“I thought you were going to eat.” Beyon’s eyes flashed towards her.
“I am, I just…” A puff of air escaped her mouth.
Beyon cocked his head, as if listening to something she couldn’t hear.
Mesema put a date in her mouth and pressed it with her tongue.
“Mesema.” He touched her cheek. “Do not be frightened.”
“I’m trying.”
He took her chin in a gentle grip. “Now, chew.”
She chewed and swallowed. It did help her feel better. She reached for a piece of cheese, and then a piece of bread. She opened the skin and took a swig, only to make a face. “That sour stuff.”
“Ale. You should drink it anyway.”
She took another swig and reached for some meat. “Aren’t you eating?” Do Carriers eat?
“I didn’t wait; I ate before. Sorry.”
She took one more date and rolled the fruit back into its bundle. “I think we should save this.” She placed it in the corner and then, after a moment’s thought, removed Sarmin’s dagger from her belt and put it together with the food. I can’t stab him without a weapon.
“What do they sound like? The Carriers?” It frightened her to ask, and so she felt she must.
“They’re always in the background. It’s like standing outside a room full of people. Sometimes you can hear what they’re saying, sometimes you can’t.” Beyon arranged the silks and blankets into a comfortable pallet. He held out an arm to her, and she lay down facing him, watching his eyes. Carrier eyes were blank and dead. His were tired but alive, and they crinkled when he smiled.
“It’s still me,” he said, tracing her cheekbone with his thumb.
“I know.”
“And you’re still frightened.”
“Not of you.”
“Then because you feel trapped in here?”
She spoke without thinking. “I’ve been trapped since my father decided to send me to Nooria.”
Beyon said nothing, only running his finger across her bottom lip.
“What are you doing?”
“If you have to ask, I’m not doing it right.”
Mesema thought of Banreh and the touch of his skin. She remembered how his lips sent a shock through her body. She wondered what kissing Sarmin might have felt like. She hadn’t given up on her prince just yet.
“You aren’t going to kiss me very hard again, are you?”
“No.”
She looked down at his chest. “Shouldn’t I touch our marks together?”
“No. I’m all right.”
“When you were out, did you happen to see the stars?”
He withdrew his hand and pillowed it under his head. “I’ve been thinking about what we discussed before. About Tuvaini being the emperor.”
“Oh?”
“Sarmin would be better.”
“What about you?”
Beyon looked down, and Mesema felt her stomach twist. She searched for words. “What about the desert? Just yesterday you said…” When he didn’t respond, she kept talking. “Sarmin is… He’s not used to people.”
“You can help him with that.”
“I would be stuck in the women’s wing.”
“You wouldn’t have to be. My mother wasn’t. Mesema, promise me you will help him.”
Mesema squeezed her eyes shut. Too many promises-to Eldra, then Sarmin, now Beyon-too many to keep, and no way to fulfil them. She thought of Eldra’s feather, so far away now, at the bottom of her trunk in the ocean room. She’d meant to have it in her hand the day she stopped the pattern.
She couldn’t stop it. She never would.
“Mesema.”
“All right.” She put a hand over her mouth to keep from crying.
“Thank you,” he said, closing his eyes. “I’m just going to rest for a minute now.”
He fell silent, and she watched the play of light over his marks. She watched his breath rise and fall in his patterned chest. She had failed him; she never should have agreed to hide in this coffin. Now he would die. She watched him and she waited.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
On the fifth day Grada walked another ten miles along the riverbanks, keeping east of the great army. The towns of Colla and Santarch came and went. She watched the dhows, low in the water, burdened with wheat and dates and salt and timber. Merchants passed her in caravans, some a hundred waggons long. None but the drivers so much as noticed her, and even the drivers had nothing but crude jests for a woman in the robes of an Untouchable.
Grada paid them no heed. She carried a prince within her, though he was distracted of late. She wondered about his dying friend.
