“Master Herran seeks audience, my emperor!” The herald called out from the great doors, eased apart to admit his bulk.
“Let him come.” Sarmin raised a weary hand above his head and beckoned.
“Herran brings only Herzu’s cures,” Azeem said. He stepped aside and studied his patterned slippers.
“Master Herran.” Sarmin acknowledged the assassin as he walked the long path to the dais, his feet silent on the silk runner laying out his route.
Herran said nothing until he reached his allotted place, two yards before the lowest step. “My emperor.” And he slipped into the obeisance as if age had no finger on him. Indeed he looked more hale that he had at any point in the last year, his hair and eyebrows shaded away from their usual white to a new grey, though Sarmin would not have thought the man vain.
“Master Herran.” Sarmin scowled at the back of the old man’s head. “Your profession has done great harm this night.”
Herran said nothing.
“Rise.” Sarmin’s fingertips drummed his irritation out on the armrest. “Speak.”
Master Herran got to his knees, then showing at the last some sign of age, to his feet. “My emperor. It remains to be seen whether the envoy’s death is the work of skilled men or of amateurs with fortune on their side-I can assure you that the Grey Service were no part of this. The solution however may lie with the grey men in your service.”
“You will cut the throats of each and every Fryth in their bed and leave us none to war against? Is that your solution?” Some of that bitterness brewed in the long years of Sarmin’s imprisonment leaked into his voice.
“Only two more.” Herran inclined his head.
“Two? I don’t understand you. I won’t send you after the duke and his last remaining heir if that’s what you’re asking. I won’t have it.” Behind his eyes the pool of Kavic’s blood widened until it joined that which had spread around Sarmin’s brothers in the long ago.
Herran waited a moment, studying Sarmin as no servant should study his master. The assassin had pale eyes that together with the lines of his face spoke of a mixed ancestry, of blood from beyond Cerana’s borders. “If the envoy had never reached the palace, if ill luck had befallen him in the wild mountains where lawless tribes hold sway, then we would never have had this problem.”
“But ill luck didn’t befall them until they spent the night beneath my roofs!” Sarmin studied his fingers, looking for traces of blood.
Azeem coughed into his hand. “If we say they never reached us. If we send for word of their arrival… who will call us liars? Who will call the emperor of Cerana a liar?”
“Austere Adam, for one,” said Sarmin. “Besides, I am not a liar.”
Herran bowed his head. Azeem licked his lips and continued. “Would you lie to preserve the peace you seek, my emperor, to save the ten thousand lives you spoke of?”
Sarmin frowned. Mesema would know what to say to that. His mother would lie without pause for blinking, except that her pride would not incline her towards peace. “Austere Adam is not-”
“Austere Adam has not yet survived the night,” Herran said. “Ah.” Finally Sarmin understood. He did not count himself stupid, but his mind did not run so easily down the bloodier of paths. “No. I won’t order a priest slain.”
“We have places he might be held, along with that guardsman,” Azeem said. “Cells in the dungeon where men might be forgotten.” The oubliettes. Sarmin remembered the smoothness of that skull beneath his hands, the dry papery feel when he hooked his fingers through its eye sockets. “No! Not there. I commanded that every prisoner be brought out and the dungeons emptied.”
Azeem and Herran exchanged a look. The older man spoke. “Your royal father appointed Eyul son of Klemet to be the fifty-third Knife-Sworn. He found he needed such a man and that the Grey Service would not fill the need.”
“This I know. I watched the man slit my brothers’ throats. Your assassins are forbidden such blood. If he had been a true emperor my father would have killed his sons by his own hand, or let them live.”
“Emperor Tahal was dead by the time the deed was required.” A gentle reminder from Azeem.
“You need a Knife in your service, my emperor.” Herran’s pale eyes sought Sarmin’s.
“No.” Appointing a Knife was the penultimate step towards sacrificing his last brother. He might as well snatch Daveed from his mother’s arms and throttle him himself as put the emperor’s Knife into the hand of a new Knife-Sworn.
