I opened the red door.
Four bedrolls laid out around the fire pit. No warm orange light filled the inside; the pit had long since turned to ash. Only the roof of the ger allowed any sort of brightness. At the center of the roof was a small opening to see the stars through. On full moon nights, this illuminated a ger nicely.
That night was not a full moon night.
And yet I saw perfectly in the dark. I stepped among the sleeping bodies of my family with ease. Scattered pots and pans, bows tucked under pillows, empty waterskins and bowls—I avoided all of them. I do not want to say that the room was not dark in my vision, for it was. But it was not … not so deep, I suppose. Ink in water.
I found my mother sleeping on the western side of the ger. I shook her awake. She shot up and immediately reached for the knife she kept beneath her pillow. She got as far as grabbing me by the hair and pressing it to my throat before she realized whom she was about to kill.
Her lips parted. A sound escaped them akin to a mouse’s squeak. She dropped the knife and touched my face, cleared my hair away.
“Mother,” I whispered.
She drew me close and sniffed my cheeks. She squeezed me so tight, my back cracked; she rocked with me back and forth.
My mother swore an oath of silence at sixteen. I was sixteen then as she embraced me, as the soft sounds of tears filled the tent like clashing swords.
I was sixteen when I heard my mother speak for the first time.
I thought I imagined it. Honestly, I did. The voices must be taunting me. It was not my mother. It could not be my mother.
Except this voice was not like the others. It was warm and sweet and rich, like spiced tea thick with honey.
“You’re safe,” she whispered.
My jaw dropped. I did not know what to say; I was not safe, but my mother was so worried, she had actually spoken and …
No. I would not tell her tonight. Instead, I let her hold me. I let her count my fingers and toes, as she had when I was a child, and check me for new scars. The wound Leng gave me had already healed by then; she saw no trace of it. Even the cuts the surgeons gave me had healed. To my mother’s trained eyes, there was nothing wrong with me.
After a few minutes of this, she grabbed a pot and banged her knife against it until the entire ger sprang awake. The entire ger cursed, too, but I do not blame them. It was long past Last Bell; no one in their right mind is awake at such an hour. Otgar, her mother, her father, and another one of my aunts angrily rubbed their eyes.
“Burqila,” Otgar murmured, “I swear by Grandmother Sky, you must be deaf as well as mute—”
She stopped upon seeing me. A grin spread across her wide, flat face. She pulled me into a hug so fast and so tight, I slammed right into her, but she was the one who staggered backwards.
“Cousin Needlenose!” she said, quickly sniffing my cheeks. “Did you get heavier, lugging all Barsatoq’s things around?”
And it made me chuckle. After all these months, that is what Otgar said to me.
“Your laugh tells me it is true!” she said, slinging an arm around me.
My aunts and uncles gathered around and welcomed me home, despite the hour. We lit a fire. We drank kumaq together, and no one questioned where I’d been. No one questioned what I’d been up to.
No one questioned why I did not sleep.
In the morning, I excused myself from the revelries. I needed to return to you, and I wanted to do so before too many people were out. Otgar demanded to come along. After all, the last time I left camp alone, I ran off to the north to fight demons.
A man leaves home to fight for the Emperor. When he leaves, he is a young man, perhaps twenty-two. His wife is pregnant. He swears to her he will return before their son is named. For ten years, he serves. Only when he loses an arm does the Emperor discharge him. The man returns home, traveling through the Empire on his own. He dreams of what kind of boy his son has grown to be. He decides to spend his meager earnings on books and ink for his son. When he reaches his old house, he does not recognize the weathered woman on the porch as his wife, does not realize the young girl selling flowers at market is his daughter. His home is the same—but nothing else is.
So it was with me. Every time I saw myself I was surprised. No, that could not be my reflection. It had not changed. My features were as dark as ever, my nose just as thin, my lips just as full, my hair the same shade of flaxen blond. My eyes had not changed color—still tea-leaf green. How was that possible when my mind was so different? How was it possible, after what I had suffered?
I kept my thoughts to myself. Otgar did not know, and I was not going to tell her.
Lucky for me, she had other concerns.
“You’ve got some explaining to do, Needlenose,” she said when we were out of earshot.
I stiffened. My cousin spoke in her usual jovial manner. On the surface, nothing was amiss. She had no reason to suspect me.
But that does not stop the demons whispering in my ears that she knows. That she is going to tell my mother. That she and my mother …
I swallowed. No. Demons lie.
“That’s right,” Otgar said. “You should be afraid. Did you think you could bed the heir to this gods-forsaken Empire in my ger and get away with it? My ger, that I made with my own two hands?”
Oh.
I coughed. My cheeks felt hot. I was so wrapped up in my own troubles, I’d not considered that.
I opened my mouth to say something apologetic. She slapped me hard on the shoulder. It did not hurt as much as she expected it to.
“You’ve always hunted dangerous game,” Otgar said. “Always picked the most difficult path. But this time you’ve really outdone yourself. Are you aware what will happen if others find out?”
As if I had not had nightmares about your people finding out. But wait a moment.
“You are not angry?”
She scoffed, staring at me as if I’d asked a question with an obvious answer. After a few seconds of this, her disbelief only grew. “Barsalai,” she said. “You truly did not notice?”
I frowned and shook my head. I did not know what game my cousin played at, but I did not much like it.
“Barsalai, your mother loved Naisuran.”
“Obvious,” I said. My mother only ever smiled in your mother’s presence. Of course she loved her. They’d been through unimaginable pain together; their friendship was forged from heavenly steel.
Otgar palmed her face. She tugged at her gelding’s reins and brought him to a stop.
I am sure you know by now that Qorin do not stop riding until they’ve reached their destination, or their camp for the night. It is very bad luck. So Otgar spat on the ground before she continued speaking.