Steles of the Sky (49 page)

Tsaagan Buqa nursed and grew and learned to lift his head and gaze about himself—with dark mysterious eyes. Saadet very soon began wearing him in a sling, looking forward to the day when he would be strong enough for a cradleboard such as the Qersnyk women used. She brought him on horseback, and finally flew her great, nameless eagle at foxes, if not wolves. Her winter hood was lined with thick, breath-soft russet fur not long after.

And, like the Kyivvan cranes whose pale wings bleached the sky in spring and autumn until the White Sea took its name from them, the Qersnyk armies—and the armies of their allies—were on the move. Qersnyk clans trailed in as it became possible. Half a thousand new warriors arrived over the course of three weeks, and to Saadet’s ongoing frustration, al-Sepehr dealt directly with their leaders and her generals and left instructions that she was not to be troubled on “matters of strategy.”

She rose before sunrise to complete her own devotions and left her son with his nurse. Having finished before the usual hour, she snuck out early to al-Sepehr’s chamber to find him at prayer one morning—the only time she could be sure of catching him alone. She waited—she guessed, in this clockless backwater—outside his door for a third of an hour before she heard him rise and set his pens aside. It was not becoming for the Khatun to wait upon anyone, even her father. But Saadet was not so much a barbarian yet that she would interrupt anyone, especially a man, at his prayers.

He looked up as she paused before him, and the expression on his face sent her reflexively groping for her veil. She drew it across her face, staring at the tips of his boots, the mud-stained hem of his over-robes. Rahazeen clothing was not ideal here on the steppe, but al-Sepehr would not abandon it.

She said, “Why was I not informed of the troop arrivals?”

“Shahruz,” al-Sepehr said, “can you not control your sister?”

That brought her brother back, from whatever corner of Saadet’s mind he sulked in. She felt him push her to step back, his disgust that she would leave her child and come, like this, to remonstrate with al-Sepehr as if she were a shrew and he a shopkeeper.

For the first time, she did not listen.

Her hands trembled with the effort, but if she could manage not to scratch between her toes in court, she could manage not to let Shahruz send her running in disgrace down the halls.

She drew herself upright, forced herself to look al-Sepehr in the face.

His cheeks sucked in like a fish’s, eyes widening.

“It is in my son’s name they come,” she said. She thought of Paian and Esen—would it have been better, or worse, if she had brought them with her?

Al-Sepehr’s jaw tightened, and then relaxation smoothed the lines between his eyes. He said, “Of course this is true, Saadet. But they also come because I have arranged for them to come—”

“Are they not the allies of Qori Buqa?”

She startled herself by interrupting him. She reared back, what she had meant to say next stopping her mouth.

In the resulting silence, he inserted a smooth reply. “Qori Buqa’s allies were sadly depleted by Qori Buqa’s wars. You must understand, many of these come because Re Temur is linked to the blood ghosts, to the destruction of Qeshqer and the massacre here in Qarash.”

“I see,” said Saadet. Was she now intended to believe that al-Sepehr had planned that link from the first, rather than merely capitalizing upon it as a happy accident when he and Shahruz—and she, she must admit—had failed to kill that bastard slave-son Temur and his pack of whores? “I am not ignorant of strategy. You cannot hold Qarash without me and my son. In the future, I
will
be kept apprised of troop strength and logistics.”

At that moment, she almost told him that she had spoken to Re Temur. She felt the words rise up in her on a bubble of wrath, and only bit them back with effort.
O perfidious daughter.
But she was too angry—that Temur had
used
Shahruz’s stone! That he had dared!—and al-Sepehr was not angry enough.

Al-Sepehr would not meet her gaze. Politely, protecting her modesty, he stared over her head. “It will be as you say, Saadet.”

Leaving, however, she did not feel as if she had won anything.

She resolved to speak to Esen, and have him in particular bring her all news of their readiness for war. And any news of Re Temur, styling himself Khagan, who would die by Saadet’s hand alone.

*   *   *

The Kyivvan troops arrived before the snow was properly melted.

Even deep drifts were insignificant to their indrik-zver, and the immense beasts trampled a path that horses and infantry and even wagons had no trouble following. It was the Kyivvan caravans that kept commerce along the Celadon Highway flowing, albeit intermittently, through the brutal steppe winters and the searing desert summers. They were in company of a large contingent of Mehmed Caliph’s troops, including the new caliph himself.

