The Court of Broken Knives

by Anna Smith Spark

  ‘Marith Altrersyr,’ said Alxine. ‘Prince Marith. King Marith … Got a nice ring to it, that, don’t you think? Kind of nice in the mouth.’

  ‘Nice in the mouth, eh?’ said Rate. ‘Just his name, you mean, yeah?’

  Alxine glared at him. ‘Prince Marith … What do you think he did, then? To that lady?’

  ‘Abandoned her,’ said Tobias.

  ‘Raped her,’ said Rate.

  They were silent for a while.

  ‘So what do we do now, then?’ said Alxine.

  Gods, why did they keep asking him that? Tobias said sharply, ‘We do what we’re doing. What we’re hired to bloody do. Who Marith is or isn’t and what he has or hasn’t done has got nothing to do with anything. After the job’s over, then maybe we see. Prince Marith Altrersyr must be worth quite a bit, to the right people.’

  ‘Bit weird, though, isn’t it?’ said Alxine thoughtfully. ‘Now we know and all …’

  ‘Bit weird ’cause you fancy him, you mean,’ said Rate.

  Alxine shuddered. ‘Kind of puts you off a bit, things that have been going on recently. Not sure I really feel like fucking someone who’s part god and part suicidal drunk, you know?’

  PART TWO

  THE BLADE

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  This morning, Demmy drew the red lot.

  I had not even thought of it, after Ausa. She is alive, still, Helase says. Likely to heal, even, in as much as such wounds will heal. She bows her head and whispers dimly that it was her fault, that she was deserving of punishment, that she is blessed by Great Tanis Himself to have survived. She does not reproach me, she says.

  But Demmy has drawn the red lot, and I will die in my turn. Ausa must be glad of it, deep down in her soul. I would be.

  I went out into the garden, after I had been told. The children were playing there, running among the trees, chasing each other, shouting. Little fat Sissly skipping on sturdy short legs, fallen leaves caught in her curls. Corbele, much older than the rest and already in full training as a priestess, but wild and free and happiest in the company of little ones. Galana, shy and frightened and following her. Demmy the leader, making them run, setting the rules of the game. She does not know, yet, what any of this means.

  I sat on the grass and watched them. The children shouted and ran and I felt … contented. At peace. As though some great labour has finished, and now I can rest a while. She is a pretty thing, of course, and clever, and sweet-natured. Beautiful slender hands. She will do well.

  Helase came to me looking worried. Her eyes were swollen with tears. The last few days have been hard for her, for Ausa was her friend. I told her not to fear. She began to cry and I stopped her. I am still alive, I said. I will be alive for ten years yet. Unlike most who live, I can say the time of my death to the moment. For ten years I am safe. Doesn’t that mean I am free of something? We watched the children play for a while in the sun.

  There is a great rite, the dedication of the High Priestess-thatwill-be. It must be done immediately when the lot is drawn, so we must always be ready for whenever a child reaches the right age. It can come any day, or not for a hundred years. All the Temple was bustle and excitement, the news breaking out into the streets: there is a new High Priestess chosen! The red lot is drawn! The red lot is drawn! The people rejoice, for it means my succession is assured. A terrible thing it would be, if I were to grow old and die before another came to replace me, for there would be no sacrifice, perhaps no living and no dying in all the Sekemleth Empire, perhaps even in all the world. And so Demmy and I knelt side by side before the High Altar to be blessed, she looking so absurdly small beside me, grave and confused in a little golden dress too short at her legs. I thought, watching her, that I could remember my own dedication.

  The Temple shone with candles, flames proud and tall and unwavering, smoke sweet as honey cakes. The priestesses sang for joy, where only a few days ago there was the heavy cloud of grief like vile air because of Ausa. Their voices rose in a great golden chant, the hymn to light and living, the song so beautiful it cannot be heard without weeping. I have done something so terrible to Ausa. I have seen the hour and the instrument of my death. But in the light and the singing and the glory I felt only happiness, great happiness like a warmth in my heart. There is no fear, there is no sorrow. There is life and there is dying, and we stand before them, lit by the sun.

