hip. The hilt felt warm beneath his sore fingertips, reassuring. There might be little call for a blind assassin, but the emperor’s Knife would make his end a quick one. And hers.
I send souls to paradise.
The heat built quickly, and with it came flies. Eyul covered Amalya’s arm as best he could with his cloak. She stirred once in his lap, muttering something incomprehensible, and he ran his fingers across her lips. “Shhh.”
An hour passed, or maybe four. The sun parched Eyul, and his tongue felt like old leather when he spoke. “Perhaps it is time.” Before she wakes. She won’t feel it. He reached for his Knife, faltered. He didn’t want it to be time.
“Nice knife.” A stranger’s voice sounded at his shoulder. Eyul pulled the blade clear.
“They say a blind man’s other senses get sharp.” The stranger spoke with mild amusement. Somewhere on the dune, others whispered.
Eyul knew the accent; only one people spoke the true-tongue with such reckless disregard for vowels.
“But it can’t be true. I watched you cuddle that pretty slave girl for so long that Jarquil had time to find your camels.”
Eyul set the emperor’s Knife to Amalya’s throat.
“Hey now!” The nomad’s surprise set a grim smile on Eyul’s lips.
“Wh- What?” The touch of metal to skin brought Amalya from whatever dark seas she floated on.
Eyul flinched, finding his own surprise.
“Who?” Amalya asked the question in a croak.
“Nomads,” Eyul said. “You should let me cut your throat. I’d be doing you a favor.”
Chapter Fourteen
'Hey now,” the nomad said again, softer this time, “the sun rises. Time for you to come with us, blind man.”
Amalya’s fingers curled around Eyul’s wrist. With a sigh he drew the Knife away from her throat. He bent his head over hers, seeking the hollow of her ear. “Can you see them?”
She stirred and spoke into his chest. “No weapons in their hands.”
“What do you want?” Eyul asked the nomad, raising his head as if he could see. He heard the soft bray of a horse.
“Me? Nothing. The old man is expecting you. Come, now.”
“It’s all right,” Amalya said.
Eyul sheathed his Knife. He kept still as someone, a nomad, from the smell, wound fabric about his eyes.
“Jarquil brings water.” Done with Eyul’s bandage, the nomad tapped his shoulder, then tapped it again until Eyul raised his knife-hand to accept a clammy water-bag, cool against his burned palm. He held it to Amalya’s mouth first.
Afterwards, the nomad took the skin from his hand. “Come, now. The pretty girl, too.”
Eyul drew his right arm in front of her. “She stays with me.”
This drew a hoot of amusement. “If you think you can hold onto her, blind man.”
He did. She was not as helpless getting onto the camel as he expected, but he wrapped one arm around her anyway, holding her firmly in place. With his good hand he grabbed the pommel.
The nomads led them on, and they travelled in silence under the hot sun. Amalya rested her arms on Eyul’s, and nestled her head under his chin. He supposed she was drifting. Her hair was hot from the sun, wafting a fragrance he remembered from the palace courtyard: the yellow flowers that sparkled on their bushes like the stars at night. He had never learned the names of the different flowers, not even for the making of poisons, for he did not work in secret, or with cowardly tools. If a man died by the emperor’s Knife, he and everyone else would know it. And so he didn’t know the name of the yellow flower. He regretted that, among many other things, today.
Eyul had never questioned any of the decisions and beliefs that had brought him to this moment. Every step felt pre-ordained, difficult but necessary for his service to the gods. At the same time he knew that any different choice might have brought him a different life-one where he would be quietly fishing along the river, perhaps, or collecting ink roots in the desert. Maybe he’d have sons instead of dead princes to dream about.
He felt Amalya’s fingers close around his elbow and surprise drove away the last of his wistful thoughts: she was alert.
That small touch of fellowship encouraged him. Without sight, the hours left to him promised to be small in number and low in comfort. Sweat and sand chafed his skin; pain held his back in a scorpion grip. The nomads’ high-pitched calls roiled in his ears. Even so, the gods might have chosen a worse ending, for he was not alone.
“How are you feeling?” A stupid question. Soon she would ask him to free her, to give her up, and he would do it.
She turned until he could feel her breath against his throat.
“I think we’re going to be all right.”
She lies for me. “Yes,” he said, “maybe so.”
Tuvaini passed through the Low Room where the fountain made soft lapping sounds and patterned sunlight fell through the latticed stone above. Two of the Old Wives sat upon the fountain’s rim, washing their arms in the cool water. One met his eye and whispered in the other’s ear, and they both giggled. Despite their grey hair and sagging breasts, he was no doubt too old for their taste.
This room held no more solace for him. When he looked at the tiles, he remembered Eyul’s blood, and he wondered whether the assassin had survived his mission in the desert. If it were any other man, Tuvaini would assume him dead, but Eyul’s years of killing hung around him like chainmail. He might survive. The idea was pleasing.
He passed the guards, who bowed, and the slaves, who prostrated themselves; he paid no attention to either.
The doors to the throne room stood open. Tuvaini had liked the great doors very much, in Emperor Tahal’s time. It felt right for the gods to smile upon Tahal, who had earned the throne with both strength and spirit. But when Tuvaini realised the doors favoured all emperors indiscriminately, he became disenchanted. Under the aegis of those carved gods, the Boy Emperor had thrown tantrums in his chair, refused to listen to his adviser, and even struck his mother when she tried to whisper in his ear. That was when the nobles had first drifted away from the city, pursuing power in their own provinces, unhindered, while the boy pursued maturity in his.
It would be a long time coming. Even now, as Tuvaini approached, Beyon played a loud game with the slave children and his mangy dog. “Catch the ball like that,” he said, as a little brown-haired boy laughed. “Then- quick!- throw it and turn-”
The boy threw the ball towards a little red-haired girl; her hands darted out to catch it, but she missed. Squealing with laughter, she raced the shaggy dog for the prize.
“Get it, get it!” the boy called after her. But the dog got the ball, and Beyon and the slave boy collapsed with laughter.
“Your Magnificence.” Tuvaini made a quick obeisance. Beyon looked at him like a man coming awake, his eyes clearing, his smile fading. “Tuvaini,” he muttered. In a louder voice he said, “All right, children, have some honey-nuts-here; here-and now back to your master and the chores he has for you. I’ll see you again tomorrow.”
The children plodded away from the dais, their heads low, their shoulders bowed.
“Do you know, Your Majesty,” said Tuvaini, “that their master might well beat them for their presumption, interacting with you?”
Beyon raised his eyebrows as Tuvaini put on a look of concern.
“Then I would have their master killed,” said Beyon. “It is not for him to judge.”
“As you say, Majesty.” Beyon rarely had any other solution. It bored Tuvaini, but also he depended on it. “But remember, these slaves will grow up one day, and they will expect special favors from you.” Or me.
