13
Mesema
Mesema descended a dark staircase in the Ways, one hand on the wall to steady her, the other clutching her lantern. In the distance she saw two other lights, both above her, their owners set to different missions. If they did see her own descending flame, they did not care to investigate. By long tradition, one did not indulge curiosity in this dark place. This she had learned from the Old Wives. Those who travelled the bridges and stairs and passed through the hidden doors in the Ways respected the secrets of others.
The cold pressed against the bottoms of her feet, which were protected only by her dainty sandals. So far from the light and heat of the desert the air was chill, and a slow drip sounded against the stone. These wet and creeping fingers did not belong to the wide, shallow Blessing. The lifeblood that ran down the walls of the Ways like tears did not come from the river; this water came from a deeper and more secret source. She found it comforting.
Mesema reached the door to the dungeon and used the simple hook-twist lock, relieved to find the bar had not been dropped against her. Until recently there had been no prisoners to keep inside – there had been nothing to guard. She stepped through, listening. Someone cleared his throat, and she heard conversation – the guards talking amongst themselves. She covered her immodest top with a scarf, for it was not Felting custom to dress so, and eased around the corner. Six cells, three on each side, stood empty. She had heard they all were full when the Fryth prisoners had arrived and she tried to imagine how many people that had been, trapped here under the ground. It had been wrong, all of it had been wrong, but Sarmin could not say so; he could not admit any fault before the court. Sometimes I need to say the truth, he had said to her. But the greatest truths would remain forever hidden, eating away at the core of him.
Nothing had changed since the rebellion, not truly. Sarmin’s Code for the Moral Treatment of Royal Slaves lay unfinished upon Azeem’s table; the courtiers could not agree upon the merest detail. The fighting continued. The god’s wound continued to bleed into the desert while austeres cast patterns in the city. And now Banreh was here, the worst place he could be, for this was the place where they would kill him.
Five cells further down she found him. He stood against the stones at the back of the small space, his arms crossed over his chest. She gripped the iron bars. She had not thought of what to say; she had only wanted to see him, to find out his purpose in returning to her, but now that she stood before him found her words missing.
He pushed away from the wall. ‘Your Majesty.’
Something had changed. Banreh had been lame since Mesema was just a girl. It was part of who he was. Without his shattered leg, he never would have become her father’s voice-and-hands. He had used his lameness to persuade Mesema to marry Sarmin, to convince her that something that looked like a tragedy could be a defining event. Now he moved with ease.
‘Your leg,’ she said in her own language.
‘I still have my limp.’ When she continued to stare he said, ‘The pattern has many uses.’ In all this he employed the respectful tone, one used by two equals who did not know one another. ‘The duke is a better bonesetter than a killer.’
She matched his tone, though it brought a tear to her eye. ‘And yet the two of you killed those White Hats as they lay sleeping.’
He did not shrink from her gaze. ‘Yes. As Marke Kavic died in his sleep.’
‘Are you Mogyrk now then?’
‘No.’
‘So why?’ She needed to understand his reasons. He had brought her to Cerana and then betrayed it. One or the other, she could accept, but not both things together.
He lifted his shoulders. ‘To show what we were capable of. For revenge. A play for the land and the iron it holds. Take your pick.’
There was something he was not telling her. She looked around his bare cell. There were no parchments, no ink, no quills. He seemed naked without them, and without his pain. ‘I learned to read,’ she said, ‘Sarmin taught me.’ She had meant to write a letter to him in Fryth, to make him proud of her.
He looked at her as if she were mad. ‘Mesema – listen. Did the Felting slaves arrive in Nooria?’
‘There were no Felting slaves.’
His green eyes narrowed, gauging her truthfulness, and anger flashed within her that he would think her a liar for even a moment.
‘There were,’ he said.
‘No.’ For generations the people of the Grass had been exempt from the empire’s tribute. Each chief promised to fight when called upon, which ensured no Felting parent ever sacrificed a child to the Cerani nobles.
