The Emperor's knife

by Mazarkis Williams

  Wrapping the bandage around his eyes, he counted fifteen steps to Amalya’s tent. He dropped to his knees and scratched lightly at the flap.

  A rustle, and then her voice came, velvety with sleep. “Eyul?”

  “When we met, you asked me how I became an assassin.” She was silent, but he felt her listening on the other side of the cloth.

  “There was a man-a cruel man. Jarek. I spent many days with him, weeks, maybe months.”

  “He taught you to kill?”

  The simplicity of her question caught him off-guard. “No-no, at the time I was just a boy lifting purses.” He remembered hiding in a doorway, slipping after his mark, the soft feel of leather against his fingers, and the shouts, the chase.

  “The guards said I’d lose my hand, but first they put me in Jarek’s cell.” For a moment he felt Jarek’s breath on his neck, heard the shouts of the guards taking bets. When will the boy scream? Eyul cleared his throat. “He didn’t know how to kill, at least, not on purpose.”

  “I see.”

  He drew his fingers through the sand, as he’d seen the hermit do, and closed his eyes against the morning light. “One day-I remember it was a cold day-they passed a sword through the bars to me. They said if I killed Jarek, they’d let me go. A visitor came and watched me try. He was young, well-dressed.” No bets were taken that day, in deference to the visitor with green robes and serious eyes.

  Halim had always been serious. Each turn of the blade, every thrust and step, could save or end your life, he’d said. In training there had been no cause for levity. In the end, Halim had been a better teacher than an assassin. He’d died when Eyul’s beard was still new and soft on his cheeks. Halim never knew grey hairs or creaking joints, but he had known regret. The one thing he never taught Eyul was how to live with it.

  “Eyul?” Amalya’s voice brought him to the present.

  He shook off the memories. “I couldn’t, even after all the things he’d done to me… When he was on the floor, pleading for his life, I couldn’t do it. I had to tell the jailers to take my hand after all.”

  “But they didn’t.”

  “No.” His right hand went to his hip, searching for the familiar Knife, and found nothing there. “It was a test. The assassins look for mercy in their young recruits. Then they show us how death itself is a mercy.”

  She reached out to him then, soft fingers on his wrist. “It can’t have been easy for you.”

  Eyul thought of Beyon and his dead brothers; Prince Sarmin in his room, longing for death; a young Island girl, leaving her family for ever… “It’s not easy for any of us.”

  “No, so it isn’t,” she said with a sigh. “It isn’t.”

  Eyul drew a breath. “Amalya,” he said, “the hermit wants-”

  “No.” Her hand tightened, fingers digging into his skin. “You don’t have to tell me,” she whispered, her voice so soft he had to press his forehead to the tent flap to hear her. “I don’t want to know. But I beg you, as we are Beyon’s instruments, to tell the emperor first.”

  So it was Beyon who gave her the Star.

  “Beyon doesn’t like to speak to me,” he said.

  “Do you promise?”

  “I promise.” He wrapped his fingers around hers and squeezed. He felt relieved to have the decision taken out of his hands, but something nagged at him.

  The white fabric shifted. He could feel the heat of her breath against his nose. “Eyul,” she murmured, “it means a great deal to me that you made a promise to the hermit. But I’m afraid it’s too much.”

  “Let me worry about that.”

  A silence. “If you say so.”

  “Thank you, Amalya.” He drew his hand away and stood up.

  “Eyul?” She raised her voice now. He imagined her, inside, turning her face towards him. He imagined the sun lighting her features.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you have trouble sleeping?”

  “Yes.”

  “Me too.”

  Metrishet. The desert grew hot around him. He stood, the light driving long nails through his eyes. He watched her tent so long that he wondered if she still listened. “I’ll see you at nightfall.”

  She answered. “At nightfall, then.”

  He climbed into his tent at last, leaving his Knife in the sand. Today he would not sleep as an assassin.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Mesema and Eldra prepared for sleep. They laid their mats side by side and ran bone-picks through one another’s hair. It felt strange, after so long away from home, to braid Eldra’s curls when they were so close to the colour and feel of Dirini’s, and it was stranger yet to sit idle, doing girlish things, when the pattern waited. It felt so odd to fiddle with hair-beads while deceiving an emperor.

