Steles of the Sky (40 page)

Samarkar glanced at Tesefahun. “Speaking of Danupati. Has Tesefahun told you about what else al-Sepehr stole?”

He shook his head. “It didn’t come up.”

“Do you know about the curse of Danupati?”

“It’s death to disturb his bones—”

“No,” said Samarkar. “Not exactly.”

She resumed her seat on the thick woolen carpets by the fire, and Temur and Edene also returned to their places, Edene now with Ganjin tucked inside her robe. Iskandar seemed more comfortable with her seated beside him; his gaze had a natural place to rest that was not on her bosom. Edene picked up her cup again and gestured Samarkar to continue.

“It’s
war
to disturb his bones. War in all the realms he once claimed as his empire.”

“That’s the whole world!”

“Except the farthest west and north, it is—”

“And south,” Tesefahun interrupted. “There are lands beyond Aezin that never fell under his sway.”

Samarkar’s gesture acknowledged and dismissed his footnote both at once. “Half the world, then.”

Edene glanced down at her ring. “Al-Sepehr got this ring somehow. From Danupati’s grave?”

Temur said, “He also took Danupati’s skull.”

“He wants us to chew each other up,” Iskandar said bitterly. “Then he can pick over the gnawed bones at his leisure.”

Edene did not take her eyes from Temur. “Do you know where the grave was?”

Temur felt as if his chin jerked up and down on a stick.

“Well, that’s easy, then!” Anyone else might not have heard the irony in Edene’s voice, but even on the other side of a separation Temur knew her well. “We steal the skull back, free the djinn and the Rukh, return the ring and the skull to the grave of Danupati, and what does al-Sepehr have left to bring against us?”

They looked at one another, hushed as snow.

Then Iskandar stretched, cracked his neck, and said, “Armies.” He stretched his fingers against one another. “One of them used to be mine.”

*   *   *

After the council, the Wizard Samarkar took charge of the drowsy Ganjin and herded the other men outside, leaving Edene and Temur alone in the white-house. It was a gesture Edene would have expected from a sister-wife, not a rival. That, and the tea, and Temur’s obvious trust in the Rasani sorcerer were the reasons Edene chose to let her leave with Ganjin in her arms. Well, and she did not think that Tesefahun or Besha Ghul or Edene’s cousins would allow any harm to come to the child.

As the others left, the rug fell across the doorway, cutting the chill. She and Temur still stood just within it, unmoving. Beyond it, muffled in a familiar way, Edene could hear the sounds of every camp she had ever called home. She stared at the fabric, the warm nap of its weave.

“Buldshak?” she asked, so quickly and with so little inflection that he must know she was afraid of the answer. Her rose-gray filly had been left behind when she was stolen, along with Sube and Temur; she had worried about the horse and the dog and the man in equal measure.

“At Stone Steading,” he said. “I brought her to seek you, but I did not think I could bring her safely across the desert. She was well when I left, and she is being kept for you. We can reclaim her when the war is won.”

Edene sighed, a slow release of one more fear she had been carrying for too long. Her eyes stung; she bowed her head closer to the bright carpets hanging against the lath-supported felt wall.

Temur laid a hand upon her upper arm. “Make this white-house yours.”

She turned to him, startled. “What?”

“Her house,” he quoted. “His horse. Let me give this house to you.”

“You can’t marry,” she said. He had lost his secret name when all his family died. There was no one living to tell it to her, and without that knowledge she could not be his wife. “Or has that changed?”

He shook his head. “I can’t marry. But I would make you a Khatun anyway.”

She took his wrist and led him away from the doorway, toward the padded benches that ringed half the white-house. She sat, and pulled him down to sit beside her. “What about your Samarkar?”

He smiled. “Can you and she learn to be allies?”

Edene shrugged, but remembered the tea. “She will not give you heirs.”

“Heirs have been accomplished,” Temur replied. He hesitated. She waited. “What is his true name?” he asked.

She had known the question was coming. The fact that that foreknowledge probably eased the clenching anxiety in her gut only made what she did endure the more impressive.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“How can you not—”

She glared; he stilled. She half-wished he had ridden over her. It would have made it easier to pull herself free.

Was she going to pull herself free? She did not know. The hooks were deep, and she was not certain that she wanted to.

