Mistress of Animals

by Myers, Karen

  The first faint fires of the evening came into view ahead. Everyone was indoors, of course, but each time a door opened, it shed light from the kazr onto the trampled snow, more and more by the moment, the light occluded briefly by people emerging.

  Ilzay steered for the dark bulk of four large kazrab on the edge of the settlement, and then stopped, and everyone pulled up behind him. Out of the gloom appeared the two herd-boys Penrys remembered, the ones that had taken care of Umzakhilin.

  “Come take these horses, Zabrash,” Ilzay called. Right behind them were Bimal, the lost dirum, and with her the young dirum-malb Inghiti that the sister clan Winnajjinza had offered Umzakhilin.

  Winnajhubr, on foot now, side-stepped the activity and trotted straight to Jirkat and Ilzay. “He wants to see you, Umzakhilin does, and then I’m to bring the bikrajab when they’re ready.”

  Penrys stayed back a bit with Najud and Munraz, and let Jirkat and Ilzay get sorted out first. Then she kicked her left foot from her stirrup, balanced on her hands, swung her right leg over, and dropped to land on her good leg, holding onto her horse until she was stable. Her crutch was strapped to her back, as the most convenient place to carry it on horseback, and by the time she’d untied it and gotten it under her right shoulder, Bimal had come to greet her.

  “You’re looking well, dirum,” Penrys said, and indeed it was clear that she was in her element, overseeing Birssahr and Zabrash, with Inghiti’s help.

  “These five horses…” Penrys said, indicating her string. “I want them. I’ll buy them, whoever’s they are. They saved my life.”

  Bimal smiled. “I know how that can be. I’ll find out about them for you, bikrajti.”

  Najud roped Winnajhubr into helping him erect their kazr with Munraz, and Penrys stayed out of the way. Just beyond the activity, she could dimly see in the partial moonlight that more people had come outside, quietly, just to watch.

  They made quick work of putting up the kazr and laying out the rugs, and then their packs along the walls. Najud gave it all a glance, then shooed Penrys and Munraz out.

  “Zabrash will get the fire started and keep an eye on it so we don’t all come back to a cold bed,” he told them.

  Winnajhubr was waiting for them nervously outside, and beckoned the three of them to follow him to Umzakhilin’s kazr.

  All along the way as they went more deeply into the zudiqazd people gathered in ones and twos and watched them go by. When Penrys reached out and sampled their mood, she felt curiosity and tension, fear and hope.

  She followed Najud as he ducked into the big, central kazr that was shared now by Umzakhilin and Hadishti.

  “Welcome back,” Hadishti said, warmly, and her children, Sharma and Dimghuy, found them places to sit, struggling a bit with Penrys until Najud simply lowered her down onto her good knee and left her to arrange the healing leg straight out in front of her from there. They glanced curiously at Munraz.

  The place was fully furnished now, Penrys saw, and looked as if it had been this family’s home for generations. Hadishti brought fresh mutton and beans to each of them, and when she’d given Penrys her share, Penrys grabbed her arm to stop her for a moment. “Thanks for all your advice,” she said, “Not to mention the cooking lessons. Made things easier.”

  Hadishti beamed at her. “Eat, now, and relax. Plenty of time to talk afterward.”

  Umzakhilin was chatting with Jirkat and Ilzay closer to the fire while his new guests ate. He looked much better to Penrys, though she saw a sturdy cane on the rugs beside him.

  Najud had just laid his meal aside, when there came a knock on the doorframe. Umzakhilin looked at his clansmen. “Did you tell him?”

  They shook their heads and tried to hide a smile. Hadishti told Najud, “We have a surprise for you, bikraj.”

  The door opened, and a young woman stepped in over the threshold, her head bare and covered with black curls.

  Najud scrambled to his feet. “Rubti! What are you doing here?”

  Penrys looked from one face to the other as they hugged. She must be his younger sister, the one he said was a dirum-malb. How wonderful to have a family to greet you.

  But this is my family, too, now. What a strange thought.

  Najud grabbed her left arm and hauled her up, steadying her until she could balance with her crutch. “Nurti, this is my betrothed. Penrys, my middle sister, Rubti.”

