Mazarkis Williams: The Emperor's knife

He smiled. “Not any more.” She came closer.

He looked at her amber eyes, the pocked scars on her cheeks.

“Are you sorry you let them use you?” she asked.

“A little.” Tuvaini had seen Eyul’s hair turning steel-grey, had noticed his stiffness going in and out of obeisances, but he hadn’t expected the assassin to get hurt. Eyul still had his uses.

Lapella stood before him now, chasing his regrets away. “But you got what you wanted?”

“I will.” He smiled again and opened his arms. She leaned into him, rose-scented and soft.

“What did you do today?” he asked.

“The same.” Not much of an answer. He had no idea how she spent her days. She insisted a servant’s life was better than living in the women’s halls. Back home, noblewomen moved about more freely. Here, they depended on the double luck of having sons and outliving their husbands, as Empire Mother Nessaket had.

Nessaket had nearly the freedom of a man, and more cunning. He’d seen her today in the royal gardens. Not one to linger over blossoms, she’d used the flower walk to hurry from the east wing to the west. Tuvaini stood by the yellow roses and watched her disappear through the Sunset Arch, her silken train shimmering behind her. His mind filled with images of Nessaket. In every one of them, pride sculpted her features. She stood, or sat, or lay clothed in wisps, but always distant as mountain ice.

I will see her sweat and cry, see that perfect hair tangled, wild, watch those pale limbs strain.

“I see you’re ready for me,” commented Lapella, stroking him through his robe. He’d nearly forgotten about her, but she didn’t mind. She didn’t mind anything. She was his now. Before the pox-sickness came, it was said that only an emperor deserved Lapella, and only an emperor could master her. After it came, her family couldn’t marry her to anyone at all. They were relieved when Tuvaini paid a small sum for her permanent service, and they didn’t ask why. When he came to claim her, her spirit was still strong; her acid tongue had burned him. But he was honest and kind, and that broke her.

Tahal had taught him that one does not rule well by force alone.

Tuvaini pulled her robes from her shoulders and let them fall.

She smiled, happy for any attention he could give her. With Lapella, there was never a complaint or an unexpected demand.

Tuvaini loved certainty, hated uncertainty. Prince Sarmin’s madness vexed him, and this female from the Wastes would only complicate his plans. And yet, Tuvaini had his training to fall back on; of all the men in the palace, only he had sat at the feet of the great Tahal. Only he knew when to submit, when to charm and when to break a person like an egg.

Like Lapella. He laid her across the bed and spread her legs with his knees. “You are very precious to me,” he whispered.

“So you say,” she said with a chuckle. A hint of her old sense of humour, but she went no further with it. Next, she would apologise. And she did. “I’m sorry I’m so ugly for you.”

He could have said that the scars had faded so much that one could still see her old beauty. That her body was as firm and plump as it had ever been. These statements would have been true, but they would not serve him. Instead he said, “I don’t love you for your looks.” That, too, was true.

She made a little sound as he entered her. All conversation had ended. It was all right if he thought of Nessaket instead, as he pinned Lapella’s arms against the cushions. Lapella didn’t mind anything he did. It was a certainty.

Eyul rode through the narrow streets of the Maze. He kept his camel to a slow pace along the central path, making it tread around the channel where the sewage ran, or rather where it lingered, stagnant and polluting the night. Despite the camel’s protests, he held it from the easier ground to either side.

Long ago, in this place, Eyul first learned to kill, his mentor Halim guiding his hand. In the darkness of the alleyways, whose black mouths yawned to the left and to the right, he had sliced lives from their owners. The Maze made him feel old. In the forty years since he ran here as a boy, nothing had changed: same stench, same murmured night-song, distant laughter, muffled violence, quick feet.

Eyul didn’t fear an attack, but why risk one? Take the path of least resistance. His camel resisted, as camels always do, giving out a loud snort of protest. He kicked it with both heels, hard, and kept the centreline.

His thoughts returned to the palace whilst his eyes remained on the alleyways. Who would employ Carriers as assassins? Who wanted the vizier dead? Eyul goaded his camel on, cursing at the throbbing in his leg where the Carrier’s knife had caught him.

Getting slow, old man, getting slow.

A movement in the moonlight shadow, liquid and threatening. “Do you really want to die here, my friend?” Eyul addressed the darkness. He heard the whisper of retreating footsteps. When robbed of surprise, most inhabitants of the Maze were apt to withdraw.

The Carrier had also run. Eyul had not given chase; that wouldn’t have been wise, not with a bleeding leg. Besides, anyone who could get into the Red Room would have had help; they would have been hidden long before he’d limped along their trail. Odd. Most odd. The patterning might not always take the life from a Carrier, but it took his fear of death. Why would a Carrier run?

Eyul followed the snaking path of the Old Way, passing a pyre tended by a lone Blue Shield. The royal guardsman wore a scarf around his mouth and nose to block the acrid smoke. The Carriers inside had fallen to nothing more than blackened bits of bone, yet he continued to stoke the flames. He didn’t look up; he didn’t notice Eyul leaving Nooria by the Low Door, where any man, even the emperor’s assassin, might escape the snare of the city walls without undue attention.

“Who goes? And on what business?” Another soldier, gap-toothed and limping, emerged from the gatehouse. His concern was only for show; he shone his lantern on the camel, not the rider.

“My name is Rinn, and I go to count the sand.” Eyul gave the old reply, a nod to legend and custom. He leaned from the saddle and placed three jade coins in the soldier’s hand. The man’s breath stank, fouler even than the sewers of the Maze.

“Go in peace, Rinn.” The soldier turned to raise the gate-bar.

Eyul’s leg throbbed, and he wondered if the patterning would enter him through the cut. Perhaps Tuvaini had more than one reason for sending him away. Eyul remembered struggling with the Carrier, held close, eye to eye, before he slid the emperor’s Knife over that unclean throat. The hermit will help me. For a price. Eyul shuddered. The hermit always had his price.

It would be twenty days across the sands to the Cliffs of Sight. He had his water and his parasol, his blankets and his tent. And a good bow and his Knife, always those. But he wouldn’t need them yet; outside the city wall, marketers waited to sell fermented juice, roasted goat, leg of dog, pickled eyes, and a thousand other delicacies. Even at this hour, when honest men lay abed, Eyul’s passage stirred the vendors into action. They stepped from tent to stall, sing-songing their wares, lifting the lids on blackened pots.

Eyul twitched his nose, searching through the scents. The oily barks of duggan tree and sand-birch smoked on low fires, flavouring the meats above. His mouth watered. An old man dusted strips of dry-roasted camel-hump with pollen. Eyul caught the scent of desert-rose and his stomach growled. He had long since learned to tolerate the bland foods of the palace, but he had never begun to like them.

The old man looked up as Eyul passed. “Two jade. Best rose-camel. Two jade only.”