The Court of Broken Knives

by Anna Smith Spark

  ‘Oh, come on,’ Elis Vorley snorted. ‘The Calborides haven’t been different from any other great family for centuries now. Whatever his ancestors might have been or done, Selerie has always seemed perfectly reasonable; in fact, his brother was quite charming when he was here.’

  ‘Blood’s blood,’ said Holt darkly.

  Elis laughed. ‘I’d rather be descended from a false god than a well-documented money-lender.’

  ‘There’s also been news from the east,’ said the Secretary loudly. ‘The Altrersyr Prince is dead.’

  ‘Took him long enough,’ Tam Rhyl murmured. ‘I’m amazed he lasted this long.’

  ‘The younger boy’s already been named as heir. King Illyn is reported to be rather pleased, as you can well imagine.’

  ‘For the best, I suppose,’ said Darath. ‘Though it would have been interesting to see how things turned out, if he’d survived long enough to rule.’ He stroked his chin thoughtfully. ‘The younger boy was here a few years ago, seemed to like it … We should make overtures.’

  ‘Overtures?’ said Tam Rhyl darkly. ‘An assassin would be more like it.’

  Ah, yes. Of course. That. Not really the kind of thing someone forgot or forgave. Pathetic stupidity, the whole thing. But still … The High Council looked sympathetically at Tam, trying not to snigger. Orhan gave the man what he hoped was a soothing smile.

  ‘I can appreciate your feelings, Tam. But even you must agree it’s a better outcome politically.’

  ‘We’ll need to send some kind of formal missive of, uh, condolence and congratulation,’ said Cammor. ‘Carefully crafted, of course. Sensitive subject, children.’

  The Secretary gave him a crisp smile. ‘It’s already been written and dispatched, My Lord.’

  ‘His mother was a Calboride, wasn’t she?’ said Lord Amdelle, still stuck in his previous musings. ‘Calboride and Altrersyr blood … bad combination, that, if ever there was one.’

  God’s knives, the man was obsessed with genealogies. Terrible overcompensation: anyone would think he was ashamed of his own. As if blood meant anything. Your great-great grandfather did something nasty and suddenly you had bad blood. Nobody ever spoke about the peasantry like that. They were just people, good or bad, fat or thin, mad or sane. But one of the curious things about being high-born was the way you were entirely defined by your ancestors. Thus interesting to see how the next Lord or Lady Emmereth turned out.

  ‘And there’s been another outbreak of deeping fever in the southern Chathe,’ the Secretary went on hurriedly. ‘Reports are confused, of course, but at least three villages seem to have been affected. No known survivors, although one can’t be certain.’

  ‘Put extra soldiers on the gates, question anyone travelling from the north. Have them dispatch anyone travelling from the north who seems sick,’ said Tam quickly. Orhan nodded agreement. He’d read several accounts of deeping fever.

  ‘That’s a little extreme, isn’t it?’ Holt Amdelle began, just as the Secretary said, ‘It’s already been ordered, My Lord. If the number of villages affected grows beyond six, they’re to kill anyone with a Chathean accent or garb, whatever their state of health.’

  ‘Might finally have an effect on the hatha merchants,’ said Samn Magreth. Orhan was pleased to see that March had the decency to look embarrassed. He’d felt vile for the best part of a day after Eloise’s party.

  The Secretary flashed Orhan a cold smile. ‘Finally, my lords, a curious rumour has reached us. Perhaps My Lord Emmereth could enlighten us further … It would appear someone or something has killed a dragon out in the desert to the east. A caravan driver lost the road, followed a flock of crows and claims to have found a very large corpse. He was irreparably insane with sun exposure by the time he was found, of course, but still …’ He gazed blandly in Orhan’s direction.

  A dragon killer in the eastern desert? Orhan flushed. ‘I’ll … look into it,’ he said hurriedly. The particular absurdity of his title as Lord of the Rising Sun. He should have known about it. And it was not ideal having people talking about certain places right now. Someone or something with a sword …

  ‘Man’s been busy with his beloved wife,’ said Darath. Flashed a nasty grin at Orhan.

