Storm Bride (25 page)

“Why should I care whether war leaves my people? We’ve lived with war for more than a hundred years.”

“Because war has already claimed your wife. It nearly claimed your child. It may soon claim your brother. Make peace quickly, lest you lose twice more than what you’ve lost already.”

“My wife was not claimed by war,” he said. The stone dug into the flesh of his fingers. But the sign he had demanded from Golgoyat had pointed here, and he would listen. For a while. “What do you know about my wife?”

“Khou left her. I know this, because Khou was with me, making war against the Yakhat warriors by burying them in the earth. Don’t wonder that Khou sided with your enemies, son of Golgoyat. It was but a small step from the broken wedding to outright enmity between Golgoyat and Khou. And I called up the earth mother with memories of the homes which your warriors despoiled, just as the city-dwellers first despoiled the Bans. You have become the image of your enemies. It wasn’t hard to bring Khou to my side.”

She was quiet for a moment. “But do not fear. Khou has made peace and returned to her sacred circle. No stones will crush you now.”

“But Tuulo…”

“Tuulo wasn’t crushed by stones, but by a child who could not be born without Khou’s blessing. It is good for you to weep for her. It’s good for you to know a portion of the sorrow you’ve spread everywhere your spear has pointed.”

The stone lay limply in his hand. He hurled it into the sea. “
I
have to know the sorrow I’ve spread? We Yakhat have known sorrow. Golgoyat urged the Yakhat to bring the Sorrow of Khaat Ban to everyone we touched. Making others know our sorrow was our calling.”

“And, as was inevitable, that sorrow has returned to you again. Now if you insist, you can renew your campaign and pile weeping upon weeping, never resting from war. Every sorrow that you plant will eventually return to your own breast. But there is another way.”

“There is no other way. The Sorrow of Khaat Ban—”

“Is your sorrow. Is my sorrow. It’s the wounds suffered by the captive woman you gave to Tuulo. It’s the sorrow of the stillborn child she held in her hands. Did you realize that she made the same oath that your people made so long ago, at the boundaries of the Bans?”

Keshlik spat. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that she swore to repay the sorrow she had been dealt and punish those who had wounded her. But though she had sworn to smother your son when he was born, and though she cast him into the water, she relented. She begged him back from the sea and put him to her breast.”

The words struck him like a blow.
Tuulo is dead, and I can barely continue to live. If I had lost my son as well…
He gasped for words. He owed his son to the captive woman. She had sworn an oath—he would have done the same—but she had turned back.

“Now you, too, must put aside your wrathful oath, Golgoyat. Return to Khou your bride. Let her make her home here, in a land hallowed by blood and milk, and marry.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Reconcile the Powers and put an end to this war.” The woman paused. “Marry the woman who nurses your son.”

A growl of rage erupted from his throat, and he stepped toward the witch to throw her into the sea for her grotesque suggestion. She did not flinch, and the serenity of her milk-white eyes made his fury falter.
Golgoyat brought me here. I will listen.
“How dare you suggest such a thing? I do not want another. I want Tuulo. Your promises of peace will not bring her back.”

The witch answered quietly, “But peace may save your son.”

“How will it save my son?”

“Without Uya, your child has no mother and will probably die. Even if you find a Yakhat nurse in time, you child will grow into war. Khou will leave your people, and she will not return. The sorrow you know today will be reaped by all the Yakhat—including your son, when his time comes.”

“But the Sorrow is not avenged.”

“It can never be avenged. Sorrow is not repaid with vengeance. But perhaps it can be healed, and the wedding broken at Khaat Ban be restored.”

Keshlik trembled. “I cannot.”

“You can.”

He sank to his knees. “I would betray Tuulo and my people.”

“No. You would save them.”

He covered his eyes and began to weep.
Tuulo, Tuulo.
I cannot wed another. How could I set aside my spear?

Yet the Praseo woman suffered my son to live, recanted her oath of vengeance. I cannot continue to make war against her people.
“The Yakhat warriors will despise me.”

He felt the witch’s hand on his shoulder. “Be not afraid. Your people are more ready for peace than you think. You must have the courage to first say the word.”

“Peace.”

“For the sake of your child.”

“But the Yakhat do not want peace.
I
do not want peace.” The words tasted false. Perhaps he didn’t want peace, but he had lost his hunger for war.

