Steles of the Sky (39 page)

“He only has the one,” said Temur. “Better to wait out winter, when he can offer the poor thing some ground support.… Samarkar, what’s that?”

Beyond the paddock, along the road that would bring them to the Dragon Road if they should follow it, more than a dozen shaggy, stocky horses were being led up over the edge of the sinkhole by a group of figures who mostly wore coats tailored in the Asitaneh style. One or two wore hooded robes in rich colors that recollected agate stones, and behind the horses more hooded figures toiled up the slope from below—heads, then shoulders, then spare awkward bodies.

They were silhouetted against the snow, making it hard to pick out detail, but she could see that the hooded figures moved in an awkward, inhuman manner—and that they and the coated men were all led by a mounted woman, with a cradleboard slung on the saddle by her knee.

An army, perhaps. But not one currently bent on conquest.

Samarkar felt Temur stiffen. His fingers dug into her forearm. When she moved her gloved hand to cover his, she imagined she could feel the cold through layers of hide and fur. Something rushed past them, a shaggy bearlike beast—the great dog Sube, barking exultantly, wagging his tail as if he might take flight.

Before Samarkar had even finished turning to him, Temur pulled away again and plunged toward the army coming down on them, raising as much joyful noise as the dog.

*   *   *

The horse was a solid, fit-looking blue roan with a near-black face and thick, curly coat like a clipped sheep. Fine as the gelding was, it was the figure on his back—perched high in the Kyivvan saddle with its moderate pommel and center joint—who held Temur’s undivided attention. She was dressed in armor such as he had never seen, the metal red as fire and wreathed in petals of a rising crimson light like an aurora, like a flame.

Over it, she wore an open robe, soft and dark red. Her helm was strapped at her knee, and the hood of her robe lay in folds upon her shoulders, revealing dark hair braided around her head, bright eyes gleaming from between tight lids, and cheeks less plump than when last he had seen her. They both, he thought, looked the worse for travel.

She sat as if perfectly calm, queenly, hands folded over her reins, watching the dog and the man run toward her. Sube outstripped Temur, bounding forward on great blond paws. He was five leaps from her when her composure broke and she slid from the saddle with all a girl’s tumbledown grace, landing crouched in the snow. She held out her arms, the reins still trailing from her left hand, the roan gelding stamping one hoof as a warning to the dog.

That was not why the dog suddenly planted his feet and skidded to a halt in the snow. Sube’s ears flattened. His haystack of a coat was too thick to bristle, but the wild wagging stopped as his tail drooped and stiffened. The growl that rumbled from his throat shuddered Temur’s chest like a drum.

“Sube, no!” he shouted, as the dog stood his ground, crouched as if he faced a wolf, and growled to shake the earth apart.

The roan was having none of it. He lunged back against the reins and would have pulled Edene off her feet if she had not chosen to go with him, using his momentum to jump back and grab the stirrup. Someone else—one of the men in the Asitaneh coats—was on the roan’s other side, catching the bridle and throwing an arm around his neck. The horse stamped and whinnied, a clear threat. And Edene stood between them, uncertain of which way to turn.

“Sube!” she said, not sharply but broken, and Temur wondered what it was like to come home after nearly a year to be growled at by your own dog. He laid a glove on Sube’s heavy ruff, curling fingers into the matted fur so the dog could feel his hold, and spoke in a soothing murmur. Nonsense, the sort of words you used on dogs and horses when all that mattered was the tone.
Don’t you know Edene, hush now, see it’s a friend.

The gelding quieted, though his ears stayed up, his nostrils flaring pink, his gaze steady on the dog. Sube dropped in the snow, his elbows hovering—not a relaxed “down” but a position that said
I won’t start anything, and you had
better
not.
He betrayed no interest in the horse; all his attention was for the woman.

Temur had crouched when the dog did. Now, as Edene stepped away from her half-soothed horse, he let himself rise. He felt Samarkar at his back, felt something hanging in the air between them—and between the two of them and Edene. A tension, a prickling sensation like that which filled the air when, somewhere above, lightning was waiting. His own voice echoed in his ear, words that he had spoken beneath a mountain and heard since in his dreams:
I am Re Temur. I will help you fight your Rahazeen warlord, Hrahima. And I will take back from him in turn what he first took from me. And then I will come back and see Qori Buqa put out of the place that was rightfully my brother’s.

