The Emperors Knife

CHAPTER Thirteen

"Let me see it,” Eyul said. Amalya hunched in his arms, her back to him, as if even his gaze would sear her arm. He could see her pain, written into the lines of her neck and

shoulders. He gritted his teeth as he drew himself up. Somehow he’d injured his own back.

Amalya turned slowly, holding her elbow with care, like a brimming cup. The sand had given her a new skin where the flesh had been scraped raw; only here and there could Eyul see the glistening of stripped muscle in patches the desert had not yet found. “Have you magic for wounds?” Eyul asked. The flies would come, and with them the taint that would sour the arm.

Her eyes held the glazed amazement of a man stabbed in the stomach.

He knew that look. “Have you a cure-spell?” He reached for her shoulder with his unburned hand.

She blinked, and some intelligence returned. “Herb law,” she whispered, “I know a little herb law. My true magic lies in fire and in smoke.” She managed a grimace and looked around.

“Herbs seem to be in short supply.”

Eyul was relieved: she had her wits, at least. A Tower mage could be relied on for a well-trained mind.

“Wait here,” he said, “I’ll bring the camels.”

Amalya crouched down, slow and stiff, sheltering her arm as though it were the most precious infant.

The stars lit Eyul’s path across the dunes and he found Amalya’s camel in the depths, between the starlit crests, where the darkness was almost tangible. He walked stiffly, dragging his wounded leg, as he scanned the ridges for the dappling of tracks left by his own camel. “An assassin wears the dark like a cloak,” he quoted from the Book of the Knife. Darkness had ever been his friend.

No night terrors for Eyul.

And yet his breath came unevenly and his heart’s rhythm guided his steps. For a moment he saw Pelar’s ball, bouncing with every beat. Behind him Amalya’s camel passed wind with unusual vigour, leaving the night’s silence in tatters.

Eyul grinned and yanked the beast forwards by its tether. “You have the right of it, my friend.” The horror sank with the city. The echoes that remained would haunt him only if he let them.

Eyul found his own camel a mile further on, waiting peaceably in the lee of a hundred-foot dune. He rode back, leading Amalya’s beast and navigating by the light of the moon. For the last half-mile of his return, Eyul could see her robes at each crest, white against the moonlit sand, and motionless.

“You have magic for the pain?” he asked as he closed the last yards.

She looked up, dark gleams for eyes. “Fire and smoke, nothing else.”

He helped her onto her camel. She held herself upright stiffly, moving with slow determination. Eyul still found her beautiful, despite the taut lines of her agony and the grim slit of her mouth. He felt guilty for it, even as he breathed her in. “There. Hold to the pommel.”

She gripped with her good arm. “Tell him to walk steady. I’d rather not fall off.” She managed a tight smile.

Eyul studied her for a moment. In the ruins she’d feared him as much as the ghosts, afraid he’d slit her throat. In a day or two her arm would swell, and she’d beg for that mercy. The knowledge sat like a cold stone in his stomach. The keen edge of the emperor’s Knife would hardly notice her skin, but he noticed it. He didn’t want her death on his hands.

“You never wanted any man’s death.” Eyul heard the words as if Halim were standing at his shoulder even now, risen from the grave and scarcely the more wizened for thirty years in the dry ground. “That is what makes you the ideal assassin: patience. Your lack of appetite lets you wait. Duty will guide your hand to make the cut.”

Amalya returned his gaze. “What are you thinking?” A lover’s question, asked through gritted teeth.

“That we should put space between us and this place,” he said, mounting his own beast.

Tuvaini waited for her in the temple of death. Herzu watched him from eyes oflapis lazuli in a face of carved jet. He returned the god’s stare as he approached along the central aisle. The sculptor presented Herzu as a thickchested man with the head of a jackal, six yards tall. When Herzu visited Tuvaini’s dreams, he came as a human youth, loose-limbed, robed, walking the dunes in the dusk, seen only in glimpses between the crests.

“My Lord High Vizier.”

Tuvaini turned. Nessaket stood behind him, close enough to touch. “My lady.” He brought his fingers to his forehead. “You have a silent step.” She waited, impassive save for the slightest furrow between her brows. Tuvaini moved aside, and as she passed he drew in the scent of her.

Desert-rose, and a hint of honey. He watched Nessaket’s smooth back, the motion of her shoulders, the gleam of olive skin as she made her devotions. Her personal guards would be waiting by the door, but in the temple of death they were alone.

