Steles of the Sky by Elizabeth Bear Read Free Book Online Page B

people. Before we are out of the mountains, we will decide.”
    *   *   *
    South of Tsarepheth, in the green sweeping valley of the river Tsarethi, in the shadow of the smoking Cold Fire, the Dowager Empress Regent Yangchen led her people away from the cracked walls of the Black Palace. They were laden, men and women leaning into high-sided carts to assist head-tossing mules and stolid yaks. Children herded chickens, feathered lizards, yaks, and shaggy sheep and goats with sticks. Women trudged, neck-bent, under comically disproportionate bundles, and the ash fell over them all.
    At least the prevailing wind was blowing the bulk of the volcano’s debris north, away from them. Toward the other refugee train.
    Yangchen-tsa felt ashamed of her relief.
    She told herself her people would have done this anyway—many of them, anyway. But it would normally be planned, faster and more efficient, adequately supplied. Those who traveled would normally be those with the resources to travel, and those who did not would hunker down in Tsarepheth and await the winter there.
    Some always wintered over in the high country, including the wizards … but it had never much occurred to Yangchen before to think that, when her husbands and sister-wives and the late Dowager Empress and the Princess Samarkar and their court and cousins and staff and light women and fancy men and chefs and armorers and guardsmen and seamstresses and hangers-on packed up each autumn and headed south, to the lower elevations and more forgiving climes of Rasa, with its easy routes to Song and the Lotus Kingdoms, they were leaving behind half a city to endure the killing cold and murderous storms of deep winter in the Steles of the Sky. This time, everyone who could move was moving out, except some sick, the wizards who had elected to stay behind to protect the Citadel of Tsarepheth (and try to save it and the city that shared its name from the Cold Fire), and a few too stubborn or too old to leave their homes.
    This caravan—chiefly afoot, full of people who could not possibly be carrying enough food or warm clothing for the march—would not move as quickly or as well, or have as easy a time feeding itself. Her belly sank as she considered the likely outcomes. Even with a large contingent of wizards and their entourage along, with their own rattling great carts and pack train of yaks and mules … this could end in death. And it was her duty to prevent as much of that death as possible.
    With a start, Yangchen realized that all those people with whom she had used to travel were also dead, now. Except Samarkar, the fled-away Third-wife Payma-tsa, and Second-wife Tsechen-tsa, and Yangchen herself. And possibly—maybe—Tsansong. Although Yangchen thought she knew where the great bird that had carried him off had come from. She might have been naïve—by the Jade Courtesan, so naïve!—but she thought she understood, now, how her erstwhile ally operated. And she had recognized the Rukh as a larger—a gigantic—version of the eagle-sized birds that had ferried her messages to and from the one who had supplied her with poisons and abortifacients so she could—she now understood—do his work in weakening the Rasan Empire when she thought she was doing her own work and protecting a legacy for her son.
    She could not say so, could not reveal the source of her dangerous knowledge, because that would reveal the lengths she had gone to, to protect her life and the position of her son. But she did not think that Prince Tsansong had survived long in the care of the al-Sepehr.
    One more burden to carry alone. One more terrific error she must somehow redeem, because she could never make amends for it.
    Yangchen had begun the day on foot, her babe on her back like many another woman’s—in solidarity. But her advisors—formerly her husband’s advisors—had insisted that it would be disheartening to her people to see her trudging along as if she had no resources