line that joined the towers of the Knife and that of the mages lay the room where she had once stabbed Sarmin. The room where Sarmin had made a pattern of two and bound their lives tight together. Sarmin’s only window had pointed only at the mages’ Tower, though, and he never had a view of where the Grey Service lived.
“The only crime the Knife-Sworn may be guilty of is failing to obey the command of the rightful emperor.” Herran had found the page unerringly and read for her, his fingers tracing the script without touching it. He closed the book with two hands, the cover as heavy and final as a coffin lid.
Grada walked by Mirra’s shrine, the black dome darker than the surrounding gloom. Life comes out of the darkness of “before”, the midnight nothingness that waits behind memory and beyond imagining. Ten more paces and the healing shrine, Mirra’s cradle of birth, lay behind her. A row of ancient palms, dust grey in the twilight, led her on. At the far end of the street Herzu’s shrine waited, a point of light, the alabaster still brilliant, finding and returning whatever radiance the sun left in its wake. Grada kept her eyes on that bright point, taking slow steps along the street. The leaning palms and the high garden walls of great houses gave the feeling of a tunnel. The day’s heat radiated from the flagstones but the air grew colder by the moment. The wind rose and the palms whispered together, sharing old confidences.
In the time it took Grada to reach the gates of the Jomla’s manse the day had gone. She slung her muslin bag of meat over the wall where it dipped lowest, following some artist’s notion of ocean waves. She heard the bag break branches, rustle leaves, then hit ground with a wet thump. Slow steps took her on to Herzu’s shrine. In the east the moon rose and the shrine glowed with the new light, pale as bone. Grada considered entering, but what words had she for gods? Instead she sank against the base of the nearest palm, letting the moon shadows swallow her. She took the Knife from her hip, still scabbarded. The street lay quiet but the glimmer of a blade might catch a hidden eye. Each of these houses would have guards, each a fortress of wealth, though the times when families fought openly here, and factions claimed and reclaimed territory, were long gone, remembered only in the shape and style of the older homes.
In the darkness at the base of the tree Grada counted out the path that had led her to this place. A path not of choices but of being chosen. What had the Pattern Master seen in her to send her as his weapon into the palace? Helmar had been a royal, emperor by right when he chose her as his Knife and sent her to kill Sarmin — the first royal blood she spilled. Helmar had been emperor enthroned when she had stabbed him amid his bloodpattern in the desert past Migido, he had been attested ruler of all Cerana. And still she killed him there. It had been her right. She was Helmar’s Knife. Now she was Sarmin’s. But why had Helmar chosen her? The Pattern Master had so many choices, and if he had wanted an Untouchable, he had a thousand and more among the Many, among the dirt and squalor of the Maze. But he took her. Without allowing her a choice. Perhaps he sensed he was not the first to do so.
When Sarmin made a pattern of two parts from himself and her, Grada had no say in it. He had invaded every part of her life without invitation, without permission. Only that he lay dying and that her hand had delivered the wound made it forgivable, this and the way they had fitted together, each weakness countered by a strength, each strength by a weakness. Herran had chosen too, Meere offered no choices. And Govnan left her in that room, left her with Sarmin in the room where she shed his blood, and while the emperor said please, and while she knew he would accept her refusal, there was from the moment he held the Knife’s hilt towards her, no choice.
With the moon full risen Grada rose too, retracing her steps along the street of palms. She might have nothing to say to the gods, but it seemed they spoke to her, laughed behind their hands even as they laid out for her the same night she remembered from her dreaming with the Many, the same street, the same house.
“That is all that will be the same though.” She spoke the words silently to the Knife, the cold pommel stone against her lips as she walked. “That was memory. This will be choice.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Rushes saw them everywhere, Mylo’s followers, identified by their secret signal, a finger across the chin. They gathered over simple meals and work-tables in every place where marble changed to plain tile, where silk tapestries gave way to white-washed walls, and where the silk-clad did not venture. They whispered and planned though their Fryth austere had disappeared, likely into the dark oubliettes where Rushes had first found the Megra.
