Chapter Nine

“ MYHUSBAND,” Eluneke thought to herself as she Mentered the world of dreams. “Find my husband.” She worried that he had already met his fate and hoped his dreams would give her some clue about who he was or how she was supposed to save him. But . . .

“This can’t be him!” Eluneke moaned to herself as she dropped sickeningly into a trough of seawater. Her soon to be dead—but not yet wed—husband rode among Qubal warriors as one of them. He wore a Qubal face over his death’s-head skull and dressed in the clothes of a highborn Qubal lord or clan chieftain. No Harnishman—Qubal, Tinglut, or Uulgar madman—would ever go to sea. He would rather fight tigers or demons than cross the Onga River. Even a hero might quake in his boots if he met up with too great a puddle after a rainstorm.

It wasn’t that the Harn feared water, exactly. They drank it, after all. But man, woman and child, they preferred it in quantities no greater than a teacupful. The stuff of the universe was at its weakest in bodies of water, even small ones. A man could fall forever into the river, never touching land until his feet brought him to the underworld. In rainstorms lightning might snatch a man’s spirit for the sky heaven, leaving his dead body behind with the sign of the tree at the center of the world burned into his chest.

This man whose dream she had invaded feared the water as much as Eluneke did, but it was hard to tell if he had the Qubal belief about standing water or if he feared a simpler death from the storm tossing his little ship like a leaf on the angry foam. Her watery husband wanted to vomit, but his stomach was empty. That could have been either of them, too. Bolghai hadn’t allowed her to stop for dinner and now she was missing breakfast as well. But his hunger felt more urgent. She had an image in her head—his head—of hard biscuit and beans, knew she couldn’t eat it even as her stomach growled in anticipation. Overhead, birds flew before the storm while in the rocking ship her muscles strained to the breaking while a voice called, “Pull!”

Her bottom felt bruised and she discovered why—with a huge pull on a great tree trunk of an oar, she fell backward onto a wooden bench hard as a paddle with a thin layer of padding on it. “Step, step, pull!” the voice called again, and she moved dizzily to the command once, twice, three times before she broke free. When she became aware of her surroundings again, she lay on the ground by Toragana’s feet, exhausted and wet through.

“It seems she’s been somewhere.” Bolghai spilled a little of his tea on Eluneke as he bent to study her on the ground. She didn’t mind; the tea was warmer than the seawater that had lately crashed over her. “Where have you been, girl? And how did you get all wet?”

“I’ve been on a ship, in a storm,” Eluneke answered. She tried to stand up but found she was still too weak from her buffeting at sea. “I didn’t see his face, but bitter despair wrapped clinging fingers around his heart. I might have died of it if I hadn’t escaped when I did.”

“And is he now dead of this despair, as you describe it?” Bolghai asked, though it seemed to Eluneke that he had already guessed the answer.

She was not so certain. “No. Nooo. Maybe. I tried to find the boy who wore a death’s-head beneath his flesh, but I must have lost my way. Who ever heard of a Qubal warrior rowing a ship?”

“Who, indeed!” Bolghai exclaimed, with interest quick as flame in his eyes. “Do you know when in time you traveled—to the past of your young warrior? Or to his future?”

“Past, I think.” Eluneke considered the feelings she had experienced in her travels and had to give up with a shrug. “But whether he dreamed a memory or a prophecy I couldn’t tell.” She would have made excuses, that she had never traveled into someone else’s dreams. She had nothing by which to measure the experience.

But Bolghai’s thoughts were clearly elsewhere. “I see,” he said, and snapped his teeth shut, refusing to say anything but: “Come in and have some tea. My son Chahar has come to visit while you were traveling. The khan has declared a series of games today, to celebrate his recent success in battle and the taking of a bear by his heir in the forest. You won’t want to miss it.”

Toragana raised her brows, a familiar gesture that marked her surprise that the old shaman had released her pupil for a morning of pleasure at such a critical point in her training. Bolghai didn’t seem to notice, however, and more than that she kept to herself.

“Tea,” Eluneke agreed. She would have hopped like a toad down the whole length of the Onga for a cup. As it was, she needed only to follow Bolghai and her teacher into the little round tent.

Though loud enough to rouse the spirits of the dead, Bekter’s familiar snoring hadn’t awakened Qutula; the angry whispers coming from his mother’s bed had. Sechule was tossing her lover out by the false dawn of Little Sun again, before the camp had fully cast off sleep around them. Her lover objected, but gathered his things while he made his protests, which mostly had to do with marriage and her own tent in his clans.

That’s never going to win her, General Yesugei, Qutula mused cynically to himself. She’s already got a tent of her own. She doesn’t have to answer to any first wife to keep it, even if she wanted to forget her schemes to claim a place on the dais of the khan, which she never will. He opened his eyes a crack, enough to see that his mother hadn’t given her lover time to put on his clothes.

