I could write to you forever about those heady days spent in Fujino. I could write of how silly I looked when you let me try on your dresses—how the billowing sleeves came just past my elbow, how none of your belts fit around my waist. I let you try on my deel. It was massive on you, pooling on the floor around your feet. You left the collar mostly undone.
I saw your collarbones, accents to the slender curve of your neck. I tried not to stare at them.
I was fascinated by you. By your motions, by your expressions, the smallest details of your life. In the mornings, you rose at Third Bell. After rising from the bed, you moved to your writing desk. In careful strokes, you wrote a line from one of your father’s poems—first in Hokkaran, then in Qorin letters. We’d read it together, so that you understood the pronunciation and I understood how to read it.
We took tea together. On the second day, I realized you were not let out of your rooms unless you were going to court. You did not say it aloud. I suspect you did not want to admit defeat.
And so you spoke of anything and everything except your parents.
“My uncle despises me,” you said one night.
I drummed my fingertips against the desk.
“He has not said this, but I know it to be true,” you continued. “He picked these rooms for me. He summons me to court, but only after peasants have worn him thin.
“To him,” you said, “I am nothing but a passing amusement. Someone to write his edicts, I suppose. But I have seen the jealousy festering behind his eyes. I am never invited to dinner, never allowed to greet our people.”
As you spoke, you wrote. Another set of notices, from what little I could read. You took no joy in this. You stabbed your brush into the water.
“He hopes people do not think of me,” you said. Brush met paper. You took a deep breath. A single, short, stroke.
“Three wives,” you said. “Three wives, no children; no bastards running amok. Peasants call him the Limp Emperor.”
It came together in my mind. Without any children, you were the only Hokkaran heir.
You were crown princess now.
Rocks against your window. You ignored them. The dark clouds on the horizon were somewhat harder to ignore. To the north of Hokkaro—toward the Ruined Lands—inky clouds marred Grandmother Sky’s skin. It was just the way of things.
“I shall be a woman soon, of proper age, and then no one will cage me,” you said.
Again, you spoke with certainty. But as your lips shaped the words, my heart forged them.
Cages were not meant for people.
* * *
TWO WEEKS AFTER I barreled into the palace in the dark of night, my mother followed in my footsteps. It was past Last Bell when we woke to clattering weapons outside the door. Qorin shouting reached my ears.
“Stand down, you Imperial dogs!” Temurin shouted. No one understood her, but she shouted all the same. When I opened the door, my mother stood outside. In her hand, a bared blade; on her face, a wolf’s fury. Temurin stood back to back with her.
“Stand down!” you shouted from behind me. And because it was you who spoke, they listened.
With a snarl my mother, too, sheathed her sword. The gesture she made couldn’t have meant anything nice.
And yet when she laid eyes on you, her whole manner changed. Waves of anger gave way to tides of sadness; bittersweet joy replaced red-hot wrath. My mother, Burqila Alshara, the Destroyer, the Terror of the Steppes, embraced you with a whimper.
I watched her run her fingers through your hair. She pressed her nose to each of your cheeks, took a breath of you. Then she perched her head atop yours and held you so tight, I wondered if you could breathe.
Temurin watched with lips parted. I hugged myself, a few steps away.
Because I saw what Temurin did not.
I saw my mother whispering in your ear. I saw her scarred lips moving. Frozen in awe, you were, your eyes carved from glittering ice, your skin turned to gooseflesh.
In the ages to come, drawings and woodcuts tried to imagine this scene. Most of them bear captions. It seems everyone has an idea what my mother said to you. A thousand purple promises; a hundred boisterous boasts. I’ve seen some that make a joke of it. Yes, some people make a joke of my mother breaking her vow of silence.
“I left the firepit alight!” I would like to see that writer try to lead an army without making a single sound. I would like to see him raise two children without speaking to them.
But the truth of the matter is this: My mother only ever spoke to your mother. The first time she broke her oath was during the Eightfold Trial, when one of the Generals imprisoned them together. As you well know, the most popular story goes that Shizuru kept cracking jokes about the prison needing more bamboo mats—the Minami clan being bamboo mat merchants at the time.
My mother looked at her and said, “If we live, I will buy your mats.”
Shizuru told this story whenever she got the chance; I believe it to be true with my whole heart. To hear her tell it, the whole reason she never lost hope was that she had a hut full of mats to sell.
But Shizuru could not tell that story anymore.
And that was why my mother spoke to you.
In a minute it was over—this moment frozen in my mind. The two of you parted. Only then did Alshara embrace me and sniff my cheeks. But she did muss my hair.
Then she gestured that we should follow her.
You laughed.
“Alshara-mor,” you said. “I have guards.”
Among the many things in the chest pocket of her deel, my mother keeps a slate and chalk. She produced it now. In confident, if inelegant, Hokkaran strokes, she wrote. I couldn’t read it, of course, but you’ve told me this story so many times, I thought I might return the favor.
I am Burqila Alshara. O-Shizuru entrusted me with the care of her daughter. If you doubt me, you are welcomed to try and stop me. I have killed in front of my children before.
She held it up so it was plain to read from behind you. You covered your mouth. Only my mother would be so blunt, so audacious.
Yet still she stared each of the guards down, fingering the hilt of her knife.
“So the stories are true!” said one of them. He was smiling. Sky rest his soul, he was smiling. “You use slate and chalk! What kind of a warlord does that?”
“Kai-tsao, don’t be a fool,” said another. As he spoke, his upper lip trembled. A certain smell fill the air. Acrid, warm, stale. The same smell that filled any ger in the morning.
Piss.
A dark trail trickled its way down the second guard’s pants.
