“Oh he’s not my Meere. He’s the emperor’s, though the emperor may not know it yet.” Rorrin kept his voice low, tone conversational, and Grada found herself hurrying at his elbow to catch his words. “Meere is the last person many people ever see-the best knife in the Grey Service.”
That stopped Grada’s feet and left her standing, jostled by crowds. The Grey Service was something to be whispered at night, a phrase invoked to end the conversation.
“Eyul was the emperor’s Knife. I saw him through the Many. I didn’t see any Grey Service.”
Rorrin sidestepped a pot-seller hung around with his trade goods. “Eyul, son of Klemet, Fifty-third Knife- Sworn was a man of particular duties and particular talents, a man set to cut throats for the empire-”
“For the emperor!” Grada said.
“For the empire. The Knife may cut royal throats too-even the throat of a false emperor or one condemned by his own laws. The Grey Service, on the other hand, carry out more mundane forms of murder for the state. It isn’t wise laws and shrewd negotiations that keep the empire’s peace, or at least not just those things. Unexpected deaths and the fear of dying unexpectedly in the night, in the security of one’s own bed, is what halts the plans of many an ambitious Cerani or stops them drawing up such plans in the first place.”
A coldness ran across Grada’s skin while she pushed and shoved to keep up with Rorrin, as if a shadow passed over them. “You mean the whole empire is run on murder and blood?”
Rorrin barked a laugh. “All empires run on murder and blood.” He stopped without warning and she checked herself just before crashing into him. “And the disturbing thing? All the alternatives lead to more blood and more murder.”
“So where are we going?” Grada asked, then stopped, turned, and set off back up the street, no longer interested in his reply. He’d done it to her again. Simply told her what to do, and like a trained dog, she’d obeyed even though it meant giving up the task set into her hands by Emperor Sarmin himself.
“Where are you going?” Rorrin followed in her wake.
“Back to what I should be doing. Back to my duty.”
“Come this way then. You won’t find them at the stockyards. I know a shortcut to where they’re going.” And he veered away into the mouth of a narrow alley.
Grada cursed and followed. Somehow she always seemed to end up following the man, one way or the other. Behind her the hubbub of the street fell away with remarkable swiftness, as if the hot and acrid shade of the alley were a different world. Rorrin moved quickly, half-running, sandals scuffing over sandy cobbles.
Something soft and heavy dropped behind her as she hurried after him. The sound stopped her, pulled her round. The man must have waited on some ledge and watched them pass below. Grada had no time to look up and check-the blade in his hand kept her gaze, even in the shadow its edge found a gleam.
“What do you want?” she asked as he rose from his crouch, a man neither young nor old, sharp-faced, black hair greased back across his skull. It was a foolish question but questions were all she had to put between them.
“Don’t.” The man’s eyes flicked to Grada’s hands, busy with her belt rope.
“All right.” Grada nodded, and kept her fingers working at the knot.
A smile as thin as his blade cut the man’s face. “Learning,” he said, and lunged. Grada fell back, whipping the rope up at his arm. He moved fast and somehow the knife found her shoulder. She felt her robes tearing as she dropped.
Hitting the alley floor, a mix of dirt and dislodged cobbles, hurt even through her fear. Weeks in the desert had stripped her flesh leaving only muscle and bone. From the ground she risked a quick glance in search of Rorrin, but if he were still there he wasn’t close enough to see.
“Clever,” her attacker said. “An unarmed foe is at their most difficult for a knifeman when they’re on the ground, exactly as you are.”
Grada raised her right foot, ready to kick if he came in range. The hard leather sole wouldn’t offer much protection against his blade but it felt better than bare flesh against steel.
“You know you’re bleeding?” He held his knife up to show the smear of crimson running from its tip.
Grada grunted. She hadn’t known and had nothing clever to say about it. The echoes of the Many, so loud when that pair came after her by the pomegranate grove, kept to whispers this time. Her right hand closed around a loose cobble, her left finding only dry dirt. Where in hell was Rorrin?
“Most who get stabbed or cut don’t live long enough to realise it. The pain holds back until it’s decided if you’re going to survive. But the stab lets the strength out of them quick enough.”
Grada watched him, let him talk. She’d been born in an alley and hadn’t spoken with emperors and mages just to die in one.
“If you’re going to stab someone it’s only right that you should know what being stabbed feels like. It helps you to know what to expect of those you knife.” The man had entirely too much to say for himself. He was starting to sound like a teacher, starting to sound like…
“Rorrin!” She barked the name. “You set this dog on me! You can call him off.”
Just a flicker of the man’s gaze, up along the alley at the mention of Rorrin’s name. Sometimes a flicker is enough. Grada let fly with the cobblestone. She moved fast, she’d always had quick, sure hands. The knifeman swayed right and caught the stone in his left hand some fraction of an inch from the side of his head.
“Tricksy.” His smile gone.
“You know you’re bleeding?” she asked him. An edge of the broken cobble had cut his head, his hand unable to prevent all contact. “People can miss these things in the heat of a fight.” She wanted him angry, making mistakes.
Grada flung the dirt in a wide arc, set her hands to the ground, drew her knees to her chest, feet beneath her, and jumped up. The man stepped back, shaking dust and grit from his clothes. “You really need to be closer for that to work.”
She charged. He moved with unreal speed but somehow she half-caught his wrist as she drove him back into the wall. The knife felt like nothing going in and like punch when the hilt slammed into her ribs.
“You see?” he hissed past teeth crimson from his bitten tongue. “Nobody knows what to expect.”
Grada smashed her forehead into his nose. The back of his head cracked against the stonework. She stepped back, her hand on the dagger hilt, keeping it in her as he slid to the ground. “ I know.” She looked down at knife in her flesh. “I’ve been stabbed before.” She kicked him in the neck as he tried to rise. This time his collapse was a boneless thing.
The knife started to burn in her, in the muscle and blood that held it, each breath as if her lungs had filled with broken glass. Sarmin had joined with her when she stabbed him, made them a pattern of two pieces, interwoven, she had felt every part of his pain. It hadn’t been her flesh, but she had been stabbed before.
“Ghesh take me!” Rorrin’s voice behind her. “Meere! Meere?” The alley had grown dark, as if the sun were getting further away by the moment. “How in any hell did that happen-” Grada fell, her legs turning traitor. The last thing she knew were Rorrin’s hands catching hold.
CHAPTER TWELVE
It’s cold on that street where the palms whisper in the dark and no one walks. Grada shivers against the breeze and against a deeper chill woken in her bones. In the garden below her the bushes seethe, stirred by the wind in the blackness of night. The dogs are dead or dying. She slips from the high wall and drops among the shrubs. Rising from her crouch-that brings back a memory, a man dropping behind her, rising with knife in his hand-she pulls her own blade from the sheath at her side. It’s an old knife, ugly, cutting a glimmer from starlight, a thing made for killing and not for show.
She walks from the bushes and from the muted sounds of dying beneath the rustle of leaves. The ground is soft beneath her feet, springy. Plants cover every square foot, all of them the same, their leaves like short black blades. The water it must consume to keep this garden green in the desert sun! The weight of the knife draws her back to her purpose. She would rather wander, but the knife pins her to the moment. Ahead the tall house, silent,
