Sarmin walked the corridors of the women’s wing, treading a carpet of whispers. Dark-eyed girls from desert tribes watched him from alcoves, the olive of their skin inked black by nomad needles in patterns that were old before Helmar ever worked his magics. Pale women like Jenni from across the Jagged Sea, grey-eyed beauties, reed girls from the Blessing’s delta, and more, more than he could know or name or want, some intent, staring, some languid, glances sliding from him to the sleekmuscled sword-sons tight about him as he went. Past the empty rooms where Beyon’s wives had lived, still vacant, all save one, though concubines lay elbow to elbow in the nooks and chambers of the harem. Such richness of colour and flesh could only feed the emptiness of his brother’s tomb; it could not survive it.
Ta-Sann rapped lightly upon the door to the Forest Room with the hilt of his hachirah. In time a servant girl opened it, just a hand span, not looking out but glancing over her shoulder, brow furrowed with impatience. “I’ve told you-” She registered Ta-Sann’s towering, muscled presence, the glimmer of his yard-long scimitar. “Oh.” And seeing past him to the royal purple of Sarmin’s silks, she fell into her obeisance so fast he feared she might injure herself.
“I would see my wife and son.” Sarmin waved the girl up though she could see only floor. “Rise. Rise.”
“My emperor! The empress is visiting the royal stables with Old Wife Lana to see her- The empress is absent, my emperor!”
“I’ll see my son, then, and perhaps Mesema will return whilst he and I are talking.” He hoped so; he could count on one hand the number of times he had seen her since the presentation of Pelar. A few short weeks ago he and Mesema had spent their days together, but now he allowed the Fryth negotiations to explain his absence. In truth forcing peace upon the lords and generals no longer seemed so great a challenge. They had used the last few days to launch a flurry of demands, but nevertheless it would be a simple task compared to countering the threat from within Beyon’s tomb. The servant stepped aside and Sarmin followed Ta-Sann into the muted greens of the Forest Room. Tree trunks rose in greys and browns along each wall, picked out in startling detail. By some artifice of the artist’s craft the painted ceiling carried those rising trunks to dizzying heights before exploding into branches and more branches, each thick with emerald leaves through which a painted sun threw dappled light.
Sarmin walked past Ta-Sann to the gold-leafed cradle where his son lay blinking. “You know, Ta-Sann, I have never seen a tree. Nor has the empress. Sand and grass we know between us.” For a moment though he saw a forest, with rain falling in curtains in the gloom between the trees and dark shapes hanging from branches. Sarmin shivered, shaking off the memory.
He reached into the cot and lifted Pelar beneath the arms, marvelling at the softness and warmth of the child. “So tiny…” He shook his head. “Are trees truly so tall, Ta-Sann?”
“On the islands trees grow taller than these, my emperor, wider too, and more wild.” Ta-Sann’s low voice held a wistful note.
“Taller?” Sarmin addressed the comment to his baby and smiled, jiggling the child to find his smile’s echo. “Will you climb such trees, Pelar?
You have a good start with a room like this.” He carried his son to one of the couches nearby and sat, cradling him on his lap. Little Pelar cooed to himself, looking about, wide eyed, dribbling onto Sarmin’s purple silks.
With index finger and thumb Sarmin unclenched one of Pelar’s fists and let it close again upon his smallest finger.
“What a grip!” He watched the baby’s face. “Do you see, Ta-Sann? An iron grip! Will he be a warrior, do you think?” May I give him the chance to live that long.
“I cannot say, my emperor.”
Sarmin let Pelar’s questing mouth fasten upon his knuckle. The baby gummed it wetly, the strength of his bite surprising. Sarmin-emperor sat watching his brother’s son, swirling a finger across his forehead to make dark curls of his hair. “There’s a magic here.” He said it to no one in particular and no one answered.
The child shifted slightly in Sarmin’s lap and in that moment Pelar’s face turned towards him, his gaze unfocused, the dark and liquid eyes of innocence, Beyon’s eyes, Mesema’s eyes, and something quivered in the air between them, the ancient magic of blood and bone, father and son, so deep that beside it all of patterning seemed crude scratching on the surface of things.
Long moments and no words, only Pelar’s sucking and occasional growl of complaint at not being rewarded with milk. Sarmin sat in the dim coolness of the Forest Room and understood a new thing, a thing not written in his books.
“Would you die to protect me, Ta-Sann?”
“I would, my emperor.” Ta-Sann laid a long-fingered hand on the hilt of his hachirah.
“Why?”
“I was raised to protect the emperor. If you were to die and I still lived then my life would have had no meaning, my purpose would be spent.” “You’ve told me this before, Ta-Sann,” Sarmin said. “Today I understand it.”
