I understand why the people of the region drink such a thing. When your body is desperate to stay warm and fed in an environment that wishes you to be neither, butter is an excellent way to sustain yourself. Naturally, then, it appears in any food where it might profitably be added, and on this front I have no complaint. But I feel that adding it to beverages is a bridge too far; however much I reminded myself of its beneficial qualities (and however much my body, on occasion, craved the sustenance), I never reconciled myself to drinking the stuff.
My travels, however, have inured me to consuming many things I would not even consider at home, and despite its cheese-like odour, butter tea was less objectionable than some of the comestibles on offer in the jungle of Mouleen. The five of us arrayed ourselves on the floor of Shuwa’s house, and I smiled and thanked her, thus deploying two of my dozen words of Tser-zhag.
She ducked her head and spoke with the intonation of a question, casting a puzzled glance around at our group.
“What is it?” I asked Thu. “Did I give offense somehow?”
The months that had elapsed since Thu’s arrival at Caffrey Hall had given me some sense of the man’s character. Now I recognized, by the way his hand rubbed at the nape of his neck where his queue had been, that he was embarrassed and uncomfortable. (The Taisên had imposed the queue on all males; therefore its severing was a common gesture among those Khiam Siu who wished to publicly declare their allegiance.) “No. She—she only wants to know, ah, how this group fits together.”
Shuwa made a circling gesture that encompassed the four men in the party, then pointed at me, repeating her question.
“Ah,” I said. “She is wondering what I am doing here, female as I am?”
“No.” Thu sat very upright, then said in a rush, “She wants to know if all four of us are your husbands.”
Some unknown span of time later, I realized I was sitting with my mouth open, and closed it very carefully. “All my husbands?”
“I did not think to tell you—it did not seem relevant. Here, women can marry more than one man. Brothers, to be precise. She is confused because we do not look like brothers.”
“I should think not,” I said faintly.
The custom is not a common one; polygyny, the marriage of one man to multiple women, is far more widespread. But polyandry—one woman and multiple men—serves an important function in the property laws of Tser-nga and some neighbouring regions. Farming and herding there are marginal propositions already; if land were to be divided up among a man’s sons via partible inheritance, then within a few generations the harvest from each parcel would be insufficient to keep a mew alive, much less a human family. And simply practicing primogeniture would leave quite a lot of young men wandering about at loose ends, which tends to result in raiding, warfare, and murder. In other parts of the Mrtyahaima, excess sons are all shunted off to monasteries, with only the eldest inheriting anything at all. But in the highlands of Tser-nga, all brothers marry the same woman, and hold the property in common.
Suhail looked at me, bemused. I think I stared back. I have been married more than once in my life—three times, if one counts my temporary arrangement with Liluakame in Keonga—but never simultaneously. I tried to imagine being wed to both Jacob and Suhail at once, and felt as if I had sprained something in my head. The loss of Jacob still saddened me … but had he not perished in Vystrana, I could not imagine myself having met Suhail, or having considered him in anything more than a friendly light if we had met. How could I weigh that loss against what I had gained after? Even in Tser-nga, I do not think I could have had both: my Scirling husband and my Akhian one, the marriage arranged for me by my father and the one I impulsively made for myself. And so many joys have come to me as a result of that latter match, it is impossible not to think my life would have been impoverished without it.
There are no simple answers to such things. We can never know who we might have been had things gone differently. I only know that without Suhail, I would not have become the woman I am today.
Tom coughed, breaking the awkward silence. “You can tell her no—Isabella only lays claim to the one.”
“Yes, of course,” Thu murmured, and relayed this in Tser-zhag. Naturally he had known the answer, but I think the woman’s question so discomfited him that for a moment he could not think of the necessary words in her tongue.
Our hostess had three husbands of her own, all brothers. Two of them were away at the moment, on a journey down to Phen Rong, where they could trade for some much-needed supplies. This was why she could accomodate us in her house, although with all five of our party added it was a tight fit. I did not consider this entirely a bad thing: privacy was impossible to come by, but the close quarters meant I could at least be assured of sleeping warm. The yaks penned below us might be fragrant, but their body heat rose up through the floorboards, and with Suhail to one side of me and Shuwa to the other, I never had cause for complaint.
Not while in the house, at least. Outside, it was another matter.
We woke the morning after our arrival to the sound of gentle rain. This did not deter Thu from making arrangements with some of the local men to retrieve the remainder of our belongings—a process that left us in some difficulty, for we had only the one companion who was anything like conversant in Tser-zhag, and he could not be in two places at once. Ultimately we dispatched Chendley with the retrieval group, while Thu stayed in the village, where our topics were less easily explored in mime.
I was glad not to be going with Chendley myself. Although my body had more or less settled in to the elevation, I was still quite tired, and knew I would need a rest before tackling the hike to the col. But the next day it rained again … and then, after a respite of one day, a third time … and long before Chendley arrived back in Hlamtse Rong, we knew the truth.
The monsoon had begun.
SEVEN
Seasonal considerations—Trapping mews—Diving behaviour—Lessons in falconry—Breeding and bones
Had we been able to land closer to the village … had our first attempt to fly west been successful … had we not been forced to evade bandits on our way to Parshe … had we only left Scirland sooner. I could list a dozen points at which we lost precious time, but it was no use wishing to have those moments back. The simple fact was that we had arrived in Hlamtse Rong too late, and now had no hope of journeying to the col before the snows made it impossible.