“The djinn,” she said. “He gave Ganjin a filthy name. I do not know all of it, and the part I do know … I will not use it.”

Temur lifted his chin, the twisted scar stretching, pitting the flesh of his neck. “Then I do not wish even to know it.”

Like a lance in the breast, the sharpness of her feelings for him. For a moment, she could not breathe. His eyes did not leave hers.

He said, “We may not win this war, Edene. We lack maps, food, horses, weapons and strong hands to wield them.”

She dismissed what he said with a turn of her hand. “Weapons, the ghulim have in plenty. Those I can provide.”

He gazed at her doubtfully.

She placed her palms against his cheeks. “We will win it, my friend. The alternatives are not thinkable.”

He said, “Did he harm you?”

“You mean did he rape me?” Too sharp. Or perhaps just sharp enough. She didn’t carry al-Sepehr’s bastard; what would it matter if he had?

But Temur put a hand on her wrist and said, “I mean did he
hurt
you. Rape would generally be considered a form of harm, but…” he shrugged helplessly. “How could I think less of
you
if he had?”

She didn’t answer. But she turned her hand over and caught his fingers with her own.

He touched her hair with his other hand, stroked it smooth against the skull. Despite her wish to keep herself upright and inviolate, she felt herself leaning into the caress like a cat. “They call me the Queen of the Ruins.”

“If you give the ring back to Danupati’s shade, we lose the service of your army,” he said. “Is that so?”

“My ghulim army. My army, as enslaved as any asset al-Sepehr brings to the field. As duped and as controlled as me.”

His lips pursed. “Conscripts.”

She nodded.

“My grandfather was not above it.”

“Perhaps,” she said, “that is what it means to be Khagan.”

He was silent. He stroked her hair.

“He didn’t rape me,” she said. “He did me no harm at all. Except he took my freedom, and he kept me from you. And he tricked me into taking this damned ring.”

“Take it off,” he said.

“What about your ghulim conscripts?”

“You hate it. Take it off.”

She grimaced. “I have tried.”

That silenced him. For a little while. Then he said, “I sought you. All the way to Ala-Din. But you were gone. Samarkar came with me. And Brother Hsiung, a monk I hope you’ll meet. And a Cho-tse, Hrahima.”

“Tesefahun told me.” She touched his cheek in turn. “It must have been a long ride. You look terrible.”

“You look like a queen.”

Gently, he disengaged his hand from hers. Slowly, he stood. She did not move; she was too tired. And the ring was heavy, heavy as a shackle on her hand. He opened a box, sought through it. Lifted out a comb of wood that would have been rare and precious on the steppe. Sandalwood; the rich warm scent followed him as he returned.

He sat behind her this time, and slowly unbound her hair. First he parted the locks with his fingers, and then gently, from the bottom, he began to comb them smooth.

“There’s gray in this.” His fingers traced her part. “It wasn’t there before.”

“There’s gray in my heart,” she answered.

He combed in silence, and then he braided in silence. After he knotted the thongs again, he stroked the shining plait and draped it over his own shoulder, pulling her back to rest against him.

“Are you still my woman, Edene?”

“I am the Queen of Erem,” she said. “I am not sure I can belong to anything else.”

“Can you not be queen and Khatun both?”

“You cannot make me your Khatun,” she said. “Al-Sepehr has set a djinn to stalk me, though he has not troubled me since … since Kyiv. And more, I am the Queen of Erem. My suns would burn the world away.”

Temur breathed, and paused, and said, “Then be my friend.”

It echoed in her, something she had once said to him, repeated. She leaned back on him with a sigh, letting herself rest against him. Rest, for the first time since … since the blood ghosts had stolen her, since she had woken in a cage beneath a Rukh.

In a moment, she would go and see her cousins. She would go and see to her ghulim.

Now she closed her eyes and said, “I would not be anyone else’s friend in the world, before I would be yours.”

His lips moved against her hair. “Welcome home, Edene.”

*   *   *

It was Hrahima who followed Samarkar’s footprints and scent among the pines and the winter-naked maples, but the quest was Tsering’s idea. Hrahima had spoken to Ato Tesefahun—still her employer, in the distant and tangled fashion that Hrr-tchee understood such things—and she had afterward withdrawn to contemplate her options. Tsering came up as Hrahima sat cross-legged on a tree branch, delicately gnawing the worn sheath from a thumb-claw and contemplating the hooded creatures—not human, and by the berth Qersnyk and Rasani alike gave them, no one was pretending to think otherwise—settling into an orderly camp below.

