The Emperor's knife

by Mazarkis Williams

  In the rippling grass, ephemeral amid the seething green, gone and there again, a pattern lay, writ wide from West Ridge to East. Mesema gasped and blinked away the wind-tears. This was different from what she had seen before. Moons, half-circles and pointed shapes spread from one hill to the next, a pattern repeating and expanding in intricate themes, reaching out in all directions. The lines and underscores around the alien signs reminded her of Banreh’s scratchings.

  The wind cracked and Mesema fought for balance on the round logs of the horse-pen. A hare ran across the shadowed lines as if they held his path, binding him to a labyrinth. He turned wildly, this way and that, as if beneath the very talons of the eagle, drawing always closer. His brownish fur faded into the darker green. She could hear the rustling of his feet, but could no longer tell where in the pattern he ran.

  Though she didn’t understand it, she murmured a prayer to the Hidden God to thank Him for the message. The wind shook her once more, and fell still. Each blade of grass raised its head towards the sun, as if there had never been any message at all.

  Chapter Seven

  "The supplicant may now approach.”

  Tuvaini walked forwards and ran a sour eye across the young Tower mage. Though she kept her face blank, Tuvaini suspected some hidden enjoyment in naming the high vizier “supplicant.”

  “I would speak with Govnan.” No titles or honorific from the supplicant.

  “High Mage Govnan has been informed of your presence.” The young mage met Tuvaini’s gaze, her eyes the winter-blue of the wind-sworn.

  So I wait on his pleasure, do I? Tuvaini held his peace. He craned his head to look up at the Tower. The stonework cut a dark line across the sky; he could make out no detail.

  “We so seldom look up.” Tuvaini addressed her in a friendly tone. “We go about our duties in this city that reaches for the heavens, and we so rarely raise our eyes above the first six feet of it all.”

  If you don’t draw your enemy out, what have you to work with?

  “The wind-sworn are ever watchful of the skies.” Though she had Cerani coloring, something in the curve of her cheekbones, and in the way she clipped her words, suggested her homelands lay on the easternmost borders of empire. It seemed to Tuvaini that hardly a mage among the two-score of the Tower hailed from Nooria. Perhaps the local water left one unsuited to the pursuit of magic, or maybe it wasn’t a calling fit for true Cerani. Either way, the presence of so many near-foreigners in the heart of the city always irked him. Supplicant! The word burned.

  “And what have you seen in the skies?” He kept the scorn from his voice. No wind-sworn had flown the heavens in his lifetime, not since the great Alakal. He had always felt his father’s stories of Alakal were tales for children rather than for men.

  “Patterns.” The half-smile she offered held a strangeness that silenced him. In the Tower’s courtyard minutes crawled by as if time itself flagged in the heat. The vast enclosure covered some twenty-five acres, and yet the Tower’s shadow still reached the walls, overtopping them and delving into the palace sprawl. Tuvaini didn’t need reminding of the Tower’s reach. He glanced at the young mage again. He didn’t trust her. He didn’t trust any of them. He never knew whether he was speaking to the person, or to the elemental trapped inside.

  “High Mage Govnan will see you now.” She turned to face the door, the sudden movement setting her robes swirling around her. The brass door swung open at the touch of her fingertips.

  Tuvaini followed her in. He remembered the heavy metal door from his last visit to the Tower. “The emperor does not have such a door at the entrance to his throne room,” he said.

  I don’t have such a door!

  “We are the emperor’s door, his gatekeepers. There are foes to whom a door of brass is as nothing, and yet we keep them from the emperor.” She led him through the entrance hall, past the statued relics of the rock-sworn.

  “Invisible defences against invisible enemies. It puts me in mind of the old fable wherein the emperor buys a set of invisible clothes,” Tuvaini said. He paused at the last of the statues. “Well, well. Old High Mage Kobar. His prisoner finally escaped.”

  The mage turned back. If she took offence, none of it reached her face. “All bound spirits seek release.”

  Tuvaini shuddered: to have something like that inside, growing and gaining power, until at last it no longer serves, but masters…

  The idea filled him with peculiar horror.

  “Lead on,” he said.

  They reached the stairs. Tuvaini remembered them well; he saved his breath for the climb.

