The Court of Broken Knives

by Anna Smith Spark

  ‘Too much smoke,’ Tobias muttered, but he saw Marith shivering and said nothing more. Rate made tea again, offered Thalia a cup though it meant going without himself. She thanked him as she took it, the first words she had exchanged with him. He smiled at her kindly enough. Rate snorted at the exchange.

  There was hard bread again, and dried meat, and dried fruit. Marith divided his carefully with Thalia, offering her far more than he kept for himself. She pressed food back on him, and his face shone. He, a prince, a descendant of the World Conqueror, a man with a sword at his hip and the marks of battle on his hands and face, he seemed to feel the thanks of the woman he had rescued from a dirty alley were so far above him he must tremble if she looked at him.

  Rate rolled his eyes at the way Marith was with her, and she felt something unspoken pass between the four men. Marith did not speak to her again for a while, sitting hunched in silence eating the bread she had given back to him, eyes down in the dust.

  After they had eaten and washed themselves in the stream they set off again, walking slowly through the scrub. The men were more tired than they had been the day before, their faces greyer, more creased with pain. Tobias and Rate’s limps were worse, Alxine’s left arm held stiffly by his side. Thalia felt it also, the ache in her body from sleeping on cold, hard ground, the weariness and hunger after the long day’s walk and knowing there was no resting. Her feet were sore and blistered in her thin soft shoes and she, too, began to limp. It began to occur to her, in her new-born naïvety, to wonder where they had got their injuries, and why they carried swords, and why they were leaving the city for the wilds.

  Marith saw her limping and came over to her. His face was haggard, scratches around his eyes. And yet there was a brightness in him that grew as he walked, so that he seemed stronger than the others, healthier, happier. He took her arm; after a while, as she was tired, he put his arm around her to take her weight onto him, half carrying her along.

  ‘Tobias has … has some money he owes me,’ he said after a while. ‘We’ll have to go into a village today, we need proper supplies. We can buy you clothes and shoes and things there, perhaps. Horses even. It’s too long a journey on foot. Wherever it is.’

  Thalia nodded, intent on the walking. The other men were watching and listening; she did not like it. She had tried to talk to him in Literan, so they could not overhear, but he had glanced at Tobias before answering her in Pernish, more loudly than before.

  ‘Why are you leaving?’ she asked. ‘Where are you going?’ Why are you here? she almost said. But she could not ask him that, the words dried on her tongue.

  A silence. The rough tramp of their footsteps on the grit and pebbles they walked on, the laboured sound of her breathing, weary in the heat.

  ‘We … did things,’ Marith said at last. ‘I don’t want to talk about it … I … We …’

  ‘You were part of the attack on the palace. Weren’t you?’

  ‘You know?’ He frowned. ‘Of course you know. I saw that, when you looked at me, when we first met. I didn’t … I mean …’

  How could I possibly have known that? she thought. Just a sudden terrible frightened guess. The panic in the city, running out into the dark and thinking she was free of something, and instead the streets were filled with shouts and torches, voices screaming that the Immish were invading, the Emperor dead. Men with knives. A troop of soldiers. A building going up in flames. It had struck her dumb. Left her reeling in fear. But it was death for a priestess to leave the Great Temple. For the High Priestess above all. The Small Chamber and the knife. Demmy’s little white hands – Demmy had only drawn the lot so recently, she thought suddenly. The God, then, had known what she would do? Demmy would have to kill her. And so she could not go back. She would not go back. And the city had been terrible and terrifying. So much noise, crashing over her like water, surging like a storm about her head. He had seemed to offer some kind of safety: a man with a sword, who was offering to help her.

  ‘I didn’t kill him,’ said Marith. ‘Your Emperor. I wouldn’t— I’d never— I mean … I would never have harmed you. He—’ he gestured to Tobias – ‘he was paid to do it. I was doing … what he told me to do.’ He sighed deeply, rubbed at his face. ‘That’s not true. You know that, too. I wanted to do it. I—’ He rubbed at his face harder, wincing at the pain.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You must hate me now, I suppose. If you didn’t before. And you’d probably be right to. What I am.’ In the bright brilliant white light of the desert, shadows beat in his eyes like wings.