  ‘Thank you, My Lord,’ said the Secretary in a smooth voice. ‘Any other business, My Lords? Your Eminence?’ He bowed in the direction of the Emperor, who had sat silent throughout, dozing over the prattling of his lords. A show, this meeting of the Emperor and his Friends and Counsellors, a piece of fiction drawn out for weary centuries, since the days when the high families of Sorlost were as powerful as emperors and their Emperor more powerful than gods. All faded now, like the frescos on the wall. The high families ruled a city of crumbling plaster, the Emperor an empire of empty sand. What could they do now, these god men? Refuse to levy a tax to pay for repairs to a gate?

  The Emperor rose and his counsellors rose with him and swept back onto their knees. The Emperor walked slowly out of the room, the Secretary following him. The guards pulled the doors closed behind him, the harsh voice called out distantly ‘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!’ in case a stray servant should cross his path without grovelling in the dust.

  The great lords of the Sekemleth Empire got up neatly and brushed down their silk-clad knees.

  Orhan and Darath Vorley strolled down the Street of Closed Eyes together, heading in a general way towards the House of the East. Sterne and Amlis and Darath’s escort followed at a respectful distance, knives drawn.

  ‘I think it fair to say Holt won’t be receiving an invitation to His Eminence’s next private banquet,’ said Darath. ‘Most unfortunate. “Blood’s blood”! Did you see the Emperor twitch?’

  ‘Your brother was on rather dangerous ground, too, as far as I can see.’

  ‘My brother knows it and doesn’t care. Holt Amdelle doesn’t know it and does. Care. Vile upstart man.’ Darath laughed. ‘I’ve got Calboride blood myself, you know.’

  ‘Have you? I didn’t know. Your divinity shines through you but darkly, then,’ said Orhan.

  ‘You didn’t used to say that.’ Darath shot him a smile. Their eyes met and Orhan smiled back. ‘My great-great-great grandmother. But still. My honour demands I should feel offence. Unless you feel offence on your sister’s behalf that I am offended?’

  Orhan sighed. ‘She knew what she was getting into. We Emmereths have pride enough we can happily sell ourselves and not care about it.’

  ‘That what you did, is it? And I always imagined you just lay back and thought of the state of your roof. Oh, don’t frown like that. I fully appreciate my own intense good fortune in having a younger brother to churn out little Vorleys for me when necessary.’

  They turned into the Court of the Fountain. The crowds milled around them, bright and thick in the evening light. The air smelled heavily of grilled meat and perfumes and sweat. Slanting sunlight caught the water of the fountain, flashed on the beaded headdress of a woman dancing beside it, hands twisting and fluttering like butterflies. Her bare feet pounded out her rhythm, the sound of her bells and the sound of the water her only accompaniment. Across the square, a piper played a tune at a different pace to the dancing woman, mournful and slow.

  Black skin and golden curls, arms raised in triumph …

  ‘Can we talk seriously now?’

  ‘I thought we were.’ Darath wandered over to a woman selling grilled meats, bought two skewers. He gave the woman a talent and smiled at her brilliantly. She stared back at him.

  ‘Here.’ He passed a skewer to Orhan. ‘Harder to lip-read if someone’s got a mouthful of rancid grease.’

  Orhan bit down on the meat. Stringy and overcooked but well-seasoned, with the pleasant sweetness of honey and cinnamon and a bitter tang of vervain that clung in the mouth. They continued walking, slowly but purposefully, gazing around them at the sights and spectacles of the s
quare. No one seemed to be following them directly, although there were always watchers of one kind or another. It had been absurdly, typically reckless of Darath to even mention it at Eloise’s party.

  ‘So …’ Darath said through a mouthful of meat, ‘you owe me three thalers, Lord Emmereth.’

  ‘Oh, come on. You can’t possibly have found out.’ Not even managed to tell the people actually doing it the new date yet, following all Tam’s messing around.

  ‘What do you want me to do, shout it out loudly in front of all these people? If you really want me to prove it …’ Darath’s voice rose: ‘Ladies and gentlemen of Sorlost, the Lord of the Rising Sun has some burning news he would like to impart to you …’

  ‘Lord of Living and Dying, Darath, you are the most insufferable man alive.’ Orhan dug his hands into his purse. ‘Here, you can have a talent and three … four dhol.’