At the Needle Stone Grada took the mountain road and left the river behind. Only the outpost of Migido lay before her now; beyond that nothing but the vastness of the desert to the west, and to the north, the badlands that would eventually give way to the grass and plains of the Felt.
Travellers were few and far apart on the mountain road. She kept her eyes on the dunes, where the desert lapped against the rocks. The sun beat at her, its brightness almost too fierce to bear, but still she watched the dunes: nomads roamed out there, and bandits, and worse, evil men who preyed on the traffic between one oasis and the next. Cerani patrols kept the mountain road safer than the desert, but it was still not secure.
The heat stifled and dried. The sweat left her without ever making her damp. She arrived at each well as parched as the strips of mutton that sustained her. She filled her stomach until it hurt and filled the skins near to bursting, but it was only ever just enough to reach the next waterhole.
The road became lonely. Travelling by day she saw no one. Sarmin always filled her, though the palace held his attention now-and perhaps the yellow-haired girl, too. She began to hunger for company, and pushed herself harder to reach Migido.
Mesema ran her finger along Beyon’s marks as he slept. Her moon-patterned finger picked up whispers and images of those the pattern had taken. A child here, begging for bread; a woman there, opening herself to a lover; a man, whispering secrets to his priest. All these lives had been lost, absorbed by shapes and lines, worked into the obscure plan of the Pattern Master. She riffled through them, a thousand thousand stories, too many for any storyteller to recall. Her throat tightened with sorrow.
“Can you feel them?”
Beyon’s voice startled her. She looked into his eyes. Still brown. Still alive. “I can feel them. It’s not what you said, it’s not sin written here. It’s just… people.”
“He took them all.”
“I know.”
“He won’t take me.”
Mesema felt as if she could breathe at last. “Thank the Hidden God. I thought you’d given up.” One less death, one less promise to keep. Beyon would be alive. She smiled and pressed her lips against his in an impulsive kiss. “We’ll fight.”
But there was something sad about his smile. “We will.”
“This is good!” She touched their lips together again, three short happy kisses. Hope. This is what we’ve been missing.
“This is very good,” he agreed, kissing her back, long and slow. He drew one hand up her thigh, and her breath caught in her throat, relief transforming into something new. She felt his breath against her cheek, his heart beating under her fingers.
“There’s still hope, while we live,” she whispered.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
"Beyon remains missing, Your Majesty.”
Tuvaini let his gaze slide across the throne room. The royal guards stood motionless at their stations. From the throne the place looked very different this morning: an acre of woven rugs, worked velvet, gold thread, the glitter of gems from statuettes and trinkets in the wall niches, Cerani history stitched on tapestries and stretching back into a faded past. The luxury of Tahal’s day had replaced Beyon’s ascetic taste, but having it all back, owning it all, pleased him less than he had imagined.
“And has Master Herran no report of
Eyul since yesterday?” “Nothing new, Magnificence.”
Eyul had killed Beyon’s wives and run into the secret ways. There could be no doubt he turned traitor. He’d kidnapped the horsegirl, too, if Arigu’s men were to be believed. Tuvaini could only hope he’d perished somewhere in the darkness, by accident or Carrier, and good riddance. But if Eyul were dead, where were Beyon and the girl? It made him uneasy.
Arigu had marched away. He’d left three days ago, his men forming a long desert train. They would go to the Wastes and organise the horsemen there. The savage chief would have to accept that his daughter had died during the succession, an unfortunate accident. A misunderstanding. The war would begin soon, the fight for a greater empire. It was too late for him to refuse.
“Have you sent to the Islands for my personal guard?” Tuvaini asked. “I have, Your Majesty.”
Tuvaini would breathe easier with the unquestioned loyalty of slave-bred sword-sons around him. With the sword-sons you got what you paid for, and he could pay for a lot.
“Send for Nessaket. I would have her attend me.” He liked the sound of that. Let her wait on him and wonder when their marriage might be.