  “What about Arigu?” whispered Mesema.

  “He didn’t come for me, and if he had, I’d have told him I still had the Woman visiting.”

  They giggled as the sun burned its way through the tent.

  “What is he like?” asked Mesema. No amount of worry could keep her from being curious.

  “He’s mostly nice, when it’s just the two of us,” said Eldra, tilting her head to Mesema’s fingers. “Gentle.”

  Mesema remembered Arigu’s hands on her arms, how he hadn’t squeezed or poked when he’d looked for the pattern-marks. She thought about the chief coming to her mother in the longhouse, how his eyes went soft at the sight of her. “Sometimes strong men are soft in private.”

  “And sometimes soft men are rough.”

  Mesema thought of Banreh. “I suppose.” She secured a bead at the end of Eldra’s last braid.

  “There,” said Eldra, turning to face her. “Now we are both beautiful.”

  “You’re the pretty one, Eldra.” Mesema picked up her quilted bag and placed the pick inside. It also held bracelets and hairclips, the kinds of things she would wear on her wedding day. Would her husband like them? She didn’t expect to know, nor would she ask. She wouldn’t be able to talk with him as she could talk with Banreh. She couldn’t tell him about reading the wind, or about the resin, carefully hidden in the bottom of her trunk.

  She was learning that her life in Nooria would be about hiding: hiding the truth and, in turn, hiding from the emperor, and the pattern. Thoughts of the pattern had dogged her all day, just as the heat surrounded and suffocated her, but no matter what she tried to think about instead, a shape or path kept entering her mind. She was learning how to hold her tongue, but she didn’t know how to keep her thoughts from turning.

  “Have you ever seen a pattern like the one that came through the sands?” she asked Eldra.

  “No, but I’ve heard of them.” Eldra leaned forwards, almost bumping noses with Mesema. “I wanted to go to that church.”

  “Well, you couldn’t,” said Mesema.

  “When you’re a princess, you’ll command them to take me back.”

  “If I can spare you.” They giggled together under the bright canvas.

  Mesema yawned. Sleep dragged at her, but her mind wouldn’t stop. Just as notes made no song without the touch of a musician, shapes and lines made no spell without the touch of a mage. A thought came to her, and the sweat on her back went cold. “I don’t think that church is a good place to go,” she said, dropping onto her mat. “We should forget it.”

  “What shall I make of myself, then?” asked Eldra, her voice sharp for the first time.

  Mesema rolled to look at her. “Listen. If you had gone to the church, what would you have made of that, with no food and no water?”

  Eldra sighed and turned her back.

  “Let’s go to sleep.” But in truth Mesema couldn’t close her eyes. She tried to decide whether a pattern could enforce a man’s will. How had it been created? Each shape seemed simple in itself, but together they created something beyond her ken.

  Mesema rolled onto her stomach. She wanted to forget the pattern. She was meant to have a child. Her duty lay in that simple and difficul
t task. It didn’t matter what the prince looked like, or how he treated her: when the Bright One came over the moon, she would lie with him. There were more frightening things than making a child. For the first time, she was not frightened of her prince.

  She did fear his brother, the emperor. She wondered how long it would be before he died of his illness. But as much as he frightened her, she couldn’t make herself wish for his death.

  At last she drifted off to sleep, sung along by the sounds of sand and the familiar neighing of the horses. She dreamed of home, of the songs by the fireside and the women with their needles. She dreamed that the women embroidered her receiving cloth, a circle of white as big as the longhouse, in blue and yellow and purple; they employed the costliest dyes for the baby emperor. And when Mesema tied off her thread and looked at their work, she recognised the shapes and twisting paths of the sand pattern.

  She screamed-no; she woke to a scream: Eldra was sitting beside her, tears running down her face, fingernails scraping at her own skin.

  Pattern-marks ran across her chest, a spiderweb of color marked with moons and half-stars.

  Outside, men were shouting. Weapons hissed out of their sheaths. Sand spilled under fast-moving boots.

