Mazarkis Williams - The Emperor's knife

If you don’t draw your enemy out, what have you to work with?

“The wind-sworn are ever watchful of the skies.” Though she had Cerani coloring, something in the curve of her cheekbones, and in the way she clipped her words, suggested her homelands lay on the easternmost borders of empire. It seemed to Tuvaini that hardly a mage among the two-score of the Tower hailed from Nooria. Perhaps the local water left one unsuited to the pursuit of magic, or maybe it wasn’t a calling fit for true Cerani. Either way, the presence of so many near-foreigners in the heart of the city always irked him. Supplicant! The word burned.

“And what have you seen in the skies?” He kept the scorn from his voice. No wind-sworn had flown the heavens in his lifetime, not since the great Alakal. He had always felt his father’s stories of Alakal were tales for children rather than for men.

“Patterns.” The half-smile she offered held a strangeness that silenced him. In the Tower’s courtyard minutes crawled by as if time itself flagged in the heat. The vast enclosure covered some twenty-five acres, and yet the Tower’s shadow still reached the walls, overtopping them and delving into the palace sprawl. Tuvaini didn’t need reminding of the Tower’s reach. He glanced at the young mage again. He didn’t trust her. He didn’t trust any of them. He never knew whether he was speaking to the person, or to the elemental trapped inside.

“High Mage Govnan will see you now.” She turned to face the door, the sudden movement setting her robes swirling around her. The brass door swung open at the touch of her fingertips.

Tuvaini followed her in. He remembered the heavy metal door from his last visit to the Tower. “The emperor does not have such a door at the entrance to his throne room,” he said.

I don’t have such a door!

“We are the emperor’s door, his gatekeepers. There are foes to whom a door of brass is as nothing, and yet we keep them from the emperor.” She led him through the entrance hall, past the statued relics of the rock-sworn.

“Invisible defences against invisible enemies. It puts me in mind of the old fable wherein the emperor buys a set of invisible clothes,” Tuvaini said. He paused at the last of the statues. “Well, well. Old High Mage Kobar. His prisoner finally escaped.”

The mage turned back. If she took offence, none of it reached her face. “All bound spirits seek release.”

Tuvaini shuddered: to have something like that inside, growing and gaining power, until at last it no longer serves, but masters…

The idea filled him with peculiar horror.

“Lead on,” he said.

They reached the stairs. Tuvaini remembered them well; he saved his breath for the climb.

The high mage kept his rooms not at the top of the Tower, but in the middle. Tuvaini had no notion what the upper half of the Tower housed. His escort led him to Govnan’s door, and took her leave with the briefest of bows.

“It’s not locked.”

The voice from behind the door took Tuvaini by surprise. He cast a glance left, then right, to see if anyone had seen him startle, but the corridor lay empty. He straightened the sash of his robe and stepped through.

Govnan watched him enter from his seat, an iron chair set against the far wall. The back rose over him and curled forwards in a vaguely claw-like manner, enclosing Govnan within its grip. He was a wizened ember of a man, but his eyes were bright in a shadowed face. Every Tower mage Tuvaini had met was either a youth or an elder, as though the burden of power stole away their middle years.

“High Mage.” Tuvaini inclined his head by the smallest fraction.

“Vizier.” Govnan waved away formality with an agitated hand. Tuvaini took two steps into the room. It smelled of char. The place lay bare, with no stick of furniture save the high mage’s chair, nor any hint of ornament.

“I come on a matter of the utmost importance.” Tuvaini returned his gaze to Govnan.

“What else would drag you to the Tower?” The high mage’s voice held a crackle of irritation. The flame-sworn were always tetchy. “You have not seen fit to seek our counsel in eighteen years. I am fascinated to learn what has finally brought you to our doors.”

“I am concerned for the health of the emperor,” Tuvaini said. Govnan held silent. He could have been rock-sworn, for all the motion in him.

The silence stretched.

“And for the health of his brother.” There was no way Govnan could know what was happening in the palace, but his gaze unsettled Tuvaini nonetheless.

A tight smile flickered across Govnan’s face. “You never forgave the Tower for his brother, did you, Vizier?”

“You broke with tradition.” Tuvaini let his anger speak. “You broke Tahal’s law, and now we have a madman who might do anything-a raving prince who cannot rule.” Tuvaini smacked fist to palm and strode forwards. “Beyon has no other heir-”

Govnan stood, sudden and unexpected. There was a fire behind his eyes. “If Sarmin is mad, that is no one’s fault but your own, Vizier. The Tower spoke to save the child. It was you who incarcerated him.”

“He had to be held secret. Any fool-”

Tuvaini staggered before a blast of heat. His words dried on his tongue.

Fire blossomed in Govnan’s hands, and they burned as though soaked in oil. His lips peeled back in a snarl from blackened teeth in a mouth stretched so wide that it hurt to watch.

“Cage what you fear, and when it escapes it will consume you utterly!” A tongue of flame crackled from the mage’s mouth as he spoke in an inferno roar.

Tuvaini could smell his hair smouldering. His skin felt tight, scorched before the heat, and yet some force held him so he couldn’t turn away.

Fire spilled from Govnan’s hands and ran wild over the stone floor; bright rivers encircled Tuvaini.

“Govnan!” Tuvaini fought down hysteria and put command into his voice.

For a moment the heat built, and then it broke. The flames died, and Govnan slumped in his chair, smoke wafting from his lips. “My apologies.” The high mage spoke in little more than a whisper. “Ashanagur has grown strong. Sometimes he takes offence and slips my bonds to voice his will.”

“It-It has a name?” Tuvaini said.

“He has a name.” Govnan inclined his head. “And he will have a life beyond me. But you didn’t come here to discuss the mysteries of the Tower. What would you have us do about Prince Sarmin?”

“Why did you insist Sarmin be spared the Knife?” Tuvaini asked.

“It was High Mage Kobar who-”

“Kobar is a rock. I passed him in the hall below. You tell me,” Tuvaini said.

“He has about him that quality we seek for the Tower.” Govnan gripped the arms of his chair and pulled himself straight.

“The Tower cannot recruit among the emperor’s family.” Tuvaini recoiled from the very idea.

“Once upon a time we did-it was a royal prince who founded this Tower, and Alakal himself was the grandson of an emperor. The royal family now consider it beneath them to serve, but if Sarmin were trained, he might make such a mage as has not been seen in three generations. Such a resource cannot be thrown away lightly. A time may come when the emperor has need of such talents. A similar provision was made in the time of the emperor’s grandfather, though that child was lost in the chaos of the

Yrkman War.”

“Why did Kobar not say this when he demanded Sarmin’s survival?” Govnan shrugged. “I cannot know Kobar’s mind, but it is clear that the more potential a weapon is felt to have, the more hands will turn to lift it.” “Well, this particular weapon of yours is mad,” Tuvaini said. “He cannot be trusted to act in anybody’s interest, not even his own. He sees treachery in every corner, and twists honest words into conspiracy.”