The Court of Broken Knives

by Anna Smith Spark

The people of Immier and Caltath, by contrast, feared death so intently and so absurdly that their kings became determined they should not die, and had themselves declared living gods who would rule forever. And, indeed, they did not die. But not dying is not a pleasant thing, in the end, and their rule was terrible, for they had no fear and no longing and no hope. And the people feared death the more, when they saw their kings living on and on without end, while they died. Immier fell in ruin, its king raving mad, its people mad likewise. They say plants grew up in the streets and the fields blackened with weeds, while the people sat in their houses praying for immortality. Caltath was taken by the sea, drowned by floods in the course of a single night. Its king alone survived, clinging to the very tip of the highest mountain, now an island in a churning sea. Some say he sits there still, immortal king of a barren rock.

  Amrath wanted to kill the world. His banners were made of skin and bone. His watchword was ‘death’. He mortared His fortresses with the blood of His enemies. He killed the people of His own cities, in the end. Then He died and there was no one left to bury Him, and the wild beasts gnawed His bones.

  We are not like that. This is Sorlost, greatest of cities, that was old before Tarboran built her tombs, before the Godkings were even born. We live and we die. Not one without the other. Death is as natural as life, we say, and as great a blessing. No light without darkness. No joy without pain. Life is a glory. Death is a sweet release.

  We lie, of course.

  Chapter Nineteen

  He’d missed Darath.

  Three years, it had been. They’d sat and talked for a long time, after. Like they’d used to. Darath’s golden-black hair had some grey around the temples that hadn’t been there before, no longer quite the perfect creature he’d been. Only three years.

  Starting something up again was a bad idea. Starting something up again now was a very bad idea. But Darath was right: nothing got a man’s blood up like the prospect of someone else’s imminent death. He and Darath understood each other. Fitted each other. Might even say they loved each other.

  Bil would be upset. She’d been happier since things had fallen apart the last time. It must have been hard for her; Orhan wasn’t callous enough not to realize that, nor not to feel guilty about it. She’d known, when she married him, but the difference between knowing and seeing had perhaps been greater than she’d realized. There had been evenings when the tension had leached into the walls.

  Sex with another man or indeed relationship with another man, was not uncommon in Sorlost, as it was not uncommon anywhere. Better to say it was not looked down upon in Sorlost, as it could be elsewhere. Plenty of brothel boys and pretty young things who would be more than happy to spend some time with him. Tam Rhyl kept a very lovely young man who accompanied him to banquets and parties, his own grandfather had had a slightly mysterious ‘secretary’ whose role in the household Orhan had only fully understood years after both had died. But two men of equal status publicly acknowledging their relationship? When they were the heads of two great families it was considered almost dangerous. Even though the great families intermarried all the time. Even though the course of action they were currently embarking on had been planned and set in motion during the one period in the last ten years they hadn’t been fucking. Even though he hadn’t wanted Darath to get involved.

  There was no way he could keep it from Bil, since Darath had stayed the night and most of the next morning. Quite a lot of Sorlost probably knew by now. Certainly everyone in his household unless they were blind and deaf. And if Bil somehow hadn’t noticed, Celyse would delight in telling her. Her spies would have gone running before they’d even made it into the bedroom. He didn’t want to upset his wife, in her condition. Should have waited until the baby was born.

  Should have waited until the Emperor was dead, too. A few days, now, and everything would be so different.

  The plan itself was painfully simple. Hire a troop of trained killers, smuggle them into the palace, let them kill everyone inside. Killing the Emperor alone was pointless. The Emperor was a figurehead. It was the Imperial Secretary, the Keeper of the Treasury, the clerk who noted down what the Emperor should be having for breakfast and whether the sun was shining today, that had to be got rid of. The bureaucrats would carry on regardless, whatever the foibles of the current incarnation of the Eternal Eminence, the Ever Living, the Lord of the Dawn Light. Kill the Emperor, in fact, and you ended up with a hapless child on the throne and power only further consolidated in the hands of his servants. To really make any changes, they all had to die. You had to get rid of everyone. Start again.