“It is not just for the spilling of royal blood that the Knife serves, Sarmin. The Knife serves the empire. The Knife dares what must be done, what needs be done, what honest men and good men cannot bring themselves to say or to command. The hand that wields the Knife is stained; the emperor’s remain clean.
“Your father appointed Eyul because he trusted him, with his own life, with the black judgements that taint a man and yet must be made. Your father sacrificed Eyul to the Knife that the empire might survive, that the people within her borders might live and thrive.”
The Many began their whispering, the hush and flow of their words reaching from the darkest corners of Sarmin’s mind, rippling like the shadows across the throne room floor. “Your search is over before it starts then, assassin,” he said. “I’ve grown between four walls, alone, forgotten. Who would I trust as my father trusted Eyul? Who would I trust to kill in my name and not to ask my permission or tell me the result?” And if I had such a person how could I sacrifice them?
Herran turned away, towards the doors, and clapped twice. A figure stepped through with no announcement. Hooded, the visitor walked towards the throne, avoiding the silk runner, taking careful steps as if favouring an injury.
“Who-” The herald would announce every visitor without exception; only the guards entered without remark. The guards and servants.
Halfway to the throne the figure stopped. Further back than noble supplicants, further back than merchants or low ranked officers would halt, further back than the lowest of servants.
“Grada!” And as he spoke she threw her hood back and watched him with dark eyes. The Many whispered, they lifted their voices so Sarmin could hear neither assassin nor vizier. He saw both men though their words didn’t reach him-saw them in their many parts, their bright fault-lines, the way they fit the pattern all around them. Grada however, stood unmoving and did not speak, and no lines crossed her, she stood dark and whole her purpose clear, she fit only a single pattern, a puzzle of two parts, his and hers.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
SARMIN
DI kill Kavic? Did the Many kill him with these hands? Sarmin held his palms before him for inspection. No stain, no trace of blood. But someone inside him had made dust of the ropes that bound him to his bed. Someone had been free to do it. And envoy Kavic lay dead, the image of his spreading blood seared on Sarmin’s mind like memory although only the killer would have seen it flow.
“Not memory,” he told the gods. “Imagination.” He had not killed Austere Adam. He had ordered him into the oubliettes instead: not what Sarmin wanted to do, but better than cutting the man’s throat.
Sarmin stood in the tower room where he had counted out his youth. Too many steps ached in his legs and they told him to sit, but he remained standing, eyes on the painted ceiling from where the gods looked down upon him.
A knock and Ta-Sann’s voice through the door. “My emperor?”
“Yes.”
“High Mage Govnan is here with… a servant.” Even Ta-Sann, who could cut through the niceties of court like a blade, had not the words for Grada.
“Let them come.” Sarmin stood, anticipation flowing through him. At last he and Grada would speak without the eyes of the court upon them.
Govnan walked in, hobbled with age but carrying no extra burden from the climb, Grada behind him, frowning, not even the hint of a smile when his eyes caught hers.
“Well?” Before Govan had even begun his slow descent into the ob
eisance.
The old man put his hands together, knuckles overlarge, skin patterned by age. “There was no magic in it.”
“But what did you discover?”
“The elements have little to say in the matter.” Govnan bowed his head. “The spirits in the stone, the air, within the flame of lamp and lantern, they see much but it means nothing to them. They don’t care about what we care about. No stone was broken, no fire set, just flesh cut, blood spilled.”
“And what does Herran say?” Sarmin looked to Grada.
“That the killer came in through the roof vents by removing a screen. That they must have had a slight build to fit. That they sifted poppy-dust into to the room first, to drug the envoy and his guard.” She shrugged, a hint of anger in the motion.
“You don’t agree?” Sarmin asked.
“Herran isn’t wrong. His men don’t miss much.”
“What then?” For a moment Sarmin missed the days when the edges of their thoughts had met within a pattern of two, and questions need not be spoken.
“The how is less than who, and both are less than why,” she said.
“And you know why?”
“I know who.”
