Knife Sworn Read Online Free Page B

cast Zanasta out and now he would not help her.
    Below the window and to the left an area of the old decoration lay untouched, a tangle of dense calligraphy that had yielded no face in all the long days of Sarmin’s inspection, no voice, only confusion mixed with beauty. He went to it now, set his fingers to the fabric, traced the scroll of the lines written out in black and in deepest blue.
    “She comes.” Sarmin jerked his hand back, fingertips stung. The voice had rung through him, spilled from his mouth. “Who?” he whispered. His hand didn’t want to return to the wall; the ache of it ran in each tendon. Even so he set his fingers to the pattern once more. None of the angels ever spoke with such authority. Not even Aherim. Of all the devils even Zanasta never chilled him so. “Who comes?” Only silence and the defiant complexity, as if the artist had written in knots rather than script. “A daughter? Our child will be a girl?”
    “She comes.” Again the shock but Sarmin forced his hand to maintain the contact. A jagged line tore his vision. Mountain tops. The sun sinking behind serrated ridges of stone.
    “Who?” Sarmin demanded it but the voice kept silent. “Who!”
    Silence.
    A knocking brought Sarmin back to himself. It repeated. He found that he was sitting before the wall with his fingers still pressed to the designs.
    “My emperor?” Azeem’s voice from outside.
    The door-handle turned. From long habit Sarmin ignored it. His guards had always checked the door, but never entered. Now the hinges creaked and silk rustled as Azeem entered the room. He took silent stock of the ruined walls and the broken window before touching his forehead to the floor.
    Sarmin gathered himself before speaking. “How is my wife, Azeem? The child?”
    Azeem leaned back, onto the balls of his feet. “I know nothing of the women’s hall,” he said. “I have other news.”
    Sarmin paused before the window and looked down upon the courtyard where his brothers had died. “Then tell it.”
    Azeem stood now. Sarmin without looking imagined him smoothing the silk of his robe, brushing the plaster dust from its folds.
    —He will betray you—the boys, where are the boys?—so much blood—I’m frightened.
    —Be quiet, all of you.
    After several moments Azeem said, “Govnan’s mage whispers upon the wind: the peace embassy from Fryth draws near.”
    “Such magics.” Sarmin turned and met the vizier’s gaze. Azeem looked away, the jewels on his turban throwing out glimmers of the sinking sun. “Such powers exerted that men might talk across miles.” Fryth was the outermost colony of Yrkmir, the closest corner of its empire, and yet still so far.
    “Battles can turn on such a thing. Wars can be won because a message was lost, or heard.” Azeem laced his fingers. Perhaps not trusting himself not to fidget.
    “And yet when we stand face to face we have so little to say to each other.”
    “Even so,” Azeem said, eyes on his hands. He wore no rings on those long dark fingers.
    “Let us hope a peace can turn on the right words at the right time.”
    Azeem bent his head in agreement. “Indeed we must move carefully. With victory so close Arigu was not pleased to call a truce, and he has many allies in Nooria.”
    Arigu’s pleasure mattered nothing. A truce would be had. Sarmin’s messengers had been stopped by snow in the passes, unable to reach Fryth and stop the general from launching his attack. Now too many people had died. Sarmin felt each one as a loss, a shape removed from a pattern, leaving blankness. He spoke the words he had meant to keep behind his lips. “Let us hope my my council understands Arigu better than I, for in truth I don’t know what he sought through bloodshed.”
    “It is the doom of good men that they cannot see what evil men desire, and their salvation that men of evil will not believe it,” Azeem said.
    Sarmin returned to the wall, his fingers exploring the ruination. “You were