The Court of Broken Knives

by Anna Smith Spark

  One serving girl present, standing inconspicuously in the corner, watching her mistress with big dark eyes. She presumably knew most of Bil’s doings, and the nature of his marriage and his and his wife’s lives was hardly a secret. But no reason to allow the household too much free rein. A man must have some dignity, in his own home. Orhan waved her away sharply and she retreated beyond the green walls of the jasmine. Sat back in his chair and smiled warmly at Bil.

  ‘Well done, Bilale,’ he said loudly, addressing the green leaves of the jasmine. ‘An Emmereth heir.’

  ‘You’re pleased? Truly?’ Bil came over and stood next to him, her face flushed and bright.

  As if he didn’t have enough to worry about. ‘Of course I’m pleased.’ He looked at her gently. Why else did I marry you? his eyes said to her, cool and honest. Why else would I marry at all, yet alone you? The fact that you’re rich was useful, of course, but we both know what this marriage is about. Bil got a title that reopened doors closed to her by her disfigurement. He got a wife who expected nothing more from him than his name, and who would magic him up an heir with enough discretion no one would ever know where it came from.

  ‘We should go to the Temple,’ Bil said. ‘Give thanks. It’s a child sacrifice tonight, so it’s propitious.’

  Orhan frowned. ‘Is it? Yes, of course, I suppose it must be. If you want, then.’ If he was going to do this, he’d have to do it properly, no half measures. A child would certainly merit a public show of prayers, and probably a generous offering. He’d need to find the money for a name day feast too, later. An expensive business, children.

  ‘I’ll go and change,’ he said, for need of something to say. He was aware of Bil looking at him, seeing his thoughts in his face. It was odd, how well in some ways she knew him. ‘You’ve got some honey around your mouth, you should probably wash it off.’

  ‘Janush says I should eat honey every day. To make the baby sweet-tempered.’ She sounded happy. She wants this baby, Orhan realized. She wants to be a mother and to have a child. She has wanted this for a long time now. She knew him, but he knew so little about her.

  They travelled to the Temple in a litter, reclining uncomfortably close to each other behind thin yellow curtains that showed the city beyond like flies in amber, Amlis and Sterne walking before them in the soft blue livery of House Emmereth, knives drawn to clear their path. Sterne’s face was fixed and blank. So my parents once travelled, Orhan thought, to give thanks for my birth. So my father’s parents, before that. The same streets, the same turnings in the road, old bricks and old stone, old as his family were old, old as Sorlost itself. It gave him an odd kind of start to realize how much he was fulfilling the demands of his history, and how much he was betraying it. The child would be an Emmereth in name, if not in blood, he thought. And what does blood matter? What matters is that it will be strong, and healthy, and born at all. He eyed the ripples of muscle across Sterne’s back. Strong …

  They came down the Street of Flowers and turned into Grey Square. In itself unimpressive, not large, its flagstones worn. Not even marble, just cheap soft grey stuff that turned greenish in the rain. Cracked and blackened in places, as though they had once been subject to intense heat. A mighty duel was once fought there between two great magelords, grandmothers told their grandchildren, so powerful the stones were melted in the fire of their hate. But the names and the reasons varied, and the story had no basis in truth that Orhan could ever find. The stones were cracked and blackened simply because the square was old. The marketplace and meeting place of a desert village, untouched since the first days of Sorlost. In itself unimpressive, not large, its flagstones worn.

  But behind it stood the Great Temple. It too was old. Not old like the square was old, but old like the stars are old. Old like the sea is old. Old like the cut of a knife.

  It had stood before Sorlost was a village. It had stood before the desert dried. It had been built by gods, by demons, by dead men quarrying stone with their bare hands. It was vast and terrible, and once a man stared at it he could not stop staring. It gaped like a diseased wound in the centre of the city, holy and blind. If a man left Sorlost for a while, he saw it every night in his dreams.

  The first inhabitants of Sorlost had built it, or found it, or dreamed it into being, and then they had built their marketplace and their houses and their shops around it, as though it was a human thing. Their descendants had taken a village in the desert and built or dreamed it into an empire. Their descendants in turn had lost an empire and retreated into their dreams. But the Temple still stood as it had always stood. It was the most perfect thing in all Sorlost. Perhaps the most perfect thing in all the world.

