The Emperor's knife

by Mazarkis Williams

  “No.” She released his wrist but didn’t move away.

  Sarmin shrugged. It didn’t hurt-nothing hurt any more. He smiled and laid his head back. The gods watched him.

  “It’s my knife, isn’t it?” Grada asked, her voice soft.

  “Yes.”

  Sarmin watched the gods. He thought of Beyon, and of Grada. He was glad not to be alone.

  “I will carry you.” Grada leaned over him. “Show me how.” Sarmin released a sigh he’d not known was inside him and set a trembling hand to her neck. Warm flesh pulsed beneath his fingertips. A star became a moon. And they were joined: Grada and Sarmin.

  “Grada?” He spoke from inside of her. He could see himself through her eyes, pale against cushions dark with his blood.

  “Grada?”

  He could hear his breath rattle into shallow lungs.

  “Herzu’s member! You’re a prince!”

  “I’m going to be a dead prince unless you start moving, Grada.”

  “I’m in a palace and I stabbed a prince!” She was yelling, but her lips did not move.

  “Grada!”

  She started towards Tuvaini’s secret door. Sarmin shared the pain lancing out from her sliced back.

  “Who is Tuvaini?”

  “Cerani’s high vizier, a cousin of mine, I think, if you go through enough genealogy.”

  “Genie what?”

  “Pay attention, those stairs are steep.”

  “The high vizier? Camelspit! The high vizier comes to see you?” She reached the bottom of the stairs and paused. She looked out over the bridge.

  “Rotram?” she asked. Another memory had escaped Sarmin’s keeping into Grada’s mind.

  “A royal guard. He died here.”

  “Died?” Grada asked out loud.

  “Was killed.”

  “I remember a dream-” Images fluttered through her mind: the hatred on Ellar’s face, Rotram falling into the blackness.

  Sarmin moved within her and turned her head from the chasm. “Don’t.”

  “They killed him- somebody killed him,” she said, “with my hands.” She looked at them, still rusty with his blood. “But it wasn’t me?”

  “No.”

  “It wasn’t me.” Prayer rather than conviction.

  Together they made their way across the bridge and through Tuvaini’s passages-the secret ways pre-dated Tuvaini by three hundred years, but Sarmin thought of them as the vizier’s. Tuvaini, keeper of secrets-what other hidden paths had the man trodden?

  Grada retraced her footsteps, bringing them through the forgotten bowels of the ancient palace. A concealed door gave before experimental fingers and she crawled through, emerging behind a patterned urn, man-high, in a dusty corner of a corridor lit by lanterns.

  “This is the under-palace?” Recognition thrilled across Sarmin’s shoulders, though he had never walked the halls where servants went about their business.

  “I thought the emperor must live here when I saw it,” Grada said, “I didn’t know there were such places.” Her words carried images of the Maze in their wake: dark rooms, small and dirt-floored, sewer stink, and rot in the gutters.

  She found her feet and looked both ways along the corridor. To her left was a low door, and above it brown tiles picking out a scene from the Battle of the Well, showing Cerani and Parigols locked in combat.

  She moved to go past, but Sarmin stopped her and they almost fell. “I’ve seen this before-this decoration.”

  Grada said nothing.

  “I saw it,” Sarmin continued, “I was with the Many, and I saw Tuvaini here. And something was given to him-something precious. It was his price for betrayal. His price for opening the secret ways to you.”

  Grada frowned. “I remember… almost.”

  “He plays Settu, my cousin,” Sarmin said. “We’re tiles on his board. He tried to use me and found that I was not a tool he could turn to his purpose, so he sold me to the Many, and charged a high price for his treachery. He plays the Pattern Master at his own game. Or he thinks he does.”

  Grada shook her head and for a moment Sarmin felt himself fade, losing substance, as if he were a memory or an idea ready to be overwritten by new thoughts. The image came to him of cushions black with blood.

  “Quickly,” he murmured, “we have to reach the Tower.” They had taken four steps before Grada remembered her robes and retrieved them from the throat of the urn. The sun robes were ill-suited to fighting, but essential to the outdoor life of the Maze. She gasped as she struggled into them, but the rough cloth would hide her wound.

