Knife Sworn (6 page)

Everywhere painted women perched on benches and cushions like butterflies. Generals, satraps and prominent merchants had all sent their finest prizes to Emperor Sarmin, but he had found no use for them. They watched her pass, eyes careful and cunning. Nessaket had not chosen them. They bore watching.

At last they arrived at the temple of Herzu. She indicated for her men to wait, squared her shoulders and marched into the darkness. She picked her way through the confusion of statues and benches, sometimes looking up at the high, spotless dome. Its apex was hidden in shadow, but she knew what was there: a will and a purpose. Not a path to avoid suffering but one to live through it, victorious.

At last she emerged near the altar. High Priest Dinar stood under the monstrous golden statue of Herzu, his broad shoulders blocking the candlelight. A sandcat lay at his feet, muscles twitching, its blood pooling on the tiles. A sacrifice. Sandcats were said to be twice as fast as a man and three times as strong, but she saw no man here save Dinar. She stood silently, watching the cat grow still.

At last Dinar turned, and she met his dark gaze. She was the wife of two emperors, and twice Empire Mother. He would hear her out. “Your Holiness.”

He bowed. She saw the speckles of blood on his scalp, on the backs of his arms. His right hand held a bloody dagger. “You bring the babe.” A question in his tone.

“I would have him serve Herzu.”

Dinar rose from his bow and motioned to a nearby bench. Together they sat. Dinar looked down at Daveed. “May I?” He held out his hands, covered with blood.

Nessaket slipped her baby from the sling and handed him to the priest. Dinar took him from his blankets, studied his legs and arms, turned his jaw left and right, and checked his penis. “He is strong.”

“Yes. He would make a good priest of Herzu.”

“Tuvaini was a good servant of Herzu. His son must be blessed.” Nessaket said nothing. Dinar turned the baby on his lap and ran a redtinged finger along his spine. “You would give me the babe? Now?” She hesitated. “He needs my milk.”

Dinar wrapped the blanket around Daveed. “I cannot take him.” Nessaket felt a wetness on her slipper. The creature’s blood had run across the tiles. She looked at Herzu’s statue, his terrible fangs, the heart of the sandcat in one golden hand, a dead baby in the other, and then at Dinar, his eyes cold, a ruthless smile on his lips. “Why?”

“You come to me out of fear and weakness. A mother’s desperation. You insult me.”

“Mothers can also be strong.”

“Are you strong now? Were you strong when you tried to spirit him away to your family? Or does your mage son frighten you?”

“Sarmin is no mage.”

Dinar smiled again. “You were not among the Many, were you? Many things that had been secret were shared. We shared a terrible knowledge. Now we are afraid to remember.”

“What are you speaking of?”

“Cowardice. We have forgotten what was begun.” Dinar stood and walked through the sandcat blood to the altar. He ran a hand down Herzu’s muscled, golden leg. “By Sarmin and those before him. We long for the Many, but we forget the price.”

Nessaket could not make out his meaning, but she knew it had nothing to do with Daveed. She stood, the babe quiet in her arms. “You refuse my son?”

Dinar spoke with his back to her. “I refuse your intent. Be strong for the empire, serve Herzu, and perhaps I will take him yet.”

“Sarmin—”

“For now the emperor is a child of Mirra, soft and weak. He offers peace to a defeated foe and coos over an infant. He will not move against you.” Treasonous words. But she had spoken worse in this place of Herzu, when Beyon was emperor. And Dinar spoke truly. She could make her moves now, before Sarmin learned to play the game in earnest. She could be several steps ahead of him before he was finished admiring his new son. “What must I do?”

“You know what to do. This peace is an affront to Him.”

Nessaket gathered Daveed against her chest and left the temple, leaving bloody footprints in her wake
.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Rushes! Wake up, girl.”

Rushes opened her eyes to take in the room, just beginning to show itself in shades of gray, and Mother Hagga, leaning over her with a frown.

“Sleeping when you should be lighting the fires. Gorgen—”

Gorgen!
Rushes leaped up and reached for her serving-dress, hanging on the wall above her pallet. If she hurried, she’d still get to the kitchen before he did. She didn’t want any trouble.
You’ll get it,
he always said. She finished tying on her clothes and ran to the water-basin. “Where’s Demah?” she asked.

