Range of Ghosts (28 page)

He gestured to the sheer walls of the cliff below, the rumpled desert beyond, the frame of stark brown mountains that limited the horizon. You could not walk out of that; not without knowledge and supplies.

Edene nodded. Even if she had not believed him, she would have nodded.

“If you wear your veil where men can see you,” al-Sepehr said, “you may have the freedom of the keep. The archers know to shoot you down if they see you fleeing.”

“I understand,” she said.

He gestured to the bird. The rukh. Against the pale sky, Edene saw the dark wings of its mate outlined and approaching. Some massive dead thing hung limply from her enormous claws. A camel, perhaps; the outline was correct.

Al-Sepehr said, “You say they are more beautiful in flight. They are,” he said. “But they are more useful to me here.”

Edene nodded as if she understood him. But all she could think was
A ring. A ring in his pocket that makes you move in silence, without being seen.

*   *   *

The emperor (no longer in-waiting) was so gracious as to dismiss them before he withdrew, flanked again by his two guards. Hrahima managed to hold her silence until the little group was outside the royal precinct and well away from any eavesdropping ear. And then her ears flattened and her tail lashed and she spat a Cho-tse word or phrase in tones that indicated it would be best for everyone if nobody asked what it meant. It echoed from the stone walls of the corridor. Samarkar imagined the force of it trembled the tears that still clung to her face.

She would not break down entirely. She would not give Songtsan that much. But it was hard.

Samarkar waited another ten steps or so, forcing herself to breathe by focusing on the pressure of her collar against her throat. Finally, as mildly as she could and in the lowest audible tones, she asked, “Were you about to cast a spell against his magnificence?”

That brought Hrahima’s ears up; in their ignominious retreat, they had outpaced the footman, and a few moments remained before he would catch up. “My people do not practice wizardry,” she said, but Samarkar heard the elision.

“But the legends of your people are full of stories of sorcery—”

“It’s not sorcery. And those are not my people’s legends.” Hrahima extended her stride.

With a glance backward at Temur, Samarkar broke into a trot to keep up. Her head came only to the Cho-tse’s bicep; a fast walk for Hrahima was very nearly a run for Samarkar.

“But the hypnotic gaze of your eyes—”

Samarkar choked off when Hrahima pinned her on just such a look, the irises of her eyes green and orange and shot through with fracture lines like the eyes of some tortoiseshell cats. Samarkar almost stumbled, and kept her balance only through deep concentration.

Hrahima hissed, but her hand snaked out to steady Samarkar, so Samarkar guessed the Cho-tse was not truly angry. “It is not sorcery,” she insisted. And then she, too, glanced over her shoulder—where bandy-legged Temur and the doorman were catching up—and muttered, “I spoke of the Immanent Destiny and the Sun Within.”

“You did.”

“The faith of my people demands surrender to these things. And in return, we are granted certain abilities.” Her shrug was a thing out of legend, shoulders rising and settling like the shaking of a mountain. “I have broken with the faith. Apparently my destiny was not something I could make myself surrender to.”

“And the abilities?”

“Oh,” Hrahima said. “
Those
remain. And
our
legends are full to brimming with stories of those who used them with insufficient humility. Imagine, if you will, what such a creature could wreak, unrestrained by the Bond of Service.”

“A Cho-tse Carrion-King.”

“At the least.”

“And you were tempted?” She knew the answer. But Hrahima’s anger was an opportunity to establish trust, and Samarkar was too many years a politician to allow that to slip through her hands.

Hrahima snorted, slowing at last. “Every day.”

Whatever Samarkar might have said in reply was interrupted by the hushing patter of feet running in silk slippers, echoing down one of the cross-corridors up ahead. Hrahima held up her hand, but Samarkar was already moving forward, calling on the patterns of protection worked into her collar. The light that blazed around her was green as jade this time, filtered through the energies of the translucent stones, painting the black stone walls with a viridian sheen. Now Hrahima extended her stride to keep up with Samarkar, and Temur and the footman, too, broke into a trot. But the running woman came into sight before either of them had taken more than a few steps.

