“Where are you from, little girl?”
The girl stared at her without understanding. Of course. She had been speaking Cerantic. She asked the same question in Fryth, or tried, but the girl still did not answer.
Rushes moved on, hesitating at the turn, facing the long, empty hallway that led to the oubliettes. She could not remember which one it was. The stone twisted and warmed in her pocket. As she walked, the prisoners called to her, still begging from where they stood packed together in the corridors behind. She counted to fifteen. The Many always had been divided into five, and three was her favourite number, the number of times to hit a stone for good luck or walk in circles for a blessing. Three fives is fifteen. Fifteen is the number of the first priests of Mogyrk. Fifteen is how many days it took Mogyrk to die. The Many had known this, but she had not remembered. Not until now. She stopped before the fifteenth cell.
The door was made of wood, but a little window had been cut through and fitted with a grill. Rushes couldn’t reach it the opening, even standing on tiptoe, but she found an old pail, turned it upside down and climbed up. Inside sat a woman, all alone, shoulders drawn up against the cold. She was old, older than Sahree even, skin sagging over her eyes, wrinkles hiding the flesh of her lips. Her spine curved and her knees stuck out, bony and swollen at once. She turned to Rushes and pointed towards her with a hand that had become a claw.
“The stone,” she said, “you have the stone.”
Rushes felt the trembling at the core of herself. “You know about the stone?”
The old woman shuffled to the door. “Put two hundred years behind you and you’ll realise we none of us know anything. But I feel the stone. I see it. More clearly than I see you, child. He made it. Helmar. And once upon a time he was mine.”
Rushes drew it from her pocket and hissed at the heat of it. She nearly threw it at the old woman, so much did she want to get rid of it. How a stone could know things, make itself warm, she did not understand. The mages of the Tower used elementals for their magic, borrowing power from another place and time. This stone thought for itself, behaved for itself. She pushed it through the grill; it was nearly too large to fit.
The woman cradled it between her palms, cupping it like a child might hold a mouse or a chick. The stone, searing in Rushes’ grip, did not bother the woman at all. “Oh, yes,” she said, nodding to herself, “yes. Meg has you. Meg has you.”
Rushes backed away. The need to leave the stone behind, to leave the old woman and the Fryth prisoners, overcame her.
“Girl!” shouted Meg, pointing at her again, and she froze. “You must take it back.” Her stare held Rushes, a communion of a kind as if the two of them were Many, rich with emotion, each conflicting the next.
“I can’t. I brought it here as I was supposed to, and now…”
“Take it. It is in the design that you will. His design. Be brave. Take what comes.” She held out the stone to Rushes, her arm thin as a stalk of cat-grass. Rushes stepped forward and accepted it, tears running down her face. “It’s all right to cry,” said the old woman, “I know you’re scared. But it’s the emperor’s stone, now. He needs it.”
“I can’t…” She remembered what Beyon had said to her on the balcony, using Sarmin’s lips: He wants this, and I can’t let him have it. He had meant his brother. The emperor.
The stone had turned cold and lay inert in Rushes’ hand. “Take it,” said Meg. “Be strong. You can be strong. We’re none of us one thing.”
Rushes wiped her tears and put the stone in her pocket. “You’re from Fryth?”
“I’m from Mythyck, girl, but as far as they’re concerned I’m from Fryth.”
“Is there fighting there? War?”
“There was blood and fire and hangings and all of it. But there is much worse to come. All this horror these children think is so important… and it’s all just a dance on a knife edge none of them can see. Now go on, girl, before I drop dead and can’t do anything more for anyone. Tell the emperor I know who put it here in the oubliette. Remember to say oubliette. It rhymes with forget. Now go on. Go!”
Rushes hurried to the Ways, past the prisoners, past the dark corners, past a thousand other stones that looked like stones but could be anything else, could trick a person and change into something with a will. She would need to get past a great many soldiers to speak with the emperor, and she would not know whether it was Sarmin or Beyon until they spoke. If it were Beyon she found, he would be angry; he did not take disobedience and betrayal lightly. He had kept his promise to her, though violently; but she would fail him.
And yet that was not really Beyon, the Beyon who was sad and kind as well as angry. The Beyon who hid inside his brother had left parts of himself in heaven, she thought; perhaps the rest of him stood with Mirra even now, urging her to help his brother. She thought maybe that was so.
CHAPTER THIRTY
“Who could have done this thing?” Only Sarmin and his vizier stood upon the steps of the dais, and the throne room lay empty save for the ever-present guards. Lit in haste, only one in three of the many lamps sconced along the walls held a flame and the room ran with shadows. Sarmin paced, unable to sit, and Azeem followed, careful always to be a step lower. “Who?” Sarmin could think of a list a yard long, the person who brought the snake to Daveed at the head of it and himself close behind.
“Why is the question that may answer who, my emperor, and more importantly will give us the hand behind whatever knife was used.”
Sarmin found himself looking at his own hand, sore from tearing at the ropes that bound him in his sleep. The image of Kavic lying twisted in his blood on a patterned rug returned to him. How could he see it if he were not there? But then he had been absent witness to so much of late.
“There is a question still more pressing than that of guilt, my emperor,” Azeem said. The jewels on his robe of office caught the lamp light, returning it in deep reds. Had Tuvaini worn that robe? One like it but not that one- Tuvaini had been a much taller man.
“My emperor?” Azeem waited at his elbow.
“What question, Vizier?”
“The question of how to proceed. Can the peace be kept despite what has happened? What should be done with this Fryth austere? Can he speak in the envoy’s place? What line might he take? Austere Adam is said to be a zealot. He may prefer to see Fryth burn for the chance it might set Yrkmir against Cerana, and count every death in Mondrath a new martyr for his faith.”
Sarmin returned to the Petal Throne. “They will see that a peace can’t stand or fall on the death of one man.” He nodded, finding comfort in agreeing with himself. “This Iron Duke of theirs… Mala… Malast?”
“Malast Anteydies Griffon, my emperor.”
“This duke must be able to see that two cut throats don’t require ten thousand more to die in his streets, Fryth and Cerani both.”
“It’s not the death of one man, though I understand the Duke favoured his grandson Kavic. The envoy carried Fryth’s pride with him. To have him murdered abed in the imperial palace is to wound the pride of every man of Fryth. Wars have been fought for far smaller injuries to men’s pride.”
Sarmin remembered Kavic speaking of the man, of his humiliation at the hands of Yrkmir. He watched the shadows flicker and play. He wanted Mesema at his side. The throne was a lonely place. Even his mother would have had good council. “So we need to heal this wound.” And how can pride be repaired? Sarmin had no idea; his room had not armed him with such talents. “Shall I call priest Assar to work one of Mirra’s cures?”
“Master Herran seeks audience, my emperor!” The herald called out from the great doors, eased apart to admit his bulk.
“Let him come.” Sarmin raised a weary hand above his head and beckoned.
“Herran brings only Herzu’s cures,” Azeem said. He stepped aside and studied his patterned slippers.
“Master Herran.” Sarmin acknowledged the assassin as he walked the long path to the dais, his feet silent on the silk runner laying out his route.
