The Emperors Knife - By Mazarkis Williams Page 0,93
glad, but when she looked out of the window all she could see were walls, high and close, rising to either side. She felt like a lamb in its pen and shivered.
The voices grew distant as the carriage passed through yet another gate. This new place held a stillness, and the soldiers, when they spoke, used hushed tones. They had arrived. The carriage pulled to a stop and Mesema jerked her shoulders back, seized with a sudden panic; she felt she might be sick. Sahree scrambled from her seat and left Mesema alone in the darkness. Mesema wanted to shout out, to ask Sahree to return, but instead she clutched her hands together and took careful breaths. Here I am. I have made it this far. I’m not dead, nor have I hurt anyone. Another thought came to her, an exclamation in her mind:Banreh!
She waited. Outside the window, torches lit a wide courtyard. Soldiers unpacked their animals with quick, efficient movements, and others ran up to assist them, leading away the horses and the camels, carrying the boxes, offering water to the travel-weary. Mesema waited, but Sahree did not return, and as night fell in earnest, fewer soldiers could be seen. Those who remained were now leaning against the barrels, speaking casually to one another, or smoking some sort of weed in a pipe. She waited, and at length even those soldiers wandered away, leaving her alone.
Mesema opened her carriage door and paused to see if anyone would come to stop for her, or assist her. She heard no footsteps, nor the rustling of Sahree’s skirts; only a distant chanting reached her ears, falling soft and rhythmic on the night air.
She stepped out. It was a long drop to the courtyard tiles. The soldiers had always set out steps for her before. Her sandals made a slapping noise against the stone, but still nobody noticed, or came for her. At the top of the walls that encircled the courtyard she could see soldiers on patrol, but if they saw her, they didn’t show it.
The palace rose over Mesema, all sheer walls, domes, and rounded windows, bigger than the stone temple she’d seen in the desert, bigger than any structure she’d ever seen. It glowed brightly, even against the night sky. Across from where she stood, white brick outlined a small wooden door. It didn’t look impressive enough to be the palace door. Another, larger, stood beside it.
She tried to fathom having many doors, each assigned to an appropriate station. The Felt had their leaders, to be sure, but there were not so many differences in status. Every Cerani had someone above and someone below, excepting the emperor and the most miserable slave.
And which door was meant for her? She felt it best to use the low door; though she guessed it was the wrong one it would surely be better than using a door meant for the emperor alone.
A modest hallway led her between the soldiers’ lodgings. Boots struck stone floors. Cerani voices called to one another, giving and accepting orders. Somewhere, lamb was roasting in garlic and rose petals. Her stomach grumbled. She turned, and turned again, following the passage towards the centre of the building. Soon she entered a well-appointed corridor, with hanging tapestries and marble floors. She paused. The pattern-link told her Beyon lay above—she felt it in the pricking of her finger—but she couldn’t see a staircase anywhere. She wiped away a tear, feeling foolish. We are Felt. On her right, a dark room opened onto the corridor. She ducked inside and found a crowded space, with statues and benches cluttering the floor without perceptible order. Stone walls supported a high ceiling lost in shadow. Candlelight flickered from the far end of the room. Curiosity gripped her, along with a sense of recognition: Beyon knew this place. She discovered a path on the far side of a sneering marble gryphon. At the end rose a golden figure, a horned, twisted beast three times Mesema’s height. Its feet were candlelit, and its eyes lay hidden in the shadows above. Fangs shimmered beneath sneering lips. It held a dead baby in one hand and an apple in the other, both withered and sunken. The place stank of rot.
Dirini had told her that Cerani made such tributes to their gods, statues fashioned of more gold than the tribes could gather from all their lands in a generation. She’d thought that a story for the sewing circle.