  Tam Rhyl had wanted to do it with their own men at first, a traditional assassination, argued that external help was too risky. But as far as Orhan could see, it was using your own men that was risky. Hiring a mercenary company kept it cleaner, more removed. Easier to bear.

  The Sekemleth Empire was dying. A laughing stock. The Immish were arming and could walk across their borders and up to their walls and push them over like a boy kicking sand. It astonished him sometimes that it had not already happened. That the lure of their wealth and weakness hadn’t drawn armies from across Irlast, trampling the Empire under their feet as they squabbled over its broken bones.

  But something was coming. He knew it. Couldn’t understand why the whole city didn’t feel it, didn’t awake screaming in fear in the night from the things crawling in the dark. The scent of blood in the air. The Immish arming was part of it, perhaps. Tensions rising. Thoughts of death. They’d never survive, as they were. But they didn’t deserve to die. The people of Sorlost were just people living their lives. Looked at like that, he was a hero, a saviour. Not a murderer and a traitor at all. Not—

  ‘They seem a capable bunch, you’ll be pleased to hear.’

  Darath appeared in the study doorway, followed by an anxiouslooking door keep. Orhan started up from his thoughts, smiled at him and waved the servant away. Happiness sweet as candle-light. Darath came over to kiss him. Orhan clutched at him back, sliding his hands around Darath’s waist. I’m dragging you into this squalor and I’m glad, he thought, because it means you’re here with me. Three years. God’s knives, I’ve missed you.

  Perhaps Tam is right, he thought then with a sudden chill. Perhaps I’m only doing this because I needed something to keep me occupied without you. He kissed Darath in return. Began tugging at the fastenings of his clothes. Three years …

  ‘Alas, no. We need to talk first.’ Darath pushed him off and pulled over a chair. Looked down with interest at the pile of papers on Orhan’s desk. ‘Rewriting your will, Lord Emmereth? That doesn’t strike a particularly reassuring note given current circumstances.’

  Orhan sighed. ‘It seemed wise to take precautions.’

  ‘Really? If this goes wrong, they’ll burn every last member of your household, then raze your estates to the ground and sow the ruins with salt. Whether or not you left a few thalers to the poor or remembered your second cousin’s desire for a particular set of tea bowls will seem somewhat academic at that point, I’d have thought.’

  ‘No. But still …’ He’d thought of sending Bil away somewhere, but there was nowhere she could go, and it would attract too much comment anyway. It was a curious sensation, that he held the lives of every servant, family member and sycophantic hanger-on balanced in the palm of his hand. Too huge and terrible to think about. Every life. His own and all the people linked to him.

  ‘We’d best hope it doesn’t go wrong then,’ Darath said cheerfully. He scanned the sheets of parchment. ‘Left me anything? A ring, a token, a lock of your hair?’

  ‘You’ll be as dead as I am.’ Orhan hurriedly swept the papers away into a box and closed the lid. ‘Which might explain why I hadn’t wanted you to get involved. What do we need to talk about, then?’

  ‘I just thought you’d like to know how events stand. I met with your friend Skie: he seems a sensible fellow, though one of his lieutenants clearly loathed me on sight. The
date is confirmed by all, we just need to finalize the ways in with Tam. They have some money to buy equipment, seemed laughably impressed with the purses I gave them. One forgets how poor the Immish are. You could probably have offered them half what you did.’

  ‘Yes, well.’ Please, for the love of the God, don’t suggest we ask for a discount at this point. ‘I shouldn’t have let you meet them. You shouldn’t have asked me.’

  ‘It was fun. I was careful.’

  ‘Were you?’

  ‘Better than you would have been. You’d just have got their backs up, looking all guilty and ashamed. You know you would.’

  ‘Yes, probably, yes …’ Orhan put the box of papers back in a cupboard under his desk, locked the door. ‘Seeing as you’re here: I’ve found a couple of babies that seem suitable. The most promising mother is a congenital idiot, the grandmother likewise, apparently. The father is entirely unknown, but I can’t imagine he was anything physically or intellectually exceptional, given what he was reduced to bedding. The child is due any day now. If it’s a boy, it would be ideal.’

