The Emperors Knife (2 page)

Sarmin sat up and slid from the bed to the soft floor. His turn had come around at last. A squeal of a laugh escaped his lips, though part of him despaired. Perhaps he would finally be free.

The assassin leaned against the wall, closing the secret door with his back.

A time to die.

The man must have seen something in Sarmin's expression, for he grimaced and sheathed his knife. “Please excuse the weapon, Your Highness,” he said. “The door trigger is on the inside, a shaft the length of a dacarba's blade.”

Your Highness.
He was Prince Sarmin, next in line to the throne, and he bent knee to no one but the emperor. If he knew nothing else, held no other power, there was that.

“Who addresses me?” Sarmin summoned the authority he remembered from his father's voice and made his eyes like his mother's.

“Tuvaini, my lord. I am Lord High Vizier.” Tuvaini stepped forwards, his face shadowed and indistinct. “I have come to discuss a matter of empire.”

Sarmin laughed again. “Empire? This is my empire.” He swept the room's span with one arm.

“You remain here because that may not always be true, my lord.” Tuvaini held himself motionless, his face bland.

Sarmin was a spare, a replacement, a contingency plan for other men. He'd known it for years, but to hear the words out loud in this silent place… He looked at his hands, balled into fists, hands that had never touched a real blade.

“Two visitors in a day,” Sarmin said. “There have been months when I had not so many.” He crossed the room to face Tuvaini. The man stood an inch or two taller, and the planes of his face caught the moonlight.

An acid thrill burned Sarmin's spine. He reached towards the dacarba's sheath, but Tuvaini put a protective hand over the leather. “Give me your weapon,” Sarmin said.

“My lord, I cannot.” The vizier shook his head. “We have important matters—”

“You walk through my wall. You pass in secret,” Sarmin cut across him. “Would you have me tell my mother of this visit? Would you have me call the guards who sit outside my door?”

“My lord, I come on a mission of great delicacy. What I have to say concerns you deeply. Your future hangs in a balance that I can sway.”

They stared at one another. The moonlight made tiny pearls of the sweat on Tuvaini's brow. Another second, and he raised his hand from the knife's sheath.

Sarmin reached for the dacarba and held the triangular blade before his eyes. With the right edge, any tie might be cut, any bond broken. “But what if I pray for death?”

“My lord, please…” A tremble replaced the surety in Tuvaini's voice.

Sarmin's skin tingled. The courtier had come to trade in politics, but found a man who dealt in alien currencies. “The dacarba is mine. Your gift to me. A token of the—the
bond
—between us,” Sarmin said. He set the knife upon his bed. “So, I've been remembered? My brother cannot sow the seed of dynasty no matter how fertile the fields, or how many?” Sarmin marvelled at the words flooding from him. The eaters of hashish, the men who drew opium from their hookahs, did they feel like this? And what drug had lit freedom for Sarmin? He glanced once more at the vizier and in that instant knew the answer. For so long he'd lived at the sufferance of others, under the will of silent men. And here in one glorious blaze of circumstance he held power, for the first time ever.

But he knew from the
Book of Statehood
that there would be a price.

“Why do you seek me out, Tuvaini, and at such risk? If my brother thinks you move against him, it will be the end of you.”

The vizier hesitated, as if gathering strength. “It is not only to please heaven and win an heir that the emperor burns the Patterned.” The certainty entered his voice again. “Your brother carries the marks now. I had it from the executioner who slew the royal body-slaves. The sands run swiftly. The time may come when it is you, and not Beyon or his son, who sits upon the Petal Throne.”

Beyon.
Sunlight and wood, laughter and punches; the lost joys came to him unbidden. That price was too high.

Treachery.
He'd been frightened to see it in his mother's eyes, but the vizier didn't scare him. He moved in close and looked up at the man's thin nose and heavy brow. “You speak of replacing the emperor,” he hissed. “Do you think I have no love for my brother?”

“Of course you love him, my lord, as do I,” whispered Tuvaini, dark eyes flicking to the door. The real door. The guards outside carried heavy swords, hachirahs that could cut a man in two.

“I love our empire, and our beautiful city. Your brother is the embodiment of all that I love.”

