Range of Ghosts (42 page)

He said, “Bansh can swim it.”

Samarkar snorted. “With you on her back? Both of you still injured from your fights? Don’t think I haven’t seen the cuts and bruises. You’ll kill your pony in the sea, man.”

Not to mention yourself.
But she wouldn’t say that.

She lifted her chin as the sea air lifted her hair, rough streamers draping her shoulders and trailing as if the tide already washed them. He had a vision of her drowned.

But her eyes were trained on the western shore. “I can see across,” she said. “What I can see, I can swim to.”

Temur looked to Brother Hsiung for support, but the monk shrugged and folded his arms across his chest. He wasn’t about to get in the way of a wizard of Tsarepheth. And Hrahima had wandered off down the shore, where she was turning over driftwood and prospecting among the weeds tossed on the shore—whether out of curiosity or after something edible, Temur had no idea.

Samarkar stripped off her clothing with rough efficiency, handing each piece to Brother Hsiung to fold and store in Bansh’s saddlebags. Brother Hsiung averted his eyes after her coat came off, merely holding out one hand behind him. She gave him her jeweled collar as well, to be padded and packed reverentially. Even her loincloth she pushed down her hips and seemed about to discard, but at the last moment she paused, twisting travel-stained linen between her hands.

Her breasts were full, slightly pendulous. Temur winced to see the scars of her neutering and how they marred the round moon of her belly. Travel had slackened her flesh, shrunken her ripe hips.

If she stayed with him, he could offer her nothing different. Not for a long time.

“I’ll need the gold,” she said, as Brother Hsiung made himself scarce by walking down the beach toward Hrahima. “To hire a boat to come and fetch you. Also, the grease for the lamp.”

Silently, he handed her what she asked for. While Samarkar coated her body liberally with the oil from the camel fat, he milked the mare and exchanged the fermented milk in her saddle-skin for fresh. While Samarkar twisted her loincloth into a kind of harness and sewed the gold inside, Temur sharpened his knife on a stone. When the edge was a razor, he sheathed it and stood. Taking up the bowl of
airag,
Temur went to stand by Bansh’s fine-boned dark head. He touched her soft nose, admiring how the sunlight filled her hide with gleams of red and white-gold.

“Bring me clean water,” he said to the naked woman, and realized only when she returned with the leathern pail brimming and cold with the salty seawater, that he’d addressed a princess and a wizard as if she were a serving girl. She merely arched an eyebrow as she handed it over, but he looked down, abashed.

He took a rag and washed the mare’s neck. Not until he drew the honed knife from his pocket and felt for the heat and pressure of the vein behind delicate skin did Samarkar lay her fingertips on his hand. “Temur,” she said.

“You will have this,” he said, and nicked the mare’s neck with the sharpest bit of blade.

The trickle that ran from the cut was deep red, flowing freely but not too strong. He reached out his hand; Samarkar put the bowl into it, and Temur pressed it into place to catch the flow of blood. Red ran into white, a puddle then a spiral as Temur swirled the cup to mix it. He handed the cup to Samarkar and picked up the salt-water-soaked rag once more.

“Drink it while it’s warm.” His good mare didn’t snort once, until he pressed the rag to her wound, staunching the flow. She stamped and leaned away but did not move off.

When he turned back, though, Samarkar was still staring at him over the wooden rim. He raised his brows; silently she toasted him and downed the draught.

“Take the camel fat, too.” He pressed harder against Bansh’s neck, though the bleeding had stopped. “You can suck on it while you swim. And take my knife in case you have to fight something.”

*   *   *

The sea was warm at the surface, cold if she let her legs dip below that top layer. It was challenging at first; the waves approaching the beach had strong currents and eddies. But even they did not rival the currents of the Tsarethi. And once she was out past the breakers into the swells, she found it was easy to time them, and she let them lift her on their backs like a mother dandling a child. The water seemed thicker than water she had known before, bearing her up more easily, and Samarkar’s wizard mind wondered if that was a result of the salt she could taste in it. Salt could make an egg float; why not a woman?