  The girl took in her broken leg and obviously foreign appearance with a startled blink, and then smiled up at her brother. “You always leave the most important news out of your letters, tigha, don’t you? I want to hear the whole story.”

  Najud grinned. “But why are you here? Anyone else with you? Is everyone all right?”

  “They’re fine, and it’s just me. I’ll tell you about it later.”

  Najud helped Penrys settle back on the carpets, then plunked down with his sister, side by side.

  Umzakhilin cleared his throat, and all eyes switched back to him. “So, zarawinnaj, you’ve done as I asked and brought us back our clan. I’m told the qahulajti is no longer a threat, and this is fine news. I’ve heard part of it from these men.” His gesture encompassed Jirkat, Ilzay, and Winnajhubr. “And part from many of our returned clan-kin.”

  He paused and looked expectantly at Najud. “Now, if you are not too tired, perhaps you could give me your full report.”

  Najud drew a deep breath and let it out. Then he straightened his spine and told the tale. He took Umzakhilin swiftly over the first few days of camps and cairns and tracking, and Jirkat and Ilzay contributed the occasional bit. Winnajhubr maintained a discrete silence befitting his relative youth.

  Penrys told the story of the meeting with Khizuwi, and then the next meeting with Jiqlaraz and Munraz. She introduced Munraz as Najud’s nal-jarghal, and hers, and that raised eyebrows, but she saved the explanation for its proper place in the report.

  Najud took a moment to outline the rumored marriage practices of the Rashaban bikrajab, and Munraz nodded to verify the details. Then he continued with the blizzard, the same that had dumped the snow all around the zudiqazd, and which gave Umzakhilin a clear date for when things happened from there.

  Penrys explained how they found the first survivors, and what she thought the qahulajti had done to them, and how the effect was dismissed.

  It was harder for Najud to maintain his even tone when he outlined the expedition into the Silmat valley, where Penrys located the pockets of survivors and then flew off and didn’t return. She reached out and gripped his hand, and he continued to describe, with Jirkat and Ilzay’s help, how they hastened group after group of them back to their camp. “None of this could have been done without the fine men you sent with us, ujarqa. We needed every one of them.”

  Penrys hastened over the details of her slow chase and what she made of the qahulajti’s movements.

  While Jirkat told of gathering all the survivors and making what speed he could with them, Penrys caught the open-mouthed looks Rubti gave her brother as she listened to this tale, and the occasional glances directed her own way.

  Najud took time for a deep draft of mead. Then he braced himself and described the fight about the qahulajti, and her death. Penrys could picture it all. And me unconscious in the kazr the whole time.

  “Munraz upheld the judgment of the bikrajab present, and for this he has paid with exile from his family and clan,” Najud said.

  “And so the bikrajab of Rashaban are now declared enemies?” Umzakhilin asked.

  “That’s not entirely clear. Khizuwi speculated that it would happen, if not now, then soon. Penrys thought they crossed behind us, back to the camp and its cairn, a couple of nights ago.”

  Penrys shook her head. “I can’t be sure that’s what I felt.”

  “And young Munraz here?” Umzakhilin’s voice was carefully neutral.

  Najud said, “He killed the qahulajti to keep his uncle from claiming her, and it cost him everything. We will vouch for him, as our nal-jarghal.�
��

  “I will think about this,” Umzakhilin said. He leaned back and stretched a moment.

  “And so there may yet be survivors in Silmat, and certainly more of our herds. We must send another party soon, but I don’t like to call on the other clans in our tribe for yet more help.”

  Ilzay said, “It may be, ujarqa, that clan Umzabul, Khizuwi’s clan, would be willing to help. We need to escort young Ariqnas there anyway. Perhaps that could be an opportunity to strengthen relations with them, outside our own tribe, and the distance from there to Silmat is hardly any further.”

  “That’s an interesting suggestion.”

  Penrys could see that Najud was pleased with Umzakhilin’s reaction.