It was Payma, dressed all in trailing robes of white and apricot silk, sliding, stumbling as she rounded the corner, righting herself against the far wall and charging on. The oiled tower of her hair fell in disarray from jeweled combs; her hands were bare of rings. Tears or sweat streaked the careful maquillage on her cheeks, the shadows that made her eyes seem as huge and dazzling as stars. She plunged forward, tripping on uneven stones, and Samarkar closed the distance between them in order to catch Payma before she could fall and bloody her knees and her palms.

The girl in Samarkar’s arms felt like a caterpillar’s twiggy tent, but as she fell against Samarkar’s side, Samarkar felt the firm, ripe curve of her belly and fought down a sharp moment of envy.
It’s not a sacrifice if it doesn’t mean anything to you.

“Payma,” Samarkar said, pulling her into the shelter of Samarkar’s green and airy light. The effect was as if Payma stood in the verdant tunnel beneath trees in a garden, her skin smoothed by flattering green shade. “Honored Sister-in-Law. What’s wrong?”

The girl—the
child,
in all honesty—might be in hysterics, but she was still a force. With one hand on Samarkar’s arm as a prop, she pushed herself upright, and erect as a queen she held up the other imperious hand.

“You,” Payma said to the footman, “you must go elsewhere.”

“Highness,” the footman said without question, and faded back down the hall. His evident relief told Samarkar that there was no question but that the chamberlain—then, perforce, Songtsan—would be informed of these events in mere moments.

Payma sagged, as if that had been her last strength. Samarkar slid a supporting arm around Payma’s shoulders, bending her knees to hold the princess upright. Hrahima bounded past, reaching the intersection Payma had just run through in a single leap. She scanned the side corridors with her tail lashing, her knees bent to a half crouch.

“Nothing,” she said, but Samarkar knew it was only a matter of time before some pursuit materialized. Princesses were not left to wander the palace corridors unescorted, in tears and in dishabille.

“You have to help me,” Payma said. She raised a hand to Samarkar’s cheek. She smelled of tears and snot and sandalwood and the tinted grease on her cheeks. “My husbands are going to … I mean…”—she gulped in a breath and seemed to draw strength from it, for the quaver dropped out of her voice and she spoke with strained dignity—“Songtsan is going to kill Tsansong. And I know I am not meant to have favorites between my husbands, but there is no doubt that the babe I carry is Tsansong’s child.”

Samarkar needed no help with the pitiless equations of politics. Songtsan had a boy child born; he had finally dispensed with his hated mother. What would stop him from removing his brother, his rival, and that rival’s unborn son?

She was a wizard of Tsarepheth. She was under the authority of the
bstangpo.
She had chosen that role in part so that her sons could never prove rivals to Songtsan’s lineage, because she knew precisely what her brother was capable of—and in part because it was the best measure of freedom from his machinations that she could buy.

“That’s treason,” she said, with a glance at Temur.
I’m willing,
she said with her eyes, praying he would understand. It had to be his choice.

He swallowed, one hand on his knife, and said only, “Do we try to rescue your brother?”

Samarkar wanted to close her eyes, but she would not. If she would condemn Tsansong to the flames, she would do it while meeting his lover’s gaze. “If we had an army, it might be possible.”

Payma wiped the runnels of makeup off her cheeks, smearing the apricot sleeve of her gown. She lifted her chin and put her free hand on the belly that Samarkar could not yet see beneath her robes. “I will save his scion,” she said, and Samarkar heard the ice in it—and how thin that ice was over the pain.

“If we can.” Hrahima, of course, had heard it all. Now she came striding back, her feet soundless as the wind through her fur. “Samarkar-la, this was your home. Tell us how to proceed.”

There were secret ways, of course—the palace at Tsarepheth was no different from any other palace in this regard. And while Samarkar was confident she knew them all, Songtsan was by no means more ignorant. Still, the first thing they must do was get Payma out of the corridor and start moving. And they could not take her out a guarded door, not unless they were prepared to fight.

