Authors: Elizabeth Bear
Prince Tsansong dangled from the upright stake, chains around his waist and under his armpits, his hands pulled whitely against his belly by the shackles. He was wild-eyed, wild-haired … but unmistakably alive. He looked up, his face stilling, and observed their approach silently. There was still enough light in the sky to see by.
The twins reached over their shoulder as if drawing a blade from a back sheath and produced a pair of long-handled cutters. The prince watched carefully as they fitted the blades into the chains that bound his wrists and pushed the handles together. It was hard—Shahruz would have cursed in frustration at Saadet’s body’s limited strength, if he had not been so pious a man—but with a grunt and a heave they levered the arms shut. Metal parted with an unmelodious
spang,
but the chains still held the prince off his feet.
“Be ready,” the twins said in Rasan.
The prince, watching their veiled face, nodded. When they snipped the long wrapped chain, he brought his hands up as he dropped to break his fall.
You did not often see the brother of a Bstangpo on his hands and knees among cinders. The twins paused for a moment to stow the cutters in their pack again before they reached to help him up.
But the prince was already pushing himself upright, blood dark on scraped palms and spotting the knees of his jade-colored breeches. He rose with the poise of a fit man, for all that the twins could see that he was disoriented—as who would not be?—and inclined his head to them.
“I am in your debt,” he said in Uthman.
“You are,” the twins responded. “Please, follow me.”
* * *
Having lit a lamp, the twins led the prince away from the rukh. They descended the obsidian- and pumice-strewn slope of the volcano’s caldera more elegantly than the rukh had done, though the lantern’s light got caught in the thick shrouds of mist and illuminated little besides the treacherous, rolling stones directly beneath their feet.
When they broke below the mists, their clothes and hair were drenched.
“We’ll freeze when we leave,” the prince said, his first words since the admission of debt owed.
“There are dry clothes on the rukh,” said Shahruz, keeping their hand from the hilt of his sword. “Here, just ahead.”
The twins pointed to the stone table, just visible now at the light’s edge, atop a strange, circular rise. The prince glanced from their finger to the incongruous piece of furniture and back again. He cocked his head, reminding Saadet of the rukh when it was deciding whether it wanted to eat someone.
“Hmh,” he said. He looked at her. “You know that what you have done—freeing me—will lead to war.”
“It needn’t have,” said the twins. “But yes, now that your brother has declared your life forfeit, your survival guarantees it. Even if you were to vanish, to flee to another land, Prince Tsansong…”
The twins shrugged.
The prince smiled tightly. “I would not even need to raise a banner myself for partisans to flock to it. Others would do it in my name.”
“Anyone with a grudge against the Bstangpo,” the twins agreed. They bowed and extended an arm, indicating that the prince should precede them.
He stood his ground, however, and regarded them steadily. His nostrils flared, perhaps at the faint scent of sulfur that hung all around. “I begin to comprehend why it is exactly that a Rahazeen assassin comes to the rescue of a condemned second son.”
The twins knew their smile showed around the veil—in the creases of their eyes, in the outlined shape of the face it hid. They had seen such smiles on one another’s faces often enough in times gone by. Whether the prince could read it or not was an open question, but his expression did seem to ease.
The prince stepped forward, the twins following a few steps behind. “What is this?” he asked, gesturing. His tone was light, interested. Intrigued.
“An altar of ancient Erem, the City of Jackals,” the twins answered. Saadet felt the handle of Shahruz’s wheel lock smooth against their palm as the prince leaned forward slightly, toiling up the rise in the breathless air. “Carefully, your highness. Do not stare at it too long. It is said that the dead script can blind you, the inscriptions rot your animus within your form.”
“And do not touch it, I suppose?” He crouched though, hands on knees, by the head of the table.
“Be very careful not to touch it,” the twins said.
The pistol barely hissed on cloth as Shahruz drew it into the hand that did not hold the lamp. But the prince heard it, and turned, eyes widening—
The lead ball—carved with symbols of ancient Erem, just as the table was—took him through the temple. It exited behind his left ear, taking most of his brain out with it.
The prince fell across the table, shivered, and lay still. Saadet felt the trigger sharp against their finger.
“For the Nameless,” said Shahruz.
