The Court of Broken Knives

by Anna Smith Spark

  He dropped the vial into Marith’s hand.

  There suddenly in Marith’s mind the image of a statue, its face so corrupted as to be unrecognizable, holding aloft a burden too damaged to be seen. In its other hand, a broken knife. A woman sitting weeping at its feet. Black fire, burning, running over it all. Faceless and broken and ruined and empty of anything. The Court of the Broken Knife, the square the statue stood in was called. A sad, hateful, ill-fated place.

  A kindness, he thought. Oh, yes.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Thalia came back up from the river, where she had found a little beach of pale sand, her feet wet and muddy. She stopped. Rate and Tobias were sitting by the fire. They rose up when she approached and came towards her. Fear gripped suddenly at her heart. Tobias held a sword. Marith’s sword.

  ‘Where is he?’ she cried out. He was dead. They’d killed him. She’d left him alone and they’d killed him.

  ‘He’s alive, don’t worry.’ Tobias gestured to the wagon. ‘We’re not going to harm him. Or you.’

  ‘Fish’s ready,’ said Rate. ‘If you want some.’

  She’d told him they were dangerous. She’d told him.

  ‘Look, girl,’ said Tobias, ‘there are two ways we can do this. I don’t want to harm you. I told you, I want to help you. I mean it. Yeah? So you can sit down here with us, eat some fish, ride along to Reneneth where I’ll give you some money, like I offered to. Immish is a good place. Actually, to be honest with you, Reneneth’s a shithole, but Immish in general is a good place. Or, hell, given Reneneth’s a shithole, you can ride along with us all the way to Alborn if you like, or anywhere else we feel like going. Alborn … now that is a good place. A face like yours and a sword like mine and the bit of cash we’re making, we could do pretty well there.’ He waved the sword. ‘Or I could tie you up and dump you in there beside him, and you can end up dead or whatever happens to him. Or I could kill you now.’

  ‘You’ve known him for a few days,’ said Rate. ‘Fucked him a few times. And he’s really not quite what you think he is. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. Come and sit down and have some fish.’

  The fire and the dark and the power in her. She braced herself, closed her eyes, summoned up her strength. She had defeated armed men in her Temple. She was the knife of God, the holiest woman in Irlast. She had no fear of them. She could destroy them. There was nobody in all the world she need fear. She understood that, looking at them, two men who thought they could harm her, she, she who was the Chosen of the God. She had kept life and death balanced. The most powerful woman in the world.

  The campfire flickered. Darkness growing around them. Tobias’s face looked strained. Rate whimpered and took a step back. Fear in the air, alive, licking at them. Thalia raised her hands.

  The campfire flickered. She sat down.

  She was in the midst of a wilderness. She’d die anyway, or worse, without them. All kinds of power lay in her. But she had absolutely no idea how to survive in the wilds.

  ‘Clever girl,’ said Tobias.

  Thalia stared at him. He paled. Looked away.

  ‘I want to see him.’

  ‘Not a good idea,’ said Rate.

  ‘I want to see him. Now.’ The High Priestess of Great Tanis. Rate and Tobias nodded, led her round to the wagon. She noticed Tobias kept his hand on the hilt of his sword.

  Marith sat slumped, propped up against the canvas of the wall, his hands bound behind his back. His eyes were open, staring blankly at things she could not see. His mouth moved silently, shaping the same meaningless sound over and over. Spittle trickled over his lips.

  ‘Hatha,’ Rate said. ‘I wouldn’t waste your breath trying to talk to him. The amount he’s taken, he wouldn’t understand a word you were saying. Tobias did try to warn you. Really not worth you caring about, see?’

  Thalia bent down beside her lover. Hopeless. His face did not respond, not even a flicker of his eyes. Cautiously, she reached out and touched him. He didn’t move. ‘Marith,’ she whispered. No response. ‘Marith.’ Louder. Nothing.

  ‘Told you it wasn’t a good idea,’ said Rate. ‘The fish is getting cold. Come and eat.’

  ‘I—’ The way his face had shone, looking at her. The way he’d been so afraid of her, then smiled, then laughed in her arms.

  Marith made a mumbling sound. Spittle trickled down his face.

  No, she thought. She certainly didn’t need to stay with him.

