Steles of the Sky (31 page)

“Good.”

Samarkar touched Temur’s arm, and he realized from the direction of her glance that no one could return to the cushions until he offered them the option. “We should sit.”

She lowered herself gratefully, and when she sat, Temur sat as well. Everyone else settled around them, except Toragana, who moved in with a tray and handed around cups of tea.

She seemed to forget that Hrahima was even present, the tiger melted into the shadows so well. Tsering took a cup but then set it aside untasted. She twisted her hands together, but did not drop her eyes. “I met your mother, Re Temur.”

“I was only Temur when you met me,” he reminded. There were no nights in Song, so even though sunset was ending beyond the felt walls of the white-house, no moons would float in the black heavens to trouble his conscience and heart. He put them from his mind and instead asked, “My mother?”

“Ashra, daughter of Tesefahun.”

“That is she. Where is she now?”

“She helped us more than you can imagine, Temur. It was she who found a partial cure for the plague that was killing our people. It was she, along with Hong-la”—Hong-la snorted, and gave her a look that suggested he had other blame and credit to assign—“who saw a fighting chance of using a combination of medicine and surgery to heal those infected. She taught us to make a beer, a beer brewed in a particular fashion, that fought back the processes of putrefaction that otherwise affected the lungs of the ill.”

“And my mother herself? Is she here?” He would have liked to keep that shiver of hope from his voice. Maybe Samarkar could give him lessons in admitting nothing.

Tsering closed her head and shook her eyes. “She had the pestilence herself, I’m afraid. And it felled her before we even got close to finishing the materials she taught us how to make.”

“Ah.” Temur closed his eyes. He could feel the warmth of Samarkar’s hand hovering by his elbow, but she did not touch him. Which was good. He might have crumpled completely if she had. He knew what she was thinking as plainly as if she’d said it aloud: Temur’s mother could have told Samarkar—and Edene!—Temur’s name.

“She was seeking you,” Tsering said. “She was greatly heartened to learn that you had left us in good condition, and that you had a quest before you.”

“When she died,” Temur said. “Did she die badly? In pain?”

Tsering seemed to search his face. “There was some pain,” she allowed at last. “This plague is not a clean death. But she died of infection, not the illness. She was helping us research treatments, and what she taught us saved any number of lives. Your mother was a wizard in her own right, Re Temur, if she held the title or not.”

Temur exhaled. “She died usefully.”

“Profoundly so.”

And she had not died on the battlefield. Or in the sack of Qarash. Temur felt like a particularly terrible person for his relief … but he preferred to think of his mother seeking a cure, dying engaged in a puzzle, rather than ripped to bits, raped and savaged in some dynastic war that seemed more and more futile to him with every passing day.

Or he could tell himself so now, and weep for her later, anyway.

“Tell me about the plague,” said Temur.

Hong-la sighed, folding his hands around his knees. “It’s more of a pestilence. An infestation. Demons—nest in the lungs. The victim suffocates slowly, and most of those that survive the incubation do not survive the … emergence.”

“Demons.” Samarkar leaned forward. Her hands were interlaced around her cup, and she did not seem to notice when hot tea splashed over her fingers. “Glassy things? Winged? Spiny? Cold?”

“Not cold,” Hong-la said. “Hot as blood when they emerge. But yes, otherwise your description is accurate. They—” He swallowed.

Tsering said, “They talk.”

“You’ve seen them,” said Hong-la.

“The adults,” said Samarkar. “Maybe. The ones we saw couldn’t incubate in a lung. But perhaps they could grow from something that could.”

Toragana slipped outside, the doorway draping shut behind her. Her passage admitted a breeze that stirred the warm close air of the white-house. Temur made himself pause, sip tea, consider. His
urge
was to call out an army and throw it at some enemy, but you couldn’t fight sickness with arrows.

No. A Khagan had another way of doing that. If it worked. He glanced at Jurchadai, the silent shaman-rememberer, but that one did not raise his eyes—or give any indication that he was even aware of the existence of a world outside his bowl of tea.

Temur imitated him for a moment. But long before he felt ready, he forced himself to raise his eyes and ask, “Are there any affected here?”

