Steles of the Sky (50 page)

The flap twitched aside, letting in the light she had desired and now cringed from—an irony she would have to include in a poem someday—and revealing a tall Qersnyk man and a small woman costumed as a Nameless assassin, though of course such a thing was impossible. The woman’s face was bare, her indigo veil dropped around her throat as a scarf, and she wore a Qersnyk shearling coat with a fox-fur-lined hood open over her Rahazeen trousers.

It took a moment, but Ümmühan had had plenty of time to eavesdrop on her journeys, and she knew the political situation they were entering well.
This is the Khatun, mother of the infant prince. The Rahazeen woman who became a barbarian queen.

Ümmühan felt a pang of envy as Saadet and her companion strode into Mehmed’s tent as if they owned it.
To move so freely. To seem so in command.
Three more good-sized Qersnyk warriors paused outside the tent, and a little one in a blue coat who must be one of their barbarian shamans of questionable gender.

Ümmühan crowded herself into the corner by her birdcage litter, mad with desire to hear what might follow. But Mehmed’s eye caught her, and he jerked his chin to the door. “Outside, woman.”

“Your slave, my Caliph,” she murmured, and whisked through the still-open door—past the four frowning Qersnyk—to plaster herself against the tent wall just around the corner and out of their sight.

The argument that followed was exactly predictable in every detail, except that it was a Rahazeen woman dressing down three grown men. And the Kyivvan was taking her side—when he could get a word in edgewise, in his halting Uthman.

Ümmühan bit her gloved hand through her veil to stifle giggles. She had never dreamed to hear such a thing—and she had never dreamed how it would delight her. It took all her willpower not to stand so close she made a woman-shaped dent in the wall of the tent. Her feet ached with cold in their slippers, but the rest of her was warm enough—at least for a little while.

She was listening so hard that she almost fell
through
that tent wall when someone abruptly loomed up before her. Malului, Mehmed’s lieutenant. The unbearable one.

He did not even trouble himself to frown. In a soft, singsong voice like a bullying child, he said, mockingly, “Did Mehmed’s little pet piddle a carpet? Is that why she’s exiled out in the cold? And what would her master say if he could see her leaning in to catch his every word when she has clearly been banished?”

Ümmühan straightened herself away from the tent. She let her chin drop demurely, hiding even a glimpse of her eyes behind the net of her veils. But a courtesan’s ancient practice showed the outline of her breast and hip through the cloak, as if by accident.

“It is out of the wind,” she said.

His hand darted out. Through the veils, he grabbed her chin and squeezed. Her jaw came open. She knew better than to lean away. She let a little gasp of pain come into her voice. He pulled her close; she could smell the coffee on his breath, and the stale garlic of his dinner. She turned her eyes aside, afraid he would catch their glitter through her veils, and be even more angry that she had the insolence to stare at him.

Whatever he might have hissed into her ear, she never knew. Because a sharp, feminine voice with a strong Rahazeen accent snapped, “Unhand that woman. Now.”

Ümmühan opened her eyes. There was the glitter of a blade in sunlight, but it was not leveled at her. It hovered, instead, with its point lost in Malului’s dense black beard.

Gently, his fingers opened. Slowly, his hand fell to his side.

Ümmühan stepped back, rubbing her jaw.

The argument within the tent had ended. The Rahazeen Khatun stood perpendicular to Ümmühan and Malului, and a naked scimitar hung in her hand.

“Step back,” she told Malului, and he did. The point of the scimitar reappeared.

“Touch my sister again in this place,” she said, “and you will face Qersnyk justice for it. Which will
not
be a simple requirement that you marry the woman wronged. I guarantee you that.”

He stepped back again. Her sword did not droop. She smiled. Ümmühan did not see where Malului went, because she was staring at the Khatun when he vanished. A moment later, and the Khatun’s sword vanished too.

Ümmühan knelt in the mud at her feet. With her left hand, reflexively, she made the sign of the Women’s Rite. Her right, she pressed to her bowed forehead, palm facing her benefactress.

“Khatun,” she said. “This unworthy one praises you.”

“I believe I have heard of you, sister,” the Khatun said. “I would consider myself rather most unworthy of your praise.”

