Range of Ghosts (26 page)

Samarkar touched his shoulder lightly, so lightly he barely startled, and said, “We have a range, if you want to practice your archery.”

She watched his eyes focus, watched him decide to smile. “My bow won’t love the wet here,” he said. A moist climate could cause the laminated steppe bow to lose strength or even come apart entirely. He’d left it in his quarters, wrapped in oilskins and carefully cased. “I suppose I could borrow one?”

She nodded. As they crossed the plaza between the battlements, he stared away north—the direction of Qeshqer and the steppe. “I should leave in the morning,” he said. “This will grow no easier for the waiting.”

“This?”

“If it’s an army I must raise, well, there is only one place to do that. In my own lands, with whatever small fame and face is mine. There is no help here, and I must do whatever it takes to save Edene. If I must ride to the Teeth of Ctesifon themselves.”

He said it quietly, with a fatalism that Samarkar, accustomed to the portentous edicts of her brother, found chilling. He would, she thought. To the Teeth of Ctesifon—or to the seven gates of Hell.

“You are free to go,” she said. “Your assistance in bringing word of the fall of Qeshqer to the
bstangpo
will not be forgotten.”

He looked up. “Qeshqer was our city.”

She let herself smile, but only one corner of her mouth would cooperate. “But our people.”

He frowned, as if he’d never considered it quite that way before. He touched his lips, as if about to say something, and turned away. Samarkar stood rooted, wondering if she should let him walk off or follow.…

The shadow that fell over her came unheralded by any footsteps, and only the training of a once-princess kept her from flinching and crying out in surprise. It was Hrahima, of course, her black stripes glossy in the sun, her pale belly lustrous with grooming. Temur turned, his hand going to the hilt of his knife, and relaxed again when he saw who had come up on them. He stepped sideways, getting the sun to his back when he looked up at Hrahima, and Samarkar too stepped out of her shadow.

“You could try to make more noise,” Samarkar said with a smile. “You might be greeted with less screaming.”

Framed against a blue sky and snapping banners, the Cho-tse smoothed her whiskers back. “I have an audience with the
bstangpo
this afternoon. Perhaps you would come with me, Samarkar-la? To lend authority to my words?” She looked beyond Samarkar, to Temur, and spread her great hands. “And you, Temur? You have knowledge perhaps the monkey-king should hear as well.”

Samarkar looked at Temur. He seemed to hesitate; she imagined he had spent much of his life effacing himself, in ways that reminded her of her younger brother Tsansong.

And there was a barbed arrow to the heart. There had been no answer to her note—but in reality, she expected none. What could she do? With one mountain-sick plainsman and a Cho-tse, mount an assault to free him? People did not escape the dungeons of the Black Palace.

“I will come,” Samarkar said, setting herself forward, telling herself that the sense of portent that accompanied the words was nothing but her own overnurtured self-image. Though it was bitter in her mouth, she said, “There are ways I mollify him. Though they may do my dignity no good.”

She made a point not to glance at Temur, not to make this about him. But she was unsurprised when his shadow nodded on the ground at her feet, and he said, “I too will come.”

*   *   *

The palace was as it always was, but this time Samarkar was aware of her companions’ reactions to its endless corridors and intricate stoneworks. As they trailed behind a doorman—not Baryan, this time, but a young man Samarkar did not know—she heard Hrahima’s deep sniffs. The Cho-tse was memorizing and categorizing every scent. Samarkar was aware, too, of Temur glancing about—not as wide-eyed as she had anticipated, but rather considering, calculating. Assessing the place as a warrior, Samarkar realized, with an eye to its frailties and strengths.

All men fancy themselves warriors, and all warriors are the same.
Possibly that was not fair to men, but Samarkar had already worked herself into a lather of irritation at her brother, and it was spilling over to others.

Because it was Hrahima’s audience, she followed closest behind the doorman, with Samarkar and Temur sweeping behind her like the wings of a cloak she was not wearing. The footman showed them into the antechamber that had been her father’s privy closet. That was a good sign, as was the platter of tea and sweets set waiting.

She also knew that this room was replete with cunning hides and blinds where an emperor could have his closest advisors crouch behind the very stone walls and hear and see clearly what was said and done within. That suggested that Songtsan-tsa was taking his strange inhuman emissary seriously.

