switch.
Someone whispered, and he put his ear against the stone.
“Sarmin! It’s me!”
Joy bloomed in him. “Mesema!” My bride! “There’s a catch-Tuvaini told me once. You have to put a dagger in it, or a dacarba, right up to the hilt.”
“I have your knife.” After a minute something clicked and the wall swung wide. It amazed Sarmin, every time. Mesema ran in, looking wild as a legend, with a silken sheet wrapped around her, her hair hanging in tangles, and blood streaked across her cheeks. She held his dacarba in her right hand.
“Beyon’s dead.”
“I know.”
“He took his own life to keep from joining the pattern.”
Sarmin sat on his bed. He hadn’t expected that-an assassin, he’d thought, or maybe some Carriers-but to take his own life, as a final act of bravery… He felt the tears come once again and wiped them away. “But it can’t be. After he died, the pattern was stronger.”
“Yes.” The way Mesema thrust out her chin told him that she hadn’t changed her mind about fighting. “His blood raised a pattern all around him. The Pattern Master-” Her bravery was short-lived. She looked past him to the assassin and gave a little cry.
Sarmin watched her face, how the lines grew longer when she was worried. “I’ve been giving him wine,” he told her. “Do you have any healing?”
“A little.” She crossed to the bed, and as she pulled up Eyul’s shirt Sarmin’s gaze fell with shock upon her arms. Red and blue pattern-marks spiralled from her wrist to her elbow, each shape part of the Master’s plan, each line drawing them closer to the endgame. She raised a hand over the assassin’s wound, but hesitated to touch it. “This will kill him.”
“I think so.”
“You were hurt-who healed you?”
“Govnan, but I have no way to call him.” He felt it a lack in himself that he could not call on the mages, that he must wait and hope that they called to him upon the wind. And he felt a lack in himself that he could not reassure her.
Mesema took a breath and leaned over the assassin, reaching out to stroke his hair. “Poor man. Lucky he’s not conscious, he can’t feel the pain.”
Sarmin wasn’t so sure of that, but he didn’t say so. Her marks drew his eye and he wanted to touch them, study them, even now. “He killed my brothers.”
“Yes.” She looked away, her face troubled. “I know.”
“It’s good to see you.”
“Is it?” She fell against him then, and he felt her tears against his skin. “It’s good to see you, too.” They stood that way for some time, lit by the evening sun burning through the broken window, her breath tickling his neck, his hands feeling the warmth of her skin beneath the thin sheet. In all the years in this room only Grada had come this close, and that had been in a killing embrace. “The Carriers almost found me,” she said. “I crouched in the dark and watched them run into the tomb to kill me.”
“But you got to me,” he said.
“I did.”
She stepped away from him, and immediately he wanted her back again. “Sarmin, if I carried Beyon’s child, would you still like me?”
A child! Someone else to love. He thought of Beyon’s eyes, the way he had laughed, his strong and powerful voice. He remembered trailing behind Beyon in the halls, his brothers around him, a laughing huddle, but always behind, struggling to keep close enough to see Beyon disappear around the next corner or beyond a door. Don’t leave me, he would always think. Don’t leave me. “Yes,” he breathed, “oh, yes.” He paused. There would be no secrets from his bride. “But I love Grada, too.”
She looked up at him. “That’s all right. I love Banreh.” He smiled and took her hand.
Chapter Forty-One
Tuvaini tied his robes and stepped into his silken slippers. It was the fourth day of the rule of Helmar the Restorer. Azeem waited before him, as he always had, not yet marked, though the guards at the door showed stripes across the backs of their hands. He could not speak of anything with them there.
Tuvaini was now Prince Tuvaini, the descendant of the Son of Heaven, the heir to the throne. He was not entirely sure why Helmar had allowed that, or why he’d left him unmarked, so far at least. He wished for company, perhaps. He had left Nessaket free of the pattern as well, and Tuvaini was glad of it, for the sake of the child-if there really was a child. He could never be sure with Nessaket.
He slipped on his rings and bracelets, thinking of the sea. The sea came to his mind often now. With Lapella gone, all connection to his homeland had been lost. He had also lost the throne, and that was truly gone. Even if he did inherit after Helmar, this was not the city he loved, the empire he loved: thousands were already dead, and the rest were marked and silent. This was the centre of a doomed empire. It had begun its slow decline with Beyon, but Helmar’s work was quicker.
He felt a lump rising in his throat, but feigned a cough instead. “Let us go to the temple.” Helmar had no interest in Cerani gods, so Herzu’s temple might be safe from Carrier eyes.
Azeem led the way. Travelling the corridors no longer held any pleasure for Tuvaini. It had begun with Lapella’s death, a vague distaste for the mosaics and tapestries that showed the way from one grand room to another, but with Helmar’s ascendance distaste had solidified to aversion, and now Tuvaini longed for the simple whitewashed walls and the natural flower gardens of his old home. He approached the temple of Herzu with relief, for the dark and ugliness felt more true.
Nessaket waited on a bench, her hair shining and straight as ever, shoulders stiff. He took his place beside her and gazed up at the golden effigy of their patron god. Azeem settled further back, near the corridor, ready to alert them should anyone else enter.
“I wait for you every day,” Nessaket said.
“I have been quite busy, as you might expect.”
“The last time a new emperor took the throne, the wives of the old emperor died.”
“Ah, but you are not yet my wife.”
She fell silent, fiddling with the sapphire charm around her neck. “We should be grateful.”
“Should we?”
“Let me be frank. When one considers our treachery, this is one of the best possible outcomes. You are still an heir, and we are both unmarked.”
“I see your point.” He did not feel grateful.
“I want to come to the throne room today.”
“Your best plan is to stay unnoticed.”
She tugged at her necklace. “I am no ordinary woman, to wait in a gilded room!”
“He is no ordinary man-you think to charm him, to dazzle him with your beauty? I would guess him immune to such tactics. This is no game.”
“As you said, I am not your wife yet, and you cannot command me.”
“Your life is yours to waste, but our child-” Truly, the last thing I have to lose.
“Our child’s life depends on what we are able to do next, and that depends on knowing everything we can know about him-including whether he can be swayed by a woman!”
She thinks to betray me. She will marry the hermit if she can.
Tuvaini looked once more at the god-statue towering over them in the dark. “Do as you will. I care not.” The lie felt sour on his lips as he left the temple and made his way to the throne room.
Mesema crept along the kitchen corridors. Wearing a coarse sack and with her hair pulled back, she could pass for a toilet-keeper or offal-bearer. She left the marks on her arms exposed-all the servants bore marks now,
