Knife Sworn (7 page)

“Dark blue,” said the Nessaket, letting go of Rushes’ chin. “Fryth for certain.” She took another bite, chewing slowly, her red mouth curling up into a smile. Behind her, the little prince began to wail, pulling Rushes even further into the past, when she was five and her own little brother cried for his milk. Her mother sold her one season later, to get herself a dowry and to secure the baby’s future, but she remembered his angry little fists, his chubby, pumping legs. The fierce love she had felt for him rose inside her, more of a longing than a memory, and tears threatened once again.

But where could the prince be? She could hear him, but she couldn’t see him. She looked around the room, at its gilded pillars, gleaming mirrors, and fine paintings of angels. There was too much to look at here. He could be anywhere, in a golden or silver basket, lost in the mix of colour and fabric.

Nessaket returned her food to the tray. “Do you understand the Fryth concubines when they speak?”

“Apologies, Your Majesty. I have not heard them speak.” In truth she did not know whether she would understand Frythian. She remembered something about her father’s speech, its hard edges and its lack of affectionate tone. Had that been Frythian?

“But you understand their language? What about the other ones? The Mythyck girls?”

Rushes blinked away another tear. “I’m just a slave, Your Majesty.”

“A slave with ears.” The Empire Mother looked away as if gathering her thoughts. Perhaps Rushes’ stray tear had disturbed her. “But pretty. You may attract too many eyes.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” said Rushes, not sure whether it was the right response. She could have told how she wore her dresses loose, and used two aprons instead of one, to try and keep the men from looking.

“And yet,” said Nessaket, “I would love to have someone who can tell me what people are saying. Visitors to the palace. Generals and lords. The concubines. They guard their tongues when I am near.”

“Of course, Your Majesty.” Rushes made a bow. “As you wish.”

Nessaket smiled and waved a hand over her tray. “I’m finished.”

Rushes picked up the tray and left the room backwards, bowing. In the corridor she nearly bumped into one of the new concubines, a pale, lighthaired girl with eyes that narrowed at her appraisingly. Had some lord paid her family, and then presented her to Emperor Sarmin like a gilded box? Rushes remembered the first day they brought her before Emperor Beyon. He had been standing all alone in his great hall, but then he sat down on the steps and gave her some honey-candy. He called her Red-Rose and let her play when nobody was looking. She had betrayed him in the end, but she could still help his mother. All she had to do was listen.

Rushes returned the empire mother’s tray to the moving shelves, careful not to walk into any of the silk-clad concubines. They crowded the great room, circling the food she’d laid out earlier. She felt pity for them; everyone knew the emperor wanted only one wife. It was a love story, savoured over the sleeping-mats. Sarmin the Saviour and his wife Mesema.

The beauties ignored her as she balanced the tray on one knee and pushed the heavy door. On the other side a guard saw her, smiled and pulled it open. She thanked him as she hurried past, wondering which One he might have been. It was nearly impossible to match the memory of a voice, the impression of a life, with a real face. And of all the things she heard when she was Carried
, I was a guard
was the most often repeated. But
he
probably remembered her.

Rushes turned this way, then the other, as the corridors grew plainer but at the same time, brighter. The plain white walls reflected the sun and made the servants’ quarters sizzle. This hall was for the slaves who had earned their freedom but remained in service, though she did not understand why they would. Before long she found a door hung with a wreath of Mirra and knocked. She heard only a vague murmur, so she put the tray on the floor and pressed her ear to the door. “Hello?” she called out, knocking a little louder. This time she heard something like the croak of a blackbird. Before she had the time to be afraid, she opened the door.

The room was so dark compared to the hallway that it was difficult to see inside. Wooden screens blocked all light from the window, and shadows drifted along the edges of the room like mist. To the right, she could see an altar, its base carved in the shape of a woman, its candles unlit. In the centre of the room rose the dark mound of the bed, and what lay on the bed looked more wraith than old woman. She could make out only the sharp edges of her cheeks, the brightness of her eyes, and tufts of white hair glowing in the light from the door.

Rushes bent down, lifted the tray and carried it in. Finding no table near the bed, she laid it on top of the covers. The room felt colder than it should be. Outdoors it was hot; it was hot in the hallway. And yet this room felt like autumn on the plains.

“A lady died here,” the woman said, her voice dry as old bread. “Murdered. You can feel it, can’t you?”

