‘I’m— My name is Farid.’ So this was about something they wanted. He relaxed a little. He knew how to barter and how to bluff.
‘Farid.’ Adam held forth a flask. The old greeting, done with metal rather than skin.
The ropes slid away. Farid brought his hands forwards and rubbed them together before reaching for the flask. He said, ‘I don’t know who you think I am. I sell fruit in the marketplace. Now my week’s haul is left untended.’ He made his voice heavy with disappointment, emphasising he’d already made a sacrifice. That would have to go into whatever deal these men had in mind. As he drank, he studied Adam. His build named him soldier; the robes named him priest. His bright hair spoke of the north, of Yrkmir. Of the enemy.
Adam showed his palms in a gesture of honesty. He knew the ways of Nooria, wherever he had come from. ‘Your fruit is gone, along with every living soul in that marketplace.’
‘What do you mean?’ Farid grabbed the flask with both hands to keep from dropping it. There had been children there, old men, scrawny dogs, every one of them breathing and alive.
‘Those marks destroy all that is or was alive. Once they surround a man he is already dead. But you saw them, and were saved.’
Farid had seen them. He remembered leaving his stall, cautioning the boy who always sat on the barrels not to sneak an apple. He’d known the boy would do it anyway; he did it every time. It didn’t matter. The boy kept good watch for him otherwise, from men and animals alike. Now Farid couldn’t remember his name – he never forgot anything, and yet today, his memory failed him. Gone. Was the boy truly gone? It was impossible. He stood. ‘I want to see.’
Adam pulled a piece of chalk from his robe and crouched. As he drew a white line against the stone Farid snapped, ‘No, not the marks.’ He had seen enough of the marks when the pattern took his mother. ‘I want to see the marketplace.’
‘It will not be a pleasant sight. In any case we can’t let you go – not yet. The Tower will be searching for us.’ Adam said ‘the Tower’ the way most people said ‘Yrkmir’, hushed and wary. But then his hair, so bright, had already been a warning. These men were more than escaped prisoners: they were the worst of them: the very Mogyrks who had fomented rebellion in the first place.
‘But I’m not one of you. I am a citizen of Nooria.’
‘And yet you see the marks.’
‘So you said. What does it matter?’ Farid could not imagine what deal these Mogyrks might propose; he could not imagine why he still lived. It must have been they who attacked the marketplace, they who had killed everyone inside. Muad: he remembered the boy’s name now. Muad.
‘The patterns that lay a ward or an attack cannot be seen once they are set – not by anyone with normal eyes. You are blessed by Mogyrk to see them,’ said Adam, looking up at him from his position on the floor, sure and calm, though Farid towered over him. ‘The marks protect and strengthen those who are holy and hide from those who are not.’
Farid had seen plenty of marks when the pattern ruled Nooria, when his mother had suffered and died, when Helmar had controlled half the city and sent the other half into hiding. ‘I’m not holy. I’m a fruit-seller. My father is coming upriver tomorrow with another load. He’ll be expecting me to meet him.’
Adam continued as if Farid had not spoken, ‘You are Cerani, but He has chosen from Nooria before. It is not for me to say why. You can see the pattern-marks.’
‘Again, what does it matter?’ He wanted to punch the man. ‘What do you want?’
Adam looked up at him with eyes of the clearest blue. ‘You saw those pattern-marks. That means you can also use them.’
2
Mesema
Mesema unrolled a map of Nooria, laid it over the table engraved with the whole of Cerana and squinted. Nessaket had warned her that reading would take its toll on her eyesight, but maybe it was only the darkness of the library that made the lines swim under her gaze. The cartodome harboured a surprising number of shadows. She pushed the table towards the only window, where sunlight spilled in through the open screens.
‘Majesty! Please, allow us.’ Willa took one corner of the table and Tarub the other.
‘So you say with every turn of the glass. If it were up to the two of you, I would do nothing but sit in the bath all day until someone thought to take me out of it.’
Tarub giggled as she set the table down under the window, then raised a hand to dispel the dust that danced in the sun like fireflies. Fewer hands cleaned the palace these days. Between the slave rebellion and the pale sickness, Azeem estimated they had lost a third of their workers, but Sarmin had put a hold on the buying and selling of slaves while he focused on a new code for their treatment. Mesema was never sure that words on parchment could truly alter the way of things. She remembered hurrying past under the resentful glares of her father’s Red Hoof captives, the hatred that guided their every word and posture. Even as a child she had understood they wanted to be free. Nessaket’s injury and the kidnapping of Sarmin’s brother Daveed had grown from such a legacy, and she was not certain Sarmin’s code would bring it to any resolution.