Temur hunkered down beside Samarkar. He drew his flint and steel from inside his vest and began kindling a spark on a flat stone she’d heaped with dry grass. Her shoulders were still hunched protectively, her chin dropped.
As the flint scraped down the file, shedding sparks, he said, “You’re as stiff as butter in a cold house. Is something wrong?”
The tinder caught immediately, and Temur muttered a thanks to the spirit of the fire while Samarkar considered his question. “It’s hard for me to leave the mountains,” she said at last, quietly. “The sky is too big.”
And he could appreciate what Anil-la had left unsaid, to know that she had not enjoyed her last sojourn away from Tsarepheth. He nodded to direct her attention to Payma, who had paused in assembling dinner preparations to lift her face to the wind and take deep breaths of the wide space spread all around them, except to the south where the mountains loomed still.
“She enjoys it,” Temur said. “But I understand—sort of—how you feel. In the mountains everything was too thick and close, and the sky was heavy overhead.”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s higher out here, too.”
The tinder was burning merrily as Temur slid the flat stone carefully into the air space under the dung. He watched flames bathe the underside of Samarkar’s pyramid, igniting glowing embers, and hunkered forward to blow gently across the fire.
When it caught solidly, he leaned back, satisfied, and rubbed his hands together. “If you think this is bad, wait until we reach the Salt Desert.”
* * *
When Saadet appeared at the door of the scriptorium during al-Sepehr’s prayers, al-Sepehr knew the news was ill. Through twisting apprehension, he forced himself to remain calm. To copy to the bottom of the page before he stood and left the scriptorium. Saadet turned and walked beside him, matching his pace with a man’s stride.
“We failed,” Saadet said crisply, in her brother’s tones. No excuses. “Re Temur fled Tsarepheth before we made it. He is traveling in the company of a Cho-tse and a Rasan witch. And a runaway princess, who carries the dead prince’s child. I imagine there is a bird en route from your Rasan ally—”
“Too slow by half,” al-Sepehr said, doubling his fists inside his sleeves. He forced his hands to open. He paused before the balustrade surrounding the courtyard and laid his hands on white stone, forcing himself to focus on the words of scripture written black across their backs. “Aban?”
“Dead,” said Saadet for her brother. “I saved his hands.”
“His family will be grateful.” A wave of exhaustion blurred al-Sepehr’s vision: He could summon the ghosts, but could he survive the summoning? Not so soon after Qeshqer, he thought. They were hungry things, and though they did not draw so much from their summoner as from their prey, to raise ten thousand of them had cost more than he’d anticipated. “Follow,” he said. “If he’s traveling with a gravid woman, he will be slowed. Overtake him. I will send the birds to find him, and Saadet will show your path. That is all.”
“Thank you, al-Sepehr.” Saadet bowed like a man and arose with a woman’s grace. She looked up at al-Sepehr from behind her veil. “Have you further need of me?”
He waved her away so she would not see him leaning heavily on the rail. Once she was gone, he drew a breath or two and made sure his veil was neat across his face. Then he turned his back to a featureless wall, so as to afford Qori Buqa as little intelligence about Ala-Din as possible, and pulled the appropriate stone from his pocket.
He held it up and concentrated on it while the dried blood flaked onto his fingers. A moment later, the ghostly visage of the Qersnyk usurper swam before him, wavering like rising smoke.
In spare words, al-Sepehr sketched the situation. “My man is in pursuit of Re Temur. I believe we will have him soon.”
Qori Buqa sighed like a tired horse. “There are rumors everywhere that Otgonbayar’s brat means to raise an army against me. I cannot raise my banner while he lives and can be seen to oppose me. The clans will not gather if I call them now, and I will lose any chance of ever uniting them. I cannot be Khagan while Re Temur lives, unless he bends to me. So send your ghosts, al-Sepehr! I am tired of waiting!”
“It’s not that simple,” al-Sepehr said. “You must trust me to deal with him my way. Have I not earned that?”
Qori Buqa clasped long hands before his mouth, then let them drop out of sight. “You have,” he said. He glanced away, as if looking over his shoulder. “But I beg you, al-Sepehr. Make haste. Make haste, or there will be no Khagan.”