The Emperors Knife

CHAPTER Two

Pray for an heir.” Beneath the vizier’s dry humour, Eyul could hear the disappointment.

Eyul pressed himself to the stonework as the vizier squeezed past. He took his lamp from the niche by the door and fell in behind. “Prince Sarmin was not as compliant as you’d hoped?”

“He is the emperor’s brother, no mistaking that.” Tuvaini hurried down the steep, narrow stair cut into the thickness of the tower wall. Ten turns brought them into the natural rock, the base of the oldest palace. They reached the chasm, and the vizier strode across the bridging stone without pause. Eyul’s lamp made no impression on the darkness to either side of the narrow span, but he knew the hidden drop fell a good twenty yards. Tuvaini opened a lead. He was familiar with the passages and seemed spurred to haste by his anger. The distance between them grew as Eyul picked his way.

“So he told you his own plan?” That was what the emperor would have done. Eyul took a certain satisfaction in seeing Tuvaini vexed. The vizier prided himself on his composure.

“If that’s what you call stealing my knife and praying for death.” Tuvaini waved a hand over the empty sheath at his belt.

Eyul had noted the missing dacarba. It was his business to know where weapons were, and where they were not. With the bridge behind him, he picked up the pace.

Tuvaini slid through the maze of unlit corridors, making sudden turns, left, right, and left again, with a whisper of swirled silk.

“Few men who wish for death hold that desire to the very end.” Eyul came to a halt behind Tuvaini at the Red Door. He heard the jingle of keys as the vizier fished in his robes for the required hook-twist.

“You didn’t see his eyes.” Tuvaini turned and pushed. The door swung inwards on noiseless hinges. He lowered his voice and repeated, “Pray for an heir.”

The prince would not long survive the birth of another heir. Eyul felt the old chill reaching across his back. It was bad luck to kill the mad, but then, Eyul had never depended on luck.

“I serve the empire,” he said. He stepped quickly through the doorway, into the light.

Tuvaini closed the secret door and brushed the scrolled fabric of the wall coverings to obscure the hairline cracks that remained. “The prince has bid me return to him soon. I will have to go—I can’t trust in his sanity to hold him silent.” He paced the circumference of the room. With each lamp he passed, his shadow leaped towards the fountain at the centre. Finally he slowed, and Eyul knew he’d found the voice he liked best to use, full of charm and regret. “It saddens me that the Empire Mother schemes against the empire. Your Knife may be forced into use, Eyul.”

Eyul’s hand strayed to the ancient blade at his hip. It is not my Knife, it is a thing older and more cruel than I. He recalled the day the old emperor had handed the weapon to him. He’d thought it an ugly thing, poorly made.

Emperor Tahal had been a delicate man, thin where Beyon was muscular, understanding where Beyon used force. He had folded Eyul’s fingers about the twisted hilt and pressed his own hand against the razored edge. “Only with this holy weapon may royal blood be spilled without sin,” he told him. “You enter into a divine covenant, Knife of Heaven. You are the Hand of Justice. Serve only the empire, and damnation will not befall you.”

Would that were true. The young princes visited Eyul in his dreams. Every night they watched him. Every night their blood ran through his fingers. He felt their lifeless gazes upon him even now.

Eyul shook the memory from his mind. “And if the marks are true? We could have a Carrier on the petal throne.”

“If the marks are true the pattern will carry Beyon from the throne.” Tuvaini sat on the edge of the fountain and ran his fingers across the slick tiles. “One way or another.” His voice sounded heavy, but with sadness or anticipation, Eyul couldn’t tell.

Eyul listened to the play of the waters. He liked this room at the heart of the palace. During the day the fountain belonged to the women. They hung their firm, glossy legs over the sides and murmured together as they enjoyed the relief from the midday sun. The men gathered around the fountain in the evening, smoking their pipes and discussing matters of empire. All of them were mere ghosts at the time of midnight bells. In this dark hour, the fountain took on the stony feel of a tomb and offered a rare peace.

The Old Emperor had laid on Eyul a burden; the future of the empire might rest on the twisted Knife at his side. The pattern-marks had threatened the empire since the time of Beyon’s grandfather. They spread from person to person, silently, imperceptibly, until hundreds died at once, the agony in their final moments surpassing any torturer’s skill. By the time those blue shapes appeared on a person’s skin, only two possibilities remained. The marked person either died, or changed for ever, abandoning his family and all that he loved to answer the call of the pattern. They murdered and thieved in unison, but to what end, no one could tell. Blank of face and eye, Carriers were mere shadows of their former selves, walking imitations of life. The emperor’s Blue Shields endeavoured to burn all victims, purge the sickness, and leave no trace of the pattern. Fires burned throughout the city, achieving nothing but smoke and the stench of burning flesh. The marks continued to appear, coloring their way even to the emperor.

