Govnan met him at the first landing, looking flustered for the first time since Sarmin had met him. ‘Have you come to interview Mage Mura, Magnificence?’
‘I came to see the Megra,’ said Sarmin, pausing for breath, ‘but I will speak with Mura, in time.’ He would need to learn from her what this duke could do, get a sense of whether his offer was in earnest. He dared not hope. All of him stirred at the idea of regaining his pattern-sight – though that was not part of the deal.
Relief broke over the high mage’s face. ‘Of course. I will lead you to her room.’ After that he fell silent. They continued to climb, and Sarmin considered the carvings that lined the walls. They were not on the traditional themes of war and victory, but rather, showed men and women in poses of intense concentration and purpose. The carvings outnumbered the mages in the Tower by a factor of ten; that was why Sarmin must leave Mura’s discipline to Govnan. They could not lose another mage. She had defended the traitor, but with the high mage’s guidance she would soon remember her captivity with less emotion – and then he would speak with her again.
At last they reached a landing covered in thick carpet – the better to ease tired feet – and Govnan opened the door to a bright, sunny room. ‘Here she is, Magnificence.’ The window faced the river, and Sarmin’s gaze followed the line of boats going south, hoping to catch sight of Pelar’s. Failing, he sighed and turned back to the bed. The Megra lay there, looking older than he had remembered, all bones and onionskin and eyes looking out from deep hollows. But she recognised him.
‘Sarmin.’ Just his name. He demanded no honorifics from her, no false respect, no obeisance. He sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand. ‘Megra.’
‘I have been waiting for you,’ she said, and then fell silent for a time, watching birds flutter past the window.
Sarmin said, ‘I have lost the pattern, Megra. I cannot see it any more.’
She smiled and patted his hand. ‘You cannot change what you are.’
‘And what is that?’
‘More than just one thing.’ She looked at the goblet of water by the side of the bed, and he held it to her lips. When she was satisfied, she leaned back on the pillow, momentarily spent. Then she said, ‘I’ve made a friend. Sahree. You know her?’
‘I met her, yes.’ Mesema doted on the old servant – Sahree had brought her in from the desert, and then Beyon had thrown the old woman into the dungeon for the crime of knowing that. Now she was free and did as she wished, and mostly she wished to be in the Tower.
‘She says what’s coming is Mirra’s work. I think she may be right.’
‘Mirra is a goddess of Cerana, but Helmar’s work …’ Helmar’s work was of Yrkmir.
‘Yes.’ She patted his hand once again. ‘But you should know … he was only a man.’ She closed her eyes. ‘Just a man …’
Of course Helmar was just a man, as was Duke Didryk. Two pattern mages, one dead, one living, and each holding a promise that ate at him. Sarmin fiddled with the butterfly-stone he still kept in his pocket. Megra stirred and opened her eyes again. ‘There was a wound in the Hollow,’ she said. ‘Helmar’s making, turning men pale. That makes five.’
For the fifth and final wound to be so far away in Fryth, beyond his reach, was a blow. ‘What should I do?’ he asked, but she had drifted off to sleep. Sarmin adjusted her coverings and stared down into her face, the face that Helmar had loved.
Govnan was gone, most likely to his newly returned mage. Sarmin turned from the bed and left the room. As he began down the stairs, his Knife detached from the wall and fell in with him, giving no greeting or obeisance, as if she had been with him the entire time.
At the ground floor she said, ‘May I suggest the Ways, Your Majesty – it seems you left your sword-sons in the palace.’ Her tone reprimanded him.
As Grada worked the key to open the dark passages, Sarmin watched her dark, intelligent eyes, her agile hands. Since coming free from his own tower he had learned that women such as Grada were not thought to be desirable. Wide-shouldered and capable, arms strong after years of work, she was no delicate flower to wrap in silks and lay upon a cushion. But she drew him, flesh and bone: she drew him.
Guilty, he turned his mind to his wife. Mesema was insightful and kind, and he had come to depend on her standing at his elbow in the throne room, but she was impulsive and now he worried what would happen with her old love Banreh in the palace dungeon. He knew the chief would die, knew it as well as he knew every score and dent in the walls of his old room, and also that Mesema would do whatever she could to prevent it. That knowledge had hardened within him until it formed a hard, cruel point that he knew he might yet have to wield.