Authors: Elizabeth Bear
He groped for his knife, left beside the bed. When he raised his opened eyes again, Samarkar stood over him, gold-flecked hazel eyes too pale in a changed face. She seemed stretched, misaligned—as if the bones lay wrong beneath her skin. She reached out to him with a hand that was wrong, taloned, the fingers crooked and too long. She clucked, as if to a mare.
… not to Temur. To the demonling; it flew up with still-moist wingbeats, lofting itself to perch on her fingertips like a tame songbird with its long tail trailing behind. Behind it, a second hatchling began to drag itself from between Samarkar’s fleshless jaws, and the thing standing over her—wearing her skin stitched tight with black cordage over alien bones—smiled in maternal delight.
Outside the window, Temur realized, a million more of the tiny monsters roosted, and the light had been dappled not by the turning of leaves but the movement of their gently fanning wings.
* * *
Temur woke in warm darkness, a woman’s breasts against his back, her arm around his waist, a press of lips to his nape that told him she lay awake. He was frozen at first, dream-locked, the horror of what he had seen still creeping up his spine and in his veins. For a moment, it was all he could do to breathe, in and then out again, and to curl his fingers around Samarkar’s supporting arm.
“Sky and stars,” he muttered when he could say anything at all, and he felt her pull him closer.
“Dreaming true?” she murmured.
He closed his eyes to better feel her breath against his ear. “I hope not. It was the Sorcerer-Prince again. Breeding an army of demons in the bodies of my friends.”
“Ugh.” She waited for him to continue, a gentle strength.
He leaned against her. “It wore a different skin this time.”
She kissed his neck again, still breathing. “Yes?”
She must have known already, from the weight of his pause. But she waited nonetheless for him to get it out.
“Yours.”
* * *
The scent haunted Edene. At stray moments, when her mind wandered, she would catch a hint of the smell of hot desert, of ammonia, of frankincense and bitter myrrh. It made her stomach clench as the babe had not, and made her wonder, each time, at her sanity. She could almost feel al-Sepehr at her shoulder—his cloying paternalism, his grotesque parodies of human emotion. Just the smell—remembered or imagined—was enough to bring paroxysms of loathing up in her.
She had been touring the storerooms with the tireless Besha Ghul—so many bolts of cloth, so many salvaged weapons of ancient Erem, so many barrels of meat too rancid and vile for anyone who was not a ghul to eat, all laid in readiness for war—when the sense of presence moved over her again. Sniffing, she turned—this was a storeroom, and it already smelled of putrid meat and resin; surely that was all—but she found that the scent followed her into the hall. She stood, sniffing, and the ghul was right behind her.
“I’m not crazy.”
Besha Ghul gave her exactly the look anyone would give a crazy person, if anyone were a dog-snouted, velvet-gray monster. “You smell something unclean, my Queen?”
Besides the rotten meat?
“I smell…” she hesitated. But she would not allow herself to be afraid to say his name. “I smell al-Sepehr. I mean, the man who—”
“We know of the al-Sepehrs,” the ghul said, its normal air of obsequiousness lost with the force of the interruption. Its ears went flat against the wrinkled head, lips curling in a slight snarl. “We knew of their master.”
Edene paused in surprise. “You don’t approve?”
“He cared not for Erem,” the ghul said. “Only for using its power against the other worlds.” A flicking gesture of distaste and dismissal with a clawed hand. “You will be a better Queen.”
The ring warm on her hand, Edene smiled.
I will be the best of queens.
But was not her own plan to use the ghulim to fight an outside war?
It was the curse, perhaps, of being commanded by a ring. Could she choose not to command them? Could—
She must. She
must
bring an army to Temur.
Her finger sweated under the warmth of the ring. The scent of frankincense suffused her senses. She closed her eyes, turned her head.
You are not real. You are not real.
It was like pushing back the felted wall of a collapsing white-house: a muffling pressure that wanted to overwhelm her, smother her under softness and weight. She breathed deep—pulled in, pulled up.
I am free of you! I am Edene!
The pressure broke. The stench of resin and guano faded.
Edene opened her eyes to see Besha Ghul. Its head cocked in concern.
“I’m fine,” said Edene, and fainted against the wall.
