So I took the risk and voiced the same songs from the tower, going up with "High, high, a bird on a cloud," and then down with, "Tell her a secret that makes her sigh." I watched his face —his eyes closed briefly, his forehead relaxed, his lips let out a long breath. But no remembrance of me.
I've spent these years wondering if he held my shirt to his face, if he knew my scent, if he'd recognize the smell of my skin like a mother cat knows her own kits. But not even the sound of my singing made him blink.
Day 91
It's been two days since I sat on her khan's floor, my hands on his leg. Shria said she'd come again if the khan requested me. I don't sleep well at night for wondering what I should do. I hear my lady snoring. She's sleeping on the kitchen floor, still in her dirty apron because she was too tired from scrubbing all day to take it off. I'm surely the worst lady's maid who ever lived under the Eternal Blue Sky.
Her khan is betrothed. There's a promise between him and Lady Vachir now. By rights, his betrothed can take the life of anyone who threatens her marriage. Even on the steppes, betrothal is sacred, and a man who carries off a betrothed girl is declared by all clans to be marked for slaying. I can't risk my lady's life by telling him she's here.
Then again, he and my lady were promised together first. Or were they? I mean, they promised their hearts to each other, but there couldn't have been a betrothal ceremony with ribbons of scarlet and brooms sweeping away the past. Her father never consented. If Lady Vachir asked for my lady's life, the chiefs of the city might find justice in her claim and grant it.
Besides, how would her khan be sure she really was his lady love? Will he remember her by sight? He hasn't seen her in at least four years. She must've been a girl when they met, and now she's a woman.
I'll have Qacha sing me the song for a clear head and think on this tomorrow.
Day 92
I've decided. I can't tell him yet. I need to be sure first that he'd welcome her, that there'd been a promise between them that would protect her from Lady Vachir.
"Was there a promise?" I asked my lady.
She was scrubbing a rag but going about it all wrong, just sort of massaging it with her fingers instead of rubbing it hard against itself. I took the rag from her and began to work at the stain until she snatched it back.
"I'll do it myself, Dashti. And I don't know what you mean about the promise. I don't remember."
Too often my lady talks this way. She says she doesn't know anything and remembers less, and spends each hour in silence, scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing. I don't know why I bother to keep singing her the healing songs. Maybe there's nothing to heal.
Day 100
I've returned three times to her khan. Each time I sing to his pain and help his bones and muscles remember how they used to be whole. Sometimes the khan's chiefs sit in the room, talking love about war and Lord Khasar. Sometimes we're alone but for a guard outside the door, and the room is stuffed with silence. He hasn't spoken to me since the first day when he asked my name.
Day 103
Ancestors, I did speak when I should've been silent, I did forget who I was.
This afternoon, Shria returned me to the khan's love-ceilinged room and left me there. Khan Tegus was reading papers, and for many long minutes, perhaps an hour, I stood by the door. How my feet itched! But it felt like a solemn time, too, watching him read, seeing how he hunched his neck when the news was bad, how his cheek twitched with the idea of a smile when something amused him. He scratched his brow, his chin (and once, his rear end).
The looking reminded me of how I used to stare at the Sacred Mountain after Mama died. For hours I would gaze at the peak, imagining her soul making the journey up its slopes and back down to find the whole world transformed into the Ancestors' Realm, brimming with souls and dancing with light. I think sometimes just being silent and watching can change a person.
I draw this from memory, so it won't be right:
After some time he stretched, turned, and looked on me, looking for the time of a breath in and a breath out before his eyes focused and he realized he was staring at someone. He gasped.
"Lord Under but you startled me," he said. "I didn't realize anyone was here."
I laughed. I couldn't help it. He didn't seem to mind.
I set to work on his leg and I could sense the pain lifting from him fast. When I sang the pain out of his leg two weeks ago, it had taken much longer, finally easing in the time it takes water to boil over a fire. The more I work his leg, the better it remembers what it felt like to be whole and uninjured. In time, I guess his leg will heal itself entirely. And he won't need me.