  ‘You have such a sense of Imperial dignity, Orhan.’

  They shared a wry smile. The Ever Living, the Eternal, the First and Last Ruler of the Sekemleth Empire, a mortal man who was immortal, who died and lived again a thousand times, reborn each time somewhere in what remained of his Empire. And so it could take years to find him. The current Emperor had been thirteen when he was finally recognized. Thirteen long, painful years of stalemate and stasis while everyone stared at every boy in the city in hope. Orhan was a rational man and had thought about things carefully. The only sensible solution was to identify the next incarnation before this one ended. A lot more efficient than years spent wandering around looking for a special sign of some sort or another to guide you. A flock of ravens cawing the word ‘emperor’ had been the clue to this one’s status. The sort of thing that gave the richest empire the world had ever known a bad name for superstitious idiocy, even among people who were credulous enough to believe their kings were descended from gods.

  ‘And if the woman has the bad manners to have a girl? Or a corpse, come to that?’

  ‘There are a couple of other likely candidates. A young whore down at the Weeping Docks, again due any time in the next few days now; another in Fair Flowers.’

  A wicked smile flashed across Darath’s face: ‘If your timing had been better, you could have made your son Emperor. Want to delay things a few months?’

  Had to laugh at that. ‘I think that would be a bit obvious, don’t you? And I don’t really feel like being executed just so my son can wear a black coat.’

  Darath smiled. ‘A slight disadvantage, I admit. I might even miss you.’

  Orhan sat in silence afterwards. All he wanted, in the end. Perhaps Tam was right, he had simply been looking for something to occupy himself. If he and Darath had mended things sooner … or had not broken things off at all … Everything would go on unchanged, and there was no threat to Sorlost. He was dreaming, seeking fears, a mirror for his own unhappiness. Bored and rich and idealistic and wound-up enough to start planning murder, and then finding it had all got real and solid and too late to stop.

  No, he thought then. Darath sees it. Fragments of it. He’s not reckless enough to go into this without some cause. Just pretends he is. We can’t explain our reasons, either of us. But he understands why. That it’s necessary. 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.

  I need to hold on to that, he thought. That it’s necessary. That Darath sees it too. If I was a bad person, he thought, doing this for bad reasons, I wouldn’t keep questioning it.

  That’s so absurdly naïve, Orhan, he thought.

  But something Darath had said remained nagging at him, uncomfortable in the back of his mind. He’d dined, Bil sitting opposite him in frozen silence, read for a while and was preparing to sleep when it suddenly came to him.

  The penalty for high treason. Rarely enacted, in the long, faded centuries of the Empire’s slow decline, but drummed into every nobleman as a child. He could remember his nurse telling it to him, his boyish confidence disbelieving, appalled and fascinated in equal measure. If one of the great families was found to have committed treason against the Empire or the Emperor, they were burned alive. Every member of their household was burned alive. Women and children. Bondsmen. Servants. Errand boys. Regularly visited whores. Their holdings razed to the ground and destroyed utterly. The ruins sown with salt and ash.

  It hadn’t happened in his lifetime – yet – but he’d been taken to see the blackened wasteland that had once been the house of the Saddulae, an ancient line of petty kings with substantial holdings on the Chathean border who’d been absorbed into the Empire in a last sudden gasp of re-expansion a few centuries back. They were the last family to have been executed for treason against the Emperor, after they attempted to break free and ally again with Chathe. That had been fifty years ago, though it was remembered by the great families like it was yesterday. The Saddulae lands had been noted for the very high quality of their wine and oil. No longer, since the soil was now barren dead earth.

  Wine. Old wine. A vintage fifty years old, an estate that no longer produced.

  Rhyl was trying to warn him? Or threaten him? Why? For what?

  Orhan sat up in bed, sick in his stomach, panic crushing him.

  His death.

  Bil, burning. His sister. His good-brother, stupid money-grabbing upstart that he was. Sterne. Amlis. The tiny unborn lump of Bil’s child. His beautiful house. His books.

