'If I'm not mistaken, my khan,' said one of the men, 'that's the injury I myself gave you.'
'It was you, wasn't it, Batu?' Her khan's frown twitched with humor. 'I'd forgotten. You were teaching that slicing maneuver with your sword and I turned my horse the wrong way.'
He straightened out on the couch, and I knelt beside him, placing my hands on his leg just below his knee where I thought I could feel the subtle heat that hovers around pain. He nodded at me once as if to say that I had my hands on the right spot, then continued to converse with the men.
I didn't dare sing for him the same songs I had in the tower. If he realized who I was, that I'd given him my shirt, I think I would just crumble like old bread underfoot. Instead I offered the song for new wounds. It's a battle song, urgent, fiery, 'Hold, hold, strike and flee.' Though he was absorbed in his conversation, I could tell it wasn't working. He seemed disappointed, the unease of his pain making him tired of the whole world.
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 low 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 low-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:
[Image: Drawing of a Man Seated Reading.]
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
