Steles of the Sky (55 page)

“You know why,” the djinn said, with another mercurial change of aspect. Now he was serious, stern. A disappointed parent. “I have come to tell your son his name.”

“So a demon can learn it, and call him by it? Is that the threat you’re too cowardly to speak?”

“A demon? Or a djinn?”

“He shall not hear the filthy name you’ve given him from you, or from any person.”

“You
are
a great and terrible queen.”

“Great and terrible enough that you mean to use me to defeat al-Sepehr—”

He scoffed. “To distract him, you mean.”

“I’ll kill you first,” said Edene, aware though she was of the unwisdom of pricking a djinn’s vanity.

The djinn laughed. “With your little ring? In the armor I made for you? I’m terrified.”

“With your
name,
O Fy-m’shar-ala-easfh-ala-wtqe-shra-tw’qe-al-nar-ala-fasheer!”

The djinn stepped back. His eyes narrowed, the blue within them blazing so they seemed like slits exposing the heart of a kiln. “Or perhaps you will bargain,” he said.

Hsiung had come up to flank him—completely out of his depth, and yet unwilling to let Edene face the djinn alone. Edene shook her head, the faintest movement.
Stand back. Have a care.
Whether Hsiung understood her gesture or not, he did not reach out for the djinn’s arm. Which, considering the djinn’s fury, might just have been wisdom. She would not have cared to see Hsiung’s hand flash to ashes.

Edene crossed her arms. “Bargain?”

“Perhaps.”

“For your son’s name,” the djinn said. “Use your ghulim against Re Temur. Turn upon him on the battlefield. Your son can be Khagan; marry him off to Qori Buqa’s get—”

“A
boy
?”

“A shaman-rememberer,” the djinn clarified. “They can be co-Khagans, and their children will unite both rival lines. And carry Tsareg blood. Al-Sepehr will be happy to allow his grandson to rule the steppe, with the proper treaties and alliances.”

The whole sharp ugliness of it clicked into place for Edene at once, like a roused and ruffled bird when it shakes out its plumage and is sleek and well-designed once more. Her hand almost went to her belly, protectively. She closed it into a fist instead. The weight of the ring dragged sharply at her, made her stupid and sick.

She struggled, found her focus, found her words though the world swam.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “O Fy-m’shar-ala-easfh-ala-wtqe-shra-tw’qe-al-nar-ala-fasheer.”

“That is my name,” said the djinn. “Say it a third time, and I’ll roast your sweetbreads and share them among the carrion birds.”

“How will al-Sepehr hold his empire?” Hsiung asked.

The djinn’s head turned. He regarded the monk with mild amazement, as one might a cat that walked on two legs as a trick, or a dancing bear. “It speaks?”

Edene ached as if with exhaustion or an ague. Her will was elaborately diffuse. Her head had sagged somehow; she forced it up. Hsiung’s words pierced her daze. She echoed and expanded them.

“How many armies has al-Sepehr?” she asked. “How many of his own? How many not manipulated, blackmailed, bribed, or falsified to? How
will
he hold an empire, Djinn?”

“Need he hold one?” the djinn asked. “Does he make one?”

It struck Edene through and through, the confusion burning back before its sharp energy like mist in a mounting sun. But not enough—she faltered, and the fog rolled in again. Against its dullness, she said, “He doesn’t
wish
to hold it. He has no reason to. He really
is
going to try to call the Joy-of-Ravens from the grave.”

“I am forbidden to answer that question,” the djinn said carefully. A slow and toothy grin split his drowned blue lips, pulled down the hook of his nose. “Queen Edene.”

The ghulim,
she thought.
What I do to them is what al-Sepehr does to this creature. I am a free Qersnyk woman. Shall I take slaves?

She staggered. There was Hsiung beside her, silent and sturdy, supporting half her weight.

“Where is Besha Ghul?” she said. She turned from side to side. Her eyes felt dazzled. “Where is Ka-asha?”

All she ever needed to do was speak their names to find them there. She reached out a hand and felt twig-velvet ghul fingers close on hers. Besha Ghul’s whirring voice: “We are here.”

“Hold me up,” she said.

Ghul claws caught her under the arms, supported her waist. Edene let her body sag as it would. She had no strength to stand, now, against the lassitude that suffused her, against the impossible weight of the ring.

