to burn.” He remembered Amalya’s fastidiousness when it came to cooking over camel dung.

  “No.” The word held a crackle that made him drop the ropes and turn to her.

  Her dark eyes caught the crimson hint of dawn and threw it back at him. A wisp of flame played over the skin of her wounded arm and was gone. Amalya held her good hand before her, brown fingers clawed; she spoke one hot syllable, and fire woke on the dune. A white flame leaped up between them, higher than a man. Eyul stumbled back, the heat beating at him like a fist, and his already burned hand roared a protest.

  “Amalya!” he shouted over the camels’ terror, reaching out for one as it broke past him, and missing.

  The flame made no sound save for a faint but angry roar, higher pitched than the wind. It neither wavered nor flickered but stood like a white lance against the sky from which all trace of dawn had been driven. Eyul could smell his headscarf smouldering and he stumbled backwards.

  “Amalya!”

  She stood before the flame, one hand extended as if she were pouring out her fever into its hungry brilliance. The desert sun at its zenith in a steelblue sky would shed a kinder light than that which now lit the dune. Under its illumination all color fled. Amalya stood robed in utter white, her flesh cut from pieces of night.

  For a moment the flame flared brighter still. Eyul raised one hand to his eyes, but his vision had already left him. An echo of Amalya against a white-lit sky lay in every direction.

  She gave a short cry, and the fire fell cold and silent. Amalya’s after-image died with the flames, leaving Eyul in a world of black.

  “Amalya!”

  She didn’t answer.

  Eyul groped a blind man’s path to where he’d last seen her. For the longest time he thought himself lost beyond redemption-his hands could find neither Amalya, nor any sign of their camp. Questing fingers caught only sand, sand, and more sand. He called out, softly at first, and then more stridently, but only the wind answered, filling his mouth with grit. He crawled in an ever-widening circle, though his leg and hand smarted and his back protested. He ignored them. He would find her.

  At last there was a soft whisper to his left. “Here…’

  When at last he caught a handful of cloth he sighed with relief and reached out again, this time finding firm flesh within the robes. He’d had no plan beyond finding Amalya, and so he gathered the woman to him and sat with her cradled in his lap. He could feel that the fever had left her, expelled with the heat of the flame. She was limp, unstrung, but breathing smoothly.

  “You lost control of your fire,” he told her, “but I suppose it’s better this way. You can’t feel it now.”

  Eyul sensed the dawn, felt the fingers of its warmth pushing back the chill of night. He turned his face to the sun and stroked her hair as a mother would her child’s. A tear rolled down his cheek. He checked the Knife at his hip. The hilt felt warm beneath his sore fingertips, reassuring. There might be little call for a blind assassin, but the emperor’s Knife would make his end a quick one. And hers.

  I send souls to paradise.

  The heat built quickly, and with it came flies. Eyul covered Amalya’s arm as best he could with his cloak. She stirred once in his lap, muttering something incomprehensible, and he ran his fingers across her lips. “Shhh.”

  An hour passed, or maybe four. The sun parched Eyul, and his tongue felt like old leather when he spoke. “Perhaps it is time.” Before she wakes. She won’t feel it. He reached for his Knife, faltered. He didn’t want it to be time.

  “Nice knife.” A stranger’s voice sounded at his shoulder. Eyul pulled the blade clear.

  “They say a blind man’s other senses get sharp.” The stranger spoke with mild amusement. Somewhere on the dune, others whispered.

  Eyul knew the accent; only one people spoke the true-tongue with such reckless disregard for vowels.

  “But it can’t be true. I watched you cuddle that pretty slave girl for so long that Jarquil had time to find your camels.”

  Eyul set the emperor’s Knife to Amalya’s throat.

  “Hey now!” The nomad’s surprise set a grim smile on Eyul’s lips.

  “Wh- What?” The touch of metal to skin brought Amalya from whatever dark seas she floated on.

  Eyul flinched, finding his own surprise.

  “Who?” Amalya asked the question in a croak.

  “Nomads,” Eyul said. “You should let me cut your throat. I’d be doing you a favor.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  "Hey now,” the nomad said again, softer this time, “the sun rises. Time for you to come with us, blind man.”

  Amalya’s fingers curled around Eyul’s wrist. With a sigh he drew the Knife away from her throat. He bent his head over hers, seeking the hollow of her ear. “Can you see them?”

  She stirred and spoke into his chest. “No weapons in their hands.”

  “What do you want?” Eyul asked the nomad, raising his head as if he could see. He heard the soft bray of a horse.

  “Me? Nothing. The old man is expecting you. Come, now.”

  “It’s all right,” Amalya said.

  Eyul sheathed his Knife. He kept still as someone, a nomad, from the smell, wound fabric about his eyes.

  “Jarquil brings water.” Done with Eyul’s bandage, the nomad tapped his shoulder, then tapped it again until Eyul raised his knife-hand to accept a clammy water-bag, cool against his burned palm. He held it to Amalya’s mouth first.

  Afterwards, the nomad took the skin from his hand. “Come, now. The pretty girl, too.”

  Eyul drew his right arm in front of her. “She stays with me.”

  This drew a hoot of amusement. “If you think you can hold onto her, blind man.”

  He did. She was not as helpless getting onto the camel as he expected, but he wrapped one arm around her anyway, holding her firmly in place. With his good hand he grabbed the pommel.

  The nomads led them on, and they travelled in silence under the hot sun. Amalya rested her arms on Eyul’s, and nestled her head under his chin. He supposed she was drifting. Her hair was hot from the sun, wafting a fra
grance he remembered from the palace courtyard: the yellow flowers that sparkled on their bushes like the stars at night. He had never learned the names of the different flowers, not even for the making of poisons, for he did not work in secret, or with cowardly tools. If a man died by the emperor’s Knife, he and everyone else would know it. And so he didn’t know the name of the yellow flower. He regretted that, among many other things, today.

  Eyul had never questioned any of the decisions and beliefs that had brought him to this moment. Every step felt pre-ordained, difficult but necessary for his service to the gods. At the same time he knew that any different choice might have brought him a different life-one where he would be quietly fishing along the river, perhaps, or collecting ink roots in the desert. Maybe he’d have sons instead of dead princes to dream about.

  He felt Amalya’s fingers close around his elbow and surprise drove away the last of his wistful thoughts: she was alert.

  That small touch of fellowship encouraged him. Without sight, the hours left to him promised to be small in number and low in comfort. Sweat and sand chafed his skin; pain held his back in a scorpion grip. The nomads’ high-pitched calls roiled in his ears. Even so, the gods might have chosen a worse ending, for he was not alone.

  “How are you feeling?” A stupid question. Soon she would ask him to free her, to give her up, and he would do it.

  She turned until he could feel her breath against his throat.

  “I think we’re going to be all right.”

  She lies for me. “Yes,” he said, “maybe so.”

  Tuvaini passed through the Low Room where the fountain made soft lapping sounds and patterned sunlight fell through the latticed stone above. Two of the Old Wives sat upon the fountain’s rim, washing their arms in the cool water. One met his eye and whispered in the other’s ear, and they both giggled. Despite their grey hair and sagging breasts, he was no doubt too old for their taste.

  This room held no more solace for him. When he looked at the tiles, he remembered Eyul’s blood, and he wondered whether the assassin had survived his mission in the desert. If it were any other man, Tuvaini would assume him dead, but Eyul’s years of killing hung around him like chainmail. He might survive. The idea was pleasing.