“Peace requires negotiation-negotiation requires manners.” The envoy cut across the words that would have been the priest’s last had they escaped his lips. His Cerantic reminded Sarmin of Mesema’s way of shaping the sounds when she first came to the palace. Perhaps the envoy too had learned the language en route.
Kavic began to lower himself, making his intentions clear so his companions could kneel before him. The guardsman went quickly, first kneeling, then pressing his forehead to the marble. The priest hesitated, a snarl twitching at his lips, but he could hardly stand when the envoy knelt, and at last he followed the guard’s lead, with Kavic following.
A breath Sarmin had not known he was holding hissed past his teeth. The Mogyrk priest was right; they were here only because Cerana’s armies had invaded Fryth, but being right would not have kept him alive. Indeed it might have brought ruin to his homeland. The priest’s insolence had been destroying the only thing preventing the destruction of his nation-the peace rested on Sarmin’s ability to command the men between them, the lords that ruled the many pieces of Cerana in his name. And that obedience, as Azeem often pointed out, rested on tradition. If showing obeisance to the emperor was a tradition that no longer had to be observed, what else might follow? As a nation of Settu players the people of Cerana knew all about how one falling tile can topple every token on the board.
But tradition would not keep the emptiness from toppling the palace, from filling the city with hollow men and leaving the Blessing as a trail of dust. This matter of distant war had to be resolved and quickly so Sarmin could consider the more imminent crisis.
Sarmin kept the visitors in their obeisance for a minute, and then a minute more. Time enough to gather his wits, time enough to underscore the point for the old men of empire seated two steps below him. Those old men, as much as any other players-his mother, Tuvaini, Beyon-had kept him in that room so many years. Alive and yet not alive, for what is a life that’s lived unseen and unknown? Less than dust.
“Rise,” he said, and waved two palace guards to help the injured man away.
Kavic gained his feet with a wry smile, the priest still venting silent outrage so that in Sarmin’s eyes it almost shimmered about him like the heat around a glowing coal.
“Welcome to Cerana, welcome to Nooria, may the sand take only your sorrows.” Sarmin offered the old greeting.
Kavic tilted his head and gave a stiff shallow bow. “We thank you for your welcome to your court, Magnificence.” He kept any hint of irony from his voice, or perhaps it became lost in translation. Far behind him the injured Fryth guard collapsed onto a bench against the rear wall.
Azeem had counselled that the men of Fryth played a short and direct game when it came to diplomacy, despising the verbal feints and circling so beloved of Cerana’s princes and satraps. Sarmin chose to do likewise. Not so long ago his longest conversations were those conducted with the decoration on his walls, better to reach his point quickly than to lose it in the confusion of small talk.
“My cousin, Emperor Tuvaini, initiated an attack upon the Dukedom of Fryth. I understand he was poorly advised by one of his generals, a childhood companion of his. It was believed at the time that the plague which had taken my brother, Emperor Beyon, from this throne had its roots in Yrkmir and her protectorates.
“The truth turned out to be more complex. In fact the pattern-plague was the work of Helmar, also emperor, a son of this royal house, torn from it and educated in the way of pattern by Yrkmen invaders long ago. The pattern-plague was rooted in both Cerana and Yrkmir and in the conflict between them. Rather than starting a war, those events should have reminded us all of the lingering horrors such aggression leaves to echo down the years. Long after homes have been rebuilt and nations repopulated old grievances survive and work their ill again.
“I came to my throne with that reminder in my thoughts and my first act was to call a halt to the advance of the White Hat army.” Sarmin paused and unlaced his knotted fingers. Beneath his silks sweat ran. “Tell me Envoy Kavic, what word do you bring from the Iron Duke on my offer of peace between us, nation and throne?”
The priest made to open his mouth but Kavic answered first. “My grandfather Malast Anteides Gryffon desires peace also, though the terms and reparations will require consideration.”
Second Austere Adam scowled. A muted rumble rose from the men on the third step: Reparations?
“Good,” Sarmin said. “Then perhaps tomorrow we shall begin such considerations. For now though you must be tired after so many weeks on the road. You will be taken to fitting quarters and shown how welcoming Nooria can be…” Sarmin allowed himself a smile and added, “now that the business of manners has been settled.” He would rather they talked terms and reparations immediately, reached agreement before sunset and moved on to the more immediate matter of the wound their god had made on the world. But in Cerana no agreement reached in such haste would carry respect; instead it would need to be picked over by advisors, the most minor of points argued through, near to death, the documents drafted, drawn, redrafted and redrawn. He wondered sometimes how in such a nation of debaters and nitpickers, the decision that bound him for seventeen years and stole away his youth could have been reached in the scant hours separating his father’s death from the long climb up those stairs to his prison.
Sarmin looked up from his musings. Kavic had made no move into his obeisance and for a moment Sarmin feared that once again it would prove a sticking point.
“My thanks, Magnificence. It has been a… trying journey. I must urge haste, though. I hope we can complete our negotiations tomorrow and communicate the results to Fryth as swiftly as possible. Our friends in the east may be slow to stir, but they will not remain idle forever in the face of Cerani troops on Frythian soil.” He bowed, then remembering himself he kneeled and made his obeisance, Austere Adam, following him down, winced at each stage as if every move cut his honour to the quick.
The court watched in silence as the visitors departed, no word spoken until the great doors closed behind them.
“Speak then,” Sarmin said. “You are here to advise me.” Marke Kavic had spoken of the Yrkmen. Had it been a threat or a warning?
The courtiers before him stood, some stiff and rubbing their posteriors, some quick to their feet, all of them stepping down from the dais before turning to face their emperor. Sarmin had expected the sharp-tongued Satrap of Morrai, Honnecka, to be first to share his opinions but the ragged Notheen spoke into the pause, his voice low, persuading his listeners to silence, and speaking words of which only Sarmin and Govnan understood the full meaning.
“The priest knows war is coming, whether this marke wishes it or no. The church of Mogyrk has decided to test its strength in the desert. That much is plain enough.”
A longer pause and then the babble of outrage as the high and the mighty competed to pour scorn on such defeatist talk. Sarmin settled back into the Petal Throne and let his advisors advise, but the words flowed over him leaving little mark. War is coming. Those words stayed. Those words stuck.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
With the envoy gone, the advisors, and slaves banished, the throne room felt empty. The guards, ever- present, were hard not to consider furniture, so gaudy and so without motion.
From time to time Sarmin would remind himself of the men behind those impassive faces, of the lives he had pieced together across years from scraps of conversation heard with his ear pressed to his prison door and later from the voices of the Many.
The creak of Govnan’s knees as he shifted position brought Sarmin’s attention back to matters in hand. “High mage, Headman.” He focused on the two men remaining at the base of the dais, Govnan gnarled and ancient, fire- hardened Sarmin thought him, tempered in the secret flame, and Notheen, tall, ragged, bony, when the desert finally claimed him there would be little to consume. In many ways, in the ways that counted, they looked alike. Sarmin could believe them father and son. They fit together in some way that could not be seen with the eyes but from a different perspective would be obvious. Lately Sarmin had started to see all those around him as parts of a puzzle, shapes to be manipulated in some high dimensional and abstract space. It worried him.
“Keep watch on my brother’s tomb. If there is alteration, or the Fryth austere comes near it, you let me