Afternoon found him shuffling through the parchments brought by the priestess. Helmar had written something about a stone, precious to Meksha, in the foundation of the palace. Sarmin frowned, knowing he had read something about the stone before, or been told it, but the memory eluded him, fluttering away. He looked at his hand, cupped, as if it remembered the weight of such a stone. It might be a clue, a path to follow, to stop the palace from falling through the world like water through a torn skin. The bottom of his lantern held ashes but he did not remember burning anything there. Was there something the Many did not want him to know? He laid a hand on the Knife, the one that had killed the Pattern Master, and looked down at Helmar’s parchments. You are gone, Helmar, but you left so much behind.
But one of these parchments had not been left by Helmar. Lightly coloured and supple against his fingers, it matched his own supply from inside the drawer. Sarmin turned it towards the light from the window, the writing on its surface making no sense to him at first, an unpractised scrawl where he was accustomed to seeing a scribe’s smooth lettering or Helmar’s careful, looping cursive. When he recognized the words he dropped the parchment with a hiss of fear.
YOU are not the emperor.
It was written by the same man who had destroyed his Histories- but in truth Sarmin’s own hands had done both, driven by another man’s rage and another man’s will, just as another man’s lust had been spent in Jenni. Who was this man, and what did he want? A darkness welled in his mind. The Pattern Master had made Grada kill his guards and drive a knife between his ribs. How much harm might his own body do before he could wake to himself? He had woken Grada but there was no-one to wake him. He ran his fingers across the scar she had left. Grada. Where are you? He longed to hear her mind’s voice, but he had broken that bond, the last bond he’d had with any of the Many still alive. At times it felt as if he had cut off his own right hand.
Govnan shuffled into the room without announcement or fanfare, as if he were bringing a meal or cleaning the slop bucket. But looking into his eyes one could not mistake him. He was high mage of the Tower, the third pillar of Cerana, and advisor to the Son of Heaven.
Sarmin tucked the note into his robe. “Govnan.”
Govnan sighed, eased into his seat and laid his walking-stick across his knees. “There is little to say. The tomb dissolves.”
“And the austere?””
“I cannot know for certain. I see no pattern. He has not approached.”
Sarmin waited. Normally the high mage had much to say, and more elegantly. After a silence he asked, “Can your rock-sworn not replace what has been lost? Replace the stone as it fades away?”
“They can.” Govnan paused, and the space between his words told the rest. “It only slows the nothing. Gives us a few more hours. My rock-sworn have not the strength. Had we more mages…” But there was no time to recruit and train mages, and nobody to do it.
And so it fell to Sarmin. There was nobody else.
But he did not know what to do.
After a moment he noticed Azeem in obeisance at the door. Sarmin was not certain how long the vizier had been waiting, but now he stood and said, “Rise, Azeem. How goes the empire?”
Azeem rose and smoothed his silks for a moment before speaking. “The empire is strong, Magnificence,” he said, though his voice sounded wary, “Only one small blemish on its proud face disturbs our peace today.” As he spoke Govnan shuffled out, leaning heavily on his walking-stick. Sarmin thought to stop him, to ask more questions, but he knew the old man was at the limit of his power and beyond. He could not solve this. Instead he turned to Azeem.
“What is that blemish, Azeem?”
“Nooria has received refugees from a town upriver, Migido. Also from the desert. These people say-”
“Migido?” Sarmin recalled the bodies in the marketplace, the blood making a sickening pattern beneath the sun. Helmar’s work. He looked down at the parchments on his desk and felt the world spinning. “Nobody lives there.”
“The town was abandoned during Helmar’s rule, it is true, but it is located along the river, where barges load pomegranates and olives for shipment to Nooria. Such a place attracts settlers. It was soon half-full with new residents.”
“And now?”
Azeem looked at the carpet, picking between unfamiliar words. “Some kind of natural disaster, Magnificence. I cannot tell whether it is a sandstorm or a blight. The way they talk about it is… odd.”
With dread Sarmin remembered his dream, the grey spot that grew in the desert, devouring the tent and the boy. Hollow. Beyon’s tomb. An emptiness that devours. Migido had been another anchor point for Helmar’s pattern. How many had there been, in the sands and in the cities? How many wounds had been opened to the world? They could not move from the palace if nowhere was safe. He thought of Pelar and his brother Daveed, both so small and helpless, both so loved. “Allow the refugees into the city, Azeem,” he said, his mouth feeling strange with fear, “It is my order they will be given bread, salt and water. Here they will be…”- safe teetered on the edge of his lips-“welcomed.”
Azeem nodded, his eyes still on the carpet, his mouth twitching with the need to say something more, something uncomfortable.
“What else have you come for, vizier?”
“Not I, Your Majesty,” he said, motioning towards the door, “It is the Marke Kavic. He wishes to speak with you.”