The Emperor's knife

by Mazarkis Williams

  Out there they thought him dead-out there he was dead.

  “I can’t.”

  He crawled back to his bed.

  My bride. Sarmin turned once more to his walls and what might be seen there. Among a million twisting lines he found the curve of her cheek. He traced it with a finger and found her smile. She watched him. She was close, he knew it. Out there, beyond the threshold, she was close enough to hear the call of the Tower mages. Come to me. Please.

  Mesema struggled with the pomegranate. Even the fruits here were strange and unhelpful. Still, her efforts had won her a small pile of segments, like pale rubies in her dish. They were beautiful, but disappointing in the mouth. She would have preferred an apple.

  “Who was that man who scared you?” she asked Lana. The old man who had come out of the wall and spoken to Mesema as if he knew her.

  Lana frowned and considered every word she spoke, as if picking her way through a field of secrets.

  “His name is Govnan.”

  Mesema added another segment to her pile on the silver plate. Something tugged at her: a memory of Beyon’s? Imagination?

  “And who is Govnan?” He was clearly someone important, for he had sought no permission to enter the women’s wing.

  “He is High Mage Govnan,” Lana said.

  “A mage?” Mesema turned a seed in her mouth, thinking of the pattern. “What kind of mage?”

  Lana kept her eyes on the floor, studying the mosaics. Juice beaded her nails as Mesema tore the remains of the pomegranate apart. The mage hadn’t looked dangerous, he had looked tired and old-and yet he had called freely upon the emperor’s time.

  “What did he say to the emperor?” Mesema had seen them exchange words by the door. Govnan had spoken only once, and Beyon had nearly stumbled, putting a hand on the old man’s shoulder, as if for support. They left together with no goodbyes.

  “I don’t know.” Her voice trembled, and she kept her eyes down.

  “Has someone died?” Mesema didn’t know why she asked it, but as the words came she knew them to be true. She felt the pattern closing in, stronger now.

  Lana kept her head down, but the tears fell in a steady rain. Mesema felt her eyes prickle. It couldn’t be Sahree; the high mage would not concern himself with a mere servant, nor would Beyon react so to her death. Nevertheless a sudden grief welled in her, blurring the lamplight that gleamed on her plate. She pushed it away.

  “I’m sorry.” She put her hand on Lana’s, her fingers pale against the dusk of the woman’s skin.

  Lana pulled her hand back. “I had a son, Pelar. They will be together now.”

  For a moment they watched the floor together. From nowhere, maybe from memory, Mesema felt the tug of a cold wind, and with it a longing for the wideness of sky and the endless grass of home. Nothing here gave the eye peace; the walls, the ceiling, the floors, they were all worked and scrolled, all intricacy and convolution, like the essence of a lie without the substance.

  “What happened?” She wanted to insist, but the words sounded faint, as if spoken into a vast cavern.

  Lana ignored her, and Mesema wanted to take her by the shoulders, to demand an answer, but it would be useless. She put the remains of the pomegranate on the silver dish and rose to her feet. She walked past scrollwork and gold leaf, carvings and tapestries, until she saw darkness through the curved lattice of a wooden screen and found, beyond it, a balcony overlooking the courtyard.

  The soldiers below were joking and shouting among themselves, relaxing in the torchlight, reminding her of the Riders back home, but when they saw her they fell silent and scattered from view. From up here she could see the courtyard’s stones formed a diamond pattern of black and brown. Its far end pointed towards the city, a confusion of roofs and awnings illuminated by orange bonfires. Each fire was tended by a lone silhouette. Mesema shivered.

  She ran her fingertip along the stone railing. Perhaps the rough surface would rub the mark away, but even without looking, she knew it clung to her still, telling her of Beyon’s distant movements.

  A wind blew up around her, hot as fire-stones and smelling of char. A flag atop one of the towers cracked and strained against its fittings. She pushed her hair from her eyes and looked at the Bright One, stepping near the top of the moon. Just a few more days-a week, perhaps. She put it from her mind.

  Then she saw it: the highest tower in the palace, the topmost window gaping. Though the night was dark, the room beyond the window appeared darker still.