  She went back and sat down by the campfire and ate fish with Rate and Tobias. His presence blazed behind her in the wagon, grating on her mind. They felt it too, she saw, jumping at shadows every time the fire crackled, their eyes sliding away reluctant to look at her. Stinking of guilt.

  That night, she dreamed again of herself and Marith crowned in silver, seated on golden thrones. A beautiful dream. Woke groggy and frightened, to hear Rate and Tobias still awake, talking about him.

  ‘… could just kill him,’ Rate was saying.

  ‘Oh, I’m tempted, lad. Very tempted indeed.’ The fire crackled and she missed whatever else Tobias said.

  ‘… pay to do it for us,’ Tobias was saying when she could hear clearly again. ‘Feels … cleaner, don’t you think?’

  ‘More profitable, that means, then, does it?’

  A kind of sigh. ‘Yeah. That too.’

  ‘So how much?’

  ‘Ten talents. She gave me two already, when I met her in Sorlost.’

  ‘Gods, Tobias. There anyone in your life you’ve not screwed over for coin?’

  ‘Coin never stabbed a man in the back, Rate, lad. Or the front or the gut or the head, come to that. It wasn’t a definite thing, anyway. Just … if things went one way and not another, be good to know where she was and how to contact her. That we might be coming this way. Take advantage of opportunities when they present themselves to you screaming and obviously wealthy. Find out who they are, where they’re lodged. Let them know you might be interested in discussing certain things. Very pleased, she was, thinking of ways to kill him, once she’d got over the shock of him being alive.’

  Thalia curled up tighter, tried not to hear them. Guilt. Guilt. Shame. He had been their prisoner all the time, then, she thought.

  The next morning Rate and Tobias smiled at her like nothing had happened, and spoke to her kindly and cheerfully, and she helped with the horses and preparing breakfast, and they rode on. Silence from the wagon. Just don’t look, she thought. Don’t look. The sunlight was golden on the grasslands, the trees were bronze and green and gold. Rate found some ripe plums and gave her one, it was sweet and tart and the juice ran down her chin. A herd of deer ran on ahead of them. Tobias pointed out a kestrel on the wing.

  PART THREE

  THE LIGHT OF THE SUN

  Chapter Forty-Two

  It was raining in Sorlost.

  Rain was a rare occurrence. A beautiful thing. The smell of it rolled off the ground, sweet and heavy, exhilarating. Dust and ashes were churned into thick black mud, richly fertile, staining the city’s stones. Dust into earth. Growing things. Children splashed naked in the puddles, shrieking. The corpses of drowned vermin floated on the water. Everything clean.

  Lord Tanis lives in a palace soaked with water, whose gardens smell always of damp and growth. But we men must live in the dry places. Until it rains, and we think we see, for a moment, what it must mean to be God. Or so Maran Gyste had once written, anyway. But he wasn’t half as good a poet as everyone said.

  At the edge of the Court of the Fountain, Orhan stood in the rain. It always made him think of his childhood, watching the children dance in it. The brilliance of the memories. The scent of it, evoking pain like prodding a sore tooth. Raindrops bounced off the marble of the fountain, beating down the jets of water. The paving stones ran a thumb’s height deep with water pitted like hammered tin. A lake, shining where a city had been drowned. The whores and hatha addicts and beggars picked through it as carefully as wading birds, fishing for treasures
, rainwater streaming off them and all the colours of their clothes and skin running and blurring and staining the ground.

  Something of a holiday, rainfall. Not many people about in it other than to enjoy it. Commerce ground to a halt as street sellers rushed to get their goods under cover, shop owners pulled closed their shutters, shoppers and errand boys ran for shelter or threw back their heads to dance. A spice merchant swore and screamed as a sack of saffron overturned, tiny red threads floating like worms and the water swirling yellow. A litter lurched by, its canopy cascading water, the bearers’ hands slipping on its waxed poles. Two women squeaked and squealed and almost fell over on high jewelled shoes, while the man with them struggled to wrap a great bale of silk in his cloak. A merchant selling garlands laughed like a madman as his lovely paper offerings dissolved into mush on his brass tray.

