“You have magic for the pain?” he asked as he closed the last yards.
She looked up, dark gleams for eyes. “Fire and smoke, nothing else.”
He helped her onto her camel. She held herself upright stiffly, moving with slow determination. Eyul still found her beautiful, despite the taut lines of her agony and the grim slit of her mouth. He felt guilty for it, even as he breathed her in. “There. Hold to the pommel.”
She gripped with her good arm. “Tell him to walk steady. I’d rather not fall off.” She managed a tight smile.
Eyul studied her for a moment. In the ruins she’d feared him as much as the ghosts, afraid he’d slit her throat. In a day or two her arm would swell, and she’d beg for that mercy. The knowledge sat like a cold stone in his stomach. The keen edge of the emperor’s Knife would hardly notice her skin, but he noticed it. He didn’t want her death on his hands.
“You never wanted any man’s death.” Eyul heard the words as if Halim were standing at his shoulder even now, risen from the grave and scarcely the more wizened for thirty years in the dry ground. “That is what makes you the ideal assassin: patience. Your lack of appetite lets you wait. Duty will guide your hand to make the cut.”
Amalya returned his gaze. “What are you thinking?” A lover’s question, asked through gritted teeth.
“That we should put space between us and this place,” he said, mounting his own beast.
Tuvaini waited for her in the temple of death. Herzu watched him from eyes oflapis lazuli in a face of carved jet. He returned the god’s stare as he approached along the central aisle. The sculptor presented Herzu as a thickchested man with the head of a jackal, six yards tall. When Herzu visited Tuvaini’s dreams, he came as a human youth, loose-limbed, robed, walking the dunes in the dusk, seen only in glimpses between the crests.
“My Lord High Vizier.”
Tuvaini turned. Nessaket stood behind him, close enough to touch. “My lady.” He brought his fingers to his forehead. “You have a silent step.” She waited, impassive save for the slightest furrow between her brows. Tuvaini moved aside, and as she passed he drew in the scent of her.
Desert-rose, and a hint of honey. He watched Nessaket’s smooth back, the motion of her shoulders, the gleam of olive skin as she made her devotions. Her personal guards would be waiting by the door, but in the temple of death they were alone.
At last she stood and turned. Tuvaini pulled his gaze from the sway of her breasts to the hardness of her eyes.
“You are a pious man, Vizier?”
“Only the foolish do not honour those with power over them,” Tuvaini said.
“Herzu holds power in both hands.” She spoke from the scriptures. “In his left he brings hunger.”
“And in his right hand, pestilence.” Tuvaini finished the line. A pause.
“And the emperor fares well this morning, I trust?” Tuvaini smiled.
Nessaket did not smile. “My son is well, I thank you.” She walked towards the entrance and her waiting guards. She always left him this way, wanting. Set aside.
“But which son?”
Nessaket stopped, her shoulders stiff. For the longest moment she neither walked nor turned. Tuvaini wanted to see her face, wanted to see what his words had written there.
Another step towards the doorway.
“Herzu has his right hand upon Beyon’s shoulder, Nessaket.” Her name felt good in his mouth.
She stopped again. Sweat ran beneath his robes, liquid trickles across his ribs.
“Can Arigu find a child among the horse clans so young she is yet a virgin?” Tuvaini asked.
At that Nessaket turned.
Tuvaini felt his heart pound. “And if he can, will she reach Nooria? It’s a long road from the grasslands, and we live in interesting times.” He reached into his robes.
Nessaket startled, arms rising, mouth ready to call her men He pulled the scroll out quickly. “No weapons-we are not barbarians, Nessaket.” He managed a smile. Their sins bound both of them to silence. Nessaket would not run to the throne room; she would stay and listen until he let her go. He held the scroll before him, level with his head. “There is an old man in the desert who remembers our history better than the most learned palace scribe. He holds treasures from the library of Axus, taken on the night it burned-papers, documents, books of record, sealed oaths, blood confessions spilled on cured skin.” And one has been stolen for me.
Nessaket approached, a sway to her hips, silks flowing, a memory from dreams on nights too hot for sleep.
“And what does your paper say, Tuvaini?”
“I-” She had never spoken his name before. “I-” He looked to the scroll and its wax seals. His hand shook from wanting her. “It shows the lines of succession, back past the Yrkman incursion. Where we have speculation, it has names; where we have hearsay, it has dates. Fact in place of argument.”
“And what is that to me? Or the emperor?”
“Herzu watches us. May we speak of death, Nessaket?”
She was close, her scents surrounding him. “I married the death of children, Tuvaini. I am no stranger to such talk.”
Tuvaini lowered the scroll, unrolling it. “This page shows the path Herzu has set before me. It tells a tale of failed lines, premature ends, assassination. It shows how, with enough time, the seed that falls furthest from the tree can flourish.”
She took a step closer, her head tilted in question.
“Beyon will die soon, or become something worse than a corpse. And fifteen years’ solitude has broken Sarmin; he could never rule. Let that line end, and the next step is written here.” He pointed at the bottom of the scroll.
Nessaket drew in her breath. “Treason.”
“I do not speak of betrayal. I would never raise my hand against the empire. I love the empire.” He traced a finger down the longest line upon the parchment, reaching his grandfather’s name. “And it falls to me to safeguard the empire.”
She was silent a long time, and he listened to her breathing, watched the light on her hair. She raised her head from the parchment and looked at him, truly studied him, as she never had before. What did she see, he wondered.
“I very much enjoy being the emperor’s mother,” she said at last.
He resisted the urge to wet his lips. “And how did you enjoy being the emperor’s wife?”
“One of many wives.” She turned towards the statue. “It was tolerable.”
“Tahal was a great man, deserving of many honours,” said Tuvaini. “But I am a humble servant of the empire, who has never once asked permission to marry.”
“I see what you mean.” She fingered the pendant that hung between her breasts.
Another silence.
“Beyon has been to see Sarmin,” he told her. “He wishes to circumvent you and make Sarmin his own servant.”
“He will fail.” She dropped the pendant and faced him.
“They were close as boys. Apart, they are easily controlled, but together, they might be difficult.”
“While you are not.” Nessaket showed him a slow, secret smile, and for an instant she was the girl he had loved in the happy days of Tahal: the graceful young girl who danced for the emperor in his private rooms, the boy at his feet forgotten. Tuvaini had always been overlooked. But no more.
“While I am not,” he agreed. “A sick son and a mad son, Nessaket. There is no future there.”
She stepped closer, so close he had to clutch the scroll to keep himself from touching her. “I will consider your words,” she said. “And your offer.”
Tuvaini swallowed. “Nothing could please me more.”
A brief incline of her head and she was gone, brushing past him and to her guards without another word.
Tuvaini lowered himself to the stone and stared up at Herzu’s face. His breathing slowed; his fierce need abated. He gathered himself for his next confrontation. It was as he had told Nessaket: together, the brothers