It was Esen who brought Saadet the news. She was in her steam bath—one luxury afforded by the lingering winter and, at least for the moment, bountiful water supplies—when a scratching at the hide door announced a visitor. Unthinking, she acknowledged it.

When the tall warrior strode in, bootless so as not to track in mud and animal droppings but otherwise fully clad, Saadet jumped up with a scream. She clapped her hand to her mouth and the other arm across her breasts and tottered there, dizzy from the heat, uncertain of where to turn.

“Khatun,” Esen said uncomfortably. He turned away, sweat already shining on his balding pate, and shielded his eyes with a palm.

Of course nudity was nothing to the Qersnyk; they lived and bathed in their big felt tents and seemed to have no sense of separation of the sexes at all. Saadet forced her hands down and her back straight.

“You have an urgent message?”

“The Khatun had ordered me to report on further troop arrivals, movements, and departures,” he said, more formally than he had ever spoken to her before. “This warrior brings the Khatun news that a foreign army is at the city gates, flying flags of treaty. This warrior must also inform his Khatun that her noble father has already ridden out to greet them—”

“Ysmat’s
tears,
” Saadet swore, already moving toward the doorway, heedless of her nakedness now.

“Khatun?”

She stalked out past attendants, who had yanked the hanging hide open at her cry and now stood befuddled. One of the guards had a sword drawn. Saadet shivered internally at the thought of how close she had come to getting poor loyal Esen gutted.

“Have my mare saddled,” she called over her shoulder to Esen. And to the nearest attendant—by happenstance, the one with the naked blade—she snapped, “And get me a pair of pants!”

*   *   *

Ümmühan did not enjoy her journey across the White Sea to Asmaracanda by ship, closed into a tiny cabin and racked with seasickness. But it was privacy of a sort, and privacy she used to light a flame—a ship’s lantern because she could not get a brazier—and, once her nausea permitted, to whisper the seventeen syllables comprising a djinn’s name.

He appeared in a puff of brimstone reek, and she hastened to open the porthole before somebody could wonder why she was burning gunpowder. When some of the acrid smoke had wafted from the room, she turned on the djinn and whispered fiercely, “You will have me disemboweled for witchcraft!”

The djinn shrugged as if it were no concern of his. “Fire this time,” he commented, as if only just noticing the lamp. “Do you mean to bargain with me, friend? Better you made me your ally, ally … or if you prefer, you can speak my name one more time to make thrice, and take three wishes of me.”

“I do not wish your heathen sorcery,” she said. “I’ll not damn myself so easily.”

His pointed eyebrows rose. His voice stayed soft. No one outside the cabin would hear him, and Ümmühan had wedged the door. “If you don’t wish to take up my bargain, why call me back?”

She folded her arms and lounged against the edge of the small fixed table, trying to look insouciant. “I need to know how to protect the Hasitani.”

“In the current political climate?” the djinn said. “You’ve got your work cut out for you. Get rid of Kara Mehmed. And don’t let al-Sepehr or this Malului step into his shoes. Better yet, toss the whole caliphate and start over. Could your Hasitani do
worse,
running things?”

It was an impossible dream, but she took a moment to enjoy it. Then, with a frown, she forced herself back to reality. “Fourteen Falzeen princes, Djinn, and not one of them ever made a point of making life easy for the Hasitani.”

“Alas,” said the djinn. He rippled and faded, his voice crackling and seeming to grow dim. “But at least they didn’t go out of their way to make it
hard,
now did they? Better answer the door, poetess. I think I hear your master coming.”

He vanished, leaving Ümmühan to rush to do as he suggested—and then to light incense, quickly, to hide the lingering pall in the room. It helped only inasmuch as it was confusing: Mehmed told her specifically never to burn that joss again.

The barge up the Mother River through the Range of Ghosts had been a pleasant interlude, but it hadn’t made up for the lurching and bone-jolting progress of the enclosed litter in which she had accompanied Mehmed Caliph’s army—and Mehmed Caliph—overland to their rendezvous with the troops from Kyiv. She had not enjoyed sleeping rough—though she shared Mehmed Caliph’s tent—camp food, or the unexpectedly brutal cold of the steppe.