Hagga shrugged and reached for her own work clothes, but without any hurry. Mother Hagga had worked in the Little Kitchen for as long as anybody could remember, and did mostly as she liked.

After splashing some water on her face, Rushes ran through the door and towards the Little Kitchen, holding her skirts up over her feet, taking the corners at a spin.She hoped Demah had already lit the fire.

But when she got to the Little Kitchen the fireplace was dark, and Gorgen waited by the water-pump, his big shoulders drawn up against the cool of the morning. Tears formed in Rushes’ eyes and she edged towards the coals, listening for Mother Hagga, though she had run so fast, and Mother Hagga was slow.
Where’s Demah?
As one of the Many she might have called out for her, but not any more.

Gorgen smiled. In this light his teeth looked just a shade lighter brown than his hair. She froze, one hand on the coal-shovel, but he didn’t move towards her, not yet. “You look so pretty, even first thing in the morning,” he said.

Confused, she said nothing, watching his face for clues.

He reached her in one stride, his big, calloused hand raised, and she cringed. But he only ran a finger down her cheek, and this scared her more than a slap ever could have. She didn’t know what he wanted, or what she was supposed to do. To live outside the Many, deaf to the murmurs of those around her, was to live in doubt. “I remember your voice,” he began, but stepped back and fell quiet at the sound of Mother Hagga’s footsteps in the corridor.

Rushes turned away and shoveled the coal. It wasn’t unusual for people to remember her voice among the Many. She’d been the only child in the palace who survived the Patterning. Also she was fast, and small enough to fit through little cracks and holes, so that it had been her who first found the body of Emperor Beyon, laid out in his coffin with the pattern shining all around him. It had been her who sent the image to the Many so that all could rejoice. When he was alive he promised
that as long as he was emperor nobody could hurt her.
And then she had become part of the Many, and celebrated his death. Tears burned her eyes; when the pattern broke the shame had found her and it had never left. It burned in her now, so she threw herself into the morning’s work.
Sorrow slips through the empty places, the idle moments, and trouble can’t move a busy hand
. That was what her mother used to say when the snow piled up outside and the two of them readied the wool for spinning, all alone in their smallhouse, with no clan or fields to surround them.
Let’s keep our hands busy.

“Here comes the priest,” Hagga warned in a low voice and then Rushes saw him, all in black, gliding past the kitchen door like a wraith from old stories. Every morning an acolyte of Herzu went into the dungeon and plucked out a prisoner who never came back. The stairway to the prison cells grew dark and silent.

She must have stopped whatever she was doing, for Hagga hissed at her, “Get to it, child! You can be frightened later.”

Mina scurried up from the Big Kitchen, dark hair gleaming under a pink scarf, carrying a bucket of onions with both arms. Only four of them worked in the Little Kitchen—Rushes, Demah, Mina, and old Hagga.

“Where’s Demah?” asked Gorgen, looking towards the hallway.

“Sick,” said Hagga. It wasn’t exactly a lie; Demah was always sad and out of sorts since the Unpatterning, the same as many other slaves. People called it the Longing.

Gorgen snorted. “She better drag herself out of bed. The prince is being presented today, and the silk-clad will be looking to fill their mouths.”

Rushes imagined the baby, red-faced and soft. It made her smile. She had been allowed only a few months with her own baby brother before coming to the palace. They finished the rest of the breakfast preparations in silence, each to their own tasks. Hagga made the bread, which gave a pleasant smell to the room, and Gorgen polished the silver and glass to gleaming. Every morning Rushes and Mina took platters up to the generals, the visiting nobles, and the finer slaves—the ones who counted money or wrote the stories of empire—while Demah served the women’s wing.

Gorgen turned to Rushes. His eyes had seemed kind, earlier, but now they went sharp. “With Demah dozing like a lazy cat,” he said, “you’ll have to do her work.”

Rushes hoped the beating of her heart didn’t show in her hands as she reached for the first silver tray, covered with the best dishes and the finest glass, and placed it on the moving shelves that would rise all the way to the third floor, to where the silk-clad women waited for their breakfasts. Once that tray was in place, she reached for the second.

