above him but he would not have space enough to stretch his arms wide and still make the turn. The narrow door stood ajar, old wood, inches thick and black with age. Sarmin rotated the skull to face him. Someone more forgotten than ever I was-with no comfort but cold stone, no bed or books, no window, no freedom but death. Had one of the Many brought him here to silence his recriminations with shame? To make him face up to his duties? Perhaps one of the sets of memories that seethed within his mind had once been entirely confined behind the dark eye sockets that now regarded him.
Silence wrapped him. No sound from any others unremembered in their tiny cells, nothing of the palace’s clatter and stamp reached down this far, no cry of tower mage or hawks’ keening, just time sliding past unheard, by second, minute, and year. He had ordered the dungeons emptied. If their crimes were as forgotten as the prisoners then they were freed, or executed if their crimes were remembered and not forgiven-but each man saw the sky, and spoke with an acolyte of Herzu on the wall-tower where the wind comes in from the desert. And so he was alone, the cells abandoned.
Sarmin set the skull before him, wincing at the clack of bone on floor slab. The sea of the Many had stranded him on strange shores before but none so lonely as this. He sat still and let his eyes explore the stonework with that same intensity which once found every angel and each devil in the detail of his own prison walls. Time’s river flowed. Twice the lamp guttered but did not die, and at last Sarmin’s gaze settled upon a stone in the wall… in the wall, but not of the wall. It drew him to his feet and he worked it free by fractions of an inch breaking nails and skinning a fingertip. At last he held it, a dark smooth stone, one edge disguised with dirt and dust to better match the wall. It had a weight to it, more than such a stone should, and a warmth…
When the sound came, Sarmin took it for the return of the Many, but they held their peace, perhaps kept back by whichever of them had walked Sarmin to the oubliette in the first place. Again! The scrape of shoe on floor slab. Sarmin set the stone dead centre of the cell on the floor beside the skull, slid the hood across his lantern, and sat behind the door with his back to the cold wall. Footsteps approached but the Many came faster, some new person from among the unreturned now overwriting him like sudden inspiration.
“Are you well, Magnificence?”
Sarmin shook his head and found focus. His mind had gone silent and the oubliette, skull, and stone had been replaced by soft silk, feather mattresses, and a harem girl, pale as milk with golden hair, naked and smiling. A pre- dawn light filtered down from tiny windows high above.
Silk covers slid from Sarmin as he sat, pooling around his hips. He too was naked.
“Who?” He stared at her, finding her face and knowing it to be familiar. “You’re a slave?”
“They call me a concubine.” She pouted, rolled to her front, then grinned. “But I’m a princess when you are with me, my emperor.” Her words came sharp and angled, exotic as her looks.
He knew her then, a slave from the north, one of many gifts brought to serve as concubines in the harem, the offering of some or other lord who curried his favour. Grada had gone to find out more about them. She would find information about these women, these gifts from his courtiers, and then she would return to him. A sharp longing for her twisted his hands in the silk. “Your name?” he asked the girl who was not Grada.
“Jenni, my emperor.”
Jenni then. By the blue and white of the walls, shown here and there in the glow of jeweled lamps, Sarmin knew it to be the Ocean Room. He shook his head. The unreturned haunted his nights; they had taken his body before and left him for the morning light to find, sprawled and bruised before the Sayakarva window, but never before had they taken him from the room.
“Where are my clothes?”
What had he said to her? Or rather, what had been said with his mouth?
Jenni slipped from the covers and went to gather his tunic, trews, and slippers. Watching the lamps’ glow move across her slim body an echo of want rang through him-just an echo, though. It had been another man’s desire, just as she had taken another man’s lust. A voice rose from the silence, soft and low.
— You should have her killed.
The advice Beyon would have given. Beyon’s body slaves had died to keep his secrets. It wasn’t the story of their coupling that begged the girl’s death; that would earn him Mesema’s disappointment, but Sarmin had far more damaging tales to tell. Just a handful of words whispered in coitus and passed on could see him dead and his brother Daveed with him, both of them given to the old Knife in new hands, and baby Pelar set upon the Petal Throne.
“Should I dress you, my emperor?” Jenni smiled and reached towards him.
“No.” Better run, girl. “Just go. And say nothing of this to anyone.”
“My emperor.” The smile fell away and she went swiftly into her obeisance, the lamplight throwing her knobs of her spine into a relief of light and shade.
Sarmin waited for her to leave and then found his path to the Ways through the hidden door in the corridor. These secret doors were better locked now and new doors of iron sealed key junctions within the Ways, but all of them surrendered to the emperor’s own key. Mesema’s chambers were so near that he heard Pelar crying out for his milk. The sound cut through him like Grada’s knife and in the darkness, as the hidden door closed behind him, Sarmin leaned against the wall and covered his eyes. Mesema.
Blind, Sarmin found the way with outstretched fingers and with his first step wondered how a man who could not rule himself might speak for a nation and heal the emptiness that threatened to consume them all.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Silver trays lined up in the Little Kitchen, gleaming in the lantern light, evening meals for generals and scribes. Rushes hoped that if she grabbed the first one and left the kitchen as quickly as possible, Gorgen wouldn’t notice her. “Who’s this one for?” she whispered urgently to Hagga, but Hagga didn’t answer, her mind on other things as she shaped the bread for the noon meal.
And then Gorgen was there, pressing against her from behind, drawing his hand over the small of her back, still bruised from the beating she had received. “That one is for General Lurish,” he said, leaning down, his breath tickling her ear.
She stepped away from him and gathered up the tray, trying to turn towards the door, but Gorgen caught her elbow. She tensed her fingers around the silver and wine sloshed over the edges of the blown glass. Unbidden, Marke Kavic of Fryth came to her mind, with the way he had defended her, like a sister or a friend. But the austere-he had been like Gorgen, except smarter. Trickier.
Fingers pinched her skin. “Has Mina been sneaking around in the root cellar?”
Rushes swallowed. “No.” She wondered whether he knew about Mylo and the secret meetings, or had simply discovered some missing food.
He accepted the lie, for the moment. “What about you?”
“No. Please, Gorgen, I’ll be late!” She made herself meet his gaze, opened her eyes wide to show him how honest she was.
It was no good. He took the tray from her hands and shook his head as if he was sorry, but he was not sorry. He was glad. “You’re going to get it.” He pulled her down the corridor, past the steps to the dungeon. The entrance stood empty and cold but the thick wooden door drew her eye. She dragged her feet, but Gorgen only pulled harder. Sahree’s stone was still down there. It called to her at night, when she tried to sleep. She imagined holding it in her pocket, the weight of it at her side. Imagined feeling safe.
Gorgen pulled into a store room where the shelves were loaded with dried fruit, flour, and nuts. With so few in the Little Kitchen the shelves had fallen into disarray. Rice scattered over the wooden floor drew her eyes up, to where an overfull sack tipped forward, ready to spill. Gorgen would be in trouble if it fell; Naveen might beat him hard. She was about to say something when he shut the door and cast the room in darkness.
She backed away, hitting her shoulders against a cask. If only she could hear his thoughts, know his mind. “What did I say, Gorgen?”
“You said you didn’t go down to the cellar,” he said, but his voice sounded strange, muffled. “But a fine lord