The witch’s silence accused him.

Finally he asked, “Is there no other way?”

She shook her head. “Only the captive woman could heal the tears of Khou. And only you, son of Golgoyat, can quell the thunder’s wrath.”

He wanted to object, but every word that came to his tongue dissolved like salt in the rain. Tuulo was gone. The Sorrow of Khaat Ban, the rage of the Yakhat, the honor of the warriors—none of these mattered. What mattered was a newborn in a yurt, and the woman who had preserved the child for him.

“I will do it,” he said.

The witch raised her head. “You will restore the marriage of the Powers?”

“Whatever is required. Let my son be the firstborn child of peace.”

Chapter 31

Uya

T
he baby was crying again.
Uya opened her eyes and saw daylight creeping through the door of the yurt. Morning. She had been up throughout the night nursing, after the sleepless night of attending Tuulo’s labor. Her limbs cried out for sleep.

But the baby was crying again.

She rolled over, unwound the boy’s swaddling, and cupped his warm, tiny body against her belly. He begged for her nipple, letting out a mousy squawk when she didn’t comply quickly enough.

“I’m coming. I’m coming,” she whispered. “Just a minute.”

She arranged herself against the straw-filled cushions that Dhuja had brought her. The baby squealed until she tucked him into the crook of her elbow and pulled him up to her breast. He bit down. She whispered a grunt of pain. He suckled greedily, and the pain passed as her breast let down the milk. It dribbled from the corner of the boy’s mouth and down Uya’s stomach.

Dhuja was gone, and there was no sign of Tuulo’s body. Finally. Uya had been none too happy about nursing with a dead body in the yurt, but after wrapping Tuulo in the red sash, Dhuja had seemed in no hurry to remove the dead mother. Plus, there had been the awful storm. A person would’ve had to be mad to go out in the storm.

Mad as the baby’s monstrous father had been, charging in and out at the beginning of the evening. She held that word—
monstrous
—in her mind for a moment, but it had lost its teeth. Her hatred dissolved with the flow of her milk.

There was silence in the yurt, except for the tiny movements of the nursing child. Outside, birds warbled in the dawn. Uya switched the child to the other breast, then rested her head against the cushions and dozed. The baby nursed in silence.

When he was done, she bound him again in the white cloth and lay him to sleep. She curled herself around him and closed her eyes.

The sound of startled voices outside the yurt woke her. One voice belonged to Dhuja, and the other to a man. The third voice sounded familiar. She straightened. The baby, too, was awake, observing her quietly with his narrow brown eyes.

“They’re making an awful lot of noise,” Uya said. “They really ought to let us sleep.”

The boy gurgled.

She picked him up and tucked him against her belly and began to rock. She was hungry. But she had no idea how to tell Dhuja, so she would have to wait for the midwife to think to bring her some food. Hopefully it wouldn’t be too long.

Dhuja ducked through the door of the yurt. Looking panicked, the midwife took Uya’s hand, pointing and jabbering and otherwise making it clear that she was supposed to come out.

Uya batted her hand away. She had been cowering before the old woman for weeks, and now she was done being so timid. “I’ll come, but you’d better get me something to eat. Do you understand me?”

Dhuja disappeared back through the door without giving any indication that she had heard Uya’s demand for food. Perhaps whoever was waiting outside would be more cooperative. Surely
someone
understood that a nursing woman needed to eat. Uya rose unsteadily to her feet and ducked through the door after the midwife, then blinked away the sudden morning brightness. Keshlik was there in mud-slathered clothes. Next to him stood an old woman, wrapped in a white sheet.

The woman seemed familiar. Uya looked at her more closely, and her heart stuttered.

“Saotse,” she said. “Saotse!”

The old woman turned her head. “Uya?”

“Saotse! It
is
you!” Uya ran forward and threw her free arm around Saotse, pulled her into her chest, and covered her cheek with kisses. Then she began to cry.

Saotse brushed her hands against Uya’s face, wiping away tears and running her fingers over Uya’s features like water. A strange smile appeared on her face.

“Oh, Saotse. I thought you were dead! How did you get here?”

“Oarsa—no, there’s too much to tell. You wouldn’t believe me.”

“I don’t care. You’re here, and I never thought I would see any of my
enna
again.”

