Azeem cleared his throat. ‘We have overlooked something, Your Majesty.’
Didryk looked at the vizier, fear passing over his face. Strange.
Sarmin watched them both and said, ‘Have you, Azeem?’
‘Yes, Your Majesty: it is your own glorious person. You have not been marked. Nor have I, or the child upstairs.’ He did not say your brother or the false prince. Only the child.
‘I am not marked?’ Sarmin tried to remember the time of Helmar, of his binding to Grada, of all the things that happened afterwards. He looked at his arms.
‘I think you had best take the mark, Magnificence.’ There was urgency in the grand vizier’s voice as he looked at the bodies on the floor.
‘I …’ He watched the duke’s expression change from fearful to curious. ‘Will it protect me against that?’ He motioned to the two dead men.
‘I do not think so,’ said Didryk. He looked shaken. ‘But it would protect you against other attacks by lesser austeres.’
‘I will go first,’ Azeem offered, and stepped before the Fryth duke, who stood almost a head taller. Didryk looked down at Azeem, and after a pause he bent down to pick up his pot of greasepaint, dipped his finger in it and marked Azeem’s forehead.
As Sarmin watched the black marks disappear into his grand vizier’s skin he felt uneasy.
‘If you are prepared, Your Majesty?’ Didryk asked, turning his way.
Sarmin waved him forward and Didryk touched his forehead with the cold grease. ‘Just a line here, and this one … There – finished, Your Majesty.’ Didryk stepped back and the world changed.
Sarmin blinked and the room came into focus, altered and beautiful. Tangled shapes and skewed lines revealed themselves to him, resolving in his vision, shifting into place with a flash of blue. Symbols shone from each guard’s forehead, bright and clean, finished with twists that led into tendrils of light, and beyond all that, the world itself, tangible and real but also defined by twists and curves, formations, structures.
Sarmin took a breath. The touch of the warding symbol against his forehead had woken his eyes to the pattern. He saw the mark gleaming on Didryk’s wrist and the sickly green that was Banreh’s health, weighing it down, and the duke’s wide, knowing eyes.
Now Sarmin knew what Didryk had wanted – why he had come here. All those tendrils of light led back to him. This was what he had hoped for, to be allowed to mark everyone, to link each person to himself. But what he had meant to do with it – whether he had Helmar’s strength to twist each person’s will to his own – that Sarmin could not tell. Was Didryk responsible for the attack that had just occurred?
He raised a hand, intending to cut those tendrils away, to leave Didryk isolated – but he found he lacked the power to do so. To his dismay he found not everything had been returned to him. He could see the designs, but he could not alter them. He needed Didryk as much as he had before.
Sarmin stood, disguising both his new knowledge and his powerlessness. ‘Join me,’ he said. ‘I would show you something.’ With that he turned and led the Fryth from the throne room, Ne-Seth and the other sword-sons falling in behind them as Sarmin began the long walk to his old tower. He offered no explanation to the duke as they travelled through the palace, and his own mind wandered along other paths, including to Mesema. She had been right about this – the pattern had returned to him – but she had been wrong about trusting Didryk.
The damage done by the earthquake was not noticeable where they walked unless one knew where to look: here, a patched wall, there, a new pillar, carved with images of Mirra, set to right the floor above.
At the base of Sarmin’s old tower Didryk hesitated, looking at the charred steps and the gathered sword-sons, perhaps wishing he had not left his guards behind. ‘Where are we going, Your Majesty?’
‘I want to show you my room, where I met your cousin the marke.’ Sarmin waved the sword-sons off. ‘Wait here.’
‘Your Majesty,’ interjected Ne-Seth, tugging at his well-shaped beard, ‘at least let me ensure the room is safe. After what just happened—’
‘Of course.’ Sarmin waved Ne-Seth ahead and he ran up the stairs. Very soon he was out of sight above them and Sarmin began his own climb.
Didryk followed him up the long, curving stair. Sarmin paused to rest from time to time, looking out of the narrow windows set into the curved walls. Each turn lent him a different glimpse of courtyard, wall or city, with no context in which to place the brief views. He thought that even when his view was constant and of wide breadth it did not give him any context either.