“When you broke down the Wall of Stone, did you write it a sweet love letter beforehand?”
You held your head in your hands. Temurin bit the back of her palm. I winced.
My mother never wastes time with elegance. Whenever she attacks someone, it is quick and brutal, vicious as a dog. This occasion was no different. With one hand, she slammed the guard called Kai-tsao against the wall and held him there. With the other, she drew her hunting knife. He wriggled, he tried to kick, but she only slammed him again. That’s when she slid the knife between his lips. That’s when she made a single cut. Then she dropped the knife, shoved her fingers into his mouth, and pulled.
A flopping pink tongue landed on the ground.
Alshara stepped on it.
The man screamed. It was less scream and more wet gurgle. The other guards looked away as Kai-tsao dropped to his knees and collected the pieces of his tongue.
My mother erased her words. She wrote a few new ones.
I am mute by choice. Now you are not. When you pray for your tongue to be regrown, you should write it a letter beforehand.
So it was that the guards parted like reeds in the wind before us. No one questioned us as we left. Perhaps because my mother was covered in blood. Perhaps because my mother was my mother, and also covered in blood. It is hard to say which frightened them more. Whatever the case, we were not stopped. Outside, our horses waited, saddled and ready.
All except yours.
You could not ride with me. Not then, not in front of my mother. Only husbands and wives rode the same horse. Despite the fluttering in my stomach when I looked at you, I could not have us riding together with others watching.
Alone, yes. You did not know what it meant. You would wrap your arms around my waist for steadiness. I could let you hold the reins, while I held the whip. Together we could ride.
But not in view of others.
So I offered you one of the spare horses I’d brought along and tried to wipe the idea from my mind. Later. Alone.
Since we did not have a ger, and the Daughter’s warm breath swept Hokkaro, we slept beneath the stars. My mother brought bedrolls, at least. You’d never slept in one before, and it took you some fumbling before you were able to open it. The first time I’d ever seen you fumble with anything at all. I laughed as I watched you, the heir to the Empire, slap your bedroll against the ground.
I came over and opened it for you.
Pouting, you turned a bit away. “I could’ve figured that out,” you said.
I dragged my bedroll next to yours. Temurin, the guards, and my mother slept closer to the fire. We had here some small amount of privacy. As you eased into the bedroll, you shot a glance toward the others.
“Does your mother always do that?”
I looked over. Alshara sat on a log, fletching arrows.
“Only when needed,” I said. She found fletching a relaxing activity, but she was not very good at it. Other clans presented her with gifted arrows so often, she used those instead. They flew straighter.
You rolled your eyes a bit. “Not that,” you said. “I meant … When we were leaving Fujino. She tore out that man’s tongue.”
I tapped my fingers to my lips in thought. Had my mother torn out other tongues before this?
I shook my head.
“But she did it so casually,” you said. “Without hesitation.” Your voice was softer than usual, as if you were afraid my mother would hear us.
“Normally,” I said, “she’d slit his throat. Or tear it out. Cut off an ear, nose. This is the first time she takes a tongue.”
You pressed your lips together and nodded. “I’ve heard the stories about her,” you said. “Is it true she killed her brothers?”
Again, I nodded. Qorin children all knew the story. Alshara once had six sisters and two brothers. This being before the Qorin united, it was still common to promise girls to other chiefs to curry favor. So it was with the two oldest sisters. My uncles bartered both of them away to rival clans.
But these were not pleasant times, and my aunts did not please their new husbands.
So their heads came back to us.
My uncles gnashed their teeth. To declare war, or not to declare war? We were smaller than either of the other clans. If we did attack—which of the two clans would be our target?
Each of my uncles had a different idea. For two months they argued, then four, then eight, and then a year flew by with no revenge. The two enemy clans raided us five times while my uncles deliberated. Five times. We were cold, hungry, and poor—yet they did nothing. Not even attack one of the weaker clans.
Alshara was the eldest of the remaining sisters. Grandmother was beginning to look for husbands for her, but it was not marriage that my mother sought in her heart of hearts. Food in her belly, boots that did not clap with every step, and her elder sisters put to rest—these were the things my mother wanted. But to get those things, she needed to control the clan. She could not seize power unless she was the eldest surviving child. It was a wall against Alshara’s progress.
My mother has never been fond of walls.
Alshara’s solution was brutal and simple. She took them out on a hunt, and when they were far from camp, she called for them to dismount.
She then ran them through, wrapped their bodies in felt, and dragged them back to camp.
This was the woman sitting on a log, fletching arrows.
“Did no one rebel against her?”
“At first,” I said. “But they died.”
You mulled this over. I imagine it must’ve been strange for you. After all, you’d known my mother only briefly before this. You could not speak with her. Whatever you knew stemmed from Shizuru’s war stories, colored pink and gold with faded glory.
But here she was, the woman herself, the most feared person in all Hokkaro. Your mother’s best friend. The woman who had adopted you.
Whatever your thoughts were, you kept them to yourself. If you were more tense around Alshara than most, no one called you out on it. Not even me.
My mother is terrifying at times, and I did not expect you to get accustomed to her overnight.
Yet you did.
Two months later, we arrived at the edge of the steppes. The Burqila clan welcomed us with open arms. My aunts threw another feast to celebrate my mother’s return. I didn’t see Otgar’s boy among the revelers, but I did see her. The three of us sat by the fire and ate our stew. Otgar brimmed with happiness. She’d grown younger since I last saw her three months prior. No longer did she hold herself as if she had something to prove.
“Your mother,” she said in Hokkaran, “sent the boy away.”
