CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

SARMIN

Sarmin entered his room to find Azeem gone. He leafed through the papers on his desk, looking for the scroll from Lord Nessen’s courier. Rahim had sent plans for war machines—too late for the upcoming battle. He glanced at the designs and put them aside. There were some communications regarding the provinces, others about the delivery of swords for the Blue Shields; all of these could wait. Again he heard the same buzzing sound he had heard in Mesema’s quarters. He walked to the window, parchments in hand, but his view did not encompass the Scar. He felt it along his skin, prickling the fine hair of his arms.

He dropped the parchments on the desk, accidentally knocking free the scroll-tube he was looking for. It rolled along the wood and hit the rug with a soft whisper. He picked it up. Nothing had yet come of the surveillance on the man’s estate, though they still believed him to be a Mogyrk sympathiser. Sarmin had been certain the manse had something to do with his troubles, but this scroll had offered no clue the last time he read it. Now, as he unwound it again, he remembered the awkward handwriting, the spilled ink, the touching letter from a mother to her daughter.

But now he looked at it in a different way, just as he had looked at Daveed and finally seen him.

He unrolled it the rest of the way and scanned it. It still read like a fond note, but the ink that appeared to be so carelessly spilled served to underline particular letters. The missive was long, and much ink had been spilled—but Sarmin traced each letter with his finger as he read them aloud, and finally he cracked the code. All this time it had been sitting on his desk and he had not realised.

ARIGU’S MAN BROUGHT ALLIED SLAVES. LORD N REFUSED SHELTER. POISONED? APPROACH EMPEROR? RECOMMEND.

Sarmin sat back in his chair, amazed by what he had seen with his new eyes.

Arigu’s captain had prevailed upon the hospitality of a Fryth sympathiser, who had refused to let him enter with his bounty of illegal slaves. Lord Nessen had ended up dead. But where were the slaves? If the captain had left them at Lord Nessen’s estate in the north, he thought that would have been in the letter. No, somehow the slaves had been brought to the city. Grada and the Grey Service had been watching Lord Nessen’s estate in the Holies. She had told him she saw nothing but food go in.

Sarmin stood and paced. Of course—the slaves were there. That is why she had seen nobody come out. “Grada!” he called, “come! You will not believe what I found.”

She entered. Her face was not curious; that was not one of her usual expressions, but what she did show was patient interest.

“You were right to watch that house and bring me this scroll. Mesema was right to investigate. The Fryth slaves are there.”

Azeem entered behind her, his hands folded around a leatherbound ledger. “Azeem!” Sarmin beckoned him forwards. “Send a platoon of Blue Shields to Lord Nessen’s manse in the Holies. There are a number of Felting prisoners there who must be freed.”

As Grada took her place beside Sarmin and leaned down, examining the scroll, Sarmin looked up into the hall—and saw one of his sword-sons turn, place a hand on the hilt of his hachirah and begin to draw it.

“Grada,” he said, but it was too late for her to help; the man had already drawn his weapon and clashed blades with someone in the corridor. He heard Ne-Seth give a shout of surprise; in an instant Grada was at the door, the Knife in her hand. He heard a thud as someone fell to the rug in the corridor.

A sword-son entered, a bloody hachirah in his hand, his eyes black as night. A pattern, dark and malicious, had been laid over him, greasy, iridescent half-moons and circles rising from the floor to infect him like rot.

“Ne-Seth!” Sarmin called out, his stomach turning with worry, “Ne-Seth!” He heard an answering groan from the corridor.

At the sight of Grada the infected sword-son slashed down at her, but hachirahs were heavy and slow to wield, and Grada was fast. She dodged away from his swing, spun, and got inside the reach of his sword before he had even lifted it again. She slid the blade between his ribs with a grating noise.

The sword-son’s eyes cleared to brown as the pattern shrank away from him like a dying vine and disappeared into the floor. He blinked and looked at Sarmin, a question on his mouth, just as another sword-son came behind him and cut through his neck in a gleaming sweep of metal. His head toppled away and hit the floor with a thud, followed immediately by his body. Blood pooled around the man’s severed neck. Sarmin knew the sword-son had been himself in that last moment. He had not known what had been done with his hands, just as Sarmin had not known his own hands had murdered Marke Kavic.

