Knife Sworn

by Mazarkis Williams

  “It’s copper coloured, I grant you.” Rorrin flipped the pot over in one hand and flicked the base to make it chime. “Doesn’t sing like copper, though. I find its voice sharp and lacking melody.” He shopped with heart although he bought only citronel pods and later some roasted ground nuts sprinkled with the pollen of desert rose. To watch him Grada could believe Rorrin had no greater desire than to bilk the traders of their profit.

  Rorrin put the cooking pot back with the others and allowed himself to glance at the approaching caravan. It had been turning heads for a little while, some citizens stopping to stare, little boys clambering up the palms lining the approach to the Blessing Gate.

  “Foreigners,” he said, spitting for good measure.

  “How can you tell?” Grada wondered if the slave wagons were rumbling 76

  along in the wake of this new caravan or whether they had changed course as she feared.

  “The covers come to a peak. It’s the style in Fryth and Mythyck. The cloth is faded but hints at blue—which more than hints at Fryth. Someone important going on the size of the escort. Those White Hat are service units in from seeing action, they’re not dressed for show. I’d say we’re looking at royal prisoners, or some kind of envoy.”

  They watched the approach. Outriders came in to disperse the queue at the gates, showing no patience with anyone who objected. Close up Grada could see dented shields, torn clothing, rusty blood stains, and short tempers in evidence. “It’s an envoy,” she said. “Our forces must have been repulsed.” Some among the crowd started to hoot, to call down curses upon the Frythian devils. For a moment Grada bristled at the idea of any defeat, her blood rising with the anger of the crowd. Cerani troops driven back by mere Fryth! It took a moment to recall that Sarmin had wanted peace, had demanded this very thing. She took control of herself, shocked at how infectious the mob’s mood was—at how easily people put aside reason in favour of taking sides.

  The White Hats dealt out blows with fist and spear haft until the crowd fell into sullen silence. The caravan commander clearly had orders to make this a welcome. Preventing it from being a stoning was perhaps the most he could hope for.

  The wagons drew closer now and Grada could see the Fryth wagons with their faded blues and narrow wheels among the Cerani army wagons, and further back along the column, flanked by White Hat spearmen, two carriages, each decortated with angular carvings exotic to her eye, blued and gilded.

  That Rorrin had recognised their origin and deduced so much in so short a time reminded Grada that whatever favours she might have she was still an untouchable, with all the lack of education and ignorance that entailed. Her early life had been spent focused on survival in a particular handful of alleys, before Sarmin the sum total of her life had been played out within perhaps a single square mile of Nooria. And here was the world arriving at her doorstep once more, reminding her how very large and how very strange it was.

  The carriages passed, the first less grand, with shades closed. White Hat guards marched briskly beside, spears over their shoulders.

  “Scribes and personal servants, most like,” Rorrin said. “Maybe an honour guard.”

  The second carriage rattled by, a golden eagle spreading gleaming wings atop its finial. The carriage windows stood open to catch the air and Grada stared at the men within. The closer man met her gaze between the passing spears as he went by, leaving her with an impression of indigo. A larger man sat to his left, broad cheekbones, a brutal face. And they were gone.

  “What did you see?” Rorrin asked.

  “Two men. They were gone so—”

  “Don’t speak. Close your eyes and see them. They are still there on the back of your eyelids. Describe them to me.”

  “I can’t—”

  “Do it.”

  So Grada closed her eyes and let the images flow. After a minute, stood without motion among the jostling ill-tempered crowd, she spoke.

  “He wore a helm, despite the heat. The closer one, the younger one. An inlaid golden eagle in flight decorated it. His jacket, deep blue … almost black.Shiny buttons with that eagle again.” Grada wondered if she were making it up. How would she even have made out eagles on buttons? “He had dark hair where it showed, like charcoal, dull. Blue eyes, a strange deep blue. No beard, an artist’s face, delicate, angled. The other man was bare-headed, short yellow hair, some kind of robe, black I think. He looked like a warrior.”