  Sarmin retreated to the back of Grada’s mind and watched as they passed a hall where women, old and young, sat at long tables, cutting and stitching with swift fingers and quicker voices. The corridor split and from the left men came, hefting amphorae heavy with sweet-wine for the palace kitchens. They passed without a glance for Grada, who hurried down the passage to the right.

  They passed by a well, low-walled and secret in a window-less hall. The air felt strange to Sarmin; it was clammy on Grada’s skin. She took a wooden bucket from a row by the wall. Sarmin found himself listening to her breathing, wondering at the soft strength and strangeness of her body beneath the robes. As she reached for a cover for the bucket Sarmin turned her hand, studying her palm for a moment before she took command again.

  The corridors became more crowded, with servants, scribes, craftsmen, all bound for unknown destinations. Grada stepped aside and passed unmarked, beneath notice, a ghost within the machine of government.

  A low door gave onto the grand courtyard. As a child Sarmin had left the palace carried within a palanquin, taken through the Elephant Gate, a vaulted portal with doors of spice-teak, tall enough to admit gods. The door before them now was not for gods, or princes, or even merchants. Even so, a palace guard waited, a scarred hand resting upon the hilt of his hachirah. His eyes flitted to the bucket in Grada’s hands and he wrinkled his nose and said nothing. Grada passed through, silent, into the sun. Sarmin could hear the words unspoken: night-soil. Hachirahs meant nothing to the Mazeborn.

  The noonday sun bludgeoned the flagstones of the grand courtyard with such violence that none lingered there. Only Grada and a distant patrol of the Blue Shield Guard moved in the heat. Sarmin felt the hot stone through Grada’s sandals and through the slits of her eyes he saw the great expanse of the sky. After fifteen years beneath a painted ceiling the sight robbed him of thought. His scream escaped Grada’s lips and he ran, throwing himself back into her skull, into her mind, into the darkest recesses, diving under the blackness, burrowing “Grada?” A man’s voice in the night of memory.

  “Grada? Why are you hiding?” Closer now. “Father always finds you.”

  And there, buried from the sun, in a stranger’s nightmares, Sarmin learned of other ways to lose a childhood.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Eyul stood by the burning tent. He watched her funeral pyre through his white sun-mask, Knife in hand. It had taken only seconds for Metrishet to free himself, to blister Amalya’s smooth skin and envelop her blankets in a crackling blaze.

  Someone would die for this. He twisted the hilt of the emperor’s Knife in his hand, ignoring the whispers pouring forth in his mind.

  There was no point in collecting Amalya’s pots, her spice-sack or anything else that spoke of her. Let the desert claim them, as the pattern had claimed Amalya. Let them be forgotten.

  But first, someone would die. Perhaps many.

  He mounted his camel and turned towards the city.

  The sun in the west hit the white walls of Nooria and filled Mesema’s vision with orange light. She covered her eyes against the brightness, wishing she knew what lay beyond that orange veil. Her stomach twisted with the not-knowing. She wished she could stop the carriage, but it creaked and bounced along, moving inexorably forwards. She longed to turn back, back home, back to the desert, back anywhere but here.

  The pattern had not appeared anywhere else on her
skin, but remained on her finger, a small dusty-blue moon. Twice she’d slept and twice she’d awakened, frightened and pleading to the Hidden God. One day would be the bad day, the day she’d find those lines and shapes running across her ribs. She hadn’t yet decided what to do on that day.

  Sahree sat opposite, her eyes averted; it had been so ever since Mesema’s visit to the emperor’s tent. Everyone thought she was his now, the property of the divine. The other girls no longer spoke to her; they only murmured to each other in awed tones. They did everything for her, without ever meeting her eyes. If she sighed, they fanned her. If she yawned, they offered her plump cushions. If she stumbled, they rubbed her feet and cursed the ground.

  For the first time she realised how lonely the emperor must feel. And yet it kept her safe; they looked away from her, away from the blue mark on her finger.

  She embroidered a pattern in her head. Somewhere, something burned; the smoke caught in her throat. Mesema tried not to swallow. If she swallowed, Sahree would think she was thirsty, leap from the carriage and cause the whole caravan to stop until the second-freshest water and second-best goblet could be found. Almost there. Loop, stitch, stitch. She kept her bluetinged finger pressed against the cloth at her knee. She missed the feather from Eldra’s arrow. She used to work it in her hand, but Cerani women had no pockets; she kept it in her trunk now, next to the resin Mamma had given her.