“The emperor—” Tuvaini began to speak.

A shadow passed, a flicker at the edge of Eyul’s vision.

Ambush!

Tuvaini saw it too, a heartbeat later. He lifted his feet and spun into the fountain. “Treachery!” he cried. A knife blurred through the space where his head had been.

Eyul turned right, blade at the ready. Three shadows, two spreading to flank him, one advancing. Eyul danced aside from the lunge of a dagger and caught the black-clad arm behind the thrust. The emperor’s Knife slid home, deep, steel in meat. Two more.

One circled Tuvaini, who struggled to his feet in dripping silk. The other—where had he gone? Instinct made Eyul dive forwards and the knife seeking his heart bit only his calf as he rolled clear.

The assassin loomed over him, his blade a flicker in his closed fist. Eyul spun on the floor, grabbed the man’s sandal, and rose quickly, yanking up the captured foot. His foe toppled, arms flailing, head cracking when it hit the tiles. Eyul held only the shoe now, lost as the man fell. Without pause Eyul threw himself onto the prone figure, pinning knife-hand to floor, holding the man down with his whole body.

The Carrier made no move other than to open his eyes, and Eyul almost rolled clear at the sight of his fixed and unfocused pupils. Those eyes belonged on a corpse, but the body below him continued to struggle, lifting a free arm towards Eyul’s face—an arm twined with blue lines, half-moons and circles. Plague marks. Eyul pushed it back. They lay leg to leg, arm to arm, intimate as lovers.

“Who sent you?” he asked, fighting the bile in his mouth. No answer. He rolled away, drawing his Knife over the Carrier’s throat. So sharp neither of them really felt it.

Eyul struggled to his feet. Hot blood ran down his leg. He slipped across the marble floor towards the last attacker, who circled the fountain, wolf to Tuvaini’s fox. He glanced at Eyul with those same vacant eyes and fled. Eyul shuddered and let him run, through the great archway to the Red Hall beyond.

Tuvaini glanced to his left and right and struggled to pull his wet robes over the lip of the fountain. It might have been funny, another time. “Carriers,” he said, “in the game, and placing their tiles.” He squeezed water from his robe. Blue dye joined with the blood upon the floor to make a royal purple.

“We need to know more. We’ll put our hopes in the old hermit.”

“Yes,” Eyul said. Certainty overtook him. “We will.”

“There’s an old man who lives in the caves to the south,” Dahla said. Her mouth was as busy as her needle-hand. Dahla sewed so fast, Mesema couldn’t even count the stitches.

“Listen,” said Dahla, though all the women were already listening. “Listen. The Cerani go to him with questions, silly questions that only a god could answer, such as, “Will I have a boy or a girl come summer?” or, “Will it rain tomorrow?” And the old man, he’ll answer them. But first he’ll say, “Give me your goat,” and tear it apart and read the insides. But sometimes’—now she leaned forwards, her hand at rest against the fine fabric in her lap, her eyes white enough to match—

“listen. Sometimes he asks for children!”

The women bent over the bride-clothes, giggling and shaking their heads. “Dahla,” Mesema’s mother scolded from the oven table, “how can you be so cruel? Dirini will barely sleep tonight.”

Dirini herself only stared into the fire, one of her boys clutched to her chest. She couldn’t take her sons to meet her new husband, and Mesema knew it broke her heart.

“It’s only a night’s tale, Mamma,” said Mesema, her mirth fading. “Is it? Who knows, with these Cerani? Mad hares, they are.” The older woman glanced up through strands of grey, but her eyes saw something distant. Her hands kneaded the bread with a slow intensity. Mesema thought her mother’s heart must be breaking. Dirini was the first daughter to marry outside the clan. Outside the People, even. She was meant for a Cerani royal.

Mesema couldn’t bear to see all this grief; she looked away and pushed her own sorrow aside. The clothes had to be finished before Dirini’s departure at summer’s end.

