She could have asked him where he would go, what he would do. But she knew the answer: He would go and get Edene and bring her home again. He would hunt down the man on the rukh, and if that man was not the master of the Nameless, he would use him to find whoever was.
The woman-king looked back at her neglected plate and said, “When you are done with that bird rider, Qersnyk, I want his skull to wash my hands in. You can count on my help in making it so.”
Temur said, “It will be yours.”
* * *
In the morning, Samarkar, Temur, Hrahima, Bansh, and Brother Hsiung made for the coast. Two days’ fast ride, Tzitzik said. It would have been five, if they went easy for their own sake and the battered mare’s, as they should have. As they could not, when they were hunted. Despite the chaos of her household, Tzitzik pushed supplies upon the travelers—camel fat, measures of grain for Bansh, a little of the local beer.
Samarkar knew they should have traveled by night. But she also knew that there was no easy way to avoid the rukh and its rider if it returned, and sleeping out by day in these endless grasslands would not hide them much better than walking.
They would rely on speed, instead, and resting as little as possible. They would walk by moonlight and the light of the sun. Although, she thought with irony as they staggered through darkness that night, it was possible that rukhs, like owls, could fly by night.
At least what Tzitzik had told them about the Hard Drinker emptying into the White Sea was no exaggeration. Samarkar had known they must be drawing closer, because the trees that lined the Hard Drinker’s banks grew more squat and twisted. Samarkar had heard that seas were salty, and she wondered if that was the cause of it—or if it was the increasingly poor and sandy soil.
In any case, nothing could prepare her for the sight of the White Sea itself.
They’d been forced farther and farther from the channel of the Hard Drinker as she flattened and broadened into a swampy delta. Samarkar had already been expecting water for half a day when they crested a little rise among stunted conifers. The branches were swept to the east by the same ceaseless wind that lifted Samarkar’s unbraided hair and—despite the summer’s heat—cooled her face. That wind smelled of nothing she’d ever experienced before: tangy, rotten, sweet and salty both at once, strong and bitter. She sneezed, and Bansh flattened her long neck, tossed her head, and sneezed as well.
When Samarkar opened her eyes, the blue stretched to the horizon. It moved, too—she’d heard of waves, of course, but reading of them or studying Song prints could not prepare her for that vast, white-capped expanse, or the way the sun glittered off it.
“Mother,” Temur said. Hrahima laughed behind her whiskers.
Samarkar could barely see a smudge at the horizon that might be land. Thirty li at least—and this was supposed to be the narrows, the place where a natural dam separated the White Sea from an arm of the Western Ocean.
“Tzitzik said to light a signal fire.” Samarkar could see a rocky promontory from here, and the soot-stained fire ring at its tip. “And a ship would put in eventually.”
She wondered exactly what a ship looked like, if this was an ocean. At least there was wood enough in the stunted forest behind.
But on her left, Brother Hsiung made a throat-cutting gesture and rolled his eyes. When Samarkar glanced at him inquiringly, he pointed to the skies.
Of course. A fire would summon enemies as well as allies. Samarkar bit her lip and comforted herself that she’d have thought of that before calling down the devil on their heads.
Temur said, “We cannot walk around. I suppose we could follow the shore northeast, until we come to a village.”
He sounded dubious. Hrahima shook her head. “Or Asmaracanda,” she said. “That could take a moon or more.”
“And Asmaracanda is under Qersnyk control, unless it, too, has fallen. Do you want to risk your uncle’s men, Temur?”
“No,” he said.
Samarkar took a deep breath. Calmly, she stretched up on tiptoe, measuring the distances against her hand. Of course it was hard to do, but if she could see land at all, and what lay on the other side was not mountainous …
She dropped to the ground and began stripping off her boots.
Temur frowned down at her, needing no explanation. “You’ll never make it.”
The set of his mouth warmed her. They hadn’t spoken alone or touched except in passing since the morning when they kissed, but she felt his regard in his concern. Still, she was the only one who could do this.
“Of course I will,” she scoffed, tugging her heel free. “I’m Samarkar. I’ve been swimming in the Tsarethi since before I could walk. Just because you can’t swim…”