The Emperors Knife Read Online Free PDF Page B

grasslands rolled, green and empty.
    Banreh came alongside her, slow and easy, as if they were inspecting the herd.
    â€œFrom the West Ridge your grandfather’s grandfather would watch the grass in the season of winds,” Banreh said. “The Hidden God would show him pictures in the ripples.”
    â€œI know this.” Mesema directed her anger at him, but trying to be angry with Banreh was like trying to light wet kindling. Even so, she kept her eyes from him and studied the grass.
    â€œWhat do you see there? What does the wind paint for you?”
    Mesema narrowed her eyes. “Ripples chasing ripples.” That’s all there had ever been for her. She turned from the vista and faced him.
    Banreh looked pale, blond hair coiled in sweat-darkened ringlets above his brow. The chase, such as it was, had taken its toll on him.
    A momentary guilt clutched at Mesema’s heart, but she remembered the Cerani prince and thrust all concern for Banreh aside. “There’s nothing to see but grass. No mysteries, no magic. Just like this marriage. There’ll be no Rider racing to my longhouse in the moon-dark. It’s just salt and silver, trade deals.”
    â€œLook again,” Banreh said.
    Mesema looked. She always found it hard to deny Banreh. His eyes held a promise and a trust.
    â€œWhat do you see?” he asked.
    â€œI… I don’t know.” The wind blew harder, and Mesema felt suddenly cold. “A—A strange patterning. Now waves, huge waves with a man riding across them. A cliff. A prison. I don’t know! Nothing.”
    â€œYou see more than you know,” Banreh said. He brought his horse around to stand before Tumble. Though he’d never be a Rider, her father gave his voice-and-hands a fine steed; it helped Banreh keep alongside him during hunts and ride-outs. But the Chief spared Banreh now to bring back the Cerani’s prize.
    Mesema was meant to leave with Arigu at autumn’s turning. She remembered how Arigu had stood at the edge of the horse-pen, watching her ride away. His expressions were unfamiliar to her, his language incomprehensible. She might as well step off the edge of the world as go to Nooria.
    â€œWhy didn’t the prince take Dirini?” The question burst from Mesema without permission. “She’s proven. She has her children to speak for her.”
    â€œThe Cerani have strange ways,” Banreh said. “Dirini’s children would always be considered a danger.”
    â€œAre they mad?”
    â€œDifferent.” Banreh rubbed at the golden stubble on his chin and looked out over the grass. “The prince has no younger brothers—they were all killed when the eldest took the throne. Why he was spared, I don’t know. The Cerani general has reasons, but he doesn’t tell me the truth.”
    â€œI should ride away from here,” Mesema said. “I should ride and join the clanless. Chasing deer on the brown-land would be better than going to Cerana.” Banreh started to reply, but she spoke over him. “Don’t talk to me of duty. The Felt won’t suffer if one daughter rides away.”
    Banreh shrugged. “When the horse fell on me I thought my life was over. I heard my leg break and I knew all my dreams broke with it.”
    Mesema watched him. He had a faraway look. His eyes held the green of the spring.
    â€œI would have made a middling Rider,” Banreh said. “I was never a natural, not like your father or your brother. I would have got by, but I’d always have been third-best in any group of four. Maybe I’d be dead by now, killed last summer when we fought the Red Hooves.
    â€œInstead I found a new world, a world of strange tongues and the stories they conceal. I found writing, and in it a trail to a dozen lands beyond our own—whole new worlds, Mesema, places no Felt has ever been. Places your father could never conquer though he had ten times