The Emperors Knife

CHAPTER Fifteen

Eyul woke to the whispers of men and the sound of dripping water. A cool rag rested on his forehead. The air felt still and warm against his skin; he guessed he lay inside a tent.

“He wakes,” a nomad said.

The last thing Eyul remembered was dozing in the saddle. Amalya. He tried to sit up, but hands, more than two, pressed him down onto his blanket.

“You put something in my water.”

Someone else spoke. “You wouldn’t have let us take care of the woman if they hadn’t. We had a hard enough time of it as it was.” The voice was cool and rich. A river in the sands.

“You sons of whores! If you—” His hand went to his hip. The emperor’s Knife was gone. He reached for his eye bandages and tore the first layer away, but once again, hands stopped him.

“Such impatience.” The voice felt familiar. “Not the temperament for desert travel.” Water dribbled into Eyul’s mouth and the man continued, “Your friend is alive.”

Eyul ceased his struggles. “Where is she?”

“Elsewhere.”



“I need to get to the hermit.” Laughter rang out around him.

“You don’t know my voice, assassin? You have arrived. And once you are well enough, you will have a choice to make.”

Eyul lay on his back and allowed the hermit to tend to him. First the old man rubbed a harsh-smelling salve on his burned hand. Then he washed the wounds on his face and leg with cold water. Eyul considered the hermit’s words. An assassin didn’t make choices.

“Does your role still fit you like a tight slipper, Eyul? Do those boys still haunt your dreams?” The tone was conversational. Eyul didn’t reply. He remembered the last time he’d come to see the hermit. The hermit couldn’t stop the nightmares, but he’d offered his water pipe, and that had eased Eyul’s mind for a time.

Fabric rustled as the hermit finished his ministrations. A waft of air told Eyul that one of the nomads had either come in or gone out of the tent.

“I regret what happened in the desert. I was powerless to change those events.” The hermit’s voice was still close.

Eyul considered this a moment. “You saw?”

“I saw,” the hermit said.

Eyul tried to gauge how many people were listening. The nomads could hold their silence for hours if they needed to, a skill gained from years of hunting sandcats or ambushing hapless merchants. They could sit motionless in their dun-colored robes until their prey was tricked into foolishness. His mother, from the sands herself, used to sit by his bedside with the same rocklike silence.

“A taste of what you’ve come for,” said the hermit. “The Carriers share a common vision: what one sees, they all see. Each Carrier is a piece of the whole, a part of a larger pattern, and the pattern itself is like a river, or a song, flowing into itself, writing itself, making itself heard.”

“The pattern is of nature?”

“No, the pattern is man-made; that is for certain. But that is not to say it doesn’t have a life of its own.”

Eyul listened again, but heard nothing but the hermit’s slow breathing. He would not ask Tuvaini’s question; the hermit could not live past answering it, knowing the pattern had found Beyon, and Eyul doubted now that he could kill him.

“Who is the enemy?” Eyul made a new question.

“Ah, now you are riding ahead of me.” A whisper of sand, and then the hermit’s voice came from above him. “You will learn more after you’ve made your choice. I give no information for free, Eyul, especially to those who’ve come to kill me.”

“I am not here to kill you.” Eyul spoke the truth.

“Disobedient in your old age?” The hermit didn’t wait for an answer. “I require the wizard’s protection. Leave her with me and I will tell you what you need to know.”

Eyul rolled his head from side to side. “That’s not my decision to make.”

“It is now,” said the hermit. Cloth rustled, and Eyul caught another gust of fresh air. He was alone.

“Amalya,” he said out loud. Nobody answered.

Mesema kicked the sand beneath her slippers. It still held the night’s chill, though the sun threatened in the east. She could see why Arigu called this land the White Sea: its waves, some cresting higher than ten horses, rippled away into the western darkness. The Bright One blinked above them, making his last few steps towards the moon before the sun chased him away.

