I blinked. “You are?”
He blinked back at me. “Yes, of course! It was a fair contest. I have no quarrel with you. Many wondered what befell you when you vanished. I would hear your tale. Will you accept the hospitality of my roof?”
I relaxed. “It would be an honor.”
With a bewildered Aleksei trailing behind me, I followed Vachir into his ger. He introduced us to his wife, Arigh, who served us bowls of hot, salty tea, the steaming liquid’s surface slick with butter-fat.
Beneath the felted dome, I told them how the Great Khan Naram had betrayed me to the Vralians. It was impulsive, aye, but all my instincts told me I could trust them. They listened with disapproval, shaking their heads.
“Batu’s tribe had acknowledged you as kin,” Arigh said firmly. “Not even the Khan himself had the right to do what he did.”
“Moirin, you will explain all this to me, will you not?” Aleksei asked in a low voice.
I nodded. “My lord, my lady, do you know what happened to Bao? General Arslan’s son who wed the Khan’s daughter?”
They exchanged a glance and shook their heads. “That young man vanished, too,” Vachir said. “No one knows where or why. Only that the Great Khan’s daughter Erdene was very angry at her father.”
I sighed.
“Are you seeking the young man?” Arigh asked in a gentle voice.
“Aye.” I spared a guilty glance at Aleksei. “He’s nowhere close, though. Far away. Right now, I come seeking to purchase a bow for the journey. My quest led me to you.”
Husband and wife exchanged another look. Arigh rose and went to the back of the ger, returning with a Tatar-style bow smaller than the one Vachir had been working on outside, as well as a quiver of arrows.
“For you,” she said simply. “My husband made it for me. I wish you to have it.”
“Your own?” I shook my head. “No, I cannot accept it.”
She thrust it at me. “You can.”
“Take it, please,” Vachir added. “I will make her another. It will go a little way toward settling the debt you are owed.”
I closed my fingers around the bow. “You’re sure?”
Vachir smiled, his eyes crinkling. “Would you have me set a price on it? I will, then. Give me a chance to reclaim my honor. Grant me a rematch, here and now.” He saw me hesitate. “You are fearful. I promise you, no one among us will endanger you. I have granted you hospitality. I swear by the sky itself, we will protect your secret as our own.”
“All right, then.” I smiled back at him. “A rematch.”
It being a Tatar encampment, naturally there was an archery range with targets already established. Word swept through the camp as we ventured out to the range, and folk abandoned their chores to watch.
“Moirin, this is foolish!” Aleksei pleaded with me. “Whatever you’re doing, I wish you wouldn’t.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I trust them.”
He shook his head in mute dismay.
Vachir and I agreed to a simple contest—the best of three shots at the distance at which we had last competed. He let me take a couple of practice shots to accustom myself to the feel of a new bow. It was different, very different, from the yew-wood bow my uncle Mabon had made me. It was shorter and stiffer, and the ends curved sharply outward, making for a tighter, more concentrated draw, the bow recoiling sharply when the string was loosed.
On my first shot, I missed the target altogether, provoking good-natured laughter from the onlookers. But I got the feel of it and adjusted quickly, acquitting myself well enough with my three official shots.
And then Vachir stepped up to the mark, drawing and releasing three times in quick succession, clustering three arrows in the center of the crude red heart painted on the stuffed target.
I laughed and bowed to him in the Ch’in manner, one hand clasped over the other. “Your honor is restored.”
He smiled his quiet smile. “I suspect we would be closer matched if you had more time to practice with an unfamiliar bow. May it serve you well, lady archer.”
After I had thanked Vachir and Arigh for their generous gift one last time, Aleksei and I took our leave of the Tatar camp. I gave him the bow and quiver to carry, reckoning it would look less conspicuous on the streets of Udinsk. He listened silently to my explanation of how I had come to compete against Vachir in the archery contest at the spring gathering.
“Are you angry?” I asked when I had finished. “Truly, I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think we could trust them. The laws of hospitality are sacred among the Tatars.”