  And then it stopped again, and the sun came out, and the steam rose from the soaked ground. The sky was filled with birds and butterflies and everything blossomed, drinking up the water, sucking it up, holding on to it, eddies swirling in the corners of the streets, rivers rushing down steps and across courtyards depositing fallen leaves and crushed petals and dead animals and a thousand pieces of the detritus of the human world. Orhan watched them float together down the Street of Flowers. He waded through the dirty waters, his guards picking their way behind him. Three street children ran past shouting and the spray spattered his clothes. Waves, they made, as they ran. The youngest, a girl, turned to laugh at Orhan, soaked and bespattered with mud. A bag of sweetmeats drifted past, rocking on the water like a boat. She bent to pick it up, stared at Orhan in challenge and triumph, disappeared off down the street.

  He walked on into the Grey Square where the Temple squatted in a pool of silver, its reflection staring back at it, wondering, lost in contemplation of itself and what it was and what it had been. Its knowledge of him beat off it like the rain.

  Filthy and soaking with the smell of steam rising from his clothes, he went up the steps and through the high narrow door. The dark was the more terrible, for the lush smell of the world outside. Suddenly cut out, replaced by metal and stone and candle wax and fire. Blood. Under everything, always and forever, blood. The light burned his eyes as he stepped through into the Great Chamber. He knelt a moment before an altar. There was a hush, supplicants and priestesses looking at him, knowing who he was. Our saviour, some of they still thought of him. The man who saved the city from something, though no one quite seemed certain any more from what.

  ‘Please tell the Imperial Presence that the Lord of the Rising Sun is here to see him,’ Orhan commanded a priestess when she approached him. She nodded mutely. He stood and waited, pretending to ignore everyone around him, looking at the walls.

  ‘This way, My Lord,’ the priestess said. Orhan recognized her as one of those who had arranged the candles he had purchased. A young woman’s face beneath her mask, plump and bright-eyed. She directed him to a Temple slave who led him out of the Great Chamber through the small doorway in the east wall that he had often stared at wondering about as a child. Dark and narrow, like the main entrance. Another half-closed mouth. Life and death crushed at him, gnashing silent teeth. How can they stand it to live here? he thought. But they must be used to it, I suppose.

  Beyond the dark were antechambers and offices and all the dull, fascinating bureaucracy of the place. Initiated into the secrets of its heart. A little courtyard to provide light and air, with a pool of blue water upon which lilies floated, its tiled floor gleaming, shiny with rain. A short, windowless corridor. A silver gilt door. The slave tapped and opened it and Orhan went in.

  ‘The Lord of the Rising Sun, My Lord.’

  Tolneurn looked up from his desk. He was a short man, fat around his middle but with a thin face and thin hair; his neck looked too thick for his head. He stood and bowed low to Orhan.

  ‘Lord Emmereth.’

  Orhan blinked, tried to draw his attention back to the office and the mundane things in hand. God’s knives, he was tired. On edge, his mind wandering.

  The slave seated himself carefully in the corner, drew out paper and pen and inkstone. Tolneurn stood and waited. Orhan sat with a sigh.

  ‘The new High Priestess—’ he began.

  ‘Demerele is learning quickly. As one would expect. Though she still finds some aspects of her role … more difficult than others. She will learn, I am sure.’ Tolneurn smiled wearily. ‘The situation is not without precedent. The High Priestess Liseel died of deeping fever before her successor had even been born. The High Priestess Mar’—’ Tolneurn raised his eyes to Orhan a moment ‘—‘the High Priestess Mar fled the Temple in the company of a slave, leaving a girl of twelve to replace her. In both cases, the Temple managed and the world did not end.’ Tolneurn paused. ‘After six years here, it sometimes surprises me that such things have happened so rarely.’

  You’ve been rehearsing this, haven’t you? Orhan thought. Marshalling your arguments, cueing up your lines. Refuse to make this easy for me, just to see me driven to say it. ‘Indeed. But she cried again, I’m told, after the last sacrifice. Worse than before.’

  Tolneurn’s pale eyes flickered. ‘She’s a child of five.’

  You bastard. Orhan took a deep breath. ‘She’s the High Priestess of the Lord of Living and Dying. She who brings death to the dying and life to those who wait to be born. People heard her. What do you think they are starting to say?’

  ‘She’s a child of five,’ Tolneurn said again.

