Shattered Pillars (45 page)

“Can you read those?” he asked Hsiung.

The monk, squinting through what must for him have been tremendous gloom, bit his lip and shook his head.

The snake slipped away, its course visible for some time by the bobbing of tree fronds. Samarkar strained after it, but said nothing and followed thoughtfully when Bansh and the others walked on. The moss breathed out a sweet moisture Temur had not known since Song. Banners of mist, opalescent in the starlight, draped like a dancer’s veils through the forest, the reclaimed city, and the night.

Something Temur had taken for a shaggy boulder in the stream below shifted, lifted, streaming water from a mossy, saturated algal beard.

It was the head of an enormous turtle.

The thing’s shell was big as a trade wagon, each plate rising to a dull spike as if someone had dipped a rod in molten glass and drawn it up. Like a baby bird’s mouth—but big enough to snap Bansh in half—the beak gaped shockingly wide, revealing a pale-pink gullet as the only softness in an armor-plated skull. The skin was gray-green, corrugated, festooned with tags and growths and verdant with water slime; the eyes were flat black beads behind gray lids creased like folded rice paper.

The turtle’s back half seemed partially buried in the opposite bank, but it rocked one foot like a pillar out of the stones of the stream and strained up the ferny steepness toward them. Bansh flicked her grotty tail and snorted, stalking past with a fine display of unconcern.

Well, if she wasn’t worried, Temur could pretend not to be. He noticed, though, that even though the turtle’s own length separated it from the road, they all fell into single file against the far slope. Even Hrahima gave the thing the respect of distance.

The sky above might have been brightening as the valley widened before them, or perhaps it was just that they came out of the shade of quite so many trees. Temur didn’t miss Hrahima’s lashing tail. But here the ground was more level, and the overgrown buildings stood in better repair and greater profusion. Bansh moved forward smartly, seeming to direct herself to one in particular—a low structure breathing moist air from a black doorway that suggested an intact roof under the weight of its vines.

As they approached, a rustle like a gust of wind spread through the vegetation, though Temur felt no breeze. He turned his head; on every side the ferns and fern trees were folding up their fronds and fans and drawing the glistening dark-green spears that resulted into armored, squatly conical trunks. The vines rolled their leaves up in lances and swallowed them in fat winding stems, leaving the valley looking as if someone had stacked rank upon rank of odd-sized terra cotta beehives haphazardly everywhere.

The sky was definitely brighter.

Bansh vanished into the dark doorway. Hsiung jerked his foot up and half-skipped as he stepped over a centipede as long as Temur’s forearm. It whipped out of sight, but not before giving Temur an unfortunate, stomach-clenching memory of the gut-worm he’d fought in the lands of the woman-king Tzitzak. He eyed the close space ahead and hesitated.
Trapped in the dark again.

Samarkar touched his wrist, slid her fingers through his. She stepped forward. He followed, half-sideways. Together, they went through the door.

*   *   *

The light outside lay savage over a barren landscape, so scorched and sere that Temur could hardly credit the verdant jungle they’d walked through, so bright that he avoided even looking at the door. He wished for water—for Bansh and for himself and his companions—and there was a leathern bucket with Bansh’s gear, where he had heaped it in the corner. But Hrahima would permit no one to risk those suns. And so the others took it in turns to sleep while Temur kept watch beside his mare—with time to braid her tail after all.

Now that it was upon them, he could not help but wonder what she would give him: colt or filly? The foal would have a steppe horse’s unique light-catching coat, but in what shade? Blood-bay, liver-bay, black, or sorrel? The black-maned mirror-gold called phantom, so highly prized for its beauty? A marmot-colored roan? Not knowing the stud at all—or the mare’s lineage—he had only Bansh’s liver-bay color to be his guide. And bay was a color that could overshadow others—with a few exceptions, the foal could be any shade from the dove-colored dun to silver, depending on the stallion.

Let it be born easily,
Temur prayed as her water broke, trying not to think that he stood under a roof and the wrong sky lay above it.
Let mare and foal be well.

In the meantime, he cared for the mare and Samarkar cared for him.

