Mazarkis Williams - The Emperor's knife

“Good. I’ll lift you over.” But when Beyon hoisted her above the rim of the gold-and-silver-filigreed tomb, the feeling of wrongness overcame her once again. The silk wrappings meant for his corpse already waited in place. A ceremonial sword made of gold rested on its side, along with an elaborate crown. Beyon would never wear such a crown or such a sword. A strong resin smell rose from it all, a smell of storage chests and funerals.

“No! It’s not right-put me down. Put me down!” Fright overwhelmed her caution.

“Shhh.” He pushed her over the edge and began his own climb.

She knelt among the rich silks of his shroud. “Listen. I don’t like it. I really don’t like it.” Something terrible is going to happen.

He settled beside her and rolled open his bundle. “You’ve always been so brave-I can’t believe you’re screaming about a tomb.” Between the rough material of his stolen blankets Beyon had hidden bread, cheese, dried meats and fruits, and even a skin full of liquid.

Mesema stared at the feast. “I’m very hungry.”

“Then eat.” He turned his attention to the lid, pushing it in line with the tomb, closing them in.

She could see the weight of it written in the straining of his muscles. She didn’t think she could open it alone. She swallowed, and tried to stop her heart from beating so quickly. The stitches, do the stitches. She embroidered a garden of flowers in her mind, lily, rose, and thorn. The lid settled into place, and the filigree dappled the morning light, putting Beyon’s face half in shadow. His marks looked darker of a sudden.

“I thought you were going to eat.” Beyon’s eyes flashed towards her.

“I am, I just…” A puff of air escaped her mouth.

Beyon cocked his head, as if listening to something she couldn’t hear.

Mesema put a date in her mouth and pressed it with her tongue.

“Mesema.” He touched her cheek. “Do not be frightened.”

“I’m trying.”

He took her chin in a gentle grip. “Now, chew.”

She chewed and swallowed. It did help her feel better. She reached for a piece of cheese, and then a piece of bread. She opened the skin and took a swig, only to make a face. “That sour stuff.”

“Ale. You should drink it anyway.”

She took another swig and reached for some meat. “Aren’t you eating?” Do Carriers eat?

“I didn’t wait; I ate before. Sorry.”

She took one more date and rolled the fruit back into its bundle. “I think we should save this.” She placed it in the corner and then, after a moment’s thought, removed Sarmin’s dagger from her belt and put it together with the food. I can’t stab him without a weapon.

“What do they sound like? The Carriers?” It frightened her to ask, and so she felt she must.

“They’re always in the background. It’s like standing outside a room full of people. Sometimes you can hear what they’re saying, sometimes you can’t.” Beyon arranged the silks and blankets into a comfortable pallet. He held out an arm to her, and she lay down facing him, watching his eyes. Carrier eyes were blank and dead. His were tired but alive, and they crinkled when he smiled.

“It’s still me,” he said, tracing her cheekbone with his thumb.

“I know.”

“And you’re still frightened.”

“Not of you.”

“Then because you feel trapped in here?”

She spoke without thinking. “I’ve been trapped since my father decided to send me to Nooria.”

Beyon said nothing, only running his finger across her bottom lip.

“What are you doing?”

“If you have to ask, I’m not doing it right.”

Mesema thought of Banreh and the touch of his skin. She remembered how his lips sent a shock through her body. She wondered what kissing Sarmin might have felt like. She hadn’t given up on her prince just yet.

“You aren’t going to kiss me very hard again, are you?”

“No.”

She looked down at his chest. “Shouldn’t I touch our marks together?”

“No. I’m all right.”

“When you were out, did you happen to see the stars?”

He withdrew his hand and pillowed it under his head. “I’ve been thinking about what we discussed before. About Tuvaini being the emperor.”

“Oh?”

“Sarmin would be better.”

“What about you?”

Beyon looked down, and Mesema felt her stomach twist. She searched for words. “What about the desert? Just yesterday you said…” When he didn’t respond, she kept talking. “Sarmin is… He’s not used to people.”

“You can help him with that.”

“I would be stuck in the women’s wing.”

“You wouldn’t have to be. My mother wasn’t. Mesema, promise me you will help him.”

Mesema squeezed her eyes shut. Too many promises-to Eldra, then Sarmin, now Beyon-too many to keep, and no way to fulfil them. She thought of Eldra’s feather, so far away now, at the bottom of her trunk in the ocean room. She’d meant to have it in her hand the day she stopped the pattern.

She couldn’t stop it. She never would.

“Mesema.”

“All right.” She put a hand over her mouth to keep from crying.

“Thank you,” he said, closing his eyes. “I’m just going to rest for a minute now.”

He fell silent, and she watched the play of light over his marks. She watched his breath rise and fall in his patterned chest. She had failed him; she never should have agreed to hide in this coffin. Now he would die. She watched him and she waited.

On the fifth day Grada walked another ten miles along the riverbanks, keeping east of the great army. The towns of Colla and Santarch came and went. She watched the dhows, low in the water, burdened with wheat and dates and salt and timber. Merchants passed her in caravans, some a hundred waggons long. None but the drivers so much as noticed her, and even the drivers had nothing but crude jests for a woman in the robes of an Untouchable.

Grada paid them no heed. She carried a prince within her, though he was distracted of late. She wondered about his dying friend.

At the Needle Stone Grada took the mountain road and left the river behind. Only the outpost of Migido lay before her now; beyond that nothing but the vastness of the desert to the west, and to the north, the badlands that would eventually give way to the grass and plains of the Felt.

Travellers were few and far apart on the mountain road. She kept her eyes on the dunes, where the desert lapped against the rocks. The sun beat at her, its brightness almost too fierce to bear, but still she watched the dunes: nomads roamed out there, and bandits, and worse, evil men who preyed on the traffic between one oasis and the next. Cerani patrols kept the mountain road safer than the desert, but it was still not secure.

The heat stifled and dried. The sweat left her without ever making her damp. She arrived at each well as parched as the strips of mutton that sustained her. She filled her stomach until it hurt and filled the skins near to bursting, but it was only ever just enough to reach the next waterhole.

The road became lonely. Travelling by day she saw no one. Sarmin always filled her, though the palace held his attention now-and perhaps the yellow-haired girl, too. She began to hunger for company, and pushed herself harder to reach Migido.

Mesema ran her finger along Beyon’s marks as he slept. Her moon-patterned finger picked up whispers and images of those the pattern had taken. A child here, begging for bread; a woman there, opening herself to a lover; a man, whispering secrets to his priest. All these lives had been lost, absorbed by shapes and lines, worked into the obscure plan of the Pattern Master. She riffled through them, a thousand thousand stories, too many for any storyteller to recall. Her throat tightened with sorrow.