"You asked for a flower," he said, "but in autumn there's little to choose from. Besides, I think pine boughs smell better, don't you?"
I smelled it like I was starving and the odor alone would fill up my belly. My head got dizzy with memories of Mama and being cold and cozy.
"It smells like the winter nap," I said, longing for some truth to tell. "Midwinter every year, my mother would decorate our . . . our home with pine boughs, cracking the needles to get the richest smell, then we'd curl up in blankets and take our winter nap, five days of no food but milk, sleeping on and off all day and night, like the burrowing animals do."
"That sounds strange and lovely and wearying, too. Is winter nap a common custom in Titor s Garden?"
"Common enough." I didn't say that it's common for muckers. We do it as a prayer to Vera, goddess of food, to help us through another year, and we do it because at midwinter there's not much food for the having anyway. I don't suppose my lady needed a winter nap, with her honored father's cellars full of grain.
"In Song for Evela, our midwinter rite is just the opposite. All folk come together under my roof and eat and eat and eat. Enough cakes, apples, mutton, and raisin rice to last a year! Sometimes it feels good to feast until it hurts."
"You feast with muckers, even?"
"What are muckers?"
"The folk that live on the grassy steppes in ghers — those are felt tents they make themselves."
"Are they herding folk?"
"That's right. The steppes of Titor s Garden are too hard for farming, rocky and windy and rough. Muckers do work when work is sent out from the city folk, and the rest of the time they travel with the seasons, herding sheep, horses, reindeer, yaks."
"May I say something? Will you be offended?"
"No . . . ," I said, though I was thinking, He knows I'm a mucker!
But then he said, "Your hand, when you took my pine bough, I saw—your hand is beautiful."
I tucked my hands under my arms and looked at my lady. She was staring at her own hands and frowning. All I could think was, thank the Ancestors that I took the bough with my right hand and not my left, which bears the red birth blotches.
"You've gone quiet," he said. "I've offended you. I'm sorry."
For some reason that got me laughing.
"What's funny?" he asked, even though his voice hinted at laughing, too.
"My hand—you thought it was beautiful! And then you thought I'd be offended. . . ."
My heart is beautiful, Mama used to tell me, and my eyes, but never my blotchy face, never my browned and callused hands. If next to my own he'd seen my lady's pale, smooth hand. . . .
"Don't stop laughing!" he said, and he started to say things to get me to laugh again, telling a story of how he was once riding a horse that stopped suddenly, sending him flying off the saddle to land headfirst in a barrel of water. He wasn't satisfied that I was truly laughing then, so he sang the silliest song I guess I've ever heard. It was about a bodiless piglet, and I remember one verse of it because it repeated several times:
This morning I found a piglet,
grunting beside my bed
This piglet, she had no body —
she was only a head!
She rolled about while squealing,
moving by snout and by jaw
Happily snuffling for treats
without use of hoof or paw.
My lady even smiled, which made me feel fat with goodness. He did keep us laughing until fear of the guards was eating at him. Then he sent up a bag of fresh meat, raw and still warm.
"From an antelope my war chief slew for you. He's fierce with an arrow. I wish I could claim I'd slain it myself, but my clumsy shot went wide. I thought fresh meat might make a pleasant change."
"Oh, Khan Tegus, oh, my lord," I said, and that's all I could say for a few moments. "We have salt meat . . . but fresh, it's a difference, isn't it?"
"I'll say! Eating salt meat, you have to drink so much for your thirst, there's no room in the belly for food."
"And we have salted everything here—vegetables and meat and cheese and cracker bread. Though I'm not complaining, please don't think. The food's wonderful, as long as I can keep the rats out."
"There are rats?"
I hadn't meant to grumble, but there was this little pressure inside me, pushing inside my chest, urging me to confide some truth to him. "We've a plague of rats in the cellar. We swat at them and even got one in a trap, but I'm afraid my . . . my maid won't have enough to eat, after a time. My, uh, my father brought us so much food, but not enough for the rats, too."
