rear, muttering disdain and belching, nine of them, four belonging to Matarai, three to him, two to Al-Tari and his son, each with its load swaying on high, tight-folded tents, pressed dates, urns of cooking oil, deflated waterskins, and most precious, the salt-blocks stacked and wrapped, white gold to the cities strung like pearls along the Blessing. The memory shredded, vivid greens swallowed by pale sand. Back where he had seen the ropes of a buried tent, a dune slumped forward, a noiseless avalanche flowing over one of the last palms.
“Al-Tari!” And with that last shout the tent folded in on itself, grey sections falling to powder.
“Dear Mirra, save us!” Silence. The cold of the desert night and silence. Where were the goats, the camels? “Where-” Something rose among the folds of Al-Tari’s tent and stole any other words from Aharab’s mouth. The shapeless form writhed and struggled. Aharab took a step back, the nightcold running like a blade along his spine. “Mirra!”
Tent fabric tore and fell, and stepping from it came Al-Tari’s boy, Tomra, grey with dust. Aharab struggled to speak and failed. The boy walked forward, dust rising around each footstep. Aharab took a step back for each step of Tomra’s approach, retreating across the hardpan, away from the desert, away from the oasis, away from the child.
Tomra held a hand out, dust sifting from his fingers. Where the pale dust left him, the flesh beneath lay more pale still. Duty and compassion made Sarmin want to go to the boy, even if Aharab’s memory screamed that this was no longer Tomra, not all of him.
“W-what are you?” Still Aharab fell back. A djinn had entered the child, surely, for he didn’t move like Tomra but like an old man forgetting how to walk.
The boy opened his mouth, his lips moved, but nothing came save the hiss of sand over sand.
“What are you?” Aharab screamed the words.
The hiss again and a single reply. “Hollow.”
Sarmin’s desire to help the boy came of duty but the thanks he gave when Aharab turned and ran sprang from older and more primal source.
“I have brought you something, Magnificence.”
Sarmin stumbled back over smooth tile, terror echoing in his throat and limbs. Tomra! Tomra? But the desert had disappeared, replaced by painted walls and a high, cushioned bench. He turned around in the reception room, empty now, but still fragranced by fish and perfume. How did I get here? Sarmin’s hand wavered, and light from his lantern danced across a woman’s face. A priestess’ face. Not hollow. She moved forwards, jangling with charms and bracelets, arms wrapped about a clay urn, then crouched to place it on the tiled floor. Her loosely-tied robes opened to show where necklaces swayed between her breasts.
Sarmin watched her, allowing his breathing to slow, his heart to resume a normal rhythm. Aharab was fading but this too could be a dream.
— She is of Meksha. A young woman’s voice rose from his mind’s depths, awed and respectful. Meksha’s temple perched against the rocks of the Kofka mountains, a place where the blood of the earth rose burning from the fractured rock. If she were truly here then she had come a long way. The earth beneath Sarmin’s feet was long dead, cold against his slippers.
He cleared his throat. “What have you brought me, priestess of Meksha?”
“Magnificence, I have come from the temple deep in the mountains where fires melt and rocks flow, water burns and air chokes. I come from the place where Meksha sings, at the heart of the world where all things are possible and all things can be seen.” She spoke in a low voice, gravelled by smoke, as she made a slow circuit of the urn. Her golden toe-rings glimmered in the lantern light. “Meksha bid me bring you this,” she said, “It will help you through the coming storm.”
— An emperor does not wait for an answer! An outraged voice, one he had not heard before, but familiar all the same.
“What is in the urn?” he said, folding his arms behind his back with a frown.
“Something that goes beyond the bickering of armies and the struggle for a throne,” she answered, beginning another circle. Her hair had been drawn into a complex arrangement and he found himself struck by the pattern it made from pins and twists. “Hundreds of years ago Meksha granted magic to Uthmann for the founding of the Tower. And so it was Meksha’s priests who tutored Helmar Pattern Master when he was held here, like you, my emperor, against an uncertain future, as grain buried in clay urns, sealed against the threat of failed harvests.” She met his gaze. “These are the records of those times.”
Sarmin looked into her eyes. The Pattern Master had written marks upon the skin of thousands, making each person a small part of his grand design. Together they had been the Many. The pattern was broken, the Pattern Master dead, but the Many had left its mark on the empire. On the emperor, too. He touched a finger to his forehead. To open the urn would be to find another brother, the one who had been hidden away, forgotten, as he had been. They had both been held in the same tower room, hundreds of years apart. He hoped this was not a dream. “Open it.”
The priestess bent over the urn, her necklaces swinging forwards and clicking like teeth. “It does not open, Magnificence. It is sealed by signs and magic.”
“Then how-”
She smiled. “I do not know. But if Helmar sealed it, you, Magnificence, can surely open it.”
Sarmin did not know whether challenge or faith lay beneath her words but it was the stout urn and its handled lid that commanded his attention. “You are dismissed,” he said, and listened as the clacking of her beads grew faint. Sarmin had killed the Helmar, Pattern Master but a different Helmar was hiding inside of this clay. No, not hidden. Forgotten. He pulled on the handle, but as he expected the lid was sealed tight. A puzzle to open. The Many moved inside Sarmin, jostling against one another.
— Don’t open it-the horsegirl is-it was cakes and lemon slices and I ate them, oh I ate them-don’t-I had a comb, it was silver with mother-of-pearl-
— Silence, all of you!
Sarmin woke in his room beside the unbroken calligraphy, the cold desert air on his cheeks. Had he been dreaming, then, of both Aharab and the priestess? But the urn was at his side, its seal intact. Not dreams, then. He touched the blue ink on the wall, fingers against dry paper. “Is that who was coming? The priestess?” he asked.
Silence.
He would look in his Book of Histories. The middle book, neither large nor small, containing little of knives or instruction, had always been his least favourite. Written in a tiny font and beginning with a long geneaology, it described Cerana from Uthmann’s time, when Meksha had been the patron of the land, gifting Nooria with the Tower. It ended with the trimphant story of Satreth the Reclaimer and his victory over Yrkmir. Over the course of long nights Sarmin had inked in his own additions-his father’s name, Beyon’s name, the births and deaths of his young brothers-and just recently, he had pulled the book from the dust and written at a bottom of one page Daveed, son of Tuvaini, and Pelar, son of Sarmin.
It was for that book that he reached now, hoping to find some reference to priests of Meksha tutoring a young prince. Helmar was not included in the histories, he knew that already-but perhaps some remnant had been left behind, some mention of a boy and his priest.
But Histories lay open on the floor, its leather cover loose and twisted, the pages cut to shreds. “No!” Sarmin knelt by the ruined book, grieving as for a friend. His least favourite, yes, but one of his only companions during Beyon’s reign. The destruction was complete; each page dagger-cut and punctured, the words bending and disappearing into the wounds. Such rage had guided that blade that even now Sarmin could feel it, emanating from the book like a scent or a memory. With trembling fingers he searched for the last geneaology page, where he had entered the name of his son and new brother.
Gone.
“Ta-Sann!” he cried, “Ta-Sann, who has been in my room!” But even as he spoke he suspected something else, a darker possibility, the truth of how he had found himself in the reception room with no memory of having walked there, of the manner in which he had returned. As the sword-son entered he knew what the man would say, that guards were posted at the stairwell door and the door to the Ways could not be opened without the emperor’s own key. That nobody had been here. Nobody, but himself.
