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.
“It’s a show,” Hrahima said, as one of the camels stamped its big soft foot. “A sort of … beauty contest.”
“Oh,” Temur said, reaching out to touch the shoulder of his mare. She was warm, reassuringly solid. Here was a people that sent their women about under blankets and showed off their camels. Well, he was Qersnyk; it was not for him to question the ways of others.