The Emperors Knife (10 page)

“Sarmin—please understand, I'd have come sooner, but it wasn't safe for you. There are people who, if they knew you were here—” Beyon's eyes wandered towards the scrollwork, in the area of the hidden door. “Well. You wouldn't be here any more.”

“But you come now.” Sarmin wondered why his life was no longer important. Perhaps Beyon had conceived a child at last?

His brother changed the subject. “Do you know why he did it, Sarmin? Our father?” Beyon moved to stand at the edge of the carpet, by the opaque window. “Our grandfather had mercy and spared his brothers. Our father had to kill them himself, but not in the courtyard, on the battlefield. Father wanted to spare me that.

“But you—” Beyon turned back towards Sarmin. “You were the kindest, the gentlest child—the wisest of us. You were the one who would never lead an army against his brother. I went to our father's deathbed and asked him to let you live.” His voice grew soft. “It was my very first decision as a ruler.”

Sarmin's shoulders shook with denial. “No. It was Mother who begged our father to save me.”

“No,” said Beyon, “I asked Father to spare you.”

A cold tear slid down Sarmin's cheek.

Beyon continued, “I believed it then, and I believe it now—even all these years later. You're the only person I can trust—Why do you shake your head? Is it not true?”

“It's true. It's true.” Sarmin slid to his knees on the floor. He cradled his head in wet hands. “I would never betray you, Beyon.”

Beyon knelt beside him, smelling of memories. The fatherly aroma of tobacco. A musky, female scent Sarmin almost recalled from the women's pillows. And then another, long forgotten until now: Beyon owned a dog. Sarmin longed to press himself up against his brother, soak in those memories and the fragrances of life, but Beyon grabbed his elbow and lifted it.

“Swear it,” he breathed. “Swear it on my head, and I will take you from here. I will make you my first adviser.”

Sarmin felt a moment of hope. He might sit at court. He might live among people, help Beyon run his empire, even breathe the outside air. But his imagination of these fine days quickly led him to thoughts of Tuvaini, followed by their mother and her general. He frowned as he placed his hand upon Beyon's clean hair. “Is that wise, my brother?”

“You question the Son of Heaven?” The emperor drew back, his eyes narrowing.

“Brother, if you anger those who have brought themselves up into power...” Sarmin thought of his knife, tucked away under his pillow.

“What do you care about that?” the emperor snapped. “Swear it!”

Sarmin said nothing. Beyon looked at the carpet. He lifted a hand, let it fall.

“I swear it,” said Sarmin, at last, “as a brother. I will never betray you, Beyon.”

“Yes.” Beyon nodded and placed his hands on Sarmin's shoulders. “You have sworn.” He exhaled a long breath.

Sarmin let Beyon hold him in that position for as long as he wished. He could feel Beyon's strength, and he could see the healthy tone of his skin. Beyon's breath wafted across Sarmin's face, pleasant and cool.

Tuvaini had lied. Beyon was not sick.

Beyon released him and leaned back. He looked at Sarmin as if he had just asked a question.

Sarmin opened his mouth, then said the second thing that came to mind. “I'd like to meet your dog, Beyon.”

His brother laughed, and Sarmin watched him, the way his chin went up, the way his eyes cast to the side. This, he remembered.

Beyon was like a precious new book that he couldn't keep. If he told Beyon about Tuvaini and their mother, Beyon would be angry and leave him here alone. But Sarmin couldn't keep the secret for ever.

“Sarmin,” said Beyon, with a wide-lipped smile, “you have just told the emperor that he stinks of dog.”

“My apologies, my Emperor—”

“No, no—don't apologise.”

Sarmin looked at the small scar on Beyon's cheek, the stiff taffeta of his robes, the unadorned gold around his neck.

Beyon's hands moved to his sash. “I have something to show you. Don't be afraid.” As his fingers moved, Sarmin tried to look away, tried to obey the cold hand that seemed to pull his chin to the side, but he could not. Blue-marked skin revealed itself, finger-span by finger-span.

Beyon slipped the red silk from his shoulders and sat bare-chested before his brother.