“Not angry, no,” Aleksei said slowly. “You lived among them, you know their ways. It was just….. strange….. seeing you thusly. Strange, and beautiful. It made me understand why the old Hellenes gave one of their goddesses a bow. Every time I think I am coming to know you, Moirin, I discover a new you. It’s as though I turned a corner I thought was familiar, and found myself in a hallway I hadn’t known existed.”
“Oh.” I wasn’t sure how to respond.
He gave me a sidelong glance. “Are there many more of you?”
I thought about it. “Well, there is the Moirin of Terre d’Ange who served as royal companion to the Queen, who went about in jewels and finery, attending balls and concerts and poetry recitals. And there is the Moirin who was Master Lo Feng’s pupil, and learned to master the Five Styles of Breathing and studied the Way. But they are all me, Aleksei. Does it trouble you?”
“No.” He frowned. “It’s just that I’ve only ever been one person, I suppose.”
I took his arm. “You’re an uncut gem, sweet boy. Time will reveal your facets. The Aleksei I met three months ago is not the Aleksei who offered to teach me to lie to his uncle, and that young man is not the Aleksei who plotted our escape. Of a surety, none of them are the Aleksei who consented this very morning to accept Naamah’s blessing.” I raised my brows. “Or had you forgotten?”
“No.” Aleksei flushed and looked downward, his dark lashes shuttering his eyes. “Oh, no.”
“Good.” I squeezed his arm. “Now let us see if that bath is ready.”
FORTY-ONE
The bathing-chamber was small and steamy, the tin tub was small and cramped—and the bath was altogether a glorious thing. It was the first hot bath I’d had since leaving Shuntian, and the first time in months I’d been able to bathe without chains rattling and clanking around me, and shackles chafing my skin. If I hadn’t had to share it with Aleksei, I’d have stayed in that tub until the water cooled.
It was worth every cent it cost.
Such a simple thing; and yet it felt as though I’d taken a step further toward reclaiming myself, washing the taint of the Patriarch’s touch from my soul even as I washed the grime from the journey from my skin.
Afterward, I found myself humming. To be sure, all was not right with the world. Distant Bao and his low-burning diadh-anam were never far from my thoughts; and I was a long way from being safely out of Vralia.
But yesterday I had been penniless, tired, and hungry, with scarce a possession in the world. Today, I had nearly everything I would need to set out on a long journey. I was well fed, well rested, and clean.
And today I was on Naamah’s business, which made me happy.
I had assumed my modest, blushing boy would want to wait for nightfall and the cover of darkness to invoke Naamah’s blessing, that I might even have to coax him into letting me light a candle.
Much to my delight, I was wrong.
I sensed it in the common room where our hostess, whose name was Polina, served us leftover chicken and dumplings for a midday meal. Clean and damp from his bath, Aleksei stole covert glances at me as we dined, and I could sense the yearning rising in him, an aching hunger I longed to assuage.
“You don’t want to wait for nightfall, do you?” I asked softly.
“No.” His voice was low and steady; and although he blushed, he held my gaze without flinching. “I want to see you, Moirin. All of you.”
I nodded, rose, and held out my hand to him. “Let us go, then.”
He took a deep breath, nodded in agreement, and took my hand. As we left the common room together, our hostess Polina gazed after us with a maternal look of habitual disapproval mixed with indulgence.
In the bedchamber, I closed the door and latched it. Aleksei glanced around the sunlit room. “It does seem very bright.”
“Too bright?”
He shook his head. “No. I will not hide from this.”
I fetched one of the tallow candles we had purchased earlier that day. It took several tries to kindle it with the flint striker.
“What’s that for?”
“An offering to Naamah.” I smiled at him. “It should be incense, but I thought you’d take it amiss if I stole some from a temple.”
“Like as not.” Aleksei tried to smile back at me, but it came out as an anxious grimace, tension beginning to war with desire in him. He took another deep breath, shuddering as he exhaled. “What….. what am I supposed to be doing, Moirin? You will have to tell me.”
