Authors: Elizabeth Bear
“I did not mean to imply you should,” Samarkar said. She was aware of Ato Tesefahun’s stare. Definitely time to change the subject.
She hesitated, studying fingernails that had begun to grow longer again after the hardships of the trail. “What if the caliph doesn’t sign the treaty? What if he uses it to prove Temur’s disloyalty?”
Ato Tesefahun shook his head. “Then you are on the road with a fugitive usurper. And nothing has changed.”
* * *
Whatever their fears of the caliph’s response, in the morning that same messenger awaited them beyond the door. In his right hand he carried a copy of Samarkar’s caligraphed document. In his left he carried a signet ring.
“From his serene Excellency with his compliments,” the messenger said to Temur, having bowed as if before a king.
Not
as if,
Temur reminded himself, accepting the ring and the document. It was not what he would have expected if he had known to expect anything—but an ancient green-and-black jade seal, intaglio of a running horse. The workmanship was Song, but the design was Qersnyk.
“What is this?” he asked. He wanted to be sure.
“A gift,” said the messenger. “It is from the Xa-shaol Dynasty.”
The last time the ten thousand princes of Song had been united under one supreme ruler, they had conquered the horse clans as far west as the holdfasts of the Lizard Folk—who in those days had mastered great trading cities and a parallel empire.
The ring would have been made by a Qersnyk, in that case, an artisan brought to Song as a slave or hostage. Temur wondered if the Song princes cut off the balls of stonemasons, too, or just bureaucrats—which they did with such abandon that the amazing thing was that there were enough of them left to breed the next generation.
“A prince needs a signet,” the messenger said. Temur thought he was quoting his master. “And if you can wear no crown on horseback, you can at least don a ring.”
Temur smiled. One could not spend too much time keeping company with Samarkar without picking up some of the nuances of politics, even if you were a second son whose greatest ambition in life had been to serve as one of your older brother’s generals. Although Temur supposed upon reflection that being a general demanded a grasp of politics too.
It had been Temur’s grandfather, the legendary Great Khagan Temusan for whom Temur was named, who had tossed a lotus-carved crown set with padparadschas and sapphires to the ground and asked dismissively, “Can I wear a crown on horseback? What throne do I need but a mare?”
The crown, gold worked by masters and studded with cerulean and sunset-colored gems, had been proffered to the Great Khagan as a form of appeasement by a prince of Vharathi, one of the Lotus Kingdoms. In respect for their quick and utter capitulation, Temusan had spared the city rapine and plunder—he was not above burning those that fought too hard. A forward-looking leader, he had understood that it helped encourage the next batch to surrender faster—but he had spurned their flattery.
It was from that incident that the Padparadscha Seat, saddle-throne of the Khaganate, took its name.
According to the histories, Temusan had then ridden his horde across the plain where the crown lay, trampling it to pieces. Temur was reasonably confident that in actuality some enterprising Qersnyk had leaned down and scooped the thing up before the sapphires were shattered by pounding hooves.
“Tell his serene Excellency,” Temur said, lingering over the words, “that the Khan of Khans meets his consideration with approval. You may withdraw.”
He stumbled over that last permission, but imagined Samarkar standing over the messenger’s shoulder, mouthing the words to him. It gave him the strength to continue.
“Thank you … Khan of Khans,” the messenger said to the floor. He scurried backward, withdrawing without raising his head or turning. If he wore a smile, his stooped head meant it was only for the tiles underfoot—and Temur was just as happy not to know.
He was still feeling chills up his neck from that phrase—“Khan of Khans”—when the explosion shook red dust from the crevices of the walls and rattled his bones one against another so only his flesh bound them together.
* * *
The messenger had vanished. Temur ran out into the street, into the cool morning-textured air, not expecting to see his blue-and-crimson livery lingering—but also not expecting the flood of people that surrounded him. Men, even women, some with veils stretched hastily across sacred faces by one hand.
If they were each one and all the image of the Scholar-God, Temur thought at random, the Scholar-God had as many faces as the demon Artiquq.