  *I don’t understand what’s going on.*

  *What’s happening, Pen-sha, is that the ujarqa may be considering the caravan base I’ve suggested, where alliances beyond the tribe will become important.*

  Umzakhilin clapped his hands together. “This is enough for one evening.” He spoke to his audience of bikrajab. “I have been waiting until the fate of the qahulajti was known. Tomorrow morning we will have the grand tally of the living and the dead. And in the afternoon, we will do our weddings, here in the privacy of our own zudiqazd instead of the magham, where we can manage our own grief.” He glanced over at Hadishti.

  “There will be five of them, all at once,” she told them. “Jirkat’s brother Khashghuy and the rescued Yardiqurti—he waited for his brother to return. And four more, newly announced among the survivors.” Her lips quirked. “They’re determined to weld family fragments back into new families.”

  Najud looked at Penrys and raised an eyebrow. She smiled and nodded.

  Hadishti watched them and told her husband, “Six couples, I think it will be.”

  CHAPTER 57

  Rubti walked back with Najud and Penrys to the kazr they shared with Munraz. She greeted everyone she met along the way by name and they smiled back at her.

  Najud noticed. “How long have you been here, nurti, that you know so many people?”

  “Only a few days, tigha. I got here in time for part of the magham, before Jirkat and Ilzay came back. After that, they started worrying about what was keeping you. I wanted to go with them, but Umzakhilin wouldn’t allow it.”

  They ducked inside through the doorframe and startled Zabrash who’d been dozing on the rugs by the stove. When the boy saw Rubti, he grinned. “I didn’t tell him.”

  Najud commented sardonically, “How is it that so many conspired with my little sister to keep me in the dark, eh?” He chased the boy out of the kazr in pretend wrath, and shut the door behind him.

  “Now, sit down, nurti, and tell me the whole tale.”

  The two siblings sat across from each other, in front of the stove, and Munraz observed from near the door, silent. Penrys suddenly realized that she didn’t know if he had brothers and sisters himself.

  Penrys moved over to her bed so she could sit on its edge, and watched her… sister-in-law. How strange that felt. Was it her youth that gave her such self-possessed confidence? But no, Najud has that, too. What must the rest of the family be like?

  “It was four weeks ago, two months after I celebrated becoming a tushkzurtudin. A message came special for you, over the Low Pass, with your lineage and clan, and we accepted it for you.”

  She reached into her winter robes and pulled out a stiff wrapped packet of paper, still sealed and bound with cords. Najud glanced at it, then handed it to Penrys and she stretched forward to take it.

  It was addressed in both Kigali and Rasesni script, very formal, and beneath that someone had written the Zannib version, more casually. When she held it up to her nose, the scent of paper, ink, and seal were overlaid with some sort of Zannib spices, no doubt from whatever pack it had shared while it traveled. She laid it aside on the bed.

  “We didn’t know what to do with it,” Rubti said. “Our father thought it likely that the message itself wasn’t written in Zannib, judging from the address, and was reluctant to open it. And, in any case, we didn’t know where you were. Last we heard, it was somewhere in Neshilik.”

  She looked up at Najud accusingly from under her brows, and he threw his hands into the air in helpless apology.

  “Then a week later,” she said, “Hazimjilah arrived, from the west. He said he’d been sent by Zamharshat, gharqa of the Undullah tribe, and he had a message for your family, from you. And it had my name on it, in someone else’s handwriting.”

  She laughed. “Now, I had heard of the Undullah tribe, over by the High Pass, but how would they know my name?”

  “Donkeys,” Najud said, promptly, and her eyebrows climbed.

  “Are those your donkeys?” she asked, distracted by enthusiasm. “No one told me. I haven’t had a chance to look them over seriously, but there’s this one jack with a bad temper…”

  Najud and Penrys interrupted her in unison. “Demon.” Rubti glared at them as they laughed.

  “Never mind,” Najud said. “We’ll get to that. But that’s how they know your name—I mentioned my nurti, a dirum-malb, and they remembered.”

  “Oh. Well, we guested the man overnight, and he was ready to return the next morning. And… I decided to come with him.”

  “But why, nurti? It’s such a long way, and with a strange man…”

  “We had separate kamahab,” she declared, indignation strong in her voice. “He was just a companion for the road. He took me to the magham and returned to his own clan there.”

  Najud just continued to look at her steadily.

