Tower & Knife 03 - The Tower Broken by Mazarkis Williams

Author:Mazarkis Williams [Williams, Mazarkis]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, epic, General
ISBN: 9781780871509
Google: sQLsAQAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00EDOBZGM
Publisher: Jo Fletcher Books
Published: 2013-11-20T23:00:00+00:00

29

Sarmin

Sarmin paced his room, twenty by thirty, twenty by thirty. Azeem did not arrive with the books he had requested, nor did Mesema take the notion to visit. He sat at his desk; a scroll lay there and idly he rolled it back and forth over the rosewood surface, thinking about Duke Didryk. He could not discard the idea that the duke had some deeper plan, some deception, in mind. And yet down to his bones Sarmin knew that he must try to repair that brief, broken friendship between Fryth and Cerana, to reach out, as he had done to Marke Kavic, and welcome another son of the cold mountains into the desert.

Finally he stood and looked out over the courtyard where the great men were taking their leave. His proclamation had caused a stir and he saw many aggressive postures in the crowd, turban-feathers bobbing, heavy rings glinting in the sunlight with every emphatic gesture. He wished he could hear their words. At last the courtiers climbed into their shining carriages, surrounded by more bodyguards than stood with Sarmin himself. They were frightened, and not without reason; between the rebels, the pattern attacks and the approaching Storm, the city was no longer safe for them. Sarmin’s window faced west, not north, but even so he could sense a darkness at the corner of his vision, a gathering cloud a thousand times larger than the one that had surrounded his brother’s tomb.

When the last courtier passed through the Elephant Gate, his carriage of polished wood catching the afternoon sun, Sarmin turned from the window and summoned his sword-sons. One came forward, a tall man with a bit of vanity in his oiled ringlets, his beard shaped carefully below his lips.

‘What are you called?’ Sarmin at last pushed aside his fear of asking for a name. His death would be no less meaningful for the lack of it.

‘Ne-Seth, Magnificence.’ The sword-sons kept the names given to them in their training – not Cerani names but names of power, telling who they had been and who they had become when born again into the service of empire.

‘Ne-Seth.’ The name meant nothing to Sarmin. ‘Come.’ He left his apartments and made for Mesema’s room. High above in the Great Hall workmen had already replastered the dome and were preparing for artists to press new legends upon it in gems and glass: Uthman versus the Parigol Army, Ghelen the Holy versus the southern sorcerer – perhaps even Sarmin the Saviour versus Helmar the Pattern Master. As he walked, it occurred to him that the new women’s wing was too far from where he slept and conducted his business – or Mesema at least was too far.

Tarub answered the door, but quickly made her obeisance and disappeared into the corridor. Mesema paced in the room beyond, a spyglass clutched in her hand. When she saw him she cried out and rushed forwards, her arms wide, and he caught and held her, breathing in the scent of her hair.

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