There was a pause, and then: “Rise,” said a second man. “Approach.”
Lifting her head, Samarkar was surprised to discover that the caliph—Uthman Caliph Fourteenth, Commander of the Faithful, Viceroy of the Scholar-God, Successor to the Prophet—had spoken himself. She would have expected one of the men surrounding his chair to serve as his voice—as, apparently, one had begun to. The disgruntled-looking one on his left, her right, most likely.
She advanced with the others, halting on an invisible demarcation a hand span or two behind Ato Tesefahun. When the Aezin wizard bowed again, so did she. And remained so until she noticed Temur straighten in response to some gesture she did not see around the restriction of her helm.
“Re Temur Khanzadeh,” said the caliph. His tone was playful, light. It put Samarkar’s guard up at once. “Your family has been a plague upon the borders of my nation since my great-grandfather’s day. And now you come to me as a supplicant? I know your family wars against itself, and the moons fall from your sky. Why should I offer you assistance, princeling?”
Temur stood proud, his shoulders square and his hands at his sides in the posture Samarkar had seen him use to pray. From the rear, she could see that his head rode strangely on his neck. Sadly, sickeningly, contracting scar tissue was beginning to twist his posture out of true. Samarkar cursed herself for a poor wizard and a worse physicker—and a bad lover, most of all.
“My usurping uncle has allied himself with one of your own rebel warlords, your serene Excellency,” Temur said. “They have resorted to carrion sorcery, the raising of blood ghosts, and perhaps more dire witchcraft yet. They have sent those ghosts against refugee trains and at least one city that had taken no part in the battles. Qeshqer is fallen, your serene Excellency, the city my grandfather took from Rasa, which is also called Kashe—”
Samarkar would not let herself bristle, not before this caliph who might yet prove an enemy. Temur was Qersnyk; it was natural he should use the Qersnyk name first. That he even thought of the conquered Rasan city’s Rasan name was either a sign of more diplomacy than she’d expected from him or a concession to her sensibilities.
As once-princess, as wizard and as woman, she wasn’t sure which she would have preferred. She turned her head aside and found Brother Hsiung’s blue-shadowed gaze regarding her steadily. He tipped his head and winked. She bit back on the slightly hysterical chuckle that wanted to answer. Mute the monk might be, but half the time she thought he needed language less than did a dog.
“This rebel warlord,” said Uthman Caliph. “Name him.”
“Mukhtar ai-Idoj,” said Ato Tesefahun. “Called al-Sepehr of the Rahazeen Nameless.”
Samarkar saw the caliph glance to the left before he spoke, taking the temper of the man there—the man on her right who she thought had spoken those first, mocking words. She shifted her attention as well. The helm concealed her eyes: another unanticipated benefit.
He wore a blue kaftan sewn with stars, perhaps some mark of the caliph’s favor. He was younger than she would have expected—fresh-faced and pretty, his beard as black as if drawn on with a pen and steadfastly refusing to cover the center of his chin. Samarkar imagined from the lift of his head that he thought well of himself. He met the caliph’s gaze boldly, and while Samarkar would not hazard to guess what communication passed between them, she knew she had shared such gazes with her brothers on occasion—though never with her husband.
“Devotees of some medieval just-so story,” the caliph said. “He has no armies. His cult clings to the caves and fortresses of the mountains because they dare not descend. And I should find them a threat? If you think me so weak, why would you even seek my patronage?”
“We do not think you weak,” Temur began. “This al-Sepehr commands a rukh, great caliph, and the armies of the dead. I believe…”
The silence stretched heartbeats long. Samarkar was startled that no one filled it, but perhaps the shaking intensity in Temur’s voice held even the caliph and his black-bearded advisor in thrall for those few moments.
Temur controlled his voice and continued. “I believe he may try to raise the Sorcerer-Prince himself.”
This silence rang. Even the caliph leaned forward, expectantly—until the black-bearded advisor broke it with a muffled chuckle, quickly—perhaps ostentatiously—stifled.
No one glanced at him, because the caliph uncurled one hand from his untouched coffee cup and half-raised it. “What the Scholar-God put down, no man can raise up again.”
Hrahima and Ato Tesefahun might have been shadows cast by the falling radiance within the palace, for all the noise they made—but Samarkar heard Brother Hsiung’s clothing whisk against itself as he shifted his weight, though his feet made no sound on the stone. She too winced inwardly, though her face—she hoped—showed none of it.