“For the world,” his sister answered, as her gorge heaved and rose and she kept their eyes focused on the lumpy red spray smoking softly where it had fallen across the black stone altar.
The hot earth cracked beneath their feet. The ground shook, hard, like a waking beast.
Clutching the pistol in their right hand, the twins turned without a word and ran.
8
Edene climbed.
Long had she paced through moist tunnels. First she followed Besha Ghul’s bent shadow with eyes that pierced the dark as easily as if it were a night lit by ten dozen moons. As she gained confidence and felt the ring grow warm, felt the pull of ancient knowledge filling her blood and heart like it had always been there,
she
led the way through the labyrinth. In the end, as Edene had known they must, she and Besha Ghul found a stair, each riser low and narrow and worn from the passage of more feet than Edene could imagine.
The stairs might not go on so long as had the corridors, but it seemed while they climbed that they climbed them forever. Still Edene felt no fatigue: no hiss of tired breath, no ache of exerted muscles afflicted her. She climbed, that was all, as in a dream—and Besha Ghul climbed just behind her, nails of dry dog paws clicking on stone. Compounding the sense of dream, sometimes a faint thread of perfume came to her—resin incense, soured by ammonia in a way that made her think of Ala-Din.
At last, Edene rounded the corner of a landing and was dazzled. At her heels, Besha too blinked and snorted, ducking its head in dismay. “Suns-set,” the ghul said. “We can outwait it safely here, but should climb no higher.”
“Suns?” Even as she asked, the ring gave her the knowledge. The daylight was dangerous. Edene craned back her head, watching shadows move on the walls above. They were overlaid as if the light from several lanterns—or several moons—fell through an aperture. The effect was both strange and strangely familiar. She had long moments to examine it as she paused beside the ghul, waiting for the sense that it was safe to continue.
Erem had four suns, the nightsun and the three that ruled the day. The nightsun was a white pinpoint, as bright as four small moons. One of the daysuns was similar, and often ranged far ahead of or behind its companions. The other two danced closely with each other, neither bigger in the sky than a grain of barley. The larger was squashed and sullen and orange, twisted in a coil of flame like a dancer in her veils. That wreath made a streamer connecting the orange sun to its blue-hot companion.
The light of the blue star killed. It blistered flesh at a touch like dragon flame and whitened eyes until they were as blind as boiled eggs.
People had lived here once. But Erem was not a place for human gods.
At last the light above dimmed to indigo and Besha Ghul shifted restlessly. Edene climbed again. But only a few steps this time, just the length of one flight.
They emerged into a night such as Edene had never seen. They stood in the sandy belly of a canyon, cliff walls breaking the horizon on either side. The sky between them was a narrow torrent of indigo-violet, a textured deepness punctured by so many stars it was hard to see the color between them. There were three moons only—but such moons! The smallest—still bigger than any of the moons of the steppe and casting the light of ten such—was mottled ivory, sliding across the heavens so fast that Edene could stand and
watch
its forward edge eat the stars. Its next largest companion was a rust-hued monster, a wheel Edene thought she could stand inside, spread her arms and turn with—turn within—as it rolled through the sky.
The last and largest, though, was blacker than the night that lay behind it, visible only as a silhouette and a lazy gleam of opalescence. A semicircle loomed above the cliff edge, so heavy and present that Edene had to force her eyes down to counteract the fear that the swollen great thing would drop on her.
The green ring weighed warm and heavy on her hand. She touched it with the opposite fingers and wondered for a moment if she should pull it off, toss it away. But it was strength; it was power. It was her route to reclaim her family and her home.
Sand sifted across her worn slippers, filtered in through the holes. Her eyes adapted to this dark as well, and to the sharp, dueling shadows cast by moons and stars. When she looked up again she could see the dwellings carved into the tawny rock, the windows and doors black as the holes in a rank of skulls, the short sandy rise leading up to them. And she could see too the dozens or hundreds of gaunt shapes arrayed before those hollowed cliffs, standing not in ranks or lines but in ragged bunches, straggles, and clusters.
“Erem-of-the-Pillars,” said Besha Ghul.
“An army,” breathed Edene.
