When the Many came at night, when Sarmin’s mind sought sleep, he felt like that ship, alone and without anchor in a place far from any surety of solid ground.
— I hammered pots of copper and plates of silver in the Street of- I knew a girl from Honna Province with hair like dark water falling-Mine was the truest heart that man had ever known-Four times I bore a child and none drew breath-I ran from-I killed-I loved -
The tide rose and lifted Sarmin from all thought or care.
Sarmin regained himself in a cold dark place. He found himself hunched, turning some smooth object in his hands. The Ways. Only in the Ways could a man be cold in Nooria. One of the Many had brought him here from his room, taking the secret door and the staircase that spiraled down within the thickness of the walls until it reached the tunnels. He shifted and his shadow moved. He shifted again and turned towards the lantern set behind him on the rock.
Sarmin’s hands held a skull, fingers hooked through its dark sockets. He almost dropped it but some instinct made him keep hold. He looked around, trying not to feel the smoothness of the bone between his fingers. The walls stood straight, dressed with blocks of stone. Not the Ways then, but still some deep place. The dungeons? Had he come through a hidden door into the oubliettes? He made a slow circle, still crouching. The cell rose high above him but he would not have space enough to stretch his arms wide and still make the turn. The narrow door stood ajar, old wood, inches thick and black with age. Sarmin rotated the skull to face him. Someone more forgotten than ever I was-with no comfort but cold stone, no bed or books, no window, no freedom but death. Had one of the Many brought him here to silence his recriminations with shame? To make him face up to his duties? Perhaps one of the sets of memories that seethed within his mind had once been entirely confined behind the dark eye sockets that now regarded him.
Silence wrapped him. No sound from any others unremembered in their tiny cells, nothing of the palace’s clatter and stamp reached down this far, no cry of tower mage or hawks’ keening, just time sliding past unheard, by second, minute, and year. He had ordered the dungeons emptied. If their crimes were as forgotten as the prisoners then they were freed, or executed if their crimes were remembered and not forgiven-but each man saw the sky, and spoke with an acolyte of Herzu on the wall-tower where the wind comes in from the desert. And so he was alone, the cells abandoned.
Sarmin set the skull before him, wincing at the clack of bone on floor slab. The sea of the Many had stranded him on strange shores before but none so lonely as this. He sat still and let his eyes explore the stonework with that same intensity which once found every angel and each devil in the detail of his own prison walls. Time’s river flowed. Twice the lamp guttered but did not die, and at last Sarmin’s gaze settled upon a stone in the wall… in the wall, but not of the wall. It drew him to his feet and he worked it free by fractions of an inch breaking nails and skinning a fingertip. At last he held it, a dark smooth stone, one edge disguised with dirt and dust to better match the wall. It had a weight to it, more than such a stone should, and a warmth…
When the sound came, Sarmin took it for the return of the Many, but they held their peace, perhaps kept back by whichever of them had walked Sarmin to the oubliette in the first place. Again! The scrape of shoe on floor slab. Sarmin set the stone dead centre of the cell on the floor beside the skull, slid the hood across his lantern, and sat behind the door with his back to the cold wall. Footsteps approached but the Many came faster, some new person from among the unreturned now overwriting him like sudden inspiration.
“Are you well, Magnificence?”
Sarmin shook his head and found focus. His mind had gone silent and the oubliette, skull, and stone had been replaced by soft silk, feather mattresses, and a harem girl, pale as milk with golden hair, naked and smiling. A pre-dawn light filtered down from tiny windows high above.
Silk covers slid from Sarmin as he sat, pooling around his hips. He too was naked.
“Who?” He stared at her, finding her face and knowing it to be familiar. “You’re a slave?”
“They call me a concubine.” She pouted, rolled to her front, then grinned. “But I’m a princess when you are with me, my emperor.” Her words came sharp and angled, exotic as her looks.
