The Court of Broken Knives

by Anna Smith Spark

  The words Caleste had taught her for this. Words she had never yet said. ‘Great Tanis, Lord of Living and Dying, Great Tanis Who Rules All Things, this one your servant has done a bad thing. She has brought darkness where there should be light. She has brought death where there should be life. We tremble before your anger, oh Lord. We bring her to you. We take her eyes, that she may see neither light nor dark. We take her hands, that she may use them for neither good nor evil. Take now this punishment and forgive her, oh Lord. From the fear of life and the fear of death, release us.’

  She brought the knife down. Again. Again. Again. Hands not stabbing but sawing, cutting at bone and sinew, almost beyond her strength. Ausa screamed until finally she stopped screaming. Thalia stood before her and raised her left arm. She cut herself from wrist to elbow, a shallow jagged cut over the course of her scars. The blood ran down, mingling with Ausa’s blood. She stood for a moment, her arm shaking, the knife raised. Put down the knife and walked away, through the curtain, through the Great Chamber. The slaves came out of the shadows and carried Ausa away.

  In a corridor she met Tolneurn. He had been waiting, perhaps. He looked at her, covered in Ausa’s blood, her dress clinging to her body. His eyes flickered. Disgust and desire. Desire and disgust.

  That was the secret, the thing Helase was too innocent to see. The reason poets clamoured to write of the beauty of the High Priestess. Disgust and desire. Desire and disgust. Samnel knew it: Thalia saw that in the older woman’s face after every death, mocking and knowing. The thin face stared at her, pale man eyes, lust and loathing, jealousy of her power, revulsion at her act.

  ‘It is done, then?’ he asked, pointlessly.

  ‘It is done.’

  ‘Is she—?’

  ‘If she is unlucky, she will live.’ She would pace out her days doing what little useless things she could, a servant who could not serve, a priestess whom the God had abandoned. Better she had died under the knife. Better she had drawn a black lot. Better she had never been born. Thalia made herself stand very straight and tall as the man gazed at her. Why did he not move? Why did he not go, let her flee away and get clean? She was alive, she thought. She was my friend. So much life in her.

  ‘She was your friend. Do you grieve for her?’

  ‘She was a priestess who offended the God.’ Her legs felt as though they might buckle beneath her. The weight of Ausa’s blood was crushing; her arm hurt where it bled. Still he looked at her.

  ‘My Lady.’ Samnel. Come to rescue her. A kind act.

  ‘They are waiting for you upstairs,’ said Samnel. Tolneurn bowed his head and left them, looking back for a moment as he went. Thalia let out a great sigh and almost fell against the older woman. Samnel flinched at the feel of her, the taint of her as they touched.

  ‘I am sorry,’ Samnel said. ‘That it was Ausa. That it had to be done.’

  ‘It was needful,’ said Thalia in an empty voice. Not before Samnel, either. You worship Him with such ardour, she thought. This is what He wishes. What we must do. They went up the stairs together, the girl leaning on the woman’s arm. In her bedroom, Thalia was washed and her wound treated, given a cup of warm water sweetened with honey. The servants who tended her were kind, though she could feel them drawing away from her. What she had done had not been done for a long time.

  Ausa was somewhere down below, in the small infirmary with the old sick woman Calden who was too weak and senile to serve. Thalia could see the Temple in her mind as the God must see it, as though the roof had been taken off and the contents displayed like a toy. Ausa, in her bed, drugged and tied down. Thalia, standing at her window. She was so tired, she just wanted to sleep. She did not feel exhilarated, as she did after a sacrifice, only worn and trembling as if she had a fever. There was a service later she must officiate at.

  She stood at the window, looking out at the bright sunlight and the flowers and the birds. Difficult to think of what she had done, bathed in the light and the warmth, a butterfly dancing on the sill. Guilt, crushing her. Shame. She did these things, for her God, for her pride. She could have defied Tolneurn. She could have defied them all. She could have defied the God. The weight of it, the pity of it. For herself, as much as for Ausa. That she came to these things. Blind and crippled, as Ausa was, trapped within the walls of life and death. Shedding blood. Killing. Locked away from the world. I bring life, she thought. But I will never see it.

  The butterfly danced nearer and landed on her outstretched hand. Its wings were green and gold. A little child laughed somewhere down below in the garden, playing in the sun.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Tobias and Rate sat at a table in the Five Corners, arguing.