The grand doors opened a crack to admit the herald.
“Astronomer Kleggan has arrived. He seeks audience with Emperor Tuvaini, seventh son of the Reclaimer, Lord of Cerana, Master of the Islands and King across the Sea.” The last title represented his claim to Yrkmir.
Tuvaini raised his left hand, and the herald returned to escort the astronomer to the throne. He was both dark and fair in the way of the Westerners, and walked with a conqueror’s stride, proud.
“Majesty.” The astronomer prostrated himself.
Tuvaini sat back in the throne and opened his hands. “I have sent for you to read my future.” He closed his eyes for a moment. He saw Sarmin’s face, pale, mad, and at his shoulder, Beyon, honey-gold and fierce, with the look of eagles. Two of the lives he had paid for an uncomfortable throne and Arigu’s wars. Something was wrong-there was some piece forgotten, or unlooked-for.
Around the circumference of the throne room lanterns flickered as if a wind had circled the chamber. Tuvaini looked up and studied the room. Something was wrong. Something was coming.
A tremour ran through the palace, vibrating through Tuvaini’s soles, through the throne, rattling the jewelled statues in their niches.
The grand doors opened again, and again the herald stepped through. This time he was unsteady, his head bowed.
“A man from the desert seeks audience with Emperor Tuvaini… seventh son of-”
“A commoner from the desert?” Azeem turned in disbelief. “What insolence is this?”
Tuvaini kept his voice calm and low, though ice ran through his veins. “What manner of man?”
For the longest time the herald said nothing, then he started, “Lord-” The herald coughed, or wept, Tuvaini couldn’t tell. Then he raised his face, and across every inch the pattern blazed in blue and red. “Someone old, Majesty. Very old.”
The great doors of the throne room swung inwards. The carvings of the gods fell in splinters as if invisible knives pared them away, and in their place was the pattern. The herald fell to one side and a man entered, tall and vital but wrapped about with something ancient, unseen and powerful.
Tuvaini clutched at the armrests of his throne. His voice dried in his throat.
The man wore desert robes, and his long hair fell across it, whiter than the cloth. Where he walked, the weave of the rugs changed as the pattern followed in his wake.
Unchallenged, he reached the middle of the chamber, stopped, and smiled.
Tuvaini found his voice at last. “I know you: you are the hermit, theman-who-sees. Why have you come here?” His words broke the silence, and the royal guard drew their swords.
“I have come for what is mine,” the Pattern Master said.
A dozen threats hurried across Tuvaini’s mind, but in the end he asked simply, “And what is that?”
At the doorway more guards were massing, among them the priest of Herzu and the tall figure of General Lurish.
“Why, the throne, of course,” the Pattern Master said.
Tuvaini felt his lips twitch. He stood and took a step to the edge of the dais. “And by what right would you stake such a claim?” Better to gain some time, let more soldiers gather, and await the arrival of the Tower mages.
“By the right that you have established for me”-the Pattern Master raised his voice-“ Grandson. Great-grandson, I should say.”
A laugh broke from Tuvaini, but a cold hand rested on his chest. “Any fathers of my grandfathers are dust. My own father was seventy years old when he died.”
“Even so,” the Pattern Master said, “I am of the line: a second son put aside until the true faith of Mogyrk came and opened doors for everyone.”
The High Priests of Mirra and Herzu had shouldered through the guardsmen at the door now, and there were others, summoned from their temples by the commotion. Behind them Tuvaini could see the young wind-sworn mage who had slighted him at the tower.
“You lie!” And if he did not, Tuvaini would make it a lie; he felt no kinship with this desert man.
The Pattern Master spread his hands. “I would not expect my word to put me upon the empire’s throne. There are paths to the truth, paths known by the holy and the wise. I am prepared to accept the judgement of your priests and mages, sworn before their gods and their duty to the people of Cerana.”
