The Tower Broken(38)

She listened.

‘I’ve had a thought. Do you remember how you and I slipped through the pattern, unseen?’

‘Of course.’

Sarmin gripped her hands more tightly. ‘Well, the same might be possible with the Great Storm.’

‘But when I slipped through the pattern, I followed a path. There is no path through the emptiness.’ Mesema sat up and looked into his copper eyes. The moment reminded her of an earlier time when they had shared the tower room as a hiding place, eating scraps stolen from the kitchen. ‘But perhaps it is not so empty. The pattern took memories and images. The emptiness also takes. It drains everything, even colour. I thought it the opposite of the pattern, but …’

‘Maybe it is more closely linked to the pattern than we had believed.’ His enthusiasm was short-lived and he leaned back against the cushions, deflated. ‘But I cannot see patterns.’

‘Hush,’ she said, ‘you will.’ She thought how to broach the subject of Banreh and the Felting slaves, but just as she was about to speak, he caught her in an embrace.

‘I am glad you stayed in the palace,’ he whispered into her hair.

Her heart burned when she remembered Banreh’s lips against hers, and she closed her eyes to shut the memory from her mind.

Sarmin spoke again into her ear. ‘Do you think we will be husband and wife again, soon?’ His breath fell upon her neck, and she was reminded then of her dream.

She blushed and pulled away. If she had not the courage to confess about Banreh, she would confess something else. ‘I require forgiveness, my husband, for motherhood has invested me with no more wisdom than I had as a child.’ She raised a hand to stop his protest. ‘I went out into the city. I had a vision from the Hidden God and I thought it showed me Daveed. I was foolish and tricked my guards. Grada brought me back.’

His copper eyes went wide. ‘Why? Why would you go out there?’

‘How much time have you spent with your mother since her injury, Sarmin? Listen, she suffers terrible headaches. At times she is so dizzy she can barely move, but when her body is well, grief fills her mind. She cannot sleep – and so neither can I. All day I dread the night, and all night I curse the Mogyrks who took your brother. I had to do something. But I chose the wrong path, Sarmin, and men died.’ She wiped away a tear.

Sarmin stood, his shoulders stiff. ‘You must leave such things to Grada. But I would hear of your vision, because none have been false so far.’

‘It showed me Lord Nessen’s house—’ The floor shook and the parchment on Sarmin’s desk slid to the carpet. The room heaved, sending the bench through the air, its pillows streaming behind it, and throwing Mesema to the floor. A shower of plaster fell over her back and then at last the room stilled.

Mesema scrambled to her knees as Sarmin stood and looked about the room in horror. ‘What new manner of attack is this?’ he breathed.

The Felting lived in the cradle of the mountains; the tribe had long suffered their complaints. ‘My husband,’ she said, ‘that was an earthquake.’





18



Farid


The Blue Shields led Farid across the Tower courtyard. Every citizen of Nooria was accustomed to its tallest structure rising over them as if to pierce the sky, and to the wailing of the wizards as they cast their runes under the moon, but Farid had never understood the true size of the Tower compound. Here was more space than lay between the Blessing and the fruit market, or from the market to his home – his entire range of movement for most of his life – and it was filled with statues of Meksha in various destructive poses, unsettling to look upon at night, with only lantern-fire to define them in a play of orange and shadow.

The soldiers looked at one another and shuddered.

The walk from the gate to the Tower door was not so long, and a female mage answered the call of the bell-pull, pushing open thick brass doors the size of a flatboat without any apparent strain. Her eyes held the open spaces of the sky, and black hair puffed around her face like dark clouds. She gestured at them with long, delicate fingers not decorated by any chains or rings. ‘Who calls upon the Tower?’ She looked from one to the next. ‘Who interrupts our work?’ Farid looked at his feet before she turned her haunting face to his.

The old soldier – Naru – bowed. It was he who had insisted on leaving Rushes behind – the Tower was no place for a child, he had said, so now she waited at the guardhouse, the squirming babe in her arms, for Farid’s return. She would not tell the soldiers anything, for the only people she trusted were at the palace. It sounded like madness, but then here he was, at the Tower. Grand destinations did not seem so impossible any longer.