The Court of Broken Knives

‘What the hell was that all about?’ Emit asked.

‘Twilight,’ said Tobias. ‘The bell marks the moment between day and night. Considered a dangerous time.’

‘Seserenthelae aus perhalish,’ murmured Marith. ‘Night comes. We survive.’ Carin used to say it sometimes, his voice deep and solemn; they’d both laugh. It had all seemed almost funny, back then.

‘Speak bloody Literan, now, do you?’ Emit growled. Marith blinked back to the present. They were all staring at him. Speak bloody Literan, now, do you? Oh gods. He was getting careless. Slipping. Letting out things they shouldn’t know. But it was so hard to think here. Shadows. Laughter. Carin. Ah gods, Carin … Pain, clawing at him. Something screaming, just out of reach. He rubbed his eyes and tried to smile at them. ‘Plain as day I’m highborn. You didn’t think I’d be well educated as well?’

‘Speak the lingo, know the customs …’ Emit was glaring. ‘I’m starting to wonder about you, boy …’

‘My Lord,’ said Alxine, trying for levity. ‘I’m starting to wonder about you, My Lord. He can recite dirty poetry too.’

‘Course he can,’ said Rate. ‘Basis of a good education, dirty poetry. “My love is like a lily fair, With lice around her pubic hair”. But can he recite dirty poetry in Literan?’

‘Actually, yes,’ said Alxine helpfully. Emit snorted beer.

‘The best dirty poetry is written in Literan.’ Marith’s face felt hot. ‘Maran Gyste …’ Digging a hole. Big as a latrine trench. He shut up. Tried not to look at Emit or Rate.

‘Yes. Well. On that note. Yes.’ Tobias, trying to smooth things. Tobias went up to the bar, returned with a goblet of wine for him and the promise of food to be brought shortly. It was good wine, rich and heavy. Thank the gods. Marith drank it in small sips, trying to make it last. The food when it came was good too, cold meat in a hot sauce and fresh bread. They were finishing eating when the musicians put down their instruments and the piper addressed the audience in a loud voice. In Pernish, fortunately, like almost all travelling singers: Marith had a sudden image of Tobias forcing him to translate from Literan in time to the beat.

‘Good gentlemen and ladies—’ laughter from the girl, the only woman in the room ‘—tonight we bring you a story, a tale of telling old, of heroes, of dangers, of warriors fierce and bold, of Amrath, greatest lord of all, who caused all men to fear. So listen, my good audience, this mighty tale to hear.’ The drinkers groaned and cheered in equal measure.

Oh gods. Oh gods and demons. Marith’s hands started to shake. He had a sudden fear he was going to be sick.

‘And a happy birthday to Him,’ said Emit. ‘Just let it go, Rate, lad. Let it go.’

The lyre-player struck a few chords while the piper licked his lips, adopted a dramatic pose and began to speak:

‘This is a tale of the first days of Ethalden, before the wars came, when Serelethe and Amrath were still building the city’s strength. A great fortress, they built, using Serelethe’s magic and Amrath’s power. All of white marble, it was, each block twice as tall as a man, and no mortar was needed to hold it together, so smooth were the joins. Five floors it went down into the earth, deep cellars and dungeons and secret rooms. And five floors it rose up into the air, council chambers and feasting halls and armouries. It stood on the very top of the White Hill, and from its windows you could see for a hundred miles. Lost, it is, now, even the hill flattened into dust, but, then, ah then, then the fortress of Amrath was the greatest and the most beautiful and the most feared building in all the world.

‘But great and beautiful and feared it may have been, but the fortress was also haunted, and Amrath could find no peace in it. Filled, it was, with Serelethe’s spells and secrets, but this was something else. A thing that Serelethe herself could not understand, could not solve. For each month at the dark of the moon, a soldier or a serving maid or a noble was found dead in their bed, and not a mark on them but the burning marks of a great fire running all up the length of their right arm. But no smoke was smelled, and no cries were heard, and what was killing them and how they died no man knew. And the guards and the maids and the nobles began to lose faith in Amrath, if He could not keep His own people safe within His own walls.

‘So Serelethe and Amrath were in despair, for try as they might, they could not find an answer to the mystery, and their people were dying and muttering against them. And Amrath had angry words with Serelethe, who had promised Him mastery of an Empire but could not defend His own men for Him. And so things went badly in Ethalden.

