Grada climbed the last two steps. “We were wrong. This Knife cuts just as all the others. I am just as damned.”
Sarmin blinked back tears. He took a step towards her. Reached out and set his hand to her shoulder. “I had hoped we could remake it, forge a new path…”
Grada lowered her head. “This Knife cuts.” She glanced back towards Zell in the spreading pool of his blood. “But it cuts both ways.” She pointed at the dying lord with the Knife, its ugly blade hung with his lifeblood.
Sarmin looked out at the sea of still faces, outrage on the high and the mighty, curiosity here, surprise there, each turned his way. He had laid the burden of the Knife on Grada, misused her as badly as Helmar before him, damned her. He sat lord of an empire so wide a year might turn before a man could walk from border to border, heir to an unbroken chain of emperors, blood of the Reclaimer… and even so, she stood before him, untouchable, blooded, and showed him truth, showed him the path.
“The Knife-Sworn protect the emperor from whatever threats may come,” he told his court, lifting a voice unused to speech and finding in it the same power of command that had run through Beyon’s. “The emperor is the empire. And as ever, even with the threats of Yrkmir and the desert, our greatest enemies lie within.” He let that settle with them and swept his gaze across the dais steps. “I wanted peace and Arigu gave me war. I wanted reconciliation and a traitor within murdered envoy Kavic. I wanted security and yet my own lords lead such poisonous lives that our people turn to a foreign god and our slaves turn traitor.
“I have tried to be Sarmin the Saviour, tried to be Sarmin the Kind, the Peacemaker, but Cerana doesn’t need such emperors. The weakness of this empire is born of the strength of my convictions, its cruelty of my kindness, its war of my peace.
“From this day I will be a new emperor, the emperor Cerana does not deserve but needs. I will gather my power to me. My Knife will cut, cut, and cut again until my word is law, my will imposed, my desire your only concern. Cerana shall be united under one will, focused to one goal, obedient to one man.”
Mesema entered through a side door, her hair piled into a complex arrangement of curls and butterfly pins. He held out a hand to her and she walked towards him, high shoes slowing her path up the dais steps. Only one glance for Zell and his blood. He thought of Pelar, stronger with each passing hour since the sealing of the first wound. Their son, Sarmin’s and Mesema’s. Together they would find Daveed. Together they would…
We will make a better world.
Mesema arrived at his side and gripped his hand for the briefest moment before stepping back, taking her place at his side. Sarmin let his gaze return to the steps below him, the old men in their jewels and silks, wrapped in their plans and ambitions. None of it mattered. He had lived a lifetime with this cancer and if Cerana were to stand against the future the sickness must be cut out. Let them gaze upon his fierce empress and his blunt, honest Knife. He leaned forward and set a kiss upon Grada’s forehead.
“Go to it, Knife-Sworn”