At last she stood and turned. Tuvaini pulled his gaze from the sway of her breasts to the hardness of her eyes.

“You are a pious man, Vizier?”

“Only the foolish do not honour those with power over them,” Tuvaini said.

“Herzu holds power in both hands.” She spoke from the scriptures. “In his left he brings hunger.”

“And in his right hand, pestilence.” Tuvaini finished the line. A pause.

“And the emperor fares well this morning, I trust?” Tuvaini smiled.

Nessaket did not smile. “My son is well, I thank you.” She walked towards the entrance and her waiting guards. She always left him this way, wanting. Set aside.

“But which son?”

Nessaket stopped, her shoulders stiff. For the longest moment she neither walked nor turned. Tuvaini wanted to see her face, wanted to see what his words had written there.

Another step towards the doorway.

“Herzu has his right hand upon Beyon’s shoulder, Nessaket.” Her name felt good in his mouth.

She stopped again. Sweat ran beneath his robes, liquid trickles across his ribs.

“Can Arigu find a child among the horse clans so young she is yet a virgin?” Tuvaini asked.

At that Nessaket turned.

Tuvaini felt his heart pound. “And if he can, will she reach Nooria? It’s a long road from the grasslands, and we live in interesting times.” He reached into his robes.

Nessaket startled, arms rising, mouth ready to call her men—

He pulled the scroll out quickly. “No weapons—we are not barbarians, Nessaket.” He managed a smile. Their sins bound both of them to silence. Nessaket would not run to the throne room; she would stay and listen until he let her go. He held the scroll before him, level with his head. “There is an old man in the desert who remembers our history better than the most learned palace scribe. He holds treasures from the library of Axus, taken on the night it burned—papers, documents, books of record, sealed oaths, blood confessions spilled on cured skin.” And one has been stolen for me.

Nessaket approached, a sway to her hips, silks flowing, a memory from dreams on nights too hot for sleep.

“And what does your paper say, Tuvaini?”

“I—” She had never spoken his name before. “I—” He looked to the scroll and its wax seals. His hand shook from wanting her. “It shows the lines of succession, back past the Yrkman incursion. Where we have speculation, it has names; where we have hearsay, it has dates. Fact in place of argument.”

“And what is that to me? Or the emperor?”

“Herzu watches us. May we speak of death, Nessaket?”

She was close, her scents surrounding him. “I married the death of children, Tuvaini. I am no stranger to such talk.”

Tuvaini lowered the scroll, unrolling it. “This page shows the path Herzu has set before me. It tells a tale of failed lines, premature ends, assassination. It shows how, with enough time, the seed that falls furthest from the tree can flourish.”

She took a step closer, her head tilted in question.

“Beyon will die soon, or become something worse than a corpse. And fifteen years’ solitude has broken Sarmin; he could never rule. Let that line end, and the next step is written here.” He pointed at the bottom of the scroll.

Nessaket drew in her breath. “Treason.”

“I do not speak of betrayal. I would never raise my hand against the empire. I love the empire.” He traced a finger down the longest line upon the parchment, reaching his grandfather’s name. “And it falls to me to safeguard the empire.”

She was silent a long time, and he listened to her breathing, watched the light on her hair. She raised her head from the parchment and looked at him, truly studied him, as she never had before. What did she see, he wondered.

“I very much enjoy being the emperor’s mother,” she said at last.

He resisted the urge to wet his lips. “And how did you enjoy being the emperor’s wife?”

“One of many wives.” She turned towards the statue. “It was tolerable.”

“Tahal was a great man, deserving of many honours,” said Tuvaini. “But I am a humble servant of the empire, who has never once asked permission to marry.”

“I see what you mean.” She fingered the pendant that hung between her breasts.

Another silence.

“Beyon has been to see Sarmin,” he told her. “He wishes to circumvent you and make Sarmin his own servant.”

“He will fail.” She dropped the pendant and faced him.

“They were close as boys. Apart, they are easily controlled, but together, they might be difficult.”

“While you are not.” Nessaket showed him a slow, secret smile, and for an instant she was the girl he had loved in the happy days of Tahal: the graceful young girl who danced for the emperor in his private rooms, the boy at his feet forgotten. Tuvaini had always been overlooked. But no more.

“While I am not,” he agreed. “A sick son and a mad son, Nessaket. There is no future there.”

She stepped closer, so close he had to clutch the scroll to keep himself from touching her. “I will consider your words,” she said. “And your offer.”