“Nor I. Nor I.” Saotse wept then. She buried her face in Uya’s shoulder, kissed her neck, and kneaded Uya’s cheeks as if to make sure she was really there.

Uya pinned her sister to her breast and watched her blind eyes blink in wonder. “It’s like you came back from the dead.”

Saotse laughed. “Perhaps I did. I have to tell you.” One hand rested lightly on the tiny, warm bundle that had been pressed between them during their embrace. “You have the child.”

Uya blushed. The child had fallen asleep in the crook of her arm, undisturbed by their bustling. Saotse couldn’t see the hue of his skin, so she wouldn’t know. She felt a touch of shame mingled with sadness. “He’s not mine. This is hard to explain.”

“Sorry? Why should you be sorry? Most blessed, most sorrowful mother, without you— No, don’t explain anything! I already know, and I have more to explain to you.”

Dhuja broke in with a burst of Yakhat gibberish. Saotse responded with a matching hail of syllables.

“What?” Uya asked, shocked. “What is this? How—when did you learn their language?”

“Oarsa gave it to me,” Saotse said. “I told you, I have much to explain.”

Keshlik and Dhuja began to pepper Saotse with questions. Uya watched, astounded, as Saotse answered, the gravelly foreign sounds flying off her tongue as if she had been born to them.

“Tell me what they’re saying. Please, Saotse, I’ve been living here for weeks with no one to talk to, doing my best with my tiny fragments of Guza and no real translator.”

Saotse rested a comforting hand on her arm. “I told them you’re my sister and that we’re almost the same age. They nearly didn’t believe me. Keshlik didn’t realize until now that I’m one of the swift people, and that led to more questions—”

Keshlik interrupted Saotse with another demand. Saotse responded briefly, then said to Uya, “They want to know what we’re saying. I told them that there’s too much to explain right now, and I asked to speak with you alone for a while. Now, are you hungry?”

“Merciful Chaoare, yes. Can you ask them for food?”

Saotse relayed the request to Dhuja. “Dhuja says they’ll bring us food in the yurt. Let’s go in. Oh, Uya. We have so much to talk about.”

“What? He wants to
marry
me?”

“A certain kind of marriage,” Saotse said. “You won’t be expected to lie with him, for one thing. But you’ll be the mother of his child. You are already the child’s foster mother, his nurse-mother, and by becoming Keshlik’s wife, you will get recognition for this fact.”

“But still…” Uya leaned her head on the cushions beside her. The bones of the fish on which she had gorged herself lay on the ground, but she picked one of them up to see if a scrap of flesh still clung to it. Her mind felt as if it had been filled with stones and shaken. The day had turned bright after the storm, and the yurt was becoming hot and stuffy. “Can you open the yurt door? Or maybe we can go outside.”

Saotse shook her head. “You need to be in the yurt when Keshlik comes. He’s going to formally petition you after he gets permission from the Khaatat elders.”

“He’s coming
now
? Oh sweet Chaoare, I can’t deal with this.”

“Not right now, but soon. Today.”

“Today,” Uya repeated, hoping that the word would become something else. “Today. You can’t expect me to do anything today, Saotse! I’ve hardly slept in two days. My nipples are raw, I have to nurse every three hours, and it’s not even my baby. Just yesterday, I was wishing death on all of them, including the boy—Oarsa forgive me for thinking it. The fact that I took his son to my breast doesn’t mean that I’m ready to
marry
the man.”

Saotse sat impassively in Dhuja’s usual spot, eyes looking blankly ahead, her head cocked to catch all of Uya’s words. She even looked like Dhuja in that position, and it didn’t dispose Uya to think kindly of her. “I know, but—”

“Did you forget?” Uya spat. “I watched him butcher Nei and kill my mother. Am I supposed to just let that go? To become his wife?”

“He wants to make peace. He will make restitution, both to you and to the remnants of Prasa.”

“And? Does that wash the blood of our
enna
from his hands? The blood of every other
enna
in Prasa?”

Saotse was quiet for a while. “No, it doesn’t. And he has more deaths on his hands than you imagine, Uya. He can’t repay them all. He can’t repay even one. He can only hope to be forgiven.”

Uya folded her arms under her breasts. She couldn’t do it. She might be willing to let Keshlik live. But she would never be his wife.

