Jacqueline Carey - Naamah's Curse

It made me feel better. I gazed after the departing Vralians. “What did those fellows want?”

He shrugged. “Them? They always want to talk about their gods. But they were asking about you, too.” A glint came into his eyes. “I told them you were a mighty sorceress who brought the Great Khan’s son-in-law back from death, and that there is a powerful bond between you. Do not worry, I did not speak of Ch’in. It will not cause trouble. It will teach them to respect and fear you.”

I smiled sadly. “I don’t feel very fearsome.”

Batu patted my arm. “You did nothing wrong. Blame the young man. He has been untruthful.” His eyes widened. “They did not even know he was twice-born!”

“Bao has been hiding from many things,” I murmured.

“So it seems,” he agreed.

I tried to make myself useful around the camp, but most of the work of setting up had already been done, and I was restless once more. If Checheg had been there, she would have shooed me away. So instead, I shooed myself away, saddling the uncomplaining Ember once more.

No doubt Bao would have scolded me for riding out without an escort, but I didn’t intend to make myself an easy target for any vengeful Tatar princess. I rode through the campsite with my bow held loosely in one hand, guiding Ember with my knees, gazing fixedly forward with my mother’s best glare.

Many people stared, but no one troubled me.

On the outskirts of camp, I passed a group of men slaughtering a sheep in the Tatar manner. I’d seen it done only once before, for the festival of the New Year. Two men held the sheep down on its back. A third man made a small incision in the sheep’s abdomen, then plunged his hand into the slit, reaching for the sheep’s heart within the cavity of its body and squeezing it until it ceased to beat. It was done so swiftly, the sheep scarcely had time to struggle.

I felt as though Bao had done much the same to me.

As soon as I’d passed the sheep-slaughterers, I summoned the twilight, breathing it in deeply and flinging it around my horse and myself. The world softened and dimmed in the silvery-violet dusk, easing my troubled spirits. A few seconds later, I heard a soft gasp behind me, and the murmur of voices. My passage and my subsequent, abrupt disappearance had been noted.

Well and so, let them take heed. Batu had a point; it was better to be feared and respected than despised. I smiled grimly to myself and nudged Ember with my heels, setting out at a trot.

The campsite was situated alongside a wide, meandering river. I followed its course aimlessly toward the north, riding over the twilit grasslands until the tents and gers behind me looked as small as toys. I rode until I found a flat, windswept place where I could sit and watch the river.

There, I dismounted and turned Ember loose to graze.

I sat cross-legged and tried to meditate, but my thoughts were a jumble. I could not let one thought rise from another. So instead, I concentrated on breathing, cycling through the Five Styles, willing my mind to be empty.

In perhaps an hour’s time, I sensed Bao’s presence growing closer. In the twilight, I could see the silver spark of his diadh-anam coming toward me over the plains even before I could make out his form.

He couldn’t see me, of course; but he didn’t need to. Bao knew where I was as surely as I did him.

He turned his shaggy pony loose to graze with Ember and sat cross-legged opposite me without speaking, laying his staff across his lap and settling into a breathing rhythm that matched mine. We might have been Master Lo’s magpie and his least likely pupil once more. Except that in the twilight, Bao looked different than he had before.

It wasn’t just that the spark of the divine spirit of the Maghuin Dhonn Herself shone within him. The faint shimmer of darkness that surrounded him since his rebirth was deeper here, impossible to ignore, impossible to dismiss as a trick of the light. It flickered all around him-darkness made bright, a penumbra like an eclipsed moon. Gazing at it, I remembered that there was more at issue here than the fact that Bao had left me and ridden away to find his blood-father and wed some Tatar princess in the bargain.

He had died, and been restored to life. He was twice-born, and he was learning how to live with it. And although I was angry, mayhap I owed him the chance to explain.

With a sigh, I released the twilight, letting the daylight world return.

Bao’s lips parted at my sudden appearance, but having known I was there all along, he showed no other sign of surprise. I tilted my head to indicate I was listening. He nodded in acknowledgment and cleared his throat. “First of all, it would have been a grave discourtesy to refuse such an honor from the Great Khan. Second, I did not seek it out, Moirin.”

I stayed silent.

“You remember Master Lo’s snowdrop bulbs?” he asked me. “Well, I took them. I made a tonic like Master Lo prepared.”

“I know.” I wasn’t very good at holding my tongue. “I heard. That’s how you bribed your way into General Arslan’s favor.”

“My father’s favor, yes.” Bao fidgeted with his staff, frowning a little. “It’s true, you know. Although the truth isn’t exactly what I expected it to be. I thought… I thought that mayhap that once I gained his trust, I would avenge my family’s honor.”

“But it’s complicated,” I said in a neutral tone.

“Yes.” He straightened his back. “For now, it is enough to say that my father claimed me with pride, and I allowed it. When the Great Khan Naram visited his most loyal general, he was intrigued. He wished to see the fighting prowess of which my father boasted. He wished to sample my famed tonic. I obliged.”

“And the Great Khan was pleased,” I noted.

“Very pleased,” Bao agreed. “So pleased that he insisted on giving me his youngest daughter in marriage.”

I scowled at him. “Bao, you are the stubbornest person I’ve ever met, and now that Master Lo is gone, I do not think there is anyone under the sun who could make you do a thing if you did not wish it. You’re a clever and skilled liar. Don’t tell me you could not have talked your way out of it.”

“I’m not,” he said mildly.

I waited.

Bao sighed. “Moirin, you possess a gift the likes of which no one outside your strange bear-folk has ever seen. You possess a strange beauty the likes of which no one has ever seen. You are descended from three different royal lineages. And I’m nothing but a simple Ch’in peasant-boy-or at least I was. Do you think I don’t know it matters?”

I looked blankly at him. “ You’re the one who insisted on referring to yourself thusly! What did I ever say or do to make you think it mattered to me?”

“You didn’t need to say anything!” His voice rose. “Gods, Moirin! Do you know how much gossip I had to endure in Terre d’Ange? I know your history as well as my own. Better, maybe.”

“So?”

“So there was that lord’s son in Alba, the one who died.” He began to recite a litany of my lovers, ticking them off on his fingers. “And I am sorry, because I know you cared for him, but he was a lord’s son. High-and-mighty Lion Mane, that Raphael de Mereliot, what was he? Some kind of nobleman. His sister ruled a city, anyway. When you quarreled with him, you bedded the Crown Prince, didn’t you?” Bao raised his brows at me. “That’s what they all said. And when you quarreled with both of them, the White Queen herself.”

I flushed. “Aye, but-”

He cut me off, lowering his voice to a fierce, hushed whisper as though someone might overhear us. “And I am not sure how to count the fact that a dragon decided you were a worthy mate for the heir to the throne of the Celestial Empire, but I am quite sure it does count, even if the Noble Princess was not particularly pleased with his choice. There is no place for peasants in your history, Moirin.”