  After the ceremony, I went back to my bedroom, and sat for a long while alone. A servant brought me bread and cream and honey and I ate it gladly. Only a few days before I fast again, before the next killing time. It is one of the less sacred things I must tell Demmy, when she is older, that the High Priestess must enjoy eating when she can. These funny little things, like the trick of kneeling without leaving one’s legs numb, or how to keep awake and thoughtful in the long night preceding a sacrifice, in the burning light before the High Altar in the candle heat. Odd details that Caleste taught me, and I must pass on to Demmy in my turn.

  I lay down in my bed and thought how strange it is, that down below in another little room another girl is lying, and in ten years from now I will be dead and she will be sleeping in this room for the first time. Still it does not concern me as I thought. All I feel is peace, and the golden singing, and the understanding that we are alive.

  I will go and watch the children play again tomorrow and every day for the next ten years. I will eat bread and cream and honey and read old tales of princesses. I will wear the golden dress on feast days and be as beautiful as Manora, and inspire terrible poetry about my hair and my skin.

  I will live, and live, and live.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  They kept Marith shut up alone in his room all night and most of the following day.

  The night was the worst. He screamed and pleaded with them, but no one came. He sat in the dark and stared at the wall. It would not surprise him if they came to kill him. It would not surprise him if he died. He felt the dark close in around him, pressing on him, a great weight stifling him, smothering him. Go away. Make everything go away. Make the world a good place. Oh please. Oh please. ‘Carin’, he cried out, but Carin would never come.

  He awoke to shafts of bright sunlight streaming down on his face, and for a long time he lay still, uncertain as to where he was. The light moved slowly along the white wall; his eyes followed it, empty and tired. The door opened and Tobias came in with bread and water; he stared at it for a while then ate slowly, choking on the taste. His eyes hurt. His mind hurt. The light moved along the white wall, paler and weaker now. Wavering. Shadows began to grow and darkness to build in the sky. Things crawled across the walls, pressing on his skin. Good things. Things that hurt. He closed his eyes and opened them and the room was darker. The blades of light had faded away to ghosts.

  The door opened again. Tobias came in.

  ‘Get up,’ Tobias said shortly. ‘Navala’s bringing a bath up for you. You get up, look presentable, explain to her you’ve been ill if she asks anything. Then you get washed and shaved and dressed and put this’ – he dumped Marith’s armour on the bed and covered it with the blanket – ‘on under your clothes. And then you come downstairs with a sweet smile on your face and do exactly what I tell you. Got it?’

  Marith nodded slowly. He was going to go and kill people, he thought dully. Or get killed himself. He wasn’t sure he particularly cared which. Navala brought up hot water for him and he smiled at her sweetly and said in a soft voice that he’d been ill.

  He came down the stairs into the common room clean and shining and beautiful, a well-dressed young lord with sad eyes. Alyet smiled at him as she passed. His face was raw and itchy like it was being eaten away beneath the bones of his skull. His hands shook so badly he had to hold them clenched.

  The others were sitting at the table, tense. He joined them, feeling himself falling with every step he took. Tobias looked at him for a moment and then shoved a cup over to him. He gulped it down, almost weeping with relief.
r />   Tobias said, ‘Okay. We need to go now. Ready?’ He followed them out slowly. Alyet waved at them as they went.

  They walked through the dusk, long shadows falling around them. They passed two men in white silk fighting in silence, their shadows cast and recast in the torchlight, dancing on the walls. They passed a woman crouched in a doorway, her face a mass of sores. They passed a great red silk litter, lit from within, carried on the shoulders of dark-robed figures masked with hangman’s hoods.

  They came at last to the walls of the palace, and they stopped a moment, and stared.