  Something held her gaze- there! Something or someone was hidden there. She could almost remember, and the lost memory pulled at her, the half-formed image-something of both softness and cruelty. Beyon knew who or what crouched there alone, removed from the rest of the palace. Perhaps he had put it there.

  Mesema rubbed her fingertip, trying to bring forth those things she had touched in Beyon, but she had lost this piece of his past, as she had lost so many others. She knew only that it felt like grief. She didn’t know what the pattern meant for her or Beyon. She didn’t know whether Arigu’s games would change the empire, or what role Banreh would have in that, if he lived. She didn’t know what had happened to Sahree.

  But she could find out what was in that tower.

  She left the balcony and passed the scrollwork, the tapestries, and the tasselled cushions. The floor mosaic caught her eye: the pattern seemed to flow, a slow rotation, with only one line constant, unmoving, like a single certainty, a thread, drawing her. She passed Lana, who did not even raise her head, and as she followed the line Lana made no move to stop her; she gave no sign of having seen her. A silence pressed on the room, so profound that even breathing came hard.

  The line left the mosaic swirl and crossed two plush rugs, dividing their patterns. Mesema followed it to the doorway, never raising her eyes. Almost in a dream she pushed open the doors and passed between two guardsmen dressed in splendid colors; neither man so much as twitched.

  The line led on, along the centre of the corridor. Mesema pursued it, and silence followed in her wake.

  The magnificence of the palace should have taken away her breath, but Mesema saw it only from the corner of her eye; the line filled her purpose, a simple constant amongst the lies and confusion, and where it led, none blocked her way. She moved as if she were invisible: as long as she watched the line, no one would watch her. A simple truth.

  She passed courtiers, servants, guards, and then more guards, and silk and woven tapestries gave way to bare stone. A spiral stairway took her up, turn after turn promising the sky, and the line grew as broad as a river, as black as pitch, until, suddenly, it was nothing but a crack in the flagstone beneath her slippered feet.

  Mesema found herself at the top of the stair, before her not the sky but a door, open just an inch, just enough for her fingers. She pushed it.

  Sarmin pulled, and with slow certainty she came, not drawn against her will, but because of it. Sarmin watched the door. Pale fingers, nails painted like blood, glistening with moisture, and then she stood there.

  “Hello.” He smiled. He hoped it was the right thing to do. “Hello.”

  She looks so young.

  “I’m Sarmin,” he said.

  “Mesema.” She glanced around the room then her eyes returned to his. “I don’t remember why you’re here.” A strange thing to say, and a strange way to say it. She spoke the words with hard corners on the vowels. The oddness of it made him laugh.

  “I’m Beyon’s brother.”

  “His brother?”

  Her lips made a circle. Everything about her made him glad. “His brother.” It didn’t sound like an explanation, but it was. She walked into the room. Sarmin watched her, wondering if he looked foolish. She sat upon the bed, so close that if they both reached out, their fingers would touch. He could smell soap on her, and fruit.

  He cleared his throat. “I had other brothers, but they died.” “I’m sorry.” And she was, he could see it in her eyes, a sparkle of tears.
No one had ever said they were sorry, not for his brothers. “They were… killed?” She knew they had been. She paused because the words were ugly in her mouth. He could see it. “My brother was also killed.”

  Sarmin nodded.

  “It was wrong.”

  “It was.” He blinked to keep his eyes clear. He didn’t want to cry. But it was wrong. “I worry for Beyon. He’s sick. I don’t want him to die, too.” The notion that he might keep secrets from her was silly.

  Mesema looked away. She pressed her cheek to her shoulder and held her hand towards him, fingers extended. A pattern-mark challenged him from a fingertip. No-not my princess. In the darkness of his mind he recalled the Pattern Master’s mocking voice.

  Sarmin took her hand. Her skin felt cool, but fire passed between them. Mine. He turned her fingers in his and knew this to be another reason why men fought: the touch of her skin and the way her hair fell over her cheek as she looked at their joined hands. He would not let the Pattern Master have his bride. He spoke over the pounding of his heart. “I can take this mark away,” he said.