After the first few
li,
Samarkar found her rhythm. She stroked long and evenly, working for endurance rather than speed. There was a long way to go, and she did not want to exhaust herself. It was hard to pace herself, though, and her only opportunities to rest would come while treading water. Hard to remember that her left arm was still weaker than it should be and might fail her or cramp disastrously.

She could rest, though, and that was a way in which this sea was different from the mountain rivers she had learned in. There, to rest was to risk being dashed into rocks or swept out of the safe parts of the river. Here, it just meant losing time while you floated.

Losing time—and losing ground, she soon realized. Because there was a current here, something she had not anticipated. She’d been thinking of this sea as a big lake, static water. But she could see the land on the far side slipping past.

The White Sea, she remembered, flowed through the Strait of Asitaneh into the Western Ocean. It drained all the north- and west-flowing rivers on this side of the Steles.

Of course it had a current. She should have started off a good way upstream. But she was committed now; there was no option except to keep going or turn back and admit defeat.

Samarkar cursed herself for an idiot and kept swimming, nibbling pieces of Temur’s camel fat from time to time for strength and trying not to swallow too much seawater while she did so. The sun might bake her, the salt water parch her skin. She was the wizard Samarkar. She was not going to quietly drown.

*   *   *

Night fell, a blessed relief from the battering sun. A single moon rose, a cupped sliver guiding her with its light.

She was tired. She ached in every limb. Hunger cramped her stomach; exhaustion cramped her muscles. She called upon wizarding disciplines now and hoped that would be enough to give her strength.

She had sat unmoving in a hole in the cold darkness for three days and walked out a magician. What was swimming a sea to that?

Samarkar looked into herself and found the quiet. The quiet sustained her. She swam on.

*   *   *

The sunset.
It spilled through the halls of Ala-Din through each high window, its angle low enough now to make the shades and awnings useless. Because Ala-Din stood on a high place, the sun dipped below it before it dipped below the rim of the world. Edene followed its light as it rose through the bastion, sweeping up walls and across ceilings.

She stole down passages, a tray in her hands, anonymous in her veil among other women scurrying with short steps and hunched shoulders. The stronghold was still empty, curiously so—the monks had not returned yet from whatever excursion took most of them away. Several of the old masters remained behind, too infirm for hard travel, and a half dozen of the youngest novices, who were beardless boys still.

That tray was her safe conduct, and she carried it before her like a shield until she came to al-Sepehr’s rooms. They were not locked—what need had al-Sepehr to lock his own rooms at the very heart of his power?—and Edene slipped inside with little trouble.

She set the tray on a stool beside the door and closed the door softly. The latch clicked; she pulled in the cord that made it easy to open from the outside. Anyone who wanted to come in now would have to break the door open.

She did not think she would need very much time.

He might have taken the ring with him, and a terrible unease filled Edene when she realized it no longer sat so carelessly in the teakwood tray on his chest. Forcing herself to move calmly, she crouched, her belly pressing her thighs wide, and opened the lid.

It was heavy and plain, lined with cedar, from the smell. Sturdy brass hinges operated without a squeak.

Edene lifted the first layer of woven cotton and found a small silk pouch embroidered in Song style just below. It lay flat, as if empty or nearly so. When she lifted it, she could feel a smooth, hard round within, so heavy it startled her.

Now her hands trembled as the tugged at the drawstrings. They shook so much when she tried to reach inside the pouch that she gave in and upended the contents into her palm.

A ring.

Plain and stark as the room she squatted in, crudely hammered so it barely shone, its only beauty was in the metal. She’d never seen metal quite this color; not green and also
not
not-green, exactly, but more the color a leaf would be if a plant grew gold.

She held it in her palm. It was cold. She lifted it to her eye. When her breath blew across it, the metal misted. It was made of one continuous piece that must have been cast that way, or pierced and stretched. There was no inscription within or without, no symbols etched into the band. Just hammer marks.

It weighed more, she thought, than even gold should weigh.

