Eternal Sky 01(122)

He tripped on the edge of a paving stone but did not fall. When he looked up from his stumble there was music—cymbals, drums, the wild ululations of women. The crowd parted as if before a procession.…

Actually, that was not far from the truth. Women, a dozen of them, were arranged in two lines of four, with four in the middle. They wore gauzy veils that displayed only their eyes and the high piles of their glossy hair, which chimed and shone with gold. Ten-span skirts in teal and vermilion swirled around their switching hips; halters and tiers of necklaces covered their bosoms. Their midriffs were bare, navels shining with jewels, and the stone walls rang with their cries. The four in the middle—by their black hair and firm bodies, younger—danced. The ones on either side—by their graying hair and the slackness of their bellies, older—drummed and sang. Coins rained down among them from passersby, and the dancing women swooped and bowed to collect them.

“Hasitani,” Hrahima said, when Samarkar stopped to stare.

“Sacred whores?” she asked softly.

“Mendicant scientists,” Hrahima said. “You would like them.”

“Huh.” They passed, but Samarkar turned to watch them, and Temur saw her reach into her pouch and hurl a shower of small silver to the road among their horny, naked feet.

There was not too much farther to walk after that encounter. Hrahima led them until they reached the house of Ato Tesafahun. She presented herself at the wrought-iron gate and spoke through it to a servant. There was a brief pause—probably, Temur thought, for consultation—and then he returned and admitted them.

* * *



It was evening when they entered the garden of Ato Tesefahun. Great walls held the city and the desert out; they were of red clay smoothed over red stone. A bubbling fountain played amidst a stone patio, and gracious trees gave shade all around the edges. Except for datura and moonwise, Temur could not even name the flowers. There was one like clusters of tiny paper lanterns in brilliant shades of pink and orange, its vines draping through the trees. There was another that grew at their feet and was green and lush and covered with four-pointed pale blue blossoms like stars.

As the sky dimmed, the glow they twinkled in was cast by candles, fixed in glass jars to the shells of ambling tortoises, so as the sun set, the whole of the garden was filled with a moving light. Birds sang themselves to sleep in the tree branches, and the twilight made a canopy overhead.

Ato Tesefahun waited for them in his garden, on a bench before a table set with a meal of strange foods: bread and cured olives with garlic and salt, sliced fruits, sweet wine with lemon slices floating in it. He stood when Temur, Hrahima, Brother Hsiung, and Samarkar entered, setting aside the small bound book he had been cupping in the palm of his hand.

He was not a tall man, nor was he young. But his hair hovered in a white cloud all around his lined, mole-sprinkled face, and his long age-gaunt brown hands were deft. “Welcome to my home,” he said. “I am Tesefahun.”

“Grandfather,” Temur said, through the portcullis of emotion that bid fair to close his throat. “It is a joy to meet you, finally.”

* * *



The rukh furled her wings and dropped like a stone through the sky. Al-Sepehr knew she wished she could kill him, shake him from her back and then dive to catch him in her talons and crush him where she fell. And he knew also that she never would, that the lives of her mate and offspring were surety for her obedience.

It amused him.

She snapped her wings at the last possible moment, an impact with the air as ferocious as striking a mountainside. He had been expecting it, yet his head still snapped forward painfully. Someday she was going to break his neck.

Well, she would pay the price if she did.

Al-Sepehr waited while she back-winged and settled atop the highest tower, half its width from the veiled woman who waited there. As he swung off her neck, the woman bowed low, hiding even her eyes.

It didn’t matter. He knew them. “Saadet,” he said. “I am sorry to tell you your brother is dead.”

She nodded, eyes still downcast. “I remember. What he was persists. And I still serve you.”

It should not have reassured him, but it did. And even eased the lance of grief in his own gut. Shahruz had, perhaps, been the closest thing al-Sepehr could count as a friend.

“I must inform you that the prisoner has escaped, al-Sepehr.”

“Good. She found the ring then?”

Saadet nodded, using the motion as an excuse to steal a glance at his face.

Al-Sepehr felt in his empty pocket and smiled. “She will bring our war to the Qersnyk, then. Your brother will be avenged.”

* * *



That night, in Temur’s grandfather’s house, in yet another alien bed, Samarkar came to Temur in darkness. There was a whir of fabric as she dropped her robe. And then she slipped under the covers beside him and took him in her arms.