* * *
Al-Sepehr jerked his hands from the browned, burnished surface of a bone-dry skull and gasped as if he had been struck in the solar plexus. The image of a woman shivered in the air before him as if painted with smoke. When he breathed out, it blew to shred.
Rage washed him.
That a Qersnyk whore would oppose the Nameless!
But rage was a young man’s weakness, and after a moment of contemplation he folded it and set it aside.
“So,” he said. “Another way.”
* * *
In the morning, Samarkar sought out Hrahima. She found the Cho-tse in the still-shady courtyard, lying on her back with her head pillowed in her arms. Samarkar settled beside her, legs folded and fingertips resting on her knees. Assuming the pose brought back a powerful sense memory of cold wet and darkness in the proving chambers in the belly of the Citadel, and, though the heat of the day was already rising, Samarkar had to fight back the dry warmth that wanted to crackle from her fingertips.
The silence she sought eluded her at first; her awareness churned and fretted, returning again and again to Temur’s dreams, to the image of an army of demons bred in the bodies of the unsuspecting. Samarkar knew from practice that forcing her ill thoughts away would only bring them back increased in strength. Instead, she allowed the worries to enter her mind, acknowledged them, dismissed them. She came into a place where the heat could not trouble her, nor the press of responsibility, nor the threat of dire futures.
“Wizard,” said the Cho-tse lazily, after some time.
“Hrahima,” Samarkar answered, rising from the depths of a quieted mind. “I did not mean to disturb your rest.”
She opened her eyes to find the Cho-tse unmoved, still lying sprawled, but now regarding Samarkar with an unnerving tourmaline stare.
“It was only rest after a fashion.” Hrahima stood balanced on the pads of her hind feet before Samarkar had quite registered that she was rising. “A discipline of my tribe; the contemplation of the sun without and the Sun Within.”
Samarkar thought about questioning Hrahima about the Sun Within—that deity the Cho-tse both denied and yet, seemingly, venerated. But Samarkar deemed it likely that questions would beget only evasions, yet again. The wizard rose less gracefully, but—she flattered herself—with sufficient nimbleness for a mere human.
“There’s no sun here yet,” she said with a smile.
Hrahima crouched again like a fall of water and laid one massive hand flat on the stone. “But there has been, and there will be again, and a little of the old warmth lingers.” She looked up, whiskers flat against her cheeks. “Why do you seek me, Wizard Samarkar?”
“A favor,” Samarkar said. “Will your travels take you anywhere near the caliph’s palace this morning? If you are willing, I need you to be my messenger.”
* * *
But it turned out she did not, after all. Because the messenger from the palace arrived while Ato Tesefahun’s household (and guests, and those who—like Temur—hovered somewhere between) were sitting to breakfast. Bidden enter, he approached Ato Tesefahun and bowed beside the Aezin wizard’s seat. Ato Tesefahun acknowledged him immediately. Samarkar noticed that the messenger avoided even glancing in her direction. An unveiled woman at the table with men! She comforted herself that no matter how far she traveled, no matter how changed her role, she was still and always would be a scandal.
The messenger did not rise but extended a folded and wax-sealed packet: rag paper, by the look of it, less rare here than from whence Samarkar hailed. Ato Tesefahun accepted it, flipped it, and read the elegant script aloud.
“Once-Princess Samarkar-la,” he said, eyebrows rising. “Wizard of Tsarepheth.”
Someone less schooled by years of court than Samarkar would have glanced at the messenger in confusion, or at least lowered her gaze. Samarkar felt her own face grow still, the traces of amusement dropping from the corners of her mouth and eyes. It was almost a numbness, the creeping tingle of impassivity that she had learned so early and well.
She wondered if anyone—even Temur—could spot the way her pulse drummed so suddenly in her throat. He had been watching her differently. She did not think it was only that they had become lovers: it was his dream and the aftermath of watching her die. It frightened her—not for herself but for the anticipatory grief she saw in his expression already.
One of us
will
lose the other,
she told herself—once-princess, wizard, widow.
Possibly before the sun sets on us tonight.