  She pulled her hand back and fixed him with strange blue eyes. “It copied itself from Beyon when I touched him. My finger was bleeding.” She looked past him, at the carvings on his headboard. “When I touched him again, he remembered things-good things and bad things.”

  Sarmin thought of Grada, how she had rushed back into herself. What Mesema described was different and accidental, but somehow the same. “You held Beyon to Beyon. The Pattern Master tries to lift him away, to leave only meat, but you held him within himself.”

  “Leave the mark,” she said, with no hesitation.

  Something in that stung him. “You love him? Beyon?” An ache opened in Sarmin’s chest, a hollowness. She was to be mine: the horsegirl brought from the grass clans. She had been his only gift in a million lonely years. Beyon’s now.

  But she shook her head, her eyes fixed on the broken window. “Not him.”

  Someone else, then. “The- The Master will come soon,” he said. “The pattern is almost made.” And I will die in this room.

  “What will you do?” Again her eyes settled on his.

  “What can I do?” Sarmin asked. “I don’t think I can stop him-I’m sure I can’t.”

  She looked at him, waiting.

  “I do have a kind of magic,” Sarmin admitted. “I can see the Pattern Master’s plans. I can see how much power he has, how he holds everything in his hands. He scares me.”

  “You can see his plans, and you say that you can remove his marks.” Mesema held up her index finger. “Doesn’t that mean you can stop him?”

  “I’m like an eagle that can fly over the city and see it whole. Then I can squawk about it to the mice who see only the walls around them.”

  “And the marks?”

  “I can change only one person at a time. There are too many.”

  “Beyon-”

  “I can’t help him.” He spat out the truth like a bitter pit. The Master had known it when he told Sarmin there was no hope. “I would have to remove Govnan’s protections, and the Master is always watching, waiting for that to happen.” He saw now that he had almost opened the way for the Master. Mesema had saved Beyon by raising his memories; it was her voice Sarmin had heard that night. Can she use patterns, then, as I can, as the Master can? He looked at her again. How did mages identify one another? The High Mage travelled the empire every few years, searching for children with talent. How young were they? Younger than Mesema, surely. Once identified, they spent the rest of their lives with the Tower.

  Sarmin felt a sudden panic. He’d worried Beyon would take her, or the pattern, but he hadn’t thought of Govnan. Govnan had already taken Grada away. He might take Mesema, too, and still call Sarmin fortunate. He made fists in the covers. If I could leave here…

  “What would he do then?” Mesema asked her question as she studied the calligraphy on the wall.

  Did she see the faces hidden there? “Govnan?” If I could leave here, then I would give orders to these old men instead of taking them.

  “The Pattern Master.”

  Sarmin reached back in his mind to their previous conversation. “I think the Master would be happy to see Beyon dead. Once he hoped to control the emperor, but now he has waited too long, and I sense he is a vengeful man.”

  “A vengeful man makes mistakes,” Mesema said. Her words sounded wise, but Sarmin couldn’t imagine the Pattern Master making a mistake. The only fault he could think of was one of omission: if there was something the Master didn’t see or couldn’t see…

  “Listen. I’ve seen the pattern,” Mesema said, “in grass, and in sand. A hare ran through it in secret paths.”

  Sarmin said, “I’ve seen the pattern, too. I’ve run through it, lived in it. But it doesn’t help. His pattern is perfect.” As are you.

  “You’re sure?” She pinched her lips together.

  Sarmin winced. Remembering the flaw made his stomach turn, like nails on chalkboard. The emperor’s Knife. The pattern-the whole pattern-was not drawn on parchment, or written on Carrier skin; it was bigger than that. The whole pattern was written through every thing and every one.

  Except the Knife. Only the Knife remained as a taunt to the Master, inside the pattern, yet not part of it.

  “First he must break the emperor’s Knife. Then it will be perfect.”

  “Beyon’s knife? But surely-”

  “Not Beyon’s knife, not the one he carries, anyway-it’s more than that, much more. The Knife is both holy and unholy.” She turned to him, her eyes flashing with a new idea.

  “Sarmin, listen. In the desert, the pattern led us to a church of the Mogyrk One God.”

