Eternal Sky 01(69)

Instead, he touched a translucent, glassy crystal and asked, “What’s the green?”

“Olivine,” she said, as the door swung open. “The piece that was removed to make the facet is now … now the bstangpo’s crown.”

The bstangpo. Not “my brother.”

So they were not close, then, the wizard Samarkar and her blood kin. Whatever else Temur might have asked would have to wait, though, because the open doorway was filled by a man of middle years, broad-shouldered and thick-necked. He had a square jaw and the fair, sand-colored complexion and dramatic, extremely willow-leaf-shaped eyes of the southern Song people. He was exceedingly tall, but he did not stoop, as tall men so often did. Instead, his shoulders were set like the planks of a great brassbound door.

“Hong-la,” Samarkar said, bowing low. “Thank you for seeing us. This is Temur-tsa, an emissary of the plainsmen, who is seeking his wife.”

Temur too bowed, remembering belatedly to thrust out his tongue in respect to the elder wizard.

“Your wife,” he said.

“My woman,” Temur said, unwilling to mislead this man. He met Hong-la’s gaze. “I would have married her, in other times.…”

The wizard regarded him steadily, lips pursed, and seemed to come to some abrupt decision. Whatever it was, Hong-la stood aside, beckoning them into his chamber.

It could have been a workroom, sleeping quarters, or any combination of the two. There was a framed bed in one corner, the covers pulled taut and the wooden pillow tucked away underneath it so the surface could be used as a reading couch. This purpose was attested to by the small heap of scrolls at one end and a cup of tea cooling on the flat headrail.

The rest of the room had the long slate and granite tables that Temur was coming to expect of every room in the Citadel. These labored under the weight of minerals he could not begin to identify, a small fire-stained crucible, piles of shells from the far ocean, cruets and flat dishes of glass, metal, ceramic, stone. The floors were largely bare of rugs, except one small one sized for sitting or meditating. A low wooden table like Yongten-la’s desk was pushed beneath the bed.

Temur presumed that was where Hong-la took his meals, when he did not eat in the dining hall which Samarkar had shown Temur the previous afternoon after the meeting with Yongten-la. The thought of supper reminded his stomach that it had yet to break its fast today, with predictable results: a sharp growl.

“Forgive me,” Temur said, his ears burning. “I overslept.”

Hong-la laughed and shut the door behind them. “Food can always be sent for,” he said, and crossed the room to a small brass cover set flush with the stone wall. He opened it—it lifted on a cunning hinge—and leaned close to it to speak. Having finished, he set his ear to it. Temur could faintly hear a voice floating back, like an echo. He watched, entranced, as Hong-la put his mouth back to the aperture and said one short word: “Yes.”

The wizard’s black coat was unbuttoned, the sleeves rolled up past his elbows to show the linen shirt he wore beneath. His thick jet-black hair was cropped short as a slave’s, and Temur tried to keep himself from staring at it.

Unsuccessfully, apparently. Because as Hong-la picked up the apron he must have flung over the edge of a table when he came to answer the door, he caught Temur’s eye and rubbed a hand across his scalp self-consciously.

“Some of the substances I work with,” he said, “are not things you’d want your hair trailing through.”

“Of course,” Temur said, acutely aware of his own locks flowing down his back unbraided, awkwardly flat in places from being slept on. “I take it Samarkar—Samarkar-la—or Yongten-la has told you what help I seek?”

Hong-la pulled the table out from under the bed and set it on the rug so that there was room for all three of them to sit around it. “The ghosts and the fate of Qeshqer are common knowledge now and have been almost since Tsering-la returned.” He sighed. “We have not yet had much success in convincing the emperor-in-waiting that the situation requires his immediate attention, however.”

“Ghosts don’t respect frontiers,” Temur said.

“Sit, please.” Hong-la showed them places on the rug. Samarkar dropped into hers quickly. Temur found his with only slightly more trouble. “So what is it, specifically, that you want?”

Temur looked at Samarkar. Samarkar gestured him on with an exasperated head-tilt.

“I want to find a woman who was stolen by ghosts,” he said.

Hong-la stared at him. He pulled a pair of lenses in a wire frame from his pocket and set them on his nose, then peered at Temur through them with furrowed brow. “Stolen alive?”