Steles of the Sky (44 page)

Edene said, “What a pity we can’t find a way to get it to our enemies.”

“I don’t think the dragon is about to give it up, anyway.” Samarkar dipped more rice, chewed slowly. She smiled at Tsering. “You seemed very calm about that.”

“Not my first dragon this winter,” was all Tsering-la said.

Samarkar said, “I didn’t know they’d be so … interested. In us. Challenging.”

Tsering nodded, mouth twisted askew. “I don’t know much about them. But the other one I’ve met was also awfully nosy. And condescending. This one was a bigger ass, however.”

“Well,” said Samarkar. “They
are
dragons.”

“And all we have to do is win it over,” Temur said. “How bad can that be if a Song emperor managed? Tsering, get Hong-la figuring out what we can tithe the damned thing before the equinox.”

“Tesefahun brought a great deal of gold,” Edene said.

“It wants to talk to you in person, Khagan,” Samarkar said.

Temur stretched and rolled his shoulders back. “Well, I know what maps we need to bargain for, thanks to the catalogue Samarkar and Edene brought back. Samarkar, Tsering, get Hong’s help and go through the ledger and make a list of books for me.”

Samarkar said, “This solves one mystery at least.”

“Your pardon?”

“The skies,” she said. “I imagine a Song dragon’s presence underground means Song skies overhead, if that’s what he thinks we should live under. No matter who holds the palace above.”

21

By the first thaw of the spring, Sube had forgiven Edene for the ghulim.

With the second thaw, the trickle of arrivals resumed. Temur was teaching Samarkar the horse-race game, with Edene’s “help,” explaining for the third time how the clean-boiled anklebones of a sheep, rolled and stacked, indicated the speed with which a strictly hypothetical mare had run as compared to the strictly hypothetical mare of the other player. The sound of hooves and neighs and cries of greeting echoed through the camp. Temur started up, overturning half the stacked bones and bumping the board into Edene’s knees, and still did not manage to beat Samarkar to the door.

Edene stood more slowly, a shivery chill all down her arms and across her shoulders. A horse neighed—and neighed again. A familiar, equine voice. She almost dreaded walking to the door of the white-house. She knew she was mistaken. She must be mistaken. And she could not bear the disappointment she knew awaited her.

She pulled Ganjin’s cradleboard across her shoulders and followed her family outside.

*   *   *

This first (and least-expected) among the spring’s arrivals was the Woman-King Tzitzik, last scion of the Lizard-Folk, blood of Danupati—traveling in company with a pair of Cho-tse … and a complement of warriors from Stone Steading, which lay at the outermost western edge of Temur’s grandfather’s empire. That was to say, of
Temur’s
empire.

The contingent also traveled under the care of the redoubtable Nilufer Khatun, Temur’s aunt by marriage. And it seemed as if these two very different but equally formidable warriors had come to some sort of deep-seated understanding. The prospect made Temur’s spine chill with alarm if he thought about it for more than a few moments … but at least they seemed to like each other.

Whatever he might have said was interrupted by Edene bursting past him, running heedlessly into the midst of armed strangers. Nilufer’s mount, a familiar rose-gray mare, prick-eared, bugled a sharp call as soon as she saw Edene running toward her and danced forward in her own turn, tugging her reins, shouldering another mare aside.

Woman and mare leaned together a moment, and then Edene stepped back, lifting her chin to look up at the face of the woman on her horse’s back. “You must be of Stone Steading,” she said. On her back, Ganjin giggled, having enjoyed his human mount’s short run.

The woman, armored and wearing a bow slung over her shoulder, smiled. “I am Nilufer. And unless I miss my guess, I am the great-aunt of that babe on your back. I am pleased to meet you, Tsareg Edene. I brought you back your mare.”

Temur—who was finally learning diplomacy (under Samarkar’s constant tutelage)—got Edene and Buldshak to move off in one direction to make their reacquaintance. Edene would insist on checking every inch of the mare herself. He also immediately detailed Samarkar to take charge of Nilufer and bustle her off to meet her son. Dour Chagatai was embroiled in training what warriors they had in jousting at rings; Temur guessed his worry-lined face would nevertheless crack around a smile when he saw who walked beside the Khagan’s wizard woman.