Tuvaini swallowed. “Nothing could please me more.”

A brief incline of her head and she was gone, brushing past him and to her guards without another word.

Tuvaini lowered himself to the stone and stared up at Herzu’s face. His breathing slowed; his fierce need abated. He gathered himself for his next confrontation. It was as he had told Nessaket: together, the brothers created a difficulty. It was time for Herzu’s fury to tear them apart.

Eyul and Amalya rode through another night. Eyul slouched in the saddle, his mind clenched around the visions the ruins had shown him. Every so often he looked up, checking that Amalya still kept her seat. She swayed as though in her cups, jolting with every footfall.

A chill wind picked up two hours before dawn, snatching sand from the ridges to give each gust a stinging edge. Eyul wrapped his desert scarf in the manner of the nomads to hide his face, reducing his view to a slit. In the palace treasury Eyul had seen the iron helms taken from the Yrkman invaders; those men had chosen to confine their vision to a slot, showing as little of the world as Eyul saw now. Perhaps such helms sat well on men whose narrow view of the world led them across treacherous seas to impose their will and die at such a distance from their homes.

For a while Eyul rode beside Amalya. “We were meant to die in that city,” he said. “That pattern was set to crush us.”

“Yes.”

“But something went wrong with it—something changed. Somehow a door was left open, or forced open, and an old ghost found his way in.”

“Old ghost?” Amalya spoke through teeth gritted against the pain.

“The Emperor Tahal. He showed me how to break the pattern. I thought it would be difficult, or complicated, but it was simple.”

How is evil destroyed? With the emperor’s Knife.

Amalya managed a tight smile. “The solution is generally simple when you know what it is. Strike at the centre. But sometimes that’s most of the problem—finding the centre.”

They rode without speaking from one dune crest to the next, until he asked, “What did you fear in the Mogyrk temple?”

She turned. Her eyes rolled white in her head for a moment before she found focus. “Everything.”

“What’s to fear in a new god? The invaders, men of Yrkmir and Scyhtic and other places you can’t say without spitting, they carried Mogyrk with them. What’s to fear in that? There’s no magic in their lands, just coldness and mountains without end. All peoples bring some or other god with them and Cerani swallows them whole.” Eyul realized he was quoting Tuvaini, and stopped.

“The Mogyrks see no shades,” Amalya whispered. Her camel jolted and the pain sharpened her voice. “They see only one path, one design, and they have just one evil. Think of that, assassin: one temptation, one Lord of Hell, with dominion over all things dark. The devil the Mogyrks carry on their back can turn the hearts of many men.” She straightened in the saddle and watched him with a quiet intensity. For a while only the creak of leather and the soft noises of padded feet in sand filled the space between them.

The wound on Eyul’s leg burned as if new. “You think such a devil would find easy meat in the Knife-Sworn?”

“You’ve taken scores of lives.” The moonlight caught her cheekbones, sculpting her beauty. “Women and children, perhaps?”

We live in a world of sorrow, of pain and hard choices, Eyul wanted to say. Somehow the words that had always brought him comfort felt too hollow to speak here in the desert. “I—” I bring peace. I send souls to paradise. I give an end both swift and kind. Few in this world have one at their side strong enough for mercy in their final moments.

He said nothing.

“You think loyalty will hold you safe against corruption?” Her words stumbled and she swayed. Already the wound was poisoning her blood.

“I am loyal to the empire,” Eyul said, “if nothing else.”

Amalya coughed a laugh and then muttered, “Loyalty is the easiest of all virtues to subvert.” Her words rang like steel on steel.

Caution bent Eyul’s lips. “Who gave you the Star of Cerana?”

She struggled to lift her head. “Are you loyal to the Star? Or the honesty of its delivery?”

“Who gave it to you?” Eyul fought the impulse to shake her. Amalya bent over the pommel of her saddle, the breath harsh in her throat.

“Who!”

“Ask me again, at the end.” And she would say no more. The moon dropped in the sky and still they rode on, an hour of ups and downs, punctuated by grunts and winces. “We could rest.” Amalya’s voice came dry and cracked.

Eyul pulled up his camel and dismounted. A lost hour held no water. It made no difference whether Amalya found her end on this dune or on the sands another day to the west. He told himself it made no difference.

Amalya dismounted like an old woman. Something had broken in her, to make that plea for rest. Eyul felt it break when she spoke. She caught his eyes in the grey light and manufactured a smile. “I could make us a fire,” she said.

“Are you cold?”