Hong-la said, “Fortunately, no. We have developed wards, and managed to prevent most new infections. We left the ill behind in Tsarepheth, where they would have access to your mother’s treatments. I imagine the Wizards of Song have their wards and treatments as well. But there are country hamlets, towns without wizards and with insufficient wards—”

Samarkar said, “You left them in Tsarepheth. Where the Cold Fire is burning.”

“Yongten-la remained behind,” said Hong-la. “If there is hope, for the Citadel or for the sick, he will find it.”

Samarkar nodded, though her expression was anything but agreement and ease.

Temur finished his tea. “We heard rumors…”

“Of the Carrion King.” Hong-la made a face.

Jurchadai shifted his seat, but still did not speak.
No assistance rendered from the shaman-rememberer.
Which was, Temur admitted to himself, more or less typical of the breed.

Temur said, “Yes. You don’t think so?”

“Someone is skinning corpses,” Hong-la admitted. “Someone dove down out of the sky on a giant bird and rescued Prince Tsansong from the very execution pyre.”

“We heard so in Asitaneh,” Samarkar said eagerly.

Temur felt a thrill of outrage:
al-Sepehr
! He wasn’t sure if Samarkar found his hand to squeeze, or he found hers. But whatever she felt never showed on her face.

“Have you word if my brother is alive?”

The wizards opposite shared a glance. “I cannot say,” said Tsering. “But the odds are very good that your other brother, the emperor, is not alive. The Black Palace has fallen.”

“Fall…”

“An explosion. Gunpowder.”

“A wizard,” said Samarkar.

“The evidence suggests so,” said Hong-la.

There was a silence. “Much news,” said Samarkar at last.

“Little of it good,” Tsering responded.

“The bird belongs to al-Sepehr, the high priest of the Nameless,” Samarkar said. “Either Tsansong is his prisoner, or was in truth his ally and deserved that pyre and worse—or he is dead. Given al-Sepehr’s proven taste for manipulation and misdirection, and twisting alliances to bring death and make war, I cannot tell you better which, now.”

“A Rahazeen sun rose over Tsarepheth the day the palace fell,” said Hong-la—as if it were only an item of information for their inspection. But Temur saw the way his muscles clenched.

Tsering said, “There is no doubt in me that Tsansong-tsa’s ‘rescue’ was designed to sow civil discord. Even more of it than his mere execution would have provoked.”

“Which was plenty,” Hong-la said.

Samarkar said, “If both of my brothers are dead or missing, then, who rules Rasa now?”

“Yangchen is the dowager.”

Samarkar must have been expecting it. “Has she stayed in Tsarepheth?”

“She led refugees to Rasa, as your brother refused. Away from the pestilence and the Cold Fire. We hope.”

“Well,” Samarkar said. “That’s something, then.” As if all her enmity with her brothers’ wife were nothing but a passing misunderstanding. “What you describe fits with al-Sepehr’s patterns. He plays one hand against the other, and never fields his own army, risks his own people, if he can help it. It’s all hirelings and smoke.”

Temur realized again, suddenly, how much he admired her.

“Every cloud of smoke has a fire at the bottom of it,” Hong-la said.

Hrahima’s eyes flickered, her earrings chiming gently. After so long and total a stillness, it was as startling as if she had roared. Temur took advantage of the following silence to take control of the conversation again.

“We have news too,” he said, reminded by the mention of the sky over Tsarepheth. “Asitaneh has fallen to al-Sepehr’s allies, and rests under a Rahazeen sky … as does Asmaracanda. And of course there is Qe—I mean, Kashe, the first to fall. Qori Buqa, my uncle, is dead, and his army under the command of a widow who bears his child. The steppe I mean to retake—my grandfather’s city of Qarash—is under a Rahazeen sky as well. It is evident, as Samarkar says, who the true enemy is. Whose plots we have all unwittingly danced to.”

“Al-Sepehr,” said Hrahima from the dim edge of the room, smoothly as if they had rehearsed it.

Samarkar nodded. “If it is true that a wizard is behind the fall of the Black Palace … then a wizard is allied with the Nameless.”

Hong-la reached for his tea, suddenly, and downed it at a gulp. When he was done, he pulled himself up straight and firmed his jaw. “I believe it was the Dowager Yangchen who allowed the demon spawn into Tsarepheth. No one other than she or the emperor had the metaphysical right to give those permissions.”

Tsering drew back. “You told no one this?”

Hong-la just looked at her. “She is the empress.”

“… I accept your rebuttal. Do you think she was duped?”

