Read Online The Emperors Knife by Mazarkis Williams - Free Book Online Page B

green, gone and there again, a pattern lay, writ wide from West Ridge to East. Mesema gasped and blinked away the wind-tears. This was different from what she had seen before. Moons, half-circles and pointed shapes spread from one hill to the next, a pattern repeating and expanding in intricate themes, reaching out in all directions. The lines and underscores around the alien signs reminded her of Banreh’s scratchings.
    The wind cracked and Mesema fought for balance on the round logs of the horse-pen. A hare ran across the shadowed lines as if they held his path, binding him to a labyrinth. He turned wildly, this way and that, as if beneath the very talons of the eagle, drawing always closer. His brownish fur faded into the darker green. She could hear the rustling of his feet, but could no longer tell where in the pattern he ran.
    Though she didn’t understand it, she murmured a prayer to the Hidden God to thank Him for the message. The wind shook her once more, and fell still. Each blade of grass raised its head towards the sun, as if there had never been any message at all.

Chapter Seven
    â€œT he supplicant may now approach.”
    Tuvaini walked forwards and ran a sour eye across the young Tower mage. Though she kept her face blank, Tuvaini suspected some hidden enjoyment in naming the high vizier “supplicant.”
    â€œI would speak with Govnan.” No titles or honorific from the supplicant.
    â€œHigh Mage Govnan has been informed of your presence.” The young mage met Tuvaini’s gaze, her eyes the winter-blue of the wind-sworn.
    So I wait on his pleasure, do I? Tuvaini held his peace. He craned his head to look up at the Tower. The stonework cut a dark line across the sky; he could make out no detail.
    â€œWe so seldom look up.” Tuvaini addressed her in a friendly tone. “We go about our duties in this city that reaches for the heavens, and we so rarely raise our eyes above the first six feet of it all.”
    If you don’t draw your enemy out, what have you to work with?
    â€œThe wind-sworn are ever watchful of the skies.” Though she had Cerani coloring, something in the curve of her cheekbones, and in the way she clipped her words, suggested her homelands lay on the easternmost borders of empire. It seemed to Tuvaini that hardly a mage among the two-score of the Tower hailed from Nooria. Perhaps the local water left one unsuited to the pursuit of magic, or maybe it wasn’t a calling fit for true Cerani. Either way, the presence of so many near-foreigners in the heart of the city always irked him. Supplicant! The word burned.
    â€œAnd what have you seen in the skies?” He kept the scorn from his voice. No wind-sworn had flown the heavens in his lifetime, not since the great Alakal. He had always felt his father’s stories of Alakal were tales for children rather than for men.
    â€œPatterns.” The half-smile she offered held a strangeness that silenced him.
    In the Tower’s courtyard minutes crawled by as if time itself flagged in the heat. The vast enclosure covered some twenty-five acres, and yet the Tower’s shadow still reached the walls, overtopping them and delving into the palace sprawl. Tuvaini didn’t need reminding of the Tower’s reach. He glanced at the young mage again. He didn’t trust her. He didn’t trust any of them. He never knew whether he was speaking to the person, or to the elemental trapped inside.
    â€œHigh Mage Govnan will see you now.” She turned to face the door, the sudden movement setting her robes swirling around her. The brass door swung open at the touch of her fingertips.
    Tuvaini followed her in. He remembered the heavy metal door from his last visit to the Tower. “The emperor does not have such a door at the entrance to his throne room,” he said.
    I don’t have such a door!
    â€œWe are the emperor’s door, his gatekeepers. There are foes to whom a door of brass