Rushes shivered and wrapped her arms about herself. The old woman smelled of urine, but there was another smell here, something like rot and soil. Rushes sent a quick prayer to Mirra before speaking. “Blessings, Sahree. I brought you food, from the empress.”

“Cerana has no empress.”

“But we do. She—”

“No. We have emperors, and the emperors have wives. Many wives, and many children. But this is one woman who will have just one child, and only doom will come of it.” She spoke with certainty, like a priest in his temple, and with the same ferocity.

“Don’t worry, Sahree. The little prince is healthy.” But Rushes had not seen the boy. No-one had.

Sahree chose an olive and sucked on it, making a slurping noise. The room closed in on Rushes. She imagined someone was hiding behind her, or under the bed, ready to grab her feet. She longed to run back out into the sunny hall, run down the stairs and put this room far behind her, but she worried about the shelves returning to the kitchen without the silver tray. Perhaps she could wait out in the hallway while the old woman ate. While she was considering what to do, Sahree spoke again. “Mirra blessed the girl. We all heard it loud and clear from Mirra’s garden in the desert, but she chose her own way instead. A hidden way for her Hidden God. The Hidden God can’t stop what’s coming, can’t stop what nobody can see.”

“Shh,” said Rushes, looking nervously towards the hall. “Do not speak ill of the empress.” Rushes had seen whippings, and worse, for lighter words.

“Beyon threw me into the dungeon already,” said Sahree, pointing a bony finger at the floor. “I have been in the highest rooms and the lowest cells of this place. I have seen everything there is to see and the future besides. I saw it in my stone, and it changed me. But now I have lost it.”

Rushes tried to make conversation, the way she did sometimes with Gorgen, to keep him from thinking about bad things to do. “Where did you lose your stone?”

Sahree leaned forward. It was difficult to continue meeting her gaze, so intense it was. “Right where I found it,” she whispered, “below.”

“In the dungeon?”

The old woman didn’t answer, just stared and popped another olive into her mouth. Her eyes never left Rushes’ face, and there was a question in them that could not be avoided.

Rushes covered her mouth with both hands. “Oh! I can’t get it for you. I can’t go down there. It’s dark and the priests of Herzu are there and anyway Gorgen would—”

Sahree snorted. “Gorgen! I spanked him when he was a boy running wild in Tahal’s kitchens. He’s frightened of me still.”

Rushes forced her hands down to her sides, made them stop trembling. “Well, perhaps you could ask Gorgen…”

Sahree sprang forwards then, faster than Rushes could jump away, and caught her forearm in an iron grip. Sahree’s skin was cold, and Rushes could feel her finger-bones like claws digging into her flesh. Instinctively she cried out to the Many in her mind:
Help me!
But the Many had faded to nothing more than a buzzing at the edge of her thoughts.

“This is Mirra’s work,” Sahree said, “and it has to be us women who do it.” Then she let go, leaned back and lifted one of the silver domes. “The meat is nice and rare,” she said in a normal voice, the voice of a motherly old body-slave. She took a piece and chewed, open-mouthed, and the blood ran down her chin. Rushes looked away. For a moment she felt angry at Demah. If Demah hadn’t run off, she would be the one talking to Sahree.

“Do you know why she was murdered, girl? Right here in this bed. For babies. It’s always about babies. Too many babies, not enough babies; dead baby, alive baby; right baby, wrong baby.” Sahree spat out the meat. “What’s on this?”

“Fish oil,” said Rushes, “to make you strong.”

“Take it,” said Sahree, pushing the tray, “and don’t come back without my stone.”

Rushes stood in the hall and listened for Gorgen’s voice in the kitchen. If she were lucky, he’d be on one of his many breaks in the work-yard, smoking bitter weed and flirting with the laundry girls. Since she heard only the crackle of the kitchen fires and the sound of Mother Hagga beating dough, she ventured in. Platters filled with delicate pastries covered the wooden table, waiting to be taken to the reception room where Empress Mesema would show the newborn prince to the court. Rushes walked past them to work the pulley and take a silver tray from the shelf. It was covered with half-eaten food and splashes of rose-water from when the women had cleaned their hands after eating. She took it to the washing-tub.

“Did you like it up there, among the silks?” Gorgen’s leg brushed against her backside as he moved behind her. “That could have been you, Rushes. Emperor Beyon would have you in the women’s wing by now.”