A prick! Mesema quickly dropped her work before blood ruined the fine wool. She licked the wound with annoyance. She couldn’t sew now, not until her finger stopped bleeding. She rose and laid the dress on the wooden bench with her uninjured hand. “Look, Mamma,” she said, holding out her finger as a baby might.

Before her mother could look, a herder stuck his head through the door flap. “Chief wants Mesema.”

“Lucky for you she’s not working,” Mamma said. She looked at Mesema and shrugged. Rarely were women called into the men’s longhouse. It was their place, to drink and sing without the distractions a female might offer. The herder’s face disappeared as quickly as it had come, and Mamma pointed at Mesema’s trousers.

“Do I have to wear the seat felt? I’m only going—” But Mesema stopped; she could see this was not the time to argue. She stuffed the wool into her trousers, blushing. The felt would bring every rider’s eye to her figure, and what man did not prize a full behind?

Outside she heard the bleating of sheep combined with the muffled sound of men’s laughter. Mesema took her time at first, enjoying the night air.

A Red Hoof, one of ten captives from the last war, hurried by with a pail of water for the horse-pen. His eyes met hers, threatening the dark future when he would be free. She quickened her pace. She hadn’t forgotten the sight of her brother Jakar, grey and lifeless over his horse, a broken Red Hoof spear sprouting from his chest. She hadn’t forgotten the pain and sorrow of watching the enemy’s riders fly away from the longhouses like ravens from a tree.

The Red Hoof passed her, too closely. She darted under the flap of the men’s house and breathed a sigh of relief, though the herbs smoking in the fire pit filled her eyes with tears. Besna leaves thrown on the coals were meant to block the smell of horses and sweat, but they ruined her vision as well.

Mesema knew her father sat in the centre, on a raised platform covered with furs, but she could only move her feet and hope they brought her there.

“No wonder Cerani can’t breed,” he was saying. “The fools don’t know how to choose a woman.”

“We shouldn’t complain,” another man said. “Now this deal might cost us almost nothing.”

Mesema heard her cousin’s voice. “Dirini can marry into the Black Horse Clan now. We need to make a firm alliance there.” Mesema stumbled over a row of muscular legs. The wool stuffed into her riding trousers scratched her bottom and wiggled dangerously with every step. She rubbed at her eyes and saw her father’s long hair only an arm’s length away.

“Father,” she called, “you sent for me?” She fought to stay in the same spot as men twice her size moved around her.

“Ah, yes.” He beckoned her closer and motioned to Lame Banreh at his right. “Banreh, tell this general that this is my unproven daughter.” Next to Banreh sat a man with black hair and a metal breastplate. She recognised the crest: the Cerani had sold the same armour to the Red Hooves last year.

Banreh nodded and leaned towards the stranger. His lips moved and strange staccato noises came forth.

Years ago, Banreh had fallen off his horse and shattered his leg. Useless for work or war, he’d learned how to make pictures with ink and to speak some of the trade languages. Instead of scorning Banreh as her grandfather would have done, Mesema’s father kept him at his side. They were as one, the chief and his voice-and-hands. Banreh communicated with visitors from other lands and scratched their agreements on dried lambskin. He was especially good with Cerani.

The stranger’s black eyes veered Mesema’s way. He murmured something to Lame Banreh.

Banreh avoided Mesema’s gaze as he spoke. “He says she looks pretty, but she’s too fat. Her posterior…’

Mesema’s cheeks grew hot, but her father only laughed and slapped the Cerani’s shoulder. “This man is indeed a fool,” he said to Banreh. “Tell him this is the only daughter I have who is untouched by a man. If he doesn’t like her, tell him again that Dirini is a strong mother with good hips.” As the men around him began to laugh, he added, “I’m only trying to help.”

Banreh spoke to the Cerani man once more, punching the air in a downwards motion. Mesema could tell he wasn’t translating her father’s exact words. Instead, he was revealing why all the Felting women had big behinds.

“Papa,” she said, using the affectionate tone, “why do you bring me here while the men are drinking?”

“Because,” her father said, taking a swig from his skin, “you’ve not proven to be a good breeder.”

The heat from the fire burned her cheeks. “I haven’t failed! I have one more season before I am even tried.”

“I know.” Her father laughed again.

The merriment escaped her. “Please let me go, Father.”

At that moment Banreh looked up and said, “Mesema—wait.” His kind expression and tone soothed her. But then he turned to her father, and with eleven words took her world apart.

“Chief, General Arigu agrees to take Mesema as the royal bride.”