Steles of the Sky (6 page)

By the time she had been sufficiently sniffed and investigated, another woman had emerged from beneath a stretched hide tarpaulin screened with blankets. She too wore a Qersnyk rider’s long coat and breeches. As she straightened, Tsering saw a beaded patch covering one eye. She hunkered at the nursing woman’s side and rested a hand on her shoulder.

They each spoke a few words, too low and quick for Tsering to make out. Then the one-eyed woman spoke haltingly in Rasan. “I am Tsareg Toragana. I will translate for my sister, Tsareg Oljei. Sit, please, and I will bring you tea.”

Tsering sat on a rolled hide, trying to disguise her wince. Jurchadai turned so he was making a third side of an invisible square and positioned himself halfway between her and the sisters, and he too hunkered there as casually and comfortably as Tsering might have reclined in a bed. All those years in the saddle must result in particularly powerful crouching muscles.

Oljei, supporting her baby one-handed, moved to the dried-dung fire and poured steaming liquid into clay cups with hide guards whip-stitched and shrunken around them. Tsering guessed these would help keep the tea hot—and the hands holding the cup from burning. Oljei served Tsering first, then Jurchadai, and lastly Toragana and herself.

The tea was too hot to drink, and smelled mostly of wet leaves, as if it had been brewed over more than once—but a fat lump of fresh butter floated on top, melting dreamily into the brown liquor, and the steam that rose from it bathed Tsering’s face in warmth. In another month, it would freeze on her eyelashes. She closed her eyes and enjoyed the moment of peace, with the shaman-rememberer and the two women beside her, and the warmth of the fire at her right side.

It was only a moment, though. Then Oljei—by way of Toragana, though Tsering now understood more than some of the Qersnyk words—began to speak. Her scarred face painted in furrows by the firelight, she said (and Toragana translated), “This one prays you will pardon her rudeness, Wizard Tsering, in moving so quickly to matters of business. But we are all tired, and I know you will wish to eat and seek your own bed before it grows too cold.”

Her breath formed the shape of her words on the air. Tsering watched, fascinated, and almost forgot to sip her still-scalding tea and answer. “I am grateful for what time you can spare.”

Oljei’s face twisted around its scars; it might have been meant to be a smile. She glanced at her sister, and Toragana continued, “We wish to confer with you, Wizard Tsering, on where we next take the clans. Your people will be affected as well. Their only safety is with us; there are not enough Rasani to make it across the steppe without falling prey to bandits, now that the Khagan’s peace is ended.”

Hot as the tea was, the chill in Tsering’s belly was colder. “I am not a leader of my people.”

Now
that
was definitely a smile. And Oljei lifted her chin and brushed the unbound hair behind her shoulder. Her babe fussed in her arms; she switched it to the other breast so smoothly Tsering barely saw her adjust her coat. “It is you who have protected us during our time in Tsarepheth. It is you who befriended Ashra Khatun. It is you who helped cure the demon-cough. You have proven yourself a friend to the Qersnyk and to Clan Tsareg, and it is with you that we will confer.”

This time, Tsering sought refuge in the tea. The melted butter sent savory, salty tendrils through it, coating her chapped lips in relief. When she had drunk two swallows—with a pause between, because of the heat—she had collected herself enough to answer, “What do you propose?”

Toragana said, “We will go to Dragon Lake, and support Re Temur Khagan, son of Ashra Khatun. Your people are welcome to join us, but there is danger.”

Indeed. The danger of joining the vanguard declaring support for an untested would-be emperor. The danger of travel through the unpatrolled steppe and the patrolled Song borderlands. The danger of war, of conscription, of revolution.

“There is danger in traveling alone as well.” Tsering sipped her tea once more. “I shall speak to Hong-la. We must take the temper of our people. Before we are out of the mountains, we will decide.”

*   *   *

South of Tsarepheth, in the green sweeping valley of the river Tsarethi, in the shadow of the smoking Cold Fire, the Dowager Empress Regent Yangchen led her people away from the cracked walls of the Black Palace. They were laden, men and women leaning into high-sided carts to assist head-tossing mules and stolid yaks. Children herded chickens, feathered lizards, yaks, and shaggy sheep and goats with sticks. Women trudged, neck-bent, under comically disproportionate bundles, and the ash fell over them all.