  Mesema thought quickly. “Gather yourself together, Eldra!” She reached out and slapped Eldra’s cheek. Eldra fell silent, her eyes dazed and bloodshot. “Good,” Mesema said, buttoning her friend’s nightdress with shaking hands.

  “What’s happening in there?” Arigu’s voice.

  “A nightmare,” Mesema called out, hoping he wouldn’t hear the squeak in her voice. If it were Banreh, he would know instantly that she lied.

  Eldra grabbed Mesema’s wrists. “What are you doing?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know what they’ll do to you if they find out,” said Mesema, too low for the general to hear.

  “I’m dying anyway.” Tears gathered in Eldra’s eyes. “I heard what he told you. The pattern kills.”

  Arigu’s shadow rose and flickered over the canvas. Mesema thought he had turned away and was surveying the camp. She covered her eyes with one hand. The Hidden God truly did not live in the desert. What terrible fate had befallen Eldra, without the guiding hands of rain and shade? And she herself-? Mesema gasped and ripped open her own nightdress, but she saw only the blue marks of her veins beneath pale skin. “Why-?”

  “My bad luck.” Eldra tried to smile.

  Mesema hugged Eldra, her throat burning with sorrow. Eldra patted her back. “I’m going to heaven.” But no matter where she was going, her hand trembled.

  Mesema held on, her eyes squeezed shut. She wanted to go back to the morning, when they had picked the prettiest beads for their hair, back to when they had eaten figs in the light of dawn, before the pattern came, but there was no going back, no going home, and there was no saving Eldra. She looked back at Arigu’s shadow, but he’d moved on. “I’ll take you to your church,” she whispered.

  “No. You will go to your prince-”

  “No!” Nooria was a place of evil. She knew it now for certain.

  “You must promise me-listen!-you will go to your prince and help him stop this pattern.” Tears continued unabated down Eldra’s cheeks, but her voice came steady and sure. “Promise me.”

  A promise to the dying held the sanctity of a promise made to the gods. Mesema sniffed and wiped her cheeks. She had been unkind when Eldra was scared and alone. Even after that, try as she might, she hadn’t liked her as much as she could have. And then there was Banreh. Mesema owed Eldra a kindness. She tried to swallow, but her throat was too dry.

  “I promise.”

  “Good,” said Eldra. She turned and slipped a tunic over her nightclothes.

  Eldra was leaving. Eldra was dying. Mesema could do nothing but watch.

  Before going through the flap, Eldra kissed her on the cheek. “You will be a wise and brave princess,” she whispered. Then she was gone.

  Mesema fell onto her side and lay staring at the walls of the tent. She heard nothing extraordinary, no threats directed at Eldra by the soldiers. She wondered where Eldra was now; mounting her horse, maybe, or disappearing behind the first dune. She buried her face in the desert sand. She heard a familiar sound, a saddle, creaking under a man’s weight, and then laughter.

  A short cry rang out: a woman’s cry, frightened and sudden. Eldra.

  Mesema shot up. Outside her tent, shadows moved, and men shouted. She listened, frozen with fear, too frightened to look.

  She thought of Banreh. We are Windreaders. Our spears are coated with the blood of our enemies… Ever victorious…

  The tent flap moved, and she screamed.

  A young Cerani soldier peeked in, his brown eyes narrowed.

  “The general says to stay in here. Hide. Don’t come out for anything.”

  She wanted to ask about Eldra, but her tongue had turned to stone.

  He left, and Mesema took a deep breath and counted her fingers. Her mother had taught her counting when she learned to sew. She missed the feel of the hard bone in her hand, the tension of the thread as she pulled it through the wool. She thought of the designs she used to make: three stitches and then a cross for a bundle of wheat. Five circles for a flower, caught at the tips.

  The shadows stilled. Voices lowered to a murmur. She could not bring herself to go outside. Four and five, catch. Four and five, catch. She’d just counted her fingers for the seventh time when Banreh poked his head inside. Something in his eyes made her afraid to ask.

  “You should get dressed and come out now.” He used the intimate tone.

  Mesema pulled on her clothes, kneeling on Eldra’s empty mat. Something terrible had happened; she knew it in her stomach and behind her eyes. She crawled out and stood up in the bloody light of the setting sun.