  It was beautiful, in the strange, grotesque way of Sorlostian architecture. In the twilight dark it seemed to glow, the great domes and towers shimmering gold and silver, the white walls beneath like a full moon. It looked like the crests of waves, or snow falling. Birds wheeling in the sky. Coloured glass glittered across its surface, deep greens and blues and reds. Too beautiful and brilliant to be real. Like it would shatter if you touched it, or dissolve. Quicksilver poured from a jewelled cup, too bright, too liquid. The evening sun on clear water. A face reflected in tarnished bronze. Absurdly grand compared to his father’s stronghold, so fragile-looking, also, as if it had been built out of sea foam. But Malth Elelane had been made to be defensible, hard grey stone above hard grey water, cold. This place had no need to repel invaders, for no invaders had ever made it through Sorlost’s bronze walls.

  His younger brother had been here. He’d come on a semi-official visit a few years ago, when he’d been the expendable one, the one no one cared about. Been received in the palace, knelt with just the right degree of near-respect before the great golden throne on which had sat what he had described as ‘a bored-looking man with a sour face’. Couldn’t remember a word of what they’d said to each other: the man’s birth family had been fishmongers in a city in the desert, for gods’ sake, what could he possibly have said that would be of interest to an Altrersyr? Tiothlyn had been more interested in the girls he’d met. Marith had envied the boy, at the time, that he’d been allowed to travel.

  They approached the palace warily. No one around, no trouble so far. Too easy, thought Marith. Not right. Should be guards. People. But his head was pounding and he shook the thought away. He’d been thinking about home, he remembered. It would be nice to see it again, towers shining in the sun, reflecting back the swell of the sea at their feet. To sit before the fire in his bedchamber, listening to the crash of waves and the scream of seabirds. To ride down to the great wide expanse of Morr Bay and swim there. To lie on the warm sand afterwards and let Carin stroke his hair.

  Tobias said, ‘Here we are, then.’

  Marith blinked. Trying to remember. Get out of the memories. Here we are, then. Here.

  He looked up. Stone faces, mouths open and screaming, framed all around with curling flowers.

  ‘The Gate of Weeping.’ Where the Emperor was cut down with poisoned swords by his own bodyguards, bribed with the promise of immortal souls. The gateway fell to dust as the Emperor died and could not be rebuilt save with bricks mortared with the murderers’ blood. But they got their reward: they were imprisoned inside the walls of the gatehouse, immortal but locked in stone, blind and dumb.

  A particularly sick joke on somebody’s part that it should be their chosen means of ingress.

  ‘It should …’ Tobias pushed cautiously. ‘Ah.’

  The gate swung open slowly on silent hinges. It gave onto a small courtyard, empty with an abandoned air. A dry fountain stood as its centrepiece, a woman with huge breasts carrying a water jar.

  ‘Wonder if the water used to spurt out of her nipples?’ said Rate.

  The courtyard seemed to be used for storage. Wine and oil jars were stacked neatly against one corner, empty boxes piled in another. Rate unwrapped the bundle he was carrying and handed them their swords and helms.

  So. Now they started killing people.

  Two sides of the courtyard were high walls closing the palace complex off from the city beyond. A third was colonnaded, giving onto gardens rich in flowers. The fourth, immediately opposite the gate, had three doors, elaborately carved wood so heavily decorated they looked almost rotted. Tobias made for the middle door and gave it a push. Beyond it was a large near-empty storeroom. The walls were plain whitewash but the floor was a glorious jewelled mosaic of flowers and fruit trees, the ceiling richly moulded plaster, its peaks and arabesques now dingy with cobwebs. Once a wealthy part of the palace, now obviously fallen into virtual disuse since the unfortunate incident at the gate. This room in turn opened onto another, slightly smaller chamber in a similar state of abandoned grandeur.

  A door opened in front of them and a serving woman appeared. She dropped the box she was carrying and opened her mouth to scream. Tobias skewered her with his sword. She slumped over in a pool of blood.

  ‘Everyone,’ he hissed through clenched teeth. ‘That’s the orders. Everyone.’

  They went cautiously through the door the woman had come through, into a windowless hall lit with tall yellow candles.

  Another doorway. Another hallway. Two guards in gold armour stood before a marble staircase, armed with long trident spears.