She had asked the djinn once if he could take the ring from her, and he had suggested that, perhaps, he could. What would al-Sepehr, power-mad, collector of indentures, never expect her to do?

“O Fy-m’shar-ala-easfh-ala-wtqe-shra-tw’qe-al-nar-ala-fasheer,” she said—and then, as he snarled and raised a hand flaring blue as lightning to her, a wavering flare against a whirling background as her head spun—she added: “Remove this ring. And leave it on the table there.”

Something tugged her hand. Hsiung cried out in betrayal, and he might have hurled himself against the djinn again except Edene—head now clear, vision sharp—saw him moving and lashed out to grab his arm. She wrapped her hands around his bicep, dragging him around in an arc, and saw the smooth stump of her ring finger, the unbroken flesh where it had been.

She hung on, panting, until Hsiung lurched to a stop. She had to step out of the rucked-up tangle of carpeting to catch her balance, and almost fell against him.

The djinn said, “By my name you bind me, Tsareg Edene. You have two wishes more.”

His eyes sparkled—literally sparkled, like water faceted in the sun, like floating embers blown from a fire. He smiled—not the cruel delighted grin of a moment before, but honest pleasure, sweet and sincere.

“Wishes?” she said, steadying herself against Hsiung’s stolid arm. She half-wished the monk would put a hand around her shoulders, but that would make her feel even weaker. She pushed herself upright and drew herself straight. “What about my guts? Sweetbreads, rather?”

“I’ll do you the courtesy of waiting until your eventual and due demise,” he allowed.

“That seems a decent compromise.” She tugged her collar. Despite the armor, her chest felt loose, her lungs free, for the first time she could remember. “A decent burial, even.”

“You have said my name three times, and claimed one wish. What are your other two?”

The armor was heavy, that had not been heavy before. Nausea flirted in her stomach. The ghulim withdrew from her slowly, heads ducked into cowls.

Edene asked, “Can they contradict the orders of al-Sepehr?”

The djinn smiled. “He made a younger bargain with me, and tricked me into serving him. Wishes are more limited in some ways, but stronger in others. Be careful what you wish for, though; I do hold the power of a … free … interpretation.”

She bit her lip. She glanced at Hsiung. He met her gaze but offered nothing. When she looked for the ghulim, they hid their heads and huddled beside the door.

“I wish you would tell me—whisper to me secretly—the full and complete name of my son.”

If possible, the djinn’s smile widened.

“It is my pleasure,” he said, “Tsareg Edene.” He leaned close, and breathed against her ear, “Re Sepehr Rakasa al-Kara ai-Erem ai-Nar ai-Edene Stoneborn.”

Then he leaned back. “Third wish?”

“Must I use it now?”

“No,” he said, and frowned. “But I may not feel so moved to humane charity tomorrow.”

Hsiung swayed sideways, close enough to let her feel his warmth. She breathed deep.

She looked down at her boots.
I could ask for Temur’s name as well. I could ask for horses for the battle. Cannon—

When she raised her eyes, the djinn still regarded her.

“I wish you were free of al-Sepehr,” she said.

“Keep the armor, Edene Khatun,” he said. “A freely offered gift.”

And vanished in a whorl of azure fire.

Edene stood, for a moment, watching the smoke rise from a scorched place on the carpet. Her nostrils stung with the scent of burning wool. She glanced over at the table. There, beside the dragon’s map and Hsiung’s, the Green Ring lay—a plain band, gleaming innocently.

Edene walked the two steps to it, wrapped her hand in her cloak, and lifted it. The balance was wrong; there was no pain, but it almost dropped through the gap where her finger was missing.

“Besha Ghul,” she said.

She turned, and found the ghul before her, head twisted aside as if to show its throat, though the drape of its robes covered everything. Ka-asha still huddled by the door, as if the ring on Edene’s hand were the only thing that had given them courage.

Edene thrust her hand out. “This is yours now.”

The ghul made no move to take it.

“Besha,” Edene said. “You must take the ring. You must be the ghulim’s leader.”

“Some will not fight,” Besha Ghul said.

“That must be their choice,” said Edene.

“This is not for me,” Besha Ghul said.

“Besha,” Edene said. “My friend—”

“I,” said Ka-asha suddenly. It straightened. Its royal-blue hood slid down its long gray velvet neck. Edene, Hsiung, and Besha all turned as one.

