“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.