“Did they mean to marry you?” you asked.
Otgar nodded.
You scoffed and shook your head. “You should have dueled him.”
“We do not have duels,” Otgar said. “A duel implies one person will walk away with their life at the end. We do not do that. If someone insults you, you either kill them or die trying.”
You pursed your lips and glanced about the ger. “Should the Qorin be killing each other?” you asked. “My tutors tell me there is one of you alive today for every three that were alive before the wars.”
It is just like you to bring up something your Hokkaran teachers taught you about Qorin in a conversation with Qorin.
Otgar rolled her eyes. “That is why we have so many children,” she said. “So we can have spares.”
I spat out my kumaq. You sat there gaping, reaching for something vaguely polite to say in response. Once, twice you opened your mouth and no words came out.
Then Otgar clapped you hard on the shoulder, and I thought you were going to leap out of your skin. “Do not worry, Barsatoq!” she said. “This is Qorin humor. You will get it soon. For instance!”
I braced myself. Qorin jokes are awful, Shizuka. They’re horrible. I love them dearly, but they are awful, and I would never repeat them in your presence.
“Dashdelgar is out hunting!” Otgar began in a loud voice. All at once, my uncles and aunts ceased their talking and turned toward her. No Qorin in existence misses a joke. Especially not a Dashdelgar joke. He is our patron god of obfuscating stupidity. So what if it was being told in Hokkaran? Most of us understood Ricetongue, even if we did not speak it. Except Temurin. She said she’d learn it when Hokkarans learned Qorin, which was a fair point.
“But Dashdelgar hunts in winter, and he took with him only four arrows. After a whole day out in the cold, he fails to hit anything. So he fills his belly with kumaq and makes his way back to his ger.”
You listened. Your brows scrunched like caterpillars above your eyes, but you listened.
“He finds his wife with another man—not his brother either!”
A chorus of laughs. You blinked at me.
“Qorin marriages are different,” I whispered. “Sometimes brothers share wives.”
You swallowed and licked your lips. I could hear you thinking that you were not in Hokkaro anymore.
“They do not notice him, but this is not out of the ordinary; Dashdelgar is a small man, and he shares his ger with his entire family. His wife and the other man keep right on going. Dashdelgar watches them, infuriated. But he sees that there is another skin of kumaq and so he drinks it.”
I was going to have to explain a lot of things to you because of this joke. Hokkarans don’t speak of lewd matters, but it is not uncommon for such things to happen in the ger, in full view of the adults.
“It is then Dashdelgar notices three important things. One: he is drunk. Two: the ger is empty, except for the couple. And, three: this is not his ger.”
There it is. Everyone breaks down laughing. Even you spare a chuckle.
That first night passed with many such jokes. As time wore on, each of my aunts and uncles added their own Dashdelgar story.
Dashdelgar prepares for a ride to the desert, going through great trouble to buy a Surian donkey, only to find he did not fill his waterskin.
Dashdelgar goes hunting with his clanmates, swearing he will bring home the biggest game. His clanmates want nothing to do with him and abandon him. He stalks through the grass, sure he will find something eventually; he stays out all night. Then, when Grandmother Sky’s silver eye hangs in the sky, he is surprised by a rabbit and wets himself.
If you ask a Kharsa who the most valuable member of her clan is, she may say it is her most skilled hunter. She keeps the clan fed, after all. Another might name their sanvaartain, who keeps the clan healthy. Still another would name the eldest person in the caravan, whose knowledge saved them from disaster.
Allow me to tell you a secret, Shizuka, as the daughter of the Kharsa-that-was-not.
The most valuable member of the clan is the person who tells the best stories around the fire.
You may think me silly, but listen: That hunter picked up her bow because she wanted to be like Tumenbayar. That sanvaartain idolized wily Batederne, and quotes her whenever she gets the chance.
And the caravan elder—how do you suppose they share all this knowledge rolling around in their brain?
They tell stories.
Before my mother insisted on commissioning an alphabet for us, this was how we learned of our world: sat around the fire, learning of Tumenbayar and Batumongke and Batederne. And I tell you, Shizuka, the Dashdelgar stories are every bit as important as the others.
Tumenbayar lives in the clouds, and the hooves of her horse bring thunder on dark nights. But we have all been Dashdelgar.
You’d never heard any stories about Tumenbayar, and no one told them that first night, but you strove to mimic her regardless. In Hokkaro, you woke to practice calligraphy. Here on the steppes, you did not need to write anything. Here on the steppes, there was no one to tell you how dangerous, how foolish swordplay is.
In fact, my entire clan wanted to prove it to you.
You fought anyone and everyone. Young warriors with no braids in their hair. Old veterans with ropes sprouting from their heads. Temurin was one of your favorites; she did not care if she hurt you.
Not that she ever came close, but it was the thought that mattered.
Watching you fight my clanmates was watching oil float on water. Nothing touched you. Your opponents lunged; you melted away from them. They waited for you to strike, and you turned to stone. In the three years you stayed with us, only my mother hit you with any regularity, and that because she was fond of cheating.
A blacksmith stands at his forge. In his hands, a pair of tongs; at his side, a hunk of rough-hewn iron. When he lowers it into the inferno of the smelter, he does not see a hunk of iron. He sees a sword waiting to be born. And so he pulls the iron out once it glows white-hot, lays it on his anvil. With all the force he can muster, he hammers it into shape—and then he quenches it in water.
For months, you subjected yourself to the same routine. When you awoke, you’d see who wanted to test your mettle that day. One, two, three challengers; you didn’t balk at being outnumbered, and the clan wanted to know how good a pampered Hokkaran girl could be. After you finished your first round of challenges, you’d demand that we go riding. When we finished riding, you demanded to practice wrestling.