Maybe that thought was what itched me to look deeper for another pain. I placed my hands on his belly, then his chest. His eyes opened. I could feel a heat inside him, a sharp heat, a yellow heat that comes from two broken bits of something rubbing against each other. Not an injury of flesh, but a hurt he refused to let go. This surprised me because in all my life, I've only been able to feel the heat pain like this with my own mama and with my lady, and once with a lamb I loved like a baby. And yet I could feel it so clearly in her khan.
"May I . . . may I sing to you again, my lord?" I asked.
"My leg feels fine. That will be all."
That will be all, he'd said, and that meant I should've left as quick as a fish. But how could I sense such a wound and not try to heal it? A bit of my mama awakened in me, a bit of the stubborn mucker soul, the stuff that keeps you alive when all the world is frozen and the food sacks empty. Any fool would be happy to die then and go to the Realm of the Ancestors, but only a mucker is stubborn enough to keep living.
"Sit down," I said.
I squeeze my eyes shut even as I write these words, though they're true. I did tell my lady's khan, the lord of Song for Evela, an honored gentry, to sit down. Forgive me, Nibus, god of order.
I kept my hands on his chest, and I could feel how strong he was. It reminded me of touching the neck of a horse as it runs, all those muscles under skin. Khan Tegus was a warrior, he could've knocked me to the roof and back down again. Instead he leaned back.
And I sang. "Berries in summer, red, purple, green." And I sang, "Digging and scratching, the earth bears a kin."
He leaned back more, he tensed and relaxed, the muscles of his forehead tightened. Then all of a sudden he gasped, not in pain but surprise, and his arm flailed, scattering papers.
"Are you all right?" I asked. My hands took to shaking, and I patted him all over his chest and belly, making sure I hadn't hurt him.
His eyes were wide, but he nodded. "You pricked me just then. I can't explain it."
"Was it . . . " I hesitated. I didn't want to tell him his own feelings, but I thought I understood. "Was it as though you had a splinter inside, deep in your chest, that had been there so long you'd forgotten to notice the pain, and the song reminded you so you could pluck it out?"
I think he really save me then for the first time, if that makes sense. He looked in my eyes, and he smiled and said, "Thank you, Dashti."
I hadn't known that he remembered my name. I can't say why, but his words made me want to cry, so I turned my head away and started gathering up the papers that had scattered. I felt him kneel beside me, heard the rustle of parchment as he picked up others.
"Where's that food storage account?" he mumbled after a time.
"Here, my lord," I said, handing him a paper.
"You read?"
"Yes, my lord, and write."
"And where do you work when you're not attending to me?"
"In the kitchens. I'm a scrubber."
"You read and write, you have the voice of the goddess Evela, and you scrub in the kitchens."
I laughed. "Evela's voice! I'm no pretty singer, no sit-and-listen singer. My mama used to say my singing voice is as rough as a cat's tongue and that's why my healing songs work. They dig at you, get inside, clean you up."
"Where's your mother now?"
"In the
Realm of the Ancestors." And just like that I started to cry. Five years she's been gone. I should think I'd be used to it, but just saying those words to Khan Tegus was like being swatted in the face with the sadness all over again —maybe because for the first time I was telling him some of my own truth. I handed him the papers right quick and begged dismissal, walking out his door before he'd even given me leave.
When I think on all the times I sinned against her khan's nobility, I'm shocked I haven't been struck dead. Perhaps in the morning I'll wake as a pile of ash.
Day 104
Not ash yet.
Day 105
I'm writing this from a clean room with its own hearth, a horsehair blanket, and a wood table and chair. There's a window that looks over the dairy. The room's half the size of a gher and for now it's my own. How mama would laugh! Privacy's a strange notion to a mucker, where five in a tent is a roomy place.
Yesterday Shria told Cook, "Dashti will be living upstairs so she can copy notes for the chiefs and attend to Khan Tegus with the healing songs."