“Then why come to me? Find a doctor.” Sarmin took a half-step towards the exit, towards the guards, and the vizier drew a harsh breath.

“Please, my lord, there is no cure for the patterning!”

Sarmin turned to face him again. “If I am to be emperor, you don't need to come in the night and tell me so. Why are you really here?”

Tuvaini took another breath. “Your Highness… has your mother been to see you?”

Sarmin felt it best not to share. “Why do you ask?”

Tuvaini's words tumbled out like hair from an overstuffed pillow. “It was my lord's mother who saved you. Glory be to her name, she foresaw this day. But she is a woman, my lord, and for a woman she has too many ideas. She thinks of the Felting folk to the north, and an unclean daughter there. My lord, these men are savage. They eat from besna trees and drink the milk from the mare's nipple. Your brother is marked… This cannot be the right woman for you. We cannot risk another curse.”

Sarmin waited, but the man had finished. Sarmin wondered if he spoke true. He knew nothing about these men to the north. He examined the vizier's face. Tuvaini was like a book in himself. He knew of the court and of the many tribes surrounding the city. He knew about power.

And so could Sarmin. A forgotten Settu tile can set the whole game in motion. Sarmin knew the rules from the Book of War. Though he had only ever played against himself, he knew with the right alignment, one tile could clear the board.

Tuvaini glanced behind him as the secret door eased open. Someone waited beyond.

“My mother has no way to approach these people,” Sarmin said. He remembered. Wives could not leave the palace, even the Old Wives.

“This is not true, my lord. Forgive me for correcting you,” said Tuvaini with an unrepentant look. “Your mother is very close to one of our generals, Arigu. It is he who carries out her wishes.”

Sarmin met Tuvaini's eyes. A struggle, then, between his mother, this general, and the vizier, with Sarmin in the middle.

“You will come back next week and give me your impressions of General Arigu.” Tuvaini would have to obey him; that was in the
Etiquette
book.

Tuvaini's eyes narrowed before he pressed his knees and head to the carpet. “As you wish, Your Highness,” he murmured into the silk. He stood, took three steps back, and ended on the other side of the stone door. He pushed it to.

Sarmin looked with longing to the passageway, but instead he turned to the guards' door and knocked. “I wish for light.” Silence answered him, but he knew the slaves would be called back, the fire would be fetched. He stood in the centre of the room. His eyes focused on the scroll-worked walls, finding the deeper pictures in the pattern, the spirits watching from complex depths. There for those with eyes to see, and time to hunt.

He unfurled before them, a new Sarmin, strong and free.

Chapter Two

“P
ray for an heir.” Beneath the vizier's dry humour, Eyul could hear the disappointment.

Eyul pressed himself to the stonework as the vizier squeezed past. He took his lamp from the niche by the door and fell in behind. “Prince Sarmin was not as compliant as you'd hoped?”

“He is the emperor's brother, no mistaking that.” Tuvaini hurried down the steep, narrow stair cut into the thickness of the tower wall. Ten turns brought them into the natural rock, the base of the oldest palace. They reached the chasm, and the vizier strode across the bridging stone without pause. Eyul's lamp made no impression on the darkness to either side of the narrow span, but he knew the hidden drop fell a good twenty yards. Tuvaini opened a lead. He was familiar with the passages and seemed spurred to haste by his anger. The distance between them grew as Eyul picked his way.

“So he told you his own plan?” That was what the emperor would have done. Eyul took a certain satisfaction in seeing Tuvaini vexed. The vizier prided himself on his composure.

“If that's what you call stealing my knife and praying for death.” Tuvaini waved a hand over the empty sheath at his belt.

Eyul had noted the missing dacarba. It was his business to know where weapons were, and where they were not. With the bridge behind him, he picked up the pace.

Tuvaini slid through the maze of unlit corridors, making sudden turns, left, right, and left again, with a whisper of swirled silk.

“Few men who wish for death hold that desire to the very end.” Eyul came to a halt behind Tuvaini at the Red Door. He heard the jingle of keys as the vizier fished in his robes for the required hook-twist.

“You didn't see his eyes.” Tuvaini turned and pushed. The door swung inwards on noiseless hinges. He lowered his voice and repeated, “Pray for an heir.”