  Thalia walked on beside him, weary in the heat.

  Finally, in the afternoon, Tobias decided it was probably safe to turn down out of the wilds to try to find a town. Bloody knackering, trudging along in the heat with his whole body aching, nothing to think about but the nagging sense of terror someone was pursuing them and the profoundly irritating sight of Marith edging around the girl. The boy was so bloody jumpy it made Tobias’s teeth ache. It was weird and unpleasant having a woman around at the best of times. Really awkward trying to sleep on a bit of hard rough ground next to one that looked the way she did. They needed to find an inn. A hot meal. Someone to have a proper look at Alxine’s arm. Some way to ditch the damn girl.

  Maybe an hour’s walk on the road brought them to a small crumbling town with a large crumbling caravanserai. ‘The Seeker After Wisdom’, it was called, its sign showing a dead man hanging suspended from a dead tree. Rooms were four dhol apiece, demand being high given the number of Immish or potentially Immish people currently running like hell out of Sorlost. Nobody asked particular questions about who they were or where they were headed. Or why they were all injured and unkempt. At a table in the common room, a drunk man with a strong Immish accent was bemoaning at length that he’d lost everything he’d ever owned. From the way he was being profoundly ignored, he’d been saying it for most of the day.

  Marith came up to him with a pleasingly needy look in his face. ‘I need— He frowned. ‘I want some of the money you owe me. Now, if you please.’ The lordly voice, and then a resigned sigh. ‘It’s highly unlikely I’d be able to find someone selling hatha in a place like this at a few hours’ notice even if there wasn’t a plague in Chathe affecting the supply, and I solemnly swear on my name and my blood not to spend it on anything … interesting, anyway. Thalia needs clothes, new shoes.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘Please, Tobias.’ The effort that particular word must have cost him.

  ‘Thalia does, does she? Quite the hero, you are, boy. Two silver dhol, and the rooms and tonight all come out of your share, if I ever decide to give it to you. Agreed?’

  A long pause, then Marith nodded.

  ‘And I do the purchasing.’

  ‘Oh, come on.’

  Looking forward to taking the girl out on a little shopping trip, were you? Trying to impress her by flashing some money around? ‘The Altrersyr lie, I seem to remember someone saying recently. You killed a friend of mine for drug money a few days ago, you degenerate little shit. You really telling me you wouldn’t leave a defenceless girl wearing a dirty dress if temptation came your way? You’d probably whore her out in the street, if someone offered you a bottle of something in return.’

  ‘No! No. I—’ Marith sighed again. ‘A clean dress or two, preferably with long sleeves, a cloak, a blanket if we’re going to be sleeping outdoors again. Shoes.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do, then. But this isn’t exactly a bustling metropolis with souk.’ Long sleeves, eh?

  Had to admit, though, Thalia looked even more astonishing scrubbed clean in a simple brown dress, her hair loosely tied back. Rate almost drooled as she joined them nervously at a table at the back of the common room. Marith even looked up from the cup of watered wine Tobias had generously allowed him to buy himself. She sat down next to Marith, staring around the room like she’d never been in an inn before. With uncharacteristic generosity, Rate offered to fetch her a drink. She looked half astonished and asked for a c
up of water. The water round here tasting like goat shit, he brought her a cup of wine instead.

  A serving girl brought over bowls of stew, heavily spiced to disguise the rotten meat. The bread wasn’t bad either, after several days of Rate’s cooking and hard tack. They ate in near silence, the four men made awkward by the woman’s presence and by the changed relationships between them. Tobias listened with interest to the conversation around them instead. All the talk, of course, was with what had happened in Sorlost. The Emperor, he gathered, did indeed still seem to be alive, according to official proclamations, anyway, and the latest rumours had someone called the Emperor’s Nithque responsible. The bloke who’d paid them not to do it: ironic, that. Or possibly just cruelly predictable. The desecration of the Temple occupied most minds: they knew nothing of the Emperor and the government, and cared less, but what had happened to the religious heart of their world clearly troubled them. As Rate had said, would have thought they’d be pleased if people stopped dying, but there you go. No accounting for people’s beliefs.

