Outside, the preparations began. My mother gathered up her riders. Without an interpreter, things were a bit more difficult, but many of our guards have been with us for years. If they couldn’t read Alshara’s signs, they could read her body language. Simple enough to convey “get your weapons” or “follow me.”
I watched from horseback. I watched them string their bows and sharpen their swords, watched them don their three-mirror armor, their bronze war masks. Two dozen humans became two dozen animals. I gazed upon the faces of wolves and tigers, of lions and eagles.
Not a trace of their skin showed through.
I did not have a war mask. I did not have three-mirror armor, or gauntlets thick enough to shield me from any demon blood. If I followed them on this trip, I’d be exposing myself to great risk—the sort of risk my mother wouldn’t abide. The smallest drop of demon blood spreads through a body like paint in water. For this reason, we cover ourselves. For this reason, Hokkarans use naginatas in place of swords.
Qorin do not much believe in polearms—instead, we prefer to pick enemies off from afar. And for the most part, this works.
But you must sever a demon’s head for it to truly die.
And that requires getting very close indeed.
Whoever slew the creature must be both the bravest and the most foolish. My mother, more likely than anything. She is the only person I know whose war mask is modeled on her own face. She would be the one to hold Shao’s hair and swing her sword and sever her head. She would be the one whose clothing would be burned when this was through.
The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to see it. The more I wanted to be there. And this want grew into a need, into a burning thing in my chest.
I slunk over to the supply tent. I did not have a war mask, but I could find one here. Indeed, a few were lined up on a table just inside. Wolf, fox, falcon. Family, guile, speed. I picked up the fox mask. Not that I consider myself a trickster—several others wore them. It was best if I fit in. And, no, there was no three-mirror armor—but there was lamellar. I wriggled into it and looked in the mirror.
I stood fifteen hands tall. My armor was intended for someone sixteen and a half hands at the shortest. It hung loose around my torso; I had to hold my gauntlets up to keep them on. When I moved my head, my war mask rattled. I could see, yes. Barely. Enough to know I looked ridiculous. Imagine it, Shizuka: a kitten wearing a lion’s mane.
But in the dark, on horseback, in the heat of battle—who is paying attention to what their comrade looks like?
This would have to do.
I stuffed the armor into my saddlebags. My mother wouldn’t depart until later on, when the moon was high in the sky. Demons do not travel by day. I had until then to convince Otgar to translate again.
Otgar was in our ger when I found her, huddled against the northern wall. She poked at the fire with a stick. Glowered at it. In that moment, she reminded me of you. A darker, paler-haired version of you. When I entered, she glanced up, then continued staring at the fire.
“Needlenose,” she said. “Your mother wants to marry me off.”
I took a seat next to her. The fire made my cheeks tingle as they came back to life; I held out my hands to warm them.
“Can you imagine some ten-year-old running around our ger, trying to get his chores done?” she continued. I was ten, which I did not point out. “Messing everything up. He’s going to mess everything up. Why’s she doing this?”
“You’re old enough,” I said.
Otgar threw her stick into the fire. It crackled and roared, devouring the wood in an instant. She slumped forward and hugged her knees.
If only I were you—if only I could instill confidence in someone with the slightest effort. You’d know what to say.
Granted you did not like Otgar.
But in general, you would’ve known what to say.
“Otgar.”
“Yes, Needlenose?”
“You don’t have to,” I said. “You can say no.”
She puffed her cheeks out. Here in the ger, it was warm enough that no vapor left her. I half expected to see it anyway. “You want me to say no to the Kharsa.”
“Your aunt.”
“The Kharsa.”
I shrugged.
Otgar shook her head. For some time she stayed slumped forward like that. I watched the fire in her place, wondering how long it would take her to feel better. There would be time to discuss this after the demon was dead. Plenty of time. Two years, in fact, when we could send the boy away if he ever displeased us. Such was the way bride-price worked: a boy came to work for his mother-in-law for a certain amount of time, as a sort of audition. If at any point his mother-in-law decided he was not worthy, he’d be sent back to his mother’s ger. Otgar was only slightly less picky than you were. She’d find some reason to send him away.
I wanted her to feel better, I did. But I wanted the demon to die first. That was more important than Otgar, more important than me. If a letter arrived with your seal, I’d stop to read that—but otherwise, the death of my people took precedence.
After what felt like hours, Otgar sighed again. “You need me to translate, don’t you?”
I nodded.
“You have some nerve, Shefali,” Otgar said. “I’m worried, you know, about the boy, and here you are, asking me to translate.”
There are bigger things, I wanted to say, than you or I.
Instead, I gave her a flat look.
Otgar pinched her temples. Finally she stood and kicked a bucket of sand onto the fire. “I will do it,” she said. “But it’s because we don’t have many more people left to lose. And you have to promise to support me when I speak to your mother.”
Again, I nodded. I could not think of anything less appealing to me than standing up to my mother, but I nodded. It was not about me.
So I gathered Otgar’s and my things, and we mounted our horses, and we met my mother outside the camp before sundown. The two dozen riders joined us. My mother was in front of them, gesturing in as clear a way as she could what she wanted them to do.
But the moment my mother laid eyes on Otgar, she brightened and beckoned her close. She held one hand high in the air, her fingers crossed, then tapped her eyes.
“She is happy to see us,” Otgar said.
I elbowed her.
With a sigh, she returned the gesture.
When we were close enough, my mother mussed Otgar’s hair. This time she made her signs far closer to her chest, and faster—only Otgar could get a good look at them. I watched in silence as they communicated. It is a strange thing to be unable to speak with your own mother. It felt unfair. I hardly spoke. Shouldn’t I be able to understand them, too? Shouldn’t I know what they were saying?
My father wrote to Kenshiro in Hokkaran, and he always used characters I could not read. Kenshiro tried his best to explain them, but … they never seem to take hold in my mind, never seem to stay. He’d read his letters out loud and point to each character as he went, so that I would not feel excluded.
Yet the letters were addressed to Kenshiro and spoke only to Kenshiro. They never mentioned me.
And here I was, watching my cousin and my mother talk in a sign language I barely understood, addressing only each other.