Sube began to bark, frantically, lunging in place like a dog bouncing on the end of a tether, and Temur turned.…
Edene reached for him through mist and morning, his knife in one hand and the other outstretched, her body pulled back as the ghosts surrounded and lifted her. She shouted—she didn’t scream—and Temur lunged after her as they pulled her into a sky they vanished against. His fingertips brushed hers. She twisted like a squirrel in a wolf’s mouth, lashing out with the blade, hacking at the gray hands that dragged at her.
Bansh was there. Temur vaulted up her flank, dropping his bow, using her mane as a handle until he crouched on her shoulders.
He leaped.
This time he did not even touch Edene. The ground was a long way down. He landed, rolled, heaved himself into a crouch. Arrows fell around him, shaken from his quiver. His bow was there, just beside the circle of salt that glittered amethyst and obsidian on the grass. The mist was burning off, the sunlight starting to cut and sparkle as it shone through.
“Edene!”
She wailed, lifted higher, vanishing into the sky. Still fighting.
Temur snatched up his bow. He swept an arrow through the salty-wet grass, nocked, drew back.
Temur raised his left arm. Found the roughness of the serving with his right fingertips. Let the string pull back into his gathered strength, the bow’s leathern grip settling into his palm. Spread the fingers of his left hand, reaching so his grip would not shake the bow. Raised the bow above his shoulders and waited until he felt it surround him, felt himself fall into the bow. Felt the pressure of the string at his thumbtip, unprotected by the flat horn ring he would have used to draw if he’d had time to find it.
The fall might kill her. But would that be worse than whatever the ghosts intended?
He bent his knees, tucked his tail, and the bow enfolded him. There was a moment when its balance encompassed his and the jouncing breasts of rising ghosts bounced up and down past the point of his arrow—or the point of his eye.
The arrow was the intention. There was no difference.
When Temur breathed, the bow breathed. When Temur waited, the bow waited.
When the fingers of Temur’s right hand drifted open, the bow killed.
The arrow flew true. True and high, piercing the sky, piercing the ghosts that threw themselves into its path, shredding them, passing through them as if they were nothing.
But they were not nothing. There was something to them. Some presence. Some substance.
The arrow crested its arc an arm’s breadth below the ghosts that held Edene, and began its long smooth descent back to earth.
Temur forced himself not to look down until he could not see her anymore, until Edene’s cousins came to pry the bow from his stiff hands and tend the wounds and bruises he had not even noticed he’d acquired.
5
Despite what her other brother, Tsansong, had said to her when she returned in disgrace from the nominally Song principality of Zhang Shung, Samarkar had striven all her years to be a dutiful daughter and a dutiful sister. She had even been a dutiful wife, in as many of her duties as her husband Ryi had permitted her to perform. And so she sent word ahead to the palace that Samarkar-la, aphei, would call after midday, and that she would be most pleased if her brothers would receive her.
She could have summoned a litter, but pride had something to say, even if pride was something a wizard should set aside. So instead she dressed herself with care in the clothing of her new office—the pearl and jade collar, the black trousers, the black coat—and pulled high-topped boots lined with the fleece of black sheep onto her feet. Winter might be ending, but rime and ice still lingered on the stone banks of the Tsarethi. She clothed her hands in gloves and was ready to walk the length of Tsarepheth.
It was a test for herself as much as anything, and she gritted her teeth until she could be sure no sudden weakness would overcome her.
A gorgeous day in early spring rewarded her. Though the air was crisp, the sun hung warm in the sky, and all the city’s market streets bustled. Samarkar kept to the promenade along the river’s west bank, following the flow of people—women with market baskets, herb girls selling what they had gathered in high meadows at the first light of morning, prostitutes sacred and profane.
Some of the whores were men, but not so many as the women. A few of both were maimed. One woman had had her nose and upper lip sliced away; she had probably been pretty before, and Samarkar imagined some powerful man had had her punished for refusing him. Now she could refuse no one with coin, if she wished not to starve. And who would pay much for a scarred prostitute?
Samarkar gave the whore alms, forcing herself to meet the woman’s eyes. Better to be a neutered wizard than a woman.