  “His robes were red. That was an austere. One of their priests. Very dangerous. They have magic that actually works! Not just smoke and fancy words. The other will be the envoy. Some relative of the Iron Duke I expect. In any event, not bad—you see more than you know and more than most.” Rorrin snorted. “You can open your eyes now, you know. Probably best if you did. The slave wagon just went by!”

  “What!” Grada opened her eyes, blinking against the light.

  They hastened to the gates, stepping around the fresh piles left by horse and camel, and following through behind the wagons without delay, the queues not yet having reformed as people continued to stand in hot debate about what it all meant.

  Beyond the Blessing Gate lay the wide plaza of Satreth surrounded on each side with great warehouses, huge sandstone buildings carved so grandly that many newcomers mistook them for temples. Incoming merchants drove their livestock or cargo to be unloaded at the various bays while Noorians in their hundreds busied themselves in a score of different roles, an organised chaos designed to devour what the outside world fed in.

  “We should follow.” Grada tried to shake off Rorrin’s grip as the slave wagon rumbled between two tall feed halls at the stock market.

  “Meere will watch them,” he said, releasing her as she ceased to struggle.

  “Meere!” Grada spat. “Meere, Meere, Meere. I don’t think there is any Meere. I’ve not seen sign of him for all your talk.”

  Rorrin shrugged without offence and turned back along the crowded street.

  “Who’s he supposed to be then? This Meere of yours.”

  “Oh he’s not my Meere. He’s the emperor’s, though the emperor may not know it yet.” Rorrin kept his voice low, tone conversational, and Grada found herself hurrying at his elbow to catch his words. “Meere is the last person many people ever see—the best knife in the Grey Service.”

  That stopped Grada’s feet and left her standing, jostled by crowds. The Grey Service was something to be whispered at night, a phrase invoked to end the conversation.

  “Eyul was the emperor’s Knife. I saw him through the Many. I didn’t see any Grey Service.”

  Rorrin sidestepped a pot-seller hung around with his trade goods. “Eyul, son of Klemet, Fifty-third Knife-Sworn was a man of particular duties and particular talents, a man set to cut throats for the empire—”

  “For the emperor!” Grada said.

  “For the empire. The Knife may cut royal throats too—even the throat of a false emperor or one condemned by his own laws. The Grey Service, on the other hand, carry out more mundane forms of murder for the state. It isn’t wise laws and shrewd negotiations that keep the empire’s peace, or at least not just those things. Unexpected deaths and the fear of dying unexpectedly in the night, in the security of one’s own bed, is what halts the plans of many an ambitious Cerani or stops them drawing up such plans in the first place.”

  A coldness ran across Grada’s skin while she pushed and shoved to keep up with Rorrin, as if a shadow passed over them. “You mean the whole empire is run on murder and blood?”

  Rorrin barked a laugh. “All empires run on murder and blood.” He stopped without warning and she checked herself just before crashing into him. “And the disturbing thing? All the alternatives lead to more blood and more murder.”

  “So where are we going?” Grada asked, then stopped, turned, and set off back up the street, no longer interested in his reply. He’d done it to her again. Simply told her what to do, and like a trained dog, she’d obeyed even though it meant giving up the ta
sk set into her hands by Emperor Sarmin himself.

  “Where are you going?” Rorrin followed in her wake.

  “Back to what I should be doing. Back to my duty.”

  “Come this way then. You won’t find them at the stockyards. I know a shortcut to where they’re going.” And he veered away into the mouth of a narrow alley.

  Grada cursed and followed. Somehow she always seemed to end up following the man, one way or the other. Behind her the hubbub of the street fell away with remarkable swiftness, as if the hot and acrid shade of the alley were a different world. Rorrin moved quickly, half-running, sandals scuffing over sandy cobbles.

  Something soft and heavy dropped behind her as she hurried after him. The sound stopped her, pulled her round. The man must have waited on some ledge and watched them pass below. Grada had no time to look up and check—the blade in his hand kept her gaze, even in the shadow its edge found a gleam.