The prince would not long survive the birth of another heir. Eyul felt the old chill reaching across his back. It was bad luck to kill the mad, but then, Eyul had never depended on luck.

“I serve the empire,” he said. He stepped quickly through the doorway, into the light.

Tuvaini closed the secret door and brushed the scrolled fabric of the wall coverings to obscure the hairline cracks that remained. “The prince has bid me return to him soon. I will have to go—I can't trust in his sanity to hold him silent.” He paced the circumference of the room. With each lamp he passed, his shadow leaped towards the fountain at the centre. Finally he slowed, and Eyul knew he'd found the voice he liked best to use, full of charm and regret. “It saddens me that the Empire Mother schemes against the empire. Your Knife may be forced into use, Eyul.”

Eyul's hand strayed to the ancient blade at his hip.
It is not my Knife, it is a thing older and more cruel than I.
He recalled the day the old emperor had handed the weapon to him. He'd thought it an ugly thing, poorly made.

Emperor Tahal had been a delicate man, thin where Beyon was muscular, understanding where Beyon used force. He had folded Eyul's fingers about the twisted hilt and pressed his own hand against the razored edge. “Only with this holy weapon may royal blood be spilled without sin,” he told him. “You enter into a divine covenant, Knife of Heaven. You are the Hand of Justice. Serve only the empire, and damnation will not befall you.”

Would that were true. The young princes visited Eyul in his dreams. Every night they watched him. Every night their blood ran through his fingers. He felt their lifeless gazes upon him even now.

Eyul shook the memory from his mind. “And if the marks are true? We could have a Carrier on the petal throne.”

“If the marks are true the pattern will carry Beyon from the throne.” Tuvaini sat on the edge of the fountain and ran his fingers across the slick tiles. “One way or another.” His voice sounded heavy, but with sadness or anticipation, Eyul couldn't tell.

Eyul listened to the play of the waters. He liked this room at the heart of the palace. During the day the fountain belonged to the women. They hung their firm, glossy legs over the sides and murmured together as they enjoyed the relief from the midday sun. The men gathered around the fountain in the evening, smoking their pipes and discussing matters of empire. All of them were mere ghosts at the time of midnight bells. In this dark hour, the fountain took on the stony feel of a tomb and offered a rare peace.

The Old Emperor had laid on Eyul a burden; the future of the empire might rest on the twisted Knife at his side. The pattern-marks had threatened the empire since the time of Beyon's grandfather. They spread from person to person, silently, imperceptibly, until hundreds died at once, the agony in their final moments surpassing any torturer's skill. By the time those blue shapes appeared on a person's skin, only two possibilities remained. The marked person either died, or changed for ever, abandoning his family and all that he loved to answer the call of the pattern. They murdered and thieved in unison, but to what end, no one could tell. Blank of face and eye, Carriers were mere shadows of their former selves, walking imitations of life. The emperor's Blue Shields endeavoured to burn all victims, purge the sickness, and leave no trace of the pattern. Fires burned throughout the city, achieving nothing but smoke and the stench of burning flesh. The marks continued to appear, coloring their way even to the emperor.

“The emperor—” Tuvaini began to speak.

A shadow passed, a flicker at the edge of Eyul's vision.

Ambush!

Tuvaini saw it too, a heartbeat later. He lifted his feet and spun into the fountain. “Treachery!” he cried. A knife blurred through the space where his head had been.

Eyul turned right, blade at the ready. Three shadows, two spreading to flank him, one advancing. Eyul danced aside from the lunge of a dagger and caught the black-clad arm behind the thrust. The emperor's Knife slid home, deep, steel in meat.
Two more.

One circled Tuvaini, who struggled to his feet in dripping silk. The other—where had he gone? Instinct made Eyul dive forwards and the knife seeking his heart bit only his calf as he rolled clear.

The assassin loomed over him, his blade a flicker in his closed fist. Eyul spun on the floor, grabbed the man's sandal, and rose quickly, yanking up the captured foot. His foe toppled, arms flailing, head cracking when it hit the tiles. Eyul held only the shoe now, lost as the man fell. Without pause Eyul threw himself onto the prone figure, pinning knife-hand to floor, holding the man down with his whole body.