Knife Sworn

by Mazarkis Williams

  “Do you know why she was murdered, girl? Right here in this bed. For babies. It’s always about babies. Too many babies, not enough babies; dead baby, alive baby; right baby, wrong baby.” Sahree spat out the meat. “What’s on this?”

  “Fish oil,” said Rushes, “to make you strong.”

  “Take it,” said Sahree, pushing the tray, “and don’t come back without my stone.”

  Rushes stood in the hall and listened for Gorgen’s voice in the kitchen. If she were lucky, he’d be on one of his many breaks in the work-yard, smoking bitter weed and flirting with the laundry girls. Since she heard only the crackle of the kitchen fires and the sound of Mother Hagga beating dough, she ventured in. Platters filled with delicate pastries covered the wooden table, waiting to be taken to the reception room where Empress Mesema would show the newborn prince to the court. Rushes walked past them to work the pulley and take a silver tray from the shelf. It was covered with half-eaten food and splashes of rose-water from when the women had cleaned their hands after eating. She took it to the washing-tub.

  “Did you like it up there, among the silks?” Gorgen’s leg brushed against her backside as he moved behind her. “That could have been you, Rushes. Emperor Beyon would have you in the women’s wing by now.”

  Her hand shook as she rinsed a fine glass under the water-pump. “Oh, yes.” She heard the pleasure in his voice, the joy he got from frightening her. “Lord Vizier Shubhan chose you for the throne room.” Then his finger on her cheek as it had been that morning, but not softly this time. “Why do you think he did that?”

  Red-rose, the emperor had called her. Rushes swallowed and stepped away from him.

  “The emperor played with you? Gave you treats?”

  Outrage overcame her fear. “I was a just a little girl!”

  “But not any more.” He laid a hand on her arm.

  Hagga sighed behind them. “Leave her be, Gorgen.”

  “No. I didn’t like the way she talked to me just then.” His grip tightened as he pulled her towards the rice pantry. “Come on.”

  “No… please. I need to put… need to put the glasses away.” Her protests were futile. Before they had left her lips, he had pulled her halfway across the room.

  As they passed Hagga, the old woman put down her dough and frowned at them. “Why can’t you beat her right here in the kitchen like anybody else, Gorgen?”

  Gorgen and Hagga stared at one another. Hagga’s eyes spoke of accusation and disgust. Rushes blushed with shame.

  Gorgen raised a fist. “Be careful, old bat. I’m not afraid of hitting you, too.” But then he dropped Rushes’ arm and slouched into the corridor.

  Hagga picked up her dough and kneaded it with white-crusted hands. Even as one of the Many she had stayed in the kitchen, baking her bread and tending the fire. If the Many was a river, Hagga had been a stone at the bottom, solid, unmoving, something you could step on without ever falling. I was a cook.

  “Thank you.”

  “Watch out for that one, child.”

  “Why is he like that?” The Many had never hurt one another. Rushes turned to the tub and lifted the delicate glasses she had washed. She would bring them to Naveen, who would lock them away until the next time the empire mother must eat. Their curves shone purple, then gold, as she turned towards Hagga.

  “He’s got the Longing. Without the Many he doesn’t know one end of things from the other.”

  Rushes doubted that. The Longing made people sad, not mean. Rushes remembered Sahree asked, “Hagga, have you ever heard of a special stone? A magic stone?”

  Hagga put her bread on a long trowel and slid it into the oven. Wiping her hands on her apron, she said, “I may have heard of something like that. A luck stone.”

  “How does it work?”

  “Well,” she said, already punching another round of dough, “some say you hold onto it, and bad things won’t happen to you. Others say you only have to sleep with it. Or if you plant it in your garden, you won’t get any weeds, and if you put it in your fireplace then your fire won’t smoke. Things like that.”

  Rushes looked down at the glasses she held. “Bad things won’t happen?” She wished that people could still understand each other without speaking.

  Hagga sighed. “Well, girl, a luck stone just might protect you from beatings, or worse, if you can find one.”

  Or worse. Rushes nodded and moved towards the corridor, looking for Naveen.

  “But sometimes they don’t work,” Hagga said from behind her. “And everything just gets worse.”