"Your voice is tilting down, my lady," he said, "and I guess that you're frowning. You're worried. I should go now before the guards return, but keep the rats out of your hair tonight and I'll return tomorrow."
He left.
I don't have anything else to write, but I don't want to put down my brush yet. I want to keep all that happened, the feel of the evening still thick in my head, the sounds of his words awake in my ears, twitching pleasantly inside me. I'd guess I'm tower-addled and talking to someone from outside just made me wistful. That's all. That's why I feel this way, twisting and floating, as though my heart is bigger than my chest.
I do like the world quite a lot. Nothing more to say, so I'll draw.
Day 33
It must be past midnight now, but I'll write till morning if I have to. I don't want to forget a word.
Her khan came again. When I heard him calling, I didn't wake my lady, who was asleep upstairs. Should I have? Or was it right to let her sleep? And asleep or not, should I have ignored him and refused to continue the lie? Ancestors forgive me, in the moment I didn't think twice. I just opened the flap and let his voice come in.
"Did you sleep well last night?" he asked. "I might take offense if you went ahead and slept with rats in your hair, after I specifically warned you against it."
"I slept well," I said, laughing. "Sleep is always sweet."
"Not all would say that. You're an antelope who bounds through life, I think. Here you are, locked in a tower and laughing still."
"You make me laugh."
"Why is that?"
"I can't say." And I couldn't. Why do his questions make me laugh?
"I think I'd like to make you laugh all day long. If I could take you out of here, I'd hold a feast and a dance, and see you bedecked in a silver deel, laughing and bounding about."
"Why silver?"
"Because in the dark, your voice sounds silver."
My face burned feverish hot, so hot I thought I might die of the mud fever at once, but the feeling eased as I kept talking.
"That's a pretty thing to say." I forced my tone to sound light. "I wish I could think of pretty things to say, too, besides that your ankles are skinnier than a jackrabbit's ribs."
He cleared his throat. "It's just the cut of these boots, I assure you. And no excuses, my lady. You've had a flowery tongue in your time. Don't you remember our first letters?"
"It's been so long," I said, unhappy with the lie. "What did I say?"
Her khan chuckled. "Before coming here, I looked over all our letters, and the early ones, when you were thirteen and I fifteen. Well . . ."
"They were fairly ridiculous, weren't they?"
"In truth, you weren't so bad —more formal. You're very different to speak with in person. But I found some drafts of letters that I sent to you, and in one I wrote something akin to, 'When I think of you, my heart melts like butter over the bread of my stomach.' I thought it was very poetic at the time. Or in another letter I wrote, 'You are like a shiny red apple with no worms.'"
I wanted to be respectful of his first words of love, but trying to hold in the laugh made me snort like a camel, and then he snorted, so laughs came rumbling out of me. We were trying not to laugh, of course — I didn't want to wake my lady and he didn't want to wake the guards, but that made it even harder to stop. How my side ached! I wheezed and said I couldn't breathe, which
made him laugh harder, which in turn made me laugh harder because, truth be told, his laugh sounds like a yak's grunt. I told him as much, which was a mistake, because that brought up his laugh anew.
Can I describe what it felt like to sit in the dark, laughing with her khan through a bricked wall? The hard grayness lifted out of me like the bones from a fried fish. I felt strong enough to float, warmed as if by sunlight, my bones thrumming and my skin tingling. My mama used to say that the mightiest of the healing songs was a good laugh.
When we'd calmed down and I'd wiped the tears from my face, we sat in silence. I leaned against the wall, resting my head on the bricks. I could see by the angle of his boot that, outside, he was doing the same. It was almost like touching.
"My jaw hurts," I said.
"I can't stop grinning. Some of my warriors are watching for the guards a few paces off, and they're sure to think I've gone crazy"
"Maybe you have, did you think of that? You certainly sound crazy, laughing like a wild dog."
