The Emperors Knife

CHAPTER Thirty-Eight

On the fifth day Grada walked another ten miles along the riverbanks, keeping east of the great army. The towns of Colla and Santarch came and went. She watched the dhows, low in the water, burdened with wheat and dates and salt and timber. Merchants passed her in caravans, some a hundred waggons long. None but the drivers so much as noticed her, and even the drivers had nothing but crude jests for a woman in the robes of an Untouchable.

Grada paid them no heed. She carried a prince within her, though he was distracted of late. She wondered about his dying friend.

At the Needle Stone Grada took the mountain road and left the river behind. Only the outpost of Migido lay before her now; beyond that nothing but the vastness of the desert to the west, and to the north, the badlands that would eventually give way to the grass and plains of the Felt.

Travellers were few and far apart on the mountain road. She kept her eyes on the dunes, where the desert lapped against the rocks. The sun beat at her, its brightness almost too fierce to bear, but still she watched the dunes: nomads roamed out there, and bandits, and worse, evil men who preyed on the traffic between one oasis and the next. Cerani patrols kept the mountain road safer than the desert, but it was still not secure.

The heat stifled and dried. The sweat left her without ever making her damp. She arrived at each well as parched as the strips of mutton that sustained her. She filled her stomach until it hurt and filled the skins near to bursting, but it was only ever just enough to reach the next waterhole.

The road became lonely. Travelling by day she saw no one. Sarmin always filled her, though the palace held his attention now—and perhaps the yellow-haired girl, too. She began to hunger for company, and pushed herself harder to reach Migido.

Mesema ran her finger along Beyon’s marks as he slept. Her moon-patterned finger picked up whispers and images of those the pattern had taken. A child here, begging for bread; a woman there, opening herself to a lover; a man, whispering secrets to his priest. All these lives had been lost, absorbed by shapes and lines, worked into the obscure plan of the Pattern Master. She riffled through them, a thousand thousand stories, too many for any storyteller to recall. Her throat tightened with sorrow.

“Can you feel them?”

Beyon’s voice startled her. She looked into his eyes. Still brown. Still alive. “I can feel them. It’s not what you said, it’s not sin written here. It’s just… people.”

“He took them all.”

“I know.”

“He won’t take me.”

Mesema felt as if she could breathe at last. “Thank the Hidden God. I

thought you’d given up.” One less death, one less promise to keep. Beyon would be alive. She smiled and pressed her lips against his in an impulsive kiss. “We’ll fight.”

But there was something sad about his smile. “We will.”

“This is good!” She touched their lips together again, three short happy kisses. Hope. This is what we’ve been missing.

“This is very good,” he agreed, kissing her back, long and slow. He drew one hand up her thigh, and her breath caught in her throat, relief transforming into something new. She felt his breath against her cheek, his heart beating under her fingers.

“There’s still hope, while we live,” she whispered.