The commentary floated through his head as strange and aimless as the flakes of ash that settled from the summer sky. Chunks of masonry and hissing-hot, molten glass had already fallen and scattered the street like so many tumbledown stars. Now they were followed by lighter things, which did not fall as fast.
All around him, a press of neighbors—strangers, most of them, people Temur had glimpsed in the street toing and froing or simply never glimpsed at all—rocked and strained together. Their necks craned, their chins uplifted. Some had open mouths—some of the women too, and Temur could see the outline of their gaping jaws even through the fabric when they gasped air in.
A lazy curl of smoke rose from a crater where the glass factory had been.
Temur was not sure how long he had stared—not too long, a hundred fast heartbeats or so—when he became aware of Samarkar standing beside him, tugging his arm. “We have to go.”
“Samarkar?”
“We have to leave now,” she repeated.
“Why?” Maybe a stupid question, but he was dumbfounded by the shock, his ears ringing, his eyes stinging with the smallest particles the hot wind blew.
“The sun,” Samarkar said patiently. “It’s rising in the west. We are in the house of the enemy.”
His stomach dropped as his chin lifted. He turned, the pain of revelation sharp beneath his chest. The diffuse gray glow of morning, though dimmed by dust and ash, was giving way to mounting brightness in the west. And all the shadows—vague still, but blackening—streamed toward morning … or where morning should have been.
“That’s where we’re headed.” Temur’s voice sounded flat. “Rahazeen territory.”
“There’s a lot of desert to seek us in. Here we’re hawks on the ground. The caliph has a document that confirms your location. If the sky has changed, he is not in control of his own archives anymore. Assuming he’s even still in control of his own head.”
Temur tugged against her hand, and realized she was holding him. There was something he should be doing.
“The glassworks exploded.”
“I know.”
“There will be wounded.”
“I … know.” She seemed to steel herself. The Wizards of Tsarepheth, to a greater or lesser degree, were all physicians. Samarkar was not terribly focused on that branch of the arts—but what she knew had saved Temur’s life, once upon a time. He watched her struggle with her own healer’s nature and decided that he would not do more to make her suffer … which arguing certainly would. “There will also be revolution,” she reminded. “And Rahazeen assassins seeking you. And anyone you care for. We have to go.”
Temur shook his head in frustration, and quoted, “He who speaks truth must have one foot in the stirrup.”
“Right,” said Samarkar. “Because telling people true things has been such a priority for the last few days.”
He tipped his head to concede the point. “Grandfather can’t stay here. They’ll use him as a hostage like Edene. And he can’t come with us, not if we travel at speed.”
“We’ll think of something,” Samarkar said. “Come on, you need to pack. We’ll talk about it while we prepare.”
“I thought there would be more time.”
She nodded, pulling his fingers so his arm stretched out between them. “We always do.”
* * *
By now, Samarkar could pack almost as well as a Qersnyk woman. Temur had been raised to stay out of the way when the women were working—the plainsmen said, “His herds, her house,” and men weren’t expected to know their way around the deconstruction of a white-house—but it was easy to see that Samarkar’s expectations were different. And it wasn’t as if they were packing up a house. Just the gear they had traveled with, the provisions Samarkar had so far collected, and the new desert robes that Ato Tesefahun had given them. It wasn’t as if the sun and wind had not already scorched and chafed them … but it would be good to have a second set of muffling robes to augment the ones that Nilufer, the Khatun of Stone Steading, had given them.
Temur helped her fold things until she shooed him away. At loose ends, he found himself in the stable, where he tended to withdraw when unhappy or confused. What a strange custom, keeping the horses separate from the men.
Bansh was waiting. Her long neck stretched across the stall door before he came into sight; he guessed she could identify him from his footsteps. The first glimpse of the refined bones of her face made him both want to stop, to appreciate her—and to hurry over and throw his arms around her neck. There were other horses in the stable, but they were simply noise. Bansh was the one that mattered.
