The Emperors Knife

CHAPTER Twenty-Five

Eyul turned another corner of the Maze. Smoke from the Carrierpyres overlaid the more familiar scents of blood and excrement, the flavours of his old home. The familiarity of the twisting alleys reassured him as much as the Knife at his hip. He felt more surety here than in Tuvaini’s dark passages. The Maze was honest, in all of the ways most people didn’t wish to see.

He moved towards his destination with confidence, memory guiding his feet for his vision was hazy behind white linen. The alley where he’d made his first kill ran alongside the ruins of an old Mogyrk church. These days he doubted anybody could have identified the fire-darkened, crumbling mortar for what it had been, but Eyul remembered from Halim, who knew it from his father. Only memories kept Satreth’s victory alive, though here in the Maze, it hardly felt like a victory. The Mogyrks, Halim had told him in a hushed whisper, had given out food and clothes to the denizens of these twisting streets. The only charity they saw now happened on feast-days, when the palace discarded its old clothing and spoiled food, and expected the Maze-folk to be grateful.

Eyul paused at the final turn, listening to an altercation in the narrow street ahead: two men and a woman, and the woman was screaming. He felt a grim smile on his lips. Don’t let them run from me. He touched his hand to the hilt of his Knife and moved forwards.

“Not this. Go to the palace.” The Knife-whisper, authoritative, for a child.

“Quiet.”

The low-born men turned. He could see the lines of their bodies, their heads turned attentively in his direction: they thought he’d been speaking to them. They had the woman bent over the lip of an old well, one holding her arms while the other was making ready to take his pleasure.

Eyul pulled his Knife free.

“Can you not spare the tin to pay for that?” Eyul’s feet tingled with the pleasure of the upcoming dance.

“I’m no whore!” The woman’s shadow quivered as she struggled.

“Liar.” One of the men punctuated his word with a slap. “This is no concern of yours, blind man.”

Eyul smiled. “True.” This would be too easy. Disappointment crept in. Maybe this wasn’t what he wanted after all. “But I’d still like you to go.” He hefted the Knife in his hand. “I came to visit this place, and you’re disturbing me.”

The men exchanged glances. The woman lay still and said nothing. He could guess at their thinking: either he could take them, against all logic, or he was mad. Either way, it was bad luck to fight him.

“Herzu take her anyway.” The man to Eyul’s left backed off.

“Don’t think we won’t remember you, Khima.”

The second man followed him, and the woman, Khima, crumpled to the stony ground, a dark lump in the centre of Eyul’s vision. He walked past her to the opposite wall and lifted his bandages. Decades of grime had obscured the arterial spray of his first victim. He ran his fingers along the brick.

The child whispered to him from the Knife, “Leave this place. You are needed at the palace.”

“Hey,” said Khima.

Eyul backed away from the wall to where he’d stood when he slit the man’s throat. Yes; he remembered. The sun shot through his vision, a welcome pain.

“Hey,” she said again, and now he could feel her warmth, her breath on his arm. He could kill her as easily as scratching his nose, add her blood to the wall. He felt free, powerful.

“I could lift my skirts,” she offered. That would do.

She was not just skinny but wasted, not much in his hands, but his body didn’t seem to mind. He finished, one hand against the brick where he’d drawn first blood, the other on her bony hip. Afterwards he offered her a drink from his waterskin.

“It’s fresh, from a well in the desert.”

“Tastes sweet.” She smacked her lips together. They were still full and round, not cracked and bleeding as they would be in a few years’ time. “What’s it like outside the walls?”

“Same as inside the walls.”

She laughed at that. He let her keep the waterskin. Already his mind itched for something else, something more. Govnan.

He left Khima sipping the sweet water in the alley. He judged she had a few hours before those men came back and took their revenge. No matter; he had a revenge of his own to finish. He covered his eyes again and slipped through the Maze, his gaze on the Tower, cutting a shadow from the sun. He dodged a galloping horse on Palace Road, twisting back to throw a curse at its silhouette of a rider.

The Knife-voices spoke together at once, loud but unintelligible.

“Be quiet, or I’ll throw you in the smith’s fire.” It was no more than a whispered threat; Tahal had given him this Knife twice over. It was all he had left.

Eyul made the rest of the way to the Tower in silence. He knew from Tuvaini that Govnan would be somewhere on a higher floor; he’d have to get past the other mages first. He paused, looking up at the Tower’s sheer walls. He couldn’t climb. He would have to hurt people.

The door swung in easily. Perhaps there was no need to lock the gate to the Tower; only a madman would enter the home of the mages with violent intentions. A young woman with light-colored eyes gave him a shallow bow. “I am Mura. What does the supplicant—?”

She didn’t finish her sentence; Eyul had spun behind her and wrapped his arm around her throat. Pointing the Knife at her heart, he said, “The supplicant wishes to see High Mage Govnan.”

She coughed, but he didn’t ease his pressure. Her elemental was trapped inside her; let it remain there. They moved through the courtyard like a clumsy four-legged beast. He saw no one else. Were there so few mages? He kicked open the brass door and looked through it, past the statues filling the entry hall. Still nobody.

The young mage began to stumble, losing air, and he let her fall. She writhed on the threshold, coughing, her hands to her throat.

“What’s your name?”

“M-mura.”

“Where are the other mages?”

“We are just… five,” she said hoarsely, “me, Govnan, Hashi who travels with the emperor, Amalya and Suresh.”

Only four mages left? “Where is Suresh?”

“Top floor… library.” Tears ran down her face. She was young.

He tucked the Knife in his belt. “I will go and see Govnan. Would you stop me?”

“You can go up, but he isn’t there.” Mura turned her face to the floor. “A Carrier came here before you, and Govnan ran to the palace.”