Nilufer and Edene seen to, Temur returned his attention to the Woman-King Tzitzik. Though the late winter chill had not truly given way to spring, she sat her ribby brown stud bare-chested. She wore only trousers, boots, a circlet of gold beaten to resemble dragon-scales, gauntlets, sword—and a fantastical collection of pale, beaded chains of scar ruching the papery stretch-marked skin of her hard, gaunt abdomen. Her horse was barded in scaled armor made with plates of horse-hoof, and so were the lieutenants who flanked her on every side. But Tzitzik herself rode nearly naked, a testament—so Temur supposed—to her strength and fearlessness.

As he greeted her, he tried not to hear Samarkar in his head remarking on the discomforts of long rides without the support of a halter. At least, he supposed, the woman-king was small-breasted.

He wondered if that made a difference.

She did not smile any less to see him when he returned. The pair of Cho-tse did not smile either time.

They were male and female. The male was Faranghis, the female Hryorah, and Temur tried to hide from them how surprised he was by how little Faranghis resembled the Cho-tse he had previously encountered—both Hrahima, and the emissaries who had occasionally attended Temur’s brother Qulan at this very camp, when Qulan had been one of the heirs-apparent to the Padparadscha Seat. Hrahima was big, for a Cho-tse—for anything that walked on two legs—but she would not have been out of scale with the other Cho-tse Temur had encountered. Or, in truth, with Hryorah—though Hryorah’s pelt was a stunning pale color, cream-white with coffee-black stripes. Her irises were bicolored, an outer ring of white around an inner ring of blue, putting Temur in mind of shattered ice and the crevasses of the bitter cold glaciers at the top of the world.

But Faranghis was, by Cho-tse standards, little more than a dwarf. He probably weighed no more than twice what Temur did, and his coat seemed much shorter and closer-laid than Hrahima’s, while the black stripes on his arms and back were fat and wide.

The woman-king must have caught Temur looking, because when she swung down from her saddle and embraced him formally, she whispered in his ear—in badly broken Qersnyk—“The little one is from the islands, they say.”

Temur hugged her back. “Are they here to work diplomacy on me, or are they here for Hrahima?”

Tzitzik grimaced, her grasp of his language apparently exceeded. With a jerk of her hand, she summoned her interpreter, and Temur repeated himself.

Tzitzik had met Temur’s exiled Cho-tse ally before. She shrugged when she heard the question. “Some of both, I’d say.”

Then, as she stepped back, in a louder voice she continued, “Temur Khagan! It is with great pleasure and delight that we again make your acquaintance. We are pleased indeed to see that you are not dead.”

“And I am pleased not to be dead,” he replied.

He reminded himself not to bow low. When last they had met, he had come to her court as a vagabond. A supplicant. And he had wound up spending the night walled into a barrow, through no fault of the woman-king’s. Now their positions were reversed: they might be equal in terms of precedence, but Temur held the power here, and though Tzitzik had her army at her back, she came to him this time.

She held out a hand, fist closed loosely over something in a small chamois pouch. He looked her in the eye. No trace of deceit there, although perhaps a little amusement. So Temur in his turn extended his hand as well, and took what the Woman-King of the Lizard-Folk had to offer.

Whatever the pouch held, it was irregular and hard inside the clinging goatskin. Without taking his eyes from Tzitzik’s face—Temur had a shallow but apprehensive appreciation of what she might think was funny—he picked the knots loose with his nails and wiggled open the mouth of the bag. The thing inside was cold and rough when he shook it into his palm.

A geode: a hollow stone with bright crystals within. Or half of one anyway, and with its facets inexplicably dimmed with a sticky, rust-brown patina. He lowered his nose and sniffed; the musty scent confirmed his first impression. Dried blood, and plenty of it.

“Am I supposed to say it’s lovely?”

Tzitzik grinned. Through her interpreter, she said, “We hear you’re going to fight the Nameless bastard.”

“Is that why you’ve come?”

“They said you raised your banner here.”

“You traveled in the winter,” he said.

She shrugged as if it were nothing. “Nilufer Khatun has one in her band who can witch weather. They said you needed allies. There are rewards for aiding the Khagan.”

His smile was tight. He held up the bloody lump of rock. “This is aid?”

“My swords are aid,” she said. “
That’s
something I pulled off the body of the Nameless assassin your white-foot mare kicked in the head.”