At least the prevailing wind was blowing the bulk of the volcano’s debris north, away from them.
Toward the other refugee train.

Yangchen-tsa felt ashamed of her relief.

She told herself her people would have done this anyway—many of them, anyway. But it would normally be planned, faster and more efficient, adequately supplied. Those who traveled would normally be those with the resources to travel, and those who did not would hunker down in Tsarepheth and await the winter there.

Some always wintered over in the high country, including the wizards … but it had never much occurred to Yangchen before to think that, when her husbands and sister-wives and the late Dowager Empress and the Princess Samarkar and their court and cousins and staff and light women and fancy men and chefs and armorers and guardsmen and seamstresses and hangers-on packed up each autumn and headed south, to the lower elevations and more forgiving climes of Rasa, with its easy routes to Song and the Lotus Kingdoms, they were leaving behind half a city to endure the killing cold and murderous storms of deep winter in the Steles of the Sky. This time, everyone who could move was moving out, except some sick, the wizards who had elected to stay behind to protect the Citadel of Tsarepheth (and try to save it and the city that shared its name from the Cold Fire), and a few too stubborn or too old to leave their homes.

This caravan—chiefly afoot, full of people who could not possibly be carrying enough food or warm clothing for the march—would not move as quickly or as well, or have as easy a time feeding itself. Her belly sank as she considered the likely outcomes. Even with a large contingent of wizards and their entourage along, with their own rattling great carts and pack train of yaks and mules … this could end in death. And it was her duty to prevent as much of that death as possible.

With a start, Yangchen realized that all those people with whom she had used to travel were also dead, now. Except Samarkar, the fled-away Third-wife Payma-tsa, and Second-wife Tsechen-tsa, and Yangchen herself. And possibly—maybe—Tsansong. Although Yangchen thought she knew where the great bird that had carried him off had come from. She might have been naïve—by the Jade Courtesan, so naïve!—but she thought she understood, now, how her erstwhile ally operated. And she had recognized the Rukh as a larger—a gigantic—version of the eagle-sized birds that had ferried her messages to and from the one who had supplied her with poisons and abortifacients so she could—she now understood—do his work in weakening the Rasan Empire when she thought she was doing her own work and protecting a legacy for her son.

She could not say so, could not reveal the source of her dangerous knowledge, because that would reveal the lengths she had gone to, to protect her life and the position of her son. But she did not think that Prince Tsansong had survived long in the care of the al-Sepehr.

One more burden to carry alone. One more terrific error she must somehow redeem, because she could never make amends for it.

Yangchen had begun the day on foot, her babe on her back like many another woman’s—in solidarity. But her advisors—formerly her husband’s advisors—had insisted that it would be disheartening to her people to see her trudging along as if she had no resources with which to defend them. Yangchen had protested that she was not such a good rider, and that they had neither litters nor palanquins in which to carry her—and anyway, such stout-bodied slaves as might be bearing a sedan chair would be far better put to use carrying supplies, or the wounded, or the infirm. The elders and the advisors had listened, and nodded, and looked grave until—serene as she could make herself—she still felt like a child stamping her foot in a self-centered rage.

They had brought her a yak.

“I’ve never ridden a yak,” the dowager said.

“It’s easy,” na-Baryan assured her, his spotted narrow hands smoothing the spotted wide forehead of the beast. It was a royal yak, with long, silky fringes over its eyes, on its legs, along the crest of its neck, and around the perimeter of its body. Pigment darkened its ears and circles around its eyes. Otherwise it was largely white, freckled unevenly with black as if somebody had dipped a thumb in soot and repeatedly daubed its heavy body. Its horns were amber-colored with a black stripe up the inside of the left one; they curved like the ribs of a lyre but turned backward at the tips. “They’re very friendly. Very docile, your majesty.”