  A square of black marble, in which blood was shed and the living kept alive.

  The litter stopped. The square was crowded, people milling around, merchants and shoppers, street sellers offering flowers and cakes and skewers of roast meat, beggars, a mendicant magician pulling green fire from a young boy’s ears, a poet with the hatha sores selling little scrolls of his work. Their arrival attracted a general degree of attention, the fine quality of the litter’s silks and the uniforms of the bearers indicating the wealth and status of its occupants even before Bil’s shimmering gown and jewelled headdress caught the morning sun. She, at least, was recognizable to some of the onlookers. Might have been the subject of poems herself, if they were not too cruel to write.

  As they walked towards the Temple, Orhan realized that he had assured his sister only a few days before that Bil was certainly not pregnant. Mildly vexing. She’d be irritated with him, even think he had lied to her. And disappointed, too: at the moment, her snivelling little son was the de facto Emmereth heir. Please let it be a boy, he thought again. A good strong boy with Sterne’s good clean peasant strength.

  They mounted the six steps to the doorway of the Temple, so old and worn that they dipped unsteadily in the centre, ground away by the tread of endless, countless feet. The great door was closed – was always closed – but moved easily on its pivots as Orhan pushed. Taller than a man, taller than two men standing one on the other’s shoulders, but narrow, so that only a single man could walk through at one time. It put one in mind of a great rat-trap, or a blade coming down. Black wood, hard as stone, uncarved, unadorned, the grain dark stripes like animal fur, the knots like watching eyes, like the eyes on Bil’s dress. Three long claw marks ran down the door at the height of a man’s head.

  The door gave onto a long black tunnel, thin and tall as the door itself. Bright light shone at the end of it. The sensation of walking through the narrow dark was stifling, the high ceiling magnifying the sense of oppression, the dead air above a great weight pressing down. Crushing. Drowning. Eating one alive. It could hardly be a long corridor, perhaps ten paces’ walk, but it seemed very long. Orhan shuddered, felt Bil shudder too behind him, walking very close to him.

  This is what it feels like to die, the thin dark corridor whispered, and then they stepped out into the Great Chamber and the light whispered that this is what it feels like to live.

  The Great Chamber of the Great Temple was vast. Its walls and ceiling were lined with bronze tiles, making it shimmer and glitter and burn with light, the light as tangible and oppressive as the dark from which they had come. Orhan thought of the firebox at Eloise’s party, of the mirrored facade of the House of Silver, of his sister’s red silk litter: they had shone and danced with fire; this was fire, like being in a fire, like being burned. The floor was black stone, worn like the steps with a thousand years of reverential footsteps. Thousands of candles made the air sweet. They burned in sconces on the walls, on black stone altars, in trailing patterns like dances across the black floor. Hushed voices muttered prayers, the same words repeated over and over. Like birdsong. Like rainfall.

  ‘Dear Lord, Great Tanis Who Rules All Things, from the fear of life and the fear of death, release us,’ Bil said slowly, bowing her head. Orhan hesitated then took her hand. They walked across the room, th
eir footsteps ringing on the hard floor. A well-dressed young woman kneeling before a small side altar turned and looked at them.

  The Lord of the Rising Sun seen publicly holding hands with his wife in the Great Temple. The news would be around the gossip-mongers of the city in the time it took to light a flame.

  They approached the High Altar. It was closed off from the rest of the room by a bar of iron that glowed red in the light. Behind this, the High Priestess knelt in prayer. Her black hair hung down around her face, veiling her from prying eyes. A night and a day, she must kneel there, before the evening’s sacrifice. She was still as something carved from stone, the only decorated thing in the Temple. Her eyes fixed on a single lamp that burned deep red like a pool of blood. She looked very small and slight, bent on her knees before the great monolith of the altar stone.

  Just visible behind the High Altar was the curtained entrance to the room beyond. The room one did not speak of. The room in which a child would already be lying, waiting to die.

  Orhan turned away. Don’t look. It is necessary. But don’t look. God’s great hunger for lives was a mystery of which he and most other educated men did not speak. As a boy he had thought briefly of volunteering, as all children briefly did. The greatest and most sacred choice, his teacher had told him. But he had known, even then, that to choose it would have been somehow wrong, that his teacher and parents would have been outraged if he did. The greatest and most sacred choice, unless someone you knew made it, when it became something else. Something shameful, although he still could not quite say why. A bad thing.

