Knife Sworn (11 page)

“The two of us. This truth is dangerous. Many lives balance upon it.”

“The two of us then.” Sarmin motioned the sword-sons away.

Ta-Sann hesitated. “My emperor, the nomads—”

“Away!” Sarmin waved him off with his objections and the island men retreated towards the main entrance, Lurish following, deep in thought.

When his guard reached the far side of the chamber Sarmin spoke again. “You have me to yourself, Notheen, me and the old man. Will you enlighten me or stab me? Govnan could not stop your knife.”

Again Notheen paused before answering, stretching the silence until Sarmin thought he would not speak. “We have among our people wise men, just as with all the tribes of man. They read the signs written among the dunes, listen to the wind, treat with the djinn who ride to the outer desert on sandstorms. Held among the wise of my people is a tale, a secret learned long ago and kept close.”

“I will not share this secret.” Even as Sarmin said the words he thought of his lost time, wondered to whom he spoke and with what voice. A man who commands an empire but not his own mind should not promise discretion. Notheen, however, nodded, touched his fingers to his lips through the cloth of his veil and spoke.

“The heart of the desert is a place of death. All men know this. They know of the heat, the storms, and that there is no water. But the nomad tribes know that there is more. A god went into the sands. A god walked the dunes until in every direction two weeks of travel would not bring a man to water. And there in the dry heart of the Cerana Desert that god chose to die.”

“Mogyrk!” Sarmin stepped back in shock. He lowered his voice. “Mogyrk?”

Notheen nodded. “The dead god. The desert was where he came undone.”

“If the Yrkmen know of this…”

Notheen set the length of a finger to his forehead in acknowledgement. Govnan answered with a question. “Do you know how the Yrkmen invaders were driven from Cerana?”

“The desert beat them.” Sarmin had read it in the Reclaimer’s histories. “Supply across the desert proved impossible without the co-operation of the nomad tribes, and the defeated Cerani waged war from the sands where the Yrkmen troops feared to follow them.”

Govnan nodded. “It’s true, the desert defeated them. They lived in fear of it, and with good reason. Because of Mogyrk they understood the desert better than we did. Let us hope they have not forgotten that fear.”

“Why have you told me this, now and here by my brother’s tomb?” Sarmin glanced back, wondering if the screens had always looked so white, so brittle, or was the nothing within stealing both colour and substance from them as in his dream.

“The emptiness in the desert has been spreading. Slowly at first, so slow that it was not noticed from one year to the next. The dead god made a hole in the world and our sands are running through it. Faster this year than the last, faster today than yesterday.”

“W—” Sarmin glanced between Govnan and the nomad. “Why? Why now?”

“The Pattern Master spurred the advance. Our deep routes have been swallowed, even oases have been consumed. The salt paths my fathers rode are gone.”

“Helmar made my brother’s death his last anchor point for the pattern. This place, that time, Beyon’s death. It made the pattern whole.”

“And now the dead god’s Undoing is spreading from the wound.” Notheen paused as something crumbled and fell behind the screens. “Like new fires spreading where embers from the great fire have fallen.”

“This… this will spread?” Sarmin asked. “This could consume the palace!”

Notheen bowed his head. “It could erase Nooria, from wall to wall. We call it the Great Storm. It was foretold.”

“You must be able to stop it?” Sarmin let the question hang between them. He had looked into the tomb and seen nothing, not even hunger, no pattern, no hint of substance or flaw upon which a pattern-working might find purchase. Looking into that void had left him drained. The Many felt fewer in his mind.

Govnan looked worried. “I had hoped
you
might—No? Maybe that is best. If Helmar’s pattern made the fracture through which this bleeds then perhaps more pattern working would only tear the hole wider still.”

“What can the tower do, then?” Sarmin asked.

Govnan frowned, starting at the screens as if in search of inspiration. His body hunched, shoulders raised in the effort to will a solution. At last he shook his head. “It takes substance. Perhaps a rock-sworn mage might strengthen the stone to resist it. A wind-sworn mage might teach the air to hold its essence more tightly.” A shrug. “If it is hungry and we feed it, the void might lose its appetite for other things… a water-sworn mage might steer a stream from the Blessing and seek to drown this thing, if we had one.”

