Knife Sworn

by Mazarkis Williams

  She looked at the marke and found he was watching her. “You’re a quiet one,” he said, “How long have you been here?”

  “Two years, my lord. Maybe three.” She tried to remember how young she had been when Beyon handed her that honey candy. That had been an age ago, viewed through a veil of shapes and blue lines.

  “From where in Fryth did they take you? How?” There was something odd about how he said it, an angularity to his words that it took Rushes a moment to recognize. He had spoken in his own language—in her father’s language. She remembered only bits and pieces of her father—the smell of pine, the patches on the knees of his leather trousers, the way he sang under his breath when he thought no-one was listening. And his eyes. They had been blue. Rushes gathered herself and tried to find the Frythian words that would tell the marke she was Clan, from the grass, but at that moment Austere Adam returned.

  The priest held a bottle of wine in each hand, the soldiers still trailing behind him. There was no sign they had discovered anything amiss. She rushed to fetch the men a pair of plain, sturdy goblets. The priest accepted them, sat down and spoke to Marke Kavic in a low voice.

  “It is as I feared. Our countrymen are still on the road, war prisoners, to be made into slaves.” He motioned towards Rushes and she pressed herself into the corner, wondering whether he had seen Mylo in the cellar after all. As the delivery boy Mylo could talk to people in the city, find out who was on the roads. But why? Adam cleared his throat. “The peace negotiations have not affected Cerani plans in this regard.”

  “Then we will ask for their return.”

  The austere opened a bottle of wine and poured before speaking again. “What about all that you said on the road? The pain of a few for the freedom of the many. Sacrifices for the peace…”

  “Whatever I said before, now I say that we will ask for all we discussed. The prisoners. Reparations. Everything.” Kavic took a gulp of wine.

  Adam said nothing, but he gave a chilly, mocking smile, as if he had won a game against someone he did not like. Where before he had looked a kind and capable priest, now his expression resembled Lord Zell’s. She pressed herself even further into the corner, but as she watched the austere’s face transformed again, became the same calm, patient mask she had seen when he first entered the room. Empire Mother Nessaket would want to know about this man. She would be the one to tell her.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  SARMIN

  Sarmin sat in the Petal Throne, out of sorts, tormented by what might be imagination or might be memories of the night’s wandering. The cushions he had made them place rendered the seat bearable, but hardly comfortable. They softened the contours of silver flowers and twisting stems where they rose above the stonework. Azeem had bitten back his complaint when the slave girls brought the cushions, but Sarmin heard it none the less.

  “Should I always suffer on the rack that tradition has set out for me?” Sarmin had asked him. “Seventeen years forgotten in a small room were not enough? Now I must put any stray heir to the Knife, and twist about in a chair made to be easy on the eye rather than on the behind?” Azeem offered nothing to displease him and yet the man grated on Sarmin, despite or perhaps because of the fact that the vizier’s personality came closest to his own of all the court. The key to it though was of course Azeem’s view of Grada. Honest or not Sarmin would hear no more of those opinions.

  The throne room held the usual ensemble of place guards, sword-sons of Sarmin’s personal guard and courtiers who attended him. He had picked for this meeting not men he liked, or in some cases even knew, but men used to the politicking of empire, men who commanded troops or governed regions at a level that required their close and daily attention. They sat in a row on the third step of the dais, tradition dictating an uncomfortable afternoon for them too.

  Among the nine advisors, Satrap Honnecka with his many soft chins and single sharp beard to hide them. Close by, the equally corpulent Prince of Jomla, and General Merkel’s narrow frame, absent his sword, sandwiched between them. At the far end the nomad, Notheen, perched in his tightwrapped robes, a sinister air to him. Azeem had counselled against allowing one of the desert at the audience, but Sarmin had said the desert was the heart of empire. He had insisted, in part to contradict Azeem, if only to show that the man could be wrong, but also because perhaps that disquiet the nomad brought with him from the empty reaches of the desert would speak louder to the man of Fryth and his priest than any threat or show of force. Their reactions to him might reveal whether they knew about that which grew through the sands, eating all in its path.