  The twilight bell tolled out. Silence. The girl bit her lip and looked around.

  ‘Should have been a sacrifice night,’ one of the men at the next table said loudly after the bell had tolled again. His companion hushed him, several men muttered into their drinks and spat for luck. The girl shivered. Marith looked at her oddly. She stared at him and he looked away.

  Gods, they were setting Tobias’s teeth on edge.

  After a long strained pause the noise in the inn started up a bit. Rate and Alxine tried to have some kind of conversation about something. Marith kept picking his cup up and putting it down again until Tobias wanted to hit him.

  The girl sat silent, watching everything. Watching Marith. Marith kept trying not to look at her. She kept trying to look at him.

  That is not a good idea, girl, Tobias wanted to shout. Really not. And that’s not just sour grapes on my part ’cause you’d not look at me like that if I was begging you for it on my hands and knees.

  Just get it over with and get a room, another part of him wanted to shout. This is getting embarrassing here. I’ve already got you a room, in fact.

  Whatever you decide to do, he wanted to shout, just do it. This is making my teeth ache. Come on. You killed a dragon, Marith boy. You’re a sodding prince. She’s whistling for you. Your life can’t be that bad.

  The girl looked straight at Marith. Marith looked back. She smiled. They got up together. Walked out of the room and up the stairs. A couple of people hooted approval.

  Marith hadn’t even stopped to finish his drink.

  ‘Bugger,’ said Rate. ‘That’s my chances blown, then.’

  ‘We should have warned her,’ said Alxine.

  ‘Your chances too. So you’re jealous of her, you mean.’ Rate tried to look nasty and witty: ‘Actually, on second thoughts, she’ll come round to me pretty quick. Just have to wait for him to puke on her or do that thing where he cries and bangs his head against the wall.’

  ‘Exactly. We should have warned her,’ said Alxine again.

  Tobias nodded, guilty. We should. And it was going to be considerably harder to ditch her now, too.

  ‘Why?’ said Rate irritably. ‘Why should we have warned her? Why is she even here? Lord Prince there says she’s coming with us, doesn’t even know her name at that point, she’s standing there with dirt in her hair and eyes like a scared kitten, and we just somehow go along with it. The city’s burning around us so we take a bloody woman along when we decide to escape it, just because he says so. Why? That’s the question, isn’t it? None of us can answer it. We brought her along because … None of us know why. Because the boy would have shouted and cried otherwise. Because we’re bloody idiots. Because she’s got a truly amazing behind. Witchcraft, maybe.’ He got up. He and Marith were supposed to be sharing a room. ‘Well, I might as well get another jug of beer. I assume I’m on your floor tonight, unless our fair lovers are feeling particularly generous with their affections.’

  Thalia lay awake for a long time, afterwards. Marith slept curled into a ball, his hands clenched. Occasionally he would moan or whisper, shaking his head, his face contorted with pain. Even in his sleep he sometimes rubbed at his eyes; when this happened his whole body would shudder and tense. After he had done this a couple of times, Thalia reached out tentatively and stroked his face. Marith sighed gently, the weariness around his eyes relaxing for a moment, his hands releasing. He looked very young and very beautiful, her hands were black against his moon-white skin. This, more even than what had gone before, was strange and mysterious to Thalia. Her hands had killed men, and women, and children. They had dripped with blood. They had cut her own body, over and over until the scabs would never heal. Now they smoothed a man’s face and he sighed and slipped deeper and more comfortably into sleep for a little while, his expression eased, a faint sad smile on his lips.

  After a time he tensed again, twitching and whimpering, clawing weakly at his mouth. She stroked his face again and his eyes opened. They stared at each other. Then Marith’s eyes closed and he rolled over away from her, mumbled something. Thalia sat up, unsure whether to leave. It was so hard to sleep, with someone else beside her. She had not slept with anyone else in the same room as her since she was five years old and drew the red lot. The sound of Marith’s breathing was loud and almost hypnotic: she could not stop listening to it, following its patterns, trying to find words in it. Simply the sense of someone else present was haunting. Frightening. The inn itself was noisy, the night outside noisy. She was used to silence and utter darkness, the great weight of her God blotting out all sound. Marith twitched again and cried out.

