word’s edges sharp and alien. “He has brought an austere of Mogyrk with him and demands reparations. And so the courtiers make him wait, to show their displeasure.” He wondered again whether the priest knew of the emptiness that filled Beyon’s tomb, whether he could use it to destroy them all.
“Watch the austere,” she said, as if she knew his thoughts, “If we do not respect his dead god he will move against the peace. And your mother, too. She is asking questions about the war and my people.”
Without answering he stood and pulled on his robe. Mesema watched him with disappointed eyes, but she said nothing. Many unspoken words lay between them now-about the voices of the Many, Beyon’s tomb, and his vision of the old woman; but tonight was not the time to begin speaking them. It was better she not know how fragile her safety lay, how fragile his mind. But he had brought something for her to see, one thing he could share. He lifted the urn, still sealed, for her inspection. She stood up, wrapping herself in silk sheets. He was reminded of the day she had run into his tower room, hair wild and blood on her arms. “What is it?” she asked.
“It contains papers, records.” He turned it between his hands. “I cannot open it.”
Mesema held out her arms. He handed her the urn and she tested the weight of it, frowning. Then in a sudden movement she smashed it against the floor, sending shards of clay across the rug. Scrolls and parchment fragments spilled out from between the lid and what had been the base, some tied together with strips of leather, others loose and crumbling. Sarmin smiled. “I had forgotten how quickly you get to the heart of a matter.”
She leaned over the smashed pottery and and he kissed her, once, twice, and more, heat demanding he hold her, run his hands along her skin.
Mesema pulled back and smiled, colour in her cheeks. “Will you stay a bit longer?”
“I…” In the distance, a baby cried. Pelar? The child was Beyon’s, given to Mesema hours before his death-a final gift, the promise of another person to love, but the memory cooled Sarmin’s passion. The pile at her feet drew his eye. He longed to explore those burnt scraps, dry, rolled-up scrolls, and ragged books. Perhaps he would stay and explore Helmar’s secrets with her — Sarmin and Mesema, as Sarmin and Grada once had explored the desert.
But Mesema raised her hands, blue eyes knowing, and pushed. “Go. Read.”
Whenever he left Mesema Sarmin had a falling sensation. The feeling of an opportunity missed, a chance passed by, just fluttering out of his grasp. He gathered his documents and made his way to the corridor.
Dust hung in the air, motes made golden by the last rays of this day’s sun. Sarmin held one of Helmar’s scrolls, listening all the while to the rising voices.
— he should not-I worked the fields, I always-the horsegirl is filth, she smells of-I’m lost! — I would hit him until he understood-the child is the foremost-he will kill him! — the desert is where hope dies-
Perhaps Helmar had known how to free the Many. Perhaps the answer lay in these old parchments brought by the priestess. Her predecessor had visited the palace centuries ago, when Helmar was just a boy, held in the lonely room. The Tower had seen his potential, as they had seen Sarmin’s. They thought he might swear to earth and fire both, the first to do so in forever, and called the priests of Meksha to his training. The scrolls contained their story as much as his.
The priests wrote of Helmar’s testing, of the fits he had as a child, the way he spoke in other languages and had visions-and the patterns he saw, even before the Yrkmen took him. The scrolls the priestess brought were nearly all fragments, some so brittle from age and fire that they crumbled when he tried to read them. His mind wandered to Grada. He had set her on the path of the concubines; if they were part of a larger scheme then he would know it, and he trusted nobody else with the task. And it was well to send her from Azeem, from the old men, away from their glares and their judgement. As busy as they were forcing Marke Kavic wait upon their pleasure, as much as they occupied themselves with drawing up demands to go with the peace, they would still have made time to disapprove of Grada.
Ta-Sann, sword-son, entered and fell into his obeisance, muscles rippling as he moved. “Master Herran requests an audience, Your Majesty.” — Kill him. One of the Many spoke.
Sarmin put down the scroll and eased up from the bed. His joints ached just from the short walks he had taken today. A lifetime in a tower room had not prepared him to journey the breadth and width of the larger palace. “Send him away, Ta-Sann.”
The empire needs a Knife, the old assassin would say for the seventh time. Not only because of war: Helmar was not the first heir to surface from the confusion of our history and neither will he be the last. Any man armed with old writings, ambition and time could be a danger to you if he sets to digging among the lost lines and bastard lines. You need a Knife. The master assassin had brought several candidates before him in recent months, but Sarmin had little interest in such matters; with a knife comes the pressure to use it.
In any event he would continue with knives the same way he had begun, on the day Tuvaini had opened a new door for him-he would not be given one, but he would choose his own and take it. Herran’s men had been calm and deadly, suited to their duties, but none had fitted, none carried that mix of tragedy and strength that in the end allowed Sarmin to forgive Eyul, even for his brothers. Eyul, like the holy weapon itself, had carried his scars and the insults of time. The hand that held that Knife must have known many tasks, must have touched life and been touched by it. It was not enough that they be a killer and no more.
Sarmin touched the Knife at his hip. It was always at his hip. Without it no-one could be the Knife. The power rested with Sarmin, and Sarmin alone.
The Many rose in Sarmin’s mind, flooding his ears with their voices. “TaSann…” Ta-Sann would know what to do. He fell back on the bed, his legs no longer doing what he willed, his eyes seeing beyond the constellations on the ceiling.
— It’s in the desert-help me-the girl-I had a tortoiseshell brush, where has it gone? — he is going to kill the- all those pretty girls gone to waste-
The voices rose as sand in a storm, burying his sight, and he knew no more.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Grada dreamed many dreams, some of them her own. Nightmare followed nightmare, taking her so far from her flesh that she thought she would never wake again, but always the spike of her pain anchored her and drew her back. Once through the slits of eyes glued shut with sleep she saw an old man loom over her, an ancient with a bald and wrinkled pate, two teeth only standing in his gums, huddled together as if for comfort. That was no dream, she smelled his breath and could never have imagined a stench so foul.
She tries to wake. Tries to wake. Tries to wait silent in the dark as the sleeper passes by on bare feet. This is the many-windowed house, the pale moonlit house high on the Rock among the Holies, on the street that joins the shrine of Herzu to that of Mirra. She can’t recall the name of the street-perhaps they named it “life” for what other path do we walk between birth and death?
The sleeper is gone, tugged along his path by dreams of his own. He? He had a man’s smell to him. It is enough. She is not here for him in any case. The ones she has come for will be guarded, they will be in their beds on the third floor. Grada moves on, trailing fingers along the wall, counting each doorway against the map she carries in her mind. Five she must give to the knife today. Five. But more than five will die, no matter how careful she is.
She finds the stairs and starts to climb the spiral of them. Moonlight whispers down from tiny windows in a high dome. She treads at the very edge of each step. These are marble, they will not creak, but old habits die hard. A frown as she wonders where that old habit came from. A pause as she remembers rickety ladders of bamboo lashed together with hide strips. Creeping up them, desperate not to wake him…
Wake who? She shakes the question off and continues up the stair. Her foot hurts, twinges of pain from her big toe, bruised… broken? Some accident early in the day. If she has to run, those chasing her will die.
She passes the second floor. More steps. A deeper shadow ahead, one could imagine it a man. She lifts her knife, not pausing or slowing, nothing so undoes surprise as hesitation. She needs to place hand and blade with precision, to kill quickly and to silence any exclamation. He is already leaning against the wall, so he won’t collapse in a clatter.