‘Now, this had been going on for a year, and no man was any closer to finding the truth of it, when there came to Ethalden a young mage, a wandering sorcerer from Tarboran where the fires burn. And he stood before the throne of Amrath, and dared look even Amrath full in the face. And he promised Amrath that he knew the secret that was plaguing His fortress, and could destroy it. And all he wanted in return was a chance to stand beside Amrath, and be His lieutenant, and lead His armies with fire and blood.

‘So Amrath roared a great roar of laughter, and promised the mage gold and silver and precious jewels, and a lordship, and the command of His armies, if he should only defeat the evil that was plaguing Him. For He saw in the mage a brother, and a comrade, and a tool to be used. He gave the mage a great chamber for lodgings, and put all of His wealth and His power at his disposal.

‘The mage walked the corridors of the fortress, sniffing the air and looking at the stone. And at length he stopped in a certain place, a small room in the outer keep looking down over the city, and he gave a great cry and said, “This is the place. And now we shall see what we shall see.” And he ordered the men with him to dig.

‘The men dug and the men dug, and they broke open the great stones of the walls, and they found there buried the body of a young girl, with her right arm burnt through to the bone from her wrist to her shoulder, and the marks of a knife on her throat.

‘Well, Amrath, He ordered the body buried with full honour, as though the girl was His own sister. Ten horses, they burned over her grave. But still the dying did not stop, for at the next month at the dark of the moon one of the mage’s very servants was found dead and cold with no mark on him but the burning marks of a great fire running all the way up the length of his right arm. And the mage knew then that he was dealing with no ghost but a gabeleth, a demon summoned up from the twilight places by the shedding of the girl’s blood. And he was greatly afeared, for such a thing is very powerful.

‘But the mage had promised Amrath he would destroy that which was harming His people. And he feared Amrath near as much as he did the gabeleth. So he locked himself away in his chamber with his books and his magics, and for three days he did not eat or sleep but only worked at his spells. And at the end of three days he went back to the room where he had found the girl’s body, bringing with him his staff, and his sword, and a silver ring. And there he fought the demon.

‘Three days and three nights they fought, and fire raged through the skies above Ethalden, and Serelethe herself cried out for fear. So terrible was the battle that every child birthed on those three days in all Ethalden and for thirty leagues beyond was born dead. So terrible was the battle that the sick died and healthy men went mad and ran screaming into the sea, or set themselves afire and were burnt to death where they stood.

‘But at the end of three days, the mage overcame the demon, and imprisoned it in the silver ring. He could not kill it, you see, for such things are not alive, and so cannot die. And Amrath and Serelethe rejoiced, and Amrath made him His lieutenant, and gave him command over His armies, to lead them with fire and with blood.’

The lyre-player struck a chord again with a flourish. ‘And now the tale I’ll sing you, a story great and true, so listen all fine gentles, and pay attention too.’ The piper started playing and the lyre-player began to sing, flowery and beautiful in heavy old Pernish rhythms. Not often sung, the tale of the mage lord Symeon and the gabeleth. Complex, filled with half rhymes and strange cadences, twisted, barely used words. And it didn’t show Amrath in the best light either. ‘He was Amrath, the Lord of the World, the Demon Born,’ Marith had asked his tutor after being set to study the song. ‘How could He have been defeated by a thing like a gabeleth?’

‘Amrath perhaps wondered the same thing,’ his tutor had replied after a moment’s thought. ‘Since He had Symeon executed six months later. Remember that. There’s a lesson there.’

Felt as though everyone in the room must be staring at him. The itching was painful now, stabbing fire in his face and hands. I want— I need— I don’t— Help me, Carin. Make it all go away. Please, make it all go away. Help. Help me. He had one iron penny left after last night, which would probably buy him a half-cup of weak beer. It seemed unlikely Tobias would advance him the money to drink himself unconscious, so as quickly as seemed half decent he went upstairs to his room and lay awake in the darkness, weeping uncontrollably, trying to keep from scratching his face so badly it bled.

Chapter Eleven

Two young men, boys really, gallop over the crest of a hill and down towards a long stretch of pale yellow sand. One is slim and dark-haired, the other stockier and fair-blond. They are both riding expensive chestnut-coloured horses. They laugh and shout triumphantly as the horses thunder onto the beach and splash out into the cold sea.