  The high mage kept his rooms not at the top of the Tower, but in the middle. Tuvaini had no notion what the upper half of the Tower housed. His escort led him to Govnan’s door, and took her leave with the briefest of bows.

  “It’s not locked.”

  The voice from behind the door took Tuvaini by surprise. He cast a glance left, then right, to see if anyone had seen him startle, but the corridor lay empty. He straightened the sash of his robe and stepped through.

  Govnan watched him enter from his seat, an iron chair set against the far wall. The back rose over him and curled forwards in a vaguely claw-like manner, enclosing Govnan within its grip. He was a wizened ember of a man, but his eyes were bright in a shadowed face. Every Tower mage Tuvaini had met was either a youth or an elder, as though the burden of power stole away their middle years.

  “High Mage.” Tuvaini inclined his head by the smallest fraction.

  “Vizier.” Govnan waved away formality with an agitated hand. Tuvaini took two steps into the room. It smelled of char. The place lay bare, with no stick of furniture save the high mage’s chair, nor any hint of ornament.

  “I come on a matter of the utmost importance.” Tuvaini returned his gaze to Govnan.

  “What else would drag you to the Tower?” The high mage’s voice held a crackle of irritation. The flame-sworn were always tetchy. “You have not seen fit to seek our counsel in eighteen years. I am fascinated to learn what has finally brought you to our doors.”

  “I am concerned for the health of the emperor,” Tuvaini said. Govnan held silent. He could have been rock-sworn, for all the motion in him.

  The silence stretched.

  “And for the health of his brother.” There was no way Govnan could know what was happening in the palace, but his gaze unsettled Tuvaini nonetheless.

  A tight smile flickered across Govnan’s face. “You never forgave the Tower for his brother, did you, Vizier?”

  “You broke with tradition.” Tuvaini let his anger speak. “You broke Tahal’s law, and now we have a madman who might do anything-a raving prince who cannot rule.” Tuvaini smacked fist to palm and strode forwards. “Beyon has no other heir-”

  Govnan stood, sudden and unexpected. There was a fire behind his eyes. “If Sarmin is mad, that is no one’s fault but your own, Vizier. The Tower spoke to save the child. It was you who incarcerated him.”

  “He had to be held secret. Any fool-”

  Tuvaini staggered before a blast of heat. His words dried on his tongue.

  Fire blossomed in Govnan’s hands, and they burned as though soaked in oil. His lips peeled back in a snarl from blackened teeth in a mouth stretched so wide that it hurt to watch.

  “Cage what you fear, and when it escapes it will consume you utterly!” A tongue of flame crackled from the mage’s mouth as he spoke in an inferno roar.

  Tuvaini could smell his hair smouldering. His skin felt tight, scorched before the heat, and yet some force held him so he couldn’t turn away.

  Fire spilled from Govnan’s hands and ran wild over the stone floor; bright rivers encircled Tuvaini.

  “Govnan!” Tuvaini fought down hysteria and put command into his voice.

  For a moment the heat built, and then it broke. The flames died, and Govnan slumped in his chair, smoke wafting from his lips. “My apologies.” The high mage spoke in little more than a whisper. “Ashanagur has gr
own strong. Sometimes he takes offence and slips my bonds to voice his will.”

  “It-It has a name?” Tuvaini said.

  “He has a name.” Govnan inclined his head. “And he will have a life beyond me. But you didn’t come here to discuss the mysteries of the Tower. What would you have us do about Prince Sarmin?”

  “Why did you insist Sarmin be spared the Knife?” Tuvaini asked.

  “It was High Mage Kobar who-”

  “Kobar is a rock. I passed him in the hall below. You tell me,” Tuvaini said.

  “He has about him that quality we seek for the Tower.” Govnan gripped the arms of his chair and pulled himself straight.

  “The Tower cannot recruit among the emperor’s family.” Tuvaini recoiled from the very idea.

  “Once upon a time we did-it was a royal prince who founded this Tower, and Alakal himself was the grandson of an emperor. The royal family now consider it beneath them to serve, but if Sarmin were trained, he might make such a mage as has not been seen in three generations. Such a resource cannot be thrown away lightly. A time may come when the emperor has need of such talents. A similar provision was made in the time of the emperor’s grandfather, though that child was lost in the chaos of the

  Yrkman War.”