  Not a bad choice, she thought almost in amusement. If the High Priestess of Great Tanis Who Rules All Things was to abandon her allotted calling, it was only fitting it should be in the company of a high-born prince and one of her God’s enemies. Then the boy whimpered in his sleep again, twisting his hands, and it seemed absurd he should be either.

  She slept, and suddenly there was soft grey light filling the room and the sound of voices in the road outside. A dog barked, a voice called out to it to come to heel; goats bleated; a cock crowed. Marith was sitting up, watching her. He smiled when he saw she was awake. He looked so perfect her breath caught and a stab of pain darted through her body like bright water, the dawn sun picking out the fine high bones of his face, the muscles of his shoulders, the hollow at the base of his throat. His eyes were soft and amused, cool grey like rain clouds. He blinked as she gazed at him, his eyelashes brushing the blue shadows beneath his eyes. He had long eyelashes, long as a girl’s or a child’s, deep black and almost shot with gold.

  His face was slightly marred, she saw now that she was so close to him in the bright morning light. Fine silver lines, like faint traceries of lace, curled outwards from around his eyes, almost imperceptible against the creamy white skin.

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ she said without thinking, then blushed.

  He laughed and lay back on the rough pillow. ‘Not as beautiful as you. Good morning.’

  Thalia sat up in confusion, pulling the blanket around her. She was naked, and he was looking at her. ‘You don’t … you don’t mind that I’m still here?’ she said.

  ‘Well, I suppose theoretically I’ve wasted the money I spent on a room for you.’ He reached over and kissed her mouth, pulling her down into his arms. ‘I don’t mind in the least. Certainly not compared to some of the ways I’ve woken up …’ His eyes glittered. ‘So: in the last month I have killed a dragon, burnt a sorcerer alive with his own spells and deflowered the High Priestess of the Great Temple of Sorlost. I don’t think even Amrath Himself could make that claim.’

  Thalia twisted away from him. ‘Don’t … don’t say it like that.’ Disgust and desire. Desire and disgust.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He took her hand and rolled her back towards him. ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’ She frowned at him and he smiled ruefully, his eyes alight and spark
ling. Why had she thought there was darkness in him? He shone with bright clear light. He looked so young, so full of pride in himself. ‘Well, no, actually, I probably did. But really, as drinking boasts go, bedding the holiest woman in the Sekemleth Empire is pretty impressive, you know.’

  Am I the holiest woman in the Sekemleth Empire any more? Thalia thought. Am I anything more than a woman with nothing of her own at all? But she smiled back at him. ‘As impressive as bedding an outcast Altrersyr Prince?’

  He rubbed his eyes and stretched lazily, folding his arms around her. He seemed so different to the sad figure afraid to look at her, afraid of the men with him. So confident and careless. So utterly at ease with himself and the world. Certain of himself. Certain of her. The grief that had woken in her faded away again as quickly as it had come. He is so very beautiful, she thought. And not just beautiful. A feeling of peace in her looking at him, as she felt standing at dawn in her Temple listening to the Great Hymn, her hands damp and scented with flowers. Joy and certainty and clear calm.

  ‘Let’s just stay here all day. Have some food brought up to us, and a couple of bottles of something sweet to drink. Bread and honey and wine, ripe yellow peaches I can taste in your mouth when I kiss you. Get deliciously drunk and fuck for hours. We can just stay here together, the descendant of Amrath and the High Priestess of Sorlost, making love in a lumpy bed to the sound of goats bleating. In bright sunlight, and in the evening shadows, and in the dark by candlelight. And tomorrow we can wake up and do it all over again. It would make a change from killing people, anyway, which is all I seem to have been doing recently. And then the day after tomorrow …’ Marith smiled brilliantly, an idea suddenly catching him, lighting up his face. ‘And then the day after tomorrow we’ll start out for Ith. You’ll be the most beautiful woman at the court of Malth Tyrenae. I’ll have them dress you in gold and silver, with diamonds in your hair, and make them prostrate themselves at your feet.’ He kissed her again, full of joy and excitement. ‘And then after that …’