Reluctantly, he pulled himself away from the view and went to help Samarkar chivy the mules forward. So many feet had worn the incline that you could see the dished places. As each person had leaned into any given depression to use it as a step, they had worn it deeper. Temur climbed them as if they were steps, and used them to slow his descent on spray-slick stone on the opposite side.
Hrahima waited with Bansh on the far side, flanked by four spear-armed guards in red and two in the same black coats and jade collars Tsering and Samarkar affected. These were men, though, and they wore long knives at their belts in addition to whatever wizarding weapons Temur could not see.
Samarkar’s coat won them past the wizards. The red-coated men, however, were chilly until she shouted her name above the rumble that shook the stones on which they stood. Then frost melted to an excess of deference bordering on obsequiousness.
The mules were likely to prove more intransigent. But Temur was familiar with the minds of mules, and it did not take him long to bribe and cajole them into moving. Their unshod hooves echoed on the stone span as he and Samarkar led them forward. He leaned in to shout into her ear.
“Who built this?”
“Wizards.” There was no mistaking the pride in the set of her shoulders.
He offered a mule another bit of leathery fruit to keep it moving, and watched Samarkar’s straight back as she walked ahead. Wizards.
He thought about bones bleaching in an empty city. He thought about Edene. He thought about Qori Buqa, and he pressed one fist to his belly over a sudden, painful knot of emotion. He wanted revenge. Revenge for Edene, if she was dead—and no matter how he pretended to himself that she wasn’t, some part of him knew it for a pretense.
Revenge. Wizards could help him get it.
* * *
Tsering did not meet them at the Citadel’s northern gates, and the wizards at the Wreaking would or could tell Samarkar nothing of the results of her message—though she thought the extra bodies on the battlements an unsubtle hint. Someone else did, though. Anil, the wizard who had kissed her at the celebration of finding her powers, waited just within.
His face was furrowed with concern. He took no notice of Hrahima or Temur, and the first words he said were, “Yongten-la wishes to speak with you.”
Samarkar looked to her traveling companions. “I need—”
“We’ll see the animals cared for,” Anil said, “and your friends accommodated. Go, run, Samarkar-la. He awaits.”
The head of the wizards of the Citadel had never had a particular title or rank. Everyone knew who held the post; everyone knew under whose authority they lived. Once or twice in the history of the order, there had been internecine war, but most often the trouble was finding somebody who was willing to take on the burden of the job. Wizards tended to be more interested in their spells and chemicals than administration.
Samarkar paused long enough to explain to Hrahima and Temur that she was summoned by the master of her order and that they should accept whatever comfort the wizards could offer, then she took off—as Anil had suggested—at a run. The petal hem of her coat fluttered around her legs, fabric filthy and stiff with travel. The boots rubbed new raw places on her feet where the felt wrappings had worn thin.
Within two hundred heartbeats, she stood before the open door of Yongten-la’s chamber. Light and the sound of falling water reached her through the windows. Two wizards and two novices waited in the hall, ready to attend any errand. Samarkar was taking a moment to compose herself when Yongten-la’s voice emerged from within.
“Samarkar-la,” he said. “You have returned. Come inside, and shut the door behind you.”
The words chilled her innards. If he meant to chew her out for some infraction, he would not hesitate to do so in front of witnesses. Which meant he had some news to impart that he did not wish to become public knowledge just yet.
On raw feet, Samarkar stepped forward. She pulled the door closed after.
Yongten-la’s chamber was spare and neat. His private workbenches, topped with slate and granite, lay to Samarkar’s right, and all the equipment on them was clean and orderly. Even the chalk-scrawled notations on the surface of the slate beside the scale were precise enough to read from a distance, despite their economical size. His desk was before her, under the windows, raised on a little platform padded with rugs and cushions in deference to old bones. Yongten-la sat cross-legged behind it, bent over a sand tray from which he appeared to be transcribing notes to a wax tablet. When he was satisfied with them, Samarkar knew, the tablets would go to a scribe, who would transcribe them again, onto paper for binding and preservation in the archive.