The good news was that the Black Palace of Tsarepheth was like all fortresses; it was designed to keep enemies out, not in, and if one would keep certain ways within its walls secret, that meant they must also be kept secret from the majority of the men at arms.

Heart pounding against her collar, showing in the hollows of her wrists, Samarkar dimmed the green light of her wards and led her party quickly, by devious routes, into a lamplit servant’s hall and from there to a concealed stair. In the stair there was a wall that seemed solid until one touched a particular block and muttered an incantation consisting of the lineage of the Rasan imperial household for eight generations. The wall angled in, silently, and silently Samarkar brought her companions through. She sealed the wall behind them and drew one free breath, scented with the tallow smoke from the lamps that had seeped into everyone’s hair and clothes.

The light of Samarkar’s wards revealed a corridor wide enough for two to walk abreast, low enough that it brushed Temur’s hair, while Samarkar had to walk hunched and Hrahima just dropped down to all fours and scuttled like a frog crossed with a tiger.

“We need to keep moving,” Payma said. She minced on slippered feet as if they pained her, but made no complaint.

Samarkar took her hand. “We are.”

“This could not smell more empty,” Hrahima said. “There is not even dust.”

“That is why we must hurry,” Samarkar said. “There is no ventilation in these corridors. If we stood and waited, we would breathe all the air and suffocate.”

Temur reached out to put one hand on the wall, his face dewed in sweat although the passage was chill as a grave. He set off in advance, moving quietly, supporting himself as if the presence of the walls and ceiling were a weight he carried, which made him stagger. Of course: No steppe horse-lord would love this place.

But their only path out was through.

*   *   *

The weight of the palace itself seemed to press down on Temur’s chest, shortening his breathing and closing his vision to a tunnel. His people believed it ill luck to spill blood at an execution, and so they sewed criminals into leather bags and heaped stones upon them until they died. He knew this was not the same—not even remotely the same—but for the moment he imagined that each breath grew shallower than the last, his lungs exhausted with pushing out against all that stone.

The space was not silent. It should, he thought, be as close as it was still, but every breath and every footstep rang around them until the sound fell in tiers, like thunder echoing from distant mountains.

It is only a corridor. And Samarkar knows where you are going.

She walked behind him, her green light casting forward so he could see to place his feet and see his own shadow stretching out front. The princess in the silken robes shuffled beside her, and each breath came with a squeak. Someone was as terrified here as Temur. The cat was as silent as mist, but she, too, breathed more quickly than was her wont, and the long tunnel took up the echoes of her breath and made it seem like a whole tribe of tigers panting.

Temur heard Samarkar take a quick breath, make a small noise of assessing, and start to speak.

He thought at first she was asking a question, but before long, the rhythm of her words lulled him, and he realized she was telling a story. A children’s tale, the sort of thing you soothed a babe with.

“Long ago,” Samarkar began, “there was a woman of the borderlands, a princess who was the daughter of a Dowager Queen. Their demesne lay at the foot of the Steles of the Sky, and it would have been a poor land, except that by good fortune it was inhabited by a race of great stone beings called
talus,
who mined for the people there and produced metals and jewels.

“Now like many others, this land had been conquered by the Great Khagan, and the people owed him tribute.…”

She told a story, Temur realized with a smile, that he almost knew—and knew as history. In listening to it, he forgot for a little the cold fear that wanted to creep in and numb his limbs. The woman she described, who through trickery had saved her land from a bandit prince and her mother’s machinations towards rebellion, was Temur’s kin, for she had married his uncle Toghrul, and with Toghrul defended the borders of the Khaganate with great success. If his memory served him, her name was Nilufer, and unless news had missed him, she was still alive somewhere to the west in her holdfast called Stone Steading, in the foothills of the Steles, where she had reigned since long before Temur was born.

The wall under his hand had been smoothed by many hands before. The light was good, and even if they had had no light at all, there would be no great difficulty in walking; the floor was polished smooth—to ease finding one’s way in the dark, Temur thought, should one, in fleeing for one’s life, neglect a torch or lantern.