The Emperors Knife by Mazarkis Williams

voice? “I’ll see you at sundown.”
    â€œSundown,” he agreed.
    After she crawled into her tent, Eyul scrubbed the bowls clean with sand. His eyes felt dry and tired; his head ached. The memories were as fresh to him as his ride across these dunes, but the emotion felt ancient, rooted in him. The farther he travelled from the past, the more he lived in it, each day an inexorable step, closing the circle, bringing him back to what he’d left behind.
    His work done, Eyul crawled into his tent. He dreamed of blood in a courtyard and a young emperor with dead eyes.

Chapter Five
    S armin sat and watched the wall, listening for the telltale scrape within it. In the courtyard the Blue Shields made their first round of the evening, and beneath the regular tramp of boots on flagstones, Sarmin could hear the distant cries of moorhens on the river. He stilled his breath and opened himself to all the soft noises of the night: the creak of waggon wheels in the souk, tent poles straining under a sudden breeze, shouts and cries muffled and muted into an unintelligible hubbub. The Sayakarva noises, he named them, because he heard them through the window, where the name Sayakarva was engraved in a tiny, block-like script—the craftsman’s mark, no doubt.
    He stared at the alabaster pane: a window that let in light, but no meaning. He had broken that window once and been rewarded with a view of his brothers dead and dying. He let them keep him blind now. He looked away.
    Sarmin watched the wall, following the scrollwork, tracing a single line through the complexity. In a strange way the hidden door felt as much a betrayal as an opportunity—a greater betrayal, perhaps, than even his mother’s abandonment. The walls of his room had held him longer than ever she did. For nearly two decades, these four walls had been the certainty in his life—but now? Sarmin wondered where his certainty lay; not in painted stone, nor in those who hid inside it. He traced the line to its end and looked to the next wall. That hook, that flourish—had they been there before? He struggled to see the face that belonged to those brush-strokes.
    A scrape, a scratch, and then a grinding of stone on stone. The door opened by feather-widths. Lamplight fingered then flooded through the crack as Tuvaini slipped through into the room.
    Sarmin noted the careful way he scanned the chamber and found some assurance in the vizier’s uncertainty. “Sit.” Sarmin gestured to the bed. He had pushed his small table close to it, and now he took his place in the single chair.
    â€œPrince Sarmin.” Tuvaini gave a quick bow. He crossed to the bed with quick steps, took a last glance at the main door, and seated himself.
    Sarmin inclined his head. He rested his arms upon the table and laced his fingers. He held his hands tight against one another, to keep them from wandering and betraying his own nervousness. “So, tell me of the general.”
    â€œHe is a passionate man, Your Highness, and a brave one. In military matters Arigu’s prowess has been demonstrated on both the personal level and on the larger scale.” Tuvaini kept his voice low. His eyes strayed to the moon-glow of the alabaster window.
    â€œYou speak as if you know him, Vizier.”
    â€œWe knew each other as boys, Highness. We both come from Ghara, in Vehinni Province. Our fathers were friends.”
    â€œAnd now your friend schemes with my mother to find me a bride from among the Felt?” Sarmin said. “Tell me, Vizier, why does such an alliance frighten you? Don’t speak to me of cleanliness or besna nuts. These are not matters of state, and I am no child.”
    Do I care that they drink sheep’s milk? I know where I suckled my milk, and the bitter taste is with me still.
    â€œHe is no friend of mine, my prince.”
    The edge in Tuvaini’s voice convinced Sarmin.
    â€œThe general sets his sights too high.”