  “What do you want?” she asked as he rose from his crouch, a man neither young nor old, sharp-faced, black hair greased back across his skull. It was a foolish question but questions were all she had to put between them.

  “Don’t.” The man’s eyes flicked to Grada’s hands, busy with her belt rope.

  “All right.” Grada nodded, and kept her fingers working at the knot.

  A smile as thin as his blade cut the man’s face. “Learning,” he said, and lunged. Grada fell back, whipping the rope up at his arm. He moved fast and somehow the knife found her shoulder. She felt her robes tearing as she dropped.

  Hitting the alley floor, a mix of dirt and dislodged cobbles, hurt even through her fear. Weeks in the desert had stripped her flesh leaving only muscle and bone. From the ground she risked a quick glance in search of Rorrin, but if he were still there he wasn’t close enough to see.

  “Clever,” her attacker said. “An unarmed foe is at their most difficult for a knifeman when they’re on the ground, exactly as you are.”

  Grada raised her right foot, ready to kick if he came in range. The hard leather sole wouldn’t offer much protection against his blade but it felt better than bare flesh against steel.

  “You know you’re bleeding?” He held his knife up to show the smear of crimson running from its tip.

  Grada grunted. She hadn’t known and had nothing clever to say about it. The echoes of the Many, so loud when that pair came after her by the pomegranate grove, kept to whispers this time. Her right hand closed around a loose cobble, her left finding only dry dirt. Where in hell was Rorrin?

  “Most who get stabbed or cut don’t live long enough to realise it. The pain holds back until it’s decided if you’re going to survive. But the stab lets the strength out of them quick enough.”

  Grada watched him, let him talk. She’d been born in an alley and hadn’t spoken with emperors and mages just to die in one.

  “If you’re going to stab someone it’s only right that you should know what being stabbed feels like. It helps you to know what to expect of those you knife.” The man had entirely too much to say for himself. He was starting to sound like a teacher, starting to sound like…

  “Rorrin!” She barked the name. “You set this dog on me! You can call him off.”

  Just a flicker of the man’s gaze, up along the alley at the mention of Rorrin’s name. Sometimes a flicker is enough. Grada let fly with the cobblestone. She moved fast, she’d always had quick, sure hands. The knifeman swayed right and caught the stone in his left hand some fraction of an inch from the side of his head.

  “Tricksy.” His smile gone.

  “You know you’re bleeding?” she asked him. An edge of the broken cobble had cut his head, his hand unable to prevent all contact. “People can miss these things in the heat of a fight.” She wanted him angry, making mistakes.

  Grada flung the dirt in a wide arc, set her hands to the ground, drew her knees to her chest, feet beneath her, and jumped up. The man stepped back, shaking dust and grit from his clothes. “You really need to be closer for that to work.”

  She charged. He moved with unreal speed but somehow she half-caught his wrist as she drove him back into the wall. The knife felt like nothing going in and like punch when the hilt slammed into her ribs.

  “You see?” he hissed past teeth crimson from his bitten tongue. “Nobody knows what to expect.”

  Grada smashed her forehead into his nose. The back of his head cracked against the stonework. She stepped back, her hand on the dagger hilt, keeping it in her as he slid to the ground. “I know.” She looked down at knife in her flesh. “I’ve been stabbed before.” She kicked him in the neck as he tried to rise. This time his collapse was a boneless thing.

  The knife started to burn in her, in the muscle and blood that held it, each breath as if her lungs had filled with broken glass. Sarmin had joined with her when she stabbed him, made them a pattern of two pieces, interwoven, she had felt every part of his pain. It hadn’t been her flesh, but she had been stabbed before.

  “Ghesh take me!” Rorrin’s voice behind her. “Meere! Meere?” The alley had grown dark, as if the sun were getting further away by the moment. “How in any hell did that happen—” Grada fell, her legs turning traitor. The last thing she knew were Rorrin’s hands catching hold.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  GRADA

  It’s cold on that street where the palms whisper in the dark and no one walks. Grada shivers against the breeze and against a deeper chill woken in her bones. In the garden below her the bushes seethe, stirred by the wind in the blackness of night. The dogs are dead or dying. She slips from the high wall and drops among the shrubs. Rising from her crouch—that brings back a memory, a man dropping behind her, rising with knife in his hand—she pulls her own blade from the sheath at her side. It’s an old knife, ugly, cutting a glimmer from starlight, a thing made for killing and not for show.