He knew her then, a slave from the north, one of many gifts brought to serve as concubines in the harem, the offering of some or other lord who curried his favour. Grada had gone to find out more about them. She would find information about these women, these gifts from his courtiers, and then she would return to him. A sharp longing for her twisted his hands in the silk. “Your name?” he asked the girl who was not Grada.
“Jenni, my emperor.”
Jenni then. By the blue and white of the walls, shown here and there in the glow of jeweled lamps, Sarmin knew it to be the Ocean Room. He shook his head. The unreturned haunted his nights; they had taken his body before and left him for the morning light to find, sprawled and bruised before the Sayakarva window, but never before had they taken him from the room.
“Where are my clothes?”
What had he said to her? Or rather, what had been said with his mouth?
Jenni slipped from the covers and went to gather his tunic, trews, and slippers. Watching the lamps’ glow move across her slim body an echo of want rang through him-just an echo, though. It had been another man’s desire, just as she had taken another man’s lust. A voice rose from the silence, soft and low.
— You should have her killed.
The advice Beyon would have given. Beyon’s body slaves had died to keep his secrets. It wasn’t the story of their coupling that begged the girl’s death; that would earn him Mesema’s disappointment, but Sarmin had far more damaging tales to tell. Just a handful of words whispered in coitus and passed on could see him dead and his brother Daveed with him, both of them given to the old Knife in new hands, and baby Pelar set upon the Petal Throne.
“Should I dress you, my emperor?” Jenni smiled and reached towards him.
“No.” Better run, girl. “Just go. And say nothing of this to anyone.”
“My emperor.” The smile fell away and she went swiftly into her obeisance, the lamplight throwing her knobs of her spine into a relief of light and shade.
Sarmin waited for her to leave and then found his path to the Ways through the hidden door in the corridor. These secret doors were better locked now and new doors of iron sealed key junctions within the Ways, but all of them surrendered to the emperor’s own key. Mesema’s chambers were so near that he heard Pelar crying out for his milk. The sound cut through him like Grada’s knife and in the darkness, as the hidden door closed behind him, Sarmin leaned against the wall and covered his eyes. Mesema.
Blind, Sarmin found the way with outstretched fingers and with his first step wondered how a man who could not rule himself might speak for a nation and heal the emptiness that threatened to consume them all.
CHAPTER TWENTY
RUSHES
Silver trays lined up in the Little Kitchen, gleaming in the lantern light, evening meals for generals and scribes. Rushes hoped that if she grabbed the first one and left the kitchen as quickly as possible, Gorgen wouldn’t notice her. “Who’s this one for?” she whispered urgently to Hagga, but Hagga didn’t answer, her mind on other things as she shaped the bread for the noon meal.
And then Gorgen was there, pressing against her from behind, drawing his hand over the small of her back, still bruised from the beating she had received. “That one is for General Lurish,” he said, leaning down, his breath tickling her ear.
She stepped away from him and gathered up the tray, trying to turn towards the door, but Gorgen caught her elbow. She tensed her fingers around the silver and wine sloshed over the edges of the blown glass. Unbidden, Marke Kavic of Fryth came to her mind, with the way he had defended her, like a sister or a friend. But the austere-he had been like Gorgen, except smarter. Trickier.
Fingers pinched her skin. “Has Mina been
sneaking around in the root cellar?”
Rushes swallowed. “No.” She wondered whether he knew about Mylo and the secret meetings, or had simply discovered some missing food.
He accepted the lie, for the moment. “What about you?”
“No. Please, Gorgen, I’ll be late!” She made herself meet his gaze, opened her eyes wide to show him how honest she was.
It was no good. He took the tray from her hands and shook his head as if he was sorry, but he was not sorry. He was glad. “You’re going to get it.” He pulled her down the corridor, past the steps to the dungeon. The entrance stood empty and cold but the thick wooden door drew her eye. She dragged her feet, but Gorgen only pulled harder. Sahree’s stone was still down there. It called to her at night, when she tried to sleep. She imagined holding it in her pocket, the weight of it at her side. Imagined feeling safe.
