Shattered Pillars (15 page)

Samarkar took a breath, and—willing it to be prophecy—said, “That horse is an immortal, Temur Khan.”

Temur hid his wince. Tightly, he nodded.

“So Samarkar is the first,” said Hrahima, pushing a salted fish across her plate with a claw tip.

Samarkar had filled her nervous mouth with coffee, so it was Temur who asked, “The first?”

The Cho-tse puffed her whiskers. “The first to call you
King.
”

*   *   *

It was Temur who came to help Samarkar into her wizard’s armor, to tighten her buckles and check the corded lacings that held the armor skirts to the cuirass. He did not speak, and she did not ask him how he had persuaded Ato Tesefahun’s omnipresent, self-effacing servants to allow him this role. She watched him in one of Ato Tesefahun’s huge silvered mirrors while silently he attended her buckles, and silently he combed her hair and braided it—with fair facility—and coiled it around her skull … and silently he kissed the side of her throat before he set the helm over her head.

She might have spoken: she had a thousand things to say. But he didn’t, and so she left her wistfulness silent too. Silent, she thought, but understood.

“I’ll see you for dinner,” he said when the helm was secure, his fingers gentle under her chin, still resting where he’d fastened the strap. He hadn’t lowered the faceplate. She could still see her own eyes in the mirror. Not his; his face was lowered, his gaze turned away. A grayish color dusted his face along the hairline; the desert drying his skin. She made herself a promise to oil it for him when she got back.

“Though all the hells of Song bar the way.” She craned her head to the side; he leaned around the helm to kiss her, wincing as the motion pulled his scar.

She brushed it lightly with her fingertips. This time, he didn’t recoil. “And don’t forget to stretch that while I’m gone.”

“I’ll use Bansh’s liniment on it,” he promised.

Imagining the sting and burn, she said, “Ow.”

*   *   *

She could not have walked alone through Asitaneh in any other garb, and now Samarkar relished what might be a unique opportunity. Ato Tesefahun had offered her a retinue, bodyguards and a chaperone. Samarkar had turned him down, saying that if the caliph was intrigued by the exotic reality of a woman who wore armor and a wizard’s weeds, she would only reinforce that with a show of independence. “And if he should decide to slay me or take me prisoner in his own house, what exactly could your guards do to prevent it?”

Ato Tesefahun had ducked his chin in agreement. Samarkar knew he was thinking, as did she, of the ranks of
kapikulu
and more—of the caliph’s personal bodyguard of Dead Men. She was placing herself completely in his power, and the only defense she’d have was her own ability to convince the priest-prince of her authority.

As a sort of apology, Temur’s grandfather had given her a map to memorize.

Now Samarkar walked alone through Asitaneh, head up and striving to remember everything. Once she left the hustling boulevards, the red stone streets were close and winding. Often, Samarkar could reach out and place a hand flat on either wall, and the leaning balconies kissed overhead. Asitaneh was not built on flat land, and more than a few of the streets were constructed as stairs—an architectural tactic familiar enough to her from the rugged terrain of Tsarepheth.

She had left Ato Tesefahun’s house early enough to spend some time exploring the side streets near the palace, lest she need to escape her appointment with the caliph in haste. The maps were good—she didn’t think Ato Tesefahun would tolerate a bad one—but a map was not the same thing as a city, and if Samarkar were to find herself running down alleyways with blind speed, she’d hate to suddenly fall over—or into—sewer repairs in progress.

And if she were truthful, the city itself fascinated her. The smells were so different, the texture of the mortared stone, the sounds of the voices. The way the crowd broke around her armored form: no one raised their eyes to her helm but the men strode past as if she were invisible and they had simply missed striking her fortuitously, the women scuttling by in groups with their eyes downcast behind their veils. Even the taste of the dust was strange.

At last, the city’s many sweet-sounding bells tolling the half hour before her appointment with the caliph, Samarkar turned toward the palace. Finding herself alone in one of the narrower stair-alleys, she glanced over her left shoulder—back down the slope—and raised one hand to the wall. The gauntlets of the armor were designed to preserve a wizard’s dexterity for magic in combat; they attached to the backs of the hands and fingers with straps, leaving the palms and pads bare—a design also used by archers. When she touched the red stone she was surprised at how it gritted, and at how some sand rubbed free beneath the pressure to roll between her fingertips and the wall.

