Free Knife Sworn by Mazarkis Williams Page B

Magnificence, the people of the Highrock have long fought against those of Fryth, and fought alongside them, quarrelling like brothers.
    We have blood ties stretching back longer than memory. My own cousin is in Mondrath; my brother married a daughter of the House Sharth.” “You’ve come to seek mercy for them?” It seemed unlikely; the general’s face had nothing of compassion in it, handsome but cold.
    “Only to set our claims before you, Magnificence. I have scrolls with me, from the time of your grandfather and his father, that speak of Highrock’s borders before the second Yrkmen incursion. I have papers that show my own father’s inheritance of three manses in Mondrath city and wide tracts of land to the south along the River Mern.”
    “And it may be,” Prince Jomla added, his voice high and sweet as any girl’s, “that your Magnificence will require men of good breeding and independent means to govern these new and barbaric regions of empire. Men who would not call on the royal purse in order to establish taxation and impose social order.”
    “Gentlemen.” Sarmin held up his hand, a silence rippled out across the room, broken only by the faint sound of Pelar sucking.
    “Tuvaini was emperor for two weeks, unjustly, for Helmar was the emperor by right. And Helmar’s wrongs took him from the throne just as Beyon was judged wrong.
    “An emperor unjustly on the throne for two weeks unleashed my army of the White Hat like a spear thrown at the people of Fryth. And for what?
    Lies about a Mogyrk assassin, greed for lands so distant he was never likely to set his feet there. These are not things to spill blood for, my lords. Since my empress came to Nooria I have shed my own blood to the knife and killed an emperor with this hand. It is no small thing to kill a man. Better reasons are required than to satisfy memories held only on parchment, or to move boundaries on a map.
    “In the Redeemer’s Cartodome the maps are written in stone. There is a message there. Guard your borders. Let no man set them aside, but neither push them forward. Cerana is full-grown and now it must earn its bread with honest trade. When stability can only be gained by constant expansion, something is rotten at the core. Cerana will grow, but it will get no bigger. Richer, yes, wiser, yes, but no larger. We have marked out our place in this world. Now it is time to build an empire within those borders, an empire such as the world has yet to see.”
    He finished and drew a breath. The two lords stared at him, Jomla moving his lips without speaking and Merkel’s eyes darkening with fury, fingers playing with the ruby hilt of his sword. All gazes were upon the emperor, all mouths silent in the wake of his speech. Even Mesema’s eyes, blue as the sky, pointed his way, her red lips parted in amazement. And then she smiled, and the Faces faded away with the useless swords, the thick robes, the peacock colours. It was just Sarmin, and Mesema, and the little em peror, Pelar. She smiled, and in that moment Sarmin was happy. Notheen stepped forwards, his narrowed eyes sharp in his leathery face.
    From among the colourful courtiers he stood plain and unadorned. All he needed to convey could be seen in his stance and his expression, and now, he meant to give warning. The headman had been speaking before Jomla and Merkel brought forth their politics; he had been saying something about the desert. Sarmin searched his memory for the words Notheen had so carefully chosen, and when he found them, the room’s heavy silence pressed against him like prison walls. An emptiness that devours.

CHAPTER NINE

    SARMIN
    A t lanterns’ turning Sarmin returned to his tower room, legs aching with each step. Mesema had earned her rest, guarded by six sword-sons and the Little Mother. The perfumed lords had been settled into luxurious guest rooms, where they still might convene over trays of wine, whispering of their ambitions. Azeem sat at his desk, as