Banreh stepped closer, and she watched the lines of his face as he spoke. He had always been handsome, even when his features were drawn with pain. ‘Arigu tells me they had converted to Mogyrk, that they had rebelled, but I know he just wanted them. Just as he waged his war after the emperor told him to turn back. This is a man who takes what he wants and afterwards provides a reason. You remember – he claimed you for Sarmin, though Beyon did not know.’
‘He lied to me,’ she admitted.
‘You see.’ Banreh now stood so close that when he wrapped his hands around the iron, inches from her own, the warmth from his body washed over her. He switched to the intimate tone. ‘I knew the Felt would never be free unless I showed both empires what we can do.’
‘You think you have earned freedom? Every day the court asks Sarmin to invade the grass, to punish our people, to put them in chains for a hundred years – because of what you did.’
‘That is why I am here.’
He was always calm. In the past it had given her comfort; now she wanted to hit him. Instead, she reached out towards his vest, grabbed a leather tie and gave it a sharp tug. ‘You always were a fool, Banreh.’ She laid her cheek against the cold, hard iron.
‘Yes.’ And with that he leaned forwards and pressed his lips against hers. He smelled like grass and sunshine and outside spaces and she lingered against him, taking it in. ‘I should never have brought you to this place,’ he whispered. ‘We should have had grass-children.’
With a jolt she remembered herself and let go the bars, putting a hand to her mouth. The guard station had gone quiet. ‘You cannot!’ she hissed, looking down the dark corridor. ‘They will kill you.’
He touched her cheek with a callused finger. ‘Not yet. They need Arigu.’
‘I cannot speak to you if you insist upon this foolishness.’ She backed away. She did not think it would be long before the guard returned.
He let go the bars and backed away into his cell. ‘Look for the slaves,’ he said. ‘You will find them. Then you’ll know.’
‘I will.’ Her lips still felt warm from his touch. She turned from him and walked towards the Ways, but then thought of another question and turned back. ‘Will the Fryth duke truly help us?’
He stood mostly in the shadows now, the edges of his curls lit with gold in the light of her lantern, but then he shifted and she saw his eyes. Always they had reminded her of springtime. ‘Yes. He will.’
She heard footsteps approaching and covered her lantern. She felt her way along the cells, moving quietly, but when the guard turned the corner and light spilled along the corridor she broke into a run, her sandals slapping against the stone.
‘Hey!’ the guard called out.
She whipped around the corner, hand on the stone, and pulled at the hook-twist for the door. Hurry, hurry. The guard’s boots sounded against the floor but he was not as fast as she, even in her dainty sandals. She won through and ran halfway up the wet stairs before covering her lantern. She pressed her back against the wall.
The guard opened the door and looked into the Ways, holding his lantern aloft, but the darkness proved impenetrable. He craned his head towards where she hid and she held her breath as he stood listening. Surely he knew she was close by; it was only his laziness that prevented him climbing the stairs. His prisoner had not escaped; that was his main concern, and at last
he grunted and retreated into the dungeon. She heard the bar fall on the other side of the door. That path was now closed to her.
She let out a breath, wondering what Sarmin would have said if the guard had caught her.
The Old Wives in the women’s wing gossiped that Nessaket had kept many lovers over the years, but Mesema didn’t see how that could be possible. There were rules for where a royal woman could go and with whom; for coming within the sight of a man, for speaking with him, and for touches both accidental and purposeful. While she knew a man’s punishment was death in almost all cases, she did not know what consequences a woman might face.
She let her lantern shine over the steps and began her long climb. She would have to speak with many men, census-takers and taxmen and money-counters, for one of them would surely know about an influx of slaves from the north. One of them would have collected a portion of a sale, written down a name or noted the addition of slaves to an important household. She hoped it was so; she did not want to discover that Banreh had lied to her. He had been a traitor, but let him not be a traitor to her.
