Naamah's Curse - Jacqueline Carey [28]
I gazed at them, filled with complex emotions.
“Why do you look sad, Moirin?” Checheg asked me, her voice soft with concern and exhaustion. “You did well. I have never known a birth so easy.”
“Oh…” I smiled, knowing there was a shadow of sorrow in it I could not hide. “Yes, today is a day for joy,” I said, choosing my words with care. “Only I am thinking of my Queen very far away. She was with child. She was afraid of this day when her time came. She did not want me to leave. I wanted to be there for her.”
Checheg understood. “And instead you are here for me.” She cradled the back of her babe’s head with one hand, summoning a sweet, tired smile. “But now you see there was nothing to fear. I am sure it was so for your Queen.”
“I hope so.” Although I had underestimated her before, I could not imagine Jehanne facing the ordeal of childbirth with the same calm, steady courage.
“You will see.” Checheg closed her eyes. “I will be sorry when you leave. All of us will.” Her voice took on a dreamy tone. “But you will find your legendary peasant-boy, and together you will return to faraway Terre d’Ange with its white walls and great palaces, and forests growing beneath glass pavilions, and there you will find that all is well with this Queen of whom you are so very fond.”
I had not spoken of my role as Jehanne’s companion, since it was foreign to Tatar customs. Now I flushed, suspecting I was not as good at concealing my feelings as I thought.
“By then her baby will be as big as my little brother Mongke,” Sarangerel added. “Already making trouble!”
It was a charming thought.
I wondered if Jehanne’s child, boy or girl, had inherited its mother’s mercurial temper or its father’s sense of grave resolve. Secretly, I hoped it was the former. And I gazed at the babe in Checheg’s arms, hoping she inherited a measure of her mother’s innate kindness; hoping she would come of age in a time of peace, and need not believe that to live was to suffer.
Like as not, I would never know. But I could pray for it.
The babe stirred in its mother’s arms.
I reached out to stroke her tender cheek with one finger. “Welcome to the world, little one.”
TEN
They named the baby girl Bayar, which meant joy.
“It was your idea, Moirin,” Checheg said to me, eyes dancing. “Remember? When she was born, you said it was a day for joy.”
“I remember,” I said, touched.
Grandmother Yue chewed her lips. “Too bad it wasn’t a boy.”
Batu smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “I do not mind. I like daughters, too.”
Life settled into a new rhythm in the ger. Having been trained by Checheg during my first month among the Tatars, I took on her duties, letting her rest, recover her strength, and nurse the babe while I saw to the daily preparation of tea and food, ladling it out at meal-times in the correct order of precedence.
Days passed, one by one.
Betimes, I grew restless and stifled, the felt walls and dried-dung smoke of the ger closing in on me until it was hard to breathe. When it happened, Checheg was sensitive to it. She would rise from her pallet, Bayar cradled in one arm, and tilt her head toward the door in an implicit command.
I went.
Outdoors, I could breathe. I sucked the achingly cold air deep into my lungs, breathing out plumes of frost.
I took part in surreptitious horse-races arranged by the young men of the tribe, marveling at how their sure-footed shaggy ponies were able to outpace my proud gelding Ember, an Emperor’s gift. Since the strained foreleg Ember had sustained on our journey had healed entirely, I had no excuse. The Tatars were incredible horsemen.
I helped herd the cattle, who listened to me; and the sheep, who did not.
I took part in archery challenges, shooting at tiny, distant targets.
There, I more than