“What can I do?” Sarmin asked. “I don’t think I can stop him-I’m sure I can’t.”
She looked at him, waiting.
“I do have a kind of magic,” Sarmin admitted. “I can see the Pattern Master’s plans. I can see how much power he has, how he holds everything in his hands. He scares me.”
“You can see his plans, and you say that you can remove his marks.” Mesema held up her index finger. “Doesn’t that mean you can stop him?”
“I’m like an eagle that can fly over the city and see it whole. Then I can squawk about it to the mice who see only the walls around them.”
“And the marks?”
“I can change only one person at a time. There are too many.”
“Beyon-”
“I can’t help him.” He spat out the truth like a bitter pit. The Master had known it when he told Sarmin there was no hope. “I would have to remove Govnan’s protections, and the Master is always watching, waiting for that to happen.” He saw now that he had almost opened the way for the Master. Mesema had saved Beyon by raising his memories; it was her voice Sarmin had heard that night. Can she use patterns, then, as I can, as the Master can? He looked at her again. How did mages identify one another? The High Mage travelled the empire every few years, searching for children with talent. How young were they? Younger than Mesema, surely. Once identified, they spent the rest of their lives with the Tower.
Sarmin felt a sudden panic. He’d worried Beyon would take her, or the pattern, but he hadn’t thought of Govnan. Govnan had already taken Grada away. He might take Mesema, too, and still call Sarmin fortunate. He made fists in the covers. If I could leave here…
“What would he do then?” Mesema asked her question as she studied the calligraphy on the wall.
Did she see the faces hidden there? “Govnan?” If I could leave here, then I would give orders to these old men instead of taking them.
“The Pattern Master.”
Sarmin reached back in his mind to their previous conversation. “I think the Master would be happy to see Beyon dead. Once he hoped to control the emperor, but now he has waited too long, and I sense he is a vengeful man.”
“A vengeful man makes mistakes,” Mesema said. Her words sounded wise, but Sarmin couldn’t imagine the Pattern Master making a mistake. The only fault he could think of was one of omission: if there was something the Master didn’t see or couldn’t see…
“Listen. I’ve seen the pattern,” Mesema said, “in grass, and in sand. A hare ran through it in secret paths.”
Sarmin said, “I’ve seen the pattern, too. I’ve run through it, lived in it. But it doesn’t help. His pattern is perfect.” As are you.
“You’re sure?” She pinched her lips together.
Sarmin winced. Remembering the flaw made his stomach turn, like nails on chalkboard. The emperor’s Knife. The pattern-the whole pattern-was not drawn on parchment, or written on Carrier skin; it was bigger than that. The whole pattern was written through every thing and every one.
Except the Knife. Only the Knife remained as a taunt to the Master, inside the pattern, yet not part of it.
“First he must break the emperor’s Knife. Then it will be perfect.”
“Beyon’s knife? But surely-”
“Not Beyon’s knife, not the one he carries, anyway-it’s more than that, much more. The Knife is both holy and unholy.” She turned to him, her eyes flashing with a new idea.
“Sarmin, listen. In the desert, the pattern led us to a church of the Mogyrk One God.”
One god, one pattern, one way. He looked past her lovely face to the gods on the ceiling. Many gods for many choices: could this be what the Master was missing?
Mesema touched his hand, calling him back. “Do you think the Pattern Master believes in the One God?”
He spoke, trying to make his consonants soft and his vowels hard, as she did, “I don’t know. Surely it is how he sees himself-one Master, with all powers-but he needs others as much as I do. The Carriers.”
“If he needs them, we will stop them.” She thrust her chin out, just a little.
“Is this how all your people are?” Sarmin asked. “Ready to fight? No surrender, even when your horses are gone?”
Mesema grinned. “Yes, we’re famed for it. That, and for speaking out of turn. We are the Felt.”
“I imagined you, when Mother told me you were coming. I wondered how I could make you happy.” Sarmin felt the blood rise in his cheeks.
“Fight him. Fight this Pattern Master and his plague. That would make me happy.” She looked fierce now. Sarmin had never imagined her more lovely.
“Then I shall,” he said.
“And me?” Mesema pointed her finger Sarmin’s way, and his soft brown eyes turned to the moon-mark there.
Mesema loved Prince Sarmin’s voice, the first Cerani voice too soft to scratch against her ears. Nothing about Sarmin had edges. The emperor had made her ears hurt; the wind ran around him like a storm. Sarmin’s voice rose and fell with the rhythm of Tumble’s tether-bells. She closed her eyes and imagined lying next to him under his blanket. His window had been broken, and the cold desert night gripped the room.
Now he took her hand as he had before, his gentle touch reassuring. “Your blood made that mark-or you marked yourself. I think that makes a difference.” He looked at his own hands. “Blood must be the key to the pattern. It’s how I freed Grada.”
“Grada?”
“She was a Carrier.”
“You love her?” She didn’t know why she said it, but she knew there must be a truth to it. It made her sad.
“She’s from the Maze.” When she looked at him, not understanding, he went on, “She’s low-born. She helped me, but I can’t be with her, not like that.”
Mesema knew the explanation didn’t reveal everything, but then maybe he didn’t know everything. He looked away, and she studied his face in profile. At first, shyness had kept her from doing so, then she grew so comfortable with him that she forgot to look. But now his face drew her eyes. Olive tinged Sarmin’s skin, and yet still he looked pale. Sweat plastered his dark curls to his temples, and she remembered the smell of vomit outside the room. Her hand crept out over the silk blanket that covered him. She meant to touch his face, to check for fever, but her fingers met something cold and sticky first. Of course: the other smell she hadn’t identified when she entered. Blood. “What’s that? Are you hurt?”
Sarmin didn’t answer. Night darkened the room, and light came from only one lantern, far away in the corner. Mesema feared what she might see, but forced herself to walk to it anyway, her footsteps slow and dragging. She studied the red stain on her hand with a cold certainty. “You’re bleeding.” “Not any more.” Sarmin’s big brown eyes creased at the edges when he frowned. He looked like his brother the emperor, but with finer features. He would have been as handsome as Banreh if he weren’t so thin and wasted. “Do you have a wound? I know how to sew-” She had done much sewing of flesh during the war. Sometimes it helped. Other times the wound only festered. You could never tell…
But he waved her off. “You should go. People might be looking for you.” Mesema frowned. Only Beyon would look for her. She realised with a start she hadn’t told Sarmin about her vision; she’d put it from her mind, and therefore kept it from him. No secrets from my prince. She opened her mouth, but Sarmin’s eyes had already closed. Another time, then. “You need your rest. I’ll be back,” she promised, but he didn’t respond.
His chest rose with a slow breath. She crept towards the door. “Wait.”
She turned. Her prince reached under his pillow to draw out a long dagger. It had a three-sided blade, and the hilt sparkled with red gems.
Take this dacarba. I don’t need it any more.”
Mesema stepped forwards and lifted the weapon. It felt light and cool in her hand. She’d held her father’s sword once, when he wasn’t looking, and her brother’s boning-knife; they’d both had been heavier than this.
She wrapped her fingers around the hilt, feeling the sharpness of the gems against her palm. She shut her