Sarmin felt ill. He pressed a hand against his mouth, stood, and turned to the window, taking deep breaths. To his right he could see Govnan’s fires, rising over wall and building, blinding against the night. He knew the blankness lay beyond them, a void against the stars. He closed his eyes.

“Has the truce ended?” Azeem asked. Sarmin remembered Arigu’s recommendation to attack first. Would anything have gone differently if he had?

“Azeem: go, do as I asked and send the Blue Shields to the Holies.” He did not hear the grand vizier leave, but he knew that he had. The buzzing filled his ears again; he shook it off and ran into the hallway to check on Ne-Seth. The sword-son was alive: a line of red ran from his shoulder to his groin, but it was a shallow cut.

“Take him to Assar,” he commanded, and the remaining sword-sons lifted him in their arms and carried him away.

He considered the spray of red on the wall. “Grada, I can no longer wait to question the prisoner.” Didryk had said he did not know how to stop this kind of attack, and Sarmin believed him. But Adam was a second austere, and he might know secrets that were beyond the duke’s rank. The leader of the Mogyrk church—the ruler of Yrkmir—might be testing the Tower, and only Sarmin knew enough to begin to answer the challenge. He would have to try to meet it with all the force the Tower might have had in a better time. If the first austere had known how few the mages were, and how helpless, he would not have held back, testing and evaluating their abilities with his small offensives. He would have attacked outright, and he would have won. But Govnan’s fires in the north must give an entirely different impression of their power. Twice now the high mage had saved them.

Sarmin led his Knife to the dungeon, past the tapestries and mosaics and golden doorknobs, all of them two things now—what he saw, and the pattern that defined them—all the way to the servants’ halls and the steps down to the dungeon. The steps were long and dark and cold, and he remembered waking to himself in one of the oubliettes, a skull in his hand.

The Blue Shield guard lifted two lanterns from the wall and guided him down a row of cells. “Same one as the last prisoner, Your Majesty,” he said, hooking one lantern on the wall. It lit the inside of the small cell, and Sarmin recognised the dirty pallet and the slop-bucket against the wall. But Adam did not recline as Banreh had; he crouched against the floor like a cat, his eyes alert and wary.

Sarmin made no small talk. “Why did you let my brother go?”

“Because I could not allow him to be raised by Yrkmir as had been planned. The first austere is a heretic. He has no wish to bring souls to paradise, only to destroy them. He wants everything to end—all souls to be destroyed. I thought it better to let your brother go home, and to bring all of you to Mogyrk.”

Sarmin gave no indication how he felt about that. “Tell me: how does the first austere send a pattern to take over a man’s will?”

Adam cocked his head. “Don’t you know how Helmar did it, Your Majesty?”

In fact, he did not. He had known only how to remove someone from the pattern, as he had done with Grada—and now he could not even do that. “But the first austere has no great pattern to work with, as Helmar did.”

“No. He can take only one man at a time, and it requires all his concentration.”

“So you do know.”

“Only in theory. I have never seen it.” Adam stood and brushed the dust from his red robes.

“Is there a ward against it?”

“Will you ward every man in the palace now a second time, with Yrkmir at the gate and the first austere sending his attacks?” Adam smiled. “I do not think you have the time. Your only choice is to kill him.”

“Where is he?”

“Somewhere in the city.”

That much Sarmin knew, and he hit the iron bars in frustration. “Where?”

“That I do not know—but perhaps you could draw him out. The emperor would be a tempting target for him.”

“That is why he came, Your Majesty,” Grada hissed. “He wants to trick you into being killed or captured.”

“Do I?” Adam turned out his hands, palms up. “Or am I just seeing clearly? We will all die soon enough when the Scar takes us. The question is only how we will die. I would think an emperor of your quality would want to die well.”

“There is no point to this, Your Majesty.” Grada paced towards the iron bars, fingering the hilt of her twisted Knife.

“Very well,” said Adam, crouching again, “but if you want to know more about Mogyrk—about how your death can be transformed into everlasting life—I will be happy to talk with you again, Magnificence.”

Sarmin backed away. He thought the man sincere. That was what disturbed him.