She stood up, aware as always of late how her balance had shifted from the day before, aware of how the life inside her changed her body. Trembling still, she slipped the ring onto her finger.

Her hand vanished before her eyes, as if a layer of soft dust blew across it.

*   *   *

It was not land Samarkar found at last, but a ship. A ship full of men very surprised to pull a naked woman from the sea. But they wrapped her in blankets and gave her boiled coffee on the brazier, so sugared she would normally have found it undrinkable. She hadn’t had coffee since she lived in Song, and the burnt astringency and syrupy sweetness seared through her fast and hard. It stopped her shivering, though, and gave her empty stomach something to cramp around.

The deck of the ship pitched beneath her, all its instability feeling peculiarly solid after so long in the sea. The crew clustered around her until one—the captain?—yelled at them to get back to work. Samarkar watched the bustle in awe. It seemed to require a lot of constant effort to keep the square sails doing what they should.

The presumptive captain alone approached her. “Do you speak human?” he asked in Uthman.

She blinked, only then realizing that the whole time they hauled her from the sea, she had not spoken a word. “I do,” she said, her voice creaky with disuse. She coughed and sipped more syrupy coffee. “I need your help. I want to pay you to carry some passengers from the far shore to Asitaneh.”

“Pay us?” he laughed. “With what?”

Silently, she untied the sling from around her waist and began counting out heavy, hammer-struck coins of Rasan gold. “There’s more on the far shore,” she said. “And Rasan salt. And Ato Tesafahun will no doubt reward you for our rescue as well.”

The name, as she had hoped, was one to conjure with. She spoke it, and suddenly men moved to wrap her in still more dry blankets and replace her empty cup with one filled with a gruel of beef and grain.

*   *   *

Temur found to his surprise that the boat suited him well. It was like a mare of the sea. Brother Hsiung did not enjoy the rocking motion, however, and Samarkar was kept busy treating him for nausea.

Samarkar: Temur would never forget how she had looked, waving to him from the prow of a longboat in sailors’ borrowed clothes. The way his heart had leaped up to see her.

After all their adventures, it seemed a little ridiculous how easy it was to reach Temur’s grandfather. The hardest part was getting Bansh on and off the ship, and the crew had slings and tackle they seemed accustomed to using for just such a process. Samarkar swam out with the mare and dove under her belly to secure the sling, while Temur waited unsettled for her on the deck and called down encouragement and praise.

Temur was grateful that it was Bansh who had to be so treated, and not Buldshak.

The passage was quick and uneventful. After less than a day, Asitaneh came into view—the fabled city of red stone and onion-topped towers that guarded the strait. The ship docked, its captain and men much the richer. They led Bansh down the gangplank, Temur first having muffled her hooves in sacking so the hollow ring of the wood underfoot would not frighten her. Deep in his heart, he suspected that it was more to comfort him than because she needed the reassurance. And Hrahima—after sending a runner ahead with a message to expect them—simply brought them through the crowded, bustling streets as if it were of no more consequence than bringing the flock in for shearing.

Temur had seen cities before, of course—but nothing quite like Asitaneh. Its streets were
paved,
with the same red stone of which its walls were built, and some of its towers were six stories or more. The streets crawled with people—a living carpet of them—the majority of the women veiled and cloaked, the men wearing shawls draped over their heads and filleted in place against the sun. People stared openly at Samarkar, who had resumed her worn black coat and jade collar, and who wore her long hair combed shining over her shoulders.

They saw the caliph’s men on their dish-nosed geldings and mares, sunlight glittering off tassled saddles as adorned with bullion and silk as an emperor’s chair. They saw beggars and cripples and half-naked slaves hustling along barefoot, bearing heavy baskets. They passed water sellers and concealed nobility in palanquins.

The city had more than one market—they passed three, and Hrahima told Samarkar that none of these was even the main one. In one, there were camels lined up, unharnessed except for plain halters, and a stern-looking man in black walked along the line, scowling at each one.

“Are they for sale?” Temur asked.