  A gong sounded beyond the throne room doors, another closer at hand, and then the ponderous opening as six men set their weight to the left door and six to the right. Such a weight of wood might mean little to men from the green lands of Fryth but at least they would know that entering the throne room of Cerana should not be taken lightly.

  The court herald announced the visitors—an Island slave trained for the purpose—the mellow voice that rolled forth a poor match for the oiled immensity of him, his vast girth held in with bands of purple silk.

  “Lord Kavic Syr-Griffon of Fryth, grandson to the Malast Anteydies Griffon, the Iron Duke.” He drew breath. “And Adam, Second Austere of Mondrath.”

  Two Fryth guardsmen preceded the envoy, disarmed but still fearsome in their size, both as tall as any man in the palace guard and heavily muscled. They parted to reveal their charges, the envoy in dark cloth, cut and stitched in strange shapes as if the tailor sought battle with every natural fold. The austere beside him wore robes much as every other priest Sarmin had seen, his hair close-cut, his demeanour more warrior than cleric. To Sarmin he carried the air of a man more likely to burn books than to study them.

  Before the doors closed Sarmin spotted high mage Govnan slipping through the narrowing gap. The old man had been called to sit in counsel on the fourth step, where the priests of Mirra, Herzu and the rest would sit. In the end Sarmin had not summoned the priests. Matters would likely prove tricky enough without letting the Mogyrk priest insult or be insulted by Cerana’s gaggle of holy men.

  The envoy, Kavic, moved to the fore. He halted two yards before the first step of the dais. One of Azeem’s men would have coached him in this. Azeem’s man would have coached the visitors in the obeisance as well, and yet they stood, all four of them, as if their legs would sooner break than bend. Sarmin felt the tension rising in his guardsmen. The sword-sons remained calm; protocol was nothing to them, but they noted the danger of escalation and stepped closer to the throne.

  To not give the obeisance was unthinkable. Even to Sarmin the instinct ran so deep that the mere fact of their disobedience paralysed his thoughts for a moment. Of the five books that kept his company for his long imprisonment it was the Book of Etiquette that held most of his attention. In that room they fed and watered him, but they had starved him of human contact, and so a book dealing only with the business of the interactions between one man and the next, however dry and formal its writings, proved more of a window onto the world he had lost than did the arch of stone and alabaster which admitted only light. And in that book the obeisance lay time and again, writ large in black letters that recognised no doubt or leeway, the act that more than any other defined an emperor. But these men had not read the Book of Etiquette, and Sarmin had not read their books. Truly, nothing about the garb or faces, the weapons or skin-tone of these men of Fryth so clearly marked them out as alien than that their understanding of the world came wrapped in different covers.

  Soon one or other of the palace guards would snap and take the head from priest or envoy, ready to sacrifice his own life for acting without orders rather than to endure the affront to the emperor a moment longer. Sarmin only sat and clutched the arms of the throne. He couldn’t excuse them, couldn’t show such weakness before the men he had gathered to welcome the envoy. Surely these men of Fryth didn’t understand what they were doing by standing there stiff necked and a
ngry. Azeem should have explained it to them himself…

  A gleam from polished steel as one of the palace guards closest to the envoy began to draw his blade, his face a mix of incredulity and cold rage. High Mage Govan moved in a swirl of ash-grey robes, the heel of his iron staff striking the behind the knee of the leftmost Fryth guard. The man fell helpless, landing on the injured leg, the armour casing around the joint hitting the floor with a loud retort. Govnan’s staff took the guard in the back of the neck, driving him into a crude approximation to the obeisance.

  The high mage stood for a moment, heaving in a breath, and it seemed the air about him rippled with heat. “I recommend you follow the example of your escort.” He addressed the envoy and the Mogyrk priest above the fallen man’s agonised grunts. “I had hoped the palace officials would have educated you in our ways—but if you require further instruction…” He lifted his staff an inch or two.