Hrahima, of course, had smelled the Rasani wizard long before she came close. Tsering only found her because she chose to allow herself to be found. If a wizard sought one, it was often a good idea to discover whatever it was she wanted to discuss.

So when she called up into the tree—softly, for a human—Hrahima dropped down beside her. It was cold enough that the snow was powdery beneath her pads, whipped by the wind like sand rather than compacting, and the drifts in sheltered places were sculptured and odd, twisted like breaking waves.

Tsering did not startle when the Hrr-tchee fell in before her, which told Hrahima that the monkey-wizard had known exactly where she was. Admittedly, Hrahima had not been trying to conceal herself, but alertness reinforced the respect she had for this particular human. They had traveled together before, and Hrahima thought Tsering-la sensible and clever … for a hairless ground-ape.

As if intending to prove her worthiness, Tsering craned her head back, the snake of her braid sliding from her shoulder, and said bluntly, “Have you come to consider Samarkar-la an ally?”

Hrahima considered. The old claw-sheath had finally come loose. She picked it off and flicked it away, revealing a sharp, transparent new claw beneath. She studied it for flaws for a moment before retracting it. “That would be a miserly way of putting it. I consider her an ally, yes. And I consider her a friend.”

Tsering nodded. “She’s gone off. To give Temur and Edene some time alone. She gave the little boy to his monster nursemaid and went for a walk. I do not think she should be without … friends.”

Monkey customs and social structures were a fascinating mystery. They were not like Hrr-tchee, content with mate and cub until the cub was grown, coming together otherwise in only the most ritualized of circumstances in order to teach, to learn, to share knowledge. They had their elaborate kinship and social networks, awkward and peculiar as those often were. “You do not think it is healthy for her to be alone?”

“Oh, I’m sure she can weather it,” Tsering said. “But I think it might be more painful than necessary.”

“We will find her,” Hrahima said. “Show me where you saw her last.”

The valley might be sheltered, but the hills that surrounded it were thick with snow. Hrahima thought Tsering could have followed the trail plowed patent through the drifts without assistance, and suspected that the wizard had brought her along for reasons other than her sense of smell. Hrahima had lived among the monkeys for a long time. She was starting to get a sense of how they built their extraordinarily baroque webs of obligation and affection.

Plain or not, it took Hrahima and Tsering the better part of Hard-morning to track Samarkar down. She’d gotten farther than Hrahima would have wagered, and now sat with her back to the slope, perched on a long-fallen trunk that the wind had swept clear of snow. Her black coat stood out on the white like a raven’s wings, and she had her wolverine-fur-lined hood up to shadow her face. Her hands were tucked in her sleeves and her knees drawn up. That she was not shivering, that her face—glimpsed in profile around the edge of the hood as they approached—looked serene, Hrahima suspected was the discipline of a Wizard of Tsarepheth. When the wind stirred, it was chilly out here even for a Hrr-tchee in winter coat.

Samarkar could not have missed the rasp and whisk of them coming through the snow unless she were completely deaf, or deep in meditation. She looked up when they came between the trees and said, “I am not heartbroken.”

“Of course you’re not,” said Tsering. She jumped the log, using one hand as a pivot, kicking snow in a cloud. Her trousers were white to the thigh, though it was cold enough that her body had not yet begun to melt that snow into water that would then freeze the cloth stiff.

She plunked down on the makeshift bench of the fallen tree, leaned a shoulder against Samarkar’s shoulder, and said, “You have no reasons to be heartbroken, unless I’ve missed some—or you’re inventing some.”

Samarkar snorted. “He’s fulfilled half his blood-vow. Two thirds of it, really. Or the world has fulfilled it for him.”

“Edene is free,” Hrahima said. “And Qori Buqa is no more. There remains only the bit about helping me fight al-Sepehr.”

“Edene. What’s wrong with her?”

Hrahima chuffed. “At a guess? Some taint of Erem from associating with al-Sepehr. Perhaps like Brother Hsiung. Perhaps something different. Mukhtar ai-Idoj is a pestilence in his own person, you know. Have you gotten a good sniff of her … troops?”