  Death is a bad thing. What a profound man you are, Orhan Emmereth.

  A young priestess bustled up to them, smiling. ‘My Lord, My Lady,’ she said sweetly, ‘are you looking for something? Would you like to see someone?’

  ‘Yes.’ Orhan fidgeted. They were here now. No going back. ‘My wife and I, we would like … My wife is newly with child. We would like to make a prayer and an offering, and seek a blessing.’ He pitched his voice clear. Loud.

  The priestess smiled more broadly. Happiness in her eyes. ‘It is an auspicious day for it,’ she said, glancing towards the High Altar, and the kneeling figure, and the curtained doorway beyond. ‘I will fetch one of the senior priestesses.’ She slipped away, returned a few moments later with another priestess.

  ‘My Lord Emmereth. Helase tells me that you have great joy to make known to our Lord.’ Bil flushed with pride and happiness at her words. ‘Come.’ The woman indicated a low altar to the left of the great iron bar, topped with three yellow candles, two almost burned down to stubs, one new and tall. ‘Kneel.’

  Orhan knelt uncomfortably on the cold floor, helping Bil down. She moved awkwardly in her heavy dress. The old priestess held out a candle to Bil.

  ‘Place it on the altar.’

  Bil contemplated the altar for a moment before placing the candle carefully at the very centre.

  The priestess said slowly and loudly, ‘Great Lord Tanis. These two come before You, to ask Your blessing of the child they bear. Grant that it will live and die, as all things must live and die. Grant that it will know sorrow, and pain, and happiness, and love. Grant that it will endure Your blessing and Your curse. Grant that it will be alive, as we are alive in You. Dear Lord, Great Tanis Who Rules All Things, from the fear of life and the fear of death, release us.’

  ‘Dear Lord, Great Tanis Who Rules All Things, from the fear of life and the fear of death, release us,’ Bil repeated, her voice shaking.

  ‘Place your hands on the candle,’ the priestess instructed. Bil glanced at Orhan, then reached out and placed the palm of her right hand on it, fingers pointing up towards the unlit wick. Hesitantly, Orhan did likewise. Bil’s skin was rough and warm beneath his. Whorls and twists of scar tissue, like the molten wax on the altar.

  ‘Good. Now remove them again, and ask for His blessing.’

  Bil bowed her head, her lips moving silently. Her hands folded over her stomach.

  The candle flickered into flame, bright and beautiful, its light dancing on the bronze wall.

  Chapter Six

  ‘I hear we should congratulate you.’ Darath Vorley gave Orhan a lazy smile as he slid into his seat. The Temple business had gone on rather longer than he’d expected and he was slightly late. The assembled High Lords of the Sekemleth Empire turned to him irritably and shifted round slightly to make more room. The power and brilliance of an Imperial meeting: eight backstabbing men in various states of ignorance, boredom or general decay gathered round a slightly too small table in a room that hadn’t been redecorated in nigh on a century.

  ‘Congratulate him?’ echoed Cammor Tardein. Always quick on the uptake, that one.

  ‘Lady Emmereth is with child,’ Darath said. ‘Or did you want to break the joyous news yourself, Orhan? I’m terribly sorry for stealing your thunder if so. But you did announce it in such a very public manner this morning.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ said Holt Amdelle stiffly. ‘And I’m sure my wife will be equally delighted.’ Oh, come on, thought Orhan wearily. Don’t pretend you didn’t both know. Your spies are so good, you probably knew before I did. You probably knew before Bil did. Celyse’s questions at the Verneth party: nothing wrong, I trust?

  ‘Quite an achievement,’ said Elis Vorley. ‘A most unexpected piece of good news, I must say.’

  ‘That was rather cheap, brother dear,’ said Darath. Smiled elegantly at Orhan. ‘We all knew Orhan had it in him. And his wife is after all so dedicated to the family name.’

  Lord Aviced ground his teeth and muttered something, his face scarlet. Orhan shot him an embarrassed glance. You married her to me. No need to look quite so shocked. But it smarted, still, that they should mock so openly.