  After a time, the stench of burning faded and Mesema smelled food, meat with heavy spices, flowers, the stale smell of wheat-brew. She heard chains swinging in the wind, and a baby crying. Why were there no voices? A glance through the window answered her question: mothers, traders, and soldiers all prostrated themselves as the emperor’s caravan passed by.

  Sahree held out a piece of sheer fabric. Mesema was to cover herself so that nobody could see her. She had come to know this in the last day. She shook it out and pulled it over her hair and it settled on her cheeks gently, like a butterfly. When she breathed, it pulled against her nose. Everything she looked at turned hazy-white.

  A twinge shot through her finger. Beyon approached. She imagined him wending his way between the soldiers and pack-animals, careless on his mount, his eyes hard and tired. No sooner had the image crossed her mind than he leaned in, looking first at Sahree and then taking in her silken veil. She was relieved that he couldn’t see her face.

  “We will enter the city soon,” he said.

  As if I don’t know! Mesema looked at Sahree, at her veined, thin hands, and wondered how many years Sahree had worked for the palace, how many emperors she had seen live and die.

  He didn’t wait for a response but drew away. She could hear him galloping towards the wall; she imagined the common folk dashing out of his way as he charged ahead, arrogant, heedless, as she cradled her finger in her left hand. It hurt now, when he moved far away. Sahree might see the tears streaming down her cheeks and think it was all for love of Beyon; better she not know the truth.

  “What- Who am I?” Sarmin didn’t think to ask, “Where am I?” Where would he be? Where had he always been? In his room. Through the blurred slits of his eyes he could see the only sky he had ever really known, the patterned gods of his ceiling.

  “You are Sarmin, prince of Cerana. Grada remains in the mages’ Tower. You are separate, again, and whole, or as whole as I can make you.” The deep voice had the crackle of age in it.

  Sarmin rolled his head towards the speaker and realised he was lying flat, on his own bed. His fingers sought out the tear in his tunic, and the wound below, but they found nothing, just tenderness, and the crusting of dried blood on silk.

  The man stood beside the bed. Sarmin’s eyes refused to focus, giving him only a smeared impression of a figure wreathed in light, alive with the ghosts of flame. Sarmin kneaded his eyeballs and looked again, seeing an old man now, shadowed, with wisps of white hair haloing a bald head.

  “I have no skills for healing,” the man spread his hands, and for a second the wraith-fire played across them again, “but I spent thirteen years in the desert, in the Empty Quarter. There is a rock there, a rock that bleeds. I used a little of that blood to knit your flesh and call you back to it.”

  “I don’t know you.” Sarmin felt weak. He felt empty. He wanted Grada. “My name is Govnan. I am High Mage of the Tower.”

  “You are two pieces. A puzzle of two pieces.” Sarmin still felt lightheaded; he spoke the words without thinking. “Fire and flesh.”

  Govnan raised a brow at that and stepped closer to the bed. Sarmin struggled to sit.

  “As the slave carried you within her, I too carry another. It is not the same magic, but similar-simpler. Ashanagur is bound within me, and his strength is mine. At one time he danced across the molten sea before the City of Brass where efreet dwell, but now he dwells in me, until the day comes when he consumes me and I will live inside the fire.”

  “I remember the Tower. The high mage was Kobar, before… when I was a child. He made us laugh. He knew tricks, made talking faces in stone walls… He touched Pelar’s red ball and it grew so heavy we couldn’t lift it.” Sarmin smiled at the memory.

  “High Mage Kobar was rock-sworn. The time came for the earth-spirit bound to his flesh to find its freedom. For ten years I have held the Tower for Emperor Beyon.”

  “Beyon.” Sarmin remembered his brother, the patterns on his skin, the dead guards outside the door. “There are assassins-you must save him!”

  “Grada came for you, Sarmin. There are no others. Beyon’s enemy seeks to break him. If he fails to break him, he may try murder, but he is not failing. Even with all the protections we have woven around him, the pattern closes in.”