Ümmühan kept her head down, her spine bent. Only some of it was because now, suddenly, she was shaking.

“Stand,” said the Khatun. “Face me.”

Ümmühan did. The Khatun’s eyes were beautiful, chipped amber and tiger-eye.

“I am Saadet ai-Mukhtar,” the Khatun said. “Are you the poet Ümmühan?”

“I have that honor,” said Ümmühan.

“Are you safe here, sister?”

“Kara Mehmed will keep me safe. He is my protector,” said Ümmühan. The words grated at her for the first time. She did not wish to state so plainly to this woman—this unveiled queen!—that she was a slave, a courtesan. And then she realized that she had forgotten, and blurted: “Mehmed Caliph, I mean.”

Saadet Khatun smiled wider. “I miss the society of pious women,” she said. “I will send for you to visit me.”

“Khatun?”

But the Khatun was already walking away, diminutive and queenly, light on her feet as any swordsman, dwarfed by the warriors who flocked around her like kittens following their dam.

*   *   *

Saadet kept her back straight and did not speak. She let her warriors and Paian follow her. They made no attempts at conversation, and she knew they assumed she was seething.

So she was, but not for the reasons they probably assumed.

Shahruz had chosen this moment to break his sulky silence, and now he raged at her.
How dare you defy al-Sepehr in front of strangers? How dare you defy al-Sepehr?!

She did not answer.

You should grovel before him. You owe him all duty and piety! Where would we be without him? What of the future of the Nameless? What of our place in Heaven?

She remained silent.

And what of this slut you have befriended?

She is an artist,
Saadet replied.

She is a courtesan. A whore.

She is a sister, sacred in the image of the Scholar-God!

Oh yes, I heard what you thought when she made her secret sign at you. She is a heretic, a chanter of blasphemy! You must grovel before our master and beg to be cleansed. If you tell him what the whore showed you, perhaps he will forgive us—

She is a priest of the Women’s Rite, brother.
Saadet bit her cheek, hoping he felt the pain as well.
And you will say
nothing
of her to al-Sepehr.

24

Temur stood at the mouth of the cave and let its moist breath spill over him. In the spring chill, it seemed almost warm—but he would rather have felt the dragon’s breath.

Soon enough,
he told himself,
you will.

The shards of the dream that had awakened him—and its urgency—seemed barbed under his skin. Trees rose on every side—he had approached the caverns not from the direction of the road, as Samarkar’s party had, but via the route the dragon had shown her. Based on her descriptions, it seemed a more direct route—and he’d rather spend as little time underground as he could manage.

He was alone. His pack dug gouges in his shoulders, and the mud of his climb clung to his boots. It was Soft-twilight, and below, much of the camp slept still.

He should go if he was going. No point in sneaking off by himself if he was just going to stand around until somebody noticed he was missing and came looking—and with the demands on his time these days, somebody might notice he was missing pretty much any minute.

The mouth of the cave was muddy and shaped like a kohled eye, bordered above and below by the thick roots of the tree. The bark had been polished from the pale wood in places, worn smooth in others: Temur was hardly the first person to consider sliding himself into the bowels of the earth this way.

He wondered if the palms of the others had chilled so at the thought. He wondered if they had been able to make their feet take the step forward.

No gut-worms here,
he told himself.
And no one is going to wall you inside. And even if it collapses, which it hasn’t in however many hundred years people have been bothering that dragon, there’s another way out.

That led him to wonder, then, if there wasn’t a third exit. Because from Samarkar’s description, a dragon could not fit through this one or the path she’d taken in. And yet, somehow, it had emerged to raid the library.

His heart beat so he barely heard the chirping of rousing songbirds, or their silence that followed. He forced one more step, shaking. Belatedly, he pulled the backpack off and held it against his chest, where it might snag less as he was sliding down.

It might be easier with someone watching. Then he’d be forced not to disgrace himself.

But for now, all he had was himself and a pack full of gold.

It would have to suffice.

He made himself sit down on the wet wood of the tree root, his legs dangling inside the cave. The sky above was brightening, the blue sun making radiant golden spearheads of incipient leaves.