  Yes. Yes, she is. A child of five. ‘The city is unsettled enough as it is, with everything that has happened. We cannot afford for people to get alarmed by a child crying. Rumours will start. Have started already. Omens of misfortune. She must be controlled. The crying must stop.’ His voice sounded mercilessly in his ears. ‘Will stop, do you understand? Immediately.’

  Tolneurn picked at things on his desk, looked at his hands. He said slowly, ‘If people are alarmed, if they see omens of misfortune … Let me be frank with you, My Lord. We had peace, as far as I am aware, before certain things occurred. We had a High Priestess, and her successor had just been chosen; there was nothing to concern us save the quality of the next grape harvest. I hear the things the people pray for, Lord Emmereth. Every day, I hear them. They do not ask for change. They do not ask for the great days of Empire returned. None of them, not even the High Lords. They do not ask for blood on the streets. If they believe in misfortunes, it is up to the Emperor to reassure them. We are concerned with life and death in this place, not the mundane frivolities that lie between. As the Emperor and the Palace and the Nithque have made abundantly and repeatedly clear. Omens of misfortune are your business, not ours.’

  The mundane frivolities that lie between! Say that to me again, when the Temple’s burning and the Immish are cutting your throat open with a blunt knife. It’s blood on the streets I’m trying to prevent. Orhan banged the table, perhaps more violently than he’d intended. ‘The crying must be stopped! She must learn. As you keep saying, she’s a child. A child should be controllable.’ He sighed and rubbed his hands through his hair. ‘I know this is difficult. I cannot think what it must be like for her. I do not enjoy this. But I have no other choice. We have no other choice. You must make her learn. Make her understand.’

  ‘She wakes screaming every night!’ Tolneurn shouted back. ‘Every single night! Refuses to go to bed! Wets herself! She’s a child of five! You cannot make this go on! What do you expect me to do?’ He stared at Orhan. ‘She will go mad soon, Lord Emmereth. She is breaking under this. As any child would. We had to give her keleth seed, the last time, and still she cried and screamed in fear. The medica gives her milk spiked with brandy at night, to try to get her to sleep. So what do you suggest I do, My Lord? Dose her with hatha? Beat her? Promise her a new doll if she can kill a man without crying?’

  I don’t know. God’s knives, I don’t know. Hadn’t thought of any of this when he was planning it all. Who would? ‘The High Prie
stess-that-was—’ he began hesitantly.

  ‘The High Priestess-that-was had ten years to prepare herself! She was a young woman, not a child. And she was half maddened with it herself. And she—’ Tolneurn broke off, silence falling in the room, the slave shifting in his seat.

  ‘And she?’

  ‘She … is dead,’ said Tolneurn.

  There was a silence. The slave twitched in his chair.

  ‘You are the Imperial Presence in the Temple,’ Orhan said. ‘The hand of the Emperor before God. As you say, such things have happened before. There must be ways to manage this. There are women here who are used to dealing with children, are there not? They must be able to do something.’

  Tolneurn threw up his hands in despair. ‘I say again, we have tried everything. I say again, she is five years old.’

  Orhan rose to his feet. So futile. His anger had come too quickly and now there was nothing he could say. Defeated, as he expected to have been. She’s five years old. But he hadn’t thought … What did he know about children?

  ‘Your wife is pregnant, I believe,’ Tolneurn said. ‘When you are a father, Lord Emmereth, perhaps you will think on this conversation and on what you are expecting a child to do.’

  Orhan thought: I am expecting a child to do what our God bids us. I am expecting a child to uphold the role for which she was born. I am expecting you to sacrifice one child in order that the city will go on untroubled. One child I do not know and have barely seen.

  Orhan thought: at least she’s not being burned alive.

  Orhan thought: of course it would be different if it was my child.

  This whole part of his plan had been a mistake. A disaster, every bit of it. So logical and necessary it had seemed back then. Kill the High Priestess, ensure a child successor weak enough to be controlled. If Great Tanis chose His Beloved through the granting of the red lot, then it was not even impiety, if the red lot was drawn. He’d instructed the old priestess Samnel to place one black lot in the box with the red ones. Great Tanis could have steered the child’s hand, if He truly didn’t want her.