She spent a good deal of that time—especially aboard ship—cursing herself for the pleading, pleasing, and gentle manipulation she had used to convince Kara Mehmed that her place was at his side—and that it was his idea to bring her. She was not any woman, after all, she reminded him. She was the Illiterate, and who better to write a sympathetic history of his triumph?

Men were vain, and Mehmed was no exception. He did not even consider that she might have a motive beyond wishing to be with him, wishing to glorify him with her art, and being eager to continue her role as his liaison with al-Sepehr. But even Ümmühan was forced to admit that her powers of persuasion might have availed her not if Mehmed’s lieutenant Malului had not taken up
against
her inclusion.

Mehmed was not the sort of man to be dictated to—by underlings, or even by presumed superiors. Ümmühan was packed up like baggage in her sandalwood birdcage and brought along.

She
had
enjoyed the vast, changeless and yet changing panorama of the world beyond the porthole of the ship and the louvers of her litter—the tossed waves of the White Sea; the towering white and blue walls of Asmaracanda; the rolling, textured hills and flanking mountains of the Mother River and its pass; the snowy and endless expanse of the steppe. She had nearly died of envy at the Kyivvans who swarmed over the backs of their armor-laden indrik-zver like monkeys on elephants, discommoding their great mounts as little as those monkeys might have. Some of the indrik-zver hauled
cannon,
and the cannon crew to man them. The equivalent weight of a horse team and wagon seemed insignificant, matched against the strength of an indrik-bull.

As breathtaking as the expanse of the steppes was, and as fascinatingly alien as the Kyivvans were, by the time they reached Qarash, Ümmühan had written all the poems she ever intended to write about mud. Still, she reminded herself, this was a tremendous opportunity for a poet.

How many women actually got to ride out and experience war? Truth—and mud, and lice, and ruined food were certainly the truth—was the heart of poetry. The books she would write for her sisters! Some would not wish to hear it. Some would prefer their romances, with their dearth of dysentery and gangrene.

But some would hear it, and by the truth be remade. The world stood pinned on two thorns. One was ugliness. One was beauty. The truth did not lie in the middle or at either extreme.

The truth encompassed both.

*   *   *

Ümmühan’s boredom currently encompassed both as well. Mehmed was meeting with al-Sepehr and a Kyivvan warlord named Pyotr, which seemed to be what
most
Kyivvans were named, except the ones named Taras. Pyotr had pale eyes, a color so light that Ümmühan had to remind herself constantly that he was not blind. Mehmed had called with them in his tent, which meant that she, Ümmühan, was bent under the weight of cloaks and veils, trying to keep her sleeves and gloves from catching fire as she boiled water for coffee and toasted little cakes.

It was dim in the tent, the only light coming through the smoke hole and from the low coals in the brazier—and from two lamps on the map table that gave plenty of light to the men and none at all to her. And Ümmühan was having enough trouble seeing through the netting of her veils that she wished she could just go and throw open the heavy oiled linen flap that served as a door.

The water boiled; the coffee steeped. She strained the grounds and added honey before decorating the cakes with goat cheese and slices of fig. Once it was assembled on a silver tray, she knelt under it and lifted carefully.

Like a ghost in her gray veiling, she slipped up to the table and served the men. They took no notice of her, as was proper. At least, al-Sepehr and Mehmed took no notice. Pyotr the Kyivvan mouthed a thanks, and seemed to want to catch her eye.

She kept her head turned, the better to eavesdrop. Al-Sepehr’s voice, his erudition, the precision of his speech—they still made her shiver. But she called up images of Asitaneh burning, of the mingled craftiness and despair in the expression of the djinn as he bargained with her. Al-Sepehr might bring a quiver to her loins … but no one knew better than Ümmühan how such quivers could mislead one into tragic mistakes.

And she was no man, to be destroyed by her desires.

She would not allow him to degrade the Scholar-God’s religion with his vile idolatry. She, Ümmühan, would put a stop to it.

Somehow.

As she was returning to the brazier, a commotion of footsteps outside sent her scurrying to the shadows at the edge of the tent. The men leaped up, not quite oversetting the table, though coffee splashed. Ümmühan put her back against the wall and let the tapestries that insulated it fall around her, hoping her gray cloak would help her vanish.