Gorgen pulled into a store room where the shelves were loaded with dried fruit, flour, and nuts. With so few in the Little Kitchen the shelves had fallen into disarray. Rice scattered over the wooden floor drew her eyes up, to where an overfull sack tipped forward, ready to spill. Gorgen would be in trouble if it fell; Naveen might beat him hard. She was about to say something when he shut the door and cast the room in darkness.
She backed away, hitting her shoulders against a cask. If only she could hear his thoughts, know his mind. “What did I say, Gorgen?”
“You said you didn’t go down to the cellar,” he said, but his voice sounded strange, muffled. “But a fine lord tells me you were running from there the other night. Crashed right into him, dirtied his silk robes.”
“I don’t remember that,” she lied, listening to the sounds from the hallway. If only Marke Kavic would return for wine and a little bread, as he had before.
“I remember your voice, Rushes. When we were all together, like that. Happy. You remembered things. Butterflies and little flowers. It was so real. And now you lie to me.” He turned towards her; she could tell from his breath on her cheek, and she flinched away. Happy. She remembered Beyon in his tomb, his hand empty, no knife. How did he cut his throat with no knife? Look, she had sent to the Master, communicating her delight, It is done. She shook the memory from her mind.
“Mylo is a bad person. An enemy. You should not have lied about being there. Those Mogyrks will all be hanged once I tell on them. But I won’t say anything about you.”
You beat me and you insult me. You hate me. But she knew it wasn’t true. She had always feared this, feared learning that he wanted more than just to hurt her. Rushes tried to take a step back and found the cask again, pressing between her shoulder blades. The olive oil within it made a sloshing noise. “Why?”
“I remember your voice,” he said again, sounding like a little boy. “Why do we all have to be alone now?”
It was a question they all wanted answered, all the Unpatterned. The loneliness was sometimes unbearable, it was true, but it didn’t make Gorgen what he was. Though she had not known him before the Pattern Master came, she judged that he had always been this way. “We’re supposed to be alone.” And he would have to get used to it; nobody would want to be with him.
He grabbed her hand, too tightly. “Well I don’t want it. You’re a horsegirl. Do what you horsegirls do.”
“I’m not a horsegirl. I’m a kitchen slave.”
His hands pushed down on her arms now, keeping her still, so she couldn’t run away. “You Felt girls will roll in the grass with any Rider, but you come down here and put on airs.”
“What are you doing?” She struggled to get away. “Stop it.”
“Do what I say, or I tell the low vizier where you were.”
“Stop it.” Vomit rose in her throat. She remembered Lord Zell’s hand on her thigh, and the look on his friend Nadeen’s face, heavy-lidded and intense. It had felt just like this: wrong, shameful. The same fright took hold of her as it had then, and she tried to push him away. It felt as if she were pushing a rock.
Something inside her grew still. When she had been one with the Many, she heard their voices as a constant chatter in the back of her mind, but when help was needed, always a singular voice came forward. I was a cook. I was a fisherman. I was a thief. She just needed to remember one voice, one history. I was an acrobat. Through that One she felt Gorgen’s hand on her right arm, the space between herself and the door, the strength in her legs. She brought up her foot and pushed him away, and he fell backwards, making a little gasp of surprise. I’ll get it, now. Quickly she ran to the door and out into the corridor, hearing behind her a sound like falling water. She had not run half the length of the hall before the fear took her. They’ll catch me,
Gorgen and Naveen and Back-door Arvind, and when they do, they’ll kill me. Rushes ran to the steps that led to the dungeon. Halfway down the hall a patrolling Blue Shield was just turning her way. Her shoes were soft; he hadn’t heard her. He picked at his fingernails as he walked, the picture of boredom, but soon enough Gorgen would enlist him in the hunt. The stone. I need the stone. She scrambled down to the heavy door. It was not locked.