It is hard to put into words the single-mindedness with which you pursued your training. I must stress this, Shizuka—you never turned down a challenger. When four warriors came to you, you fought them all at the same time, standing barefoot on the silver grass. Over the years, the number grew. You fought mounted Qorin, you asked my clanmates to shoot at you, you went in search of wolves. Anything to test your abilities.
So it was every morning, every afternoon, every night. Months wore into years. More than once, I caught you weeping in your bedroll at night. Whenever I caught you mumbling in your sleep, you were saying that maybe you could’ve saved your parents, if you’d gone with them, if you were strong enough.
I tried talking to you, Shizuka, but milking a stallion would’ve been easier. Either you thought I was babying you, or you said I could not understand the dedication required for Hokkaran swordplay, or …
Once, you snapped at me to “cease my incessant nagging.”
That was worse than your hands around my throat.
* * *
BUT I COULD NOT abandon you, even during those dark years when you fought so hard to be abandoned. When we ate, I was at your side. When we hunted, when we rode. Though you sometimes ignored me, I was there. That has always been my purpose, Shizuka—to protect you from everything, including your own foolish self.
And foolish it was to practice sword forms outside. At night. In the steppes. But I was there all the same.
“Are you not worried about the cold?” you said one night.
“Are you?” I asked. For you did not have a deel yet—I was still working on making one—and you had no warm hat either. Your cheeks were the color of fresh fruit, your hands raw around the hilt of your mother’s sword. “The ger has a fire.”
“I am not done,” you said. Indeed, as we spoke, you continued to move from form to form.
“You will freeze.”
“I cannot freeze,” you replied. “Imperial blood burns with heavenly fire.”
I cocked a brow at you. You believed that the same way I believed a mare birthed me. Yet you did not stop your sword forms. One stroke led to another: a dance you seemed to be trapped in.
But the more I studied you, the more I was troubled. Your steps were short and shaky; your blade rattled in your hands. Your lips were cracked and pale; beads of sweat clung to your forehead.
I rose to my feet. “Shizuka?”
“I cannot freeze!” you repeated. Your next stroke would’ve gotten you killed on a battlefield. I went toward you.
Now that I was close, I could see how pale you were. My stomach twisted. Though you still tried to go through your forms, I wrapped my arms about your waist. Like trying to hold the sun in my arms.
“Let me go!” you shouted. “I am not done with my forms.”
But we were sixteen then, and I was eighteen hands tall to your almost fifteen. I scooped you into my arms and took you inside.
A hummingbird could not hope to flap his wings faster than my heart fluttered in my chest. Alshara was already asleep, but woke at once when I kicked her rib lightly. And when she saw you … my mother’s brown face turned the color of milky tea.
She yanked Otgar out of her bedroll and fired off a series of signs. I stood there, holding you. What were we going to do? Take you to the shaman. But healers never helped me—how could they help you, if your old theory was true? Who among men can heal a god?
So I sat by your side as fever twisted your protests. You kept raving about your blood. About your heritage. About the dawn pulsing through your veins.
“When the daylight comes,” you said, “when the daylight comes, it will cleanse me, you will see. Scarlet runs gold. Brighter than ever.”
Listening to you, I had to fight my tears. You did not make sense, Shizuka. How is sunlight going to cure your fever? Dawn cannot banish sickness. I clutched your hand; I rocked back and forth in the shaman’s ger.
The sanvaartain took one look at you and shook her head. Like any sanvaartain interested in healing, she looked eighty. In reality, she could not have been older than Otgar.
“Burqila,” she said, “if you asked me to journey into the center of the earth, where Grandfather sleeps—if you asked me to steal his belt and bring it to you, I would. But I cannot heal this girl.”
My mother did not bother signing. She shattered a divining bowl instead. I recoiled from the sound, my head already throbbing with pain.
“Burqila is displeased with your answer,” Otgar said, as if it needed saying. “You tell her you can reattach a man’s severed arm, but you cannot cure a simple fever?”
The sanvaartain showed no fear in the presence of my mother. “I cannot,” she said. “The girl is not mine to heal. Even if she were, this is no simple fever. Look at her eyes.”
Glassy. You did not focus on anything; your eyes flittered everywhere like shy birds. When you lay down like this, the skin of your face sank into your skull.
“This is her fourth day of fever,” the shaman said, “that is the face of a girl who sees the Mother coming. Pray that she does not carry her home tonight.”
How long had you been sick? How long had you hidden it from us?
Guilt tore into me. You could die. You’d driven yourself day and night, you’d fought and fought and fought. And I’d done nothing. I watched. I let you do it all, and now, here you were—your own ghost.
“And if the Mother does not come for her tonight?” Otgar asked.
“Then she will live. But only if she wakes in the morning,” said the shaman.
After an hour of haranguing, the shaman admitted that water from the Rokhon might help your body rid itself of toxins. That did not make much sense to me; water is water, even if it is taken from a holy river. And what good would that do us? The Rokhon was a whole day’s ride away. By the time someone made the trip and returned, you’d be better (because you were not going to die, could not die, would not die).
But things like logistics never stopped my mother. Especially not when her best friend’s daughter lay on what seemed like her deathbed.
I glanced over my shoulder. Otgar and Alshara signed furiously at each other. I caught a few words here and there. “Madwoman,” “insane,” “impossible,” from Otgar. “Must,” “do not challenge,” and “soon,” from my mother. Eventually my mother stormed out of the ger.
“Burqila is riding to the Rokhon,” Otgar said. “Because she seems to think roads are shorter for her than for anyone else.”
