Chapter Seventeen
What the Falcon Sees
I have not slept past the third quarter in fifteen nights.
I have, on the third night and the sixth and the eleventh, allowed the lamp at the centre-pole to go down to its second quarter, and I have closed my eyes against the post the orderly's man tied my wrists to on the night of the wagons, and I have let what passes in a captive's body for sleep do the small work it can do at a count of half a watch. I have not, on any night, let the lamp go below the second quarter. I have not, on any night, allowed the small wet rasp of my own breath behind the broken nose to be the only sound the Vermillion Guard at the flap could count. The Vermillion Guard at the flap is, in this hostage-camp, the only man within ten paces who has been told to count what comes out of my chest.
He has counted, on the fourteenth night, the long careful holding of the breath behind the broken nose for the length of half a watch.
He has not, in any of the fifteen nights, counted a thing I would have preferred to give him.
I am, this morning, telling you a thing I have not told in any voice. I am telling you in my own tongue, which is the steppe-tongue, which I have not spoken in open air since the first night of the lamp, when I said Tngri-eke. Si nadur chinu-aar nigen ünegen-bürkii ele'tegülüged irgüülbe — er-ün debel-tür into the felt at the centre of the tent and the soldier with the water-bowl did not turn around, and then I said Khaghan-bürkii once into the same felt three nights later when the soldier with the water-bowl was kneeling at four paces and her wrist was at the inside of my left thigh under the thigh of the bandage-leg for the length of one count, and I have not, in any other watch, spoken the open-air word for the wolf in the bowl of her chest, because to speak the open-air word for the wolf in the bowl of her chest is to call the wolf to her wrist, and the wolf, until the small hour before the dawn-drum of the fifteenth morning, was not at her wrist. He was at the south line of the smith's wagon, lying flat on his belly with his head between his paws, watching the lambing-felt at the eastern end of the squad-line in the slow patient way an animal watches a door he is not yet permitted to step through.
I have been watching the same door.
I have been watching it with the bird-eye.
I have not, since the fourteenth morning, used the open-air word for the bird-eye in this tent. The bird-eye is the small thin shine at the inside of the right pupil that a man bonded to a hawk has from the day the bond is knotted. The bird-eye sees what the bird sees, in the small fast frame the bird's eye uses, when the bird is at the line of the bonded's sight. The bird is not, this morning, in any line a man chained to a centre-pole at the third quarter of his lamp can see. The bird is twenty li to the north-east, at the line of the smith's wagon of a column moving south at the salt-pan road of the eleventh day. The bird is — I know this because I have known it for three days through the small thin shine — sitting on the upper bough of a willow at the head of a frozen creek, with his hood pulled by an old hand I have not seen in eleven days but know as the hand of my father's master-falconer Berke, with his jess held by the soft inner of Berke's right thumb, and Berke at the willow is waiting for me, because Berke has been told to wait for me, because Khaghan-bürkii will not fly from any wrist that is not mine, and my wrist is at the centre-pole in this tent at the third quarter of the lamp, and the wrist will not, until the wolf at the south line of the smith's wagon has been called to the wrist of the soldier with the water-bowl, leave the centre-pole.
I have been watching the door.
I have learned, in the fifteen days of the lamp, three things.
The first is the thing I told her, on the seventh night, in the felt at the centre of the tent at six paces, in the lazy half-syllable I had not used on her before and would use, in the next eight nights, twice — once at the squad-fire, once at the flap of the Marshal's pavilion in the small hour of the eleventh evening when the Marshal's chief of staff came to test my imperial.
The thing I told her on the seventh night was: You don't have to say anything. I just want you to know I haven't said anything.
I told her in the imperial because the imperial was the tongue I had been told by my father at the age of eleven to learn for the day I would, after the breaking of his back at the kurultai, sit on a felt at the centre of a yurt across from a foreign ambassador and say, in the foreign tongue, the thing my father had told me to say. My father had not told me, on any of those mornings, that I would say the small careful imperial sentence I said to her on the seventh night to a soldier with a water-bowl at six paces in a tent at the eastern end of a hostage-camp on the south side of the salt-pan. My father, on those mornings, had said Toghrul, the foreign tongue is a tool. The tool is for when the steppe-tongue does not, in the room, cut. I had said the steppe-tongue cut everywhere. He had said the steppe-tongue cut everywhere because I had not, in eleven years of riding behind him, been in a room where the steppe-tongue did not cut. He had said you will, in the room where the steppe-tongue does not cut, be glad of the tool. I had not, until the seventh night of the lamp, been in such a room.
I was, on the seventh night, glad of the tool.
I have used the tool, in the fifteen nights, six times.
I have not, in any of the six, used the tool the way the foreign ambassadors my father broke at the felt at the centre of his yurt would have used it on me. I have used the tool the way a man at the centre-pole of his own captivity uses a tool he was, in another room, taught for another room — softly, and very slowly, and only at the felt between his knees and the knees of the soldier with the water-bowl who has, since the seventh night, been at four paces and not six.
The soldier with the water-bowl is, in the open-air word of the squad-fire, Yansheng.
The soldier with the water-bowl is, in the open-air word of her own grandmother's whisper over her cradle, Arsulan.
