“You’ve put me in an awkward position, to say the least,’ said Tuvaini, tucking the scroll into his robe.
“You have what you wanted,” Sarmin said. His voice felt odd, gravelly.
“So I do. And next I will cleanse your stench from the palace.”
Sarmin involuntarily glanced behind, to where he had started his walk. All lay dark. He turned back to Tuvaini. “I will leave, if it is in the design.”
“In the design.” Tuvaini’s voice mocked Sarmin’s.
For an instant a pattern flashed across Sarmin’s eyes, overlaid on the scene, familiar, compelling and fearsome all at once.
Sarmin tried to reprove the vizier for his tone, but he could not. Instead he turned away, into the darkness, where he felt something shift.
The corridors melted away into night.
“Dada?” A young girl looked up at him with wide eyes, her hair wild with sleep.
Sarmin could see the pattern woven around his arm, spiralling to the hand that held the cleaver. A meat cleaver? Was Sarmin now a butcher in the Maze, chopping goat and mutton to sell in pieces?
“Dada?” the girl asked again. “Are you still sick, Dada?” Sarmin thought the girl very pretty. She was dark, like his sister Shala. He felt the blood from the cleaver running warm and powerful across his fingers. Shouldn’t the man be practising his trade in his shop? But instead he stood in a dim mud-walled bedchamber, crammed with sleeping pallets pushed together. He had been sick. Patterned. Hidden away. Sarmin understood.
The man-Sarmin-both of them-they caught the little girl by the hair and raised the cleaver.
No!
With every fibre of his being Sarmin commanded his hand to drop the blade. The hand, bloody and dripping, hesitated, trembled. A hundred faint voices rose at the back of his mind, a thousand, more:
“The pattern finds no hold on her.”
“The child resists. The wife resisted. The sons.”
“She stands against the pattern.”
“No, she is my child.”
“She resists.”
“Erase her.”
And the cleaver swung, biting home with the wet sound of butchers’ work, a clean cut between the vertebrae.
Sarmin howled, or tried to, but he didn’t own his mouth. He tried to look away, but his eyes watched the meat open and the blood spurt. He tried to leave-with all his being he tried to leave.
Sarmin fell to his hands and knees, feeling sand beneath his fingers. No blood, no child. An unusual smell filled his nostrils and prickled his skin, but he couldn’t identify it, not until he felt sand beneath his fingers. Fresh air. He lifted his head and peered over the crest of a dune. Fifty feet away he saw an older man and a dark-skinned woman, both injured. The man held the woman, who sat with her shoulders hunched inwards.
“Where am I?” he asked, but no sound came forth. The sun rose, fast and faster, and he stood beneath a different dune, watching a caravan go by. A young woman with wheat-colored curls stuck her head out of the carriage and looked at him. The world spun again and Sarmin was in his room, staring at the ceiling gods.
“What have you wrought of me?” he asked them in his own voice. The gods did not have to tell him that his dreams were of his own making.
Mesema’s lessons lasted until full moonlight, and her tongue and throat felt sore by then. Banreh asked for extra water from the soldiers, and when they brought it, she took a long drink and looked out of the carriage for the Bright One. He’d come halfway towards the moon since she first started watching. His inevitable journey, marking her own path from daughterhood to motherhood, was too short, but she knew there was nothing she could do to slow the stars.
“Banreh,” she said, but stopped; she heard the slow breath of sleep. She bunched a cushion behind her head and tried to close her own eyes. She thought of her prince, and made him like Arigu, only younger, and with curly hair like Banreh’s.
She must have dreamed of him, for the next thing she knew was the faint light of dawn and the shouts of the soldiers as they set up camp. Banreh had already gone. She threw down her pillow and took another drink. The water still felt cool against her tongue.
She jumped out of the carriage and surveyed the wide landscape. Eldra was standing by her horse, facing the dark west, as she did every morning; she enjoyed watching the dawn spread across the desert. The Bright One hovered on Eldra’s left. Mesema scowled at it, willing the day to come and make it disappear. Then she took a breath and prepared herself. It was time to be friendly. She wasn’t doing it just for Banreh; when she got to Nooria, she would need a friend. She dragged herself to where Eldra stood, trying to think of a nice thing to say, but she needn’t have worried, for Eldra spoke first.
“The sun comes from the east, as do my people. Soon it will light the entire world.”
Mesema tried to think of a way to respond. Finally she offered, “I thought your people were to the north, like mine.”
“God’s people live in the east.” Eldra closed her eyes, a faint smile on her lips.
The east. Mesema imagined it as a place of snow and high keeps, tall men of Fryth and Mythyck and Yrkmir beyond, shaggy mountain beasts, and strange, halting songs. From them the traders-who-walked carried many things, useful and pretty, but their dead god had never appealed to any People on this side of the mountains except for the Red Hooves. Mesema thought a moment, searching for common ground.
“I believe in the gods too.”
“But there is only one god.”
One god, dead, but with all the power of the many. It made no sense, but Mesema had to learn to guard her tongue. She switched to the intimate tone, a soft teasing between friends.
“What does Arigu think of your god?”
Eldra laughed. “Like any man, he doesn’t care what I think.” She spoke as a sister, crushing her consonants together like soft felt. “Anyway, God is not my god; he’s everyone’s god.”
“Well, I understand that,” Mesema allowed. “Anyone can worship a god, even if he belongs to other people.”
“Mesema, listen. My god is everyone’s god.”
Mesema felt the heat of the sun on her back; she looked to the Bright One and was relieved to find him gone. “Why did your family send you to Arigu, Eldra? Are you to marry him?” Eldra glanced over her shoulder at the camp. “No… I never proved myself, and anyway, Arigu doesn’t really care for me. I can tell.” She turned back and squared her shoulders.
“Then what?”
“Never mind.”
Mesema thought about Eldra’s arrival. Banreh didn’t appear to know why she was with them. Arigu had some design they couldn’t see. Instead of one girl from the Felt, Arigu was bringing two. An honest assessment forced Mesema to allow that Eldra was prettier and more womanly than she was, but Eldra had two points against her. She wasn’t a virgin, and she couldn’t bear children, so she couldn’t be meant for the prince. It bothered Eldra, the not-knowing; Mesema could see that now. All her jokes and flirtations served to disguise her worry.
“Well,” Mesema said, taking Eldra’s hand, “you’re my companion, perhaps.”
Eldra giggled. “I’d rather be Banreh’s companion.”
“You’d have to talk to him about that,” said Mesema, hiding her stab of annoyance.
Eldra looked over her shoulder. “The general.” She rolled her eyes and squeezed Mesema’s hand. “I’ll see you in the afternoon.”
Mesema felt sorry for the girl. It was supposed to be fun, trying for a plainschild-or perhaps it was a sandchild in this case-but Eldra and Arigu didn’t have a real romance, and as long as Arigu dominated their caravan, Eldra could never be with the man she really cared for. Mesema’s cheeks grew hot when she realised she was glad of that. She wished the Hidden God had chosen a more blessed birthday for her, but instead she had been born selfish, under the Scorpion’s tail. He’d also chosen her fate, in being sent away; she had yet to understand if that was a punishment or a reward.