I wrote to you of the things I saw, the places I’d traveled. There weren’t many. At least, not many different ones. The steppes enthrall me, Shizuka, and they always have—but there are only so many times I can write about endless silver grass before it gets boring.
I wrote about it anyway. Anything I could think of—how Otgar’s new bows were coming along, a long rant about where a saddle should sit on a horse’s back, my Uncle Ganzorig’s latest stew recipe—went into those letters. Otgar hated transcribing them. She must have gotten used to it, though, since we did it every day for two years straight.
Seven hundred and twenty letters. When I was writing them, they all felt like one long conversation. Your replies always found us within a reasonable span—my mother enlisted four messengers dedicated only to our correspondence—until we reached the northern forests.
The Qorin there almost looked like Hokkarans, their skin was so pale—but their hair was lighter than mine was, and they still greeted us with kumaq and old war songs.
The chief of the northern tribes was, at the time, a man named Surenqalan. Old and graying, with as many scars as a dappled mare has spots, he greeted us from horseback. Only three pale braids circled his head, tied from the hair at the base of his crown. Across the flat of his bald head was a nasty streak of scarred flesh.
We shared his fire that first night, and stayed in his ger for the customary meal. On the first night of my mother’s visits, she does not discuss business. Instead, Surenqalan spoke to us of his daughters and his sons, of marriages and funerals. I listened though I knew none of the people being discussed. Otgar translated for my mother, and gave me summaries of the people. I had distant cousins here, too, thanks to my absurd number of aunts.
But the reason I remember this night so well—the reason I can still picture old Surenqalan poking at the fire, the reason I can feel the tip of my nose go numb when I think about that night, is what happened after we left to our own ger.
I saw something out of the corner of my eye, dashing between the gers. Tall, slender, cloaked in black and red; it moved as quickly as a shadow flickering between trees.
Wolves sometimes attack us, but they would not do so this far north. And they would not get so close to the camps, when they know we’d shoot them on sight. Nor could I say the figure looked Qorin—it did not wear a deel, or any winter clothing at all.
I froze in place. My mother turned toward me, one hand on the hilt of her scimitar. She wrinkled her nose and bared her teeth. I pointed where I’d seen the figure, and my mother made a few more gestures.
“Search the area,” Otgar said.
The riders scrambled off. I watched them go, opening and closing my fists. I had the sinking feeling they were not going to find anything. What if this, like the glimmer near the dying, was something only I could see?
I strung my bow and pulled an arrow from my quiver.
“Shefali,” Otgar said, “what are you doing?”
I started walking between the gers. That thing was somewhere around here, lurking near my people, and I would not allow it to continue stalking us.
“Has it occured to you,” Otgar said, “that you are ten years old?”
I continued. No use arguing; I did not have the time. Black and red, black and red … there! I saw it—her—clearly now, a living darkness against the pure white ger.
I drew back my bow and aimed.
“What are you firing at?” Otgar asked.
I was right; she couldn’t see the dark thing! More reason to let fly!
Except … well, there were people in that ger, and if my arrow pierced through its walls, they might be hurt.
A moment’s hesitation doomed me.
Because the figure noticed that I’d noticed her.
It is difficult to say that a shadow smiled. If you imagine a silhouette in darkest ink against finest paper, that was the figure I saw. No features, no light, nothing to indicate she had any expression at all. Yet I knew she was looking at me, and my bones rattled with her amusement.
“Hello, Steel-Eye.”
Ice ran through my veins.
Who was Steel-Eye? For I’d earned my name already. Tiger-Striped, I was, with my mother’s viper-green eyes.
And yet in my chest I felt a rightness. That, more than the voice itself, terrified me.
I wanted to run. I wanted, more than anything, to run.
But I was Barsalai Shefali now, an adult of the Burqila clan. And the Burqila clan did not become dominant by running from their enemies.
So I thought at this thing clearly and loudly: Whatever you are, you are not welcome in my lands.
“They are not your lands yet, Steel-Eye,” she said. “And you are still a child. You cannot stop me.”
I can, I thought.
Again, I raised my bow. Otgar squeezed my forearm, her face wrought with concern. “Shefali,” she said, “there is nothing there. You’re staring at a blank patch of the ger.”
Laughter, if you could call it that. The sound of a lump of coal shattering.
“See how they doubt you? So they will for years and years. It would be much easier if you joined us now,” it said.
Its words triggered a roiling anger within me. I no longer cared if anyone was hurt; I fired. The shadow peeled away from the ger. Arrow met felt. That sound of breaking coal rang through the air. The figure slipped inside, I took a step forward—
Otgar blocked my path.
“Shefali,” she said in a level voice, “listen to me. Whatever you saw, don’t let it affect you like this. You are going to be Kharsa one day. You cannot let the shadows rule you.”
By then my mother returned with her empty-handed riders. She saw the arrow sticking out from the ger—saw it was mine—and frowned. When she sharply gestured that I should apologize to the inhabitants, I was not surprised.
I looked from her to Otgar. My cousin was fourteen then. In a few more years, she’d be ready to marry. She was not a pretty girl, but she was smart as a whip. Someone would be coming to stay with her soon—some boy working off his bride-price.
And she was looking at me like I was a child who ran off from camp and nearly got eaten by wolves.
I lowered my bow and shrank about three sizes.
I knew what I saw.
And I knew it had a name, the same way I knew your name from the moment I could speak.
Shao. Her name was Shao.
My mother forced me to apologize, and I did that as curtly as I could. A small family lived inside that ger. A man, his wife, his grandmother. Very small. No doubt the man’s brothers died off before my mother came to power, during the wars. So many of us died to the blackblood that we were trying to make up for it. Each family was encouraged to have as many children as they could, and then sanvaartains got involved. Did you know, Shizuka, that many of the Qorin children you see these days are fatherless? Given the proper rituals, sanvaartains can induce pregnancy—but still, I saw no children here.
Otgar did her best to calm me. She told me the story of Tumenbayar again—the Kharsa who used the moon as her bow, with hair of shining silver and skin like rich clay.