She listened. ‘I don’t hear anything.’ She rose from the bed and picked up her dress from the floor. ‘Dead and not dead,’ she repeated. ‘Here and not here.’ She pulled the silk over her body. ‘Come.’
‘Where?’
‘To see someone.’ She tied the silk inexpertly; since Tarub and Willa had begun dressing her she had regressed to a childlike incompetence. She pulled up on the fabric as Sarmin rose and slipped into his robes. ‘It’s not far,’ she promised, walking to the door in her bare feet.
She was surprised to find Grada waiting in the corridor. ‘Is there more news?’ she asked, but Grada only looked at Sarmin.
‘She is guarding me,’ Sarmin said. ‘Now, show me what you want me to see.’
Mesema glanced at Grada before leading him down the hall. She would not ask why he needed the Knife at his side – she did not want to know. Inside Nessaket’s room Rushes sat, singing a song to the child in the cradle.
Sarmin slowed and stopped before the doorway, shaking his head.
‘Just look at him,’ she said. ‘One more time, look at him.’ Now that he had his pattern-sight, things might go differently.
He gathered himself. She knew he resented this boy, resented the affection everyone showed him, resented that he was the only person who still searched for Daveed. All of that showed on his face before he finally entered his mother’s room.
Rushes leaped to her feet and he waved her off. ‘Sit down, Rushes. I am here only for a moment, to see the boy.’ And yet he paused again, just inside the door. Mesema took his hand.
Finally he moved and Mesema walked with him, never letting go. And there he stood, looking down for a long time, until finally he gave a sob. ‘It is him,’ he said, letting go of her hand and lifting the boy from his silks. ‘It is my brother.’ He held Daveed against him, all chubby legs and curls and fists. ‘I didn’t see him – I was looking at him the wrong way, like through a mirror, backwards. But it is him.’
He turned to Mesema, wide-eyed, the boy squirming in his grasp. ‘Now I realise— The letter! I must go and look at it again too.’
He meant the letter taken from Lord Nessen’s courier, the one he had said meant nothing. She reached out to take Daveed from his hands, but he paused, pressing the boy against his chest and inhaling his scent. ‘My brother,’ he said, his voice filled with wonder. But his hesitation was brief; no sooner had Mesema taken Daveed from his hands than he was already at the door. ‘I will see you in the morning,’ he said, his eyes focused on her but also past her, towards the next thing he had to do.
‘In the morning, my love,’ she called after him.
She replaced Daveed in his cradle and took a deep breath. ‘Rushes,’ she said, ‘I need to look for something among Nessaket’s things. Some seeds …’
46
Sarmin
Sarmin entered his room to find Azeem gone. He leafed through the papers on his desk, looking for the scroll from Lord Nessen’s courier. Rahim had sent plans for war machines – too late for the upcoming battle. He glanced at the designs and put them aside. There were some communications regarding the provinces, others about the delivery of swords for the Blue Shields; all of these could wait. Again he heard the same buzzing sound he had heard in Mesema’s quarters. He walked to the window, parchments in hand, but his view did not encompass the Scar. He felt it along his skin, prickling the fine hair of his arms.
He dropped the parchments on the desk, accidentally knocking free the scroll-tube he was looking for. It rolled along the wood and hit the rug with a soft whisper. He picked it up. Nothing had yet come of the surveillance on the man’s estate, though they still believed him to be a Mogyrk sympathiser. Sarmin had been certain the manse had something to do with his troubles, but this scroll had offered no clue the last time he read it. Now, as he unwound it again, he remembered the awkward handwriting, the spilled ink, the touching letter from a mother to her daughter.
But now he looked at it in a different way, just as he had looked at Daveed and finally seen him.
He unrolled it the rest of the way and scanned it. It still read like a fond note, but the ink that appeared to be so carelessly spilled served to underline particular letters. The missive was long, and much ink had been spilled – but Sarmin traced each letter with his finger as he read them aloud, and finally he cracked the code. All this time it had been sitting on his desk and he had not realised.
ARIGU’S MAN BROUGHT ALLIED SLAVES. LORD N REFUSED SHELTER. POISONED? APPROACH EMPEROR? RECOMMEND.