Eldra brushed Mesema’s elbow with her fingers and offered a fig. They stood together, taking small bites, facing the west. Once, Mesema had seen Eldra as a woman and herself as a girl, but now when she looked at their shadows she saw the same curved hips, the same narrowing at the waist. They were of a height, and sand-coloured curls fell around both of their faces. A stranger might take them for twins. A Red Hoof and a Windreader; it was no longer so strange.

“Tell me about your prince,” said Eldra.

Banreh had asked Arigu about the prince, but he hadn’t received an answer. Perhaps Arigu didn’t know him, or maybe he kept silent for another reason. She told herself it didn’t matter—only the child mattered. “You know as much as I do,” she said.

“Maybe he has the nose of a rat, or the wool of a sheep,” Eldra said with a giggle.

Mesema had to laugh too. “I shall close my eyes.”

“There’s only one part of him that needs to work right.” Eldra nudged her with an elbow.

Mesema drew in her breath, feigning shock. “Eldra! You are truly wicked!” “Does that mean you won’t speak well of me to Banreh?”

Mesema tried to smile at that, but her cheeks felt stiff as old leather. She turned away, buying time. As she struggled for something to say, something sparkled at the corner of her eye. She turned to catch it in her sight, and heard the desert groan, low and resonant, bringing a tremble to her legs. “Eldra…’

The dunes shifted and whispered. The sand fell off them in sheets, spilling into the valleys between, revealing shapes of glimmering silver in the fresh sunlight. A pattern lay across the sand, a geometric weaving from dune to dune, beginning at a point she could not see and ending just where her slippers cast their shadows. Triangle, underscore, circle, dash, square: this was the same pattern she’d seen in the grass at home, when the hare had made his mad run to safety.

Something urged her feet forwards along the hare’s path. Curiosity, dread, rebellion: it was all of a piece as she walked away from Eldra and into the mystery laid across the sand. Follow this arc, this line, turn here where the circles intersect… Yes.

She heard someone shouting her name—Eldra!

Wait.

The hare had dashed under these two parallel lines. Turn here where the circle is not quite complete; pass through the diamond. Here Mesema stopped, confused. Where had he gone next? Through one of these smaller shapes, into the paths that hid, small as lace-point? She knelt and stared into the depths. Perhaps he had.

“Mesema!”

Banreh ran up behind her; she knew it was him from the sound of the sand under his boot where he dragged his right foot. He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her back, away from the hare’s hidden ways. She was surprised by the strength of Banreh’s arms. He had pulled her well away from the edge of the pattern, almost to the camp, before she even had a chance to protest.

“What are you doing?” he said, tightening his grip and pressing her back against his chest. “Are you mad?”

“You’re the one who said to look for patterns.” She relaxed against him, tilting her head back against his neck, and he let her go.

“But look—”

She followed the motion of his hand, and in the distance, at what must be the centre of the pattern, a building shone in the sunlight, the tallest Mesema had ever seen. Its white stone rose in a series of jagged points that cut away at the sky, and at the centre was a tower, rising even higher into the blue, straining towards heaven. As she looked, the shapes and lines that had surrounded it flashed and disappeared.

Mesema kept close to Banreh, feeling his warmth, smelling the ink on his hands. “What is it?”

Banreh didn’t answer.

Eldra came to them, her feet light on the sand. Her eyes showed no fear; instead she smiled at them. “The traders-who-walk speak of these pointed houses. They are holy places for my people.”

“Did the pattern bring it here? It—It wasn’t here before. Was it?” Mesema shivered, though the heat grew all around her. Perhaps it had been behind a dune.

“It’s a gift,” said Eldra, glowing now with excitement. Mesema gathered her lips around another question, but Arigu suddenly pushed between them, tall, and wide as the front of a horse, blocking the light of the dawning sun. He grabbed Eldra by the arm, his big hand crushing the fabric of her sleeve.

Eldra stumbled backwards, kept from the sand only by his iron grip. Then he hit her, and she fell.