  Darath. Oh, God’s knives. Darath. If he hadn’t given in to his wishes …

  Too late to back out now. That might even be what Tam wanted. A warning hint, so he would step back, and Tam could play on alone. Take everything, after Orhan had done all the work. His money, his plans. His name. He’d only come to Tam with it because his position as Nithque to the Emperor meant he was more useful as an ally than an opponent. Necessary. Thought Tam understood. He should do, after all he’d seen and had done to him. Couldn’t allow Tam to take it. And Darath would never forgive him for backing out now. He’d just have to keep alert.

  As Tam had told him to be …

  Signs and portents! Maybe it was just a coincidence. Maybe it was a nasty joke.

  Orhan got up and paced his bedroom, walked out onto the balcony, looked down onto a courtyard thick with flowers. The moon shone very bright. The stars were bright too: he could see the Crescent, the White Lady, the great single red star of the Dragon’s Mouth.

  What to do, what to do …? Maybe it was simply an old cask of wine. Maybe it was from Chathe, or Immish, or across the Bitter bloody Sea.

  There was a rustle of cloth behind him. He froze, no one could get in here, no one had any reason to get in here, but panic overcame him, ‘fifty years old, fifty years old, death for treason’, a voice seemed to ring in his head, he could almost feel a knife in his back, he turned and Bil stood looking at him.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ She never came into his bedroom. He’d made it clear when he married her that she wasn’t to go in there.

  ‘I heard you walking about.’ She went over to him. In the moonlight, her scars were barely visible. In the moonlight, he thought, someone could have loved her. Until they touched her skin. She said: ‘You should have told me. About Darath.’

  ‘Why? What business is it of yours?’ It came out harsher than he had meant it to, because he was so afraid.

  ‘I’m going to have your heir. I live in this house. My father paid off the debts your father ran up on this house. It would have been polite. It was the same day we went to the Temple, Orhan. People are already beginning to laugh. Saying you finally managed to bed your wife and then went running straight back to Darath Vorley.’

  ‘You should be grateful they’re saying the child is mine at all.’ She looked at him fiercely, her blu
e eyes pale in the silver light.

  Orhan thought: that was cruel.

  ‘You should come inside,’ he said. ‘You mustn’t get cold, get sick.’ They sat down on low-backed wooden chairs placed by the balcony, smelling sweetly of resin and beeswax, the cushions stuffed with dried herbs. Bil looked at his bed for a moment then did not look at it again. Folded her hands in her lap. It was an odd sensation, being alone in his bedroom with a woman at night.

  ‘I am happy about the baby,’ she said. ‘It will be nice for the house, too, to have a child in it. Make it lighter, full of noise. You will be a good father, Orhan. It’s just … why does it have to be Darath, of all people? I used to play with Elis when I was little. He was horrible. My father seemed quite keen for me to marry him at one point. Before …’

  ‘Well it’s lucky for all of us it’s not Elis I’m fucking then, I suppose.’ A great wave of tiredness swept over Orhan. He yawned. Not much sleep, the last couple of nights, and now this. ‘I’m sorry. That was crude. Go to bed, Bil. You need to sleep to keep the baby strong. I need to sleep.’

  ‘Good night, Orhan.’ She looked at him with her pale eyes and for a moment he thought she, too, knew something. Realized how much guilt he would feel, towards her and the tiny thing inside her, if the plan failed.

  ‘Good night, Bil,’ he said.

  Chapter Twenty

  Shadows.

  White light.

  Everything falling. Like broken glass.

  Moving and blurring together.

  Lines of fire. Coloured stars. His mouth tasted of blood and rot and honey. Sweet taste. Like water in the desert. Like the light of the sun.

  Tasted of peace.

  He licked his lips, trying to suck the last dried remnants into his mouth.

  Gods, his head hurt.

  Dug his hands into his pockets. Money. He had some money. Enough for more.

  Tried to stand but his body was shaking and the room spun and he fell down. Tried to crawl but his legs wouldn’t work and he lay staring at the wall. Moving. Things moving there.