‘Ah. All right, I’m done now.’
Zayn turned back. Ammadin sat down on her blankets and undid her braids to let the long tangle of golden hair spill over her shoulders and breasts. Zayn had to summon his will to keep from staring at her. She began to comb out her wet hair with a bone comb while he got an oil lamp and set it on the flat hearth stones under the smokehole. Matches he found in a silver box inside one of the tent bags. As the light brightened, he sat down opposite her and noticed a strange pattern of scars on her left shoulder.
‘How did you get those scars?’ Zayn said. ‘They look like some kind of claw mark.’
‘That’s exactly what they are. The slasher I killed to make my cloak? He got a good swing on me.’
‘You killed it yourself?’
‘Of course. It wouldn’t have any power if someone else did it for me. Spirit riders have to get everything they use for magic by themselves.’
‘Makes sense, I suppose. How did you kill it?’
‘Arrows first, then a couple of spears to finish him off. He broke the first one.’
Zayn looked her over with a curiosity that had nothing to do with lust. She was about as muscled as a woman could get, he supposed; her shoulders and arms were strongly and clearly defined, heavy with sinewy muscles.
‘What’s wrong?’ Ammadin said. ‘You mean your women back home don’t kill saurs?’
‘Not that I ever heard of.’
‘Huh! Your women couldn’t even kill a yellabuh if it flew their way.’
Since she smiled, he allowed himself a laugh. She turned to look at him, and as the lamplight caught them her eyes flashed blood-red and glowed. Another movement, and they returned to their normal grey, leaving him to wonder if he’d imagined the change.
‘You have to do a lot of difficult things if you’re going to ride the Spirit Road,’ Ammadin went on. ‘I knew that from the moment I decided to ride it.’
‘When do you make a decision like that?’
‘When you’re a child, but they give you plenty of chances later to back down. I left my mother’s comnee when I was five to ride with the man who trained me.’
During a lull in the rain, Orador came by to invite Zayn to join the men in Apanador’s enormous tent. After the chief’s wife left to visit friends, the men of the comnee filed in and sat down round the fire burning under the smokehole. The married men sat in order of age nearest the chief; the unmarried men, Zayn among them, sat farthest away with their backs to the draughty door. Apanador opened a wooden box and took out a drinking bowl, gleaming with silver in the firelight. He filled it from a skin of keese, had a sip, then passed it to the man on his left. As it went round, each man took only a small ritual sip before passing the bowl on. When it came to Zayn, he saw that it was a human cranium, silvered on the inside. Zayn took a sip, then passed it to Palindor, who looked him over with cold eyes.
Once they’d emptied the ritual cup, Apanador filled ordinary ground-stone bowls and passed them round. The men drank silently and looked only at the fire unless they were reaching for a skin of keese. This was the right way to drink, Zayn decided, with neither courtly chatter nor the kind of bragging men do just to be bragging. Finally, after everyone had had three bowls, Apanador spoke.
‘It’s time to make some decisions about this summer.’
The unmarried men laid their bowls down and got up to leave. When Zayn followed them out, Palindor caught his arm from behind in the darkness. Out of sheer reflex, Zayn nearly killed him. He had his hunting knife out of his belt and in his hand before he even realized what he was doing, but just in time he caught himself, stepped back, and sheathed it. Palindor smiled at the gesture.
‘Listen, Kazrak. The Holy One was good enough to pick you off the street like a piece of garbage. Treat her with the respect she deserves, or I’ll kill you.’
‘I have every intention of treating her the way I’d treat the Great Khan’s favourite wife.’
‘Good. I’ll make sure you do.’
His tone of voice challenged, but Zayn had trained his emotions too highly to take offence. With a shrug, he walked off in the rain and left the comnee man scowling after him.
In the tent Zayn found Ammadin sitting close to the flickering lamp. Beside her, on a piece of blue cloth, lay four smooth spheres of transparent crystal, each a good size for cupping in a hand. The lamp light shone through one sphere and cast on the tent wall curving shadows of numbers and strange symbols. He focused his mind and captured a memory picture of them. When he returned to the khanate he would draw it for his superiors. Ammadin noticed him staring at the shadow.
‘There are tiny numbers engraved all around each crystal, like a sort of belt,’ she said. ‘That’s what you’re seeing.’
‘Interesting,’ Zayn said. ‘But should I be looking at them? I’ll leave if I’m breaking one of your Banes.’
‘It’s perfectly all right. They’re just glass at the moment. They don’t have any power unless you know the incantations that wake their spirits.’
As he sat down on his bedroll, Zayn tried to look solemn instead of sceptical. In the dim light, the crystals glittered as if they were faceted, but their surfaces appeared perfectly smooth.
‘Can the spirits answer questions?’
‘Oh yes, but only certain kinds.’
‘Can they tell me why Palindor hates me?’
‘What?’ Ammadin looked up with a laugh. ‘I don’t need spirit power to answer that. Palindor wants to marry me, and here you are, sleeping in my tent.’
It was just the sort of thing that might get in the way of his mission.
‘I can sleep outside under a wagon.’
‘Why? I’m not going to marry him, and he’ll have to get used to it. If he gives you any trouble, just tell me. I said you could sleep here, and that’s that.’
‘Look, I’m totally dependent on the comnee’s charity. I don’t want to cause any trouble.’
‘You’re a strange man for a Kazrak. Which reminds me. I’ve been meaning to ask you something. Every other Kazrak I’ve ever known prayed to your god five times a day. You don’t. Why? No one here would say anything against it, if that’s what’s bothering you.’
Zayn froze. He could never tell her the truth, could never admit that men like him were forbidden to pray, that prayers from such a polluted creature would only offend the Lord.
‘Uh well,’ he said at last. ‘I do pray, but silently. Usually we’re riding when the time comes, and I don’t want to advertise my piety or anything like that. The Lord won’t mind.’
‘The Lord? I thought his name was Allah.’
‘That’s not a name, it’s a title. It just means “the lord” in the sacred language.’