The sanvaartain shook her head. “She’s going to kill that liver mare of hers,” she said. Nadsha—my mother’s liver-colored mare, with a star, strip, and snip—was getting old. It was true she could likely not survive being driven so hard.
It is fortunate, then, that the Burqila clan possesses more than ten thousand horses.
“She will not take the liver mare,” Otgar said. “Or if she does, they will not go alone. She will take a gelding, or a stallion, or a hot-blooded colt with something to prove. She would not risk the liver mare.”
“Then she will run two good horses to death,” said the sanvaartain. “For some Hokkaran girl. When has a rice-eater done anything like that? The only gift they’ve ever given us is plague.”
Liquid flame shot through my veins. How dare she? While you lay in bed, fever robbing you of your strength—she insulted your people? As much as our Hokkaran wounds festered and turned to rot, now was not the time.
I rose to my feet and locked eyes with the sanvaartain. “Out,” I snarled.
Otgar scowled. “I would listen, if I were you,” she said.
Perhaps the sanvaartain was used to be snarled at. She did not move.
“This is my mother’s ger,” she said. “I am entitled to stay in my mother’s ger at night.”
Pain shot through my jaw, from clenching it too tight. No, I could not remove a woman from her own ger. Raiders might do such a thing, but never a clanmate. This woman was my blood in some small way. Making her leave the ger her mother built with her own two hands was the same as dragging her away from her mother’s soul.
So instead, I picked you up in my arms. In thick fur pelts, I swaddled you. You muttered my name; I whispered that all would be well soon. And I carried you out of the sanvaartain’s ger.
Otgar followed us. “Are you going to take her to your mother’s?” she asked. “With our aunts and uncles, too?”
I had not thought this through, so I shrugged. When you shivered, I held you closer.
“Auntie Khadiyyaar’s little one isn’t old enough to be left alone yet,” Otgar said. “If whatever Barsatoq has is contagious…”
My eyes lit up.
Otgar paused, holding up her hands to try to soothe my rage. “Cousin,” she said. “Barsalai. Shefali. That girl might be the most self-absorbed person under the Eternal Sky, but she is important to you. And, if I’m being honest, she is almost as talented as she claims. But she is one person. You must think of the clan, Shefali. A Kharsa must put her clan first. You cannot keep her around the children.”
Send the children away, then! Let them sit in their own ger! But … No, they would fall into the fire, and someone had to watch them.
I looked down at you, swaddled like a baby, pale in the moonlight. Gods, Shizuka, you looked so weak.
“My ger is empty.”
What? Otgar had a ger? Auntie Zurganqaar stayed with us. Why did Otgar have a ger?
She shifted her weight. “I enjoy a bit of peace and quiet every now and again,” she said. “I am a woman grown, I am allowed to begin my own ger if I want.”
But Otgar was unmarried at twenty—itself an anomaly. And only married women began their own gers. What was my cousin up to? And how, exactly, had she gotten out of her marriage when that boy had already paid his bride-price? Yet I did not have the time or the wherewithal to question her. Instead, I followed as she led us to the very edge of the camp.
Otgar’s ger was the one tree in autumn whose leaves fell before all the others. Small, with a frame half the size of a normal one, only the barest sheet of felt lined it. Once we stepped inside, we saw a few carpets draped from the supports in some effort to provide warmth. In the southern corner was a single bedroll, and in the center, the smallest fire pit it’s possible to have in a ger. I felt as if I were not standing in a ger at all, but something in between a tent and the white felt palaces I am so used to.
“It is not much to look at,” Otgar said, “or to sleep in. But it is mine, and tonight it is yours.”
She stoked the smoldering coals that passed for a fire and laid out the bedroll. As I lowered you onto it, she tucked you in, rolling the sheets up to your chin. I took my place at your side.
“I must wait for Burqila to return,” said Otgar. “I’d ask if everyone in your family is such a foolhardy, mule-stubborn pain, but we are cousins. I still say it’s only your branch. But…”
She paused by the red door. Her pale eyes fell on you, sputtering meaningless syllables.
“May Grandmother Sky smile on her,” she said. “No one deserves to suffer like that.”
The door closed behind her.
And so we were alone, you and I.
I squeezed your hand. As the sands of Sur-Shar when baked beneath the sun, so was your flesh. The words that dropped from your lips were not Hokkaran or Qorin. They were the crack of fire consuming wood; the dull roar of flames igniting; the pop of boiling oil. Thick fog hid the brown-gold of your eyes.
I stared down at you and considered our life together. Our life apart, really. The first day we met, your hands locked around my throat, your face a demonic mask. All the letters you wrote me that I could not read; all the letters I made Otgar write to you. The stories you’d tell me of the goings-on at court. That afternoon beneath the tree, our blood mingling on an arrowhead.
I touched your cheek.
How I had longed to do this, Shizuka. Oh, I’d found reasons to touch you. I did take you out for rides, as I’d imagined when we first left. With perfect nonchalance, you touched the star-shaped blaze on my horse’s forehead.
Perhaps you do not know this. My mare and I were born on the same day. You might be asking yourself how such a thing is possible, when we are now nearly thirty and I ride her still. Just as you and I are something more than human, my horse is something more than a horse. This was known from her birth. My mother’s liver mare was her dam; her sire was a roan. Yet when she emerged, she was black as night, with the white star on her forehead.
In no way should such a union have yielded a black horse, or the gray she grew into. In cases like these, we say Grandfather Earth guided her birth. My mother hosted a grand feast to celebrate her dual fortune—an Earth-blessed horse, and a healthy young daughter.
