She had to run away.
If she could get to Tumble, and start riding, the River of a Hundred Names would take her to the folk in the mountains, and they could take her home.
She swung about. The emperor stood directly behind her. No. She put out her hand and tried to push him away. The cut on her finger burned, and she screamed.
Darkness. Flowers, tobacco and leather. Someone held her.
“Mirra’s song was too much for her. Bring me the water, now, quick!” The emperor. She opened her eyes and looked at his face. He glared over her at the soldiers in blue, his eyes wild and furious, and she saw the cruelty there, the other side of his strength. Had he killed Eldra, after all? How long before she too became a problem best solved with a cut throat or an arrow?
He looked down at her and put a hand to her cheek. “Are you well?” She closed her eyes, fighting nausea. A message from the Hidden God. Its meaning was clear, and unavoidable, the most definite and most terrible message He had ever sent. It filled her mouth like a bitter root. “It is sometimes hard to serve the gods, Your Majesty.”
The emperor snorted. “Then don’t, unless you want to find your efforts wasted.”
He held her in silence for a time and she gathered herself. The emperor felt different from Banreh. Softer. His hair reminded her of her father’s. But my father doesn’t kill girls. Or did he? She remembered what Eldra had told her about pulling a spear from her sister’s neck. She didn’t know what to believe. I may be a killer, too.
“I’m better now,” she said. Her finger hurt.
As they rode towards the caravan, Mesema held tight to her reins, feeling so dizzy she feared a grain of sand might knock her from the saddle. The Hidden God had shown her a future, but she hoped it wasn’t true. Gods do not lie. They can be unclear, but they do not lie.
The emperor rode beside her, as lost in thought as she. The movement of sand filled the silence between them as the moon rose in the sky, a wide crescent. The Bright One moved closer, his long journey three-quarters finished.
“Tonight you will dine with me,” he said, and spurred his horse forwards.
Eyul left his camel in the valley and crawled up the dune on his elbows. Amalya waited below in the darkness. He looked out over the campsite and slid back down to her.
“The emperor’s caravan, a large one, with his and Arigu’s soldiers both.” “Do we join him?”
Eyul considered it. No. Get to the city first. Deal with Govnan.
“They’re bound to move slowly. We’ll go around. If the scouts stop us, they stop us.”
“Eyul.” She looked at the crest of the dune, where the sounds of men and horses carried. “Since he’s here, do you think he was the one-?”
“I don’t know.” He gathered his camel’s tether and pulled. “There are more important things than a girl.”
Amalya moved her lips, but said nothing. She took her camel’s rope and followed him.
Sarmin closed his eyes and let his mind seek the Many. He moved among them, their whispers brushing against him as he passed. Their words shimmered on the edges of the pattern-shapes and pulsed into the threads, strengthening the pattern-bonds he passed between. Sarmin kept to the dark spaces, unseen, unnoticed.
A flash, and the Many turned as one, called by an unfamiliar touch, a vibration at the heart of the pattern. Sarmin felt it too, a prickling against his skin, a hollow in the design. One of the Many drew away. Sarmin followed, curious, ever cautious of the pattern’s Master.
“Rise.” Mesema rose from her obeisance and the emperor motioned her towards a low table. “Please, eat.”
Torchlight danced over the red cloth covering the table, revealing apples and gleaming oranges, flat pillows of bread, and bowls of steaming lamb decorated with zabrina blossoms of deepest blue. The scents of garlic and thyme reminded her of home.
She stood over the feast and stared at her reflection rippling in a golden plate. The body-slaves had crushed berries against her lips, giving them a bloody look, and swept her hair into a cascade of curls. She did not look Felting. She would never look Felting again.
Is this what a killer looks like?
She knew the emperor would not eat. Emperors were descended from the gods, Sahree had told her, and they did not break bread with mere mortals. He did, however, pick up a goblet and gulp down the sour red brew he’d shared with her before.
Mesema settled down and picked up a piece of bread. The emperor kept his eyes on her, as if she were giving a performance. She didn’t think she could eat, no matter how delicious it smelled. She crumbled a bit of bread between her fingertips.
“We should arrive at the palace soon.” The emperor’s voice fell deep and heavy, as if just thinking about the palace made him tired.
“You’d rather stay in the desert,” she murmured. Not a question.
“Always.”
He reminded her of a Rider in winter, restless, waiting for the day the raids would begin, but for the emperor there would be no raids. The empire was at peace, if living with the pattern could be called peace.
“What is the palace like, Your Majesty?”
He smiled. “Like a garden full of snakes.”
Like me. Mesema tried to bite the bread, but ended up just brushing it against her lips. The crust felt sharp and tough. She tried to push the evening’s vision from her mind.
“Something worries you, Zabrina.”
“Yes.” She took a gulp from her goblet- wine, they called it. She shaped the Cerantic word as the wine ran over her tongue, deciding how much to say. “The wind showed me something in the sand, Your Magnificence.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“I saw the pattern.” She left out the rest, for now, and it made an empty space in the room.
He stared at her, his hand clutched around his goblet. “You play a game with me?” He lifted it in a rough movement and the wine sloshed over the side and ran across his fingers, but he didn’t take a drink. “There are enough women in the palace who play games. Perhaps I should have sent you home to your father.”
“I…” Banreh had warned her to keep silent. Mesema looked down at her hands. A smudge of blue showed on her fingertip, a threatening touch of colour. Everything seemed to slow as she wiped the mark against her skirt. She felt the soft threads against her finger, the fabric moving against her thigh, the sweat on the back of her hand. It’s just a mark from the colour they put on my eyes. It’s from the soap. It’s from the dye in my clothing. But when she looked at her finger again, the spot remained, taking the shape of a crescent moon. It sent a message she couldn’t read, though she knew it to be fearsome.
“What is it?” the emperor asked, putting his drink aside. She had nearly forgotten him. He would kill her now.
“Nothing.” Run. Go now-find Tumble and go. But she hadn’t run the first time, when she saw the vision in Mirra’s garden, and she wouldn’t run now. The emperor stared across the table at her, and she kept still as a tent pole. His face remained that of a stranger, his expressions alien and unreadable, except when transformed by anger.
“Show me.” He knocked the pile of food aside with his elbow and grabbed her hand. Fruit fell and rolled against her slippers as he examined her fingers. He must have felt her hand shaking. He must have felt her fear.
To end here, in the desert… She had seen death fly through her village on the back of red-hoofed horses. Jakar’s clouded eyes made a hollow in her that she felt to this day. Iron was terrible, but the pattern was worse. The pattern wrote your end upon you. It made you wait, knowing your death, wondering to what sinister goal you were to give your life’s breath.
At long last the emperor looked up and told her what she already knew. “A tiny moon.”
“No!”
“A pattern-mark.” His lips grew tight.
“It’s not!” Her mouth lied without asking permission.
He let go and patted her hand. “Don’t let anybody see it.” She watched him. He should kill her, or at least call his guards and have her removed, but instead he drank again from his goblet. If she were to guess at his expression now, she would call it worried. No, he will not kill me. It is I who will kill him. Would the pattern make her do it? At last she said, “I’ll… I’ll be careful.”