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 mot
her 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 th
ings 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.
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