Jacqueline Carey - Naamah's Curse

I had not spoken of my role as Jehanne’s companion, since it was foreign to Tatar customs. Now I flushed, suspecting I was not as good at concealing my feelings as I thought.

“By then her baby will be as big as my little brother Mongke,” Sarangerel added. “Already making trouble!”

It was a charming thought.

I wondered if Jehanne’s child, boy or girl, had inherited its mother’s mercurial temper or its father’s sense of grave resolve. Secretly, I hoped it was the former. And I gazed at the babe in Checheg’s arms, hoping she inherited a measure of her mother’s innate kindness; hoping she would come of age in a time of peace, and need not believe that to live was to suffer.

Like as not, I would never know. But I could pray for it.

The babe stirred in its mother’s arms.

I reached out to stroke her tender cheek with one finger. “Welcome to the world, little one.”

They named the baby girl Bayar, which meant joy.

“It was your idea, Moirin,” Checheg said to me, eyes dancing. “Remember? When she was born, you said it was a day for joy.”

“I remember,” I said, touched.

Grandmother Yue chewed her lips. “Too bad it wasn’t a boy.”

Batu smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “I do not mind. I like daughters, too.”

Life settled into a new rhythm in the ger . Having been trained by Checheg during my first month among the Tatars, I took on her duties, letting her rest, recover her strength, and nurse the babe while I saw to the daily preparation of tea and food, ladling it out at meal-times in the correct order of precedence.

Days passed, one by one.

Betimes, I grew restless and stifled, the felt walls and dried-dung smoke of the ger closing in on me until it was hard to breathe. When it happened, Checheg was sensitive to it. She would rise from her pallet, Bayar cradled in one arm, and tilt her head toward the door in an implicit command.

I went.

Outdoors, I could breathe. I sucked the achingly cold air deep into my lungs, breathing out plumes of frost.

I took part in surreptitious horse-races arranged by the young men of the tribe, marveling at how their sure-footed shaggy ponies were able to outpace my proud gelding Ember, an Emperor’s gift. Since the strained foreleg Ember had sustained on our journey had healed entirely, I had no excuse. The Tatars were incredible horsemen.

I helped herd the cattle, who listened to me; and the sheep, who did not.

I took part in archery challenges, shooting at tiny, distant targets.

There, I more than held my own, to which the young men responded with a surprised and begrudging respect.

“No one shoots as well as us,” Temur said to me, his cheeks ruddy with the cold and his habitual embarrassment. “Maybe you are part Tatar, Moirin.”

“Mayhap,” I agreed. “My people remember coming from very far away long ago when the world was covered with ice. But we followed the Great Bear Herself, and there are no bears here.”

The young men conferred.

“Not here, no,” Temur said. “But there are bears elsewhere in Tatar lands.” He nodded to himself. “It must be so. Otherwise, you would not be so skilled with a bow.”

I lost track of the days, each much like the next. When I had been some months among the Tatars, there was a ceremony to celebrate the New Year. With unwonted shyness, Checheg presented me with a vibrant blue silk scarf.

“I have seen these.” I remembered seeing similar scarves fluttering from the wooden cairn. “It is special?”

She nodded. “It is the symbol of the sky. Today, it means you are kin.”

“I am honored,” I said sincerely. “But I have no gift to give in turn.”

Checheg shook her head. “It is not required.”

“Wait.” Remembering the dwindling store of Imperial generosity I carried, I rummaged in my packs and found a beautiful sash of celadon silk embroidered with birds and vivid pink peonies. “Maybe it is not tradition, but I would like you to have it.”

She hesitated. “It is too nice.”

“No, no.” I pressed it into her hands. “Please, take it.”

For three days, we celebrated the New Year with feasting and well-wishes. On the night of the third day, a great bonfire was built outdoors and a table set forth with incense and ritual offering bowls of food and water.

Bundled in layers of felt and wool, I watched the fire burn, sending sparks into the night sky. Overhead, the stars shone brightly.

Somewhere in the not-too-distant west, the other half of my diadh-anam shone, too. I wondered if Bao stood beneath these same stars, watching a similar bonfire. I wondered, as I often did, what in the name of all that was sacred was going through his mind.

The festival marked the first new moon after the point of midwinter, and I felt my blood begin to quicken as the days grew longer.

I struggled for patience, which had never been my strong suit. Oh, in some ways I had the knack of it. I could be patient with animals and children. I could be patient in enduring the foibles of people for whom I cared. It had served me well with Jehanne’s temper and Snow Tiger’s proud reserve, and it had served me badly with Raphael’s ambition.

But in matters of desire, I had always been impulsive; and with the slow, inevitable coming of spring, desire was rising in me.

It made me more restless than usual, until Checheg began dismissing me from the ger more often than not.

“You are like a wild thing caged,” she scolded me. “Go, go!”

When there were no chores with which I could assist outdoors, I would saddle Ember or Coal and ride as far as I dared, always ranging westward, always feeling the incessant pull of my diadh-anam .

Alone, I would summon the twilight. It was one of the only things that soothed me. In the dusky, shimmering half-light, time’s slow passage did not seem so onerous, and distance did not seem to matter so much.

I thought of the dragon, content to regard his own silvery coils reflected endlessly in a mirror, in a river, in my own dark pupils.

The dragon had counseled patience.

You are very young , he had said to me. Live. Learn. Love .

I was trying.

To be sure, I was grateful for what I learned of love, kindness, and hospitality amidst Batu’s family. They were lessons I took to heart. Were I to start a family of my own one day, I would remember them. I regretted nothing of my own upbringing, but I did not have my mother’s taste for solitude. I yearned for connection.

Day by day, I endured.

At last, spring came. It came slowly and tentatively, but it came. The frozen ground began to thaw. Murmuring grass shook itself awake, sending out tender new shoots. Cattle, sheep, and horses grazed gratefully, nibbling it to the sod’s quick.

One day, I awoke to the knowledge that Bao was on the move. I could sense his presence moving away from me.

“Batu!” I said in distress. “General Arslan… his camp, I think they must be moving. Is it not time we went, too?”

“Soon.” Batu gripped my elbows, hard. His gentle eyes gazed into mine with unwonted intensity. “They go to their spring pastures. Here, it is not time yet. Soon. Wait. Do not wish ill upon my herds with your haste. The gathering of the tribes will come.”

I bowed my head. “I wish your herds to prosper.”

He smiled. “Thank you.”

I waited and waited-and gods! Waited. At last, it was time to move the camp to our spring pastures, a week’s ride away. The felt gers , which had come to seem such substantial man-made structures to me, were dismantled and taken down easily, packed for transport in a matter of hours.