  “Why did Kobar not say this when he demanded Sarmin’s survival?” Govnan shrugged. “I cannot know Kobar’s mind, but it is clear that the more potential a weapon is felt to have, the more hands will turn to lift it.” “Well, this particular weapon of yours is mad,” Tuvaini said. “He cannot be trusted to act in anybody’s interest, not even his own. He sees treachery in every corner, and twists honest words into conspiracy.”

  Govnan fixed him with knowing eyes-too knowing. “If he twists your words, then speak none to him. You’ve wished him dead, buried him alive, so leave him be. If all is well with the empire he will die in that room of his, unknown and unmourned.”

  “All is not well, and yet there he remains.” Sarmin is of no more use to the Tower than he is to me.

  “No.” Govnan stood with care. “All is not well.”

  “Your servant-” Tuvaini realised the young mage had never supplied her name. “She said the Tower protects the emperor from harm that doors cannot keep out. I know differently.”

  “Mura speaks with the certainty of youth.” Govnan stepped towards Tuvaini, walking with an old man’s shuffle.

  Tuvaini backed away, his skin still hot with the memory of elemental rage.

  “We do not speak of a common plague. There is an enemy behind this-I sense his hand. The Carriers are his tools.” Tuvaini heard the tremble in his own words; he feared the truth he had come to seek.

  “An enemy? Yes, and we of the Tower fight him every day. We work to stay his hand; we work to keep him from claiming pieces for his game.

  A wall has been built around Beyon since the day of his father’s death, a wall of enchantment like no other we have ever fashioned, but these are strange magics we fight. They are subtle and insidious, and in such a game the might of elementals may be circumvented. We stand at an edge now, a precipice, perhaps. Our wall is crumbling.”

  It will bury them all, Beyon, Govnan and Arigu. “I must return to the palace,” said Tuvaini. “Meanwhile I expect you to focus on your work. I hope the empire will not crumble through your incompetence.”

  Govnan smiled. “No. It will not.”

  Tuvaini swept from the room. His hands were trembling, but he made sure Govnan couldn’t see as he rushed down the Tower steps. He passed the statue of Kobar without a glance.

  Sarmin would be of no assistance. It was time for Tuvaini to find out what his Red Hall bargain would yield. If he could not find an heir, one who was not mad or dying, all was lost. Satreth the Reclaimer had not driven the Mogyrk faith from this land only to have his own gods turn their backs four generations later. Blood had been shed for the papers he sought, the papers that held the key to the empire. He thought of Eyul holding his Knife, the blood on the floor by the fountain. It would be worth it. It must be worth it.

  He passed the young mage, Mura, without a glance and hurried into the sunlight. Soon he would know.

  Chapter Eight

  Eyul scanned the horizon. What had looked to be a mere line in the distance now rose high enough to measure against his thumb. The Cliffs of Sight, with their sheer walls and flat tops, looked like clay bricks from the great dune where Eyul sat on his camel. They would reach the hermit in a day, maybe two.

  Amalya stopped her camel beside his and waited. She spoke only when necessary, except during their dawn and evening meals, when they would share mundane details about the Tower and the palace, or swap some childhood anecdote. Eyul had grown accustomed to her companionship over the last weeks. At this time of night, with morning drawing near, he became impatient to make camp.

  It wasn’t unfamiliar, enjoying a woman’s company, but Amalya was an unfamiliar sort of woman. In Eyul’s world, females belonged either to the palace or the Maze. The women of the palace sashayed around in their silk and pearls, building schemes for revenge or entertainment. In the Maze, hunger drove women to please. But no matter whether noble or streetborn, women were dependent on men for all their needs; they kept to their own sphere. Amalya, on the other hand, moved without censure from city to desert, spoke with boldness and honesty, and walked under the aegis of the royal family. Of all the women Eyul had known, only Beyon’s mother had similar confidence-but even Nessaket could not leave the palace. “Why are you smiling?” asked Amalya.

  Feeling a fool, he scratched the whiskers on his chin. “Almost there,” he said.

  She looked beyond him to the cliffs. “Distance is hard to measure on the sands.” They were so high up that dunes tall as towers looked like ripples on the ocean.