The whole camp gathered about them now, taking in the scene, muttering among themselves. Banreh knelt by Eldra and touched her cheek. They exchanged soft words. They looked so intimate, with their foreheads almost touching, Banreh’s hand now on Eldra’s shoulder, that Mesema drew her mind away. She tried to focus on another conversation, but all the other voices distorted in her ears.

Mesema turned to the general, putting her hands on her hips. “Apologise!”

Arigu looked down at Banreh. “Scribe: tell your charge I will do no such thing. We cannot stop here in this place of sickness.” He turned away and shouted for his men to break camp.

“Only a coward hits a woman!” she called after him. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Banreh watching her from his place on the sand.

Arigu stopped and pointed to where the pattern had shimmered on the dunes. “Did you see that pattern?”

“Of course—I’ve seen it before. I’m not frightened!”

His mouth twisted as he took a step towards her. “You’re lucky I don’t hit you, too, Princess. Do you know how many soldiers I have lost to that pattern? How many good men have died with those marks on their skin?”

“Died?” Surprise won over Mesema’s anger.

“You’ve seen the pattern, but not the death?” He stepped closer, his nose twitching as if he smelled bad meat. “What are you, then?”

Mesema waved her hands in denial. “I saw a pattern on the grass. That’s all.” Maybe the pattern was not the Hidden God’s, just the hare, showing a safe path through.

Arigu calmed. His sharp eyes studied her. He looked thoughtful, and for a moment he reminded her of Banreh, only less kind. “And what were you looking for, out there on the sands?”

She swallowed. “A path.”

Eldra was sitting up now, steadied by Banreh’s arm, and Mesema looked away. Watching them touch made her stomach twist around.

Arigu wasn’t finished with her. “A path to that building?”

She shook her head, no.

“Good. That kind of building has caused more trouble in Cerana than even the pattern.” Arigu motioned her forwards. “Come, girl. Let me look at your arms.”

“Why?” she asked, confused, even as she moved towards him.

“I need to see if you have the marks.”

She held out her arms and Arigu folded back the sleeves of her tunic. She noticed that his hands were trembling, but his fingers were light on her as he examined her skin. He was gentle, for a big, gruff man. “Well,” he said after a few minutes, “you don’t have the marks.”

“And if I did?”

Arigu ignored her question. “You said you saw the pattern in the grass. Did somebody put it there?”

“Just the wind.”

“And you never saw it before that?”

“No.” Mesema brushed her sleeves back into place.

“Would you remember what it looked like? If someone asked you to make a picture of it?”

“The bigger shapes, maybe.” The path is important, not the pattern.

Without another word to her, Arigu turned to Banreh. “Come with me,” he said. He pointed at Eldra. “Don’t touch her,” he called out to his men. “Let me deal with her.” He tapped Banreh’s shoulder and the two walked together, away from Mesema. “I have to ask you—” he began, but they passed out of her hearing.

Mesema knelt by Eldra. “Did it hurt?”

Eldra nodded, still cradling her cheek. “I want to go to the church.” “You can’t. We’re moving on.”

“Mesema, who can outride a Felt? I’ll be there before they can even—” “Listen. The pattern kills people. Arigu just said so. If the church is part of that…” She remembered Banreh dragging her away, remembered seeing the church for the first time. How had she not seen it before?

“The Cerani lies.” Eldra rose and brushed the sand from her skirt. “And the pattern is not the church; our faith is older than patterns.” She walked to the carriage, her posture straight and sure. Mesema was relieved that she went to the carriage and not the horses. Eldra’s words were just words; she wouldn’t ride off to the strange church alone.

In the distance, Banreh nodded to Arigu and limped back towards them, step by step. His face remained patient and still, even as sweat dripped from his hairline and soaked the collar of his tunic. She stood up to face him as he drew close, lifting her chin and putting her hands on her hips.

They looked at one another for a long moment.

“It is as I told you; you must learn to curb your tongue,” said Banreh. “Because I see things?”