Whether he meant to give her a fair hearing, or whether he had already made up his mind what to do, was anybody’s guess.

The doorman gestured them within the antechamber and shut the door. Into the ensuing silence, Hrahima muttered, “What now?”

“We wait the
bstangpo
’s pleasure,” Samarkar said. “At least there is tea.”

Hrahima’s brow wrinkled. “What is the protocol?”

“We stand,” Samarkar said, moving to the sideboard. “Until the Emperor-in-Waiting graces us with his presence. We stay on this carpet; the emperor will stand on that one.” She gestured to where two carpets, one red and one white, lay separated by half the height of a man on the dark stone floor.

It turned out they had not long to wait. Samarkar had barely filled the cups when the door on the far side of the room opened, allowing her to smoothly fill a fourth and have it ready to present to her brother as he entered. She knelt at the edge of the white carpet, the cup upraised; he leaned out to take it, and touched her wrist with his other hand to bid her stand. Two guards who had entered with him set their backs against the wall beside the door and made of themselves statues, whose tassels could only be seen to flutter slightly when they breathed.

“You need not wait on me with your own hands,
aphei,
” he said.

“I am here not as a wizard,” Samarkar said, rising, “but as your sister, and so I do you what duty a family member may.”

His eyebrows arched, but that was all, and as Samarkar passed out tea to the others present, he deigned to sip his.
At least he does not suspect I would poison him.
Or possibly he’d just resorted to philters. There was enough jewelry hung about his body that a wizarded pearl would go unnoticed, and Samarkar was not about to risk entering a trance state now to see if she could detect the presence of such an enchantment.

“You support the Cho-tse ambassador’s story?” he said.

She nodded, glancing at Hrahima. But Hrahima held out a beseeching hand—the one unburdened by tea—and said, “Your Magnificence must understand that I am not an ambassador of the Cho-tse. Rather, I come as an independent emissary of the wizard Ato Tesefahun of Ctesifon, on a matter of great concern to all nations.”

“Proceed,” Songtsan said, every inch the apparent emperor.

Samarkar cupped her own tea bowl and watched quietly while Hrahima recounted her story for Songtsan—a story in almost all respects similar to the one she had told Samarkar and Temur on the road. For Songtsan, she went into more detail about the Rahazeen fortifications, stressing how impressive they were, how mountain-fast, and that it would probably take siege machines or companies of wizards to breach them.

At this, Songtsan glanced at Temur. Temur nodded. “I have spoken with men who rode against the Rahazeen fortresses,” he said. “Even the Great Khagan never managed to capture more than one or two of them, and at great cost for little gain. The Rahazeen put them in barren places by preference, and there is little won in the sack or conquest of such places.”

“But they make excellent bases for war such as you monkey-men wage,” Hrahima said. “Fastnesses are proof against all but the most resourceful and determined troops.”

Songtsan tossed back the cold remains of his tea and set the bowl aside before Samarkar could move to refill it. It was a sign the interview was coming to an end, and Samarkar touched Hrahima’s arm to be sure Hrahima knew it. Hrahima’s great feet shifted at the edge of the white rug; the tips of her claws protruded. Samarkar saw her wrap one hand inside the other to hide the evidence of premature irritation.

Premature, or perhaps prescient. Because Songtsan looked up into the tiger’s eyes and said, “There are benefits to allowing one’s enemies to eat each other, when one is in position to pick up the pieces later. I do not think I will interfere in a war between the Rahazeen and the Qersnyk. It benefits me more than either of them.”

Samarkar meant to bite her lip but could not. The memory of a pile of raw bones lay within her, forcing impassioned words from her mouth. “Honored Brother,” she burst out, “are not the dead of Qeshqer our people? Is that not a sufficient act of war?”

“They are,” he said. “And I have every intention of avenging them. Once the plainsmen and the assassins have thinned one another out.”

Samarkar saw the muscle ripple in Temur’s jaw as he clenched it against the words that wanted to fly loose. His hand trembled so the dregs of his tea wet his fingers. Carefully, he extended an arm and put the eggshell-thin porcelain bowl down before it could shatter.