A spark seemed to hang in the air before him, a thing
like
a bright spark, though it gave no light. It bridged the gap between Temur and Edene, filled his chest with light. He reached out a hand to her.

Leaving her gelding to the man in the Asitaneh coat, she extended her own hand and came, the cold flames of her armor burning all around her.

Sube did not growl again; this time the great dog whined, a sound of such distress and agony that Samarkar came to him running, high-footed and awkward as a horse prancing through drifts. She knelt in the snow and threw her arms around his neck; Temur took three steps forward and threw his arms around Edene.

Under her robes and the mail, she was thin. Bony-shouldered, not dressed for the cold, though it seemed not even to have damasked her cheeks. When Temur pulled her close, even through his coat he felt her chill; those flames had no warmth at all. He hugged her tight, heedless of the snow that dusted them both, calling for tea, ready to sweep her into his arms and carry her back to the tent. The hard fear in his chest was bitter as a dagger; even in this mild and sheltered valley, you could die of the cold.

But she put her cold hand, naked but for a ring, against his face, and laid her cheek by his.

“Shhh,” she said. “Re Temur Khagan, I am fine.”

“Edene—”

“You have seen his moon,” she said. “Now let me introduce you to your son.”

Temur ripped his eyes from her drawn face, so pale with chill. He laid his glove against her face. “My son.”

“Re Ganjin.”

“Of course.” He found himself, suddenly, all made bones and elbows fitted together seemingly at random. While she went to the saddle and lifted down the cradleboard, he fidgeted. Samarkar leaned her shoulder against him and he settled, but then Edene was back, lifting a bundle from the cradleboard, holding it out in her arms.

His hands shaking, Temur took the child. Ganjin was heavier than he expected, like a hawk on his glove, and swaddled up so that Temur could see nothing of him but squinched up eyes, pursed pink mouth, a rounded bump of a nose.

He set Ganjin in the crook of his arm and gazed down at this tiny person—real, alive, aware—and then up across him at Edene. She had that familiar compressed smile he knew so well.

“Our son,” Temur said. “How is it possible?”

Edene laughed, head thrown back amid the flames of her eldritch armor. “Well,” she said, “when a warrior and a maiden love each other very much—”

“Wench,” he answered, grinning. Ganjin was so quiet Temur kept checking to make sure he was breathing, still. He laid his left hand on Samarkar’s shoulder. He did not need to glance down to know that she was looking at him and Edene, her face as carefully blank as only a once-princess’s could be. “I have someone to introduce you to as well, Edene.”

“Can it wait until we’re warm?” Tesefahun asked, from astride a rangy brown. “My old belly could use some tea.”

Edene stepped back. “Of course, you know your grandfather, Temur Khagan,” she said. “Now you must meet my ghulim, too.”

19

Three men, two women, and a knotted silence surrounded the brazier at the center of the Khagan’s yellow white-house. They waited awkwardly while Edene made tea. Temur still held his son in the crook of his left elbow. Tesefahun sat cross-legged on his left, quilted coat stretched across his knees. The man who had been Uthman Caliph and who was now called Iskandar sat across the coals, leaving a gap for Edene when she should finally come to rest. Samarkar knelt on Temur’s right, smoothing the heavy black cotton of her new six-petaled coat down her thighs. The tailor had edged it with yellow tape. Temur wondered if she knew it was the Khagan’s color.

Probably. Samarkar knew nearly everything.

He had already sent for and then sent away Edene’s cousins, Oljei and Toragana, and her little sister Sarangerel. Edene had been strange and distant, as if distracted. That reunion had been tearful and rushed, and he and Edene had both had to promise that her family would have her to themselves for an extended period before too long. But for now, this was
his
reunion with her, and his introduction to his son.

He had held babies before. You couldn’t grow up among the clans without being pressed into childcare as soon as you were old enough to be trusted to keep a toddler from wandering into a fire. But there was something new and wonderful and calming about the warm weight of his own child in his arms—so big! Not a newborn anymore at all! All the anxious silences in the world could not quite destroy the effect of this sweet quiet.