  Darath took the coins, grinned triumphantly at Orhan then tossed them to the nearest beggar. They missed and skipped across the paving stones. Two hollow-eyed children dived for them, shrieking. The beggar, crippled in both legs, half blind, blinked dazedly after them.

  ‘It’s happening soon,’ said Darath over the hubbub. ‘Very soon, I’d guess. Weeks? Yes, look at your face, weeks. And you’ll choose Tearday, because you always choose Tearday to do things … Two weeks this Tearday, then. In the evening, obviously, gives you the whole night to consolidate, you hope, while everyone else is running around trying to work out what’s going on. How … that seems obvious enough. The big question is why. Immish, I’m guessing. Though why that should drive you to this extreme suddenly … You really think you can change the world like this, Orhan? Through blood?’

  ‘There’s another way, is there?’ Was he really that predictable? Hadn’t realized, still, after everything, how much Darath knew him. How much Darath had listened, when Orhan himself had assumed it was all just a game for him. ‘The city’s dying, Darath. The Empire’s a joke. An empty desert and a few villages. A wasteland. The Yellow Empire, we’re known as! The Yellow Empire! Cowards! Weak! The richest empire the world has ever known, and look at us! Petty cowards! Fools! Starving children crawling in filth in our streets! We should have been swept away long ago. The Immish will come with twenty thousand men and a mage, and we’ll fall in days. Or if not the Immish, someone else. Chathe, Eralad, Allene … They see what we are, even if we don’t.’

  ‘Or barbarians from Ae-Beyond-the-Waters, with well-hung stallions gripped between over-muscular thighs, set on rape and pillage and fun for all?’

  ‘God’s knives, Darath!’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’ll be serious … The Empire has survived like this for centuries, Orhan. Unconquered. Unconquerable. The Godkings, the World Conqueror, the Salavene Wars … none of them have ever touched us. The Seven Years War ended in stalemate and no one even looked at us the whole time. So why in Great Tanis’s name now? Twenty years, the Long Peace has lasted.’

  That’s exactly why, Darath, Orhan thought wearily. Can’t you see? Can’t you see? There’s been peace for too long. We’re so smug and certain. So convinced nothing will ever change. They won’t even need twenty thousand. Certainly not a mage. All this is illusion. One touch and we’ll crumble to dust. Orhan sighed and chewed on roast meat. A nasty gristle feeling between his teeth. But Tam’s right, too, he thought. The Immish are just a pretence. An easy way to say what I can’t explain. I’m afraid, Darath. I don’t know why, or of what, but I’m afraid. Shadows. Sorrow. Death. Something’s coming. I don’t know … But I’m afraid. We’re too weak, the way we are, sitting on our piles of gold pretending nothing exists beyond our walls. We need to be ready. And yes, that does mean blood. We’re too far gone for anything else.

  ‘It was them who killed the dragon, of course,’ said Darath.

  Orhan started, lost in his own thoughts, visions of flames. ‘What? Who? Oh. Yes. Yes, I imagine so. Unless there are two lots of armed men out wandering around the eastern desert. Of all the wretched luck …’

  ‘They probably thought so at the time, too.’ Darath prodded at him with a meat skewer. ‘Three thalers. I told you I’d find out when and how. Enough blades to kill a dragon, Orhan? A bit much for one man, even an immortal one, I’d have said.’ His face changed. ‘Lord of Living and Dying, you really are going to do it, aren’t you? You really are trying to change the world …’

  ‘Not the world. Sorlost.’

  ‘Sorlost is the world. And what in Great Tanis’s name does Tam Rhyl think this is about? He’s not looking to change the world, surely?’

  Tam? Change the world? ‘He just wants power. And March Verneth humiliated. But I couldn’t do it alone.’

  ‘You could have come to me,’ Darath said.

  ‘Could I?’

  ‘Ha. No. Probably not. ‘

  They turned into Felling Street, still strolling slowly, gazing idly in the shop windows at expensive sheets of silk paper, old books, pretty silverware with a patina of refined age.

  ‘But now that I know … If we’re doing it, we’re doing it properly. If I’m in, I’m in. So … how many men? And where did you find them? Even I’ve not bought that kind of service before. Wouldn’t know where you even begin, or what a likely price would be. I’d imagine it’s rather more complicated than buying a new coat, somehow.’