It is still early morning, the mist coming in off the grey water. Seabirds fly overhead. They wheel up before the rushing horses. Sad, lonely, painful cries. The sky is very pale, blurring with the sea and the dark hills, almost no colour save the deep red flash of the dark-haired boy’s cloak. A strange, bleak, melancholy winter light washes over everything, sorrowful as the birds’ cries. Against this, the boys are bright and brilliant, faces radiant with laughter and the sheer joy of being alive. They spur their horses into the foam, kicking up the water, making them leap the waves. The dark-haired boy pulls on his reins and his horse rears up, hooves thrashing, treading the air. He draws his sword and brandishes it aloft, so that its blade catches the morning light.

The fair-haired boy brings his horse to a standstill, water breaking around its legs. He watches the other, smiling at him. The dark-haired boy’s horse wheels and bucks, sending its rider’s hair in a dance.

The dark-haired boy makes a gesture with his hand and they ride back onto the dry sand. For a moment they look at each other, grinning. Then together they dig in their heels and urge the horses on again, faster and faster, galloping madly along the beach. Birds scream and start up as they thunder past, the horses neck and neck, perfectly matched. On and on, like they could ride forever, crashing through the mist, splashing back into the sea and then up onto the sand.

‘Amrath! Amrath!’ the dark-haired boy shouts jubilantly as he rides.

‘Amrath!’ the fair-haired boy echoes, laughing.

Chapter Twelve

You will wonder, perhaps, whether I enjoy my life. I suppose I do. And I have known no other with which to compare it. But then, we can all say as much. All us mere mortals, anyway: I suppose the Emperor must remember his previous incarnations. Although, as he is always the Emperor, there may not be much difference between them.

I am the High Priestess of the Lord of Living and Dying, the most powerful and most sacred woman in all the Sekemleth Empire, second in importance only to the Asekemlene Emperor himself. I preside over the most sacred of the great ceremonies in the Great Temple. I, and I alone, am permitted to shed blood in the Temple. I, and I alone, may touch the High Altar. I, and I alone, know the true will of the God.

But sometimes my life seems very small, and the world around me even smaller. I have never left the Temple since I was brought here, so new born I was still marked with my mother’s blood. I will never leave it, even in death. My body will be buried in the great pit beneath its precinct, and my bones lie where I lived. The confines of my life are so small, so narrow, walls and corridors and closed doors that I know so well I can walk them with my eyes closed.

The Temple itself is huge, of course. But most of it is holy rooms, or storerooms, or imposing empty space. Ten priestesses, five novices and three girls too young to have drawn their lots live here beside myself, and there are servants and guards and such to accommodate. So there are not then many places to go. I have a bedroom, small and clean with a large window and a balcony and stairs down to the gardens and the bathing house. I have a little dining room, in which I eat alone. When I can eat: often, I have to fast. Two days, before a killing. Three days, before the killing of a child.

The killing. You will wonder most about the killing, I suppose. How I can bear to do it. But it is what I was chosen to do. What I have been trained to do since I was a child. What I am and what I know. Life, and death, and the need for dying. It must be done. I must do it. As well ask a man if he enjoys the act of being alive.

Once, in the great days of Empire, a sacrifice was made to Great Tanis every evening, in the moment the light fades and the world is neither day nor night, alive nor dead. A man for the waxing moon, a man for the waning moon, a woman for the full moon, a child for when the moon is dark. How the High Priestess then did not die of hunger, I do not know. Perhaps she lived on water and the scent of blood. Or perhaps she did not have to fast. Perhaps the fasting only came later, as the Empire shrank and its people were less willing to die for their God.

Now, a sacrifice is made only every ten days. I am glad of this, I suppose, I do not think I would like to do it every day, even if I did not have to fast between times. Always the eyes look at me and beg me not to do it, always the victim realizes, at the last, that their choice was a wrong one, that they do not after all want to die. That they do not believe in the God they are dying for. Maybe it is in my eyes too, or will be, when one of the little girls draws the red lot. It has not been drawn yet: even if it were drawn tomorrow, I would have ten years of living left to me. A good while. But a while is never enough. I see that in the eyes of every sacrifice too. They would burn half the world for a few more moments of life.