His hesitation annoyed her, and with a peremptory whinny she made her irritation known. He came to her, vaulted over the stall door, and landed softly in the sand beside her. She nudged him with a velvet nose, whiskers prickling his neck. He passed an arm around her neck and leaned into her, breathing deeply of the smell of warm horse, hay, and sweets.
Somebody had been bribing her with treats, and somebody had brushed her until her liver-and-black coat shone like watered silk even in the diffused light of the thick stone stables. Temur swallowed jealousy: he visited every day, but Ato Tesefahun’s stable hands took care of her as well.
It is their job,
he told himself.
She had begun to regain some of the flesh she’d lost in their desert trek. And maybe—he ran a hand along her ribs and behind them, judging her belly. Ticklish, she stamped, but he was sure of it now—some of the signs of her thickening girth were due not to better food, but to advancing pregnancy. He ducked down to get a better look at her loins and tuck. Her udder was already taut, but that was from the milk-letting songs he had sung her when they crossed the desert, not her body’s preparation for the baby. But still—
He thought a faint shiver of motion ran through her flesh. It could have been his imagination. It could have been the foal kicking.
Bansh showed every sign of being a seasoned mare; this was not her first foal. She would show her pregnancy earlier than a maiden, and while Temur did not know exactly when she had been gotten in foal, he guessed she would drop the filly in no more than four months and possibly as little as three.
In other words, on the way back from Ala-Din.
It couldn’t be helped. He’d tried to leave the mare behind once and she had thwarted him. And Qersnyk ponies were often enough born on the run.
He dug in his trousers for scraps of dried fruit and fed them to her one at a time, on a flattened palm. “Good girl,” he told her, stroking the warm, silky flesh behind her ears. “Good girl. You’ll be seeing more of me again soon.”
* * *
Qori Buqa, the man whom Saadet would make Khagan—for a while—stood beside the window of the twins’ chamber in Qarash, his embroidered silk robe pale against soot marks from the sacking that still licked up the stone wall. Although the sun had set and the evening glowed dull blue outside, he was still careful not to frame himself before the darkness within as he peered out across the square beyond.
“They come,” he said. “That’s something. I have their confidence at least.”
Saadet rose from the bed on which she lay, catching wolf hides about her shoulders as she stood. He had brought her another every time he came to her, and now they hid her body in strips of warmth that stirred as she crossed the room. She was aware that what she did was calculated, and her bare face burned with shame—but she did it anyway. If she must whore herself for the Nameless … at least she had no illusions that history would be kind to her because of it. But she did what she did not for history, but for the future.
She paused at Qori Buqa’s side, her eyes just cresting his shoulder, and let her breast and hip press his back. Beyond the window, in the forecourt beyond the walls of the keep, men and women sat or lay on scattered blankets, as in an encampment of sorts. Many of them were old; some were not and clutched children in their laps.
“There are so many,” Qori Buqa said.
“Who are they?”
“Penitents,” he said. “They come to be healed by the touch of the Khagan.” He sighed heavily, and whatever he was about to say died on his lips as he glanced at her.
“It’s strange, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Them?”
“Well, yes, them. Do they really believe your touch can heal them?”
“The Khagan’s touch
can
heal them.” He pressed the window frame so hard his fingertips paled. “The question is, can mine?”
She paused. She fitted her hand over his, telling herself as she did it that it was manipulation. That his held breath and eventual sigh were the goal. “That’s not what I meant.”
He leaned back against her, trapping the wolfskins between them. “What do you find strange, Saadet ai-al-Sepehr?”
“That here we are … together. And yet politics ensures there is so much we cannot say to one another. There is so much you conceal from me, because of who my father is.”
The corner of his moustache twitched as he hid a smile.
“You are the Khagan,” she said. “In their eyes you are. Are you so sure you cannot help them, if they believe you can?”
“Not yet,” he said. “Not until the clans acknowledge me. Not until—”
“You sit in the Padparadscha Seat,” she supplied.
He turned from the window and pulled her into his arms, leaning back against the wall beside it. He tucked her head under his chin. “So you know it’s missing?”
She nodded. “If you had it in your possession, would it not be on your mare?”
Silence, though he squeezed her shoulders tight.