The Tower Broken(48)

The harpist chose that moment to begin plucking at his strings, a cacophony of twangs and vibrating sounds that served only to bring Sarmin’s hands to his ears. ‘Who let him in? Get him out!’ The series of clumsy notes came to an abrupt end, leaving a final orphaned chord hanging on the air. The sword-sons led the musician from the room and Sarmin followed after him. It was time to face Chief Banreh.





22



Sarmin


The Blue Shield guard opened Banreh’s dark cell and Sarmin entered, leaving his men in the corridor. They stared through the bars, weapons ready. Mesema had been here before him and he looked around, seeing what she had seen – dirty stones, a slop-bucket, a ragged pallet on the floor with the chief stretched out on it – and wondering what she had made of it. Seeing the emperor and all his sword-sons, the prisoner struggled to a stand, levering himself with a hand against the wall rather than using his damaged leg. When at last the man was standing straight and they were staring at one another, Sarmin motioned to the Blue Shield, who said, ‘You did not touch the floor, prisoner.’

At that Banreh lowered himself and made an awkward obeisance. Sarmin waited a minute, then another, the other man’s obvious discomfort giving him a strange satisfaction. His dislike for the chief unsettled him. With Kavic, he had thought they could be friends; he had felt a fondness for the Fryth man that an emperor is not meant to feel. It had not been allowed in the end: Kavic had fallen victim to the games of empire. Over the last months Sarmin had wondered if there were other men in the world who might become his friends. Banreh, though, would never be one of them. He held some part of Mesema that Sarmin could not reach, and he could not forget that.

‘Rise,’ he said at last, and watched the chief go through the difficulty of standing for a second time. He waited. In the throne room he had learned his silence disquietened those who sought to deceive him. It gave them time to sweat, to wonder what he knew, to imagine punishments to come.

‘Banreh,’ he said, discarding the honorific, ‘you will tell me where to find Duke Didryk.’

‘I cannot tell you, for I do not know, Your Majesty.’

Sarmin drew out the time between questions, watching the man’s drawn face. The chief felt pain from all the falling and rising, that was certain; but it was nothing compared to what Dinar could do. ‘I am confused, Windreader. You came to court to make an offer, and yet you give us no way to fulfil that offer.’

Banreh glanced at the men in the corridor, every one of them tall and gleaming with muscle, each with a wide hachirah at his belt. ‘It is my understanding, Your Majesty, that one cannot correct the emperor, for he is never wrong.’

‘That is true.’

‘And so I find myself unable to explain, Your Majesty.’

Anger drove Sarmin’s words. ‘Are we playing games now, Banreh? For I think you are losing. I cannot think this is what you planned.’ He gestured to the stone walls. ‘You would have been better off staying in the Grass.’

‘Duke Didryk sent me as a messenger, Your Majesty. A messenger is protected by certain protocols.’

‘You are a messenger who has killed a great many Cerani.’

‘That number has grown with time and the telling. More died fighting the Fryth or in the desert than ever by my hand.’

Sarmin gripped the hilt of Tuvaini’s dacarba. ‘Nevertheless.’

Banreh lowered his shoulders as if defeated.

‘Tell me your plan, or you will end on Herzu’s table.’

The chief lifted his hands palm up, the Cerani gesture of honesty, but it looked false to Sarmin, too practised, too easily won. He was all guile and verbal tricks, utterly unlike Mesema.

‘Your Majesty, Duke Didryk knows he has few choices. He offers to train your mages in exchange for clemency. That is the beginning and the end of his plan.’

‘And your plan?’

Banreh held his palms out once again. ‘Only to help my people.’

‘Like Mesema?’ He imagined her standing at the bars, within this man’s reach. Had he touched her? Sarmin pulled Tuvaini’s ruby-hilted weapon from his belt. When he killed Helmar, his dead brothers had shown him where to find a man’s heart. He imagined running the steel between Banreh’s ribs, feeling the warm blood run over his hand. Would he find it then, whatever was in him that Mesema loved?

The chief stood motionless, his eyes on the blade, and Sarmin lowered the weapon. That was not the man he wished to be.

By inches Banreh raised his left hand, careful not to excite the wrath of Sarmin’s guards, and turned it out, exposing the wrist. On it Sarmin saw a diamond pattern circled with stars, and he knew what it was without asking. He and Grada had been linked by pattern-marks when she Carried him into the city and the desert: their thoughts had been shared that way during the long weeks when Helmar Pattern Master ruled Nooria.