Steles of the Sky (53 page)

Abruptly, Hsiung straightened. He pressed his hands to his back, and for a moment a grimace of irritation contorted his face. Then it was gone again, as he smoothed a hand over the soft-looking stubble on his skull. He waved the lights away, and Samarkar banished them.

He cast about for a moment until Samarkar, apparently sensing his need, placed paper and a charcoal stick in his hands. Then he went to the end of the table away from the map and wrote quickly.

Edene knotted her hands in frustration until Master War read aloud:
“Please send for the Wizard Hong.”

*   *   *

Hong-la came at a run—an impressive sight, all long legs and coat flapping—and Ato Tesefahun and Zhan Zhang were not far behind him. Of course, the wizards and bureaucrats were often found in one another’s company. They had had time to begin discovering all they held in common. But by now Edene was wishing that her white-house, though the largest she had ever inhabited, were twice the size. She cuddled her son to her chest, put her back to the king pole, and waited. Hsiung and Hong-la were arguing—Hong-la in Song too fast for her to follow accurately, Hsiung in letters dashed on paper. She understood the gist of it: Hsiung was requesting something that Hong-la simply was not willing to provide. The look of dawning horror on Samarkar’s face provided sufficient context, but Edene noticed that Master War stood back with Temur, arms folded inside his sleeves, and frowned behind his moustache.

It was Hrahima who broke the standoff, finally. Perhaps everyone in the room had forgotten her, her demeanor was so silent, her ability to melt into the shadows so profound. When she stepped forward, she reasserted herself as a massive presence, and gazes followed her.

“They are Hsiung’s eyes,” she said, a slow rumble. “Surely, it is his to decide the disposition of them.”

“They are my hands,” Hong-la replied. “Is it mine to decide to which work they shall be turned?”

“Wait,” said Edene. “I have not understood the argument.”

Tesefahun detached himself from his place by the door. “Brother Hsiung—”

“Novice,” said Master War.

“
Novice
Hsiung has requested that the Wizard Hong perform a surgery on him, which has the potential to restore the sight to his eyes. He proposes that he then use this restored sight to read and transcribe the map into a form we can all use.”

“There’s a surgery to cure blindness?” Edene said.

“No,” said Hong-la.

All eyes turned on him, even Hsiung’s white ones. Even at the center of the white-house, beside the king pole, he stooped. When he drew himself up in outrage, as now, his head brushed the ceiling.

He said, “It does not cure anything. The surgeon punctures the front of the eye”—he gestured—“like so. And drains the clouded fluid away. It restores sight for a few days.”

“And then the fluid returns?”

Hong-la huffed. “And then the eye collapses. Blindness is total from that point.”

Edene glanced down at her hands. She thought of what the scouts had told them—of the size of al-Sepehr’s forces. Of the allies joining him on the march. Of their own paltry resources, even including her own few thousand ghulim. She saw the anguish on Samarkar’s face, the grim set of Temur’s, and knew how her family felt about this monk, this Hsiung.

Still she steeled her own jaw and said, “If we
can
use the Ways to get behind al-Sepehr. To surprise him, catch him in disarray—”

“There’s no guarantee,” Temur said, “that the Way we want even ex—”

A voice Edene had never heard—male, unpracticed, sharp—broke across Temur’s. “It is a risk I am prepared to assume. What is my sight to all those lives, my friends?”

It was, of course, Hsiung. To Edene’s surprise, Tsering-la was the first to walk out of the crowd and stand beside him. Her hands shook; she hid them in her coat.

“I know a little something about losing gambles,” she said, looking directly at Hong. He hadn’t backed down from anyone else’s gaze, but he ducked from hers. “They
are
Hsiung’s eyes.”

“What if we only did one?” Samarkar asked.

Edene said, “Looking at the map would blind the other one, anyway.”

Master War nodded. “They are Novice Hsiung’s eyes. And his errors are his to redeem.” He glanced at Hsiung askance. “You’ll never find your voice that way, however.”

Hsiung shrugged, his chin almost down to his shoulder in embarrassment. “It didn’t seem to be working out. And I fear other things more than that I might let slip the tongue of Erem.”

Master War made a gesture of acceptance and dropped his hand on Hsiung’s shoulder. “He has the permission of his order to attempt this thing.”

