Naamah's Curse - Jacqueline Carey [116]
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