He forced his hands away. “My mistress commands.”
That was a defense too, but for the time being she let it stand. “This will hurt,” she said.
She carried emollients in her kit, oil of coconut and other things. And she would use them before the night was through. But at first, she just outlined the scar with her fingertips, pressing under the edges, feeling adhesions and the way it bound up the skin, the way it drew tight into itself like badly cured leather. She should have been doing this all along, keeping it supple and flexible … but like badly cured leather it was not completely beyond repair. It would never be as soft as if she’d been treating it properly since they left Tsarepheth but that was just one more minor failure she—and Temur—would have to live with.
She went to work. He bore the prodding stoically. She limited the amount of pressure she brought to bear, but it was on his throat—and you could break a man’s collarbone with your thumbs. She knew she was hurting him.
“Without the caliph’s help,” she said, “it will be best if we find ways to spread the word that you will be returning to claim the Padparadscha Seat among your people.”
“Rumors?” he asked.
“A promise,” she replied. She laid her palm flat against his cheek and turned his face, stretching against the contraction of the scar. He grimaced but made no protest. “So they know Qori Buqa is opposed. So they know there is a choice, and those who would oppose him have a banner to rally toward. Just the—yes, rumor—of your return can conjure support among your uncle’s enemies.”
“More war,” he said. “More dead. More famines. More blood ghosts—”
“To do otherwise,” said Samarkar, relentlessly, “is to allow him to consolidate his power.”
A scowl pulled Temur’s mouth crooked, but she felt his muscles move as he nodded, reluctantly. “If I tell the tribes where to meet to support me, I also tell my uncle where to bring his army.”
“That is the flaw,” she agreed.
He raised his hands again, this time reaching past her arms to touch her waist, cup the sides of her breasts.
“You’re distracting me.”
“I’m distracting myself,” he replied. “I need it. Beside which, there is a topless woman leaning over me.”
“An issue we can address later.” She winked.
“I cannot be Khagan,” he said, “or even Khan, if my partisans do not know where to meet to proclaim me. I must raise a banner if they are to flock to it.”
She pushed and stretched him again. This time, his breath hissed between his teeth. “There are some old magics—I don’t know them, but some of my masters would. Knowledge bindings. Perhaps we could find a way to knot the knowledge up so that only those sympathetic to your cause could understand it.”
He pushed against her hand to look her in the eye then. “That’s a mighty magic.”
“It’s one that’s beyond me.”
“I will need a shaman-rememberer. What one knows, they all know. They could spread the word.”
Samarkar hesitated, considering. “What if a shaman-rememberer were among the blood ghosts?”
“I don’t know,” Temur said after a silence. “But one thing I cannot do is call for the support of the clans with foreign monks and sorcerers arrayed at my side and none of the shamans of my own folk.”
“I shall efface my—”
“You shall do no such thing,” he said sternly. This time he touched her face, upside down, cupping her cheek and holding her gaze through the dim light. “Are my people not famed across the width of the world for having no concern for which gods a man—or a woman—worships, so long as their skills are of use and they live under law? It is just that for my own people, I must be seen to have the mandate of the Eternal Sky.”
“You believe you do?”
A curious expression crossed his face—faraway, swiftly flitting. “I do.”
She nodded, and left off his neck for the time being, turning to fit herself by his side. He opened his arms to pull her close and she settled into his warmth with a sigh.
Before him—without him—she never would have known this comfort of skin on skin. The enormity of it silenced her for a moment. They lay in the lamplight, breathing together, until she recovered herself enough to say, “One thing wizards know, Temur Khanzadeh, is the power of words. To say a thing is to make it so.”
“Princes know that too,” he said.
Samarkar, once-princess, snorted in the most indelicate manner imaginable. “Wizarding and kinging are not such disparate trades.” She paused, her silence hard-edged enough that Temur stirred against her.