line constant, unmoving, like a single certainty, a thread, drawing her. She passed Lana, who did not even raise her head, and as she followed the line Lana made no move to stop her; she gave no sign of having seen her. A silence pressed on the room, so profound that even breathing came hard.
The line left the mosaic swirl and crossed two plush rugs, dividing their patterns. Mesema followed it to the doorway, never raising her eyes. Almost in a dream she pushed open the doors and passed between two guardsmen dressed in splendid colors; neither man so much as twitched.
The line led on, along the centre of the corridor. Mesema pursued it, and silence followed in her wake.
The magnificence of the palace should have taken away her breath, but Mesema saw it only from the corner of her eye; the line filled her purpose, a simple constant amongst the lies and confusion, and where it led, none blocked her way. She moved as if she were invisible: as long as she watched the line, no one would watch her. A simple truth.
She passed courtiers, servants, guards, and then more guards, and silk and woven tapestries gave way to bare stone. A spiral stairway took her up, turn after turn promising the sky, and the line grew as broad as a river, as black as pitch, until, suddenly, it was nothing but a crack in the flagstone beneath her slippered feet.
Mesema found herself at the top of the stair, before her not the sky but a door, open just an inch, just enough for her fingers. She pushed it.
Sarmin pulled, and with slow certainty she came, not drawn against her will, but because of it. Sarmin watched the door. Pale fingers, nails painted like blood, glistening with moisture, and then she stood there.
“Hello.” He smiled. He hoped it was the right thing to do. “Hello.”
She looks so young.
“I’m Sarmin,” he said.
“Mesema.” She glanced around the room then her eyes returned to his. “I
don’t remember why you’re here.” A strange thing to say, and a strange way to say it. She spoke the words with hard corners on the vowels. The oddness of it made him laugh.
“I’m Beyon’s brother.”
“His brother?”
Her lips made a circle. Everything about her made him glad. “His brother.” It didn’t sound like an explanation, but it was. She walked into the room. Sarmin watched her, wondering if he looked foolish. She sat upon the bed, so close that if they both reached out, their fingers would touch. He could smell soap on her, and fruit.
He cleared his throat. “I had other brothers, but they died.” “I’m sorry.” And she was, he could see it in her eyes, a sparkle of tears. No one had ever said they were sorry, not for his brothers. “They were… killed?” She knew they had been. She paused because the words were ugly in her mouth. He could see it. “My brother was also killed.”
Sarmin nodded.
“It was wrong.”
“It was.” He blinked to keep his eyes clear. He didn’t want to cry. But it was wrong. “I worry for Beyon. He’s sick. I don’t want him to die, too.” The notion that he might keep secrets from her was silly.
Mesema looked away. She pressed her cheek to her shoulder and held her hand towards him, fingers extended. A pattern-mark challenged him from a fingertip. No—not my princess. In the darkness of his mind he recalled the Pattern Master’s mocking voice.
Sarmin took her hand. Her skin felt cool, but fire passed between them. Mine. He turned her fingers in his and knew this to be another reason why men fought: the touch of her skin and the way her hair fell over her cheek as she looked at their joined hands. He would not let the Pattern Master have his bride. He spoke over the pounding of his heart. “I can take this mark away,” he said.
She pulled her hand back and fixed him with strange blue eyes. “It copied itself from Beyon when I touched him. My finger was bleeding.” She looked past him, at the carvings on his headboard. “When I touched him again, he remembered things—good things and bad things.”
Sarmin thought of Grada, how she had rushed back into herself. What Mesema described was different and accidental, but somehow the same. “You held Beyon to Beyon. The Pattern Master tries to lift him away, to leave only meat, but you held him within himself.”
“Leave the mark,” she said, with no