  ‘We’ve got to go out and get the bloody gear,’ said Tobias. ‘Today. Now. We can’t fuck everything up because of one bloody idiot boy.’

  ‘Emit’s still missing,’ said Rate. ‘We ought to look for him again. He could be in trouble.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, where shall we look, then? Wander about and maybe another nice young lady will lead us to him?’

  ‘I don’t bloody know. He could be anywhere.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ Tobias said flatly. ‘There’s no point in looking for him. We don’t have time to fuck around pointlessly looking for a corpse. He’s dead and dumped outside the city walls by now.’

  Rate glared at him, stood up as if to walk out and start searching immediately right then. ‘How do you know that? Feel it in your bones? Known him so long you can tell when he snuffs it? Or are you such a good squad leader you’d feel the same for any of us? I know he’s a shifty, grumpy bastard but we can’t just leave him.’

  Oh for gods’ sake. ‘How many men, exactly, do you think I’ve had to leave for dead in my time? He’s dead, Rate. You know he is. Marith basically told us as much.’

  ‘I don’t know that. You don’t know. Marith— Oh. Fuck.’ Rate sat down again slowly. ‘You think Marith killed him?’

  Tobias rolled his eyes. Maybe not as bright as he’d thought. Too trusting, underneath it all.

  ‘But he … I mean … Why?’

  Really not as bright as he’d thought. ‘Why do you bloody think, Rate?’

  Rate still floundered. ‘But …’ He frowned. ‘Oh gods. He didn’t somehow end up in that hole drinking rat poison by mistake, did he?’

  ‘No,’ Tobias said with a deep sigh. ‘He didn’t. He very much didn’t.’

  A look of realization in Rate’s face, as if something had just been confirmed for him. ‘And the twitching …? He’s a hatha addict as well, isn’t he? I was half wondering, but he seemed so … so …’

  A brief silence. Tobias felt his face go red with rage.

  ‘What do you mean, you were half-wondering? Wondering what?’

  ‘He … he has some of the symptoms. Of hatha cravings.’ Pause. Rate licked his lips. Embarrassed. You damn well should be embarrassed, Tobias thought. ‘He’s good at hiding it, but … At first I thought you knew. And then, the trust you put in him, I thought I must be wrong …’

  ‘You thought I knew? You didn’t think to mention it? Gods and fucking demons, Rate!’ Gods and demons and fuck. He’d thought the lad had some potential in him. Trusted him. Trusted Marith. What in all hells was bloody wrong with him suddenly? Put your life in your men’s hands, and this is what happened. Idiots.

  Rate said again, ‘I thought you knew. Then I thought, with the plan and everything, I thought I must be wrong … I was never sure … You didn’t seem to think there was anything to worry about …’

  ‘How many hatha addicts do you think I’ve met, exactly, the kind of life I live? And how do you even come to know about this stuff, come to that?’

  More embarrassed. ‘My, uh … my cousin farms it. Alongside the cows. Most of the people in my part of Chathe do. It’s not all rose trees and poets, Chathe. Several people in my village you’d think had bloody fleas, you didn’t know they were just dying slowly of hatha poisoning.’

  Tobias sat w
ith his mouth open. After a while he said faintly, ‘And you didn’t think to maybe mention this earlier? Like, before I gave him a purse bulging with gold? No?’

  ‘I thought you knew,’ Rate said yet again. ‘I thought I must be wrong. And I did try to say something. And it’s none of my business anyway. You’re in command, remember?’

  ‘Yes … Yes.’ They’d all been mad and blind and wrong, these last few days. The city, maybe. The golden light and the golden dust and the strange air. Or something in the city. Marith killing. Him trusting. Rate being a stupid useless bastard. Emit being dead. Nothing felt quite right here. Get the job done and get out quick, he thought. Not good for the mind, this place.

  Said exhaustedly, ‘I’m in command. Yes. Thank you for reminding me of that. It’s my bloody fault, should have looked at him more closely.’ Skie should have told me, he thought savagely. Dangerous, keeping secrets like that from a man. You trusted your commander and he trusted you. Quickest way to die badly was to change that, in their line of work. ‘And now I apparently have a drug-addled, self-pitying drunk with the rarest bloodline in Irlast under my command. Or did you have your suspicions about that too?’