The walls had been patched many times, with mortar and brick and newer stone, and reinforced with planks of bolted-on wood worn black by centuries in the desert heat that had nevertheless preserved them. She could just reach up and touch one such if she stood on the tips of her toes, which she did hastily, curiously, hesitant that someone might see. From the slick texture, she was not the first.

As she dropped her heels again, she caught a glimpse of movement from the corner of her eye, an indigo flash in a shade that left her with a crawling chill of recognition.

The Rahazeen assassin had just emerged from the cover provided by a kink in the street and was closing on her quickly. Not at a run, but with confident strides that flared his loose white trousers and left the ends of the sash through which his pistol and scimitar were thrust licking the air behind him. Samarkar glanced right—forward—
upward
—again.

Two more stood just before the next twist in the stair. Overhead, the balconies did not meet—the left wall showed a scaled scar where one had ripped away—and three more veiled faces peered from the rooftops overhead.

Six, then. And probably two or four more out of sight, if she ran.

All right, Wizard Samarkar. Wizard your way out of this one.

The assassin coming up the stairs behind her—the tallest and broadest of the ones she could get a good look at—was drawing the pistol from his belt. It was a flintlock, the striker held back on a pin curved like a swan’s neck. He leveled it at Samarkar and tilted his head to aim.

“Put your hands up, Wizard Samarkar,” he said in her mother tongue. “We’d rather have you alive.”

One of Samarkar’s hands was already raised, still stretching after that age-polished board she’d been investigating. The other was extended for balance, reaching toward the far wall.

She thanked the six merciful stalwarts that the Rahazeen had pistols rather than bows. If someone like Temur had been with them, Samarkar would have had the choice of surrender or death—unless she could have managed a very tricky bit of fire-summoning on very short notice. But this: she had options.

She kicked her right foot out to the far wall, hooked the toes of her left boot over the edge of a hewn stone that protruded from the mortar on the near wall, and pushed herself upward as fast as she could go. The left hand hooked the top of that board again: there was just enough purchase for her cantilevered fingertips to take her weight when she pressed hard to the right. That let her move the left foot up, using the opposition between the two facing walls—and she climbed half again her height before the assassins even realized they should be reacting.

Something to be said for their overexposure to cloistered Uthman harem girls,
she thought.
They seem to forget that women can climb and fight.

The helm impeded her vision; the fingertip overlap on the gauntlets scraped stone. Samarkar cursed them as she climbed, ignoring the shouts from above and below. The Rahazeen above were scrambling down to that one remaining balcony. She heard the scrape of a sulfur stick and caught the acrid scent as one lighted his matchlock, but she wasn’t worried about the gunmen above. It was extremely hard to shoot at a sharp downward angle, or so she’d been told. They would only hit her by luck, and they’d be as likely to hit their friends below.

A moment later the explosion followed, deafening in the confined space. Her helm was some protection—not enough, her ears rang and the shouts of the Rahazeen seemed strangely muffled afterward—but more than they were getting from their veils. She glanced down; one leapt to try to catch her and she snatched her ankle up just in time. The biggest one was still tracking her with his flintlock, and
he
might have a chance of hitting—the range wasn’t great—and now another had his scimitar out. She didn’t think her climbing skills, honed in the crags of the Steles of the Sky, would avail her if somebody chopped her foot or hand off.

She had hoped the big one would flinch when his friend shot and missed, but he was too focused, too well trained. She pulled the idea of fire into her mind. There was fire in the powder in the gun and it wanted to come out: it would have been easy to make it simply burn. But if the gun were aimed at her, that was no help.

So now she coaxed the fire to stay itself, to wait. And she persuaded some of that warmth into the lead ball within the barrel of the gun. Warmth made things swell—with the exception of ice, which grew as it froze. But with a pistol, the ball must be a close fit to the barrel of the gun, so the expanding force of the black powder behind it could fire it out with great velocity, without too much of that pressure escaping. A hot ball was bigger than a cold one. If it fit as tight as it ought, it would catch in the barrel.