14
Govnan
Govnan lowered himself down the last step and faced the tower wall, taking a moment to catch his breath. At some point in the last month going down had become harder than going up. He placed his lantern behind him on a stair; it irked him, even now, that he required such a thing to light the dark. But he had lost Ashanagur that day in Sarmin’s tower, when Sarmin had seen him and his elemental as nothing more than two interlocking patterns and pulled them apart. Though he was old, some experiences were new to him – the sensation of cold, the frustration of conjuring flame like a novice, the touch of a lantern’s handle. The shock at seeing the crack in front of him.
It had grown since he first saw it two weeks before. Then, it had been about three hairs wide, looking as if someone might have drawn it there, and he had hoped that was the case. But now it had begun to yawn, showing teeth of crumbling stone, its throat a great rent in the Tower wall. He rubbed his finger along its rough edges. He knew an old building could crack; the rock-sworn always had fixed the foundations of old tombs and palace outbuildings. But the Tower had been created with the magic of Meksha herself and blessed by Her, and it had always been impermeable to time and weather. Until now.
Though the light was poor he could see this was not the same kind of damage that had been done to Beyon’s tomb; that also had begun as a crack, but it had spread out into … nothing. That had been without colour or form, a blankness that drew the eye and demanded payment. It had been the result of Helmar’s work and the death of the Mogyrk god, and it had not yet ended; more wounds were growing. The one formed in Migido drew ever closer, called by the use of the pattern in the marketplace attack, and the place where the Mogyrk god had died loomed large in the east.
But this was something new.
Once it might have felt like a challenge, but today it served only to remind him of the failings of his tenure. The Tower had long been in decline: each generation produced fewer mages with less talent, and yet there had always been moments of greatness, of creation and brilliance. Govnan was beginning to fear he would be noted in the history of the Tower only for presiding over its end. And yet he could take joy in the time remaining him, for Mura had been returned.
He could still remember bringing her up the Blessing. She had been a tiny southern girl then, barely past his knee, clinging to a ragdoll. Her eyes, a deep brown before she was bound to Yomawa, had taken in everything – the crates and barrels tied to the boat, the mast and its sails, the poles tied carefully to the deck – and she had made him explain all of it. At every trade-town he bought her something new, here a pomegranate, there a tiny ring made of copper and agate. He always doted on the young recruits, for their lives would be utterly changed once they reached Nooria, where childish things would be put aside for ever. But Mura never outgrew her ragdoll; it rested on a shelf above her bed, guarding over her while she slept. She had left it behind when Sarmin sent her to Fryth, and Govnan had picked it up many times since and held it against his chest. He had never imagined giving it back to her as he had done the other day. A tear pricked his eye.
He wiped it away when he heard Moreth above him.
‘You called for me, High Mage?’ The rock-sworn took the stairs heavily, but with the ease of the young.
‘Yes. I want you to see this. Bring the light closer.’
Moreth held the lantern high as he approached. Govnan might have done the same, except that his shoulder would have complained. ‘You came down the stairs without calling me,’ Moreth scolded.
‘I am your high mage,’ Govnan reminded him. ‘Now, look.’
Moreth leaned so close to the wall that his nose nearly touched it. He closed his eyes and put a hand to the stone. After a moment he hissed and pulled back. ‘Rorswan cannot fix this,’ he said. ‘This crack does not come up from the earth, or by way of water, or through a flaw in the design.’
‘I did not think so. Did he say anything else?’
‘No, but he does not always speak when there is a thing to say.’
Govnan knew it well. Whether fire, water, rock or wind, the claimed spirits rebelled. They did exactly what was mandatory as part of their binding and no more. A favour might sometimes be granted, but always at an extra cost – sometimes one a mage did not wish to pay. ‘Why did you jump away?’
Moreth hesitated, then looked to his feet in shame. ‘It was because of Rorswan.’
‘You are newly bound. Such problems arise. Do not be ashamed – tell me what happened.’
‘When I touched the crack,’ said Moreth, ‘I felt as if Rorswan was about to become free and turn me to stone, as happens with all rock-sworn.’