I especially do not like the killing of children. They are so small, some of them.

But I have lived in the Temple all my life, been trained as High Priestess since I was five. It is all I have ever known and all I will ever know. For all my fine clothes and titles, I am a servant of the Temple, as surely as the women who scrub the floors. I am a tool of Great Tanis Who Rules All Things, His hands, His knife. You do not ask the women who scrub the floors whether they enjoy what they do. You do not ask your hand, or your knife. You see that they are necessary, and that they do what is needful of doing. You would not ask a soldier whether he enjoys his work. You would simply accept that in a war men must die and someone must kill them. If it is this man or that man who lives and this man or that man who is killed – well, that is war. Some must live and some must die. So I lived, and so others die. Another draw of the lot, it would have been reversed. Who am I to say it is wrong, or right?

There are two ways to die in Sorlost, if you seek death. The first is the white silks and the knife in the street, a brief glory of fighting and an unmarked grave. The knife-fighters are the heroes of the city, though they are nameless and forgotten as soon as they die. They walk the streets like corpses, already dead, waiting for someone to kill them, stealing women’s hearts. That is the way of young men, brave men, fools. The second is the Small Chamber and the altar stone, a noble sacrifice and the city’s gratitude that we may live and die for another few days without fear. That is the way of old men, sick men, women, children. Many that I kill are dying already, eaten up with disease or simply bored of their lives. They choose something good and noble in their dying. Or so we say.

My life is not all blood and sacrifice, besides. Most times, it is quite pleasant.

Four days out of ten, I officiate at the ceremony of the dawn. Helase hates it, for it means waking in the dark of the night to prepare, but to me it is worth the waking. I wear a robe of silver, that shimmers as I walk. The priestesses sing a hymn of praise so beautiful it makes the heart weep. I carry fresh flowers and place them before the High Altar, and the scent of them clings to my arms and my hair, the weight of them in my arms smears my skin with pollen and crushed petals and dew.

Other times I walk in the gardens or play with the children. They make me laugh, the little ones training to be priestesses; they look upon me with such awe. Only the very young ones, who have not yet drawn their lots, I avoid.

There is a fine library in the Temple: I read anything I wish. Poetry I especially enjoy, and histories. I have read several histories of the Temple and the High Priestess, which is curious. Reading about myself, it seems, for their lives can have been no different to my own.

Twice a year, at Year’s Renewal and Year’s Heart, we celebrate the Great Ceremony. Year’s Renewal is more sombre, Year’s Heart wilder and more joyful. The Emperor and all the great families come to the Temple shining with gold and jewels; the ceremony lasts for hours; the people of Sorlost dance and sing in the streets, gather outside the Temple to light candles and offer flowers. Afterwards, there are parties and banquets all over the city, and no one sleeps until the sun has risen the next day. Even we, in our cloister, have a fine meal and stay up to see the dawn, though we pray and sing rather than drink and dance. It is the one day of the year I am allowed to dine with the other priestesses. I wear a dress of cloth of gold for the ceremony, like the one I was dedicated in. It is heavy and stiff, but so very beautiful it pains me to take it off. I look like the High Priestesses from the old poems, Manora or Valdine. I look like a queen from an old book.

I have people I think of as friends: Helase, Ausa, even Samnel in her way. The woman who tends my rooms and helps me dress is kind and I talk to her of little things. I have people I suppose I would count as enemies, were I not what I am – Ninia, who talks of the old High Priestess-that-was as if everything I have done for the last five years has been failure and uselessness, as if the very way I kneel before the altar is wrong when compared to the way Caleste the High Priestess-that-was knelt; Tolneurn, the Imperial Presence in the Temple, who loathes the fact I do not have to do as he commands me, though he has never tried to command me and never will; one of the servants who serves the meals, who looks at me with hatred despite the fact I have never spoken to her.

Mostly, my life is as dull and repetitive as any other. I have seen old pictures of emissaries from half the world kneeling in the Great Temple, spellbound and trembling before the might of Great Tanis Who Rules All Things. Now I officiate to peasants and petty merchants, while foreign kings laugh at us for our beliefs behind fat fingers. Pointless, it seems sometimes. All the candles, all the gold and silver and bronze. Pointless, in the way most lives are pointless. A ritual motion we must go through, for want of anything else to do or believe.

