Temur was inexperienced yet. But he was no fool; when the side of her gauntleted hand drifted to touch his, he seemed to realize he had come to a logical stopping place … and stopped there.
Samarkar said, “Great Caliph, I have seen the destruction of cities with my own eyes, and so has Temur Khanzadeh. The blood ghosts left naught of Qeshqer but heaps of sucked bones in the market square, neatly stripped and sorted. Those skulls will bleach there, your serene Excellency—the skulls of the toothless elderly side by side … heaped each upon each … with the skulls of newborns, equally toothless and no bigger than my fist. This is not just a war that can be waited out, with the hope that our neighbors will weaken each other and we can chip some land away from them. I believe your lands are in peril too, as are those of my brother.”
“My caliphate is in peril if we lose the mandate of heaven,” he answered, with another sidelong glance. The black-bearded man regarded him, simply expressionless now. “I rule by the will of the Scholar-God. The entrails speak of avoidance of war, Wizard Samarkar. Not rushing headlong to it. You speak as if you have some knowledge of politics?”
How astute, she thought, when Ato Tesefahun had told the caliph her family and her history.
“Some,” she said, keeping from slipping into sarcasm mostly by dint of breath control. If her years as a political hostage in Song had given her nothing else, they had left her with the ability to control her tone.
“Then you know that the longer war rages on the steppe, the worse my trade situation becomes. A stable Khaganate benefits my cities.”
“A Rahazeen rebellion will not benefit you, your serene Excellency.”
To his credit, he looked her in the eye—or the general direction of it, given her helm—as he said, “The Rahazeen cannot feed their children. I am not afraid of any army they might raise.”
“Serene Excellency,” said Hrahima, the titles smooth on her rough cat’s tongue, “you have the power to deny al-Sepehr the use of the Qersnyk army, whereas so long as Qori Buqa remains unopposed he serves as al-Sepehr’s cat’s-paw. No other power in the world can do this thing. You alone have the strength.”
The caliph did not preen under the flattery. He regarded the Cho-tse from beneath brows drawn shrewdly together. “Cute,” he said. “But no.”
As they left the palace, the kapikulu and the Dead Men taking no more notice of them than they had on the way in, Samarkar heard music rising behind them once again. This time, the singer was a man.
* * *
“If you want the caliph’s troops pushed out of Ctesifon, why did you build him a palace?” Temur whispered in his grandfather’s ear as they left the building in question.
Ato Tesefahun sighed. “He paid,” he said with a shrug. “And … he commanded. You noticed, of course, the man in the starry caftan?”
“Kara Mehmed,” Hrahima said. Black Mehmed.
She swept them out onto the steps of the palace and into the bustle of the street. As they descended to join the throngs—of water sellers, of camel drivers, of hurrying, veiled women in groups, each clutching her market bags—she continued. “He’s one of the faction leaders in the war-band.”
“He’s young.” Temur was not quite able to ignore the irony of being the one to say so enough to get it out without stammering. When the others turned to him with dubious expressions, he clarified. “What I mean is, isn’t he too young to have voted to install this caliph?”
“He’ll install the next,” said Hrahima. “If he lives.”
Ato Tesefahun, the more patient teacher, explained: “His grandfather did. The position is hereditary.”
Temur boggled. “But if there is no personal loyalty between war-band and leader—”
Hrahima interrupted. “Exactly. Uthman Caliph’s not afraid of the Rahazeen,” she mocked. “Just the political pressures of his war-band or anything that might restrict trade.”
Samarkar pushed irritably at her helm. Her voice echoed eerily within. “Those are the same thing. Whose treasure houses do you suppose are furnished by the trade that passes along the Celadon Highway? By the oxcarts, the spindle weights, the glass beads, the saffron, the aloes, the myrrh? By the sandalwood, the dates, the silk, the porcelain? There were kilns along the road when we came in from the port—convenient to shipping, and at least a little out of the city traffic in the case of a disaster. The merchants trade cedar, malachite, electrum, jade … look here!”
She caught Temur’s wrist and whirled him to face a shop. The awning was raised, and through the lattices Temur could see that it was a stoneworker’s. Within, shelves and benches supported examples of the work of more than one artisan. There was eastern jade in several styles, including one reminiscent of the steppe, and soapstone carved after a manner that drew inspiration from the whimsical caricature animals of Song. The subjects, however, ranged the known world.