Shattered Pillars(50)
Hong-la’s mouth worked in memory of the acrid flavor he had not previously identified.
Watching him, Tsering-la continued, “The hatchlings…”
His throat closed; his stomach soured. He let the teacup drop to his knee.
She closed her eyes before she could continue. “The captive hatchlings speak, Hong-la.”
He would have asked, What do they say? He would have made it easier on her. But he couldn’t remember, for long moments, how to shape a word, how to push air from his lungs.
The Wizard Tsering was brave enough to get there on her own. “They speak of the Carrion King, of Sepehr al-Rachid. They prophesy—” She shook her head. “I’ll take you to hear for yourself. But there’s … other evidence.”
“Evidence more convincing than a city overrun by blood ghosts?”
Lamplight shone off her collar, the satin of her wizard’s coat as her shoulders rose and fell. She had been there, seen silenced Kashe with her own eyes—albeit from a distance. Hong-la had merely taken her report, and that of Samarkar-la. “A skinned corpse,” she said. “His head blown out. Fresh, and found above the Wreaking yesterday. It was … very neatly done.”
As if by a practiced hand. “Left for carrion,” he said.
She lifted the cast-iron teapot from the warming plate over the brazier, and despite the heat she was clearly feeling, poured her own strong cup of tea. “That is the name we gave to al-Rachid in this land.”
Hong-la held out his teacup for more. “Here’s something else to work on. You’re the best theorist I know—”
Tsering-la ducked her head and covered her face with her palms. Her jeweled collar pressed the flesh around her chin up oddly. “I cannot so much as light a candle!”
“Does that render your learning less valuable?”
She busied her hands with her own tea, avoiding his eyes and the answer. He continued, “As a theorist, Wizard Tsering—ask yourself this. How does a demon enter a warded house?”
“Someone who has the right to do so invites it,” she said promptly. “Or is fooled into inviting it.”
“So how does a demon enter a warded city?”
She stilled. Her hand did not tremble as—carefully, precisely—she set her cup down. “Someone who has the right to … invites it. Or is fooled into inviting it.”
“Songtsan-tsa?” he asked, when she had been silent long enough. “Tsering, we must find the flaws in the wards.”
“The demons are inside now. How do you get them out again? How do you revoke their permission to enter?”
“I thought,” he said, “that you might know.”
Her head stayed bowed, her hair hiding her expression. “The wardstones of Qeshqer had been intentionally defaced. If that had happened here, we would have found it now. There is a different source.”
After a pause his answer did not fill, she changed the subject. “Yongten-la has been working to convince the emperor that he must evacuate Tsarepheth, that he must relocate to the winter capital early.”
“And Songtsan is against this?”
She shook her head. “The emperor may not believe that the Citadel had nothing to do with his brother’s escape. He may not believe that the awakening of the Cold Fire is … not our doing.”
“Curse of the stones,” Hong-la muttered in Song, watching Tsering’s eyebrows rise in amusement. “So—let me guess—the emperor suspects that his own wizards are involved in a conspiracy to usurp him. So he’s afraid that if he does the sensible thing and allows his people to leave the vicinity of an active volcano, he’ll be handing us an advantage?”
“Your grasp of politics is nuanced,” Tsering said dryly.
“My parroting of the obvious is pretty good even when I’ve just crawled out of a coma, you mean.” He sighed. “Perhaps I can … talk to the empress.”
She said, “There is also news that a refugee train is en route through the mountains from the steppe. Having found no succor in Kashe, they come to plead with Songtsan-tsa for asylum from the reign of Qori Buqa.”
“They should not have come here.”
“They had nowhere else to go.”
“Songtsan will use them as cannon fodder,” Hong-la said. “Human shields.”
Tsering cupped her fingers downward, caging every side of the cast-iron cup. “Not before I interview them, he won’t.”
* * *
Tsering-la walked out of the postern gate at first light, flanked by novices and guardsmen, into a familiar landscape rendered unknowable. The white-and-red hulk of the Citadel of Tsarepheth curved behind her: gravity incarnate. The sacred river crashed in the gorge below. Bands of steam writhed from its surface where hot water and cold intermingled.