But that is not true. It is not pointless. Nothing is pointless, as long as one is alive. One moment of beauty. One moment of happiness. One moment of pain.

Lives for living. Nothing less and nothing more.

Chapter Thirteen

‘Big, isn’t it?’

‘Fancy, too. Must be a real bugger to keep clean.’

‘I like the way it shines like that. Very pretty, that is.’

‘Seems a bit … over the top, though, really.’

‘Well, if you’re the richest empire the world has ever known, I suppose you need something to spend your money on. If you’ve exhausted your capacity for wine and women, might as well be a bloody massive wall made of solid bronze. Probably a slightly more useful way to chuck money away than just digging a big hole and burying it.’

Alxine gestured to a small group of ragged, thin-faced men hanging about in front of them. ‘They could have given it to the poor.’

‘What, and have them waste it by spending it on things?’

‘I’m slightly disappointed, to be honest. All you hear about it, I kind of expected it to be taller.’

The bronze walls of Sorlost loomed before them. Five times the height of a man, shining in the morning sun. They had no seams or joins, a perfect ribbon of metal twisting around the city, punctuated only by the five great gates. The Maskers’ Gate, the Gate of the Evening, the Gate of Dust, the Gate of Laughter, the Gate of the Poor. It was impossible to conceive who had built them, or how. They had never been breached: even Amrath Himself had dashed His armies to pieces against them to no avail and given up in despair.

Marith stood and gazed up at them in awe. It was still early, only a short while past dawn, and he could feel the cold radiating off them. In the heat of the afternoon, the sun beating down upon them, they must be hot as coals to the touch. The morning light flashed off them blindingly bright. Approaching from the east as the sun rose had been wondrous, the metal turning from inky dark to blazing fire, more beautiful and vivid than the dawn itself. The moment the light hit them had been like watching someone thrust a torch into a bowl of pitch. An explosion of light. Dragon fire. Joy. Hope.

There were no villages immediately outside of the city. No houses at all. The town where they had spent the previous night had been the last place before the gates, after that there was an hour’s walk through empty country, barren grassland and scrubby thorns. No wealthy villas or shanty towns of starving untouchables, just bare ground as though they were in the remotest part of some abandoned kingdom, and, rising before them, the great walls.

A stillness, too, very few animals or birds to be seen. The air smelled of metal. The land around was a vast graveyard, for the people of Sorlost buried their dead in this silent place outside their walls. Most were unmarked. Once, they had passed a fresh grave, the earth still dark, a few flowers scattered on the hump of soil. Someone especially beloved: the people of Sorlost did not as a rule concern themselves with such things. To bury someone so close to the road, to offer flowers … Perhaps an only child, a new married wife, a beloved parent. The one joy of the mourner’s heart. Marith looked, and then looked away.

He had studied Sorlost’s history and culture, her language, her poetry and art. Well educated indeed. You need to know your enemy, his tutor had told him as he groaned over the complexities of Literan grammar, the tedious list of the Emperor’s thousand tedious little lives. To be walking here before her walls was strange as dreaming. The others felt it too, he could tell from their laughter, their dedicated attempts at nonchalance. As long ago as tomorrow, beneath the brazen walls of Sorlost.

Within sight of the gatehouse, Tobias drew them to a halt.

‘Everyone know what they’re doing and saying?’ he asked briskly. ‘Any last questions? No? Fine. Good.’ He gestured to Marith with a flourish. ‘Over to you then, boy. Your Lordship. Lead on.’

Marith took a deep breath. Again, strange how unnerving having to act himself was. Far more frightening than acting someone else.

Four soldiers stood to attention outside a brick building straddling the road before the open gates. Two storeys with a portcullis and towers, but it looked absurd beneath the vast bronze walls. A toy fort with toy soldiers. Old wooden gates, splintered and worm-eaten, carved with blank-eyed faces. Behind it, the great mass of the Maskers’ Gate like a roaring mouth. They know, Marith thought madly. They see it. Help me. Help me. What would Tobias do, he wondered, if I stopped in the road and screamed? The soldiers stared at them, asked them a few bored questions, waved them on. Past the gatehouse they stepped into the great cavern of the wall. The air stank of metal. Their footsteps echoed, a ringing sound that was unpleasant to the ear. None of them spoke.