Rushes was hiding from Beyon, from his wrath at her betrayal. She kept herself hidden in plain sight, among other female slaves, far from the women’s wing or the Little Kitchen. She found that if she walked back and forth in Nessaket’s livery nobody questioned her. Nevertheless her eyes scanned for threats, and she walked on the balls of her feet, always ready to run towards the Ways.
The whispers ran along the corridors like a rustling in the wind; Irisa was dead. The physician had left the women’s wing, his satchel clutched at his side, all the herbs and potions within it useless when it came to a girl who had lost all colour and will. At the end of her life the concubine had at last been given a room of her own, the bed high, the walls painted with birds. But it was said she did not notice, that her eyes stared straight ahead, at nothing. And now more fell ill, not just concubines but slaves too, and some of the silk-clad. When people spoke of the sickness they used the word “catch,” as if a person reached for it like a ball. Instead Rushes believed that the sickness was trying to catch her, and so by always moving, she tricked it.
Lanterns were lit day and night, reflected in the gleaming doorknobs and bright mosaics, but the brightness did nothing to keep the ghosts away; they drifted through the halls, formless, but threatening all the same. They watched, and waited-for what, Rushes could not tell. When frightened Rushes thought it was best to proceed normally, completing tasks as if she noticed nothing amiss, but sometimes, she felt a coldness sliding along her skin and she knew that a ghost had passed by too closely.
So when Kya, who carried the silk runners to and from the administrator’s hall, grabbed her arm and whispered, Rushes screamed-but it was only one of Mylo’s secret messages. Every few days she received a new one, usually instructions to appreciate Mogyrk’s blessings or to pray for strength, but this one was different. “Fire is the signal. You must bring something precious to the courtyard.”
“What?” But Kya was gone, her arms wrapped around her purple bundle. Rushes did not see how fire could be a signal. Fire burned everywhere, in the lanterns and the ovens, all day and all night. And what was meant by something precious? She spied a group of slaves standing around a table polishing silver candlesticks, their voices low, so she came closer, pulling a bit of silk that she used to polish Nessaket’s comb from her pocket.
“They say Lord Zell beat her so hard she could barely move.”
“They’ll kill all of us by the end of it, with their patterns, their beatings, or their ghosts. I tell you…”
“…waiting in a grave for another…”
“Excuse me,” said Rushes, and all turned to look at her, eyes narrowed in suspicion. She drew her finger across her chin and they relaxed, nodding and returning to their work. “Who died?”
“Mina from the Little Kitchen,” said a young woman, hair the colour of the oak door behind her. “She got beaten.”
“W-What?” Rushes stumbled and turned, her mouth moving with no words.
“Some silk-clad caught her,” she said, expression going dark with what was left unspoken. “After that they took her to Mirra’s temple but there was nothing to be done.”
Mina. Dead. Rushes had seen Lord Zell in those passageways, cloaked in black like Herzu himself, hunting girls in the Little Kitchen. Nobody would stop him. Nobody could. Rushes got away, but Mina had been caught. Her chest felt tight, so tight she could not breathe. She wandered, crookedly, her shoulder hitting against the wall, drained of hope, the Longing filling her at last.
Her mind fell deep into memory-Gorgen, her brother, Emperor Beyon, Mina, Demah-Zell-and her feet went their own way, turning and stepping, following a well-worn path into the Ways. She huddled against the damp stone, smooth from the touch of a thousand hands, some shining and clean, others filthy, bloody.
She could jump. It was what Demah had chosen, what many others had chosen. It was the easiest way. To just stop. Stop worrying, stop trying. She moved forwards, feeling with her feet for the edge of the stone. She would not be alone. There were bones down there, thousands of them. It would be like being part of the Many, only all