  One god, one pattern, one way. He looked past her lovely face to the gods on the ceiling. Many gods for many choices: could this be what the Master was missing?

  Mesema touched his hand, calling him back. “Do you think the Pattern Master believes in the One God?”

  He spoke, trying to make his consonants soft and his vowels hard, as she did, “I don’t know. Surely it is how he sees himself-one Master, with all powers-but he needs others as much as I do. The Carriers.”

  “If he needs them, we will stop them.” She thrust her chin out, just a little.

  “Is this how all your people are?” Sarmin asked. “Ready to fight? No surrender, even when your horses are gone?”

  Mesema grinned. “Yes, we’re famed for it. That, and for speaking out of turn. We are the Felt.”

  “I imagined you, when Mother told me you were coming. I wondered how I could make you happy.” Sarmin felt the blood rise in his cheeks.

  “Fight him. Fight this Pattern Master and his plague. That would make me happy.” She looked fierce now. Sarmin had never imagined her more lovely.

  “Then I shall,” he said.

  “And me?” Mesema pointed her finger Sarmin’s way, and his soft brown eyes turned to the moon-mark there.

  Mesema loved Prince Sarmin’s voice, the first Cerani voice too soft to scratch against her ears. Nothing about Sarmin had edges. The emperor had made her ears hurt; the wind ran around him like a storm. Sarmin’s voice rose and fell with the rhythm of Tumble’s tether-bells. She closed her eyes and imagined lying next to him under his blanket. His window had been broken, and the cold desert night gripped the room.

  Now he took her hand as he had before, his gentle touch reassuring. “Your blood made that mark-or you marked yourself. I think that makes a difference.” He looked at his own hands. “Blood must be the key to the pattern. It’s how I freed Grada.”

  “Grada?”

  “She was a Carrier.”

  “You love her?” She didn’t know why she said it, but she knew there must be a truth to it. It made her sad.

  “She’s from the Maze.” When she looked at him, not understanding, he went on, “She’s low-born. She helped me, but I can’t be with her, not like that.”

  Mesema knew the explanation didn’t revea
l everything, but then maybe he didn’t know everything. He looked away, and she studied his face in profile. At first, shyness had kept her from doing so, then she grew so comfortable with him that she forgot to look. But now his face drew her eyes. Olive tinged Sarmin’s skin, and yet still he looked pale. Sweat plastered his dark curls to his temples, and she remembered the smell of vomit outside the room. Her hand crept out over the silk blanket that covered him. She meant to touch his face, to check for fever, but her fingers met something cold and sticky first. Of course: the other smell she hadn’t identified when she entered. Blood. “What’s that? Are you hurt?”

  Sarmin didn’t answer. Night darkened the room, and light came from only one lantern, far away in the corner. Mesema feared what she might see, but forced herself to walk to it anyway, her footsteps slow and dragging. She studied the red stain on her hand with a cold certainty. “You’re bleeding.” “Not any more.” Sarmin’s big brown eyes creased at the edges when he frowned. He looked like his brother the emperor, but with finer features. He would have been as handsome as Banreh if he weren’t so thin and wasted. “Do you have a wound? I know how to sew-” She had done much sewing of flesh during the war. Sometimes it helped. Other times the wound only festered. You could never tell…

  But he waved her off. “You should go. People might be looking for you.” Mesema frowned. Only Beyon would look for her. She realised with a start she hadn’t told Sarmin about her vision; she’d put it from her mind, and therefore kept it from him. No secrets from my prince. She opened her mouth, but Sarmin’s eyes had already closed. Another time, then. “You need your rest. I’ll be back,” she promised, but he didn’t respond.

  His chest rose with a slow breath. She crept towards the door. “Wait.”

  She turned. Her prince reached under his pillow to draw out a long dagger. It had a three-sided blade, and the hilt sparkled with red gems.

  Take this dacarba. I don’t need it any more.”

  Mesema stepped forwards and lifted the weapon. It felt light and cool in her hand. She’d held her father’s sword once, when he wasn’t looking, and her brother’s boning-knife; they’d both had been heavier than this.