Hong-la looked around helplessly. Edene saw Samarkar’s fist clench, but her teeth also sank into her lip and she said nothing.

“Very well,” Hong-la snarled.

Guiltily, Edene glanced down at her hand. At the ring. She had been tugging at it unconsciously, and Hong-la’s attention followed her motion. He glanced back at her face; she shrugged, and held his gaze.

The anger in his face collapsed into resignation. “May I mutilate one friend at a time, if you please?”

… Friend?

The ring pricked at her.
We have no friends.

My
friends are many!
she replied, as a familiar wave of nausea and resistance washed over her. She wobbled, but she thought she hid it well.

“Fear not, Wizard Hong,” she said, formally. “I would not so discommode you without greater need than I now feel.”

25

Sometime later, when Edene’s white-house was finally clear of arguing monks and wizards, Temur lay down for a nap to repair his abandoned sleep, and Samarkar went for a walk. She wasn’t entirely sure of her goal or her direction, but she had some idea of walking off nervous—to be honest,
wrathful
—energy, and some idea of refamiliarizing herself with the changing layout of the camp.

It was less improvisational than it had been—the organizational genius of Jurchadai, Hong-la, and Zhan Zhang, more than anything—and laid out neatly in sectors with an eye toward defense, if they should be surprised. Each group had its own camp or series of encampments, from the smallest—the former caliph and his half-a-dozen Dead Men—to the largest—Edene’s ghulim. Before too long, Samarkar found herself leaning on a post that supported a corral constructed of rope line tied with scraps of cloth to ward the horses back. Two of Ato Tesefahun’s curly-coated mounts played a kicking and pawing game. The horses were all improving in condition as fresh forage became available, and the better diet was evident in their better spirits.

Watching them improved Samarkar’s disposition as well, to the point where she didn’t even say anything rude when the former Uthman Caliph Fourteenth, now turned mercenary captain, wandered up on her left.

“Wizard Samarkar,” he said.

“Captain Iskandar.” She stretched her spine out, listening to one crack after another. It wasn’t enough; the ache between her vertebrae seemed permanent, these days. She suffered a moment of bitter nostalgia for the volcanic hot springs and deep tubs of the Citadel. “How may I be of service?”

“Put me back on my dais?” he asked, with a sly grin. There was an edge behind it, of course. There always would be, with him.

“That should be a pleasant side effect,” she said, making it sound like she was agreeing.

He rocked to one foot, hesitant and dog-eager, and she found that she pitied him. He had gone from caliph, monarch of all he surveyed, to a beggar at Temur’s feast. And while he had not been gracious when their roles were reversed, Samarkar felt herself moved to further charity.

“The shaman-rememberers tell us that Kara Mehmed’s troops have joined al-Sepehr’s army, and that the man who styles himself Mehmed Caliph leads them in his own person.”

“As befits a
martial
king.”

“Or one who cannot trust his army.”

His lips quirked. Her touch had not deserted her entirely. She looked down at the mud spattering her boots, the calves of her black trousers, and spared a moment to marvel at the pampered, silk-swaddled, litter-borne creature she had been, when last she came to Song.

As if her thought had been a summoning, she heard the squelch of pattens behind her. She turned to see lady Diao, improbably tall on the wooden platforms that kept her slippers from the mud, knees still hobbled by a tight court skirt. That she could walk at all so hindered, let alone with grace, was a mystery to Samarkar.

Instantly, Iskandar ducked around Samarkar, offering his hand to steady the lady. She accepted it, though Samarkar could see her veiled reluctance.

His Song was stilted, but improving. “My lady Diao, you should not be out unescorted. Let me assist you to your destination, and I will speak strongly to your attendants.”

Her tone, by contrast, was musical and cultivated. “Thank you, Captain Iskandar. But this is my destination. You see, I have come to talk to Doctor Samarkar.”

She shot Samarkar a pleading glance that Samarkar recognized too well. Her words allowed Samarkar to insinuate herself into the conversation. “Of course, my lady. I had not forgotten our appointment.”

“I will be pleased to escort you—”

“It is a private matter between women,” Samarkar said. “If you will excuse us,
Captain
?”