“Well?” When did it change to this? From sharing minds to pulling answers from her like nails from wood… Govnan coughed. “Perhaps this news is for the Emperor’s ears only?” The look Grada shot the old mage held enough heat to suggest she too might be flame-sworn, but he simply glanced away to the ruined wall, coughing into his hand, or perhaps chuckling. “To leave the Light of Heaven alone with an Untouchable might set tongues wagging. But nobody would think it unseemly for an emperor and his Knife to meet in solitude and discuss their secrets.”
“I am the emperor! I decide what is seemly!” Sarmin hadn’t meant to raise his voice, but it rang loud enough to bring Ta-Sann through the door.
Govnan nodded. “You would think an emperor would decide who his armies wage war on, too.”
Sarmin bit back the reply to that one. Once it had been books that schooled him. Never answering back, their lessons learned by repetition, day upon day. Govnan offered a sharper wisdom. Sarmin drew open his robe. The Knife hung at his hip, where it always rested. A thing like that should drag at a man, should carry more weight than mere steel, and yet it never had. Perhaps because it was never his to wield. Perhaps only once he gave it into another’s hands would he feel the burden of it.
“Herran wants me to give you this.” Sarmin drew the Knife from its scabbard and held it up for Grada to see. Ta-Sann’s eyes followed the blade’s glimmer, the first time Sarmin had ever seen him distracted. Grada though, looked past it, into Sarmin’s eyes. A bold stare no subject should ever give their emperor. He looked away, down at the pommel of the Knife, a dark stone, swallowing the light.
“I’m not a killer. I have never killed-” She broke off. She would be remembering the guards on the bridge, their blood on her hands.
“I know.” Sarmin met her gaze again and for a moment a resonance of their old bond shivered in the space between them. He felt her strength, sorrows, fears. “Who else should I give the Knife to?”
“I’m not-”
“I don’t want you to kill, Grada.” He held the hilt towards her. “What better Knife-Sworn for a new empire, for a new peace, than one who will not cut?”
“No, I don’t-”
“Please,” he said.
And she took the Knife, surprise in her eyes as she found her fingers tight around it. Sarmin stepped back and sat upon his bed frame, burdened with new guilt.
“Witnessed.” Govnan bowed, turned away, this once not waiting to be dismissed. He set a hand to Ta-Sann’s shoulder at the door, and both men left.
Alone at last. Sarmin looked up from the bed frame, a weak smile twisting his lips. “Grada of Nooria, Fifty-Fourth Knife-Sworn, Daughter of Mella.”
She returned his smile at that. “The emperor speaking my mother’s name. A thousand fortune tellers could have told her that and she would have believed none of them.”
“Who killed the envoy, Grada?” He needed to know.
“A harem girl. Jenni of Yrkmir.”
“What? Jenni?” A glance at Grada told him she knew, knew that he had shared Jenni’s bed. It should be nothing. The harem was there for that. There should be no sting in the accusation. No accusation. But Grada judged him even so, and it stung.
“To fit through that gap in the ceiling it had to be someone slim, a woman or a child most likely. I went to the women’s wing. There your mother told me of the concubine Jenni, identified as the one who threatened your brother with the snake. Now she has disappeared.”
“Jenni? She’s not a killer.” Sarmin barely knew the girl. No, not a girl, a young woman-but surely she couldn’t have murdered two grown men? Wouldn’t have. He saw Jenni’s smile again and how it had fallen away, broken, when he dismissed her. It was one of the Many who had shared her passion, not him, never him, but his fingers remembered her curves, remembered counting a path down along the ridges of her spine.
“You were right to have me watch the concubines. More than a fifth of your harem have been trained to kill,” Grada said. She pursed her lips. “Give them a dagger and they’re more dangerous than I am with this.” She held up the Knife.
“No?” Sarmin shook his head. “Which ones.” It didn’t really matter, he knew few of their faces, and fewer of their names. “Who gave them? Whose gifts are they?” Surely no single lord had given so many of his harem. How many traitors were there?