“You know,” Saotse said after Uya’s long silence, “they were my
enna
, too.”

“It’s not the same,” Uya said. “They weren’t your blood. And you had the Powers.”

“I did not have them. I merely heard them, yet they would never answer me. Little comfort. And is blood the only thing that matters? Think of Tuulo’s child, now. Your child.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“Isn’t it?”

The baby began to cry. He had soiled his rags, and they spent several minutes finding the pot of water and extra rags to clean and change him. Then he wanted to nurse, and when at last the child was quietly suckling, Uya had forgotten what she was going to say. She closed her eyes. She needed to sleep, not to fend off proposals of marriage.

There were footsteps outside the yurt. Saotse slipped out into the brightness, and spent a few minutes speaking to someone. She heard several male voices, one of them Keshlik’s. The sound of Saotse’s voice speaking in Yakhat was still shocking and somewhat upsetting to her.

Saotse reentered the yurt. “Keshlik is here. He will be petitioning you to be his wife.”

“Already? You said not right away.”

“All I know is that he’s here.”

“Tell him I’m still nursing.” She wiped the trickle of milk from the bottom of her left breast and moved the boy to the right. He gurgled and latched on.

“Will you come when you’re done?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“You can refuse to meet him. But please, Uya. At least come out to hear his petition.”

“When the baby is done nursing.”

Nursing was finished more quickly than she wanted, and the boy fell asleep as soon as Uya finished swaddling him. All she wanted to do was sleep, too. Not to talk to Keshlik, or Dhuja, or even Saotse. She groaned and straightened. Saotse reached for her hand and followed her through the door of the yurt.

The sunlight blinded her for a moment. There was a small crowd of men in front of her yurt, some old men and a handful of warriors. One of them barked an order when Uya emerged, and all the men drew away except one. The sunlight softened, and she made out his face. Keshlik.

He held a spear in front of him in both of his hands, the point just in front of his mouth. He bowed to her, then began to speak rapidly in a sort of chant for a minute, then he struck the butt of his spear against the ground and knelt. He bowed his head and extended the spear to her in his open palms.

“Saotse,” Uya said, “what’s going on here?”

“He is offering to take you as his wife. And he makes a very generous offer.”

“Is that all? He seemed to speak for a long time.”

Saotse chuckled. She said something in Yakhat to Keshlik, who responded in a surprised tone. She relayed to Uya, “I’ll repeat the terms to you.”

Keshlik began to repeat the chant, more slowly.

Saotse translated, “First, Keshlik asks your leave to bury his wife Tuulo and to mourn her until the new moon.”

“Yes, of course—”

“Don’t interrupt. I have to keep translating.”

Keshlik hadn’t broken stride in his chant.

Saotse hurried to catch up. “He will make peace with your people at whatever price they demand, and he will bind the Yakhat to peace forever. And to you personally he offers his treasures in turquoise, gold and silver coins, cedar chests, mother-of-pearl, blankets, and… well, there’s more, but I won’t name all of it. They have quite a bit of plunder from all their fighting.”

Keshlik finished. He bowed his head again and offered the spear to Uya.

“If you’ll take his offer, receive his spear as a seal,” Saotse said. “He will reclaim it when it’s time for the wedding.”

Uya looked at Keshlik, then at Saotse. The rest of the men who had accompanied Keshlik had withdrawn to the edges of the old sacred circle and watched them with apparent indifference.

“If I take his spear,” Uya said, “would I have to stay here? With the Yakhat?”

Saotse repeated the question to Keshlik then translated his answer. “If you wanted to. But if not, he is willing to negotiate another agreement.”

“But…” Uya felt her face growing hot, and her words got away from her. It wasn’t just the thought of living perpetually with the Yakhat that disturbed her. It was everything. Even though she nursed a Yakhat boy, she wasn’t ready to marry one of them. Even if it was a false marriage, a half-marriage.

She looked at Keshlik’s face. He seemed older than she remembered, and his face was softened, scrubbed clean of the fury that had darkened it before, and haunted now by sadness. She remembered the way that he looked when he had captured her in Prasa, splattered with blood, red with fury and murder. She remembered, too, her hatred, but only as a memory. The deluge that had washed away her hatred had cleansed Keshlik, as well.