Samarkar could climb and work wizardry both at once, an indirect result of her masters’ years of patient instruction. She didn’t need to maintain her persuasion for long. As the assassin’s finger flexed on his trigger, she allowed the fire in the powder to do what it would. The spark flared in the pan, the heated ball lodged within the barrel—

The gun exploded in his hand.

Sandstone gritty, abrading her fingertips, Samarkar was still climbing. She had glanced down, seeking a foothold and keeping an eye on those below. The big assassin dropped to his knees, clutching his wrist. There was blood; she could not see how much. Her hand found the edge and then the railing of the balcony.

She didn’t trust it, but she hadn’t much choice. Brother Hsiung might have vaulted the railing and come down among the enemy kicking. Samarkar had no such skills, and therefore no such luxury. The assassins seemed to have dispensed with their pistols—a wise choice when dealing with a wizard, it turned out—but there were still three of them, and they had short blades out. The better for such work at close quarters.

The two uninjured assassins climbed behind her, if not quite with her skill and facility. Now she was treed like a cat between hawks and hounds, and the hounds were closing the gap. Her breath raked her lungs; her heart beat a martial tattoo within her rib cage. Muscle and ligaments stretched painfully under the weight of her armor.

A hand clutched her boot, fingers scrabbling at the lacquered armor. She kicked it off her ankle and used the momentum to scramble upward. A Rahazeen stabbed at her hand on the balustrade; she found a drainpipe with the other hand and swung around it, a gyre of momentum. As if of its own will her foot lashed out and took one of the attackers in the face; she recognized a motion that Brother Hsiung had drilled into her over hands and hands of days, crossing the desert from Stone Steading.

So that’s what that’s for.

She followed the motion through, summoning her will into her hands. A blue blade no longer than the span of her palm shimmered at her fingers; she struck toward an assassin’s face, but his flinch carried him clear. The magic that could open locks with keys made of intention could construct a dagger, too.

Her foot kicked off the balcony rail and she felt it settle slightly. Her fingers hooked the scar where the other balcony endured no longer. Her hands were busy, her focus sharp—but a wizard’s will and sense of structure fanned around her, and the wooden joists beneath the balcony the Rahazeen stood on were old, weathered. Nearly petrified.

Samarkar grinned behind her helmet, her breath rasping through the faceplate, as she hauled herself atop the parapet opposite. A knife glanced off the stone beside her. Another punched her on the spine, but the armor protected her. Still she felt the blow like a kick and nearly went sprawling to the roof. Only a quick turn with the force of the blow and the reflexive curl of her fingers over the parapet edge saved her.

She perched like a vulture, her armor coat spread over her knees, her eyes on the Rahazeen who still held a knife poised to throw. She would twist as it left his fingers, she decided. She would protect her eyes and throat. Each heaving inhalation crushed her breasts and ribs against the inside of the armor, but she managed a calculated chuckle between gasps.

“Six Rahazeen chosen men,” she mocked. “And yet no match for one Wizard of Tsarepheth.”

The assassin threw. Samarkar dodged to the side and let the knife whisk past her, so close she thought for a moment she’d misjudged, but it was only the whistle of the blade that startled her.

There was fire in the old wood of the balcony, too. The stone it bore up shivered as she released that long-constrained energy. Even behind the veils, she could see the eyes of the Rahazeen widen. Their arms windmilled gracelessly. One tried to leap to the parapet. But the stone flags of the balcony poured away beneath them like sand through opened hands. The Rahazeen below did not shriek, but tried to leap away.

Samarkar did not linger to see if they succeeded.

*   *   *

The flat rooftops of Asitaneh were hardly uninhabited. Not only were there men and women working here, even under the blazing light of the sun, but there were tent cities, roof gardens, children playing tag from house to house. Samarkar got an unexpected glimpse of the inner courtyards as she trotted past, forcing feet and legs that felt coated in some heavy, rubbery substance to rise and fall with monotonous regularity. Sweat trickled between her breasts and shoulder blades. She felt herself the brunt of many stares, but did not return them.