She’s kneeling in the greenest grass she has ever known. The only grass she has ever known, though for a moment she remembers a dark garden, grass in short black blades, springy beneath her feet. The shadow passes over and the sun returns to press upon her shoulders. She’s kneeling in the long grass with the squeals and shouts of other children all about her, unseen as they play. Her knees are green-stained, her hands clasped together before her, cupping something, trapping it. She feels it skittering against her palms, some thin dry frenzy of motion. When she parts her hands something escapes, bright with colour, patterned with dots and diamonds.
Grada falls back as the thing flaps a wild and stuttering path through the air, crashing into the ground, rising, crashing again. At last it pauses. A butterfly. She knows moths but this is the first butterfly she has seen, braving the sun, iridescent, beautiful… broken. She sees the wound, the ragged hole in its wings, and knows it to be her work. Acid bile floods her mouth and she spits and spits, but the taste won’t go.
“Grada?” A hand shook her.
“Where-” She bit back on the word. The room lay in darkness, the only light from a lantern set on a stone shelf in the opposite wall. “Time to go.” Rorrin said, moving into vision.
She swung at him and he caught her fist. The pain in her side stopped her struggling.
“Enough. It’s time to go.”
“Your man stabbed me!” she said. He released her and she put her fingers to the wound.
“And Anx made it better.” Rorrin nodded.
“I did my best. My mother always told me-”
“Your mother died before Uthman sowed Nooria’s seed, old man.” Meere from the shadows, cutting across Anx’s meanderings.
Grada levered herself up, cursing. “Torlos’ pointy cock!” Meere and Rorrin must have come in while she slept. Only Anx had been there on her return from the Mogyrk service.
Meere sat on his bed, ready for travel, old Anx beside him, bones and skin in a faded black robe sewn with Mirra’s hand. An acolyte then, at least once upon a time.
“Why did you stab me?” she asked.
“He said to test your mettle.” Meere nodded at Rorrin. “You caught me by surprise, things got out of hand.” He shrugged, lifting his hand towards his nose then letting it fall. “You can’t get the measure of a man without risking a little blood. It’s the nature of the business. And besides, you got lucky.”
Rorrin snorted at that. “It’s your job to make sure people don’t get lucky, Meere.”
Grada tried to stand, fell back, gritted her teeth, and stood. “Don’t,” she said, as Rorrin stepped to help her. “Why would you do something so stupid?” She put her hand to her wound.
Rorrin shook his head. “We should go to the palace and report.”
“I will see these slaves and where they are for myself before I go to Emperor Sarmin, heaven bless him and keep him,” Grada said. She looked down at the stain on her robe, the lamplight made the dry blood almost black. “His Magnificence will ask about this. Even without the robe he will know.”
“And I will tell him,” Rorrin said. “I will tell His Majesty that if he will not accept Meere as his Knife, if he will not trust my judgement in these matters and accept someone he doesn’t know to do his red work for him- then I must make a Knife of someone he does know and trust.”
“You overstep yourself, Rorrin.” Grada shook her head, confused. Sarmin might have the man killed if he came to court… unlikely, but whatever the emperor did in her defence would tarnish him. The vizier, Azeem, had the right of it, she had no place in the palace. Grada took her hand from her stained robe, stiff with her blood. “This could be the death of you.”
Rorrin watched her. A moth found its way into the lantern and beat its wings. Shadows danced across them as the creature span and thrashed. For a moment she saw the glimmer of a broken butterfly. She opened her mouth to speak, but he forestalled her. “It won’t be the death of Rorrin. He is invention, nothing more. The death of me? Perhaps. But I am sworn to the empire and this is the path.” He looked to the others.
Meere stood, his head still wrapped in linens. “I’m ready, Master Herran.”
“You’ll stay here with Anx. Grada, with me.”
And Herran, master of the Grey Service and of the emperor’s Knife both, led the way out.
As they moved through the plaza behind the palace, scattered with laundry tubs and wagons, Rorrin said, “the envoy has been killed.”
“The peace envoy?” Grada looked at him, but his face betrayed neither concern nor fear.
“We need a Knife,” he said, “tonight.”
They passed through the door and entered the back hallways. She could remember walking this way with a bucket of slops, back when Sarmin rode within her. For a moment she missed the emperor so intensely that she did not hear what Rorrin was saying.
“…someone small, through the roof vent. One of the girl’s hands might show rope burns.”
“Yes,” she said, nodding as if she understood, and put Sarmin from her mind.
Their path through the palace led up, winding through corridors that ran with servant and slave, all wrapped in their purpose, part of the great industry that let the upper echelons lead such idle lives within an illusion of tranquility. In time Rorrin led the way into areas reserved for Sarmin’s guests and family. Many halls stood empty, used perhaps once in a year, visited more frequently by slaves hunting dust than by the silk-clad in pursuit of diversion. They passed the Red Room, a place scored into the memories of the Many. In the Red Room where the fountain plays carriers first sought to test the Knife. Eyul had fought the Many there and found patterned skin cuts as easily as any other.