Her hand shook as she rinsed a fine glass under the water-pump. “Oh, yes.” She heard the pleasure in his voice, the joy he got from frightening her. “Lord Vizier Shubhan chose you for the throne room.” Then his finger on her cheek as it had been that morning, but not softly this time. “Why do you think he did that?”

Red-rose,
the emperor had called her
.
Rushes swallowed and stepped away from him.

“The emperor played with you? Gave you treats?”

Outrage overcame her fear. “I was a just a little girl!”

“But not any more.” He laid a hand on her arm.

Hagga sighed behind them. “Leave her be, Gorgen.”

“No. I didn’t like the way she talked to me just then.” His grip tightened as he pulled her towards the rice pantry. “Come on.”

“No… please. I need to put… need to put the glasses away.” Her protests were futile. Before they had left her lips, he had pulled her halfway across the room.

As they passed Hagga, the old woman put down her dough and frowned at them. “Why can’t you beat her right here in the kitchen like anybody else, Gorgen?”

Gorgen and Hagga stared at one another. Hagga’s eyes spoke of accusation and disgust. Rushes blushed with shame.

Gorgen raised a fist. “Be careful, old bat. I’m not afraid of hitting you, too.” But then he dropped Rushes’ arm and slouched into the corridor.

Hagga picked up her dough and kneaded it with white-crusted hands. Even as one of the Many she had stayed in the kitchen, baking her bread and tending the fire. If the Many was a river, Hagga had been a stone at the bottom, solid, unmoving, something you could step on without ever falling.
I was a cook.

“Thank you.”

“Watch out for that one, child.”

“Why is he like that?” The Many had never hurt one another
.
Rushes turned to the tub and lifted the delicate glasses she had washed. She would bring them to Naveen, who would lock them away until the next time the empire mother must eat. Their curves shone purple, then gold, as she turned towards Hagga.

“He’s got the Longing. Without the Many he doesn’t know one end of things from the other.”

Rushes doubted that. The Longing made people sad, not mean. Rushes remembered Sahree asked, “Hagga, have you ever heard of a special stone? A magic stone?”

Hagga put her bread on a long trowel and slid it into the oven. Wiping her hands on her apron, she said, “I may have heard of something like that. A luck stone.”

“How does it work?”

“Well,” she said, already punching another round of dough, “some say you hold onto it, and bad things won’t happen to you. Others say you only have to sleep with it. Or if you plant it in your garden, you won’t get any weeds, and if you put it in your fireplace then your fire won’t smoke. Things like that.”

Rushes looked down at the glasses she held. “Bad things won’t happen?” She wished that people could still understand each other without speaking.

Hagga sighed. “Well, girl, a luck stone just might protect you from beatings, or worse, if you can find one.”

Or worse.
Rushes nodded and moved towards the corridor, looking for Naveen.

“But sometimes they don’t work,” Hagga said from behind her. “And everything just gets worse.”

Rushes wished Hagga hadn’t said that, wished she had kept her silence, hands on the bread, still as a stone.
I was a cook.
But it was too late. Something had happened; it was too quiet and at the same time loud, as if the voiceless Many were screaming. Naveen came running around the corner and hurried past Rushes, his robes flapping against her knees, a quick butterfly kiss that brought back her morning’s dream.
No. Don’t touch it. Too delicate.
At the door Naveen shouldered past Gorgen, who dropped his pipe, scattering bits of weed across the tile like tiny feathers, and ran on, into the courtyard, beyond where Rushes could see him.

Back-door Arvind stood on the sun-baked stones, more statue than man, arms raised, hands turned up, palms empty.

Demah.

“She jumped,” Arvind said, “from the burned tower.”

Gorgen stumbled forward, into the sunlight, one hand shading his eyes. “Who?” he asked, “Who jumped?”

“Your girl from the Little Kitchen,” said Arvind.

Rushes clutched the glasses so hard she snapped one of the stems. The jagged edges cut against her palm as she watched Gorgen turn back to her, his eyes not angry but frightened, searching. She knew that look; she’d seen it in Demah. He was looking for comfort, for family. For the Many.
Too late. It’s too late now.
She let the broken glass go, let them all go, and they fell in a sparkling cascade against the tiles.
Too late.