  Sarmin stood. His legs felt strange beneath him. He walked on stilts once as a child, and this was not so different. He found himself taller than Govnan, an odd feeling, as he had been sure the mage would loom over him.

  “You’re wrong. Broken or whole, Beyon serves his purpose for the enemy. I have seen that enemy.” Sarmin’s blood had turned black and clotted on his silks. For a moment he felt it again, running hot down his side. “I saw him behind the Many, the Carriers: a Pattern Master.”

  Govnan bowed his head. He focused his gaze upon his hands, his knuckles large, and whiter than skin should be. “You have the talents of your line, Prince Sarmin. The throne was purchased with such skills in the earliest of days, and the potential runs through your dynasty. Beyon’s potential has helped to keep the pattern at bay. Your potential kept the emperor’s Knife from your throat.”

  “ You? You put me here? In this room?”

  “No-the Tower spared your life, no more. Envy put you in this room: ambition.”

  “How many?” Sarmin asked. “How many boys have lived out their lives like this, under this curse?”

  “It is a gift, Prince. Life is always a gift.” Govnan met his stare, and Sarmin could feel the heat of the man. “And there have been no others in my lifetime. There was a child in the time of the Yrkman incursions, but his quarters were sacked when Nooria was overrun.”

  “I want Grada.” And as he spoke the words Sarmin knew that he did want her, more than his lost years, more than close-held memories of stolen things, more than his mother or brother.

  “Grada is at the Tower, and it is best that she remain there. She has been a tool of the enemy. I will return her knife and-”

  “I want Grada.” Sarmin had seen with her eyes, spoken with her breath. He had held her whilst he was dying.

  “Even if no taint remains, she is low-born, gutter-kin; she has her place, and you have yours.”

  “You are a two-piece puzzle, High Mage.” A cold anger held Sarmin, iced fingers on his neck. “And even if I have no book on the subject, I am nothing if not a man of patterns.”

  “Prince, you must calm yourself. I do not understand-”

  “No!” They had held him too long; they had schemed in their corridors and towers, painted him into their plans, and at every turn they had thwarted him. Twenty
paces, left turn, fifteen paces, left turn “No,” Sarmin said, “I am done with turning.”

  He drew two symbols, one with the index finger of his right hand, one with the left, one symbol for fire, one for man, and they hung in the air between them.

  “Sarmin, don’t.”

  “Your magic is wrong.”

  Sarmin moved his hands apart, and the symbols with them. And in that motion, Govnan lit up like lamp oil before the taper. New flame flowed across old skin, pooling, pouring, building, and as Sarmin’s hands parted, so Govnan parted from Ashanagur until the two stood side by side. Govnan was a dark twin to the being of light beside him, standing straighter now, more sound, as if something had been added rather than taken. Ashanagur wore his fire like a cloak, the lithe, long limbs beneath it the color of molten iron. Around his feet the carpet charred, but the fire and the heat did not spread.

  “Ashanagur,” Sarmin said, “you are free.”

  White eyes sought Sarmin’s and something passed between them, warmth rather than heat. An understanding. There was a sound of cracking, perhaps the stone beneath the carpet, perhaps the foundation stone of the world. A jagged line of incandescence opened between them, and in a heartbeat Ashanagur was gone, leaving only a faint coil of smoke.

  The angels and the devils watched from the walls and were silent.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Eyul turned another corner of the Maze. Smoke from the Carrierpyres overlaid the more familiar scents of blood and excrement, the flavours of his old home. The familiarity of the twisting alleys reassured him as much as the Knife at his hip. He felt more surety here than in Tuvaini’s dark passages. The Maze was honest, in all of the ways most people didn’t wish to see.

  He moved towards his destination with confidence, memory guiding his feet for his vision was hazy behind white linen. The alley where he’d made his first kill ran alongside the ruins of an old Mogyrk church. These days he doubted anybody could have identified the fire-darkened, crumbling mortar for what it had been, but Eyul remembered from Halim, who knew it from his father. Only memories kept Satreth’s victory alive, though here in the Maze, it hardly felt like a victory. The Mogyrks, Halim had told him in a hushed whisper, had given out food and clothes to the denizens of these twisting streets. The only charity they saw now happened on feast-days, when the palace discarded its old clothing and spoiled food, and expected the Maze-folk to be grateful.