  “Mesema.” Banreh came and stood at her side. He always knew just where to be. He took her elbow and steered her to the left, where the horses stood over their barrels, and further on, where the scattered crates and tents of the camp gave way to the dry sea. There, in the trough of a wave of sand, Arigu stood by Eldra’s horse.

  Mesema walked closer, though her feet were as lead.

  “Where-?” And she saw her: Eldra lay in the sand, an arrow rising from her chest. It looked just like the spear that had risen from Jakar’s.

  “No!” Mesema cried. Banreh took her hand.

  “Why did you kill her? She was going away!” Mesema started towards Arigu, but Banreh held her firm.

  Arigu looked down at Eldra with a tired, sad expression.

  “Why would I kill her? I liked her well enough.”

  Banreh squeezed her hand. “Horsemen came-I saw them, Mesema.”

  “He more than saw them; he took Jouhri’s bow and knocked one clean off his horse. Not an easy shot.” Arigu nodded at Banreh and then jerked his head towards the north. “Man’s over there.”

  She studied both their faces. They didn’t know about the patterning. Someone else had killed Eldra. It was a cruel joke of the desert gods, to kill her twice.

  “Why?” Mesema knelt by the still body. Someone had closed Eldra’s eyes. Her hands, though, were still splayed across the sand. Mesema crossed them over her abdomen in the way of the Windreaders. The familiar smell of wrongful blood rose around her. She’d forgotten that smell until now. Mesema arranged Eldra’s braids and touched the beads she’d placed at their ends. The arrow, of white wood topped with bright blue feathers, was strangely beautiful. She worked one of the feathers free and kept it in her hand.

  Banreh answered the question she’d forgotten she asked. “I think they mistook her for you.”

  “For me?” Assassins? Was that why she was kept inside the carriage, while Eldra rode with Arigu every night? She remembered thinking how she and Eldra looked like sisters. How nobody ever told her-or Eldra-why she was there…

  Realisation brought anger. “You wanted her with us in case the emperor found out about me. You knew she might get hurt.”
Banreh seized her shoulders, but Mesema didn’t stop talking. “I suppose, since you didn’t like her religion, that it was all right to let her die.”

  “Guard your tongue,” said Banreh.

  “She knew you didn’t care for her.” Mesema looked into Arigu’s black eyes. She saw anger there, but also pity, and that made her look away.

  Arigu spoke. “This is an empire, little girl. Affection is costly.” With a look at Banreh, he added, “You can’t let it change things, no matter what you feel.”

  Mesema clutched the feather against her palm, felt the hollow spine snap beneath her fingers. “You play with lives.”

  “I am not playing,” Arigu said. “In twenty or thirty years, when your son cuts his brothers’ throats, talk to me again about the value of life. Talk to me again about affection.” He pivoted on his heel and walked away.

  Mesema said, “I hate him. People are nothing more than instruments to him, like needles for sewing.”

  “Did your father not use you?” said Banreh. “And does he not care for you?”

  “That was for the sake of our people. You know it well, Banreh.”

  “And Arigu does what he does for the sake of the Cerani people.” He sounded right. He always did.

  Banreh stepped out before Eldra’s horse. “What is its name?”

  She hesitated, knowing his mind. But it was the Felting way. “Crimson.”

  “Crimson,” he repeated, drawing his blade across the horse’s throat, “lead your rider Eldra to the lands of summer.”

  When the horse went still, Banreh and Mesema gathered what straw and rags they could, covered them with lamp-oil, and sent Eldra to the next life.

  As they walked back to camp, hand in hand, she said, “You killed the man who did this?”

  “One of them.” There was a measure of pride in his voice. He was Windreader, after all.

  “Good.”

  They said no more.

  The camp was struck and the caravan was ready to go before the sun had managed to set. As Mesema and Banreh prepared to climb into the carriage, Arigu rode up to them. He was not a bad rider. His big shoulders stuck out on either side of his mount; she’d never noticed before, but he resembled the ancient statues of centaurs. He looked from Banreh to Mesema, opening his mouth to speak, but saying nothing.