He smiled to himself. That would last until Ganjin awoke and began crying. For the moment, the only sound in the white-house was Edene humming softly to herself as she measured tea, yak butter, salt—and waited for the water to boil. She moved deftly, as if she had never left the steppe, despite the soft drape of the red wool of her robes. Despite how strange it was, seeing her in foreign clothes. He missed her embroidered coats and her trousers, the way the strength of her thighs stretched against the fabric when she rode. The robes hid her body, concealed the changes that nearly a year apart had wrought. But he could still see by her collarbones and wrists that she was thin.

Samarkar picked at the stitching that held the yellow finishing tape around her hem. Temur reached out and grasped her left hand with his right. She turned to him, eyebrows arching, forehead wrinkled in surprise. He winked over a corner of a smile.
It will be fine.

Until Edene poured and distributed the tea, and Ato Tesefahun took a single sharp, resigned breath and began to explain the gravity of the situation in Kyiv, Temur almost managed to make himself believe it.

Unfortunately, Tesefahun’s years of experience as a political creature made him excel at explaining just how thoroughly al-Sepehr had walled them into a tower with regard to finding allies in Kyiv. As he reached the part of the narrative with the djinn, Edene—now kneeling between Samarkar and Iskandar—lifted her head.

Tesefahun was already looking at her, which was how Temur knew they’d rehearsed this. Well, wearing their saddles, he would have shared information too. “The djinn is not al-Sepehr’s willing servant,” she said. “I would almost say that al-Sepehr does not
have
willing servants, but he has his Nameless, and his wives. The rest are dupes, or enslaved. From Qori Buqa to the Rukh.”

“The Rukh?” asked Samarkar.

“Al-Sepehr keeps her mate chained. Wing-clipped. It was my duty to care for him while I was his captive, too.”

“How did you escape?” Temur asked.

Edene flicked the edge of her cup with her nail, cheek muscles moving as if she chewed her words. She didn’t speak immediately, but all in the white-house knew she was not done. They waited.

Seeing that Edene’s cup was empty, Samarkar disengaged her hand from Temur’s. She lifted the heavy cast-iron pot from its warming plate beside the brazier and poured carefully. Edene glanced at her through her lashes, a quick curious glance.

“Thank you,” she said.

She raised the cup and drank, sighing when she was done as if some bone-deep ache had eased. Qersnyk tea from a Qersnyk cup; after his travels, Temur understood the simple ease of it. She twisted the green ring on her finger—the ring that Temur had never seen before—and said, as if the words hurt, “Some of his enemies may be dupes as well.”

“You mean what happened in Stechko,” Tesefahun said.

“Yes.”

Suddenly, Temur realized what had gone unsaid. “Grandfather. I have … Ill news.”

Tesefahun looked at him mildly, freckled old face resigned.

Temur had to close his eyes to continue. “My mother … your daughter, Ashra. Gave her life in Tsarepheth fighting a terrible plague.”

After a little time, Tesefahun said, “Damn,” and looked away.

“I made a vow,” Temur said. “To remove al-Sepehr from power. I have not forgotten it.” He glanced at Iskandar. “I’ll remove his allies from power, too.”

Iskandar nodded. He looked at Edene. “You have not answered the question of how you escaped.”

She said, “I stole this ring from him.”

Edene held up her hand and she vanished—as if someone had wiped her image with a cloth from Temur’s eyes. He started to his feet, clutching Ganjin against his chest reflexively. A mistake; he woke the child, and the child began to wail.

Then Edene was there beside him, apologetically hushing her son, apologetically regretting her grand gesture. Samarkar was on her feet as well, standing a half-stride back, uncertainly, while Edene tried to demonstrate to Temur how to quiet the child. When they finally had Ganjin hushed and set to Edene’s breast—Iskandar, his complexion watery with the depth of his discomfort, would not look in their direction while Edene’s robe was open—Edene sighed and apologized once more.

“You stole a ring that turns you invisible.”

“It does more than that,” said Tesefahun, as Edene chewed her lip again. “It is the Green Ring of Erem. Danupati’s Ring. It grants dominion over poison creatures and over the creatures of Erem.”

“Like the ghulim.”

Edene nodded. “But now I think al-Sepehr intended me to steal it. I think he intended me to use it. The powers of Erem.… It turns out,” she said regretfully, “that they are not much good for anything but causing war.”