He closed his eyes and took a breath.
Just slide down. There’ll be stone under your feet.

“I thought I’d find you here,” said Hrahima.

*   *   *

Samarkar awakened at Soft-twilight to the sounds of Edene’s distress.

She and Temur had grown accustomed to Edene’s sleeplessness, her strangeness, the way the ghulim drifted in and out, and the way she vanished into their company for hours, sometimes days, at a time. But now, as Samarkar raised her head and blinked sleep-sticky eyes, she noticed two things: one, that Temur was missing and the blankets beside her were cold … and two, that Edene crouched beside the brazier with her fingers stuffed into her mouth, keening from the throat, rocking backward and forward on the balls of her feet until Samarkar feared she would fall into the brazier and—

—well, she was the Queen of Erem. She probably would not burn herself. But she might spill the coals.

Samarkar lurched up and found her feet, hopping across the little distance between herself and Edene when the bedclothes snatched at her ankles. She caught Edene’s shoulders and pulled her up, back, away. Hugged her and held her close.

Samarkar expected Edene to struggle, but she was rigid as a plank. As an acolyte, Samarkar had once handled a frozen corpse, retrieved from the slopes of the Island-in-the-Mists, that had not been much stiffer. Carefully, Samarkar slid an arm around Edene’s waist and lifted her, then laid her down in the bed Samarkar herself had just vacated.

In his corner, Ganjin rolled on his blankets and began to wail.

Edene’s breathing was even, though strained. Her heart beat too quickly, but with a strong rhythm. Her jaw was locked, her eyes rolled back as if in some kind of a fit. There were guards outside. Samarkar needed to yell for Tsering-la or Hong; medicine was not her own specialty, and this fit was beyond her reckoning. But she couldn’t get a breath herself with fear and her own exerted breathing.

She didn’t need to. She had just begun to coach herself into getting a good lungful of air when Edene drew one deep breath and let it out slowly. Ganjin’s screaming took on aspects of the wail of battle horns. Edene’s eyes focused on Samarkar as she took another and Samarkar had the sharp, sick certainty that it was not
exactly
Edene that assessed her. A smile curved Edene’s mouth cruelly—

Then Edene said sharply, “You shall
not
!” in her own voice, and the spell was broken.

“Edene—”

“The ring,” Edene said, raising her voice over her son’s. “Help me sit now.”

“You should rest.”

“I want to
sit,
” Edene said sharply. “It’s bad enough the voices in my head patronize me.”

Stung, Samarkar pulled back. Edene rose on her elbows and shook her head, squinting, as Ganjin trailed off in sobs for a moment before commencing another shriek. “I’m sorry.”

“I might have deserved it,” said Samarkar. “This has been going on for a while, I take it?”
And you haven’t mentioned anything?

Edene sat, and swung her legs over the edge of the sleeping-bench. Lattice creaked under her as her weight shifted. Edene sighed and rose. Moving stiffly but with surety, she collected Ganjin and laid him on her shoulder. She jiggled him twice, and he promptly stopped howling.

Edene said, “And justly am I rebuked in my own turn. The ring wants what it wants. I do not choose to obey its blandishments.”

“What did it want that time?”

Edene glanced up at Samarkar through her lashes and did not speak.

“I think,” Samarkar said slowly, “that it would not hurt you to come and meditate with Hsiung and me. And Hrahima comes sometimes too. For all her arguements that there is no utility in religion, she likes her breathing exercises.”

“I need to talk to the ghulim.”

Neither of them pretended it had been an answer. Samarkar was still considering her next avenue of alliance when the door was drawn aside and Hong-la stooped to enter. As he straightened, he bowed to Edene, nodded to Samarkar, and said, “Where is the Khagan?”

Samarkar glanced at Edene. Edene shook her head. The Green Ring gleamed on her finger as she stroked Ganjin’s cloud of ebony hair. “He was gone when I came in.”

“He snuck out after I fell asleep,” said Samarkar. Struck by a sudden supposition, she rose from her own place by the bed and crossed to a chest against the wall. “The key?”

One-handed, the other still full of infant, Edene bent down and unlocked it with the keys from her belt. Samarkar opened the lid and nodded. “He took the tithe.”