Saren didn't like it, but what could I do? I begged Qacha to look out for her and help her keep up with her scrubbing, said good-bye, and that quickly, here I am. Perhaps I should've found a way to stay with my lady, but she's improved very little since the tower, and my daily singing doesn't heal her a bit. Maybe it won't hurt either of us to be apart.
I've spent the past two days brushing ink on paper, making copies of lists about supplies and weapons, and looking out the window to ease the cramping in my eyeballs.
Windows are the eyes of the Ancestors. Windows are better than food!
I had a free hour this morning and went back to the kitchens to fetch this book from where I'd hidden it beneath some empty grain sacks. No one in the kitchens can read, so far as I know, but I'd rather not risk it being found. There are things written in here that could get me hanged on the south wall.
The girls cheered to see me and wanted all the details, so I washed pots and described my room and the window and the horsehair blanket. My lady didn't speak a word. She wouldn't even meet my eyes. Sometimes I have to snap a twig to keep from shouting, "Why don't you tell him who you are? Why don't you smile? Why don't you stop worrying about your father and Khasar and the tower and just decide to be Lady Saren?"
I should scratch out those words. Maybe later.
Day 109
Lately all I do is write. I copy pages of notes, lists of food supplies, numbers of weapons. As I fall asleep, the soft sound of a brush grazing parchment continues to murmur in my ear. Already my scrubber hands have begun to heal and my ink stains make me feel like a real scribe. I'm mostly alone, but white-haired Shria comes to take the papers to the khan's chiefs, and twice a day Qacha brings my meals from the kitchen.
Sometimes when I'm sitting on the floor eating with Qacha, I feel about as content as a bird with a good lifting wind. In greeting, we always clasp forearms, touch cheeks, and inhale through our noses so as to breathe in each other's scent. Smell is the voice of the soul, and this greeting is the most intimate. It's common among family and clan, of course, but I've been on my own for so long, I'd forgotten how warm and wonderful it is.
And whenever I can, I return to the kitchen to see my lady and the other girls or walk around the stables and dairy and soak in the cheery summer sun. The window is wonderful, but any walls remind me of the tower.
I haven't seen her khan since I came to this small, clean room.
Day 111
Shria called me to the khan's chamber today. I was startled to see it full, seven of the khan's chiefs present, several shamans, all arguing about Khasar and scouting reports and the state of the city with the refugees near bursting the walls. Three other scribes were there. I joined them by the wall, taking notes of the talk as quickly as I could.
Khan Tegus never looked at me. I'm a mucker maid. I guess I needed to be reminded of that. So, good. Fine. Sometimes my fancy gets to floating inside me, threatening to carry me away like a leaf on a wind. Better to be a stone.
Day 112
Shria came flustering for me this morning.
"Come! Quick!"
We raced down the corridors, up another flight of stairs, and into the last of the khan's chain of rooms. The first thing I noticed was a man lying on the floor and bleeding, bleeding fast. Another man was in the corner, his ankles and wrists tied with sashes, animal scratches on his face. Three men with drawn swords were guarding the bound man, all tense as a gher roof, shaking slightly as if hoping for a reason to stab the bound man through. I stopped on the threshold. I wobbled.
"Here's the mucker girl, my lord," said Shria.
The khan pulled me toward the wounded man. "My friend is hurt. Sing for him."
"I . . . I can't, my lord. A healing song can't stop blood from flowing or close a wound."
"Help him, Dashti."
How I longed for the voice of Evela and the strength of Carthen, for powers as mighty as the desert shamans are rumored to possess, for a way to force that man's body to do my will and heal itself. But I felt as thin as grass. I sat by the man's head, I touched his face. My body shook so hard I thought I heard my bones rattle, and I wondered if my limbs would fall right off.
Sing to him, Dashti, I ordered myself, but before I could find a tune, I got to thinking of Mama with the fever, her skin as yellow as this paper I write on, her lips dry like a snake shedding its skin. For hours, for days I sang to her. I pushed my soul into the words till my voice rasped to ashes. But she fell asleep, deeper and deeper till her skin went cold.
