Samarkar, walking behind and bearing the lantern for both of them, was drawn to the way the hems of Tsering-la’s six-petaled wizard’s coat of black brocade swished against the bloused black silk of her trousers. Another might not be so sensitive to the sartorial details, and might find a wizard’s costume timeless and interchangeable with that of any other wizard. But Samarkar had grown up in courts and among courtiers, and she was infinitely sensitive to the nuances of style and construction.
Yongten-la wore the plainest coats of anyone: black cotton, fine-milled, quilted for warmth with a layer of wool felt between facing and lining. Their simplicity was a statement of such power as needed to make no statement. Tsering’s coat was costly silk brocade imported from Song, and it bore a pattern of intertwined blossoms in silver, steel gray, and glossy black on its matte-black ground. The six-petal cut and collar meant it could never be mistaken for anything but wizard’s weeds. Still, Samarkar wondered at the other woman’s confidence, when she had no magic of her own, to wear anything other than plain black.
Tsering stopped before an enormous double door of plain rough wood and waited until Samarkar drew up beside her. Samarkar must have given the train of her thoughts away when her right hand came up to clutch the placket of her coat. Tsering reached out gently and made a show of dusting off Samarkar’s shoulders, her calloused, short-nailed fingers whisking over Samarkar’s more-sober Rasan brocade decorated with neat rows of matte eternal knots on a glossy ground. “Whatever happens, it will be well.”
“Am I obvious?” Samarkar asked.
Tsering smiled, a quick flicker of her mouth corners. Samarkar was much taller, but the fact that Tsering had to tilt her head back to meet Samarkar’s eyes did not seem to rob her of any authority. A serpent of silver coiled through the black river of her braid, and in the lantern light it matched the decorations of her coat.
“I remember,” Tsering said. “Now give me your coat, Samarkar-la, and go and earn your power.”
Go and earn your power.
Samarkar handed over the lantern, then put her chilled fingers to her knotted buttons. The sacrifice demanded of a wizard was one thing; barrenness merely paved the road for magic. The would-be wizard still had to walk down it.
She stripped off her coat, her blouse, her boots—hopping on each foot in turn for that last. She peeled off her felted socks and stood at last before Tsering in her quilted trousers, jeweled collar, and the black-bound scarlet wrap-vest that cinched her breasts. The cold air prickled gooseflesh up across her shoulders. Her feet curled, trying to minimize contact with the icy floor.
She reached up and pulled her collar open, the edges scraping the sides of her throat. She felt far more naked without it than without her coat, though she’d been wearing coats for so much longer. She handed it to Tsering fast, before she could weigh it in her hands. “Any words of advice?”
“Advice is the last thing you need.” Tsering stood on tiptoe and kissed her forehead. “Go on, then,” she said, having spoken the ritual words already.
Steeling herself with a deep, cooling breath, Samarkar heaved open the door. The chamber beyond was dark, lit only by the stray radiance of the single lantern, and it echoed with the sound of trickling water.
Samarkar trailed a hand along the wet wall as she entered. The floor, too, was moist and slick under bare feet. With groping steps she circled the perimeter until intermittent drops splashed her arm, her bare shoulder, the part of her hair. The water felt like the ice of the glaciers it melted from.
She folded her legs beneath her and sat.
“I am ready,” she called to Tsering, just out of sight beyond the wall. Please let this happen. Please let me show them.
“Then commence, Samarkar-la!” Tsering said. And shut the door.
A thin vein of light flickered beneath the door edge for a moment, then receded with Tsering’s hesitant footsteps until she rounded a corner, and light and sound died as one. Alone in the dark, dripping water trickling down her neck and plastering the silk of her breast-binding to her skin, Samarkar closed her eyes.
It made no difference to what she saw.
* * *
Samarkar knew the things that wizards know, the things that monks and ascetics have taught them. One of these things was how to live in cold.
Though by the standard of Yongten-la, she had barely begun her practices, she at least understood the theory—or understood it as much as one so insufficiently practiced could. The insufficient practice was part of the test; one must come to the understanding in the end that one was always insufficiently practiced, and yet one must sometimes act anyway. Practice itself was an act.