“Partly. They have never heard of windreading before. But mostly, Cerani

women don’t speak as you do.” He gathered himself. “Arigu says the pattern is a soul-stealer. Those marked by it become its servants. Those it can’t use, it kills.”

“How can a pattern make such decisions, Banreh? There must be—” “There must be what? Do you know something more?”

Did she? Mesema lost her grip on the tiny thread she’d been following in

her mind. “No.”

“Well, then. Keep your thoughts close.”

Mesema twisted her hands together. “I understand. Banreh, where did that church come from?”

He looked puzzled for a moment. “I suppose it was behind a dune and then the wind moved the sand…” He stopped, then said, “I have to tell you something.”

She waited, watching Banreh massage his hip with one hand. He paused overlong, his eyes still cast down. Something bad, then.

“Tell me,” she said at last.

He looked at her. “The emperor doesn’t know you’re coming. Until he dies, you must keep your betrothal a secret.”

“But I’m to go to the palace!”

“No, we will wait in the city.”

“For him to die?”

Banreh sighed, and said, “Yes.”

Mesema took a breath. She’d known it would be hard, coming to the desert and living among the Cerani, but she hadn’t expected treachery. She stepped forwards, putting a trembling hand on Banreh’s shoulder. “Banreh—Arigu doesn’t mean to kill the emperor, does he?”

“No, the emperor is already dying.”

She breathed a sigh of relief. “But why keep it a secret? Imagine, if you married someone and my father didn’t know…” Mesema caught her breath. “My father was deceived.”

“Not exactly.”

“My father was deceived, and Arigu’s only warning us now because it’s too late for us to turn back.” She spoke, though her throat felt hollowed by sand.

Banreh kept silent, staring at the church in the distance.

“Arigu has been disloyal, Banreh, and caught us up in his game. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.”

“As you say, it is too late for us to turn back.”

She couldn’t read his voice. “Is that why Eldra is here? In case we make a run for it and get lost in the desert? So she can be the Felting bride if I run? We look alike.” Mesema gathered her hair in both hands and pulled.

Banreh hung his head. “When the emperor dies, you will be a queen, as Arigu promised, and your father will be satisfied.”

“And the war can go on, because nothing is more important. Not even this pattern that kills.”

Banreh looked over his shoulder at the packed horses and the waiting soldiers. “Come. It is time for us to move to a new camp.”

Mesema wiped at a tear and turned her back on Banreh. The dunes stretched out before her, their valleys offering shadow and secrecy. Without thought she started running, between one dune and the next, the sand shifting under her slippers, until her legs were shaking with effort. At last she fell against a soft, shadowed slope, gasping for breath. The sand cushioned her back and coiled around her feet like a rug. She was well hidden from the soldiers, and the pattern.

Mesema closed her eyes and listened for Banreh’s uneven gait. When he came around her side of the dune she said, “You will never let me run away from it, will you, Lame Banreh?”

“When Arigu chose you, your great-uncle looked into the grass.”

Mesema made a snort of disbelief. She didn’t open her eyes. She didn’t want to see his face.

“The wind showed us the future. You are to create a new leader, and with him, more glory than we have ever seen.”

“Glory that comes from fighting?” Mesema sighed. “You have used your honeyed tongue on me once already, Lame Banreh. I listen more cautiously now.”

“Then hear this.” But he said nothing for a time.

Mesema kept her eyes closed, listening to the falling of the sand.

“Mesema,” he said at last, “I would not let you go unless I believed it.”

“Go to Nooria?”

“I meant, go away from me.”

A sob escaped her, but she caught the second one and held it. “If you don’t hold me right now,” she said, “I will never forgive you, Banreh.”

Movement, and she felt his arms around her, the damp of his sweat and the roughness of his tunic. She laid her head against his chest. “This is the last time,” she said. “I will be braver in the future.”

He said nothing, only smoothing her hair.

“Damn my great-uncle and damn the grass,” she said after a time.

His voice fell soft against her ear. “It’s time to go.”

“Yes.” She stirred against him.