Notheen said nothing, only his eyes showed above the veil and beneath his cowl, and yet he managed to look unimpressed. “In the end there will be only desert. My people have always known this.”

“And that’s the total of nomad wisdom on the subject?” Sarmin kept the frustration from his voice.

“Even if the high mage can slow this advance, it is not good to be near this.” He waved his hand at the tomb. “The emptiness spreads beyond the boundary where all things are undone. Djinn will feel its pull and come to haunt this place. The nothing will echo in some of those who serve you, they will fall empty and sicken… There is no good thing here now. The wisdom of my people is in our name. Nomads. Seccan Thaleen we call ourselves, “blown before the storm”. You should find a new place, Sarmin emperor. This one is undone.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“It’s copper
coloured
, I grant you.” Rorrin flipped the pot over in one hand and flicked the base to make it chime. “Doesn’t sing like copper, though. I find its voice sharp and lacking melody.” He shopped with heart although he bought only citronel pods and later some roasted ground nuts sprinkled with the pollen of desert rose. To watch him Grada could believe Rorrin had no greater desire than to bilk the traders of their profit.

Rorrin put the cooking pot back with the others and allowed himself to glance at the approaching caravan. It had been turning heads for a little while, some citizens stopping to stare, little boys clambering up the palms lining the approach to the Blessing Gate.

“Foreigners,” he said, spitting for good measure.

“How can you tell?” Grada wondered if the slave wagons were rumbling
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along in the wake of this new caravan or whether they had changed course as she feared.

“The covers come to a peak. It’s the style in Fryth and Mythyck. The cloth is faded but hints at blue—which more than hints at Fryth. Someone important going on the size of the escort. Those White Hat are service units in from seeing action, they’re not dressed for show. I’d say we’re looking at royal prisoners, or some kind of envoy.”

They watched the approach. Outriders came in to disperse the queue at the gates, showing no patience with anyone who objected. Close up Grada could see dented shields, torn clothing, rusty blood stains, and short tempers in evidence. “It’s an envoy,” she said. “Our forces must have been repulsed.” Some among the crowd started to hoot, to call down curses upon the Frythian devils. For a moment Grada bristled at the idea of any defeat, her blood rising with the anger of the crowd.
Cerani troops driven back by mere Fryth!
It took a moment to recall that Sarmin had wanted peace, had demanded this very thing. She took control of herself, shocked at how infectious the mob’s mood was—at how easily people put aside reason in favour of taking sides.

The White Hats dealt out blows with fist and spear haft until the crowd fell into sullen silence. The caravan commander clearly had orders to make this a welcome. Preventing it from being a stoning was perhaps the most he could hope for.

The wagons drew closer now and Grada could see the Fryth wagons with their faded blues and narrow wheels among the Cerani army wagons, and further back along the column, flanked by White Hat spearmen, two carriages, each decortated with angular carvings exotic to her eye, blued and gilded.

That Rorrin had recognised their origin and deduced so much in so short a time reminded Grada that whatever favours she might have she was still an untouchable, with all the lack of education and ignorance that entailed. Her early life had been spent focused on survival in a particular handful of alleys, before Sarmin the sum total of her life had been played out within perhaps a single square mile of Nooria. And here was the world arriving at her doorstep once more, reminding her how very large and how very strange it was.

The carriages passed, the first less grand, with shades closed. White Hat guards marched briskly beside, spears over their shoulders.

“Scribes and personal servants, most like,” Rorrin said. “Maybe an honour guard.”

The second carriage rattled by, a golden eagle spreading gleaming wings atop its finial. The carriage windows stood open to catch the air and Grada stared at the men within. The closer man met her gaze between the passing spears as he went by, leaving her with an impression of indigo. A larger man sat to his left, broad cheekbones, a brutal face. And they were gone.

“What did you see?” Rorrin asked.