They had passed the doors to the Red Room when a woman’s cry echoed after them. A single wail mixing fear and resignation.
“We should keep moving,” said Rorrin, his voice cold, but Grada had already returned to the doorway and pushed it open. Against the far wall she saw the source of the cries: a woman huddled in the corner, arms shielding her face, while a man beat her with his hands and fists. He was silk-clad; she could see that much, though his robes and hair were disheveled, and as she approached he turned to look at her. She could not determine whether his lips formed a smile or a sneer, or had found some way to convey both.
“This slave talked back to me,” he said, gaze flickering from Grada to Rorrin. The woman lowered her arms enough to look. Her eyes had gone blank and dull and her hair was stiff with blood.
“You should stop now,” said Grada, and the calm she heard in her own voice surprised her. A man like him could take more from a person than the Pattern Master. She had seen it, when her father was alive, and in the dark alleys of the Maze, and in every other place too. The Many had carried their hurts into the design and she had lived enough of it.
“I am Lord Zell,” the man said, “and I do not take commands from you.” The tinkling of water into the fountain’s pool filled the silence. The room felt cool despite its hot colours, the fountain elegant and simple, a beautiful setting for such an ugly scene.
Another man stepped from the crimson folds of the hangings the covered each wall. A bodyguard, to protect Zell as he beat the slaves. She wondered what resistance Zell had met in the past that caused him to seek a guard. This one had not armed himself for the palace except for a dacarba, gleaming in his hand. Its sharp, three-sided blade was designed for assassins, but he was too heavy and thick for that profession.
“I suggest you take a command from the Grey Service.” Rorrin stepped forwards, a hand on his dagger. “Let her go.”
Lord Zell looked from Grada to Rorrin and grinned. “Grey Service? Grey hair-now that I believe.” He gave the woman a kick and she crumpled to the floor, curled around her pain. “I like my odds against an old man and a woman.”
Grada tensed her muscles, testing the pain of her wound. “You won’t.” The blade that Meere had left for her hung over her ribs, over the spot his knife punctured her. The beaten slave drew in a shuddering breath and crept closer to the wall.
“We have no time for this.” Rorrin sounded impatient. Grada thought perhaps he should sound worried. What did it take to stand before a naked blade and not feel terror she wondered. Rorrin must know the butchery a knife slash will do, open flesh gaping down through muscle and fat to the bone, blood splattering out in a hot spurting rush. And yet it was the delay that bothered the master of assassins, not the threat, not the gleam of steel. Her gaze flickered to the woman, head bowed, crimson fingers staunching a bleeding nose, flickered back to Zell and the tight cruelty of the smile twitching below his neat moustache.
Without words Grada marched towards the bodyguard. As she entered his range he delayed, confused, then lunged, dacarba angled towards her heart. She lunged too, her right hand closing over his wrist, pushing the trajectory of his blade wide as she twisted from its path, turning, presenting her back to him as she controlled his knife hand. She pulled her own blade clear with her left while she twisted into him, arched her neck, crunching the back of her skull into his face. With precision she stabbed beneath her own armpit into the guard’s chest. The steel sunk home and he cried out, letting his blade clatter to the floor. She stepped away and let him fall.
The man lay clutching his chest, the hilt of Meere’s dagger jutting from it. Scarlet bubbles sprung up around it as the guard fought for breath. Zell’s amazement wiped all other expression from his face. He stared for one moment then took to his heels, running for the exit. Rorrin let him pass.
“This was not well done, Grada.” The old assassin looked from slave to guard and shook his head. Our lives are the emperor’s and we’re not free to spend them on such… domestic matters. He could have got lucky and then you’d be the one dying on the floor. How would that help the emperor?”
“Dying?” The heat of the fight ran from Grada quicker than it came. “He’s not going to die?” She looked down at the man. “I’ll get help.” His face had gone deathly pale and his blood spread around him on the tiles.
“And that lord will make trouble. Whispers against the throne. Change is the last thing anyone of the peacocks want.”
“Help him!” Grada pointed at the man. She didn’t want his death on her hands, didn’t want to see his face when she closed her eyes to sleep.
“I will send word for Mirra’s temple to send someone,” said Rorrin. “Come. We have not the time.” He turned without another glance and left.
Grada squeezed the woman’s arm, stood and followed him from the room. “You will send someone from the temple.”
“I will.”
As they walked Grada collected herself. “It is dangerous for the silk-clad to abuse the slaves. Nobody notices the slaves, but they are there. They surround you.” She spoke also of herself, of the Untouchables.
“They surround us,” corrected Herran. “You are one of us, now. And if the Knife finds one such as Zell a threat, the Knife can eliminate him. I would advise against it though. Change must be a slow process. Cerana can only be turned by degrees. Some problems are like the hydra. Slice off a head and two grow in its place.”
To that she did not reply. Herran could not give her the Knife; only Sarmin could lay that burden upon her. But would he? The envoy had been murdered, and she knew how much he had wanted the peace. What she did not know was how much such a failure might change a man. As they continued towards the centre of the palace Herran began to speak of schemes, snakes, concubines, war and children. This time Grada listened.