You did not know that when you asked. At least you did not know it consciously. You could not talk to her as I did, could not speak the tongue of swaying wind.
I wondered if you were speaking your own version of that tongue. I wondered what you were saying.
I touched your lips while my own trembled. Dry, cracked, flaking. When I dreamed of this moment, I imagined how soft they’d be.
Yes, Shizuka. I imagined touching your lips, your cloud-soft skin. I had for at least two years. Other girls my age had boys paying their bride-prices already. When my mother asked if I wanted her to find someone, I shook my head.
I wanted you. Only you.
From the day we met, I’ve known this as my heart has known to beat. That it took me so long to recognize is my own great shame.
And I saw you there, a ghost of yourself. You still had so much to do, Shizuka. We were going to slay gods together. The Empire of Hokkaro needed you, too—you had to found your own dynasty, had to raise children, had to ascend to the Dragon Throne. Empress O-Shizuka you would be, and no one in the land would be permitted to write your name without dropping a stroke out of deference.
You could never be mine. Much as I wanted you, much as we were destined to spend our lives together, we could never be together the way I wanted us to.
I licked my lips.
A fever. That such a mundane thing would lay you so low …
“Shefali.”
At the sound of my name, I jolted back to reality. The fog on your eyes had lifted.
“Shizuka?” I said. “Do you need anything?”
Weak as you were, you squeezed my hand. Again, fire burned in your gaze, all the more bright against your pallid complexion. “Shefali,” you said, tugging on my hand, “kiss me.”
My mouth hung open. I drew back, a chill running up my spine. “Wh-what?”
You screwed your eyes shut and forced yourself to sit up. From somewhere within yourself, you found strength enough to pull me onto the bed. “I don’t care how wrong it is,” you said, almost shouting, “I am not going to die without kissing you at least once. Hurry up!”
How I wanted to! But what if this was just your fevered raving? What if, when you recovered (you had to recover) you regretted it? This could not be happening. You were going to be Empress one day. You could not want to be with me that way.
“We’re both girls,” I said.
You grabbed me by the flap of my deel. Mad with strength, you rolled us over. Hot tears fell on my chest and face.
“Did you hear me?” you roared. “I don’t care! In all the lands of the Empire, I’ve only ever wanted to marry you. You fool Qorin! You do not hesitate to slay a tiger, but you hesitate to kiss a girl?”
I stared at you, your cheeks flushed red, your whole body trembling.
“Are you not a warrior?” you said. “Are you not a leader? Act decisively! Don’t sit there and gawk at a dying woman!”
I sputtered. No words came to me.
But this was not the time for words, was it?
And so I wrapped my arms around you. So I held you in my arms as men hold women, as Grandfather Earth held Grandmother Sky. And as Tumenbayar loved Batumongke, as O-Shizuru loved O-Itsuki, so did I love you.
Yes, Shizuka. The sky is full of stars beyond number, each one representing a life. And yet in all those lives beyond number, in all those millions of years lived by those before us, in all their shared experience, none have loved so thoroughly as we.
When our lips met, the stars grew jealous of us. I cannot begin to tell you how it felt. How my whole body rang with the sound of temple bells.
When we parted, I could not remember how to breathe.
I stared at you, eyes wide, fear creeping back in. What if you had not liked it? I’d never kissed anyone before.
But you tugged me down toward you again. “Keep going,” you said, “until I tell you to stop.”
And so I did. Our mouths met again. You wasted no time slipping your tongue between my lips like a lick of flame. My hands traveled the wall of your spine. I touched your skin and felt the muscle hiding beneath, felt the bones that made you up. Your hands, too, wandered. With a calligrapher’s grace, you danced across my rib cage and collarbones.
You became my air. Whenever we parted, you redoubled your efforts. You kissed me like a monsoon; you touched me like lightning. You tugged at my deel, too weak to take it off. Whatever doubts I had disappeared when I rid myself of my deel and pants. I paused with my hands on the brocade edges of your dress.
“Are you—?”
“Keep going.”
When I slid off your clothing, I think I died for the first time—for no one can live through such a divine vision. For an eternity I sat up, gaping at your beauty before you tugged me back downward.
“Fool Qorin,” you whispered into my ear. “I did not say stop.”
And then your mouth pressed against my neck. Heat and pressure and pain against that tender skin made me moan. You smiled as you kept at it, knowing full well you’d leave a mark.
“Shizuka, everyone will see,” I whimpered.
“Let them,” you said. There would be no arguing.
Still, my hands kept traveling. I left the delicate road of your spine for something softer. Your breasts have always tantalized me, Shizuka; this you well know. Now that I was touching them for the first time, I hardly knew how to contain myself. I kneaded at them as my heart hammered in my chest, as warmth spread throughout me. Burning within me was the desire to be near to you, to burn in your flame, to show you just how much I’d wanted you all these years.
I took your delicate pink nipple in my mouth. As my tongue ran over it, you made the most wonderful sound—a half moan, half whimper. It only drove me on. You took fistfuls of my hair.
As best you could, you rocked your hips against my knee.
I continued worshipping your body. My mouth moved in unspoken prayers at your other breast, your throat, your collarbones. You threw your head back as I kissed you. How you purred, Shizuka! How I treasure that sound above all others still!
“Lie down,” you said.
I did as I was told. And though you were sick, when you positioned yourself over me, I swear I was looking up at the Eternal Sky.
Gods, but the sight of that part of you. It, too, was beautiful—pink and glistening like an orchid slick with dew.
“Shizuka, are you sure?”
“Keep going!”
