Sword of the Deceiver by Sarah Zettel Page A

wealth of scarlet robes stood on the wall above. Samudra reined Rupak to a halt and stared. As fast as he had been, word had flown ahead. Asok, Di-vakesh’s first acolyte, waited above the gates, his wiry arms folded in defiance.
    “Asok, open the gate!” Samudra cried. “I have urgent business with the emperor.” Where were the guards? The men on watch?
    Asok made the salute of trust. “I cannot, my prince. You have not been purified from your travels among the barbarians.”
    “Asok, do not …” began Samudra dangerously.
    But the acolyte shook his head. “I have my orders from my lord Divakesh. We will not affront the Mothers by letting the impure tread in the heart of the sacred dance. Not even my prince.”
    “Asok …” Where was the guard, damn them? They were his men. Why weren’t they here?
    “You must be cleansed and make sacrifice before you enter the palace,” said Asok as firmly and as calmly as a man saying the sun must rise tomorrow. “These are the Mothers’ laws, and I will not break them. I will not of my own will open these gates.”
    Beneath the fire of his rage, Samudra knew Asok did no more and no less than act according to divine law. There was ritual that must be performed after an extended journey, to shed the outer world and re-embrace the inner, to reweave the steps to match the rhythm at the center of the dance. To disrupt this was to disrupt Hastinapura itself and break the compact the first emperor made with the Queen of Heaven. Samudra knew this. He had done it scores of times, returning from a campaign or from some diplomatic journey at his father’s side.
    But Samudra also knew what Divakesh did under the cover of that law. This was payment for what had happened in the court of Sindhu. This was Divakesh reasserting his power and authority.
    In thinking of the dead, Samudra had forgotten all these lesser things.
    The dead, unnumbered and unnamed, the dead laid low by Pravan’s incompetence and his own thoughtlessness. This truth washed away the shame brought by his forgetfulness of holy rite.
    “Asok, there is no time. We are defeated. I must speak with the emperor and I must speak with Captain Pravan. We cannot delay!”
    “All you say shows how polluted your thoughts have become,” said Asok stubbornly. “In this, my master’s rank is higher even than yours, and his duty to the protection of the emperor and the Pearl Throne even greater. No one will open this gate to you until the sacrifice is ready.”
    Slowly, regally, the acolyte turned, and descended from the walls, vanishing from Samudra’s sight. Samudra was left before the locked ivory gates, with no sound but the garden’s birds to break the ringing in his ears, and no one but the servants and Hamsa to hear him shout.
    It was Hamsa he turned on, his anger blotting out reason. “What has happened here?” he demanded. “What is being done to me?”
    Hamsa, who was supposed to be his first friend and best advisor, could only say, “I don’t know, my prince.”
    “Why! You are the sorcerer, you speak to the Mothers and scry the future. Why didn’t you see this!”
    Hamsa bowed under his shouted words, turning her face away. Samudra regretted his outburst at once. “Never mind, Hamsa. It is not your fault.”
You were sent with me. They knew they had to get you out of the palace as well
.
    For a moment, her mouth moved without sound before she made the salute of trust, covering her face with her hands and bowing low before him.
    In that moment of silence, he heard a new sound, a familiar sound. The clash of metal on metal, the faint shout of men’s voices.
    The training yard. There were exercises happening in the training yard. The guard, his men, were outside the walls.
    Fool!
He cursed himself and wheeled Rapuk around, riding swiftly around the great curve of the inner walls. The Mothers, their heroes, saints, and the lesser gods looked down on him with stone eyes as he passed by. He knew that Asok was