  Tobias gestured silently to them, counting down on his fingers. They came round the corner hard, flying at the guards. Tobias took one of them in the neck before he’d even turned round. Marith barely had time to think before the other was on him, shouting in panic. He pulled his sword up and parried a stab of the trident. A stupid weapon for close quarters fighting. The blunt end of it clattered against a sconce in the wall, sending candles flying. Hot wax splashed on the floor. Rate was on the man now, angled his sword thrust in above the trident, but the guard brought the weapon up and knocked the blade away from him. Marith dived in low and slashed across the man’s legs, drawing blood. Tobias finished it with a strike to the neck as the trident jerked down again in response. The gilded breastplate clattered loudly as it struck the marble floor.

  Shouts came from further down the hallway. Two more guards appeared through an archway, this time armed with swords. They drew up short when they saw the chaos in front of them, then formed smartly into defensive positions, challenging the attackers to come at them first.

  Tobias gestured to Alxine to watch the stairs and moved forward to engage the guards. Marith and Rate followed him. What the hell am I doing? Marith thought suddenly. Why don’t I just surrender? Why didn’t I just surrender and tell someone who I am and everything I know as soon as we first got here? Then one of the guards was on him and he parried and thrust and felt his sword bite hold and blood spurt up in his face and he remembered why. Fun. This was intensely, enjoyably fun. He hacked down violently and the guard fell dead at his feet.

  ‘Up,’ Tobias indicated. ‘Up, up.’ They began to run up the stairs, Alxine shouting that something was coming down to meet them. Screams and shouts were beginning to ring out from across the palace now. Up, up. Up to where the important people were. Clattering footsteps on the stairs as three more men appeared, swords out already dripping blood. Their momentum almost brought them colliding with Alxine, who got a nasty slash on the arm and stumbled backwards on the slippery marble steps. Rate howled and came at them while Tobias pulled Alxine to his feet. Marith whirled his sword, dancing across the stone, feeling wild laughter building up inside him. He threw off his helm and shook out his beautiful, shining hair; shouted ‘Amrath! Amrath! Amrath and the Altrersyr!’ as he lunged at the man in front of him. The man grunted with astonishment as he died.

  Behind the guards, a pair of wide-eyed, terrified serving boys were crouched against the wall. Marith cut them both down, stabbing one in the throat, slashing the other in the belly so that his innards spilled out like lacework, slippery and lustrous as pearls. Would be a long time dying, like that. To stop him attempting to crawl away, he struck the boy in the left leg at the knee joint, hearing bone and cartilage crack. Lie there! he thought. Lie there and die slowly, watching your life run out of you! Look at you
r own body shrivelling and dying before your eyes. Nothing but meat and blood and muck, men are. Stripped you down to realizing that.

  The stairs ended at a wide landing running off both left and right. Tobias led them right. Several doors opened off the landing: they went through them methodically, killing anyone they found. Another servant girl, her body already a mass of blood where she must have escaped from another squad of their men; two old men, petty court functionaries from the look of them, holding blunt swords in shaking hands. They killed and killed until Marith’s head spun.

  To fight in battle was exhilarating: he’d heard that often enough from his arms master and his father’s warriors; he’d sat in his father’s hall a thousand times listening to songs of Amrath’s great victories, His battles, the glory and joy of a great host marshalled for conquest, the beauty of a duel between two heroes well matched in combat fighting to the death. As a child, he’d taken such pride in the deeds of his ancestors: Amrath, His vassal and good-brother Eltheri Calboride, Fylinn Dragonlord, Hilanis the Young King. Growing older, the stories repelled and fascinated him in equal measure. He understood them better, or perhaps he better understood himself. A shared comradeship of men, bound together by life and death, balanced bright as fire between the two but barely thinking of either, priding and measuring themselves and each other only by their prowess in killing, deliberately blind to anything deeper, more complex, more difficult to understand. He’d realized some measure of the truth of it, out there in the desert with the men around him. Found some comfort in it, even.

  But this, this butchery of servant girls and old men, this was something else. Something that drove the pain in him, and fed on it, and fed it in turn. He tried to find ways of making his victims hurt before he killed them. It irritated him when Rate or Alxine or Tobias got to someone first. Mine, he thought angrily as he saw the others kill. That death should be mine.