  “I’m grown now, I can travel when I want to,” she said, her chin high.

  Najud’s unchanged silent regard worked on her. Penrys carefully kept her face expressionless.

  “Oh, tigha, I was so bored. Hazimjilah told me what had happened here, and he told me about you, too, bikrajti.” That last was addressed to Penrys, across her brother. “Though he didn’t say anything about a betrothal.”

  Najud responded to the accusation in her voice with a mock whisper. “You see, nurti, I hadn’t convinced her yet.”

  “Why not? Didn’t she like you?”

  Penrys could see her hackles rising in defense of her brother. “No, Rubti, it wasn’t that. It’s complicated… I thought he deserved better…”

  “And I told her she was wrong,” Najud said.

  Rubti subsided. “Oh, in that case… If that’s all, then whoever he wants is fine with me, nagha.”

  She turned to Najud. “What do I call her? Is she older than Yukjilah? She looks like she might be.”

  Penrys bit her lip. She called me ‘older sister.’ A sister!

  “We don’t know, nurti,” Najud said. “Probably, since Yukjilah’s almost as young as our Ghuruma.”

  “Ah,” Rubti nodded sagely. “Naghayin, then—oldest sister.” She giggled. “That’ll make Yukjilah unhappy—all those years as a youngest nurtin in her own family, then a naghayin in ours when she married Butraz, and now just a nagha. She loved being oldest for a change.”

  “She’ll adjust,” Najud said, dryly. “Now, seriously, nurti, why did you want to leave?”

  Rubti’s face sobered. “You left when you were my age, tigha, remember? Everyone says it was different for you, doing your daril work, traveling as a journeyman bikraj. I’m just a dirum-malb, but there’re others in the clan. It’s work I want to do, but not as an apprentice, forever. And then, there’s no one unmarried there that interests me, not that way.”

  She took a deep breath. “I wanted to see more of the world, just like you, find my own place in it. So, when we heard where you were and what you were doing, and there was this foreign letter to deliver, I just… decided to go.”

  “Our parents allowed it?”

  “I’m old enough, they couldn’t stop me. And our mother gave me this, for you.”

  She leaned over and kissed Najud on his cheek.

  Penrys spoke, to cover Najud’s surprised silence. “Surely you’re not
still sleeping in a kamah in this weather.”

  “Inghiti invited me to share her kazr, naghayin, and I’m helping with dirum-malb stuff. They don’t have enough winter herdsmen yet, though some of the ones you rescued are starting to help.”

  She leaned forward. “Do you know what Bimal said to Inghiti? She told her she should stay, since her own dirum-malb was dead. Maybe she might take me on, too. I could learn a lot here.”

  “You should move in with us,” Najud declared. “Family.”

  Rubti laughed. “What, the night before a wedding? I can wait a little while.” She called over to the silent Munraz. “We’ll find you a place, too, nal-jarghal, for the next few days.”

  Wedding! Penrys looked ruefully at her broken leg and mentally reviewed the filthy clothing in her pack.

  CHAPTER 58

  “I like her,” Penrys told Najud, after Rubti bounced out of the kazr. “Are they all like that in your family?”

  Najud laughed. “No, she’s special. Of course, I don’t know the last two very well—the youngest wasn’t even born when I started my travels. But Rubti fastened on to me every time I came home, and it got so I didn’t feel right if she was somewhere else. It’ll take me a while to think of her as a tushkzurtudin, but don’t tell her that.”

  “Munraz,” Penrys called, and waved him over to join them. He rose from his quiet spot and sat down closer to the stove.

  “I just realized I don’t know much about your family. Are you the oldest? Do you have brothers and sisters?”

  “I was the only child of my mother born alive,” he said, “before she died.”

  Penrys’s mouth dropped. Before she could sputter anything, he continued. “That was my father’s second wife. His first wife died in childbirth, and the babe with her. The elders wouldn’t allow him a third wife.”

  Najud asked, quietly, “Were they cousins, your parents?”

  Munraz swallowed and looked away. “Mine were,” he muttered. “His first wife was a half-sister.”

  “Are they all like that in Rashaban?” Penrys asked, appalled.