skin?”
“Died?” Surprise won over Mesema’s anger.
“You’ve seen the pattern, but not the death?” He stepped closer, his nose twitching as if he smelled bad meat. “What are you, then?”
Mesema waved her hands in denial. “I saw a pattern on the grass. That’s all.” Maybe the pattern was not the Hidden God’s, just the hare, showing a safe path through.
Arigu calmed. His sharp eyes studied her. He looked thoughtful, and for a moment he reminded her of Banreh, only less kind. “And what were you looking for, out there on the sands?”
She swallowed. “A path.”
Eldra was sitting up now, steadied by Banreh’s arm, and Mesema looked away. Watching them touch made her stomach twist around.
Arigu wasn’t finished with her. “A path to that building?”
She shook her head, no.
“Good. That kind of building has caused more trouble in Cerana than even the pattern.” Arigu motioned her forwards. “Come, girl. Let me look at your arms.”
“Why?” she asked, confused, even as she moved towards him.
“I need to see if you have the marks.”
She held out her arms and Arigu folded back the sleeves of her tunic. She noticed that his hands were trembling, but his fingers were light on her as he examined her skin. He was gentle, for a big, gruff man. “Well,” he said after a few minutes, “you don’t have the marks.”
“And if I did?”
Arigu ignored her question. “You said you saw the pattern in the grass. Did somebody put it there?”
“Just the wind.”
“And you never saw it before that?”
“No.” Mesema brushed her sleeves back into place.
“Would you remember what it looked like? If someone asked you to make a picture of it?”
“The bigger shapes, maybe.” The path is important, not the pattern.
Without another word to her, Arigu turned to Banreh. “Come with me,” he said. He pointed at Eldra. “Don’t touch her,” he called out to his men. “Let me deal with her.” He tapped Banreh’s shoulder and the two walked together, away from Mesema. “I have to ask you-” he began, but they passed out of her hearing.
Mesema knelt by Eldra. “Did it hurt?”
Eldra nodded, still cradling her cheek. “I want to go to the church.” “You can’t. We’re moving on.”
“Mesema, who can outride a Felt? I’ll be there before they can even-” “Listen. The pattern kills people. Arigu just said so. If the church is part of that…” She remembered Banreh dragging her away, remembered seeing the church for the first time. How had she not seen it before?
“The Cerani lies.” Eldra rose and brushed the sand from her skirt. “And the pattern is not the church; our faith is older than patterns.” She walked to the carriage, her posture straight and sure. Mesema was relieved that she went to the carriage and not the horses. Eldra’s words were just words; she wouldn’t ride off to the strange church alone.
In the distance, Banreh nodded to Arigu and limped back towards them, step by step. His face remained patient and still, even as sweat dripped from his hairline and soaked the collar of his tunic. She stood up to face him as he drew close, lifting her chin and putting her hands on her hips.
They looked at one another for a long moment.
“It is as I told you; you must learn to curb your tongue,” said Banreh. “Because I see things?”
“Partly. They have never heard of windreading before. But mostly, Cerani women don’t speak as you do.” He gathered himself. “Arigu says the pattern is a soul-stealer. Those marked by it become its servants. Those it can’t use, it kills.”
“How can a pattern make such decisions, Banreh? There must be-” “There must be what? Do you know something more?”
Did she? Mesema lost her grip on the tiny thread she’d been following in her mind. “No.”
“Well, then. Keep your thoughts close.”
Mesema twisted her hands together. “I understand. Banreh, where did that church come from?”
He looked puzzled for a moment. “I suppose it was behind a dune and then the wind moved the sand…” He stopped, then said, “I have to tell you something.”
She waited, watching Banreh massage his hip with one hand. He paused overlong, his eyes still cast down. Something bad, then.
“Tell me,” she said at last.
He looked at her. “The emperor doesn’t know you’re coming. Until he dies, you must keep your betrothal a secret.”
“But I’m to go to the palace!”
“No, we will wait in the city.”
“For him to die?”
Banreh sighed, and said, “Yes.”
Mesema took a breath. She’d known it would be hard, coming to the desert and living among the Cerani, but she hadn’t expected treachery. She stepped forwards, putting a trembling hand on Banreh’s shoulder. “Banreh-Arigu doesn’t mean to kill the emperor, does he?”
“No, the emperor is already dying.”
She breathed a sigh of relief. “But why keep it a secret? Imagine, if you married someone and my father didn’t know…” Mesema caught her breath. “My father was deceived.”
“Not exactly.”
“My father was deceived, and Arigu’s only warning us now because it’s too late for us to turn back.” She spoke, though her throat felt hollowed by sand.
Banreh kept silent, staring at the church in the distance.
“Arigu has been disloyal, Banreh, and caught us up in his game. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.”
“As you say, it is too late for us to turn back.”
She couldn’t read his voice. “Is that why Eldra is here? In case we make a run for it and get lost in the desert? So she can be the Felting bride if I run? We look alike.” Mesema gathered her hair in both hands and pulled.
Banreh hung his head. “When the emperor dies, you will be a queen, as Arigu promised, and your father will be satisfied.”
“And the war can go on, because nothing is more important. Not even this pattern that kills.”
Banreh looked over his shoulder at the packed horses and the waiting soldiers. “Come. It is time for us to move to a new camp.”
Mesema wiped at a tear and turned her back on Banreh. The dunes stretched out before her, their valleys offering shadow and secrecy. Without thought she started running, between one dune and the next, the sand shifting under her slippers, until her legs were shaking with effort. At last she fell against a soft, shadowed slope, gasping for breath. The sand cushioned her back and coiled around her feet like a rug. She was well hidden from the soldiers, and the pattern.
Mesema closed her eyes and listened for Banreh’s uneven gait. When he came around her side of the dune she said, “You will never let me run away from it, will you, Lame Banreh?”
“When Arigu chose you, your great-uncle looked into the grass.”
Mesema made a snort of disbelief. She didn’t open her eyes. She didn’t want to see his face.
“The wind showed us the future. You are to create a new leader, and with him, more glory than we have ever seen.”
“Glory that comes from fighting?” Mesema sighed. “You have used your honeyed tongue on me once already, Lame Banreh. I listen more cautiously now.”
“Then hear this.” But he said nothing for a time.
Mesema kept her eyes closed, listening to the falling of the sand.
“Mesema,” he said at last, “I would not let you go unless I believed it.”
