Mazarkis Williams: Knife Sworn

“And who sent you?” The man who killed Jenna, who cut her body with a sharp knife as if he had been looking for something hidden within, that man had kind eyes.

“We both serve the same person, Grada,” Rorrin said. “Have you seen enough, or should we wait?”

“How long have you been watching?” she asked.

“Four days.” He waggled a sun-dark hand as if it might be more, might be less.

“Another won’t hurt, then.” And Grada rolled to her stomach and crawled back to the ridge, and away from the trail.

“Tell me why you let them live.” Rorrin had lain silent in the dust and heat beside Grada while the sun rolled slow across the sky. Now as the dunes beyond the compound started to throw shadows, he spoke.

“Who?” she asked.

Rorrin said nothing, not dignifying her pretence, his gaze on the buildings where the slaves had been taken.

Grada let the breath slip from her, a sigh she hadn’t known was in her. “I’m not a killer.”

“To lie to me again would be a mistake.” Rorrin’s voice held no threat, as mild as if they discussed the shade of the sand.

“I…” That pale face stared sightless at her again from beneath the water. “I didn’t want to hurt them.”

“Now you’re just lying to yourself.”

Rorrin wrinkled his nose to dislodge a fly. Not so many this far from the river but enough to annoy. It flew Grada’s way. A shiver of irritation ran through her, not at the fly, the Maze lay black with them in some months, but at the discovery Rorrin was right.

“You said you’d been watching here four days. How could you even know…”

“I said I’d been watching four days. I didn’t say here, Grada.”

“Watching me?” With effort she unclenched the fists she’d made. “Why?”

“Answer my question. I asked first,” Rorrin said.

“They didn’t deserve to die,” she said. “It would have been too easy. I wanted them to know what had happened, to remember me, to hurt, to have it in their minds the next day, the next year.”

“Death would have been a mercy?”

“Yes.” The face again, hair flowing with the current, the river sliding between them. It would have been too easy for him, to slip away with the river.

“And you weren’t feeling merciful?”

“No.” Grada watched the man beside her, his profile as he stared across the ridge at the distant building. “Now answer my question-why were you watching me?”

“I didn’t say I would answer you, just that I asked first.”

Grada pushed herself up, started to rise. “If you think-”

“Down!” A command. “Our friends are on the move!”

The three blonde girls. No, three blonde girls, but perhaps not the same ones. Grada learned that from the shell-game played on shaded corners where the Maze opened onto the wider streets of Nooria. “Watch the pea! Watch the pea!” the man would call, his hands blurring as he swapped the shells. And any honest passerby who tried to watch that pea would lose it just as they lost sight of the wider game.

“Each to a different pavilion,” Rorrin said.

Grada had started to think that Rorrin only spoke to test her. “They’re dividing them-setting doubt in their minds so any groups that formed on the journey here are broken.”

“It seems likely,” Rorrin said.

“We should have followed the caravan,” Grada said. “If it included trained slaves from this school we’d learn more from where those were taken than from watching the outside of the tents and building in which these ones are being trained.”

“Yes.” Rorrin showed no concern.

“You weren’t alone.”

“No,” he said.

“If we move fast we might still catch them before they reach the city gates.” Grada scooted back across the ground, half sand, half dust, and stood out of sight from the school.

Rorrin followed her, his pace a sensible one but too slow to suit her mood. She waited for him at a milestone. Such stones counted out the first hundred miles from the city-this one read “twenty” in the old script of lines and dots.

“We may lose them in the city,” she said as he drew closer, river dust scuffing under his sandals.

“Meere will not lose them.” Rorrin watched her face as if he had asked her a question.

“Answer my question,” she said. “Why have you followed me?” Rorrin seemed almost uninterested in the slaves, as if she herself were the quarry that mattered to him.

A shrug. “Is it only the emperor’s enemies who must train new agents for the fight?” He stepped closer, close enough that she could see the sweat on his brow, the grey stubble above his lip.

“I’m not a fighter.” The idea pulled a laugh from her. “I’m an Untou-”

His hand was on her shoulder, a move of shocking swiftness. “I touched you. Be something new.”

The echoes rose from the base of her skull, old whispers hissing repetition.

A sharp edge demands a cut. Quick hands kill, quick hands kill. Aristo touched me so.

She took his wrist and lifted his hand away. There had been an Aristo… was that voice hers? A memory?

“You don’t have to be a warrior to fight for the emperor. The Tower fights his battles, the alchemists in the Tun, spies who live new lives in far corners beyond the edge of empire.” Rorrin smiled. “Give me my hand back.”

Grada let him go and in a flicker he held her wrist instead, one finger digging down into a nerve that made her cry out and almost fall to her knees. She kept standing though, snarling at the pain.

“You’re too used to doing what is asked of you, Grada.” He let her go. “Can you unlearn that lesson of a lifetime and show that same obedience to only one man?”

The pain subsided in waves as Grada cradled her arm. “I serve the emperor, nobody else.”

“Well next time I ask to have my hand back, consider saying no.” And he walked on by, sandals scuffing.

They walked through the cool of the night with the blazing stars to light a moonless path. The love song of ten thousand frogs accompanied them, and the river’s sigh as it slipped past unseen.

Grada slapped her neck and brought her hand away dark-smeared with blood and pieces of mosquito.

Rorrin snorted at her side. “The death of a thousand bites. The emperor-”

“You don’t have to make every damn thing an… an…”

“Allegory?”

“Yes, one of them.” Grada didn’t know the word, but it sounded right. “A story about the emperor or a lesson or-”

Rorrin pressed something into her hand. “The emperor gave me these.”

Grada looked. Dark objects, rounded, small. A sniff-the faint scent of lemons, bitter lemons.

“Citronel pods. Crush them and wipe the juice on. The blood-suckers won’t want you.”

“Sarmin gave you these?” Grada asked.

“Emperor Beyon. He hated mosquitoes. The things will drink royal blood soon as take from peasants.”

“You knew Beyon? Was he like Sarmin?”

Out in the darkness a whip-o-will unleashed its cry, like a shriek of agony.

“You can’t see the emperor as a friend, Grada. That will make trouble for you and for him. And no, Emperor Beyon was nothing like his brother. He would never have spoken to an untouchable and his friendship was… dangerous. Apt to be pulled away as swiftly as it was given. He had a quick temper.”

“They say he was a great emperor. The people loved him in the city.” Jenna had always offered prayers for Beyon. And to him, which made no sense.

“The people adored him because he did nothing. They loved him because we had peace and times were good.”

“It doesn’t sound as if you loved him.” And if not Beyon, did Rorrin love Sarmin?