Mazarkis Williams - The Emperor's knife

Two jade? The man must have heard Eyul’s stomach, too.

“For two jade I would want your tent as well.” Eyul kept his eyes on the road.

“One! One jade, noble traveller. One jade, two strips!” the old man called from behind him now.

Eyul’s camel greeted the offer with a long and undulating belch.

“On my way back, friend. If I become rich in the desert.” He kicked his beast on past the souk, the common traders’ tents, and the last well.

The moon made white crests of the dunes, marching across a black sea. Eyul marked his way by the Scorpion, the seven stars beneath which his mother had birthed him. In no time at all the clamour of Nooria lay in memory. Even his unruly camel felt the new peace and stopped its complaining. Soon only the sigh of the wind rippled the silence.

So. The hermit will not be pleased to see me again. A man seeks solitude in the vastness of the desert, and what happens? Men travel mile upon mile to plague him with visitations. A boy-prince seeks only love and company, and his family entombs him alone in the teeming palace.

At first Eyul thought he saw a sandcat perched atop a dune; then, as the moonlight revealed more detail, he saw it was a camel, half-hidden behind the crest. He made out a saddle and reached for his quiver as he scoured the sands for a rider. He spotted a white-robed figure, almost lost in the darkness at the base of the dune, motionless, facing him.

Eyul stopped his camel at a hundred paces and nocked an arrow to his bow. He took reassurance in the creak as the recurved horn bent to his pull. Power in his hands.

“What business have you in the White Sea?” he called out.

A woman’s voice answered him. “I wait for you, Eyul of Nooria, son of Klemet, Fifty-third Knife-Sworn.”

A pause. “Come closer, then.”

The wind billowed her robes as she stepped across the sand. Her hood fluttered, then fell free, allowing dark curls to twist in the air. She came within twenty paces. Skin like roasted butter-nuts, eyes darker still: from the Islands.

She held his gaze.

He pointed his bow to her right, but kept it drawn. “You have used my name, but have not offered your own; that is a rudeness in the desert.”

She bent her knee slightly, but the curve of her mouth did not suggest humility. “Apologies. Amalya. Of the Tower.”

A wizard. He returned his aim to her throat. “Amalya. Go back to your Tower. Tell your masters that my business is not theirs to supervise.”

“You will deny the Tower?” She was brave to smile so in the face of his arrow, and braver still to step forwards, holding out one hand. A hand that held a Star of Cerana, sparkling in the moonlight. “Will you deny the one who gave me this?”

Eyul relaxed the grip on his bow, feeling the ache in his arm for the first time. Who had given her that Star? Beyon? His mother? Tuvaini? He felt old once more.

“You are as brave and obedient as I have been told,” she said. “I am glad to have such a companion on my journey to the hermit’s lair.”

He took a moment to secure his bow, his surprise hidden in the practised movement. He spurred his camel towards the dune. “And what can I expect from my own companion?”

Amalya raised her face to the moon, eyes closed, her feet finding their own way. “Well, I can cook.”

The scents of the marketplace lingered on Eyul’s robes. He took a deep breath. “This is good,” he said, “but surely you haven’t been sent to fix my meals.”

She laughed at that, a velvet noise, and tucked the Star in a pocket.

Eyul turned his eyes to the sands, looking for more surprises.

“We are safe here, gri she said, as if reading his mind.

A cold wave swept over him. “And if I ask who sent you?”

“I would not answer.” She opened her eyes as if waking. “I am not here to hurt you, Eyul.”

Before he had time to linger on those words, she spoke again, in a conversational tone. “My camel’s not very cooperative. I fear I may have to walk across the desert.”

“I’ll help you.” Eyul pulled the half-staff from his saddle-pack. “I speak fluent camel.”

The debate, punctuated by staff-blows to the beast’s flanks, proved short and productive. The camel agreed to bear Amalya as directed and keep its complaints to the traditional spitting and passing of wind.

Eyul took the lead. He had crossed to the Cliffs of Sight before, but that had been ten years ago, and no trail lasts long in the desert. He found his bearings by the stars; in the hot season the Scorpion’s tail pointed the way.

They rode in silence. Eyul liked it quiet, but the wizard took the comfort from desert’s calm. Each mile added to Eyul’s unease until he longed to speak, and he had never been one to make talk for its own sake.

Eyul followed the line of the dunes where he could, but as the night wore thin their course took them from crest to crest, labouring up from the dips with the sand slipping around the camels’ pads, sapping energy.

“Dawn,” Eyul said, the first word to pass between them since their journey started.

The eastern mountains glowed gold and orange: the full heat of day would be upon them soon. Eyul slid from his camel with a groan. Months in the palace had left him soft, and his wound smarted. He watched Amalya climb down and took quiet satisfaction in the stiffness she tried to hide.

“Show me how they cook in the Islands,” he said.

Amalya smiled and turned to unbind the roll of her belongings. Wizard or no, Eyul could see she had a magic to her. Her robes fell against her as she moved, showing her to be long in the leg and generous in hip and breast.

Maybe not such an old man after all. Eyul’s lips twitched at his own foolishness.

Amalya brought out pans, small jars filled with spices, strips of dried meat, a bag of grain, and slices of dried apricots on a string. Eyul placed his own contribution on the sand in front of her: five cakes of camel dung, dried and pressed.

Amalya gathered the dung between two fire-stones and blew on it, softly, as a musician might blow upon a singing stick. Flames licked at the fuel.

She was flame-sworn, Eyul realised, like Govnan the high mage. He had met Govnan once, by chance, in the dark halls beneath the throne room. Govnan had lit a flame in his bare hand and asked to see Eyul’s Knife. Neither had queried the other’s purpose in the secret ways; it hadn’t seemed polite. That same sense of etiquette kept him from asking too many questions of Amalya, but he knew that within them all mages carried an elemental, air, water, earth or fire.

Amalya wrinkled her nose as she brought her pot to sit across the stones. “In the Islands we don’t cook on dung,” she said. A gentle humour softened her words.

Eyul reached for a handful of sand and let it trickle through his fingers. “We could burn the dune instead, if you’ve the magic for it?”

Amalya did not rise to his bait. She poured water from her skin into the pot, careful, spilling none. “I’ll save my magic for the sauce.” She sprinkled cornflour from a small bag. “Some things are best left to simmer.”

Eyul smiled. He yawned and leaned back against his pack. The sky shone with a faint shade of pearl, and as he watched it brighten he wondered who had sent Amalya, and why. Get across the desert first. Then we will see. He closed his eyes and breathed in the smell of her cooking…

He must have drifted off, because he opened his eyes to low sunshine and a bowl of stew. He accepted the dish, and Amalya crouched in the sand to eat her own meal.

“This is very good,” he said, rolling the mint and pepper together on his tongue. He remembered the foods he’d passed up outside the city wall; this tasted better than rose-camel.