  Rushes wished Hagga hadn’t said that, wished she had kept her silence, hands on the bread, still as a stone. I was a cook. But it was too late. Something had happened; it was too quiet and at the same time loud, as if the voiceless Many were screaming. Naveen came running around the corner and hurried past Rushes, his robes flapping against her knees, a quick butterfly kiss that brought back her morning’s dream. No. Don’t touch it. Too delicate. At the door Naveen shouldered past Gorgen, who dropped his pipe, scattering bits of weed across the tile like tiny feathers, and ran on, into the courtyard, beyond where Rushes could see him.

  Back-door Arvind stood on the sun-baked stones, more statue than man, arms raised, hands turned up, palms empty.

  Demah.

  “She jumped,” Arvind said, “from the burned tower.”

  Gorgen stumbled forward, into the sunlight, one hand shading his eyes. “Who?” he asked, “Who jumped?”

  “Your girl from the Little Kitchen,” said Arvind.

  Rushes clutched the glasses so hard she snapped one of the stems. The jagged edges cut against her palm as she watched Gorgen turn back to her, his eyes not angry but frightened, searching. She knew that look; she’d seen it in Demah. He was looking for comfort, for family. For the Many. Too late. It’s too late now. She let the broken glass go, let them all go, and they fell in a sparkling cascade against the tiles. Too late.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SARMIN

  Mesema waited on cushions of silk and samite in shades from snow to cream and from faintest blush to crimson. A single slave stood at hand to fan her. She lay amid the heap, encircled by silver tables each piled with delicacies, her body wrapped in wisps and jewels as if she herself were a confection. Beneath the delicate fabrics white linens held her, binding tired flesh. She held one breast bare, and kept it to the small bundle she cradled in one arm. Paint had been applied to her lips, to the dark circles around her eyes, but exhaustion showed through. She smiled, tired and triumphant.

  “I want to call him Jakar, after my brother,” she said.

  “And I would call him Pelar after mine.” Courtiers followed into the chamber as Sarmin approached the tables. “But we have spoken of this.”

  The boy would wear a Cerani name to rule the empire. For countless thousands this child, like Sarmin, would never be more than a name, spoken with awe perhaps, mentioned with the gods, a face on coinage they were too poor to own. The power he would wield might be as tenuous as his own name, thus it had best be a name would echo back along the years, reminding all who spoke it of past glories, of Pelar the First, of Pelar Sand sword, of wise Pelar from the story of the camel and the crane. Servants swung the side doors wide as Sarmin approached his wife.

  Courtiers entered from all sides. A tide of them, their finery making a dour crow of their emperor, in black amid birds of paradise. They spread to all corners, scores of lords, of lesser princes from nations lost beneath Cerana’s expansion, of satraps, clerics, even hereditary generals with swords so ceremonial they resembled gaudy toys. The ruling of Sarmin’s empire rested on the goodwill of such men. A life of luxurious seclusion, of hunting and feasting, could be lived whilst ignoring any wider duties—Beyon’s life. But to rule in more than name, to make things happen, that required the subtle manipulation of this crowd of peacocks and tigers, the delicate balancing of needs and wants, egos and prejudices.

  Sarmin walked between two silver tables, t
he scrollwork along their edges catching at him. “You look tired, Mesema. Is our son well?”

  She smiled up at him, sweat beading on her brow despite the wafting fan, ostrich plumes set into a staff of turned ebony.

  “I am tired. I think one child should be enough for any emperor?” She shifted the baby’s position, his mouth tugging at her breast. “And yes, he seems well. Certainly he is hungry.”

  Behind Sarmin the courtiers moved about the perimeter of tables, picking at blue quails’ eggs, at pickled squid from the ice of Sheltren waters, at peacock breast braised with honey, at a dozen more wonders, each unseen.

  Fingers did the choosing as the emperor, the empress, and the new heir held all eyes, some curious, some thoughtful, some angry. Priest Assar watched Pelar with a smile, a finger on the pendant of Mirra he wore about his neck, while Lord Zell bit into a sesamed lotus as if it had offended him. None of these men had been at the palace during Helmar’s time; untouched by the Longing, their minds narrowed to a few simple ambitions.

