He took her hands. “It’s true, but not the way you think. If my wives had been kept alive and screaming, I would have gone to save them- not because I loved them; I didn’t. They were my mother’s creatures; all of them spied on me from the moment they came to the palace. But they were my women, and my responsibility. Tuvaini knows me well. He knows what will draw me out.” He drew a breath before continuing, “You were right to protect me from charging in. It’s only… When I heard you say the words, I couldn’t help but think that the palace had corrupted you-that I had corrupted you-and I was sorry for that.”
She looked at their joined hands. “The palace corrupted you as well.”
“I was born to it. Sometimes I think that’s what the pattern is: the palace’s own stink, written on my skin.”
“I don’t think that.”
“You are a good person, Zabrina,” he said, kissing her hair. “I’ve told Eyul to kill many times, and it wasn’t always the right thing to do. I thought fear and cruelty were my best tools, but now I see there are other ways to rule. Tuvaini may well be a better emperor.”
“I don’t believe that. You want to be the emperor.”
He laughed. “Of course I want to be the emperor, but that doesn’t mean I’m a good one. Those are completely different things.”
“I like you better now than when you were the emperor.” That was true.
“Now, maybe, but we’ll see about tomorrow, right?” They both laughed.
“That’s about right,” she said.
“Mesema,” he said, surprising her by using her real name, “it’s all slipping away-my throne, my wives-I can barely feel them any more. I can only feel the end coming.”
She lifted her head and listened.
“Sometimes I tried so hard to be what an emperor should be, but really all I could think of was having a great tomb, like Satreth. Part of me always just wanted to join my brothers.”
I think you will. You will. She pressed her moon-mark to his as she blinked away tears. “Don’t slip away just yet. You have a brother who is still alive.”
The memories came, happier, but fainter this time: Pelar, running with a red ball. Beyon, cuddled with Sarmin and a book, both boys so small they had room to share on one cushion. His sisters, running after a shaggy dog. Laughter. Sarmin swearing his fealty, Beyon’s hand on his head. Mesema on her horse, the wind in her hair.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Eyul crawled through the secret ways, his blood drawing an invisible path behind him in the dark. He’d taken an arrow below his ribs and a dagger above his knee, but he had overcome the Carriers in the end and Govnan rested safely in the Tower. Now Asham told him to find Prince Sarmin. It hurt. All of it hurt, ever since Amalya; it was right to be wounded, bloodied, to be so damaged. Now he looked the way he felt.
The Knife kept him awake. Whenever blackness appeared before his eyes, or his arms collapsed beneath him, the voices prompted him to keep going. “Only twenty bridges and five hundred steps to go,” they said at first, then, “Only thirteen bridges and three hundred steps.” Eyul couldn’t fathom how they were keeping count; he just crawled on.
He met no other denizens of the secret ways, neither Carriers, nor women, nor aristocrats going about their clandestine business. The Knife guided him, and his path lay clear. At this moment he could see a lantern moving upwards across the chasm: two figures, climbing stairs with ease. A man’s voice drifted across the black, but his words eluded Eyul. Could it be Tuvaini with Azeem, perhaps? Herran, with a young assassin? It didn’t matter; they wouldn’t come to Eyul’s side of the way.
Peering at the dark figures made him dizzy and he rested his head against the cool, rough stone.
“Don’t stop, Knife. Only eleven bridges and two hundred and thirty-two steps to go. We must see Sarmin.” Asham was always serious, determined. “Sarmin,” echoed Fadil, his voice dreamy.
Eyul placed a hand on the next step, and pulled himself up. A corpsesmell filled his nose. Whether it rose from below or from himself, he did not know. “And then what?” he asked, the question released between his teeth.
“He will know what to do with us,” Asham said.
“Our brother!” Pelar could not contain his excitement.
“I will die?” The thought occurred to Eyul, but he found he cared little. Silence.
Eyul reached for the next step.
Night fell over the desert, bringing relief from the heat of the sun. Grada moved between the dunes, listening to the song of their whispering sands. The wind played the wastes as a musician would his strings, the tune rising and falling to match her footsteps, up and down, back and forth.
Discordant sounds threw off Grada’s rhythm; a distant neigh of a horse caught her ear and then, a second later, the clash of men’s voices. She scrambled crosswise on a high dune, then crosswise in the other direction. Easiest way to get to the top. There were things she knew, now, that she hadn’t known before: Carrier things, though Sarmin had freed her. She balanced on the crest, watching a waggon-train moving north under the moon. Behind them followed soldier upon soldier, ten abreast, the line trailing all the way back to Nooria.
“My Prince. Sarmin.” She knew she was always welcome to call on him. She smiled. Just thinking he would join her made the water-pouches feel light across her shoulders.
She must have drawn him from sleep, for he was foggy and slow to form his thoughts. She saw only images: his room, the emperor in his grand robes, and a pretty girl with sand-colored hair. He suppressed the last as he gathered himself.
“Grada.”
“An army moves north. Is that your brother?”
Sarmin shuffled through his knowledge, gained from books and scraps of conversation. “Do they wear blue hats?”
“No, white.”
“Show me.”
She opened herself to him, guided his eyes.
“One of the generals.” He reached back through his mother’s words. “Arigu just came from the north; perhaps he returns.”
Only one rider lacked a white hat, a man with golden hair and pale skin. He wore a loose-fitting, colorful tunic. He turned and looked in Grada’s direction as he passed, but his gaze went past her, to the dunes beyond. She could not read it.
She felt the spark of Sarmin’s interest. “That one. He reminds me of someone.”
The girl. Grada said nothing, but kept her eyes on the blond man. It stung when Sarmin hid his thoughts from her.
“They go north,” Sarmin said at last, returning to her with confidence, “to the Wastes. Stay out of their way and they will not bother you.” And then, softer, apologetically, “Thank you for showing me.”
“Of course, my Prince.”
He withdrew, and she continued across the sands. For the first time she felt alone.
Sarmin must have slept, because when he opened his eyes his lamp had burned out and a man was calling his name.
“My Prince.”
Sarmin felt under his pillow. The dacarba was still gone.
“Prince Sarmin.”
Sarmin opened his eyes. He recognised the man sitting on his bed from his travels in Carrier-dreams. Iron hair, strong arms-but the eyes were different. They were softer than he remembered. He sat up in his bed. “You’re the assassin Eyul. You killed my brothers.” For an instant Sarmin saw him clearly through the years, through the broken window and across the palace yard, Kashim at his feet with the blood spreading, looking up, returning his stare, unreadable.
Eyul hunched over, one hand on his abdomen, his face drawn and pale. He said, “I am… the emperor’s Knife. I brought them peace.”
“And now you bring this peace to me?”
Eyul shook his head. The broken shaft of an arrow protruded between the red fingers on his belly.
Sarmin could sense the blood now, feel it resonating with the courtyard and the soldiers’ halls, and with his own blood, drying on his bed. “You’re injured.” He took no joy in it, and that surprised him.