“Nothing, sweet boy.” I laid one hand on his chest. “I am going to pray to Naamah. If you like, you may pray with me.”
“I don’t think I can,” he said earnestly. “But I will keep you company if you like.”
“That would be nice.” After removing my shoes, I knelt on the wooden floor, sitting on my heels and fixing my gaze on the candle- flame, barely visible in the bright daylight. Aleksei knelt beside me, quiet and still, doing his best to contain his nerves.
I prayed.
As strongly as I felt Naamah’s presence in the gift that Aleksei and I shared, it took a long time before I was able to sense her will. I had sought to seduce Aleksei toward my own ends; I carried a burden of resentment that I had failed, a burden of resentment toward his uncle and his aunt; and aye, a lingering burden of resentment toward God and his son Yeshua.
I had to let go of those things, offer them up.
I did.
The bright lady smiled, but she remained silent. I concentrated on the flickering candle-flame, willing my heart to be open and my ears to hear.
“You wished this, O brightest of goddesses,” I whispered in Alban, reverting to the tongue of my birth. “Will you not grant your blessing to this hurt and damaged child of yours? I offer myself as your vessel.”
When it came, it came in a rush, a sense of Naamah’s grace settling over me like a cloak of sunlight, like an embrace, like the tenderest of kisses, making my heart ache, setting the doves to fluttering in my belly. She was here, present between us. I drew a shaking breath, tears filling my eyes, words filling my mouth.
“Aleksei…..”
He nodded, wordless.
I laid my hand on his chest again, spreading my fingers, feeling his strong, young heart pounding beneath my touch. “What you carry is no curse, but a gift. Like any gift, it can be used for good or evil. If you use it wisely and kindly, it will bring only joy, and never sorrow. Trust your heart to guide you. Take your shame, and offer it to God. Let him burn it away until only what is pure remains.”
Naamah’s grace expanded, encompassing Aleksei. He caught his breath, a single, gasping sob escaping him.
I didn’t understand, not wholly. But her words were meant for him, not me. “Is all well?” I asked.
“Yes.” Wonder dawned in his blue, blue eyes. “Oh, yes!”
“Good.” I shifted, straddling his knees. “I am going to kiss you now.”
Aleksei smiled through his tears. “Do you think you need to warn me?”
I nodded. “I do.”
Leaning forward, I cupped his face in my hands. He closed his eyes, tears trickling beneath his lashes. I brushed them away with my thumbs, kissed the salty trails they left behind on his skin. I kissed his warm, firm lips until I felt them soften, and parted them with the tip of my tongue, letting it touch his.
He jerked back, eyes open and wide. “Is that….. customary?”
I laughed softly. “Yes. Did you not like it?”
“I….. don’t know.” Aleksei looked at me with that extraordinary earnestness. “Will you do it again, please?”
I kissed him again. This time, his lips parted more readily. I let my tongue slip between them, finding his and teasing it, coaxing and retreating. I let my hands slide upward into his damp, tawny hair. Let myself lean farther forward, pressing my breasts against his chest. Gods, it felt good.
Aleksei groaned into my mouth, his arms encircling my waist hard, his hands pressing against my back. In the bright sunlight, he pulled me down atop him, kissing me fervently.
“No sin?” I asked, breathless.
He shook his head. “No sin.” He tugged away my head-scarf. “Why are you wearing this? You hate it.”
“True,” I agreed.
He stroked my hair. “It is as soft as it looks.”
“Oh, aye?” I kissed his throat, biting softly at his skin.
He groaned again, his back arching. “Moirin, don’t….. don’t. It’s too much. I want to see you. I need to see you.”
I sat back on my heels. “Then do.”
Aleksei rose. I let him pull me to my feet. His big hands clutched folds of my drab woolen dress, lifting it and easing it over my head, discarding it. His hands tugged down my undergarments, and I stepped out of them.
“Oh, God.” With profound reverence, he took his deity’s name in vain, his voice shaking as he gazed at me. “Oh, God! Moirin. You are so very, very beautiful.”