‘You lost control of him.’
‘No,’ said Moreth, meeting his eye. ‘I felt more that the crack tore us apart.’
Govnan looked into the depths of the jagged tear. The power that went into the mages’ elemental bindings was the same power that had built the Tower. When Uthman the Conqueror had come to this intersection of rock, sand and stone and named it after Meksha’s daughter, Nooria, the goddess granted his descendants the power to wield her magic. Meksha’s gift was laid by rune and incantation into every stone by Gehlan the Holy, and by her blessing the Tower had raised itself towards heaven. The mages today would never be able to recreate the spells that had been used – or even understand them. He had studied the fragments describing the building of the Tower and had touched only the edges of it, just enough to know how much he could not comprehend. His long years weighed on him, but his accomplishments were light in comparison.
‘Has Meksha withdrawn her grace from us?’ he asked, more of the stone than of Moreth.
‘Sometimes I—’ Moreth frowned.
‘What? Tell me, Moreth.’
‘Sometimes I wish I could go back to the time of Satreth.’
‘If you wish to fight Yrkmir, you need not go into the past.’ The slaughter of mages in those times had devastated the Tower. Let it not happen again.
A rustling came to the top of the stairs. Mura, his returned child, stood looking down at them, and Govnan’s heart lifted. ‘What is it, my child?’
She did not return his smile. ‘You must come.’
What has happened?’ he asked, looking at all the steps he would need to climb if he obeyed her.
‘The old woman Sahree sent me,’ she said. ‘The Megra has died.’
15
Sarmin
Sarmin laid a hand upon the carved rosewood of the Megra’s coffin. She had once called him Helmar’s heir – not heir to the Pattern Master, but to the mage Helmar had been in his younger days, one who aspired to fix and to build, to make whole. In the end it had broken him. The Megra had shown him that Helmar was his brother, not by blood but by talent and experience. He and Helmar had shared the same imprisonment, the same victories, linked across time and by the designs that Helmar had laid across it – but Sarmin
was not broken. Helmar had inflicted too much suffering upon himself, left too much behind, including the woman he had loved. The Megra would not be alone here; she would rest in Mirra’s garden, its sweet scents a balm against the pains of her long life. ‘Goodbye, Megra,’ he whispered.
Priest Assar offered Sarmin a slight bow before motioning for his novices to bear the Megra away. A hush had fallen over Mirra’s garden. The rosebuds and gardenia blossoms turned towards the sun in silent communion. Sahree sat upon a bench, out of tears, her eyes on the statue of Mirra.
Govnan stepped up to his side, staff clicking against the stones, and Sarmin willed him to honour the quiet. He did not. ‘There is something at the Tower you must see, Magnificence.’ His voice had begun to lose the low rumble it had once contained, becoming high and thin, querulous.
Sarmin took his time before responding. He was not done mourning the Megra. ‘And what might that be?’
‘I cannot speak of it here, Your Majesty.’
‘Very well.’ Sarmin gave a long bow to the statue of Mirra, closing his eyes and thinking of all the Megra had seen: Helmar, both young and old; Cerani soldiers ravaging her homeland; her young friend, Gallar, hanging from a tree. Somehow she had made sense of it all.
Straightening he laid a sympathetic hand upon Sahree’s shoulder. ‘I must go.’
He walked towards the exit, sword-sons trailing behind him, and found Dinar waiting in the doorway, a tower of muscle wrapped in elegant robes. It struck Sarmin that for all the gods in the pantheon, only two were worshipped in the palace. Women went to Mirra for comfort and men went to Herzu for power. Dinar stood straighter as Sarmin approached, holding a book against his chest, showing the tears tattooed on his hand.
‘High Priest Dinar.’
‘Magnificence.’ Dinar barely dipped his head. ‘I had expected to perform the funeral myself. The old woman was not of our faith. By law’ – he presented the book he held – ‘her soul belongs with Herzu.’
Tower & Knife 03 - The Tower Broken Page 8