And they were carved in relief like the stelae guarding the barrows outside. Which he could see now was not crude at all, but when the rain and snow of countless winters had not weathered it, instead consisted of intricate stylized depictions of men and women, warriors and horses that intertwined in elaborate knotworks.
The moving shadow of more dragon banners fell across Temur’s face. He paused and glanced from Samarkar to Hsiung to see if they noticed what he did. Brother Hsiung was a master of subtle communication, and his eyebrows spoke volumes now.
“I have seen carvings like this,” Temur said, “in Song. But they were of jade, not wood.”
“Well, of course,” Saura said. “You are Qersnyk—”
“I have that honor.”
“—And so you know the Khagan’s empire stretches from the rising to the setting of the sun.”
“That is how I came to be in Song.”
Saura smiled. “Five hundred years ago, the empire that reached the ocean to the east and the sea to the west was ours; all the known earth was the realm of the Dragon Peoples. But men are weak; empires fall. The Dragon Peoples are subjects of the caliph, now.”
Temur felt the flash of heat through his body as he considered all his grandfather had built, as he thought of what the Nameless might plan for Uthman and Qersnyk alike, and the fate of all these little kingdoms, should they crumble back into lawless borderlands.
“You speak nothing but truth,” he said, though the words were painful.
Saura nodded. “I will need your weapons,” he said.
That was actually quite funny, as Temur divested himself of his sheath knife, and the other three showed their empty hands. The fact that each of them was more than capable of dealing death, messy or precise, with those hands went unremarked. Possibly Saura did not quite realize it, although he would have been hard-pressed to misunderstand the capabilities of the Cho-tse.
Saura stepped forward, and a pair of servants in yellow cotton coats bowed low and opened wide the bravely carved doors.
“Her name is King Tzitzik,” Saura said kindly, and pushed Temur forward into the gloom.
He did not stumble, because the floor inside was wide wooden boards smoothed and joined with every bit as much attention and care as the cladding on the walls. But his feet did scuff a little.
By the time he righted himself, Samarkar and Hsiung were beside him. Samarkar snaked a hand out and gave his wrist a squeeze, the touch gone before he knew it, but—he offered her a smile—appreciated.
And then his eyes adjusted and he gained some sense of the place in which he stood.
Wooden trusses bore the weight of the roof, supported by pillars in columns midway along each side of the hall. The long middle span was left clear, a corridor twice as wide as Temur was tall, vaulted high enough that a man on horseback could have ridden down it with no fear for lance or his plumes. Into this torchlit space Temur strode, turned toward the greatest concentration of noise and light, and made his way forward.
There was music. A woman sang, and in addition to the torches, indirect daylight trickled through the gaps where the roof overhung but did not touch the tops of the walls, which Temur had not noticed from outside.
He knew they were expected—and which of Saura’s men had ducked inside to bring the word?—because the singer did not falter. Instead, her melody ended naturally, hauntingly, on a held note, as Temur approached the table that sat athwart the end of the hall, below a dais on which rested an elaborate wooden chair.
Saura’s strange phrase at the end became plain to him. This was not a queen, Temur realized as he saw her seated there, trousered and dressed in boots, with her hair cut short beneath the hammered copper filet that marked her rank. No queen, but a woman-king—western sword on her hip, books piled on the table before her, her face as weathered by the sun as any of her riders.
She rose from the midst of her advisors as Temur approached. They all followed suit an instant later. As for Temur, he stopped several strides short and bowed as low as his road-weary body would allow. She was bare-chested, as were half her male advisors—and many of the women carven on the stelae. Her fingertips were elongated with elaborate, taloned finger-stalls which mimicked the claws of a dragon.
She was not a young woman. Her body was leathery, lean, muscular, feathery about the hips with lines of childbirth. Her arms were crossed with white scars and inked with tattoos of intertwined beasts, like those that adorned the carven walls and doors. Her trousers hissed like silk as she came forward. Her booted feet clicked softly.
A man walked with her, three steps behind.
“Speak,” he said, in the Qersnyk tongue.