Ka-asha choked softly, swallowed with a toss of its head. “I will take the ring.”

Edene glanced at Besha Ghul. It said, “Ka-asha should take the ring.”

“It’s yours.” Edene extended her hand again. “I will not make you fight. I am not al-Sepehr.”

Ka-asha’s hand came to hers as slowly as drifting smoke. Long black nails plucked the ring from the folds of Edene’s cloak as delicately as a berry.

“Some will not fight,” Ka-asha said. “I will.”

*   *   *

The eve of battle was a poor choice on which to acquaint one’s self with a new mount—especially an at-least-slightly supernatural one. But the battle proper would be a worse choice, and the potential advantage of an at-least-slightly supernatural mount was too much to ignore.

Samarkar had been minded to bridle the dun Jerboa anyway, and take her chances with a horse with no smack of godhood about her. But when she had gone out into the paddock with the rope, Afrit had herded the mares away from her with stallion nips and squeals, then trotted up with his sparse forelock blowing across eyes the china color of a Rahazeen sky and thrust his head into her hands. He’d given a jump and two midair kicks as he did it, showing off his mother’s trick of running on air.

Edene, waiting by the gate for her turn to come catch Buldshak, had laughed. She did not seem to mind her missing finger, and something about her—some ice that Samarkar had presumed intrinsic—had melted into vivacity. Which did not remove the air of sorrow, still.

“He knows Temur gave you to him. Besides, we can loan Jerboa to anybody. Nobody but you or me is going to ride the Ghost.”

His muzzle was soft pink, so pale Samarkar wondered how he would ever be able to endure the steppe sun. His hide, shed out of baby softness and winter shag, was the most incredible color that she had ever seen.

The steppe horses had a look to them—their summer coats caught light like lacquered metal no matter what shade they were. But Afrit’s creamy white-gold coat had the luster of pearls from the coast of the Lotus Kingdoms, a depth and gloss that Samarkar would not have thought possible even after long exposure to Bansh, Buldshak, and Jerboa. Silk might have that sheen, or certain minerals. Nothing living should. And no living horse should have those bones, that spare structure. Those pale, eerie eyes and that skeletal body.

A chill chased through her as his warm head leaned into her chest. Automatically, her hand came up to scratch the soft place under his mane; she breathed deep of the warm smell of horse. He lipped her armor, ears lazy, but she could not shake the searing cold that ran like molten lead down her bones.

He is the pale horse of the soul,
she thought, aware that she was giving her own religion’s imprint to Qersnyk superstition.
This is my death asking me to ride.

It wasn’t as if Afrit were a stranger to Samarkar. She had watched him slide into Temur’s hands, after all—a short half-year before, even if she now had to stand on tiptoe to see over his withers, and his neck was developing the elegant muscle and crest of a mature steppe stallion. If this were her death, it was one she knew, had watched grow. One she could sit comfortably astride.

So be it.

She pulled a handful of grain from her pocket, and while he nibbled it she slid the rope around his neck.

Edene had done a fine job breaking him. He bore the cracked old salvaged saddle, the only one she had found to fit him, like a falconer bore a glove. Sitting astride him made Samarkar feel like a Qersnyk herself. He was so responsive to her weight and leg that he might have been an extension of her own body—except he was smarter about his balance than she had ever been, and had a better sense of footing. It was more a matter of breaking herself in to the colt than breaking the colt in to her.

Edene soon kicked them out of the paddock—some time before Samarkar would have deemed them ready—and set them to roam. “Show him some magic,” she told Samarkar. “He needs to smell magic and know it won’t hurt him before you ride him into battle.”

“He’s seen magic since he was a baby,” Samarkar argued.

“Not from his back, he hasn’t.”

I’m letting you win,
Samarkar thought, and did not point out that magic very well
could
hurt him. Him, and Samarkar, and Edene too. Instead, she bowed low in the saddle—Afrit bowed as well, surprising a laugh from both Samarkar and Edene—and reined him at the fence.

It wasn’t much of a fence. Just as well, because the colt had three strides going at it, and then he gathered himself up and hurtled over it without doing more than extending his stride. Jerboa could have made that jump, true to her name. And Bansh, but Bansh was more than just-slightly supernatural.

Afrit drew up on the other side, kicking out with glee and spirits, and came around almost before Samarkar reined him. Edene sat Buldshak beyond the fence, grinning.