“My apologies, my Emperor-”
“No, no-don’t apologise.”
Sarmin looked at the small scar on Beyon’s cheek, the stiff taffeta of his robes, the unadorned gold around his neck.
Beyon’s hands moved to his sash. “I have something to show you. Don’t be afraid.” As his fingers moved, Sarmin tried to look away, tried to obey the cold hand that seemed to pull his chin to the side, but he could not. Blue-marked skin revealed itself, finger-span by finger-span.
Beyon slipped the red silk from his shoulders and sat bare-chested before his brother.
So Tuvaini had spoken true, after all. The emperor’s chest and shoulders were as muscled and hairy as their father’s once had been, but a curious patterning ringed his midsection with coils, concentric squares and halfmoon shapes. Pairs of triangles, one facing up, the other down, appeared at regular intervals. A band of blue underscored each string and behind that, in fainter blue, a complex geometry marched beyond sight into finer and fainter detail.
Sarmin shivered. “But you look well.” He couldn’t take his eyes from the designs written upon his brother’s flesh.
“I’m marked,” said Beyon. “It began soon after I took the throne. At first I could hide the shapes -they were small enough-but of late, I go to my wives only in total darkness. My body-slaves…” His eyes focused elsewhere for a moment. “I was forced to have them killed. Now I let no one into my rooms.”
“Are you dying?” Something lurked in the pattern: a threat, the language unknown but the tone clear enough.
“I don’t think so-maybe.” Beyon rubbed his chin. “You are my heir, should I be.”
“So you’re-” Sarmin’s lips trembled around the word. He forced his eyes to the emperor’s face.
“A Carrier? Not that I can tell. Everything I do is of my own will.” Beyon buttoned his tunic.
Sarmin half-opened his mouth to protest as the pattern vanished behind silk. He forced himself to silence.
Beyon flicked his hair out of the way. “The dreams scare me. In them I do things not of my choosing.” He looked at the stone window. “In my dreams, my body is not my own-but I can run away from the dream if I wish. I ran away when my dream made me threaten the vizier.”
“The vizier?” Sarmin remembered the vizier’s words: The Carriers become bold, even attacking on palace grounds.
“It’s getting late. They’ll be looking for me.”
“Who? Who will be looking for you?” Sarmin’s throat seized with fear.
“Slaves, administrators, wives, dogs.” Beyon smiled. “The denizens of the palace.”
Like Tuvaini. Sarmin again considered telling Beyon everything; to confess about his wife, the vizier, and his secret treasure under the pillow. No. I have sworn to my brother, but I won’t let the emperor take what is mine. Not yet.
The emperor’s commanding voice broke through his thoughts. “You have sworn. You will be summoned when it is time for you to serve.” His brother was gone; the latch clicked.
Sarmin curled against the carpet until full dark, letting Ink and Paper step around him as they came to light his lanterns. Someone placed a tray of food beside his head. He smelled something new: the sour aroma of wine. Beyon’s favor, or Tuvaini’s, or perhaps his mother’s. Whoever sent it did not expect him to wonder. He laughed to himself against the purple threads.
“Prince Sarmin of the Petal Court,” he whispered to himself. “Vizier Sarmin.” He thought another moment. “Emperor Sarmin.”
Nobody answered.
He didn’t know when Beyon would be back. How long would it take? Longer than a ride from the Felt? Longer than Tuvaini’s trips through the secret passageways? Longer than the reach of their mother’s arms?
Sarmin stood and pulled his knife from beneath his pillow. I will not betray you, brother.
He turned his desk upside down and hunched over it, intent. With fevered concentration he began to work. The point of the dacarba scored the wood time and again as he recreated the pattern: crescent moon, underscore, diamond within diamond, crescent moon, overscore. He missed no detail. Breath escaped him in slow rasps. There’s a secret here, for those with eyes to see.
Chapter Ten
Eyul woke with a start. The last of the sun’s heat sank through the cloth of his tent.
Something is wrong. He knew it, blood to bone. Sometimes it was like that. He knew better than to startle into action. He lay at rest, straining his senses, reaching for the wrongness. The sand between his fingers felt warm and gritty. Wrong. He sat up and moved to the tent flap. Veins ran across the dune, faint but visible in the low light of the setting sun: lines in the sand, raised little more than the thickness of a coin, no wider than his hand. Hundreds of them were stretching out in geometric profusion, crossing, intersecting, repeating.
He hurried out under a pink and orange sky. Amalya crouched by the remains of the fire, watching the lines at her feet.
“Amalya.”
“It’s a pattern,” she said, staring at the shapes around her, diamond, halfmoon, triangle, circle, square. “He has found us.”
“Who has?” Eyul’s fingers tightened on his Knife hilt. He didn’t remember drawing it; his hands had made the decision.
“The enemy.”
“I thought you said we were safe.” Eyul stood scuffing at the lines of the pattern. They reformed as the sand fell.
“I thought we were,” Amalya said. “My master told me he would hide us.”
She sounded defeated.
The pattern centred on the next dune, almost two hundred yards away.
The heart was formed by interlocking diamonds arrayed around a sixpointed star. From each point, a design more complex than any palace carpet swept out across the slopes.
Eyul gasped as an electric tingle ran through him. Amalya gave a low moan and struggled to her feet at his side.
“The pattern is complete,” she said.
The sands started to move. The entire facing dune began to flow, from the centre of the pattern, shifting with impossible speed, like water racing across a marble floor. He saw the tops of pillars first, then stone roofs, then archways from which the sand flooded, emptying long-buried halls. Within moments a lost city lay revealed before them, temple, tower and tomb.
Sarmin scored a line across the wood. One more stroke and the pattern would be complete. In his mind’s eye he saw again the symbol-geometry emblazoned across his brother’s chest, blood-red and blood-blue. He laid his dacarba on the floor and stretched his hands, noticing the ache in his thumb, the blister on his forefinger, and the sting of the old cut across his palm.
Sarmin’s carved pattern contained what he had seen on Beyon’s skin, but it reached out across the underside of the overturned desk to cover as much space again. He’d filled in the remainder as he would complete a circle twothirds drawn, or fill in a mouth missing from the sketch of a face.
He sat back against his bed and rested his eyes on the more familiar intricacies of the walls. He’d long ago discovered all the watchers dwelling in the scroll and swirl of the decoration. Some of the faces he’d not found for the longest time, even after years of gazing, whole days spent staring, lost in the depths from daybreak to sunset, floating on strange and distant seas. He’d found them all before he’d grown his beard, though, the angels and the devils both. The wisest and most fearsome dwelt deepest in the patterning, hidden in plain sight, written in the most subtle twists. They had watched him grow, advised him, kept him sane.
Sarmin sought out the grim-faced angel whose gimlet eyes stared from the calligraphic convolutions above the Sayakarva window. “What will happen, Aherim?” He took up his knife again. “Should I complete it?”
Aherim held his peace. Sarmin frowned. The gods might watch in silence, but he expected answers from their minions at least. Aherim seldom missed a chance to offer advice if asked.
Sarmin set knifepoint to wood.