"Careful with the accusations of insanity, oh my lady whose home is a tower with windows of brick, all for the sake of some skinny-ankled, laugh-prone boy of a khan."
"If a lady is crazy to be bricked up in a tower, then what is a khan who sits outside to laugh with her?"
He sighed and groaned at once, the sound of his smile gone. "I'm sorry I can't break you out. I can't believe you don't despise me for it."
"Stop that. What's bothering you? I mean, besides this tower? I can hear your voice is tight, you've got an ache somewhere, nagging at you."
"How did you know? Yes . . . you're right. It's my leg. I was injured at sword practice last year. When I stand for a time . . ."
"My maid, she's a mucker girl, she knows the healing songs."
"The healing songs?"
"What a large world it is if there are people who never heard of the healing songs. Here, I'll have her sing to you. To work right, she should be touching your leg. Just you touch the leg yourself and listen, and close your eyes."
I crouched by the hole, down low so I was as close to him as I could be, and I sang the song for old injuries and wove it with the song for strong limbs, singing up with the coarse chanting of "High, high, a bird on a cloud," and singing down with the low swinging melody of "Tell her a secret that makes her sigh."
When I stopped, he was quiet for a good long moment. I could hear his breath, up and down like a bird's wings flapping.
"Thank you, my lady's maid," he said. "That was . . ."
He didn't finish, leaving me wondering. Some say hearing the songs makes them tickle inside, some say they feel as if they've suddenly gone hot to cold or cold to hot. Some say it's like dreaming while awake, or swimming while dry. I wish I knew how it felt inside her khan.
"My lady's maid, where did you learn such things?" he asked.
I gasped and bit my knuckle and wished I were smarter than I am, but then I thought to say, "My maid is shy. She's a mucker and thinks she shouldn't speak to gentry, but she's grateful her song helped you."
"How does that work? I mean, the songs sing about birds and secrets and sighing, not about healing, nothing like the conjuring words of the shamans."
"What the words say doesn't matter. The sound of the words and the sound of the tune together speak a language that the body can understand . . . or so I've been told by my maid. The body wants to be whole, and when you sing the right sounds, you're reminding it how to heal itself."
"Can muckers heal? Does she have the power to stop blood flowing and stave off death?"
"Oh no, only the Ancestors have power of life. The healing songs just ease suffering, whether of body or mind. Times I've seen a man who'd decided to die, and a healing song changed his mind and let his body fight the disease off. I — my maid, she's never performed anything so grand. Though her mother has."
I could hear him move around, as if getting more comfortable, and lean his head closer to the hole.
"Keep talking, my lady. Your voice makes me want to stay and stay."
I lay down, resting my head on my hands, facing his voice. And I spoke. I wished I could whisper true things, about my mama, about the day my brothers left, about how a rainy spring makes the steppes grass so green you wish you were a yak so you could eat it. But I was being my lady, so I hid inside stories. I told the legend of how the Ancestors formed commoners from mud so there would be people in the world to serve their gentry children. He told me another that I'd never heard before, how Goda, goddess of sleep, took the form of a raven and first brought night to the world so all could rest. I would write down the exact tale here if I could recall it, but already some of his words slip away. All I remember for sure about that part of the conversation is I felt like I was riding a fast mare and I was sleeping in a warm blanket, both at the same time.
From outside, we heard a dog howl.
"That's a guard dog." His voice got a spice of anger in it. "Why do they have to come back so soon! Why don't they give us another hour of peace?"
I would've liked another hour myself.
"Listen," he said, "I am going to break you out. I'll come tomorrow night. I have enough warriors with me to kill the guards — "
"No, my lord, you can't just kill the guards!"
"Then we'll drug them somehow, and when they're sluggish and sleeping, we'll break down the — "
"No! Listen. My honored father is terribly mean, he'll know it was you, he'll come after you. It'll be war between Titor's Garden and Song for Evela, sure enough. And if Lord Khasar hears you've taken us . . . he's a beast, I've heard. You don't want a war with him. We can wait for my . . . my father to soften. He's bound to let us out sometime, and meanwhile we're safe here." I believe that. Having now spent weeks in the darkness, I don't think her father will truly leave us here for seven years. No father could do that.