“Burning up.” She tried a grin, but sudden pain erased it. Eyul imagined he could feel the heat coming off her. At sundown, when he had lifted her onto her camel, he had smelled the wound and felt the fever on her skin. Why? he almost asked aloud, but the answer closed his mouth. She didn’t want to die useless.

“A fire would be good. It will be a while before the sun finds us,” he said.

Amalya’s brow glistened where her sweat ran in trickles. He started on the straps to his saddle-pack. “I’ll find us something to burn.” He remembered Amalya’s fastidiousness when it came to cooking over camel dung.

“No.” The word held a crackle that made him drop the ropes and turn to her.

Her dark eyes caught the crimson hint of dawn and threw it back at him. A wisp of flame played over the skin of her wounded arm and was gone. Amalya held her good hand before her, brown fingers clawed; she spoke one hot syllable, and fire woke on the dune. A white flame leaped up between them, higher than a man. Eyul stumbled back, the heat beating at him like a fist, and his already burned hand roared a protest.

“Amalya!” he shouted over the camels’ terror, reaching out for one as it broke past him, and missing.

The flame made no sound save for a faint but angry roar, higher pitched than the wind. It neither wavered nor flickered but stood like a white lance against the sky from which all trace of dawn had been driven. Eyul could smell his headscarf smouldering and he stumbled backwards.

“Amalya!”

She stood before the flame, one hand extended as if she were pouring out her fever into its hungry brilliance. The desert sun at its zenith in a steelblue sky would shed a kinder light than that which now lit the dune. Under its illumination all color fled. Amalya stood robed in utter white, her flesh cut from pieces of night.

For a moment the flame flared brighter still. Eyul raised one hand to his eyes, but his vision had already left him. An echo of Amalya against a white-lit sky lay in every direction.

She gave a short cry, and the fire fell cold and silent. Amalya’s after-image died with the flames, leaving Eyul in a world of black.

“Amalya!”

She didn’t answer.

Eyul groped a blind man’s path to where he’d last seen her. For the longest time he thought himself lost beyond redemption—his hands could find neither Amalya, nor any sign of their camp. Questing fingers caught only sand, sand, and more sand. He called out, softly at first, and then more stridently, but only the wind answered, filling his mouth with grit. He crawled in an ever-widening circle, though his leg and hand smarted and his back protested. He ignored them. He would find her.

At last there was a soft whisper to his left. “Here…’

When at last he caught a handful of cloth he sighed with relief and reached out again, this time finding firm flesh within the robes. He’d had no plan beyond finding Amalya, and so he gathered the woman to him and sat with her cradled in his lap. He could feel that the fever had left her, expelled with the heat of the flame. She was limp, unstrung, but breathing smoothly.

“You lost control of your fire,” he told her, “but I suppose it’s better this way. You can’t feel it now.”

Eyul sensed the dawn, felt the fingers of its warmth pushing back the chill of night. He turned his face to the sun and stroked her hair as a mother would her child’s. A tear rolled down his cheek. He checked the Knife at his hip. The hilt felt warm beneath his sore fingertips, reassuring. There might be little call for a blind assassin, but the emperor’s Knife would make his end a quick one. And hers.

I send souls to paradise.

The heat built quickly, and with it came flies. Eyul covered Amalya’s arm as best he could with his cloak. She stirred once in his lap, muttering something incomprehensible, and he ran his fingers across her lips. “Shhh.”

An hour passed, or maybe four. The sun parched Eyul, and his tongue felt like old leather when he spoke. “Perhaps it is time.” Before she wakes. She won’t feel it. He reached for his Knife, faltered. He didn’t want it to be time.

“Nice knife.” A stranger’s voice sounded at his shoulder. Eyul pulled the blade clear.

“They say a blind man’s other senses get sharp.” The stranger spoke with mild amusement. Somewhere on the dune, others whispered.

Eyul knew the accent; only one people spoke the true-tongue with such reckless disregard for vowels.

“But it can’t be true. I watched you cuddle that pretty slave girl for so long that Jarquil had time to find your camels.”

Eyul set the emperor’s Knife to Amalya’s throat.

“Hey now!” The nomad’s surprise set a grim smile on Eyul’s lips.

“Wh— What?” The touch of metal to skin brought Amalya from whatever dark seas she floated on.

Eyul flinched, finding his own surprise.

“Who?” Amalya asked the question in a croak.

“Nomads,” Eyul said. “You should let me cut your throat. I’d be doing you a favor.”