But he could try to prevent his fugitive wife and sister—and their entourage—from gaining the safety of the Citadel. Hrahima had halted, crouched low among boulders and stunted trees; Temur came up beside her on his belly, crawling as if on a horse raid.
“It would be easy to kill three or four,” Hrahima said. Her hands flexed against the stony earth, pale claws drawing parallel lines.
“Easy,” Samarkar said from her other side. “But they are only men doing their lawful lord’s bidding. They and their fathers have served my family for generations. I will not have their blood spent cheaply—or, if I can prevent it, at all.”
“Hruh,” the Cho-tse said. She glanced back over her shoulder, to where Princess Payma still huddled in the shadow of a boulder, her apricot gown gleaming in the moonlight like the wings of a white owl.
Temur could read Hrahima’s thoughts quite clearly. To Samarkar, he said, “Do you have a spell to get us past them, then?”
“I could wrap us in darkness,” she said. “But that would fail when we came within their lights.”
Hrahima’s eyes seemed to gather that light and reflect it. When she closed them, Temur imagined the night grew a little dimmer—or perhaps it was not his imagination at all. She rubbed a hand down her face in a gesture he would have called tired resignation had a man performed it, and muttered something in Cho-tse.
“What was that?” Samarkar asked.
“I should not be tempted,” the Cho-tse answered. “To be tempted, and to justify that temptation, is the path to evil. You wait here; you will know the time to move.”
“Hrahima—”
But even as Temur reached out for her, she charged. Her thick pelt brushed his fingertips. He had just time enough to marvel at the texture before she was gone, bounding down the slope, her voice a guttural snarl that rose to a terrible wail. She sprang down the mountain in two great leaps, hurtled in among the nearest group of guards, and slashed about herself. From this height, looking from darkness into light, he could see how far her claws were from ever touching skin, but he imagined if you were faced with her, it would feel like blind luck only that she had not torn your throat out. And then she was away, bounding toward the next group of guards at the foot of the next stair, and the ones she had first confronted charged in pursuit.
Temur scrambled back up the slope as Samarkar rose to her feet. He found Payma in the darkness of the standing stone and grasped her arm, reminded by her shocked intake of breath that he was manhandling a princess. Well, it seemed his head was already forfeit for rescuing one; what was one more affront against her regal dignity?
He could not carry her in his arms, not and run in the moonlight. Nor could she run herself, in the thin slippers and on tender feet already worn bloody by the night’s walking. Instead he pulled her up onto his back. She got the idea quickly enough, clutching his shoulders rather than across his throat, her legs locked tight around his waist. Samarkar certainly knew how to handle a horse; now, judging by the strength of Payma-tsa’s thighs, Temur guessed all Rasan princesses rode.
Even pregnant, she was no great burden for his strength. He slithered down the slope half-sideways, Samarkar beside him and to the right, steadying him with a hand on his arm. He hopped from stone to stone, feeling the shock of each jump in ankles and hips, a scatter of small stones building to a minor landslide before him.
Samarkar and he—still bearing Payma—cascaded to the level place where the stair had landed. He swung Payma to the ground so she could run. Samarkar caught her other hand, and together they plunged for the narrow white steps. Payma whimpered between her teeth with each jarring step. She did not slow them.
A shout told Temur that one of the imperial guards had seen them, no matter how involved those guards might be in trying to pin Hrahima against the wall. The Cho-tse, he saw at a hurried glance, was still evading them with ease, leaping in and out of the skirmish like a cat playing tag with her kittens. She sprang ahead to cut off the ones who broke away to pursue Temur, Samarkar, and Payma. Temur heard one scream in undignified terror as she reared up and showed her claws, arms spread wide.
“Come on,” he urged Payma, who ran grimly as he and Samarkar dragged her along, trying to take as much of her weight as they could. Each stride of her feet left wet darkness on the stones, but she made no complaint.
Now all the guards were coming. The thing in Temur’s chest—the battle rage, the instinct that told him that flight was useless, that the only option was to stand and hew until he was in turn hewn down—flared bright. He clamped his jaw, tooth gritting on tooth, and forced himself to pick his feet up, to fall forward. To run.