  Sarmin squatted beside Mesema to better see his son, Beyon’s son. His knees ached at once —but better to squat than to kneel, and the cushions did not invite. He’d spent too long in his small room, grown in the dark, and been left weak in a world that praised strength. No wonder the men around him watched this infant with such interest. How many years would their pale emperor last in his new throne? Was the child sickly too, or would he grow to lead them into glory?

  “He’s beautiful.” The child had tufts of black hair, a pinched in face, the tiniest of hands balled into fists—but he was beautiful. “He will be Pelar third of the name, Pelar Jakar of the House Cotora.”

  “Must they stare at us?” Mesema tried to watch his eyes but her gaze kept slipping to the crowd.

  Sarmin reached for the baby and took one little fist in his hand. Around him the hubbub of conversation, respectfully hushed, leaving the sounds of important men chewing, the shuffling of feet and swish of costly fabric.

  In Emperor Tahal’s day the palace held a menagerie where sandcats and a lone tiger prowled in cages, furred wonders from northern forests lurked in green pools, and crimson scorpions writhed in a glass tank. Sarmin and his brothers had watched the tiger, speaking in whispers for the creature, thin and sunken as it was, awed them with the cool blueness of its stare and the white fangs descending from its upper jaw. Only Pelar had thought to pity it. Now Sarmin understood.

  “This is theatre, and we are the players. And yes it is necessary.” Without a sure heir to the throne men of influence and wealth might set to wondering where the power would lie should things change. It is not good for an empire to continue with a single man standing between peace and chaos.

  “Now should ill befall me there will be no doubt, no conflict, and all Cerani will know where their allegiance lies,” Sarmin said.

  “On the grass the women ride out with their newborn in the second week to show him at each hall and hut,” Mesema said. “They don’t invite the riders in to watch before the blood has dried on their thighs.” “In years to come when these men are far away in their palaces a messenger may come to say there is a new emperor, that Prince Pelar has taken the throne. They will remember then that they stood here and saw him on his name day, the true-born son of the emperor. We’re buying his future.”

  Sarmin kissed the boy’s hand and let it go. He raised Mesema’s fingertips to his lips. “You are of the Felt,” he said.

  “We carry on.” Mesema sighed and hugged her baby closer still. Sarmin stood, holding his face still against the effort. The Many stole his sleep and left him weak. He turned to the tables and the crowd. If Beyon’s child could have been a girl!

  “You have a fine son, Magnificence!” A round man in thinned velvets, purples so dark as to be black, with a neat and pointed beard darker still. “He is strong.” Sarmin nodded. “When he is older I will bring him east, Satrap Honnecka.” Azeem had warned him of this one, sharp despite the blunt bulk of him, with a hunger for more than goose livers and camel-fat.

  His gifts of women were set to overflow the women’s wing.

  “As handsome as his father, Magnificence.” A taller man, young, hair in greased black ringlets about a sallow face. Gethchen of Arthona: his grandfather ruled a land that now enjoyed the protection of Cerana. “He will grow fierce,” Sarmin said. “A warrior of the horse, like his mother’s people.”

  He wanted no such thing for the child. Better a life of peace and books, a wife of his choosing, a future to be discovered. And yet the boy would have none of it. If little Pelar had been a girl Sarmin could have named Beyon as the father. Now the secret must be held tight. As Beyon’s son Pelar was the emperor, no doubt or questions: the true emperor lay suckling at his mother’s breast. Armed with such knowledge Gethchen, Honnecka, and a score of others would rise. The council listened to these men—they would no longer require Sarmin’s permission to return to the ways of the Knife.

  Daveed would die first. Sarmin might survive that night, maybe the next, but in time the emperor’s Knife would seek him out. He had been dangerous to keep when hidden in his room all those long years. Out in the light of day he would be seen as a threat to Beyon’s son, and removed. Sarmin stepped out between the tables to walk among his nobles and the men who ruled the empire in his name. The four sword-sons of his inner guard closed around him, sharks slicing through glittering waters. Each guard kept a hand to his knife hilt, short blades of chrome-steel. In a crowd they would trust to the speed of knives over the reach of their swords. “Headman Notheen.” Sarmin approached the only courtier in garb as simple as his own. “How stands the desert?”