You fell forward and braced yourself with one shaky arm. With my hair still in your hand, you rode me—a canter at first, then a full gallop. Your wetness covered my mouth and jaw and chin, and I could not get enough of your taste. Again, I licked and suckled; again, I teased your opening. The louder you were, the harder I went.
“Don’t … don’t you dare stop.…”
I could feel you throbbing against my tongue. You tugged my hair so hard, I thought it would fall out; you squeezed my head so tight, I thought it would pop off my neck. When at last you went taut as a bowstring, you spoke my name like a prayer.
I was covered in you. Gods, the smell, Shizuka. How I wish I could smell you again. How I wish I could take a bit of your spirit into me again.
For a few moments, you lay on top of me, catching your breath. Perhaps you shouldn’t be engaging in such strenuous activity in your state. But I could not say I regretted it. How could I ever regret being so close to you?
“Shizuka,” I asked, “was that … did you feel…?”
In response, you rolled over and smiled. If only for an instant, you looked like your old self. You were going to make it. You had to make it now.
But … well, there was another matter to attend to. My inner thighs were slick, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t desperate for you.
You clambered on top of me and bent to kiss me.
I turned away. “You shouldn’t—”
“You’re only a mess because of me,” you said. “Let me kiss you.”
Your kisses were more insistent than mine, and your hands more needy. You grabbed me as if you were going to die in the morning, because there was a very real chance you might. Your long nails left trails wherever they went; your flashing teeth nipped at my nipples and skin. You cupped my bottom and squeezed.
Our eyes met. Your fingers hovered a hairsbreadth away from my center, from the heat between my legs. My breath hitched; I needed you inside me more than I’d ever needed anything in my life.
“Shefali,” you whispered.
I licked my lips. I was so eager, Shizuka. I was the bowstring now, waiting to be fired.
“Before I do this,” you said, “you should know that I’ve loved you since we were children.”
“I love you, too,” I said.
And just like that, your fingertips rubbed against me. Pleasure sank into me like an arrow. I clutched you tight and rode your hand.
“Ready yourself,” you said.
But how could I when I was so overwhelmed? Your fingers slid inside me and I moaned loud enough for all Sur-Shar to hear me. After that, I bit at your shoulder to try to keep quiet.
You thrust your fingers in and out of me, hooking them with each stroke. I moaned into your mouth as the pressure built up at the base of my spine. Soon I was going to explode like Dragon’s Fire, soon I was going to burst, soon I was going to die in your arms and …
And then it all came to a glorious climax, to a small eternity of bliss.
When it was over, I leaned against you slick with sweat. We both needed a bit of time to catch our breaths—to process what we had just done. Women did not do this with other women. I couldn’t think of anyone who’d done such a thing. And even if one of us were a man, we were unmarried. If your uncle tried to find you a husband now …
Yet I could not feel bad about it. If this was not how the gods intended us to live our lives, then I’d rather be executed at your side than never touch you again. Looking at you with your eyes so wide, panting, your chest flushed red, I thought this must be the point of it all.
You were the point.
And you were also the first to speak.
“I see your shy nature does not extend to the bedroom,” you said.
We both laughed. We linked hands underneath the blanket, and I hid my face against your shoulder in mock embarrassment. We stayed that way for a while.
“Thank you,” you whispered. “I’ve wanted to do that with you for some time.”
“Since you saw Aunt Zurgaanqar and Uncle Ganzorig?” I asked.
One night you saw my uncle and aunt rutting. How red you got looking at them, how you stared and sputtered! That was the first time you’d ever seen anything of the sort, you said. No one in Hokkaro spoke of such things.
But here on the steppes, there is no privacy. What goes on between man and wife has long been known to me. Qorin girls are supposed to ease their shy husbands into it.
How amusing, then, that we should be together like this. Was I your shy husband? Or were you mine?
A blush came to your cheek, but you nodded. “I’ve always known I wanted to be with you,” you said. “The same way a child knows who their parents are, so I knew you were the one for me. But I did not know what it meant until…”
I kissed you on the cheek. “You stared.”
“I did,” you said. “Because I wanted so badly to do the same with you.”
You huddled against me. We had done the same now, and we could never go back.
No one could know.
If anyone found out about us, you would not inherit. And much as I loved you, the people of Hokkaro needed you … No, I cannot say they need you more. I need you more than any hundred thousand people put together. But they are the ones to whom you should turn your attention.
Do you pay attention to them now, in my absence?
I did not know what the future held that night. So I held your wasting frame in my arms, and I prayed to every god I knew that we’d wake together in the morning.
* * *
SURE ENOUGH, I woke before you. The first rosy fingers of dawn turned the blue sky violet. Bright morning stars flickered above our ger; the warm morning air washed against the white felt walls.
I looked down at you asleep against me, our feet entangled beneath the blankets. Already red crept back into your complexion; already you felt cooler. I squeezed you tight.
And under the sheets, you were naked. I had not been dreaming, after all.
But with the dawn came the return of reality. We could not be caught like this. I slipped out of the bedroll. In your sleep, you reached for me; as I stood, your fingers trailed through my hair.
It hurt my heart to leave you, but I, at least, had to be dressed.
Just as I tugged on my deel, I heard the clattering of hooves. I did my best to tuck you in tight.
A few seconds later, my mother threw open the red door. There were dark circles underneath her eyes, and a halo of frizz crowned her head. As a caged animal finally set free is wild and crazed, so was my mother’s expression. In her hands was a dripping waterskin.
I tried to stop her, but she barreled straight for you.
“Mother—”
She knelt next to you, slipped one arm beneath your shoulders, and sat you up. When she saw that you were naked, she scowled at me.