  “I’m sure that won’t be necessary, high mage,” Sarmin said from the throne. Even without his elemental there was clearly fire in the old man yet. And well directed. His outburst might succeed in overcoming the impasse with a broken knee in place of a severed head.

  “In Fryth a man kneels only to Mogyrk or to his liege lord.” The priest spoke, a man of middle years, white-blond hair gleaming in the lantern light, an intensity around his dark blue eyes. His voice held calm, carrying only sight accents, but his skin flushed in a crimson scald from neckline to cheekbones.

  Sarmin spoke to pre-empt hot words from Govnan. “You are not in Fryth, priest.”

  “There is a reason for that! We—”

  “Peace requires negotiation—negotiation requires manners.” The envoy cut across the words that would have been the priest’s last had they escaped his lips. His Cerantic reminded Sarmin of Mesema’s way of shaping the sounds when she first came to the palace. Perhaps the envoy too had learned the language en route.

  Kavic began to lower himself, making his intentions clear so his companions could kneel before him. The guardsman went quickly, first kneeling, then pressing his forehead to the marble. The priest hesitated, a snarl twitching at his lips, but he could hardly stand when the envoy knelt, and at last he followed the guard’s lead, with Kavic following.

  A breath Sarmin had not known he was holding hissed past his teeth. The Mogyrk priest was right; they were here only because Cerana’s armies had invaded Fryth, but being right would not have kept him alive. Indeed it might have brought ruin to his homeland. The priest’s insolence had been destroying the only thing preventing the destruction of his nation—the peace rested on Sarmin’s ability to command the men between them, the lords that ruled the many pieces of Cerana in his name. And that obedience, as Azeem often pointed out, rested on tradition. If showing obeisance to the emperor was a tradition that no longer had to be observed, what else might follow? As a nation of Settu players the people of Cerana knew all about how one falling tile can topple every token on the board.

  But tradition would not keep the emptiness from toppling the palace, from filling the city with hollow men and leaving the Blessing as a trail of dust. This matter of distant war had to be resolved and quickly so Sarmin could consider the more imminent crisis.

  Sarmin kept the visitors in their obeisance for a minute, and then a minute more. Time enough to gather his wits, time enough to underscore the point for the old men of empire seated two steps below him. Those old men, as much as any other players—his mother, Tuvaini, Beyon—had kept him in that room so many years. Alive and yet not alive, for what is a life that’s lived unseen and unknown? Less than dust.

  “Rise,” he said, and waved two palace guards to help the injured man away.

  Kavic gained his feet with a wry smile, the priest still venting silent outrage so that in Sarmin’s eyes it almost shimmered about him like the heat around a glowing coal.

  “Welcome to Cerana, welcome to Nooria, may the sand take only your sorrows.” Sarmin offered the old greeting.

  Kavic tilted his head and gave a stiff shallow bow. “We thank you for your welcome to your court, Magnificence.” He kept any hint of irony from his voice, or perhaps it became lost in translation. Far behind him the injured Fryth guard collapsed onto a bench against the rear wall.

  Azeem had counselled that the men of Fryth played a short and direct game when it came to diplomacy, despising the verbal feints and circling so beloved of Cerana’s princes and satraps. Sarmin chose to do likewise. Not so long ago his longest conversations were those conducted with the decoration on his walls, better to reach his point quickly than to lose it in the confusion of small talk.

  “My cousin, Emperor Tuvaini, initiated an attack upon the Dukedom of Fryth. I understand he was poorly advised by one of his generals, a childhood companion of his. It was believed at the time that the plague which had taken my brother, Emperor Beyon, from this throne had its roots in Yrkmir and her protectorates.

  “The truth turned out to be more complex. In fact the pattern-plague was the work of Helmar, also emperor, a son of this royal house, torn from it and educated in the way of pattern by Yrkmen invaders long ago. The pattern-plague was rooted in both Cerana and Yrkmir and in the conflict between them. Rather than starting a war, those events should have reminded us all of the lingering horrors such aggression leaves to echo down the years. Long after homes have been rebuilt and nations repopulated old grievances survive and work their ill again.