  She walks from the bushes and from the muted sounds of dying beneath the rustle of leaves. The ground is soft beneath her feet, springy. Plants cover every square foot, all of them the same, their leaves like short black blades. The water it must consume to keep this garden green in the desert sun! The weight of the knife draws her back to her purpose. She would rather wander, but the knife pins her to the moment. Ahead the tall house, silent, its many windows dark. She is here to do murder.

  The house looms, pale stone reaching skyward as she passes the ground-floor windows one by one. She tests the shutters on each then moves on. This is memory. In some lost corner of her mind she has been passing by these windows forever, hoping never to stop.

  She tries another shutter. She strains to see the hands testing that smooth wood, prising those long slats, tries to see if they are her hands, Grada’s, or if she is carried rather than carrying. Carried at least the blood will not stain her skin, though the stain will be more than skin-deep in either event.

  Another window, fingers wedged once more between the slats, muscles straining, and with a soft schnick something vital surrenders and the shutter comes loose. She climbs in, heart hammering louder than her footfalls. Even passing through she notes the quality of the timber, the extravagant thickness of it, shipped down the Blessing in the great barges of trade princes like Jomla and Honnecka. These people throw gold about as if it were nothing while in the Maze children starve, babies are stillborn. She tries to kindle a fire within her, anger to burn away guilt, but the sparks die. The desire to kill can’t be manufactured.

  She’s in a corridor now, padding her way, the heavy knife held out before her to test the darkness, so thick you might better call it blindness.

  Footsteps, just a whisper, bare feet on thick rugs, a snuffle, someone making their way by habit. Grada steps back against the wall and waits. She draws a deep slow breath but it hurts. For no reason her lungs are full of broken glass, a hot rivet driven between her ribs. She bites down on the cry that demands escape.

  “Herzu’s member!” The curse started as a scream but died in a whisper on her lips.

&nbs
p; “The mouth on her! Labourers on Tuvaini’s tomb shout that when they hammer their thumbs by mistake…you’re sure she’s the emperor’s chosen one?”

  “Just finish stitching.”

  “Gods damn you, Rorrin!” Grada managed a louder whisper. She couldn’t unscrew her eyes yet but she knew his voice.

  “Rorrin?”

  “Stitch or I’ll give you something bigger to sew up!” Rorrin’s voice again.

  “She’s done. I’ll go see to my other patient.” Something being wrapped around her chest and ribs.

  “I wouldn’t bother. If he wakes he’ll only die of shame. Taken out by a Maze girl…”

  Meere? She tried to curse again but her lips felt too dry. Whatever might be wrapping her ribs something thicker and more velvet seemed to wrap the rest of her, pulling her down into black and dreamless sleep. Meere?

  CHAPTER SIX

  NESSAKET

  Nessaket stood on the stairs and watched the Fryth delegation move towards the western wing. Newly arrived visitors were always taken to the temple of Herzu, to remind them they stood in Nooria, the heart of the empire, carved from the desert with ruthlessness and will. Hazran’s white-hatted soldiers herded taller men in ornate armour, their swords thin and light compared to Cerana’s heavy steel. Their weapons made these Fryth guardsmen no less intimidating, for their height and muscle showed what force might wield them. In their midst walked two men, one blond and wrapped in a priest’s red robe, the other black-haired and wearing a heavy coat the colour of midnight. The latter looked towards the steps, but not at her; his eyes fell upon the carved ivory balustrades, the gold leaf, and the paintings that lined the wall, his eyes wide with wonder. Lords from the farthest reaches who lived in wooden shacks or tumbledown ruins often wore that look upon first arriving in Nooria, but she had heard the Fryth were artisans themselves, building architectural wonders within their mountain holds.