“I don’t want Qutula or Bekter to see you here,” she whispered, and shoved him naked out the door.

“Too late.”

When the door closed behind the general, Qutula sat up, scattering the furs that covered his bed. He still wore his clothes of the night before and his nose filled with the musty scent of his lady’s strange perfume. The urge to reach out and touch her, even in her absence, was so overpowering that he closed his eyes for a moment, cooling the heat that the memory brought to his blood.

Fortunately, before his mother could call attention to his state, the last heap of bedding stirred. “Can I stop pretending to snore yet?” came Bekter’s plaint from beneath the blankets.

“Oh, get up, fools!” Sechule grumbled at them as she put the breakfast pot on the firebox to boil with porridge made fresh yesterday. “I don’t know why I put up with either of you!”

Bekter rolled out of bed and stretched, answering through a yawn: “Because a mother will always rule in her son’s tent, but a second wife must learn to bow her head to a husband’s first, and to his grown children?” Not even this more even-tempered brother deluded himself about his mother’s affection.

“Or maybe it’s because your beloved children are your only tie to the khan.” Qutula followed his brother more slowly to his feet. The hours spent waiting for his dark lady had tired him, but the reminder of her scent on his clothes drove the sleep from his thoughts.

“You do me an injustice!” In protest, Sechule rattled around making more clatter than necessary gathering bowls and spoons. “I want only what is rightfully yours.”

“But do you want it for us, or for yourself? If you expect to live in the silver palace of the khan, it will be on the coattails of your sons.”

“You are too harsh, Qutula! I don’t know what makes you so cruel.” Sechule had put on a simple sleeveless shift before throwing her lover out and she hugged it more tightly around her, as if she needed to defend herself against her son’s words.

“I’ve done all I can to put you in front of your father. It should be you beside him on the dais, not the old khan’s orphan. But I can’t win Mergen’s approval for you. You have to do that for yourself if you want to gain your place as heir and take your father’s rank when he dies.”

She made it seem that it was her sons’ fault she had lost the eye of the khan, but Qutula guessed she’d never had his ear. Still, she’d succeeded in placing him close to the khan as she claimed. He only had to find a way to reach Mergen’s heart. Then his father’s death could come sooner rather than later. His lady had said that she wouldn’t love a patricide, but he thought she might be persuaded when he took his place at the head of the clans.

Bekter was frowning over his porridge, however. “The khan is fit and likely to enjoy a good long reign if the spirits favor him. Which, as his son, I devoutly pray they do.”

“I know. You are a good son.” Sechule petted his brother’s head with absent fondness, but Qutula thought she wasn’t pleased with Bekter’s goodness.

She proved his suspicions when she added, with a wistful sigh, “Life would have been simpler for all of us if the old khan’s offspring had fallen with the rest of his line.” Died, she meant. “But instead, look at him! Parading around as if he were Mergen’s own son, while the true heirs of the khan’s body are forced to serve him. Prince Tayyichiut should be serving you!”

Qutula couldn’t argue with that. Hadn’t, when he’d renewed his promise in the night to kill the prince. Only he hadn’t lied about how closely Prince Tayyichiut was watched. It wasn’t enough just to kill his cousin; he had to make sure no trail led back to his own tent. Of course, there was a reason that the symbol for two women under the same tent roof represented war. If he were to have any hope for a peaceful life with his dark lady as khaness, it wouldn’t hurt to have suspicion fall on his mother. He didn’t want to distress Bekter, but he didn’t see any other way.

“However we would like our fates to fall, the khan awaits us now,” he said, giving nothing away of his plans.

“The games.” Bekter set his dish aside and rose to leave, noting with a frown, however, “You need your breakfast. How will you defeat the prince’s Nirun if you don’t eat?”

“Duty will sustain me in the name of the Durluken!” Qutula smiled for his mother to make a joke of it as he swept his arm in a grand flourish to accompany the words. “Will you attend the games this morning to cheer the team of your sons to victory?”

“Of course I will.” Sechule gave Bekter a kiss, first on the right cheek, then on the left. “You are both such dutiful sons. If your father only saw your true worth, he couldn’t help but love you.”

When it came his turn for a motherly kiss, she looked at Qutula with so intense a gaze that he knew she meant more than the simple duty a son owes his mother. Kill him for me, that gaze said, kill the prince and your father will learn to love you. He answered her silent command with a little bow and a lift of his chin, agreeing to their silent pact. She didn’t know he already planned murder as a gift to his lover, but the snake that coiled in ink upon his breast recognized the vow for her alone, and rewarded him with the now-familiar tingle that stole through his body at her approval.