  Orhan snorted. ‘Even you …! So daring and wicked and corrupt your very name is a byword for idleness. It is strangely like buying a new coat, to be quite honest, if that doesn’t disappoint you. Get a recommended name, describe what you want and by when, negotiate over details and price, sit back and wait and hope the man cuts your cloth straight and knows where to stick his pins. Forty men. The Free Company of the Sword, they’re called. Absurd name. They were recommended by one of my acquaintances in Immish, ironically enough. The High Council has used them a couple of times. They were key to the Immish recovery of Telea during the Winter War. Specialize in … interesting work like this.’

  ‘And you trust them?’

  ‘Of course I don’t trust them. I don’t expect to trust them. That’s what they do. Betray people for money. They’re inherently untrustworthy, in fact. Except that I’m paying them, and they don’t get paid if they betray me. That’s how they operate.’

  ‘Like buying a whore, then. They’ll get a bad reputation if they don’t go through with it, or pick your pocket or whatnot.’

  ‘If you really must put it that way, probably, yes, I imagine it is.’

  Darath grinned at him again. ‘Now I’ve put you out, haven’t I? So sweetly fastidious as always. Even plotting murder you have to be purer than I am … They’re arriving soon, then, I take it?’

  ‘I had word yesterday. They’re coming in in small groups. Two or three days, it will take.’

  ‘Hmmm … This doubling of the guard. Dangerous. Very bad timing. Why in the God’s name did Tam suggest it? And why in the God’s name did you agree?’

  ‘Because I don’t particularly want to die of deeping fever, probably.’ Orhan took a last bite of meat and spoke as he chewed. ‘And it’s actually extremely fortuitous, as far as I can see. Excellent timing. The guards will be so preoccupied looking out for Chathean accents, they won’t look too closely at anything else.’

  ‘I suppose so … You’ve got a lump of gristle on your chin, by the way.’

  Orhan rubbed at his face in irritation. The spices were beginning to sting his lips. ‘We could have just had this conversation in my study. Without the need for all this flim-flamming about.’

  ‘Your study … Now that’s somewhere I haven’t been for a while. What would people say? Quite an eventful day you’d be having. And I don’t trust even your men not to be peeping at the keyhole. Especially your men, if they really do only charge six dhol.’

  They paused in the street, standing with the charred skewers in their hands, sticky with grease. Before them the small green square flanking the House of the East. A magnolia tree bloomed in its centre, its petals were beg
inning to fall and lay like skin on the marble ground. The air was very still, as though the city had stopped breathing. A bell tolled over in the west. Dusk. A ferfew called loudly; he heard a woman laugh. A dog barked and the bird flew up with a frantic beating of wings. Orhan thought: a little way over to the west, a child is dying. Always a perilous time, the border between day and night. He looked at his ex-lover, who was more worn now, more haggard, more alive.

  ‘Why don’t you come in, Darath?’ he said.

  Darath looked back at him. The tension that was between them flickered like the tongue of a snake. ‘Damned erotic thing, plotting the overthrow of one’s Emperor. Or did the pretty serving boy earlier stir you up? I saw you eyeing him. Lovely lips, he had.’

  They turned together in through the gates of the House of the East, which opened smoothly at Orhan’s approach. Amlis and Sterne and Darath’s escort followed behind them, knives drawn.

  Chapter Seven

  They line up in long rows, stretching away into the horizon. Rank upon rank of them. Gleaming silver armour, silver-gilt bronze over fine white cloth. The blood shows through the white and marks them as His soldiers, who will fight until they’ve lost every drop of blood in their bodies and beyond.

  They carry the long spear, the sarriss, its jagged point a thing to rip flesh going in and coming out. A short wide-bladed sword that will stab and hack and cleave and tear. A broad cruel knife. No shields. His armies do not need shields. Shields are to stop a man dying. It does not matter how many of them die. Only that they kill as they do so. A shield is a coward thing.

  Their helmets cover the eyes but leave the mouth bare, to bite and spit and scream. Ten times a thousand pairs of eyes stare through white-tempered bronze. They wear red horse-hair plumes that nod in the wind. He likes His soldiers plumed like birds in His colours. Seen from above, standing on the walls of a city looking down at them, they must look like a great field of flowers. Like the rose forests of Chathe must have looked, before they burned them.