The mare went down on her side in a drift of dead leaves and Temur crouched behind her. But when the foal’s long legs, like curved sticks, emerged from the birth canal, he could not believe his eyes. The hooves with their protective overgrowth seemed weirdly long and ragged, just as they should—but the legs themselves looked white in the shadows; when at his request Samarkar sent a witchlight close and tuned its color to match the daylight of the steppe, he saw that they were splashed with white to the knee, and the color above that—even darkened by the womb’s wetness—was a pale and glistering shade of electrum: silver tinged with yellow. One could not even call it gold.

The nose breached, and it was pink as a pig’s snout, a white streak wide as a finger dipping between the nostrils. The hair above it was shone that same pale gleaming color.

Temur’s mouth opened. With the next heave, the foal’s entire head emerged. It laid as flat upon the forelegs as if it were a leaping hunter depicted in some stylized art of the Lotus Kingdoms. The membrane about its head was tearing, and Temur found himself meeting the gaze of one wet-lashed eye, as white-blue as a hazy sky, the pupil a black horizontal bar amid a streaky, brighter halo.

“Impossible,” said Temur.

Samarkar materialized beside him as if
that
were her magic. “What’s wrong?”

“She can’t be that color.” He crouched beside Bansh’s hindquarters. The foal’s forelegs kicked sheaves of dead foliage this way and that as she scrabbled at the ground. Temur’s voice shook, but his hands were steady as he tore the white, slimy veil of the membrane away from the foal’s nostrils. Bansh heaved again: a gush of hot fluid followed, and the foal was pushed from the birth canal as far as the shoulders but slipped back in again.

“The shoulders are the hard part,” Temur said.

“What do you mean, she can’t be? She is—” Samarkar shook her head. “I ride well enough.”

He knew that. He also knew Samarkar well enough to understand that it was a qualification to whatever she would say next, and waited. Another push brought the foal out to mid-body. Bansh craned her head around to look, and Temur touched her rump. “Almost,” he told her. “One more good one.” He could drag the foal free at this point, but it was better if the mare did it herself, and she did not seem tired yet.

“I’ve never bred horses. She can’t
be
that color?”

“She’s a ghost sorrel. She should only be that color if Bansh were phantom-colored, or mirror. You have to breed phantom or mirror to each other, or to ghost, to get this color. And no one would allow that breeding.”

He looked up, spreading blood-and-mucus-slimed hands helplessly. “It’s an unlucky color.”

She put a hand on his shoulder. “You know it’s a filly already?”

“I hope.” Mares were worth more than stud horses or geldings. Mares were milk and foals—

Even a ghost sorrel.

But Bansh heaved up suddenly, leaving Temur scrambling into a squat to support the foal, and it slid into his arms in an awkward mess of kicking limbs and slime. He caught it and eased it down—but he’d felt the foal’s testicles when his arm went between its legs and stood up disappointed. The cord had broken. Temur prayed for an intact afterbirth, quickly to follow.

“Colt,” he said.
Unlucky colt.
Still, healthy. Already raising his head and blinking around with those blue demon eyes as Temur bent over to help peel the rest of the membrane away. As he did, an idea struck him.

“Take his bad luck away,” he said to Samarkar. “Name him.”

She stopped as if struck, eyes wide as if he had given her a tremendous gift. Which, after a fashion, was true.

“Afrit,” she said, with a glance at Hrahima. “For the time of his birth. And for blue eyes.”

Temur touched the colt between the ears, noticing that the white stripe on his nose ran up to a ragged white pattern between the eyes as well. “Your name is Afrit,” he said.

The foal blinked at him with lush eyelashes, just beginning to feather and dry. Beside him, Bansh heaved again, beginning the process of getting the afterbirth out.

*   *   *

Hong-la rose from his reading table at the scratching beside his door. He expected the opened panel to reveal a novice. What he found was two women he did not expect to see together, each dressed in clothing so foreign to their usual habits that he blinked and rocked back, too stunned to gesture them inside.

In the leathers and wool of a farmer, Tsering took the empress—dressed as a lesser courtier, a baby in a sling across her chest and her face plain of its usual varnish—by the elbow and pulled her across the threshold. Yangchen-tsa’s eyes widened that anyone would so mishandle her. Hong-la was more shocked that Tsering would come in without an explicit invitation. He was even more startled to realize that the fussing baby whose cries pierced his ears was the heir to all of Rasa—here alone, with no protection except his mother.