"But no, I . . ."
Her khan paused. He knew I was right. We couldn't start a war over a tower, not when my lady and I were alive and the cellar more full of food than of rats. The Ancestors bless him for hoping otherwise.
"It's all right, my lord. We'll be fine enough. We will."
"But my lady — "
"Just tell me, what's the sky look like tonight?"
Her khan sighed as if he were going to argue more, but then went quiet, and I imagined him looking up, squinting, waiting for the right words to fall into his head.
"The air is so clear, it shivers," he said. "All the stars are out, every one, even the babies. It's so bright with stars, the blacks of the sky look a dark, dark blue."
I could see it just like he said it.
"My lady." His voice was soft, as though there were no wall, as though he were right beside me. "I should return home. There's been unrest lately, Lord Khasar making threats and the like. I'll come again as soon as I can, and we'll see then if it's time to knock down this wall."
I said, "That's fine," though I didn't want him to leave. But I was speaking for my lady, and I spoke as I thought gentry would. "Your people should come first."
"I have a farewell gift," he said, a touch more brightness in his voice. "My chief of animals came on this journey, and she brought some companion animals along with the horses and yaks. When you mentioned your trouble with rats . . ."
I heard him call lightly to someone, then her khan's bare hand came through the hole, raising up something furry that mewed.
It was a yearling cat, long and lean, pale gray with green eyes. I put my face in its neck. It smelled of wind in the grass, of riverbed clay, of the world. I wanted to give him something in return, so I unhooked the neck clasp of my deel and shivered out of my shirt. It's just an undershirt, but it's what I wear closest to me and seemed the kind of a gift Lady Saren should offer her betrothed. Things worn closest to the skin, to the heart, carry the scent of a person, and of course, scent is the breath of the soul.
I leaned down, giving him the shirt. He took it, and took my hand, too. His hands were warm today, rough
on the palms like well-used leather. And so much larger, my own hand nearly disappeared into his. He didn't say another word, but I felt different, as though he had sung to me the song for heartache, the one that goes, soft and slow, "Tilly tilly, nar a black bird, nilly nilly, there a blue bird."
Day 35
It's been two days since her khan left. We'll have the rest of his antelope meat tonight. I hope he has a safe journey.
I named the cat My Lord.
Day 39
I'm in love! My heart's so light it floats and carries me so my feet don't walk. I sing all day and I don't mind the washing, and that's how I know I'm in love. Completely smitten with My Lord the cat.
He's like a naked beech tree, sleek and gray. He's prettier than a morning sky and knows it, too. I shouldn't encourage him but I can't help it, and tell him all day long, "You're the prettiest cat in the world, My Lord, you're smarter than a dog and faster than a bird." I give him all the best bits from my dinner. Whenever I'm not singing to my lady's hidden ailment, I'm slathering the cat with songs.
My Lord has already killed three rats and I haven't heard so much as a good morning from the rest. And at night, do you know where he sleeps? With Dashti the mucker. The only cats I've known were so mangy their fur was half gone and they wheezed like startled snakes. But My Lord is gentry among beasts, a khan of cats.
And he always knows when it's day. Times there are when I wake thinking that it's morning, only to peer out the flap and see darkness thick as stew. Time makes no sense in a dark prison. But My Lord the cat knows the time. As soon as it's morning, he stands on my chest, touches his cold nose to mine, and breathes on my lips.
I'd ask my lady if she'd prefer My Lord to sleep with her, but Titor, god of animals, himself can't force a cat to change his mind. Besides, it might not be proper to share a bed with a cat, she being an honored lady and all.
Day 48
Two weeks since her khan left. I asked my lady how far to his home in Song for Evela, and she thinks it'd take about two weeks, so perhaps he's already home.