So Tuvaini had spoken true, after all. The emperor's chest and shoulders were as muscled and hairy as their father's once had been, but a curious patterning ringed his midsection with coils, concentric squares and half-moon shapes. Pairs of triangles, one facing up, the other down, appeared at regular intervals. A band of blue underscored each string and behind that, in fainter blue, a complex geometry marched beyond sight into finer and fainter detail.

Sarmin shivered. “But you look well.” He couldn't take his eyes from the designs written upon his brother's flesh.

“I'm marked,” said Beyon. “It began soon after I took the throne. At first I could hide the shapes —they were small enough—but of late, I go to my wives only in total darkness. My body-slaves…” His eyes focused elsewhere for a moment. “I was forced to have them killed. Now I let no one into my rooms.”

“Are you dying?” Something lurked in the pattern: a threat, the language unknown but the tone clear enough.

“I don't think so—maybe.” Beyon rubbed his chin. “You are my heir, should I be.”

“So you're—” Sarmin's lips trembled around the word. He forced his eyes to the emperor's face.

“A Carrier? Not that I can tell. Everything I do is of my own will.” Beyon buttoned his tunic.

Sarmin half-opened his mouth to protest as the pattern vanished behind silk. He forced himself to silence.

Beyon flicked his hair out of the way. “The dreams scare me. In them I do things not of my choosing.” He looked at the stone window. “In my dreams, my body is not my own—but I can run away from the dream if I wish. I ran away when my dream made me threaten the vizier.”

“The vizier?” Sarmin remembered the vizier's words:
The Carriers become bold, even attacking on palace grounds.

“It's getting late. They'll be looking for me.”

“Who? Who will be looking for you?” Sarmin's throat seized with fear.

“Slaves, administrators, wives, dogs.” Beyon smiled. “The denizens of the palace.”

Like Tuvaini.
Sarmin again considered telling Beyon everything; to confess about his wife, the vizier, and his secret treasure under the pillow.
No.
I have sworn to my brother, but I won't let the emperor take what is mine. Not yet.

The emperor's commanding voice broke through his thoughts. “You have sworn. You will be summoned when it is time for you to serve.” His brother was gone; the latch clicked.

Sarmin curled against the carpet until full dark, letting Ink and Paper step around him as they came to light his lanterns. Someone placed a tray of food beside his head. He smelled something new: the sour aroma of wine. Beyon's favor, or Tuvaini's, or perhaps his mother's. Whoever sent it did not expect him to wonder. He laughed to himself against the purple threads.

“Prince Sarmin of the Petal Court,” he whispered to himself. “Vizier Sarmin.” He thought another moment. “Emperor Sarmin.”

Nobody answered.

He didn't know when Beyon would be back. How long would it take? Longer than a ride from the Felt? Longer than Tuvaini's trips through the secret passageways? Longer than the reach of their mother's arms?

Sarmin stood and pulled his knife from beneath his pillow.
I will not betray you, brother.

He turned his desk upside down and hunched over it, intent. With fevered concentration he began to work. The point of the dacarba scored the wood time and again as he recreated the pattern: crescent moon, underscore, diamond within diamond, crescent moon, overscore. He missed no detail. Breath escaped him in slow rasps.
There's a secret here, for those with eyes to see.

Chapter Ten

E
yul woke with a start. The last of the sun's heat sank through the cloth of his tent.

Something is wrong.
He knew it, blood to bone. Sometimes it was like that. He knew better than to startle into action. He lay at rest, straining his senses, reaching for the wrongness. The sand between his fingers felt warm and gritty. Wrong. He sat up and moved to the tent flap. Veins ran across the dune, faint but visible in the low light of the setting sun: lines in the sand, raised little more than the thickness of a coin, no wider than his hand. Hundreds of them were stretching out in geometric profusion, crossing, intersecting, repeating.

He hurried out under a pink and orange sky. Amalya crouched by the remains of the fire, watching the lines at her feet.

“Amalya.”

“It's a pattern,” she said, staring at the shapes around her, diamond, half-moon, triangle, circle, square. “He has found us.”

“Who has?” Eyul's fingers tightened on his Knife hilt. He didn't remember drawing it; his hands had made the decision.

“The enemy.”

“I thought you said we were safe.” Eyul stood scuffing at the lines of the pattern. They reformed as the sand fell.

“I thought we were,” Amalya said. “My master told me he would hide us.” She sounded defeated.