  “I came to my throne with that reminder in my thoughts and my first act was to call a halt to the advance of the White Hat army.” Sarmin paused and unlaced his knotted fingers. Beneath his silks sweat ran. “Tell me Envoy Kavic, what word do you bring from the Iron Duke on my offer of peace between us, nation and throne?”

  The priest made to open his mouth but Kavic answered first. “My grandfather Malast Anteides Gryffon desires peace also, though the terms and reparations will require consideration.”

  Second Austere Adam scowled. A muted rumble rose from the men on the third step: Reparations?

  “Good,” Sarmin said. “Then perhaps tomorrow we shall begin such considerations. For now though you must be tired after so many weeks on the road. You will be taken to fitting quarters and shown how welcoming Nooria can be…” Sarmin allowed himself a smile and added, “now that the business of manners has been settled.” He would rather they talked terms and reparations immediately, reached agreement before sunset and moved on to the more immediate matter of the wound their god had made on the world. But in Cerana no agreement reached in such haste would carry respect; instead it would need to be picked over by advisors, the most minor of points argued through, near to death, the documents drafted, drawn, redrafted and redrawn. He wondered sometimes how in such a nation of debaters and nitpickers, the decision that bound him for seventeen years and stole away his youth could have been reached in the scant hours separating his father’s death from the long climb up those stairs to his prison.

  Sarmin looked up from his musings. Kavic had made no move into his obeisance and for a moment Sarmin feared that once again it would prove a sticking point.

  “My thanks, Magnificence. It has been a… trying journey. I must urge haste, though. I hope we can complete our negotiations tomorrow and communicate the results to Fryth as swiftly as possible. Our friends in the east may be slow to stir, but they will not remain idle forever in the face of Cerani troops on Frythian soil.” He bowed, then remembering himself he kneeled and made his obeisance, Austere Adam, following him down, winced at each stage as if every move cut his honour to the quick.

  The court watched in silence as the visitors departed, no word spoken until the great doors closed behind them.

  “Speak then,” Sarmin said. “You are here to advise me.” Marke Kavic had spoken of the Yrkmen. Had it been a threat or a warning?

  The courtiers before him stood, some stiff and rubbing their posteriors, some quick to their feet, all of them stepping down from the dais before turning to face their emperor. Sarmin ha
d expected the sharp-tongued Satrap of Morrai, Honnecka, to be first to share his opinions but the ragged Notheen spoke into the pause, his voice low, persuading his listeners to silence, and speaking words of which only Sarmin and Govnan understood the full meaning.

  “The priest knows war is coming, whether this marke wishes it or no. The church of Mogyrk has decided to test its strength in the desert. That much is plain enough.”

  A longer pause and then the babble of outrage as the high and the mighty competed to pour scorn on such defeatist talk. Sarmin settled back into the Petal Throne and let his advisors advise, but the words flowed over him leaving little mark. War is coming. Those words stayed. Those words stuck.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  SARMIN

  With the envoy gone, the advisors, and slaves banished, the throne room felt empty. The guards, ever-present, were hard not to consider furniture, so gaudy and so without motion.

  From time to time Sarmin would remind himself of the men behind those impassive faces, of the lives he had pieced together across years from scraps of conversation heard with his ear pressed to his prison door and later from the voices of the Many.

  The creak of Govnan’s knees as he shifted position brought Sarmin’s attention back to matters in hand. “High mage, Headman.” He focused on the two men remaining at the base of the dais, Govnan gnarled and ancient, fire-hardened Sarmin thought him, tempered in the secret flame, and Notheen, tall, ragged, bony, when the desert finally claimed him there would be little to consume. In many ways, in the ways that counted, they looked alike. Sarmin could believe them father and son. They fit together in some way that could not be seen with the eyes but from a different perspective would be obvious. Lately Sarmin had started to see all those around him as parts of a puzzle, shapes to be manipulated in some high dimensional and abstract space. It worried him.