“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.