His look of bemusement followed them as they returned the way Lady Diao had come. Their pace, though constrained by Diao’s garments, was as fast as they could manage. The pattens made Diao tower over Samarkar. When Samarkar stole a look at her, her jaw was set, her mouth firm beneath the cosmetics.

“You should use zinc white,” Samarkar said, when they were out of earshot of the once-caliph. “Or chalk pounded in coconut oil. The lead is bad for your complexion and will eventually make you stupid. And use charcoal for your eyes instead of kohl.”

Lady Diao blinked at her, then smiled with the lips behind her painted-on carmine rosebud. “I had a sister like you, Doctor Samarkar. She galloped horses and wore trousers, and if father would have permitted it, she would have practiced alchemy and worn a sword.”

She used the male form for
doctor;
Song did not have a feminine equivalent. Samarkar made a note to herself to teach her the ungendered Rasan honorifics.

“What happened to her?” Samarkar asked, wishing she didn’t have to.

“She married,” the Lady Diao said, to which Samarkar had no answer.

They trudged in silence through the mud until they came to Lady Diao’s pavilion. Two women and an armed guard clustered by the doorway looked up in relief and quickly veiled irritation as they entered. Lady Diao walked past them as if they were no more to her than the drape they drew aside for her. She stepped from her pattens onto the carpet and ushered Samarkar into her temporary home.

By the standards of a war camp, it was more than luxurious. The rich scent of aloes-wood incense permeated brocade hangings, and a frame of planks elevated the carpets off the muddy ground. There were low chairs designed like slings in a folding frame. Lady Diao waited until Samarkar—the guest—had left her muddy boots by the door and chosen a chair, then settled herself in the other.

She said, “Even the Scholar-God’s dog treats you as a person.”

Samarkar shrugged acknowledgment. The gesture moved her wizard’s collar against her throat, and she realized with surprise that she barely felt it anymore. “Half a person, anyway,” she said. “Maybe not the better half.”

Lady Diao laughed, a tinkling, cultivated sound. Then her face stilled, and she said, “I throw myself upon your mercy as a woman, Doctor Samarkar.”

“Then you believe we have some?”

“Well,” said Lady Diao, “as you know, those who study the Sages disagree.… Yes. I believe you have some. My father had seventeen daughters, Doctor Samarkar. I am the youngest but one.” She paused delicately. “All the possible alliances have been forged—or honored—you see.”

Samarkar nodded. She saw indeed. If every available marriage for the Lady Diao had already been made by one of her sisters, this chance at dynastic marriage to a barbarian emperor and life as an exile in his court was truly the best
this
Lady Diao could hope for. To return home would mean some even more desperately undesirable alliance—young bride to a very old man, or to a man with a dozen wives already—as the best that she could hope for. The worst would be to become a spinster attaché to some brother’s household, or—worse—as the personal servant of some sister’s mother-in-law.

Lady Diao was pretty enough, and had a studied elegance … but she was not the sort of ravishing otherworldly beauty who might manage to thrive as a twenty-second wife. And Samarkar thought, looking at her, that she did not have the makings of a nun.

The lady glanced down at her hands, veiling her eyes behind her lashes. “I do not mean to play politics with you, or win away your man. I just—”

“You need to live,” said Samarkar.

A tear shivered in the lady’s lashes. With a fingertip, careful of her cosmetics, she dabbed it away. “I am at your mercy, Doctor Samarkar.”

*   *   *

The whores from the caliphate came to Ümmühan for blessings. Camp followers, professionals, slaves—word of who and what she was trickled between them, and soon some of them brought their heathen sisters as well. Ümmühan ministered to Kyivvan women—some of them warriors! Shield-maidens, though if one in five were a maiden in more than name she’d die of shock—and even one or two Qersnyks, though mostly there were enough heathen shaman-rememberers floating about that the steppe folk could get their spiritual needs seen to without going outside their religion.

For those seekers who did come to her, Kyivvan and Qersnyk both, Ümmühan tried to witness simply, quietly, as Ysmat of the Beads might have done.

And she gave them poems to whisper. Poems that seemed safe on the surface, little plaints of lovers and astronomy, of historical betrayals. Of old stories of how a trusted lieutenant had turned on his sworn captain, and how the displeasure of the Scholar-God and Her prophets had ensued.