“Two men. They were gone so—”

“Don’t speak. Close your eyes and see them. They are still there on the back of your eyelids. Describe them to me.”

“I can’t—”

“Do it.”

So Grada closed her eyes and let the images flow. After a minute, stood without motion among the jostling ill-tempered crowd, she spoke.

“He wore a helm, despite the heat. The closer one, the younger one. An inlaid golden eagle in flight decorated it. His jacket, deep blue … almost black.Shiny buttons with that eagle again.” Grada wondered if she were making it up. How would she even have made out eagles on buttons? “He had dark hair where it showed, like charcoal, dull. Blue eyes, a strange deep blue. No beard, an artist’s face, delicate, angled. The other man was bare-headed, short yellow hair, some kind of robe, black I think. He looked like a warrior.”

“His robes were red. That was an austere. One of their priests. Very dangerous. They have magic that actually works! Not just smoke and fancy words. The other will be the envoy. Some relative of the Iron Duke I expect. In any event, not bad—you see more than you know and more than most.” Rorrin snorted. “You can open your eyes now, you know. Probably best if you did. The slave wagon just went by!”

“What!” Grada opened her eyes, blinking against the light.

They hastened to the gates, stepping around the fresh piles left by horse and camel, and following through behind the wagons without delay, the queues not yet having reformed as people continued to stand in hot debate about what it all meant.

Beyond the Blessing Gate lay the wide plaza of Satreth surrounded on each side with great warehouses, huge sandstone buildings carved so grandly that many newcomers mistook them for temples. Incoming merchants drove their livestock or cargo to be unloaded at the various bays while Noorians in their hundreds busied themselves in a score of different roles, an organised chaos designed to devour what the outside world fed in.

“We should follow.” Grada tried to shake off Rorrin’s grip as the slave wagon rumbled between two tall feed halls at the stock market.

“Meere will watch them,” he said, releasing her as she ceased to struggle.

“Meere!” Grada spat. “Meere, Meere, Meere. I don’t think there is any Meere. I’ve not seen sign of him for all your talk.”

Rorrin shrugged without offence and turned back along the crowded street.

“Who’s he supposed to be then? This Meere of yours.”

“Oh he’s not my Meere. He’s the emperor’s, though the emperor may not know it yet.” Rorrin kept his voice low, tone conversational, and Grada found herself hurrying at his elbow to catch his words. “Meere is the last person many people ever see—the best knife in the Grey Service.”

That stopped Grada’s feet and left her standing, jostled by crowds. The Grey Service was something to be whispered at night, a phrase invoked to end the conversation.

“Eyul was the emperor’s Knife. I saw him through the Many. I didn’t see any Grey Service.”

Rorrin sidestepped a pot-seller hung around with his trade goods. “Eyul, son of Klemet, Fifty-third Knife-Sworn was a man of particular duties and particular talents, a man set to cut throats for the empire—”

“For the emperor!” Grada said.

“For the empire. The Knife may cut royal throats too—even the throat of a false emperor or one condemned by his own laws. The Grey Service, on the other hand, carry out more mundane forms of murder for the state. It isn’t wise laws and shrewd negotiations that keep the empire’s peace, or at least not just those things. Unexpected deaths and the fear of dying unexpectedly in the night, in the security of one’s own bed, is what halts the plans of many an ambitious Cerani or stops them drawing up such plans in the first place.”

A coldness ran across Grada’s skin while she pushed and shoved to keep up with Rorrin, as if a shadow passed over them. “You mean the whole empire is run on murder and blood?”

Rorrin barked a laugh. “All empires run on murder and blood.” He stopped without warning and she checked herself just before crashing into him. “And the disturbing thing? All the alternatives lead to more blood and more murder.”

“So where are we going?” Grada asked, then stopped, turned, and set off back up the street, no longer interested in his reply. He’d done it to her again. Simply told her what to do, and like a trained dog, she’d obeyed even though it meant giving up the task set into her hands by Emperor Sarmin himself.

“Where are
you
going?” Rorrin followed in her wake.