always, and touched her cold cheek. “I—” His breathing filled the quiet room. “Lapella, wake up. I have news for you.”
He waited, but Lapella didn’t move. Her right hand stood in the air, a frozen claw. Her left reached towards an over-turned dish. He leaned across the bed, his stomach pressing against hers. Five plump dates rolled towards him as the blankets shifted. He lifted one, and the dark flesh yielded under his fingernail to reveal a mixture of crushed nuts, honey and candied flower petals.
Lapella never bought such things for herself, and they hadn’t come from him. He dropped the sweet and wiped his fingers carefully.
“I didn’t know this would happen.” He spoke into her small, perfectly proportioned ear. A golden hoop was strung through the soft lobe. Her eyes
were turned from him, and he was glad of that. “I’m sorry.”
He imagined the way she used to shrug at him, her way of saying that all the waiting and disappointment were nothing to her; that she didn’t mind bearing it all, everything he had to bring her. He searched across the dark room for the outline of Mirra’s statue. “Perhaps Mirra wanted you beside her and so she took you away.” He’d heard such sentiments expressed in the past and he knew they were words she’d like to hear. Inside, he knew that Herzu had taken her, and not out of love.
He returned to the window. “How would you have me feel?” He stared into the darkness a while. The courtyard showed no movement, no fire. The room grew colder.
“I am the emperor now,” he said to her. “Everything is going to change.
Nothing would have changed for you, though. I’m sorry.” He turned and looked at her twisted form on the blankets. Poison could pull a person’s muscles in strange ways. He had seen it before. “I must go. Goodbye, Lapella.”
The door felt heavy, his shoes, heavy. The corridor was too bright. The soldiers followed him, their boots noisy on the floor. It set his teeth on
edge. Eyul had always been silent when they walked together. Perhaps as emperor he would set up a new guard using only Herran’s men. His eyes prickled. He blinked, staring at the tiles to keep from seeing her twisted arm. Silly. He shook his head as if to rid it of foolishness.
He turned a corner. He had no idea where to go. He passed the women’s wing and kept on walking.
Mesema crept down the tower stairs, the three-sided dagger in her hand. The weapon frightened her. Its sharp blade had already torn through the top of her skirt. She paused at a landing, listening for voices, but she knew the tower was not guarded—at least, not by people. Something else tickled at her skin. The tower stank of fire—not cooking fire, or the kind that kept the longhouse warm on winter nights; this smelled like dead fire, the stench the Red Hooves left behind them after killing Jakar and forcing Hola’s daughter. It had filled the air during their funeral rites, this smell of blackened stone and dark tears.
Ash covered the last flight of stairs, a black powder so fine that it rose up around her sandals like a cloud. As she moved towards the door she heard faint voices.
“Another five—put your coins there—” Laughter.
“No. Again.”
Mesema pushed the door open by finger-widths, and when nobody raised
their voice in alarm she slipped out into the wide hallway. Bright lanterns lighting the wall at regular intervals made her feel exposed, though the corridor was unoccupied. The voices came from her left. Young men—soldiers, she guessed—played a betting game of some kind. They were using words Banreh hadn’t taught her.
“Hey, Sazz, what are you doing here?” one of the men called out. “Did you hear the emperor—?”
Mesema didn’t catch the rest. Her finger told her Beyon was in the palace, but always far away, no matter how much she moved. She peeked around a corner to find another empty hallway.
“You’re in the wrong place, my lady,” said a blue-hatted guardsman, quiet on his feet. “I’ll take you to the wives’ quarter, yes?”
She let him lead the way, past the barracks.
“—madness, to spend the whole winter in the north—”
“—say the girls there open their legs for nothing more than a smile. They’ll keep us warm enough—”
The soldiers stood with their backs to the corridor, paying no attention to her or her guide.
“I heard they all have behinds wide as cows.”
A second man laughed. “Then I hope we