more felt than seen, as if discovered through blind fingertips, one corner at a time, but it was clear enough that whatever end had stalked her through the years it was now catching up fast.
When the guards look away the Megra touches the wrap hidden beneath her shift. “Be brave,” the boy had said, had dared to instruct her, barely dry from the womb and… and now dead. She slips the ring out, hidden in her hand within the veil of her hair. Helmar taught her to see past darkness lifetimes ago. That trick she had not forgotten. The gold gleams, ageless and without stain. Helmar told her once that gold, all of it, was made in a single heartbeat in the dying scream of a star. She had watched him pour the metal from crucible to mould, brighter with heat than it would ever be again. They had passed the ring between them before it cooled enough, giggling and gasping, tossing it to the other before the metal burned their hands. She had clung to him, pestered, laughed, as he set the words there, stamping each line with a steel tool.
“What does it say? What does it say?” She wanted to know.
“What you need to know,” he said. “What you need to hear.” Ending his sentence as every other with a quirk of the lips, setting on his words, seemingly so clear, a seal to render them inscrutable, as ambiguous as every part of the man, and past that quarter smile the briefest glimpse of darkness, so fleeting that it might only be imagination.
She snatched it from him then and read, devoured the words. “You are my salvation.”
“What does that mean?” she laughed but the words set a chill in her. “Salvation? That’s silly. I should write that for you.”
He had taken the ring from her, folding it in his palm, too wide for a finger, or even thumb, too narrow for a wrist. He took it and left her with a kiss. “My sweet Meg.”
In the darkness of the forest, in the shadow of her hair, with the cold rain running, and more than two centuries aching in her bones she reads, “You are my salvation.”
A guardsman’s kick shakes the Megra from her thoughts. More rustling, lanterns swinging, shields against the thorns, and the officer who pulled her tooth strides in flanked by several men, all dripping.
“Up. Woman. My captain has come. He will want to question this… expert. General Arigu is keen to meet the Yrkmen so let us hope your tale pleases us.”
Sarmin wants to stay, to watch this woman who once loved Helmar, to understand this war in his name, to know why Gallar died, but the scene is fading. The forest, the rain, all growing faint, reduced to patterns of sound and light. He tries to hold on but it’s fingers catching sand and the moments slip from him.
Sarmin came to himself upon the floor of his room, on his side, one cheek buried in the dusty rug. After moment he scrambled to his feet, urgency guiding his movements. The Many must not take him this night. Negotiations would begin in the morning and he could not wake in another strange place, his feet having moved along the path of another, his lips having spoken another man’s words, his knife… He remembered his Histories, stabbed a dozen dozen times, and felt a coldness in his stomach.
At the door he called for Ta-Sann and his fellows to bind him to his bed. They used elaborate knots of twisting silk, making patterns that belonged to great boats and the men who sailed them. Once secure he began to drift, the memories of those who were lost rising before him in the same bright clarity as if he had lived them. And in those images he saw one, something so recent that its smells and sounds came to him unbidden. His own hand held a parchment fragment, dark with age and covered with with the script of the man who had once lived alone, in this same tower room, a man who had also loved patterns. And what was written on that fragment was his own name.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“My emperor!” The words came again, reaching past dreams. “What?” Sarmin kept his eyes closed against the glare of a lamp close by.
“My emperor, the vizier has urgent news.”
“Azeem?” It would have to be him, disturbing the first peaceful night in forever.
Sarmin sat and shielded his eyes. One of the sword-sons loomed above him, lamp in hand.
“Is he here, then?” The shadows offered no hint of the vizier. “Waiting with the counsel in the throne room, my emperor.” “The counsel?” Some disaster must have happened. The last traces of sleep fell away as Sarmin stood. “Mesema! My son?” It was as if Grada stabbed him once again, the metal scraping against his bone.
“I have only been told to wake you, my emperor.”
Sarmin reached up to catch the unyielding ridge of muscle along the man’s shoulder. “Tell me! I am your emperor!”
“I know nothing-forgive me.” The man bowed his head and Sarmin walked past him, the other five sword- sons closing around him, bracketing him three before, three behind as they descended the stair. The palace halls glowed with the light of hundreds of lamps as if to leave a shadow no hiding place. Not since the night that Sarmin wedded Mesema had so many lamps been lit. Squads of palace guard hastened by without falling into obeisance as Sarmin passed-only in war might such insolence be tolerated. Had Yrkmir’s armies crossed the desert? Had the emptiness reached the palace, reached Mesema and Pelar?
The throne room door stood open. A crowd of men had gathered within and was still growing while curious women were being swept out, a river of colour and silk. He caught a glimpse of Jenni’s face, then others just as pretty, all gone in a moment. Among those who stayed Sarmin picked out the faces of Prince Jomla, General Merkel and Herzu’s priest among his acolytes, before they fell into obeisance, like river-corn before the scythe.
“Tell me of my wife and child. Tell me now,” Sarmin shouted. Azeem rose from the sea of backs. “They are well, my emperor.” “And my brother?” Daveed, he has fallen into nothing!
“Prince Daveed is well and with the empire mother, my emperor.” “What then! Why am I here and all these before me?” He swept his arm at the prostrate nobles. “Rise! Get up!”
Azeem walked to the dais, opening a path among the priests and nobles so that Sarmin could ascend to take his place above them. Sarmin lowered himself onto the cushions. “Speak!” He sounded like Beyon, infected with that same impatience now.
Azeem cleared his throat. “The envoy from Fryth has been killed.” “Killed.” Sarmin tried the word out for size.
“His throat was cut.” Azeem nodded as if it were a question. “And his guards?” Sarmin pictured the two huge warriors.
“The one set to watch over the envoy is dead. The other and the priest were in a separate chamber. Both live.”
“And my guards? The men I set to honour my guest?” There had only been honour in it, the thought that the men of Fryth were in danger within the palace had not crossed Sarmin’s mind.
“Nobody else was hurt. The attacker did not enter the room by the corridor.”
Azeem studied the ripples in the silk runner that led from doors to throne. The Ways! Was there a man of Nooria who didn’t know the Ways since the Many ran loose there?
“Captain Shalla believes the killer may have gained access from the roof through a ventilation dome.” General Lurish spoke up beside the vizier. Prince Jomla broke in with his high, sweet voice. “Your Majesty-” Sarmin cut across him and spoke to Azeem. “And what of Herran? What does he say?” He sought the master assassin among the crowd. If any should know how death was brought into the palace it should be that one, Eyul’s old master. “Master Herran left the palace several days ago, my emperor; we are uncertain when to expect his return.”
“Gone questing to find me a Knife, I imagine.” Sarmin tapped his fingers on the marble of his armrest. Master Herran had brought several candidates before him in recent months, trying to convince him to take one or other of them as the next emperor’s Knife, but Sarmin would have none. As many candidates as it takes, Herran had said. “Are none of the Grey Service here to answer me?” Sarmin didn’t expect anyone to step out of the crowd but they would come to him in time.
Only silence for an answer, broken by the shuffling of expensive footwear. “Govnan! Have the mages from the Tower, every one of them.” As few as they were. “Read the stone, the water, air, and fire. Tell me what has
