I missed,” he hissed. “Prince Sarmin is alive.” He pressed his finger on another mark. “No matter. We will kill him again.”
No! Sarmin’s thought, or hers? It didn’t matter. She kicked out at his weak legs and was satisfied when he lost his balance and released her. She dived for her knife.
The Master laughed, rolling on the floor with the dead. “You can’t kill me.”
I am faster than he is, and his body is old. She backed away. “Maybe not, but I can wreck your design.” She stepped over a severed arm and kicked it to the side. He did not laugh this time. Rage twisted his wet mouth as she reached down and grabbed the severed head of a woman with long, dark hair. She tossed it behind her.
“Stop that!”
“Why are there no Carriers here? Did you believe we would not think to come?” Sarmin’s words were carried from the palace and over the desert to her mouth.
“There are no Carriers here because I don’t need them.” He found his legs once again and stood tall.
Grada saw a hand and kicked it away. She rubbed her sandal over the blood-design beneath. “You are old and weak.”
“This body is old, but I am not weak. But maybe it’s time for a switch. Perhaps I won’t kill Prince Sarmin; maybe I should take his body instead.”
Rage made her strong. She lifted a dripping torso and heaved it across the room. He had taken her body, forced her to do things… She screamed, a mindless, bloody shout, remembering the soldiers she had thrown into the chasm; remembering lying over Sarmin, pressing the knife between his ribs. She would not let the Pattern Master take Sarmin’s body; she would not let him make Sarmin do those things. She ran at him, her dagger held in front of her, taking him off guard, and the blade found a home between his ribs as his legs collapsed beneath him for a second time. He fell, laughter bubbling with the blood in his mouth.
“Good girl,” he said, “But you can’t kill me. I am Carried.” And as his blood hit the stone floor, the pattern around him glowed with new life.
Chapter Forty-Two
"No!” Sarmin leaped to his feet. Mesema looked up from where she sat on the bed with Eyul’s hand cradled in her own.
“I can’t beat him! I thought a pattern in blood… but that’s his path. I can’t do those things—we would just drown each other in gore! His pattern is too strong, and we’ve only made it stronger!” From tomb to church, Helmar to Beyon, the Grand Pattern had found its final anchor.
“Eyul is dead,” she said, her voice quiet.
Sarmin looked at the old assassin. “I think he would be glad for it.” Some sad note echoed inside him.
With Eyul dead, the last flaw in the pattern was removed. The design was both terrible and perfect; Sarmin could see it without closing his eyes. He felt himself drawn to its beauty, even knowing it meant the end. “The Pattern Master will use my body,” he said.
Mesema drew the dacarba from her sash and folded Eyul’s hands about the ruby-hilt. “Wherever the assassin has gone, let him go armed.” She fell silent for a time, thinking or praying.
Sarmin looked at the assassin and wondered if he had joined Mirra or Herzu, or gone somewhere else entirely. His eyes scanned the walls, wishing that the hidden ones would show themselves again.
Mesema stirred. “We should leave this room. We have waited here too long as it is, and they will find us.”
“I can’t leave this room.” It hurt to say it.
“So we will stay here with Eyul?” Her voice lowered, perhaps out of politeness to the corpse. “It is very hot.”
“I can’t leave,” he said again.
“Why is that? You never told me why.”
He hesitated. Will she believe me? Will she know I am mad? But he knew
he had to tell her: Only the truth for my princess. “You see the gods in the ceiling, but there are also angels. And demons, on the wall.” Her head turned towards the wall, blue eyes searching.
“They prophesy for me. They told me you were coming. They told me all about you. They warn me about things, too, but of late, they are quiet.”
Mesema walked to the wall, drew her hand across it. “That’s why you don’t leave? Because they are your family?”
He marvelled at her insight. “No—I mean, yes, but it’s really because they prophesied that I would never leave.