“Many men gave them, and none were given by the man who had them trained. They were sold on, gifted, placed and traded in such a manner that each stood a decent chance of ending up in the palace. Many did not. A lot of gold has been spent.”
“Herran told you all this?” They sounded like Herran’s words, like his cleverness, not the rough speech of the Untouchable who had stabbed him long ago… or at least it seemed long ago, though the scar was still red.
“Some of it. Some I have learned this evening.” She spoke with her own voice, changed but hers. They had both changed since they left this room. He wouldn’t recognise himself if he could look back, nor if he could have looked forward from then to now.
“And Herran has let this stand? Left me surrounded by enemies? Left my son-”
“We only understood the truth of it yesterday. Herran would have come to you immediately but you had the envoy to tend to, and you have little time for your Grey Service at the best of times.” She shrugged. Herran made that shrug. “The arrests will soon begin, slowly, one girl then the next, so there wouldn’t be panic, rash acts. Jenni will be found. Your son will be kept safe.”
“But I was-” He remembered waking with Jenni beside him, her sweet smile in the morning light.
“If Jenni had wanted you dead wouldn’t she have stabbed you while you slept?” She left “together” unspoken. Beyon’s Knife would never have cut across him; Eyul kept his temper sheathed.
“That wasn’t-” He broke off. The emperor didn’t explain himself. That wasn’t me. Sarmin could explain to Grada, but the emperor didn’t explain, not even to his Knife. The empire rested on his authority and any crack in it would spread, fork and fork again, reaching out until the whole edifice of his power came crashing down.
“Ta-Sann, Azeem, all those that watch you said you kept your distance from the harem. You told me to watch the slaves from the north. I thought you were suspicious of these women, these gifts.”
“I was.” Again he did not explain why he had ignored that warning when his body found its pleasure in Jenni. “But my brother-the snake-”
“You killed that snake yourself,” said Grada, “fortunately.”
Sarmin had been told of this, though the memory was not his. It was a comfort, at least, to know that some of the Many he carried would commit good deeds as well as bad.
Grada held the Knife by her hip, turning it this way and that to watch the light slide across the blade. “Why me
?”
He reached for the memory of reading Helmar’s records with his own hands, his own eyes, but another man’s will. “I have been reading Helmar’s history. One parchment fragment held the last words he spoke to his tutor. He talked of patterns and of symmetry. Said that any pattern reaches out to forever, and that just as a grand pattern can hold memory and reaches back to capture and contain the past, such a pattern also reaches forward and does the same to the future.”
“And what are a sick boy’s ramblings to you?” Only Beyon had ever spoken to him like that. Beyon and Mesema. As if he were just a person, without title or any right to wisdom. Sarmin sensed more value in that honesty than in all the council of the wise, slanted as it was towards hidden goals. “Helmar hated you, hated all of us.” Grada held up the Knife. “You killed him with this!”
“There was more on that fragment, Grada. My name was there. He called me his brother in captivity. Little of that boy who wrote to me remained by the time he returned here. Maybe just enough to let me stab him. I killed the Pattern Master. But three hundred years ago Helmar, son of an emperor, my ancestor and blood, reached out to me, knowing I would save him from what he became, and offering me peace in thanks.” Sarmin hoped that it was true, that he could heal the damage Helmar had done.
“And he put the Knife into my hand,” Grada said.
Sarmin said nothing but held her gaze. He had sent Grada away to spare her the old mens’ judgement. He had never wanted her to take the Knife. And yet here she was, Eyul’s ugly blade in hand, perhaps as damned as any before her.
“Jenni may know a secret.” The words left him slowly, unwilling. “Something more dangerous to me, to the empire, than any dead envoy.” Sarmin thought of Daveed, saw the baby’s soft arms and balled fists reaching from the basket their mother put him in. If Jenni knew-if he had told her-if one of the Many had spoken of Beyon and Mesema to Jenni, even as he spent himself in her… How long had she waited to tell whoever placed her in the palace? Had knowledge of Pelar’s true heritage brought a snake to the women’s halls?
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