Hong-la did not hesitate. “Yes. And I think she realized it, by the end. A woman who is a willing part of her kingdom’s downfall does not go among the sick, ministering to their illness. She does not come to the wizards defending that city and offer anything she can do to help.”

Samarkar said, “My sister-in-law has had a change of heart?”

“Perhaps she has had a taste of adulthood,” Hong-la said.

“It would fit what we know of al-Sepehr if she were a dupe, or a slave. He does not seem to favor free and willing allies.”

From the set of Samarkar’s lips, Temur knew she was thinking of the animate corpses, chained forever in the desert below Ala-Din. He regarded her and felt reality twist around him as he realized what this was. That he was a Khagan, gathered in his tent with his advisors, discussing the strategy of a terrible enemy.

“Where has Toragana gone?” he said. “Can we send for her? I wish her counsel now.”

Jurchadai, still without a word—but with a glance to him for permission—stood. But before he could move to the door, it opened again, and Toragana returned—carrying a child in her arms. A child Temur knew, better than he knew most of the Tsareg.

Edene’s small sister Sarangerel. The one to whom he and Edene had given up their tent in a season past, choosing instead to sleep under the moons.

He had started to his feet before he knew it. All around him, the others—perforce—rose as well.

Toragana stood proud before him and held the girl out in her arms—a display of strength, for the child had nine winters on her and was long of bone. “Merciful Khagan. This child is ill and needs your touch.”

His body responded with a ridiculous flare of panic, made worse when he realized that Tsering was beside him. She said, “His touch?”

Toragana’s heavy braid tossed back and forth as she shook her head. “He’s the Khagan. His touch might heal.”

Might
. She’d follow him against the forces of Qori Buqa, but even she wasn’t prepared to do more than hope that his reign might be blessed.

He stepped around Toragana, headed for the door. When the others would have followed him, he gestured them away. Except for Samarkar, who was not so easily deterred. She paused in the doorway, though, when she saw that he had no intent of going far. Just to lift the airag skin down and gulp down a mouthful of something more nourishing than tea.

She lowered her voice, took his elbow, led him a little ways away. “Those people want you to save their children. To prevent more suffering.”

“I know.”

“You’re thinking of Asmaracanda.”

He raised his brows at her and held out the skin. She took it and drank. He wondered if she was finally developing a taste for mare’s milk. When she extended it toward him again, he shook his head. “Bring it inside.”

“Will you try?”

“I don’t think I’m capable.”

Her lips curved. It wasn’t a smile, though someone who did not know her well might have mistaken it for one. “I don’t think we’re capable of any of this. And yet, we keep doing it.”

Temur caught himself fingering the long scar that stiffened his neck, and pulled his hand away. Hadn’t that been impossible, too? Surviving that wound? The world was full of impossibilities.

“If I begin laying hands on sick children, I’ll never be able to stop. All my life, I’ll never do anything else.”

It wasn’t a real protest, and she knew it.

“Is that such a bad fate, heart of my own?” she asked.

*   *   *

When they walked back inside, Toragana had laid Sarangerel on the carpet and was coaxing her to drink tea. Oljei must have come in while Temur and Samarkar were outside. She sat cross-legged beside them. She was arguing with Toragana, trying to get her to offer the girl some airag instead—for strength. Tsering hunkered beside them, a hand on the girl’s forehead. She looked up as Temur entered. The doubt in her eyes was even less trouble to read than Toragana’s. “I’ve been treating her for some time now,” she said.

“Tsareg Toragana,” Temur said, very politely. “Would you come over here, please?”

Samarkar went to stand beside Hong-la, who had crouched beside the brazier and was feeding it fibrous bits of dried yak dung. Hrahima had settled down and now sat cross-legged beside the chests of goods. Her eyes were lidded, her hands relaxed on her knees. Only the shiver of her whiskers in her breath and the twitch of a tail-tip showed that she was living.

Toragana rose and came.

“What is her illness?” Temur asked.

With a glance over her shoulder at Tsering, Toragana shook her head. “Tsering-la could not identify it. Hong-la says it might be the white-blood wasting. He says he cannot be sure without a, a kind of lens, which he does not have here. But she bruises easily, and she…” Her voice took on a desperate cheerfulness as she gulped a breath and started again. “It’s not the lung-demons, at least.”