* * *
It was easy to sleep in Samarkar’s arms. Too easy, Temur thought, drifting, her fingers on his hair and the curve of her bosom pressing his cheek. He could
reach
the anxiety and outrage that had driven him this far, but he
had
to reach for them. They were somewhere else, at arm’s length, and the warm ease and comfort of the woman breathing against his scalp was here, now, present and real. The scent of her warmth filled his awareness. Her sweat dried lightly on his skin.
Well,
he thought,
at least you shall be rested.
He wasn’t sure why he fought the relaxation. His misery made nothing better for Edene in her durance—but in an obscure manner it comforted
him.
He thought Samarkar was asleep, but in his head he could hear her measured tones, the mountain accent with which she’d say
It comforts you because it comforts your grief, Re Temur. Your grief wants you to live for nothing else. Will you fight less hard for Edene if you do not allow it to cripple you?
He thought,
I will fight harder.
Ato Tesefahun must have ordered that lamps be hung in the courtyard tonight, because their light trickled through the louvers like dawn, golden and fragile, moving with each breath of wind that flipped the garden’s leaves. Temur watched it play along Samarkar’s hair that lay unbound and sleek across her shoulder and breast, watched the shine on the small hairs of his own forearm where it lay across her rib cage, lifted and dropped by the rhythm of her breath. Her head was toward the window; the gold light limned her silhouette: the downy edge of her cheek, the eggshell curve of an ear, her princess-stern face in shadow. No moist gleam of slitted eye suggested she was anything other than deeply asleep.
The glow from outside brightened.
Fire,
Temur thought, confusedly, but there was no tang of smoke, no crackle of burning. Had he slept after all, without knowing? Was he drifting awake again, the sun on the rise?
It was too silent for dawn. Where was the cacophony of birds and insects, the irrigated desert stirring awake? Where were the morning sounds of Asitaneh? All he could hear in the failing dark was the easy blur of his own breath, the more-and-more stentorian rasp of Samarkar’s. If not for the unease tossing in his belly, Temur might have closed his eyes and smiled against her shoulder.
The once-princess was snoring.
Except the sounds grew sharper and harder, rising to a wheezing whistle, a rattle, that made Temur’s fingers cold with fear. Her belly heaved, her body convulsing as if in a spasm of pleasure, and something rigid and smooth pushed her flesh against his arm. Temur recoiled, clutching at her shoulders as he rolled to his knees. He saw with horror the white foam at the corner of her mouth, the pregnant bulge of her abdomen that made her scars stretch shiny-taut in the daylight brightness.
She is the Wizard Samarkar,
he thought ridiculously.
She
cannot
get with child—
She gasped, then, or tried to gasp—but no air filled her. She strained and strained, face gray, eyes bulging, her hands pressing clawed nails frantically to his chest below the collarbone. Sweat beaded on her skin and ran into her hair. He watched the blood vessels burst in the whites of her eyes.
Something heaved inside her. That hideous creaking sound, the sharp greenstick snapping—those were her ribs, bowed up by the struggling of something within.
They were not alone in the room. Someone was behind him, a shadow at his shoulder, looming over them. The certain cold of a stare pierced his shoulders, but he could not turn away from Samarkar.
He reached out to her, laying his hands against her chest. An unfamiliar pins-and-needles tingle numbed him fingertips to wrists, chill soaking his flesh as if the life and energy rushed from his body into Samarkar. He had a sudden, vivid memory of Mongke Khagan laying hands on a leper, of rotten flesh growing supple under the Khan of Khans touch—and of the Khagan, afterward, shaking his hands as if his fingers had been frozen or burned.
What made Temur think he should have this power over life and death? And why did the flow of strength out of his hands seem to confirm that something, indeed, was happening?
Whatever he was accomplishing, it wasn’t enough, though he tried until the dark room spun.
Not until her struggles ceased and the first lank, slimed demonling undulated from her mouth in a well of blood and mucus did he turn away. Then, he could not turn fast enough. To his shame, he recoiled from the spatter across his face as the demonling fanned membranous wings and shook its head clean. Temur’s head snapped to the side, Samarkar’s blood unnaturally bitter upon his lips. He sobbed, but even clenching his eyes like fists did not remove the image of the skeletal, clawed thing drying its dark wings in the warm morning air. Temur thought the frail, bony limbs, the beaked and barbed head, the half-shuttered eyes would be with him until he died.