My cheeks flushed. “She was cold,” I mumbled.
My mother tilted her head. At times my mother’s muteness is no obstacle to communication. I read her look easy as Qorin letters carved onto a cliff.
We will speak of this later.
I cleared my throat and averted my eyes as if I had not already seen you. As if I were the shy virgin I had been last night.
As she jostled you, you stirred, your eyes adjusting to the half light. My mother tipped the waterskin to your lips before you could protest; you choked as the water trickled down your throat.
“Burqila,” you gasped, clutching your chest.
She slapped you hard on the back. Then, with unexpected tenderness, she took your temperature with her hand. A sigh of relief left her. She touched her fingers to her lips and held them to the sky in praise. I took the opportunity to drape the blankets around your shoulders.
Otgar came in not long after that—a good thing, too, as my mother had many questions for you.
“Did you lose a duel with your clothing?” Otgar teased.
“I won the duel with the fever, that is all that matters,” you said. I must admire your aplomb; the question did not faze you in the slightest. Your princess’s dignity shielded you from shame.
My mother interrupted us with a raised hand. Signing followed. Otgar let out a small laugh.
“Burqila says that if you allow yourself to get so sick again, she would treat with demons to revive you just so she can kill you again.”
We called the sanvaartain in to check on you. She affirmed your health the same way one might declare a woman pregnant.
“Give thanks to Grandmother Sky,” she said, “who shielded you from the Mother’s grasping hands.”
When we were eight, we faced a tiger. From it we received our names, and I received a scar. The image of it is still vivid in my mind—the way it sank low to the ground with its hindquarters raised. I remember its golden eyes and the proud, sagacious way it regarded me just before it attacked.
So, too, did you regard the sanvaartain. “I will thank no one save Shefali and Burqila,” you said, “for they are the ones who aided me. If the gods wish for me to thank them, then they shall come into the ger to speak to me.”
Skies darken over the Silver Steppes. It is the moment before a thunderstorm. Animals run for shelter; Qorin hurry to their gers, leaving bowls and cups to catch the rain. If anyone were outside, they would hear the perfect stillness in the air—the worried whisper of the grass.
So it was after you spoke. Otgar, my mother, and the sanvaartain all spat on the ground. Even I, who knew you so well, found myself staring blankly at you. Qorin and Hokkarans may hold different gods, but you challenged all of them to speak to you. A mortal.
But …
If the gods spoke to anyone, perhaps they would speak to us.
You did not wait for mortals to chide you. Instead, you wrapped yourself in your robes and got to your feet.
“Barsatoq,” said Otgar, “has it occurred to you that you are daring the world to slay you?”
“I will dare and dare again,” you said, “since I cannot die.” You tied your robes closed and tucked your sword into your belt. “Not until I finish what I was meant to do.”
And as you spoke, your eyes met mine. Our night together played out again in my mind, bringing a flush to my face I coughed to conceal.
“Let all the gods of man and beast face me, if they so wish,” you continued. “I cannot be humbled by my equals.”
Honey-sweet lips summoned thunder and lightning. When you opened the red door, light crowned you.
I did not know what to say. What is there to say to such a thing? Boasting was as natural to you as archery is to me, but you’d never insulted the gods like this before.
You stood silhouetted by the dawn in the doorway. I thought of the second time we met—when you stood like this at Oshiro’s garden gates, cloaked in golden silk, a thousand flowers swaying behind you. Now there was only the tall silver grass and the Eternal Sky.
But the image was no less striking.
“Shefali,” you called, “you are coming, yes?”
“She is not,” cut in Otgar. Strange. My mother did not sign anything for her to translate. “We have much to discuss.”
You wrinkled your nose. “You intend to leave me alone?”
I opened my mouth, but Otgar spoke first. Again. She had a knack for that. “Well, Barsatoq, if you are so comfortable threatening the gods, then being alone should be no problem.”
I stood. My quiver, bow, and whip were within easy reach; I needed nothing else to survive. I walked to the red door.
“Shefali, your mother wants you to stay,” Otgar said.
But I looked to you crowned with daylight’s glory.
When I met my mother’s and Otgar’s gazes, I shook my head. I was sixteen. If I wanted to disobey my mother, I could. It did not matter that my mother happened to be the greatest fear of most Hokkarans—at the time, she was keeping me from the person I wanted to be with.
So I said nothing, only shook my head, and left out the red door. I did not look behind me as I left, but I imagine they were frustrated. They did not chase after me, however. Whatever words we were all going to share would wait until you and I returned from wherever we were going.
Come to think of it, I did not know where you were leading us.
But as we made our way through the camp, you laced your pinky through mine and I decided not to think on it too hard. Better to savor the moment. Better to savor the way the wind tousled your hair, the simple sight of you on the steppes. I cannot say you were ever truly at home there—more than once, you complained of the smell, or longed for a proper shower—but you were here among the rolling hills of my childhood. For that sight alone, I am forever grateful.
Watching you, it occurred to me you might not remember what happened the night before. Sometimes fever claims one’s memories. And what if you didn’t remember? What if you woke naked and confused?
As you approached your stocky red horse, I summoned my courage. I could not bear the thought of you not knowing.
“Shizuka,” I ventured, “do you remember what happened?”
You turned from saddling your horse. Somewhere between mirth and embarrassment was the look you gave me. “Shefali,” you said, “do not be silly. I could not forget … I could not forget such a night.”
Relief left me in a long gasp. After a quick look around, I embraced you tight. You kissed the tip of my chin and pushed me away—more playful than condemning.
Then you squeezed my shoulder. “Which is why,” you said, “we are leaving today.”