It was late; the priests had long ago returned to their dark temple and the dungeon stairs stretched down into a black emptiness. She could not be trapped here. She knew every entrance to the Ways, even from the bottom of the world-or at least, she thought she did. Sometimes the palace spread out in her mind like the face of an old friend, hidden paths, forgotten rooms and all, and other times, she had only a sense of where to go. She entered and pushed the door closed behind her, shutting out all light.
She wondered why she didn’t hear Gorgen chasing her yet. Perhaps he was sneaking right behind her. She felt in the darkness for a bar or a lock, but then she remembered: that was not how a dungeon worked. A person could be locked in, but not locked out. She descended the stairs, shaking, listening for his angry breathing, the air moving around his fists.
These stairs were more uneven, and steep, than she expected. Rushes had to cling to the smooth stone at the sides to keep from tumbling. She moved through the dark, but it lay blacker still below her; sunlight never touched these walls, and no lanterns guided her way. She slowed her steps, taking more care. Far beneath, someone moaned. She suppressed a whimper. In time it became so dark that she was forced to sit on the cold, gritty stairs and scoot her way down. A scent of mold and wet stone rose around her. She moved in the blackness for so long she had time to think about running. Maybe she shouldn’t have. Maybe if she had stayed, Old Hagga would have spoken up for her. Or maybe not. She wondered what Gorgen would do to her this time, or whether he might feel sorry. Perhaps he would act as Mylo preached and forgive her. If only Emperor Beyon were still alive, she would feel safe.
She scooted one more step, and found herself on the floor with her legs splayed out in front of her. She began to crawl, feeling her way across the room. This wouldn’t work; she would never find the stone this way. She gasped when her hand went into a pool of icy water and decided to stand, using the wall as a guide. Where were the guards? Had all the prisoners truly been taken by Herzu?
No. Someone had moaned.
She felt her way through a doorway, and then her hands were trailing against iron bars. These were the cells. She listened for prisoners, but heard none. Perhaps they kept still and listened to her breathing, the brushing of her skirts against the iron…
The bars ended. Once again her fingers ran against stone, and then the stone took her around a corner. At last, in the distance, she saw flickering light. Her steps slowed and she watched with caution. Anyone could carry that lantern. A guard, a prisoner, another person running away like herself.
Stealth was key. I was a thief. Keep to the shadows, keep quiet. Rushes crept forward. Whoever held the lantern was not moving. He, or she, was sitting in an open cell, waiting. A sudden fear overtook her. What would she see there? Images from the Many filled her mind. Bodies, cut apart, naked and cold. Couples writhing together, or pleasing themselves in less conventional ways. Sick
, starving or injured people, desperation making them quiet. As she drew close, her shoe scraped against an irregular stone. She stopped, but someone had heard her; the lantern went dark and a scuffling whispered against the walls.
Did someone approach? She listened with all her mind, but no sound reached her except for the distant drip of water.
“I know you came for it,” said a man, somewhere ahead of her in the dark, “but it’s mine.”
The voice sounded familiar. Rushes stood where she was, saying nothing. “It’s mine!” he said again.
She opened her mouth to speak three times before she found her voice.
“You mean the stone.”
“He’s taken everything from me, except the stone. I’m keeping it.” A madman. She backed away. “I won’t take it from you,” she said. “I was only scared, and I thought that stone would help me.”
“The stone can’t help you,” he snarled. The light reappeared and swept across the walls and iron bars, as if the speaker waved the lantern like a flag.
Rushes backed away.
“It won’t work for you,” he said, “It will work for him, but I won’t let him have it.”
“I said I wouldn’t take it from you. Please, I promise.”
The light moved again and a slender man emerged from the cell. He held the lantern low and to his left, so that his face was in shadow but his blue robes and the elegant belt around his waist were brightly lit. He stopped and cocked his head, studying her, before crouching down upon the stones and putting the light in front of him. She saw his chin and the lines of his cheekbones, and drew in her breath. The emperor.
“Red-rose,” he said, leaning forward, showing his eyes, wild and gleaming. “Why didn’t you tell me it was you?”
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