Whatever might have driven her to such risk—he felt the cringe start at the nape of his neck, run between his shoulders.

Tsering released the empress, shut the door, and bowed low, an apology for her abruptness. Hong-la noticed that her gesture was in no way aimed at Yangchen.

“Fear not, Wizard Tsering,” he said. “I know one of my peers would not barge in without reason. Especially not dragging a queen.”

Tsering flinched, a lowered gaze brushing Yangchen’s shoes. She pointed to the window and said, “Revolution.”

Hong-la’s split-toed shoes squeaked on the floor as he pivoted. Forgetting himself, black coat flapping about him, he crossed the room in three strides and grasped the window frame in both hands.

Hong-la’s window faced Tsarepheth. He could see the sharp red roofs, the beige-and-white walls, the towers of the Black Palace in the distance. Thin lines of smoke always rose from the cookfires and chimneys of the city—but now he saw a heavy pall, billows, and—here and there—the vermilion toss of flames.

“Shit,” said the Wizard Hong.

It could be dealt with—it was only flame. A process, and wizards were nothing if not experts at controlling processes.

There was a speaking-tube beside the hearth. He uncapped it and called down. “This is Hong-la. Please request Yongten-la come to my chamber in haste. This is an emergency.”

The echo of his own voice down the tube was followed by the echo of a novice repeating the message. When Hong-la had confirmed it, he capped the tube again and turned to the women. “That does not explain why the empress is here, dressed as one of her maids.”

“It was the only way I could escape the palace,” she said. “My husband ordered me to my rooms.” One arm curved protectively around her son’s back. He burrowed against her breast, wailing as he snuffled for the nipple. Yangchen-tsa turned away, self-consciously tugging the wrapped collar of her dress aside.

“Never mind,” Hong-la said. “I’m a eunuch, and I have seen a breast before, and frankly I prefer the male variety. Please continue, majestrix.”

“The guards did not know me bare-faced,” she said. “I took my son for a rest, I said. By now they will have found us not in my room. I came to tell you…”

She pressed her nose to her son’s head. He did not seem contented with the breast, but she breathed deep anyway. Hong-la fought back a surge of irritation—not that she needed to draw strength from the child to speak, but that now—
now,
after the infestation had come under control, after so many lives had been lost—her conscience would drive her to speak.

She surprised him.

“I have come to evacuate the city,” she said. “Whether my husband wills it or not. It is time for the empress to stand for her people.”

“But will the people stand for the empress?” Hong-la asked.

There was another scratch upon the door. “Come!” he said, unsurprised when it opened only wide enough for narrow-shouldered Yongten-la to slip through.

“I guess you’ve looked outside?” said Yongten.

“We need a corps of wizards to fight the fire,” said Hong-la. “Or the whole city may burn.”

Yangchen-tsa put her hands to her mouth. “Why would they burn their own houses?”

You
ask that?

“They can reach them,” Tsering said. “And they have to burn something.”

“A corps is assembling,” said Yongten-la. “We will join them in a few moments.”

Tsering held up her hand. “Yongten-la, I believe the riots were triggered … that is to say, today when I was in the city, I saw three of our own disaffected youth and a Qersnyk lad dragged through the streets by the emperor’s militia.”

The ends of his moustache shivered as his creased lips pursed. “You believe the refugees may join the rioting?”

“There are some young women and men—”

“I will close the Citadel Gates.”

While he went to the speaking tube to give the order, Hong-la quickly explained that the empress had come to offer them aid in evacuating the city. “I’m not sure how that would work,” Yongten-la said. “Without your husband’s troops to maintain order and carry the word—”

“There will be those fleeing the burning,” said Tsering. “They will follow an authority figure, especially one who is telling them what they want to hear. If we can get her to where they gather, we will save lives.”

“A train of refugees,” said Hong-la, with the sickening certainty of remembrance. “Turned out into the fields without preparation. Not enough food, not enough water, not enough warm bedding or clothes…”

Tsering nodded. “And how would we get her through a burning, rioting city?”