“That one’s for the empire mother,” said Gorgen, still at her side, so close she could feel his breath on her neck. He touched another tray, smaller. “That one’s for old Sahree down in the servants’ hall.”

“Why?”

“Empress Mesema commands it.” Gorgen straightened and lifted his chin. “Sahree gave excellent service, I heard. Backdoor Arvind told me. Low Vizier Shubhan said it to Guard-Captain Mahmoud, and
he
got it from even higher up.”

Rushes couldn’t be sure all of that was true, because she had gone deaf to the thoughts of others, especially Gorgen’s. It would be odd for the message to come from Backdoor Arvind, an old man full of jokes and alcohol, who couldn’t name a single woman who lived upstairs. She lifted the last tray and put it inside the box of moving shelves.

“Hey.” Gorgen grabbed her elbow, squeezed hard. “When you see Demah, tell her she’s gonna get it.”

Rushes approached the great bed of the Empire Mother, a silver tray balanced between her hands. Nessaket lay sideways, head turned towards the window, the silk sheets tangled around her feet. Her hair made a brushstroke path along the white mattress, an artist’s sweep towards a word.
Beauty. Richness.
Rushes thought some more.
Sorrow.
She placed the tray on a nearby table and knelt into her obeisance, listening for a sound from the emperor’s little brother. Demah had told her the little prince was a jolly child, and fat, and she would very much like to see him, but she heard nothing.
Strange. Empty.
As one of the Many she would have been able to find the babe and listen to his nascent thoughts. She felt a pang of loneliness and pushed it aside.

“What is that?” the Empire Mother’s voice came hoarse and tired. “Dinner, Your Majesty,” said Rushes, focusing on a woven red flower just beneath her nose. Nessaket had never been one of the Many, but lying abed was an Unpatterned thing to do—something Demah would do.

The sheets made a slithering sound as Nessaket rose from the bed. “I know it’s my dinner—what sort of a dinner is it?”

“Cheese, bread, olive oil and some roasted vegetables and nuts,” Rushes took a breath, “Your Majesty.” The last had come too late, and she cringed, remembering how she had been slapped by the silk-clad before.

No blow came. Rushes let out her breath.

“What blood is it that grants such orange hair? I should like a slave with orange hair.”

“I—I am from the plains, Your Majesty.” Clanless and starving. But from the plains, nevertheless.

“Girls from the Plains have brownish-yellow hair,” said Nessaket, her voice full of knowing. Silver clinked against silver as she drew something from the tray. “They always look as if they need to be washed.”

Rushes mulled over the implied insult towards the empress. Her forehead began to sweat where it rested against the rug.

Glass clinked; the Empire Mother continued to eat while Rushes knelt. After a time she spoke again. “Are you sure you’re not Fryth?”

In truth she did not know. Her father had gone east when he left.
Gone home,
her mother had said, scratching at her own cheeks in desperation.
He has gone towards the morning and left us
. But Rushes did know the Cerani had attacked Fryth, and that made them the enemy—at least until the peace was made. “My father might have been Fryth, Your Majesty,” she said, “but I lived on the plains until Lord Arigu brought me here.”

A chuckle. “Arigu is no lord.” And then, more quietly, “He is more useful than that.”

“Apologies, Your Majesty.” Rushes thought about how long she had been facing the carpet. Gorgen would be in the kitchen wondering where she could be. Trays were lining up on the counter, waiting to be received by generals, advisors, and visiting lords. Mina wasn’t as fast as she was, and Demah was not there. Every day there was another reason for Gorgen to get angry. Warm wine, cold food, soggy bread.

You’ll get it.

“Stand. Let me see your eyes.”

She stood, instinctively avoiding the Empire Mother’s gaze, but then Nessaket grabbed her chin and jerked it up. Rushes stood eye-to-eye with the woman who had given birth to two emperors. Beyon’s mother. She tried not to let the other woman see it in her eyes: that she had stood over his body and radiated joy for the Many. If she blinked away tears, perhaps the Empire Mother would merely think her frightened
.