He had offered her the elaborately braided reins, looped through a gold ring that pierced the beast’s slick pink nose. Gingerly, she took them and showed the steer her palm. He had whuffed it. The nose had been just as slimy as it looked. She examined the tasseled red-and-gold brocade saddle and shook her head. But, with Gyaltsen’s assistance, she set her boot in the stirrup and swung herself awkwardly up. At least the yak wasn’t as tall as a pony.

So now she rode him astride, her side-split skirts hiked up scandalously, revealing a scandalous length of leg clad in scandalously filthy silken pantaloons. She moved up and down the line of refugees—her people—with a handful of attendants and guards, forcing herself to examine each exhausted face as she passed. This was only the beginning, and they already looked worn and weary.

How will they look when we reach Rasa?

How many of them will even be alive to see it?

Yangchen-tsa hoped to bring them to shelter in the winter capital before snow locked the passes down. They were leaving early—but nothing, it seemed, could be trusted this year. And this train would be slower than usual. Rasa was warmer and more southerly than the mountain holdfast Tsarepheth, closer to the trade routes and the mosaic of ten thousand principalities that comprised Song and the Lotus Kingdoms. Yangchen-tsa hoped the sky over Rasa would still be the bottomless blue she expected, and not this flat strange pale thing. She hoped to return in the spring, when the plague had passed and perhaps the mountain had returned to its slumber, to repair the Black Palace and reclaim the ancient and sacred city. She hoped to return in the spring, and bring Rasa’s proper sky with her.

She hoped—secretly, in a heart she could never tell—to redeem the fact that it was she who had made the mistakes that had led her people to this crisis.

But mostly, she hoped to survive until morning.

You wanted to be a queen
.
You are. Now rule like one.

Her mount required a smaller share of her attention that she might have liked. She could have used the distraction. Her heart thumped in her chest and her palms slicked with sweat despite the coolness. She had never, she realized, been given this much autonomy. Never been in charge of so much as herself, to say nothing of being charged with the well-being of so many others.

It was terrifying. It was … alchemical.

So much that had seemed important—passionately important!… her place at court, her rank among the ladies there—fell away, leaving her ability to care for these people, to keep them fed, to get them to Rasa. To be their queen.

She could not do enough to help. Have her men push a wagon from a rut here; help a child struggling with a too-large flock and a recalcitrant dog there. More problems would always arise. But the people—whom she had known to be resentful, even rebellious a few days before, when her husband was still rockily ensconced on the throne—seemed grateful when she came up to them, grateful when her guards lent their strength.

No one had ever looked at her with relief and gratitude before.

Her mount moved with a surprisingly gentle sort of swaying pace that had his belly fringes sweeping the earth like the skirts of a running woman. He seemed bulky and felted, but the shoulders between Yangchen-la’s knees were slabs of hard muscle beneath the spotted wool, and even bearing her weight and her son’s, his cloven hooves danced over the grass in a fashion she found surprisingly nimble.

She fed Namri in the saddle, shamelessly. She could have handed him off to one of his wet nurses, she realized later, but she did not wish to. She wanted him beside her, in her arms, at her breast. She wanted him where she could see him, even when he wailed at the unaccustomed motion and the unaccustomed brightness of being out all day under the uncompromising sky. She herself did not eat until the eerie retrograde sun was sliding down the eastern sky, and Gyaltsen came walking along the line of people seeking a place to pitch their improvised camps and laid a hand on the neck of her yak—who had proven himself exactly as gentle-souled and tractable as Yangchen-tsa knew herself not to be.

“You seem to be getting along well, Dowager,” he said, offering a hand to her boot to help her down from the saddle.

She staggered when her feet reached the ground. She only stayed on her feet through pride, and because Gyaltsen caught her by the waist. It was an act that could have cost him his hands, when Yangchen lived in a palace and spoke to men alone only when separated from them by a carven screen.

But she was a widow now, and it was hers to decide who touched her. That knowledge was perhaps the most exhilarating … the most unsettling realization of a deeply unsettling month. She stepped away from him lightly, the warmth of his hands on her hips following as if it had soaked into her flesh. Court discipline, years of toughening at her mother’s knee, was all that allowed her to move as if she did not feel the cramping agony in her back, buttocks, and inner thighs.