  Rate stared at him. ‘Oh, come on. You actually believe him? That he’s … he’s … you know … All of that.’

  ‘Stupid as it sounds, I do.’ It sounded stupid even as Tobias said it. ‘We knew he was high-born: that’s so bloody obvious he might as well be dressed in cloth of gold with a crown on his head. He speaks right, he looks right … There are some very odd stories about goings-on on the Whites. Headed for death, people keep saying about the Altrersyr Prince. Which he probably is, after what we saw last night. Don’t tend to live long, firewine drinkers, one way or another. Somehow I’m guessing hatha eaters don’t either. And after what we saw last night, I’d be tempted to throw him out and tell people he was dead too, if he was heir to my bloody kingdom. He says Skie knows, and Skie isn’t fooled by things. And Skie’s being cagey about something, wants to go to the Whites but doesn’t want to talk about it, too. It all fits. Sort of …’ He sighed. ‘You saw him last night. Do you think he was lying?’

  ‘So … what are we going to do? What are you going to do?’

  Run away screaming and hope I never see this place or any of you again in my bloody life. Hit something. Sit down, get drunk and have a good cry. ‘Nothing. Nothing I wouldn’t be going to do anyway. We have a job to do, and we’re doing it. Prince Marith signed up for this. A foot soldier under my command, that’s what he is. Does as I say or he’s punished for it. He’s going out with us now to buy the gear, if he lives through to the end of the contract he’ll be whipped for misconduct, then we decide what to do with him. Or Skie will, anyway. And until then we pretend we don’t know about Emit. Makes things a whole lot easier that way.’

  ‘And Alxine?’

  ‘We don’t tell Alxine anything. Not who Marith is, not what he’s done. If he works some of it out, fair enough. But otherwise, nothing. That makes things a whole lot easier too.’ Risky telling Rate. But he had to tell someone. It was the kind of thing you couldn’t just not tell. Went round and round his head and he wasn’t sure he wasn’t mad for believing a word of it. Needed to talk it out, get some reassurance he wasn’t. Say it.

  He felt strangely humiliated, too, now he knew he’d had the descendent to Amrath the World Conqueror traipsing around after him digging the latrine trenches and making pots of near-on undrinkable tea.

  Upstairs, Marith was thinking similar thoughts. He was a prisoner, now, he realized. They’d hardly let him go out without their supervision again. Whatever little freedom he had found was gone, he was caged in, now, by them and by himself. Tobias had taken back every last penny he’d had on him. And even if he had money, he couldn’t leave: he’d signed something that he was dimly aware had said he couldn’t leave on pain of death, and if he did, the only place to go was backwards, to where Skie had found him. Revulsion rose up in him at the thought of that.

  A tap on the door. One of the women, bringing back his clothes, miraculously clean and sweet-smelling, even the coat almost as good as new. She looked at him with a disgusted expression on her face as he stood shaking and shivering, still half out of his mind.

  He dressed slowly, came slowly down the stairs. His steps sounded very loud on the smooth wood. The other men were lounging awkwardly in the little courtyard garden, trying to find something to do with themselves. Birds flitted about in the corner where a plate of crumbs had been set out for them. He could hear women chattering and laughing, the clanging of cooking pots as someone began preparing a meal.

  Three pairs of eyes turned to look at him. He tried to smile, the way he’d always smiled at people who’d seen him as he really was, the smile of someone so high and lordly he could afford not to care. There was bread on the table, and honey and cheese. He sat down and helped himself. All the while the three men sat and looked at him silently. What did he expect them to do, he thought, get down and kneel? Men had grovelled at his feet before now, prostrate in the dust when he told them his name. What would he do, how would he feel, if they did the same? Laugh, probably. He ate the bread in silence and felt better, though the taste was like ashes in his mouth.

  Marith sat and looked at his plate and felt their eyes on him. Pity. Mockery. Disgust.

  Memories came to him. Sunshine on high moorland. Grey rocks tumbling into a grey sea. Beech mast crunching beneath his horse’s hooves, the light green and gold through the first new spring leaves. Men kneeling before him, women eyeing him with longing, a whole world at his feet. Gilded and pampered and lording it over everyone. Ruined and screaming and crawling blind in the dark.