  Notheen watched him a moment before speaking, eyes slitted against the sun though they stood in lamplight. “The desert stands empty, my emperor.

  Wind whispers to sand and the bones of my fathers lie drowned.” He wore deepest blue, new shades revealed as his moved, as if remembering the depths of a lost sea.

  “A curious turn of phrase, my lord.” The nomads from the inner desert went so long without speaking to strangers that they made an art of their words and spent them with misers’ care. Sarmin decided he would see the desert himself. Notheen carried a strangeness with him that made him more alien than even the Yrkman girls in the harem with their milk-skin and golden hair. “I would like to climb the dunes. I am told they stand higher than my palace.”

  Again the pause, as if Sarmin’s words must first settle in the man’s head.

  The nomad towered over Sarmin, stick-thin, sand-robes rucked around him like a wrinkled hide, though these had never seen the desert, fresh from his wives’ looms no doubt. He wore his face bare, veil pinned back perhaps for the first time in years, his cheeks stained dark by the dyes his people prized in their cloth.

  “The desert is an ocean, my emperor, wider and more deep. Where the storms gather, the dunes over-top your tower of mages. I would be honoured to show you these places. Even to the Cliffs of Sight.”

  Sarmin had seen the Cliffs marked, in the cartodome on one of the maps set in many colours of stone into the tops of marble tables. On those maps the desert accounted for more than half his empire, though not one in a thousand of his people dwelled there. The Cliffs of Sight lay on the margins.

  Even the cartogramme, where each hill and stream bore a legend, offered no name for the desert, and in the centre amid the sandstone used to indicate the margins, only the plain white marble of the table, suggesting nothing. “What of the interior, Headman? Do I rule there too?” The blank whiteness of the map-table filled his mind and for a moment the whispers of the Many rose to cover Notheen’s reply.

  “…survive. That place is not for men, my emperor. It is an emptiness that devours.” The Headman bowed and took a half-step back, as if he had no more to say.

  Honnecka pressed close enough to make the sword-sons loosen their daggers. He cleared his throat, a deep unhealthy sound. Flanking him to the left a man of similar girth, his belly hitched up in bands of sca
rlet silk, rings on each of his fat olive fingers, many set with gems as large as eyeballs, a discordant display of wealth that owed nothing to beauty or balance. To the right a warrior in plates of fire-bronze, each stamped with the eagle of Highrock. His beard reached almost to his chest, showing hints of red in the dark curls.

  “Satrap Honnecka,” Sarmin said. “And…” Azeem’s schooling failed him. “Prince Jomla of Westla.” He indicated the man in silks and rings. The name Sarmin remembered. Grown fat off river trade and a monopoly on caravans out of Hedrin, richest of the West ports. “And General Merkel from the Fort of Ax in Jalan Hills.” Of this one Sarmin knew nothing. “Magnificence.” The General bowed at the waist. Not a general with Cerani legions under his command, but less ornamental than many of his fellow Faces. Azeem called them Faces, the men named as generals and called to the palace so that nations with only a generation or two under the Cerani yoke could save face and name themselves allies and protectorates rather than mere outlying regions of the empire.

  “General Merkel.” Sarmin made a smile for the man. “You’ve come a long way. There can hardly have been time for news of the empress’ condition to reach the north-marches and for you to journey south from Highrock. You must have left immediately!”

  “Indeed I would have, Magnificence, but I had already embarked on the ride before any such tidings reached us.” The light gleamed from one plate of armour then the next as he shifted.

  “What then set you on so long a journey, General?”

  “War, Magnificence.” Merkel’s hand slipped towards the ruby-set hilt of his blunted sword, and then away as the sword-sons tensed. “The White Hat army—with its glorious men-at-arms and the fabled horsemen, the battle-strength of the plains—all passed within a spyglass’ view of Fort Ax on their way to the grass. They shouted out the name of Emperor Tuvaini as they carved a red path to Mondrath. And this man at their head, Arigu, told us they were to press on into Yrkmir lands.”