*   *   *

Nilufer told Samarkar that Samarkar’s sister-in-law Payma had been safely delivered of a baby daughter, and despite a difficult birth, mother and child were well. Samarkar in her turn shared this news with Edene and Temur, when the three of them were alone—except for Ganjin—in Edene’s white-house that night, sharing a sparse early-spring supper of tea, green onions, and long sliced dumplings around the brazier’s low-built warmth.

“If only Songtsan-tsa and Yangchen-tsa had known,” Samarkar said. Her voice fairly
dripped
irony; when she was not restraining herself for reasons of diplomacy, she had not so light a hand with that particular spice as did Edene. “Payma could have stayed safe in Tsarepheth until the palace exploded, and you and I, Temur, would have parted ways when we had barely met.”

Barely met
seemed a parsimonious term for her having saved his fever-addled life, but he let it slide. Instead, as Edene slurped noodles from her tea, he reached into his pocket for the stone. Edene claimed she did not get hungry, but when food was put into her hands, she went to with a will.

He put the bag in Samarkar’s left hand while her right still balanced her barbaric eating sticks against the lip of her bowl. As civilized people, Temur and Edene ate with their hands.

“What is this?”

“You tell me, Wizard of Tsarepheth,” he replied.

She paused with the mouth of the bag half-picked, reached into a pocket of her coat, and pulled out a pair of fine silk gloves. She took her time settling her fingers into them while Temur watched and Edene kept her head bent over her dinner.

When Samarkar shook the stone into her shielded palm, she almost dropped it anyway. She winced, started to hold it up—as if to sniff it, the same way Temur had—and wrinkled her nose before it got close to her face. “This is ugly magic.”

“Necromancy?”

She squinted at the thing as if examining a counterfeit gemstone with a loupe. “Well, blood is generally a good sign of the sort of thing a sorcerer is more likely to meddle in than a wizard is. Where did this come from?”

Temur told her.

She balanced it on her gloved fingertips, as if to get it as far from her flesh as possible, and frowned down at it.

“Is it a protective talisman?” Edene asked.

Samarkar pursed her lips. “It’s more likely to be a communication spell,” she said. “See how it’s only half of a thing? Someone who had the other half could probably speak to whoever had this one.”

“And something died to make the magic work?”

“I’m no expert on this sort of thing—”

Edene put her bowl down. It was not empty. “Given the source,” she said, “more probably some
one
died.”

“Hmm,” said Temur. “I wonder if we could use it to talk to him.”

“Al-Sepehr?” Samarkar asked. “I doubt he’s open to negotiation.”

“The question,” said Temur, “is, what advantage can be gleaned from contact?”

Edene raised her bowl again. Mechanically, seemingly without appetite, she slurped a dumpling from the tea and bit it in half. When she had chewed and swallowed, she looked Temur in the face and said, “Advantage? Yours or his?”

Temur said, “If I get a knife into him, that would solve everything.”

“Saadet—Saadet ai-Mukhtar, they call her, Shahruz’s sister—will not be less determined to bring you down if al-Sepehr is gone. I know her from my captivity. She was very devoted to her brother.”

“That’s personal, and I will deal with it on that level when the time comes. The devotion I’m concerned about is to her cause. Is she as
devoted
to conquering the whole world in the name of the Sorcerer-Prince as al-Sepehr is?”

Edene put her bowl aside again. She seemed frailer and yet more full of energy every day, as if a flame inside her burned her flesh away. Temur watched her and worried, half-expecting her thin hands to turn translucent to the light as she gestured. The very old seemed this way sometimes.

But neither he nor Samarkar not Toragana had been able to argue her into having the damned ring removed.

“She’s pious,” Edene said. “She’s devout. But she’s not al-Sepehr.”

Samarkar said, “I think you just want to look your enemy in the eye. Just once.”

Temur neither answered nor looked at her.

She said, “I know you accepted the blood-vow geas of your own free will. And destroying al-Sepehr is the last task you need to accomplish to be free of it—”

“The others rather accomplished themselves,” he pointed out. “Maybe I should make an attempt to fulfill at least
one
of them.”

He rolled the stone on its cloth, lips pursed as he contemplated it. “We’ll try it,” he said at last.

Samarkar lifted her hands. He caught the glance she exchanged with Edene, and wondered what was behind it, but found himself too cowardly to ask.