The pattern centred on the next dune, almost two hundred yards away. The heart was formed by interlocking diamonds arrayed around a six-pointed star. From each point, a design more complex than any palace carpet swept out across the slopes.

Eyul gasped as an electric tingle ran through him. Amalya gave a low moan and struggled to her feet at his side.

“The pattern is complete,” she said.

The sands started to move. The entire facing dune began to flow, from the centre of the pattern, shifting with impossible speed, like water racing across a marble floor. He saw the tops of pillars first, then stone roofs, then archways from which the sand flooded, emptying long-buried halls. Within moments a lost city lay revealed before them, temple, tower and tomb.

Sarmin scored a line across the wood. One more stroke and the pattern would be complete. In his mind's eye he saw again the symbol-geometry emblazoned across his brother's chest, blood-red and blood-blue. He laid his dacarba on the floor and stretched his hands, noticing the ache in his thumb, the blister on his forefinger, and the sting of the old cut across his palm.

Sarmin's carved pattern contained what he had seen on Beyon's skin, but it reached out across the underside of the overturned desk to cover as much space again. He'd filled in the remainder as he would complete a circle two-thirds drawn, or fill in a mouth missing from the sketch of a face.

He sat back against his bed and rested his eyes on the more familiar intricacies of the walls. He'd long ago discovered all the watchers dwelling in the scroll and swirl of the decoration. Some of the faces he'd not found for the longest time, even after years of gazing, whole days spent staring, lost in the depths from daybreak to sunset, floating on strange and distant seas. He'd found them all before he'd grown his beard, though, the angels and the devils both. The wisest and most fearsome dwelt deepest in the patterning, hidden in plain sight, written in the most subtle twists. They had watched him grow, advised him, kept him sane.

Sarmin sought out the grim-faced angel whose gimlet eyes stared from the calligraphic convolutions above the Sayakarva window. “What will happen, Aherim?” He took up his knife again. “Should I complete it?”

Aherim held his peace. Sarmin frowned. The gods might watch in silence, but he expected answers from their minions at least. Aherim seldom missed a chance to offer advice if asked.

Sarmin set knifepoint to wood.

“It will be a stone dropped into a deep pool. No pattern can be made whole without a ripple.”

He stared at Aherim. “Someone will notice? Who? Tell me who.”

Silence. Sarmin felt unnerved. “I will ask Him.” It was not a threat to be made idly, but surely one that would coax Aherim to speak further.

Sarmin waited. He pursed his lips. He had found Him last of all: Zanasta, eldest of the devils, speaker for the dark gods. He showed only as the light failed and grazed the east wall at its shallowest angle. Even then Sarmin had to unfocus his eyes to reveal Him.

“Tell me of the Felting girl. The bride Mother has chosen.” There was time to kill before sunset.

“She comes.” Aherim spoke again at last, his voice the dry whisper of fingers on silk.

“Is she pretty? Is she kind? Does she smell good?” Sarmin sat up and leaned forwards.

“She is sad, she is strong, she smells of horses.” Aherim fell silent. He only ever answered three questions, and generally not the ones Sarmin asked.

“She is riding to me. That's why she smells of horse.” Sarmin picked up his dacarba and sighted down the blades at one of Aherim's faces. “But why is she sad? Perhaps they have told her bad things about me. Maybe I'm ugly. Or is she worried that she will have to stay in this room with me? Maybe she will miss her horse.”

Sarmin remembered camels, though not with fondness. His father had horses, but the princes were never allowed among them. “They kick worse than camels,” he remembered a groom telling him. Still, he liked the way they looked. Perhaps a horse would be a good pet.

“I will make her happy, Aherim.” Sarmin tilted the knife so that light danced along the blade's edges. “I will…” He tried to think how he might entertain her. When they came at all, people came to him with a purpose. He couldn't recall a time when someone had come to his room simply to speak, simply to be with him. “Perhaps I will not make her happy, Aherim. Maybe I will share her sorrow. I will listen and hear of her life in the sandless wastes.”

Eyul took one uncertain step, then another. Under his feet a thin layer of sand covered something solid: old stone, undisturbed by the passage of time or the magic that brought it to the surface. Amalya kept by his side, moving so close her sleeve rubbed against his. Eyul touched her elbow with his fingers and they each took another step forwards.