The Court of Broken Knives. Anna Smith Spark

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СКАЧАТЬ god men? Refuse to levy a tax to pay for repairs to a gate?

      The Emperor rose and his counsellors rose with him and swept back onto their knees. The Emperor walked slowly out of the room, the Secretary following him. The guards pulled the doors closed behind him, the harsh voice called out distantly ‘The Emperor! All kneel for the Ever Living Emperor! Avert your eyes and kneel and be thankful! We live and we die! The Emperor comes! The Emperor comes!’ in case a stray servant should cross his path without grovelling in the dust.

      The great lords of the Sekemleth Empire got up neatly and brushed down their silk-clad knees.

      Orhan and Darath Vorley strolled down the Street of Closed Eyes together, heading in a general way towards the House of the East. Sterne and Amlis and Darath’s escort followed at a respectful distance, knives drawn.

      ‘I think it fair to say Holt won’t be receiving an invitation to His Eminence’s next private banquet,’ said Darath. ‘Most unfortunate. “Blood’s blood”! Did you see the Emperor twitch?’

      ‘Your brother was on rather dangerous ground, too, as far as I can see.’

      ‘My brother knows it and doesn’t care. Holt Amdelle doesn’t know it and does. Care. Vile upstart man.’ Darath laughed. ‘I’ve got Calboride blood myself, you know.’

      ‘Have you? I didn’t know. Your divinity shines through you but darkly, then,’ said Orhan.

      ‘You didn’t used to say that.’ Darath shot him a smile. Their eyes met and Orhan smiled back. ‘My great-great-great grandmother. But still. My honour demands I should feel offence. Unless you feel offence on your sister’s behalf that I am offended?’

      Orhan sighed. ‘She knew what she was getting into. We Emmereths have pride enough we can happily sell ourselves and not care about it.’

      ‘That what you did, is it? And I always imagined you just lay back and thought of the state of your roof. Oh, don’t frown like that. I fully appreciate my own intense good fortune in having a younger brother to churn out little Vorleys for me when necessary.’

      They turned into the Court of the Fountain. The crowds milled around them, bright and thick in the evening light. The air smelled heavily of grilled meat and perfumes and sweat. Slanting sunlight caught the water of the fountain, flashed on the beaded headdress of a woman dancing beside it, hands twisting and fluttering like butterflies. Her bare feet pounded out her rhythm, the sound of her bells and the sound of the water her only accompaniment. Across the square, a piper played a tune at a different pace to the dancing woman, mournful and slow.

      Black skin and golden curls, arms raised in triumph …

      ‘Can we talk seriously now?’

      ‘I thought we were.’ Darath wandered over to a woman selling grilled meats, bought two skewers. He gave the woman a talent and smiled at her brilliantly. She stared back at him.

      ‘Here.’ He passed a skewer to Orhan. ‘Harder to lip-read if someone’s got a mouthful of rancid grease.’

      Orhan bit down on the meat. Stringy and overcooked but well-seasoned, with the pleasant sweetness of honey and cinnamon and a bitter tang of vervain that clung in the mouth. They continued walking, slowly but purposefully, gazing around them at the sights and spectacles of the square. No one seemed to be following them directly, although there were always watchers of one kind or another. It had been absurdly, typically reckless of Darath to even mention it at Eloise’s party.

      ‘So …’ Darath said through a mouthful of meat, ‘you owe me three thalers, Lord Emmereth.’

      ‘Oh, come on. You can’t possibly have found out.’ Not even managed to tell the people actually doing it the new date yet, following all Tam’s messing around.

      ‘What do you want me to do, shout it out loudly in front of all these people? If you really want me to prove it …’ Darath’s voice rose: ‘Ladies and gentlemen of Sorlost, the Lord of the Rising Sun has some burning news he would like to impart to you …’

      ‘Lord of Living and Dying, Darath, you are the most insufferable man alive.’ Orhan dug his hands into his purse. ‘Here, you can have a talent and three … four dhol.’

      Darath took the coins, grinned triumphantly at Orhan then tossed them to the nearest beggar. They missed and skipped across the paving stones. Two hollow-eyed children dived for them, shrieking. The beggar, crippled in both legs, half blind, blinked dazedly after them.

      ‘It’s happening soon,’ said Darath over the hubbub. ‘Very soon, I’d guess. Weeks? Yes, look at your face, weeks. And you’ll choose Tearday, because you always choose Tearday to do things … Two weeks this Tearday, then. In the evening, obviously, gives you the whole night to consolidate, you hope, while everyone else is running around trying to work out what’s going on. How … that seems obvious enough. The big question is why. Immish, I’m guessing. Though why that should drive you to this extreme suddenly … You really think you can change the world like this, Orhan? Through blood?’

      ‘There’s another way, is there?’ Was he really that predictable? Hadn’t realized, still, after everything, how much Darath knew him. How much Darath had listened, when Orhan himself had assumed it was all just a game for him. ‘The city’s dying, Darath. The Empire’s a joke. An empty desert and a few villages. A wasteland. The Yellow Empire, we’re known as! The Yellow Empire! Cowards! Weak! The richest empire the world has ever known, and look at us! Petty cowards! Fools! Starving children crawling in filth in our streets! We should have been swept away long ago. The Immish will come with twenty thousand men and a mage, and we’ll fall in days. Or if not the Immish, someone else. Chathe, Eralad, Allene … They see what we are, even if we don’t.’

      ‘Or barbarians from Ae-Beyond-the-Waters, with well-hung stallions gripped between over-muscular thighs, set on rape and pillage and fun for all?’

      ‘God’s knives, Darath!’

      ‘Yes, yes, I’ll be serious … The Empire has survived like this for centuries, Orhan. Unconquered. Unconquerable. The Godkings, the World Conqueror, the Salavene Wars … none of them have ever touched us. The Seven Years War ended in stalemate and no one even looked at us the whole time. So why in Great Tanis’s name now? Twenty years, the Long Peace has lasted.’

      That’s exactly why, Darath, Orhan thought wearily. Can’t you see? Can’t you see? There’s been peace for too long. We’re so smug and certain. So convinced nothing will ever change. They won’t even need twenty thousand. Certainly not a mage. All this is illusion. One touch and we’ll crumble to dust. Orhan sighed and chewed on roast meat. A nasty gristle feeling between his teeth. But Tam’s right, too, he thought. The Immish are just a pretence. An easy way to say what I can’t explain. I’m afraid, Darath. I don’t know why, or of what, but I’m afraid. Shadows. Sorrow. Death. Something’s coming. I don’t know … But I’m afraid. We’re too weak, the way we are, sitting on our piles of gold pretending nothing exists beyond our walls. We need to be ready. And yes, that does mean blood. We’re too far gone for anything else.

      ‘It was them who killed the dragon, of course,’ said Darath.

      Orhan started, lost in his own thoughts, visions of flames. ‘What? Who? Oh. Yes. Yes, I imagine so. Unless there are two lots of armed men out wandering around the eastern desert. Of all the wretched luck …’

      ‘They probably thought so at the time, too.’ Darath СКАЧАТЬ