But my mother did insist on one thing—taking a clipping of your hair, and braiding it into mine. She gave your mother a clipping of my hair and instruction, for the same reason. Old Qorin tradition, you see—part of your soul stays in your hair when the wind blows through it. By braiding ours together, she hoped to end our bickering.
I can’t say that she was right or wrong—only that as a child, I liked touching your hair. It’s so much thicker than mine, Shizuka, and so much glossier. I wish I still had that lock of hair—I treasure all my remnants of you, but to have your hair in a place so far from home …
Let me tell you another story, the ending of which you know, but let us take our time arriving there. May you hear this in my voice, and not the careful accent of a gossiping courtier. May you hear the story itself, and not the rumors the rest may have whispered to you.
*
WHEN I WAS FIVE, my mother took my brother and me back to the steppes. We spent too long in the palace at Oshiro, she said; our minds sprouted roots. She did not actually say that out loud, of course—my brother spoke for her. In those days, he was the one who read her signing. My mother uses a form of signing employed by deaf Qorin, passed down from one to another through the years. Kenshiro did not spend much time traveling with the clan, due to my father’s objections, but my brother has always been too studious for his own good. If he could only see our mother once every eight years, then he wanted to be able to impress her.
Thus, he taught himself to sign.
Was my mother impressed? This is a difficult question. As commendable as it was that my brother went to such lengths, he was Not Qorin. He could never be, when he wore a face so like my father’s, when he wore his Hokkaran name with such pride.
But he was my brother, and I loved him dearly, and when he told me this was going to be the best year of our lives, I believed him.
On our first night on the whistling Silver Steppes, I almost froze to death. The temperature there drops faster than—well, you’ve been there, Shizuka, you know. It’s customary for mothers to rub their children down with urine just to keep them warm. No one sleeps alone; ten to fifteen of us all huddle together beneath our white felt gers. Even then the nights are frozen. Until I was eight and returned to Hokkaro, I slept in my brother’s bedroll, and huddled against him to keep the cold away.
On one such night, he spoke to me of our names.
“Shefali,” he said, “when you are out here, you are not Oshiro-sun. You know that, right?”
I stared at him. I was five. That is what five-year-olds do. He mussed my hair as he spoke again.
“Well, you know now,” he said. “Our mother’s the Kharsa, sort of. That means she’s like the Emperor, but for Qorin people.”
“No throne,” I said.
“She doesn’t need one,” said Kenshiro. “She has her mare and the respect of her people.”
Ah. Your uncle was a ruler, and so was my mother. They must be the same.
I did not know much about your family back then. Oh, everyone knew your uncle was the Son of Heaven, and his will in all things was absolute. And everyone knew your mother and my mother, together, killed one of the four Demon Generals and lived to tell the tale.
But I didn’t much care about any of that. It didn’t affect me as much as you did, as much as the memory of you did. For you were never far from my mother’s mind, and she was always quick to say that the two of us must be like two pine needles.
Yes, she said “pine needles”—the woman who lived for plains and open sky. I always thought it strange, and when I learned it was a line of your father’s poetry, I thought it stranger.
But still, I grew to think of you as …
Not the way I thought of Kenshiro. He was my brother. He taught me things, and spoke to me, and helped me hunt. But you?
I did not know how to express it, but when I touched the clipping of your hair braided into mine, I knew we were going to be together again. That we were always going to be together. As Moon chases Sun, so would I chase you.
But during my first journey around the steppes, I learned how different our two nations were.
Kenshiro was teaching me how to shoot. The day before this, Grandmother Sky blessed us with rain, and I hadn’t thought to pack my bow away in its case. The second I tried to draw it back, it came apart in my hands; the string sliced me across the cheek and ear.
As I was a child, I broke out crying. Kenshiro did his best to calm me.
Two men who were watching us cackled.
“Look at that filthy mongrel!” called the taller one. He was thin and bowlegged, and he wore a warm wool hat with drooping earflaps. When he spoke, I caught sight of his teeth. What few he had left were brown. His deel was green and decorated with circles. Two braids hung in front of his right earflap, with bright beads at the end. “I tell you, it is because she was born indoors. Burqila is a fool for keeping her.”
My brother was eleven then. For a Qorin boy, he was short. For a Hokkaran, he was tall and gangly, all elbows and knees. He stood in front of me, and I thought he was big as a tree.
“She was born outside,” he said. “Everyone knows that, Boorchu. And if she wasn’t, it wouldn’t make her any less Qorin.”
“And why should I listen to a boy with roots for feet?” said Boorchu. “If she had a real teacher—”
“Her bow was wet,” he said. “Of course it broke. It could’ve happened to you, too.”
“No, boy,” said the tall man. “I know better. Because I was born on the steppes, and I grew beneath the sky, without a roof to suffocate me. You and your sister are pale-faced rice-eaters, and that is the plain truth.”
The shorter one—who was squat and had only one braid—only snorted. I don’t know why. “Rice-eater” is not a piercing insult. “Ricetongue” is far worse. And on top of that, they called both Kenshiro and me pale-faced, when only Kenshiro is pale. I’m dark as a bay. Anyone can see that.
“Boorchu,” said the shorter one then, grabbing his friend’s arm. “Boorchu, you should—”
“I’m not going to stop,” said the tall one. “Burqila never should’ve married that inkdrinker. A good Qorin man, that is what she needs. One who’ll give her strong sons and stubborn daughters, who don’t snap their strings like fat little—”
All at once Boorchu grew quiet. Shock dawned on him, and soon he was the pale-faced one.
Someone touched my head. When I turned, my mother had emerged from the ger. A silent snarl curled her lips. She snapped to get Kenshiro’s attention, and then her fingers spoke for her, flying into shapes I could not read.
“My mother says you are to repeat what you just said,” Kenshiro translated. His voice shook. He squeezed me a bit tighter, and when he next spoke, he did so in Hokkaran. “Mother, if you’re going to hurt him—”
She cut him off with more gestures. Her horsewhip hung from her belt, opposite her sword; to a child, both were frightening.
Kenshiro made a soft, sad sound.
Boorchu stammered. “I said that, I said, er, that your daughter…”