She turned and looked for her tent. Banreh always tied a Windreader scarf to the pointed top so that she could find it. She crawled in and lay down on her mat, not bothering with her nightdress. She would ask for water to wash herself when she woke. The soldiers washed in the sand; they would consider it a waste, but they might allow it.
And then, without quite knowing why, Mesema cried herself to sleep.
Chapter Thirteen
"Let me see it,” Eyul said. Amalya hunched in his arms, her back to him, as if even his gaze would sear her arm. He could see her pain, written into the lines of her neck and shoulders. He gritted his teeth as he drew himself up. Somehow he’d injured his own back.
Amalya turned slowly, holding her elbow with care, like a brimming cup. The sand had given her a new skin where the flesh had been scraped raw; only here and there could Eyul see the glistening of stripped muscle in patches the desert had not yet found. “Have you magic for wounds?” Eyul asked. The flies would come, and with them the taint that would sour the arm.
Her eyes held the glazed amazement of a man stabbed in the stomach.
He knew that look. “Have you a cure-spell?” He reached for her shoulder with his unburned hand.
She blinked, and some intelligence returned. “Herb law,” she whispered, “I know a little herb law. My true magic lies in fire and in smoke.” She managed a grimace and looked around.
“Herbs seem to be in short supply.”
Eyul was relieved: she had her wits, at least. A Tower mage could be relied on for a well-trained mind.
“Wait here,” he said, “I’ll bring the camels.”
Amalya crouched down, slow and stiff, sheltering her arm as though it were the most precious infant.
The stars lit Eyul’s path across the dunes and he found Amalya’s camel in the depths, between the starlit crests, where the darkness was almost tangible. He walked stiffly, dragging his wounded leg, as he scanned the ridges for the dappling of tracks left by his own camel. “An assassin wears the dark like a cloak,” he quoted from the Book of the Knife. Darkness had ever been his friend.
No night terrors for Eyul.
And yet his breath came unevenly and his heart’s rhythm guided his steps. For a moment he saw Pelar’s ball, bouncing with every beat. Behind him Amalya’s camel passed wind with unusual vigour, leaving the night’s silence in tatters.
Eyul grinned and yanked the beast forwards by its tether. “You have the right of it, my friend.” The horror sank with the city. The echoes that remained would haunt him only if he let them.
Eyul found his own camel a mile further on, waiting peaceably in the lee of a hundred-foot dune. He rode back, leading Amalya’s beast and navigating by the light of the moon. For the last half-mile of his return, Eyul could see her robes at each crest, white against the moonlit sand, and motionless.
“You have magic for the pain?” he asked as he closed the last yards.
She looked up, dark gleams for eyes. “Fire and smoke, nothing else.”
He helped her onto her camel. She held herself upright stiffly, moving with slow determination. Eyul still found her beautiful, despite the taut lines of her agony and the grim slit of her mouth. He felt guilty for it, even as he breathed her in. “There. Hold to the pommel.”
She gripped with her good arm. “Tell him to walk steady. I’d rather not fall off.” She managed a tight smile.
Eyul studied her for a moment. In the ruins she’d feared him as much as the ghosts, afraid he’d slit her throat. In a day or two her arm would swell, and she’d beg for that mercy. The knowledge sat like a cold stone in his stomach. The keen edge of the emperor’s Knife would hardly notice her skin, but he noticed it. He didn’t want her death on his hands.
“You never wanted any man’s death.” Eyul heard the words as if Halim were standing at his shoulder even now, risen from the grave and scarcely the more wizened for thirty years in the dry ground. “That is what makes you the ideal assassin: patience. Your lack of appetite lets you wait. Duty will guide your hand to make the cut.”
Amalya returned his gaze. “What are you thinking?” A lover’s question, asked through gritted teeth.
“That we should put space between us and this place,” he said, mounting his own beast.
Tuvaini waited for her in the temple of death. Herzu watched him from eyes oflapis lazuli in a face of carved jet. He returned the god’s stare as he approached along the central aisle. The sculptor presented Herzu as a thickchested man with the head of a jackal, six yards tall. When Herzu visited Tuvaini’s dreams, he came as a human youth, loose-limbed, robed, walking the dunes in the dusk, seen only in glimpses between the crests.
“My Lord High Vizier.”
Tuvaini turned. Nessaket stood behind him, close enough to touch. “My lady.” He brought his fingers to his forehead. “You have a silent step.” She waited, impassive save for the slightest furrow between her brows. Tuvaini moved aside, and as she passed he drew in the scent of her.
Desert-rose, and a hint of honey. He watched Nessaket’s smooth back, the motion of her shoulders, the gleam of olive skin as she made her devotions. Her personal guards would be waiting by the door, but in the temple of death they were alone.
At last she stood and turned. Tuvaini pulled his gaze from the sway of her breasts to the hardness of her eyes.
“You are a pious man, Vizier?”
“Only the foolish do not honour those with power over them,” Tuvaini said.
“Herzu holds power in both hands.” She spoke from the scriptures. “In his left he brings hunger.”
“And in his right hand, pestilence.” Tuvaini finished the line. A pause.
“And the emperor fares well this morning, I trust?” Tuvaini smiled.
Nessaket did not smile. “My son is well, I thank you.” She walked towards the entrance and her waiting guards. She always left him this way, wanting. Set aside.
“But which son?”
Nessaket stopped, her shoulders stiff. For the longest moment she neither walked nor turned. Tuvaini wanted to see her face, wanted to see what his words had written there.
Another step towards the doorway.
“Herzu has his right hand upon Beyon’s shoulder, Nessaket.” Her name felt good in his mouth.
She stopped again. Sweat ran beneath his robes, liquid trickles across his ribs.
“Can Arigu find a child among the horse clans so young she is yet a virgin?” Tuvaini asked.
At that Nessaket turned.
Tuvaini felt his heart pound. “And if he can, will she reach Nooria? It’s a long road from the grasslands, and we live in interesting times.” He reached into his robes.
Nessaket startled, arms rising, mouth ready to call her men He pulled the scroll out quickly. “No weapons-we are not barbarians, Nessaket.” He managed a smile. Their sins bound both of them to silence. Nessaket would not run to the throne room; she would stay and listen until he let her go. He held the scroll before him, level with his head. “There is an old man in the desert who remembers our history better than the most learned palace scribe. He holds treasures from the library of Axus, taken on the night it burned-papers, documents, books of record, sealed oaths, blood confessions spilled on cured skin.” And one has been stolen for me.
Nessaket approached, a sway to her hips, silks flowing, a memory from dreams on nights too hot for sleep.
“And what does your paper say, Tuvaini?”
“I-” She had never spoken his name before. “I-” He looked to the scroll and its wax seals. His hand shook from wanting her. “It shows the lines of succession, back past the Yrkman incursion. Where we have speculation, it has names; where we have hearsay, it has dates. Fact in place of argument.”
“And what is that to me? Or the emperor?”
“Herzu watches us. May we speak of death, Nessaket?”
She was close, her scents surrounding him. “I married the death of children, Tuvaini. I am no stranger to such talk.”