The Emperors Knife - By Mazarkis Williams Page 0,82

can… do something.”

He didn’t sound convincing, but Mesema nodded before falling into her obeisance. He remained the emperor, and she would obey.

Sarmin had found a way through, only to discover new barriers before him, barriers made of moving ghosts: Pelar. Lana singing a melody in the women’s wing. His father, grunting with pain as he lifted himself from the throne. Every time Sarmin tried to move forwards, a new image from the past blocked his way. On the other side he heard voices. Beyon’s, and a woman’s. The woman’s accent was soft and sibilant. He wanted to stay and listen.

A voice purred in Sarmin’s ear, unexpected, smooth as the silk on his bed. “You move in my place, Stranger.”

Sarmin kept his mind still.

“The emperor is troublesome, isn’t he?” The Master took a conversational tone. “So many protections to move through. Nevertheless, he is mine. Not yours.” The last reverberated with anger.

Fury beat its wings in Sarmin’s chest. The Pattern Master didn’t sense it, or didn’t care.

“Beyon will serve me, alive or dead, broken or no. It is too late for him. And you…’

Sarmin felt himself falling.

“You do not belong.”

Sarmin fell past the whispers and calls of the Many, through the dawntinted desert sky and the dark places suspended in the pattern, between the gods painted on the ceiling and through the purple light of his room, and onto the pillows and comforters of his royal bed.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Eyul stared at the dim canvas roof of the tent. Near midnight, close to the city, they’d stopped and tried to sleep, in an attempt to reacquaint themselves with city-time. Soon they would walk the stone streets in the burning sunlight, conduct their business when it should be time for making love, and sleep when the cool breezes rushed across the sand. Sleep when the stars formed their patterns in the sky, pointing to other destinations, and to the time when they would not be together.

Amalya slept beside him, her breathing even and easy. The Tower comforted her; she harboured no suspicions against Govnan. She had faith that everything would work as it should, and that Beyon would be saved; otherwise, he hoped, she’d have run away with him as he’d asked. He thought once more about the west, and what was said to exist there: an ocean full of fish, islands peppered with fruit trees, and space. Specks of land lost in seas wider than deserts, places where a person might stop and think, even for the rest of his life.

Everything would change after today, with Govnan, with Beyon, and with Amalya. Whatever decisions he made regarding Govnan, things would be different.

Unless Beyon had turned—then everything was already too late.

He rolled to face her. “Are you still awake?” A question for children whispering under the covers.

Amalya pulled her blankets up around her shoulders. “Mmm.”

“Do you think Beyon sent those guardsmen?”

“You said not.”

“But if the pattern has him—”

She sighed and fell quiet until he thought she was sleeping. Then she spoke again. “We won’t know until we see him. But you should give him the benefit of the doubt.”

“Why?”

“Because you never have before.”

“That has no effect on whether or not—”

“It has an effect on you. It matters to you.”

He pressed his lips against her arm. “And you?”

If he could hear a smile, he thought he heard one then.

“Very much. Now sleep.”

Instead he rolled to his other side and looked at his Knife. Something had happened to it in the buried city when he freed Tahal. It whispered. When the sandcat had come upon him, the Knife had kept him from dying. It had helped him kill the guardsmen when he couldn’t see. And yet it spoke with the voice of a child.

He was not even sure it spoke with just one voice.

Perhaps he had gone mad, after all. But he thought not. He’d never noticed madness help a man as much as the Knife had helped him. This was something else; some other magic that was neither elemental nor patterned had infused the Knife.

He reached out to touch the warm blade and he heard it: a child’s voice. “Eyul. Assassin.” It blew over his skin, soft and calm as afternoon wind, and fell still.

“Who are you?” he whispered, but the Knife had nothing more to say.

Sarmin stood by a fountain, its gentle music the only sound in the circular hall with red walls. Oil lamps burned low and smokeless in well-spaced niches. He turned, making a slow survey of the chamber. He couldn’t see