  Oh yes, he thought, I know what I am and what I’ve given up. Sometimes I even wonder why.

  Rate said suddenly, ‘Remind me never, ever to get into any kind of drinking contest with you, Marith, boy.’

  It broke some of the tension. The others laughed. Marith laughed too. A sense of peace spread over him, sitting here in this pretty garden, breathing in the scent of honeysuckle, the other things seemed far away from him. He ate a little more bread and drank some water.

  ‘We need to go out,’ Tobias said. ‘Get a few things. Think you can manage that without throwing up in the street?’

  Marith nodded. Lines of fire flickering painfully across his vision. Probably. If he didn’t have to think too hard or speak too much. ‘A drink would help’, he almost said, then shut his mouth on it.

  ‘You may not be surprised to hear we are all coming with you,’ Tobias went on.

  Oh yes. Obviously. The cage door closing, so loud it rang in his head.

  Alxine said, ‘What about Emit? Someone ought to stay here, case he comes back.’

  Three faces looked embarrassed. Alxine was simply too nice for his own good in some ways. A rather sad attribute in a professional killer.

  Alxine scowled at them: ‘What? What?’

  ‘If he comes back, he can cope on his own for a while,’ Tobias said carefully. ‘But I wouldn’t pin my hopes on it, you get me, Alxine?’

  ‘It’s not hopes,’ said Alxine with a flush. ‘I never even really liked him. I just can’t believe he’d just disappear. He’s been with the Company for years. Where else has he got to go?’

  ‘Where else have any of us got to go?’ said Rate loudly. Marith almost choked on his cup of water.

  ‘That’s two of the men I shared a tent with,’ Alxine went on mournfully. ‘First Newlin gets flame-grilled by a dragon, now Emit just vanishes into thin air. It’s like some bloody curse.’ He looked at Marith. ‘You’d better look out, you know.’ Marith almost choked again and Rate kicked him under the table. Tobias coughed loudly.

  ‘It’s like having a particularly dangerous job, is what it is,’ said Rate. ‘You want a profound and total lack of people violently dying on you, try dairy farming instead.’

  ‘You can’t just assume he’s dead.’

  ‘If he turns up, he turns up,’ said
Tobias firmly. ‘If he doesn’t, he doesn’t. But we can’t waste any more time looking for him. And if everyone’s ready, we’ll go out now.’

  Swords. The crucial thing to buy was swords. One for Marith, one for Tobias, the blades they had had having been ruined by the dragon’s blood, the metal corroded and desiccated, felt both too light and too heavy at the same time. Brittle like burnt bone. The armourer’s shop recommended to them was a long walk through prosperous, tree-lined streets busy with plump merchants and pretty women in fine silk. The stink of hot metal was crisp in the sunshine as they approached. Marith took a deep breath. Always liked the smell, scorched and sweet, a smell of his childhood, watching the forge at Malth Elelane, the leaping sparks, the crash of iron, the master smith drawing shapes in the molten bronze. Dragon smell. Closest thing to dragons, smiths and metal workers and bellows boys. Still worshipped, smiths, in some parts of the White Isles.

  The goods on display here were plain and simply made but high quality. Lots of money involved in this thing. The whole company had strong suspicions of what they were likely to be doing, and the more money involved, the more obvious it was. Imperial assassination, thought Marith: his father would laugh until his sides ached if he knew what he was about.

  Tobias nudged him in the small of his back. ‘Go on then, boy. Here we are. Just be yourself, yeah?’

  Ah, ha-ha. Marith shot him a dark look and stepped into the armourer’s. The other three followed him in. It was very gloomy inside, after the sunlight, and he blinked, his vision fading and twisting for a moment, his head spinning. He clutched at the doorframe to steady himself. Walked slowly forward. The armourer strode up to him, wiping his hands on his thick leather apron, taking in his fine coat, his face, his tired eyes.

  ‘Can I help you, My Lord?’ Respectful, head bowed in greeting. It seemed a long time since he had been addressed properly like this. Seen at once for what he was. He’d almost forgotten, already, the bright power of it.

  ‘I need swords for my men. Something for myself, as well.’ Marith looked around haughtily, gazing with disdain at the merchandise on offer. He spoke in Literan, carefully better than the armourer’s own. ‘I have been told that your products are not entirely badly made.’