She extended her hand and accepted the letter as Ato Tesefahun excused the messenger. The paper was soft and thick, crisp along the folds. It smelled sweet. She examined the writing. Flipped the note over and tilted it to see the seal and that the seal had not been broken, or lifted off and reaffixed. It was cobalt wax over crimson and dusted with gold foil. The snarling head of a griffin regarded her from within a wreath comprised of a verse of the poetry of Ysmat of the Beads, Prophet of the Scholar-God.
The verse concerned itself with the duties of nobility. The whole seal was uncommonly fine work. Silken ribbons lay beneath it.
“That is the caliph’s personal seal,” said Ato Tesefahun. “It is used only on letters written in his own hand.”
Samarkar looked at him through her lashes. She flipped the letter again and read the address, resting her wrist against the tabletop to hide how her hands were shaking. “He has an uncommonly fine hand.”
“He does not write so many things himself that it degrades with haste.” Ato Tesefahun placed his coffee cup down on the glass tabletop. It was piping hot, but in this arid climate it trailed no plume of white steam. “Are you going to open it?”
“It might be confidential.” She set the letter facedown, appropriated a jam knife from Brother Hsiung’s plate, then heated it against the chased silver side of the coffee service. When the dull blade was warm, she eased it under the seal and lifted.
The letter fell open in her hand when she picked it up again.
“O lovely Samarkar,”
she read aloud, while Ato Tesefahun’s eyebrows rose and Brother Hsiung stilled utterly, a bit of pastry and jam in his mouth. Across the table, Temur rocked back, forehead creased in a frown that did not reach his lips.
Watching him, Samarkar thought better of reciting the contents of the note verbatim. Instead, she scanned quickly—as quickly as she could, given the Uthman script—and set the note down before summarizing. “He wants to meet with me. Alone. In his chambers.”
Silence, except for Hrahima’s faint chuff and the jingle of rings as she flicked her ears.
“That,” said Ato Tesefahun, “would seem to be a romantic proposition.”
“Would it?” Samarkar said. She flicked her left hand toward her face, skimmed it dismissively over the front of her body. Now Temur made a sound, but not an articulate one, and Samarkar could see his knuckles tighten where he gripped the table.
It’s easier to be shared than to share,
she thought half-cheerfully and waited for Ato Tesefahun to speak.
“So it would seem,” he said, with a sideways glance toward the messenger—who was still regarding Ato Tesefahun, and not Samarkar at all. Which was all to the good, because it meant he didn’t see her roll her eyes.
“Excellent,” said Samarkar briskly. “Please tell his serene Excellency’s messenger to inform his serene Excellency that I will be in attendance this noon, as he requests.”
Ato Tesefahun did, and the messenger withdrew. Samarkar could still feel Temur’s eyes upon her.
“It’s a way of speaking to him in private.” She returned her attention to her breakfast.
“Some will call you his concubine, just from that,” Ato Tesefahun observed with the air of one pointing out that if someone does not eat the last slice of cake, it will go to waste.
“To name a thing is half of making it,” Samarkar said.
Ato Tesefahun’s lips quirked. “Only half, Wizard Samarkar?”
Whatever she might have replied was lost when Hsiung pushed away the remains of his meal and stood abruptly. He paused for a moment, fist clenched at his thighs. His eyes were downcast, but Samarkar could see the flicker of green light through his lashes. He turned away. She would have risen to support him, but he held up a palm to stay her. They watched as he made his way with clipped strides to the courtyard door and passed through it.
In the stretched silence that followed, Samarkar glanced at Temur, held his gaze. After a moment, he nodded and said, “I must see to the mare today,” as if merely making conversation rather than offering a truce, and a sort of apology. “If we must be ready to travel on an instant, it will not go well should Bansh be unsound.”
The others at the table busied themselves with their cups and plates, granting Samarkar and Temur a moment of privacy even in their midst. Samarkar could feel in that instant how something between Temur and her that might have stretched and snapped, otherwise, suddenly made itself solid and correct. A glorious, uneasy sensation rose up inside her. It could have been the feeling of the future rearranging itself a new pattern—but wasn’t that moment long past?
“She’s never unsound,” Samarkar said, a peace offering of her own. In her head, she heard her father calling her his heir, a near son, telling her that as she had no brothers, she must learn to be a man in their place. All that had changed with the birth of Songtsan … and yet none of it had changed at all.
A wizard knows that to name a thing is half of making it. What you call someone … defines them.