  They were interrupted by the crash of metal on the doors of the room. A rich strained voice calling them to worship: ‘The Emperor! All kneel for the Ever Living Emperor! Avert your eyes and kneel and be thankful! We live and we die! The Emperor comes! The Emperor comes!’ The High Lords of the Sekemleth Empire got carefully to their feet and assumed kneeling positions on the floor around the table. Small but aching differentiations of rank in the postures they adopted: Lord Emmereth and Lord Verneth knelt upright, heads bowed but bodies erect. The Lords Vorley were crouched lower, Lord Aviced so low his grey hair almost brushed the floor. The minute graduations of status in the high families, mapped out in a man’s closeness to the dirt on the Emperor’s marble floors.

  The Emperor entered slowly, a youngish man with a heavy face and a heavy stomach, dressed in black that drained the colour from his skin. He was not a handsome man, and knew it. He was not a clever man, and knew that too. The thin band of yellow silk round his forehead dominated him but improved his looks. ‘The Emperor! The Emperor comes! Kneel and be thankful! The Emperor comes!’ Nodded to his lords and gestured absently for them to rise. They did so slowly, elegantly, a subtlety in their manner, as if they simply happened to be rising at that moment, not because their Emperor had commanded it. Whether the Emperor noticed this or not was uncertain. Probably not. So the great lords of the Sekemleth Empire had risen for centuries, before the fishmonger or stable hand or innkeep’s boy whom the High Priestess in her wisdom had recognized as the next incarnation of the Asekemlene Emperor, the Ever Living, the Eternal, the Husband of the City, he who had watched Sorlost grow from a desert village to an all-powerful empire to a gold-sodden husk.

  A servant poured goblets of honeyed wine. ‘You are all well, My Lords?’ the Emperor asked absently, playing with his cup. Eyes flickered, looking at his cup moving, his hands, anywhere but his face. Eyes down and averted. The Golden Emperor, the Sun As It Rises, the World’s Dawn, the King of Golden Life. A youngish man, not handsome, not clever. One should not fear such a man. The High Lords of the Sekemleth Empire, who had once been richer and more powerful than gods: they should not fear such a man. A fish merchant’s son! But their hands shook, beneath the careful perfect nonchalance of their poise. />
  The Secretary coughed, flinched at the tension, shuffled silver paper, coughed again, began. A domestic issue: the guard house at the Maskers’ Gate to the east of the city was crumbling, should an extra tax levy be imposed on the few merchant caravans still daring the old road to Reneneth in order to fund repairs? Orhan agreed without interest that they should, as did most of the other lords. A petty concern, almost below their notice, except that as Lord of the Rising Sun and thus somehow intimately connected with the eastern edge of the city he might otherwise be called upon to pay for the repairs himself. He spoke shortly to nod the plan through, his mind mostly occupied by the striking new serving boy fussing with the wine jug.

  ‘Prince Heldan has reached marriageable age,’ the Secretary said. Orhan blinked and realized they’d moved on to foreign affairs. Rather more interesting, although usually equally depressing. The Emperor’s attention wandering, also eyeing the servant and the wine jug. The High Lords of the Empire relaxed a little, now they were onto less important things.

  ‘I know,’ said March Verneth. ‘My mother’s been talking about it for months. He can have one of my girls. Both, if he promises to be nice to them.’

  Laughter at that. The Secretary flushed. ‘What I mean, My Lords, is that King Rothlen seems to be looking for a marital alliance with Ith or Immish.’

  Holt Amdelle shuddered. ‘Ith? I wouldn’t marry a Calboride if you paid me twice her weight in diamonds.’

  ‘Ith would be preferable, however,’ said Darath. ‘If he won’t take one of your girls, of course, March.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Orhan thoughtfully. ‘Chathe and Immish in close alliance would be catastrophic, as things stand. We’d be hemmed in badly.’ The other men half rolled their eyes. Harping on about Immish again, Lord Emmereth? Can’t you find anything more interesting to think about? They’ve only raised twenty thousand men in two years, tripled our trade levies and crushed the Telean uprising so savagely even we felt upset about it for a few weeks. Anyone would think you suspected them of something untoward … ‘Though a half-Calboride heir to Chathe probably isn’t ideal, either …’