When the riders came closer, she could see that their armor, too, was in a western style—conical helms and studded leather cuirasses—and their swords were scimitars. But what made Samarkar blink and turn with raised brows to Temur was that two of them were women.
And one of those women was the leader.
She dressed unlike the others, in a breastplate over monkish robes dyed orange-red with madder and with barberry. She was not young, but she carried herself with a straight back. She seemed like the curved blade at her hip: The hilt was worn, and Samarkar imagined the blade would show scrapes of honing along the edge, but she would not care to fence with the woman who carried it.
She glanced from left to right and saw Temur and Payma both hanging back. Hrahima stood at the rear of the group, so still your eye could skip over her.
Isn’t this supposed to be Temur’s family?
Samarkar sighed and raised her hands, showing them empty except for the reins. “I am Samarkar-la, a wizard of the Citadel of Tsarepheth. With me are my brother’s wife Payma, the Cho-tse Hrahima, and Re Temur. We seek sanctuary and your mistress’s indulgence, by way of Temur’s kinship to her.”
She stood aside so Temur could come forward. He moved Bansh up without visibly shifting his weight or moving his hands, as if the bay were an extension of his body. She halted shoulder-to-shoulder with Buldshak, shying a half step as the gray nipped air near her neck.
Temur controlled her without seeming to notice that she’d shifted. “I am Re Temur,” he said. “What Samarkar-la says is true. Nilufer Khatun, the Dowager Regent, was married to my uncle Re Toghrul. I wish to throw myself upon her mercy.”
The monkish warrior woman looked them up and down. Her hair had once been black as a bay horse’s mane. Her piercing eyes were still sharply contemplative. She considered the rise of Payma’s belly, the bulky shoulders of the Cho-tse. Samarkar could almost see her adding columns of benefits and disadvantages behind the impassive mask of her eyes.
“Ride ahead,” she said at last. “We will follow. The way should be obvious.”
And of course it was.
* * *
They entered the stronghold through the main gate, after a trio of grooms came to relieve them of their mules and horses. Temur was reluctant to let the animals and baggage out of his sight, and even more so his bow. He kept his knife, and he imagined if worse came to worst he could relieve one of the guards of his or her weapon.
The local bows were different. They were longer, of a pale amber-white wood rather than laminate, and he could see from the position of the arrow rest that they were meant to be shot with a tab or fingertips rather than a horn thumb-ring. But Temur was confident he could get inside one if necessary and make it sing.
Now the four of them crossed the packed-earth yard to the main doors. These were tall edifices of polished wood, peaked at the tops in order to fit snugly in the arched doorway. One stood open, and people came and went through it in great profusion. They gave way for the guards escorting the small party.
Inside, a wide corridor led across mosaic tiles to the arched and echoing space below the dome. It was decorated inside as well as out, the colors resolving into bright geometric patterns.
The height and the weight of all that stone lofted overhead made Temur dizzy. He glanced down again in time to keep himself from tripping as they passed from small bright inlaid tiles to larger flagstones. It seemed the dome was just for show, a kind of grand entryway, because no one was at work there except the guards standing at attention beside each set of doors. Just as well, Temur thought. He’d hate to spend too much time under those bizarrely suspended stones, waiting for the sky to fall.
They moved through a series of corridors—nothing like those in the Citadel or the Great Khagan’s winter palace in the territories that had once been northern Song, but sufficiently imposing (and enclosing) after spending most of a season between the empty horizons. Temur was also amused to see that once they were beyond the glittering white marble facade, these inner corridors were hewn from prosaic—and harder-wearing—granite. Perhaps this was an old stronghold, wrapped by the sparkling modern facade. Or perhaps the wealth of such a small principality only stretched so far, even with the taxes levied upon the talus herders.
Finally, however, the guards led them to a small chamber and left them there. One monkish woman warrior remained. The room was furnished in the Song style but with broad windows open on a courtyard garden. Sunlight trickled through green leaves and honey-scented blossoms. Rice-paper screens had been pushed back to allow the air and light to move unimpeded, and the floor was thick with cushions, rugs, and low tables of just the height to take a bite out of an incautious man’s ankle. Everything was embroidered—gold flowers and dragons on silk, windmills and elegant trees. A fine celadon vase sat on a table in the corner, dripping a profusion of midsummer blooms—peonies, poppies, and some Temur could not identify.