Tuvaini took a step back and felt the hard edge of the throne pressing behind his knees. His plans ran like sand through his fingers. He knew then what Beyon had felt in that moment before he fled. Tuvaini saw his enemy’s plan as though it were laid upon a Settu board before him. The Pattern Master had made his Push, and the tiles were falling.
“Have you an objection to their judgement?” the Pattern Master asked. “Perhaps you wish to summon the council once more?”
Tuvaini shook his head. He reached out, touching the air before him, searching for anything, any straw to clutch.
“Your heir,” he said. “If it is true, then I am still your heir.”
“How fortunate, then, that you have no brothers.” The Pattern Master smiled and advanced on the throne.
Chapter Forty
Sarmin had known of the Pattern Master’s arrival before word came from Govnan. He knew it by the pricking of his thumbs, and by the ache in his bones. Govnan’s voice came on the wind, blowing into the tower room. The Tower had tested the Pattern Master’s blood and found his story to be true.
Sarmin shivered. This was a violation. Four lifetimes ago, the Pattern Master had paced this same room. He had been named Helmar then, second son of the Reclaimer’s heir, spared the Knife by the Tower because of his latent talents and secured- preserved -against an uncertain future.
Sarmin had wasted away for fifteen years; young Helmar had spent only his childhood here, for in Yrkmir’s final incursion the palace had been sacked and the boy prince taken. Records of his existence had been lost to all but the mages. Until now.
Sarmin wondered what had become of the men who took Helmar. He wondered what had passed from them to the stolen prince. What did they make of you, Helmar? What did you learn in the cold mountain lands to bring back to the desert? How are you not yet dead?
“He is like me.” Sarmin didn’t want to speak aloud, but the words needed space. He didn’t want to talk to an empty room, or to Eyul’s unconscious form. When you speak to no one, madness comes tapping at your door. “He is me-a me who was given a chance. A me who crossed the threshold and went outside once more.”
He reached under his pillow for the dacarba, the knife he’d taken from Tuvaini. It felt so long ago that he had set his hand upon the hilt and pulled it free. His fingers found only silk and for a panicked moment he scrabbled to find the knife, then he relaxed. Mesema had it. He had given it to her when she left him.
When she left him. She was Beyon’s now. And Grada was gon
e, too, picking her way along the edges of the desert. He had sent her away. Now he was alone. Not even the angels and demons spoke to him.
“When did you find the pattern, Helmar?” Sarmin lay back and rested his head on the coolness of a pillow. “When did you begin the Many? What number of lives have you sewn into your plans?”
Sarmin thought of the pattern, marked across his brother’s chest, spreading like a cancer, consuming him. He thought of the child who had spent so many empty days in this very room. Did you watch the Sayakarva window, and imagine what you would see if it ever opened?
“I should be angry, too,” he said. “I should want to make them all my toys, to play with, and to break. You have a right, Helmar.” He thought of Pelar and his ball, of his brothers, almost blurred together now as memories frayed with time. “You have a right.”
Beyon whispered in her ear.
Mesema stirred against the silks, noticing his arm no longer cradled her head. Her legs were twisted together, instead of between his. No matter; she was hungry and tired and she wanted to dream about her mother’s spiced lamb in a pot. She curled up, but Beyon would not stop whispering, gripping her shoulder tight and pulling her from her mother’s longhouse.
“-can’t keep him out. He is here-”
“What?” Through her eyelids she could sense the light of day. She didn’t hear anyone else in the room. Her bladder felt heavy. She stirred some more, remembering the night past, feeling heat rise in her cheeks. Dirini had told her much of what to expect of men, but she hadn’t expected Beyon. She had been advised that her first time would be unpleasant, but Beyon had been patient and considerate. She would not have guessed that of him when they had first met in the desert.
He continued to speak. She pulled silk over her nakedness as she listened. His voice sounded strained, as if part of him didn’t want to talk any more. “-the Pattern Master. I can hear him talking to me-”
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