A shaman knelt beside me, letting his hands hover over the bleeding man's chest. Until I recognized his face, I didn't realize he was a shaman because he was dressed only in a robe and for some reason had removed his tassled hat and belt with nine mirrors.
"I feel a pulsing heat," said the shaman, his eyes closed. "The life heat leaves his body even as his blood does. His soul is teetering on a threshold, undecided to live or die."
"Help him to live," said Khan Tegus. He was speaking to me and to the shaman and he seemed near crying. "Tell his soul to live!"
Who am I to tell a man to live? Who am I to claim the powers of the Ancestors? I moved aside so the shaman could have more room to do his holy work. He's climbed the Sacred Mountain and seen the faces of the Ancestors. I have no place beside him.
I sat quietly in a corner, though I was tempted to curse like the horse wranglers and kick a chair. I was so angry at myself for not being smart enough, for not being a true healer, but I just sing the easing songs, the slow and cheery songs, the animal songs.
Later
When Qacha brought dinner to my room, she whispered that the bleeding man is an important chief to the khan.
"And the man who stabbed him?" I asked.
"An assassin. Sent by Lord Khasar to kill Khan Tegus, or so Koke heard."
"What less should we expect from the lord of the realm named for Under, god of tricks?"
"True enough, but Under played a trick back on him today. A shaman was present, and when the assassin attacked, I hear the shaman took fox form and leaped between the khan and the assassin. It seems not even Lord Khasar's warrior would dare to harm a fox."
"Ah," I said, the animal scratches on the assassin's face making sense, and the shaman wearing just his robe. He must've lost his clothes when he changed. Would that I'd been there to see that!
So it seems Under played everyone today. The khan is unharmed, but the assassin's blade still found a true mark. He's a slippery one, that Under. I knelt to the north and prayed thanks that Khan Tegus was protected, but I don't much like depending on the god of tricks.
Day 113
Morning was still as dark as night when someone tapped at my door. I wrapped my wool robe over my sleep clothes, thinking it must be Shria with an errand. Instead I found my lady's khan.
He looked as tired as dawn, and he leaned against my door and just stared at me for a time, eyes half closed. I hadn't reali
zed that I'd stopped breathing until I heard him breathe in deeply. He said, "I know you'll say it's hopeless, that you won't be able to help, but Dashti, will you come with me?"
I didn't ask what he meant as I followed him down the dark corridor. I'd been too startled to think of putting on shoes, and the floor was slippery with cold. The blind walls around us reminded me of the tower, and I spent the walk imagining what those three years would've been like if my companion in the dark had been someone else.
We entered his chambers and the air was thick with the sweet smoke of burning juniper. A shaman woman was doing her wild dance between the bed and the fire, beating a flat drum, the tassels on her hat flying.
"You may rest for a moment, holy one," said Khan Tegus, and the woman stopped spinning and sat in the corner. For a moment, I could see my own face reflected in one of the nine mirrors on her belt. I looked away.
The bleeding man was asleep on a low couch, his chest rising and falling too fast for sleep. Khan Tegus knelt by the bed. I knelt beside him.
"The shamans tell me they've done what they can, but there's no change," said Khan Tegus. "They tell me that when all that blood poured out of Batu, his soul flowed with it. Now it's dislodged from his breast and wavering on the edge of his body."
The man's face was pale. I touched his arm and found the skin was prickly hot. "His soul doesn't know whether to stay or go."
The khan met my eyes straight on. He didn't blink as he said, "Help it to stay."
I looked at the shaman, squatting by the fire and humming. I knew to complete her training, she must've climbed the Sacred Mountain, fasted from all food, and prayed for four days, naked under the sky. Bareness is the ultimate debasement, so that's why shamans do it, to submit themselves completely to the Ancestors, and even more, to prostrate themselves under the Eternal Blue Sky, naked and new as a baby.