  “I’ve been there before. Two days at the outside.”

  “Bad luck. Don’t predict.”

  Having no rejoinder, Eyul pointed to the north-east. “If I remember rightly, there is a well not far from where we stand. We can camp there.” He led the way and they reached the top of the dune, their eyes still fixed on the narrow line of the cliffs. His camel shifted, and sand slithered down into the shadows.

  Amalya shook her head.

  “No? Too far out of the way?” He surprised himself, being so solicitous of her opinion.

  “No.” She shook her head again, fiercely, as if shaking something off. Her hand clutched at her throat and she hissed, “Flesh comesThere are… people-”

  – five of them, hidden beyond the dune’s crest Eyul jumped off his camel, bow in hand, as the first man surged up the remaining yards between them. Blank of eye, his face patterned like a fine rug, he reached the crest of the dune on all fours. Eyul let his arrow fly and it travelled an arm’s length before finding a home in the Carrier’s chest. The man grunted and fell back over the side. Dead or wounded, it didn’t matter; he wouldn’t be climbing up again. That’s one.

  Eyul dropped his bow and reached for his Knife. The next Carrier found his footing and stood upright, a rusty sword levelled at Eyul’s chest. Eyul ducked as the man rushed him. Get in close. He drew his blade across the Carrier’s gut. Two. The old sword buried itself in the sand by his foot. Warm blood fell across his back.

  A flash of blue to his right; scattering sand to his left. Two more Carriers came on the heels of their dead companions, trying to trap him between them. So fast. They clutched their small knives with confidence.

  Another Carrier dragged Amalya from her camel and she screamed into the rising sun. Eyul couldn’t help her, couldn’t think about her now. He took the dervish position, arms out, ready to spin, and Now. He spun to the right, the sand sliding under his feet, and the Carrier in blue thrust towards his heart and caught him under the arm instead. By that time Eyul’s elbow was in the man’s throat. He registered the crunch of cartilage as he spun away, keeping his momentum, ignoring the sting of his own wound.

  The Carrier behind him thrust, his dagger barely missing Ey
ul’s neck, his sleeve brushing Eyul’s shoulder. Eyul acted in the time between breaths, lowering his knife-hand, spinning against the sand, calculating the position of the other man’s heart. Now. Mid-turn, Eyul’s left hand blocked the Carrier’s second thrust and half a heartbeat later his right hand pushed the emperor’s blade between the man’s ribs. Four.

  Amalya. Eyul pulled his Knife free. As he ran to her, he scanned the dunes for more Carriers, but he saw just the one, kneeling next to Amalya’s prone form, his hands around her neck. Eyul drew his hand through the sand to keep his palm from slipping over the bloody hilt of his Knife. He kept running.

  Amalya lived. Blue fire wound about her arms, covering her skin from elbow to fingertip, and sizzled against the Carrier’s chest. The Carrier opened his mouth; steam rose and evaporated in the desert air. His eyes bulged and turned milky. A ghastly smell of cooking rose around him.

  By the gods-she was boiling him…

  The Carrier’s hands fell away from Amalya’s neck and jerked in the sand before going limp. Eyul stepped forwards in time to catch the body before it collapsed on her. The flames wound away into Amalya’s skin.

  She lay there, staring wide-eyed at the sky for a time, but then she sat up, rubbing her arms and shivering.

  “Have you ever done that before?” Eyul asked her, though he felt sure of the answer.

  “Killed?” Her voice held incredulity. “Not people.”

  Eyul wiped his Knife on the Carrier’s tunic, fumbling for words.

  She stood and stepped away, staring at the body, relief and guilt mixed together on her face. It wouldn’t do for him to compliment her deadliness, although that felt like the natural thing to say. It was hard, that first kill, he knew it. He remembered the first man Halim sent him after, a pickpocket, how the blood had spurted across the alley and stained the grey stone, and how he had stood trembling over the body until Halim slapped his face.

  The Carrier with the crushed throat writhed in the sand, his hands around his own neck as he tried to breathe. Eyul would grant him mercy. He knelt and found the heart with his twisted Knife. He saw no change in the man’s eyes as his struggles ceased; they were already dead.