He kissed her where her hair met her forehead. His lips were soft, but the touch of them burned her.

“Don’t.” She opened her eyes and stood up, arranging her hair with her hands. The feel of him radiated through her, even now that the sun bled its full heat into the air. It would have to last. She took a breath and felt the hot air fill her lungs.

The high, pointed tower of the church peeked over the ridge of a dune. She shivered, remembering what Arigu had said about his dead soldiers. She couldn’t fathom how the deadly shapes related to Eldra’s religion. Perhaps the church worked like a sword: a power, to be used by good and evil alike. Mesema understood swords, and she could only grow to understand them better as time passed. But if the god was a sword, the pattern was something else again. Where a sword cut and laid bare, the pattern bound and kept hidden. Much like Arigu.

She didn’t trust Arigu. Worse, something kept her from saying so. Instead she turned to Banreh, motioning towards where she knew the Cerani general waited, putting aside the thudding in her stomach. “Let us leave this place,” she said.

“I think there is someone behind the Carriers,” Tuvaini said. “A man.”

Lapella made no indication that she had heard him. She lay across the bed, turned away on her side, her smooth curves bare for his inspection.

He ran a finger along her hip. He knew she listened. Lapella would always listen to him. “And those who fall ill hear his voice and become his creatures.”

She moved, a slow, oiled motion, turning her face to the pillow, her hip to the bed.

Tuvaini watched her, watched the lantern gleam on her skin. He knew she held tight to his words. She thought he was giving something to her, sharing secrets, making a bond.

“He has touched the emperor, this man.”

Lapella stiffened at that, her fingers knotting in the sheets, then she drew a deep breath and relaxed.

“He plans for the day he will speak and Beyon will follow his will.” Tuvaini pictured Beyon’s face. He wondered when the light in the emperor’s eyes would die. The Carriers were already preparing the ground for their advance, buying favors within the palace walls, even from Tuvaini himself.

Lapella moved to receive him, though still she did not speak, even as she lifted herself.

Tuvaini thought of the enemy’s purchases. Entry through the Red Hall to kill the emperor’s Knife. Access to Prince Sarmin, through the secret ways. Tuvaini had sold them both when the price offered exceeded their value. Though the first time, with Eyul, he hadn’t known the target.

Lapella sighed beneath him and he twisted his fingers within her hair, pulling her head back.

The man behind the Carriers—the enemy—he might walk the palace even now. He had failed once already, and he would fail again.

There had been a moment when Eyul had been locked in combat with one of the Carriers, a moment when it had seemed their intention had changed. The Carrier pretending to attack Tuvaini hadn’t moved to finish Eyul, though Eyul was injured; instead, it ran. Eyul lived. Beyon and Sarmin lived also, occupied with the prince’s wild bride.

Tuvaini need only wait for his moment.

The enemy had failed, and he would fail again. A wild bride, with wild ways.

He would fail again.

Tuvaini, spent, pushed Lapella from him. Sweat ran across his ribs. “He buys favors, but he doesn’t know what he has paid.”

Lapella lay silent, gleaming, soft motion in her hips.

He could hear her breathing now. “He will take Beyon, but I hold the keys to Beyon. And when I choose, Beyon will be undone.”

“What then?”

At last she speaks.

“The empire will be great once more.” A strong empire would defeat the curse at last. Once the Pattern Master showed his hand Tuvaini would strike, and the Cerani would no longer live in fear of his design. They would reach for magnificence, as they had in the Reclaimer’s time. There would be art and song, and trade to be had. The light of heaven would fall once again upon the throne.

Lapella rolled to face him. Already he wanted her again: her ripe curves, her dark curls, the faint scars of the wounds that made her his, the way she bit her lip when their eyes met. She ran a finger down his cheek and a lump came to his throat, surprising him. “I’m afraid for you,” she said.

He rolled over and entered her once more, pinning her hands against the pillows. This time would be even better. He liked to see himself in her eyes. “Worry for the Carriers and their Master.”