He said nothing, even though Songtsan looked at him inquiringly for a moment. Samarkar also saw the curious gesture Hrahima made—arrested, half completed—and recognized it for something of arcane intent aborted before it was fully formed.
And yet she said her people did not have wizards.

But that was a question for later, when they found themselves alone.

“Of course, Honored Brother,” Samarkar said. She lowered her eyes, bent her body almost parallel to the floor with her arms at her sides. She held the pose, uncomfortable as it was, for a few dozen heartbeats before Songtsan deigned to notice her.

“Honored Sister,” he said.

Everything she felt seemed to rise up at once, seizing her throat, banding her heart so tightly she felt each beat like a blow.

“I have heard,” she began carefully, “that our brother is a prisoner.”

Songtsan set himself back on his heels. “Our mother died of arsenic,” he said. “Someone must go to the fire.”

Her hands shook. She could not stop the heat of tears as they trickled down her cheeks, spotting the floor above which she held her face. Songtsan’s voice seemed to come from all around her, and all she could see was the toes of his shoes. His voice was cold, a threat. A voice she had obeyed in almost all things, since it sent her away to be fostered then married at fourteen.

She found the ice of determination in her heart like a hook and hung her courage from it. “Must it be Tsansong?”

“Would you rather it were you?” Songtsan did not sound like a man who threatened, but merely like one who was tired. Of course, with his coronation looming, all the administrative tasks his mother had previously taken off his hands …

Somehow, she found the will to ask again. “Must it be our brother? Can he not … can he not come to the wizards, where he would be no threat to you?”

Songtsan stepped back. She knew him too well to think she had shamed him. More probably, she had bored him—but sometimes he would do things for the pleasure of seeing you plead again the next time.

“He is not dutiful,” Songtsan said, and turned his back on her.

*   *   *

This time, when al-Sepehr arose from his copyist’s prayer, it was because he had come to the end of a chapter. He was not alone in the scriptorium this hour. Others of the Nameless toiled about him, heads bent as hands worked black ink into the ordained labyrinth of holy words across mottled, creamy vellum. Al-Sepehr left silently out of respect for them, his soft-shod feet making no noise on sanded stones.

The scriptorium’s arched windows let in both breezes and the awning-filtered light of the sun. One did not do a copyist’s work by lamplight—not for long, anyway, and not accurately. Because of this, the scholarly devotions of Rahazeen monks took place largely in daylight hours, while their more martial pursuits could be attended to in the morning or evening. Sorcery had its own times, the hours of the day being appropriate for different invocations depending upon their natures and energies.

Al-Sepehr tugged his veil across his face as he stepped into the brutal glare of the courtyard. The afternoon midway between noon and evenset was one such time. The hour of fire; the hour when the sun blazed hottest. The hour of Vajhir, a pagan god of Messaline who ruled over flames and the sun. But they were not in Messaline now, and this time was important to al-Sepehr’s Scholar-God as well.

Unlike lesser deities, the Scholar-God was singular. She had no name because she needed none, being singular. The Nameless, too, were singular. It was the teaching of Sepehr al-Rach
ī
d ibn Sepehr that there were no true prophets—not Ysmat of the Beads nor any other—and that only the naked word of the Scholar-God could be trusted.

It was an irony, al-Sepehr thought, that led some to treat al-Rach
ī
d as a prophet himself, when the so-called Sorcerer-Prince had denied that any such existed. Al-Sepehr was not one of the ones who believed that al-Rach
ī
d had been a prophet. Although he did acknowledge al-Rach
ī
d’s demidivinity—a different thing entirely.

And he, of the line of Sepehr himself, as the leader of the Nameless here in Ala-Din, had al-Rach
ī
d’s library at his disposal. It was to that library that he traveled now, past the courtyards dusty and empty in the sweltering sun, past the deep wells and cisterns with their heavy stone lids to hold the water within.

So little of sorcery was mystic circles scribed in blood and fuming censers. Oh, there was sacrifice, of course—al-Sepehr thought of the stones in his trouser pocket again—but most of his work was done bent over ancient tomes written in the crabbed handwriting of al-Rach
ī
d or al-Rach
ī
d’s heirs.