a musician, shapes and lines made no spell without the touch of a mage. A thought came to her, and the sweat on her back went cold. “I don’t think that church is a good place to go,” she said, dropping onto her mat. “We should forget it.”
“What shall I make of myself, then?” asked Eldra, her voice sharp for the first time.
Mesema rolled to look at her. “Listen. If you had gone to the church, what would you have made of that, with no food and no water?”
Eldra sighed and turned her back.
“Let’s go to sleep.” But in truth Mesema couldn’t close her eyes. She tried to decide whether a pattern could enforce a man’s will. How had it been created? Each shape seemed simple in itself, but together they created something beyond her ken.
Mesema rolled onto her stomach. She wanted to forget the pattern. She was meant to have a child. Her duty lay in that simple and difficult task. It didn’t matter what the prince looked like, or how he treated her: when the Bright One came over the moon, she would lie with him. There were more frightening things than making a child. For the first time, she was not frightened of her prince.
She did fear his brother, the emperor. She wondered how long it would be before he died of his illness. But as much as he frightened her, she couldn’t make herself wish for his death.
At last she drifted off to sleep, sung along by the sounds of sand and the familiar neighing of the horses. She dreamed of home, of the songs by the fireside and the women with their needles. She dreamed that the women embroidered her receiving cloth, a circle of white as big as the longhouse, in blue and yellow and purple; they employed the costliest dyes for the baby emperor. And when Mesema tied off her thread and looked at their work, she recognised the shapes and twisting paths of the sand pattern.
She screamed—no; she woke to a scream: Eldra was sitting beside her, tears running down her face, fingernails scraping at her own skin.
Pattern-marks ran across her chest, a spiderweb of color marked with moons and half-stars.
Outside, men were shouting. Weapons hissed out of their sheaths. Sand spilled under fast-moving boots.
Mesema thought quickly. “Gather yourself together, Eldra!” She reached out and slapped Eldra’s cheek. Eldra fell silent, her eyes dazed and bloodshot. “Good,” Mesema said, buttoning her friend’s nightdress with shaking hands.
“What’s happening in there?” Arigu’s voice.
“A nightmare,” Mesema called out, hoping he wouldn’t hear the squeak in her voice. If it were Banreh, he would know instantly that she lied.
Eldra grabbed Mesema’s wrists. “What are you doing?” she whispered.
“I don’t know what they’ll do to you if they find out,” said Mesema, too low for the general to hear.
“I’m dying anyway.” Tears gathered in Eldra’s eyes. “I heard what he told you. The pattern kills.”
Arigu’s shadow rose and flickered over the canvas. Mesema thought he had turned away and was surveying the camp. She covered her eyes with one hand. The Hidden God truly did not live in the desert. What terrible fate had befallen Eldra, without the guiding hands of rain and shade? And she herself—? Mesema gasped and ripped open her own nightdress, but she saw only the blue marks of her veins beneath pale skin. “Why—?”
“My bad luck.” Eldra tried to smile.
Mesema hugged Eldra, her throat burning with sorrow. Eldra patted her back. “I’m going to heaven.” But no matter where she was going, her hand trembled.
Mesema held on, her eyes squeezed shut. She wanted to go back to the morning, when they had picked the prettiest beads for their hair, back to when they had eaten figs in the light of dawn, before the pattern came, but there was no going back, no going home, and there was no saving Eldra. She looked back at Arigu’s shadow, but he’d moved on. “I’ll take you to your church,” she whispered.
“No. You will go to your prince—”
“No!” Nooria was a place of evil. She knew it now for certain.
“You must promise me—listen!—you will go to your prince and help him stop this pattern.” Tears continued unabated down Eldra’s cheeks, but her voice came steady and sure. “Promise me.”
A promise to the dying held the sanctity of a promise made to the gods. Mesema sniffed and wiped her cheeks. She had been unkind when Eldra was scared and alone. Even after that, try as she might,