I have known the second of the two open-air words from the second night of the lamp, when the wolf at the south line of the smith's wagon shifted on his belly at the precise count my mother's master-falconer Tonghu had told me, when I was nine, was the count at which a bonded animal will turn his head to the open-air word of his bonded if the bonded says the open-air word in the bonded's own mouth in the small low syllable in the back of the throat without breath. The soldier with the water-bowl, on the second night, sat at six paces with her hands flat on her knees and her eye on the felt between us, and she did not, in any breath of the watch, say the open-air word out loud. She said it in the back of her throat. The wolf at the south line of the smith's wagon turned his head on the precise count. The wolf at the south line of the smith's wagon was, in that count, the only thing within fifty paces that had heard the open-air word the soldier with the water-bowl said in the back of her throat, because the wolf at the south line of the smith's wagon is the only thing within fifty paces that has been listening, for nineteen years, for the open-air word the soldier with the water-bowl says in the back of her throat.
I, at four paces, am the second thing.
I have heard her say Arsulan in the back of her throat nine times in fifteen nights.
She has not, until the third watch of the fifteenth morning, said it in open air.
She said it, in open air, at the eastern edge of the camp, at the lee of a supply-wagon, into a small dry wind off the salt-pan, three times. I heard her with the bird-eye through Khaghan-bürkii at the willow at the head of the frozen creek twenty li to the north-east, because the bird-eye, on the third watch of the fifteenth morning, was sitting at the upper bough of the willow with Berke's thumb on his jess, and the bird-eye was watching, through the long sloped angle of the sky between the willow and the south line of the smith's wagon and the lee of the supply-wagon at the eastern edge of the camp, the wolf at the south line of the smith's wagon lift his head and lay it back down and lay his right ear flat to the ground at the third syllable. The bird-eye, in that moment, saw the wolf hear her. The bird-eye, through Khaghan-bürkii at twenty li, was the second thing inside the bowl of my own chest that heard her.
The first thing was me.
I have been, since the third watch of the fifteenth morning, a man inside whose chest a soldier of the southern empire has said her own name three times into the open-air wind of the salt-pan at the lee of a supply-wagon. I have been, since the third watch of the fifteenth morning, a different man than the man I was at the second quarter of the lamp the night before.
The second thing I have learned is the thing I told her on the bandage-night.
The bandage-night was the eighth night. The bandage-night was the night the secretary in the cinnabar-stripe robe came in at the second quarter of the lamp without warning and stood at the flap and asked, Soldier, has the prisoner been bandaged this evening, and the soldier with the water-bowl, who had been at four paces with her wrist under my left thigh under the thigh of the bandage-leg for the length of one count, lifted her wrist from under my thigh in the small slow motion of a soldier who is not, in any breath of the lifting, going to be a soldier the secretary has caught at anything, and she stood up, and she crossed at the six paces, and she said, in the belly voice, Yes, sir. The bandage has been applied. The thigh is clean. And the secretary said, Show me the bandage, and she crossed back to the four, and she lifted the felt at the side of my thigh, and the bandage was wound at the soldier's knot her mother had taught her at the spring sowing of her tenth year south of the Yellow River, and the secretary said, Your mother taught you a military knot. And he held the look for the count of three. And he said, Out. And she went out, and the secretary went out, and the lamp burned at the second quarter for the length of half a watch, and at the changing of the watch she came back, in the under-shirt with the binding-cloth tighter than it had been at the first crossing, and she sat at four paces, and she did not, in any breath of the watch, look at my face, and she did not, in any breath of the watch, say anything.
I told her, at the changing of the half, I have done a thing I will not undo. May I tell you what it was.
She said, Yes.
I told her the thing.
I told her I had made her my soft little jailer.
I have, in the four nights since I told her the thing, watched her sit at four paces and not look at my face and not look at me touching the bandage she had tied at the soldier's knot, and I have watched her steady her own breath at every turn of the watch, and I have, in the fourteen nights of the lamp at the third quarter, learned the thing I will not, on any night of the breakout or the chase or the One Yurt the bird-eye has shown me in the small grey light of the salt-pan dawn that is not yet snow at the foot of the Iron Gates pass, undo.
I have, in the fourteen nights, fallen.
It is not the thing the bards in my father's ordu sing about. The bards in my father's ordu sing about the bürkii of the Black Banner who fell to a steppe-mother bonded to a snow leopard at first sight at a kurultai at the foot of Tengger Bogd, and the fall, in the bards' song, is the moment the bürkii's eye crossed the line of the snow leopard's chest at the precise count of the drum, and the bards' song says the fall is a falling of one heart-beat, and the bards' song says it is a sweet falling that the Sky-Mother has had a hand in.
I have, in the fourteen nights of the lamp, fallen slowly.
I fell the first time in the small wet rasp of my own breath behind the broken nose, when the soldier with the water-bowl came under the flap on the night of the wagons and crossed the trampled grass to the centre-pole at six paces with the water and a strip of clean wrap and did not, in any breath of the crossing, look at my face.
I fell the second time on the third night, when she said it is the binding into the felt at six paces and her wrist did not move on her knee.
I fell the third time on the seventh night, when she held her silence at I haven't said anything and did not deny.
I fell the fourth time on the eighth night, when her wrist was under my thigh for one full count and neither of us moved.
I fell the fifth time on the twelfth night, when she sat at four paces in the under-shirt with the binding-cloth tighter than it had been and her hands palms-down flat on her knees and she did not say anything, and the bowl of my chest opened at the right side of the lamellar I was not wearing and reached, and she did not turn her face, and I knew she had been holding the back of her own right wrist in her own left hand for the four nights since the bandage.
I fell the sixth time on the thirteenth night, when I said I have felt yours since before, and she said, I did not, and I said Good, and she did not, for the rest of the watch, move.
I fell the seventh time on the fourteenth night, when she came under the flap at the changing of the watch and did not sit back at the six, but crossed to the four and knelt and sat back on her heels, and the bowl of her chest opened under the back of her own left hand, and the warmth that was, in any honest reading of it, not hers opened the slow opening it had been making since the white grass, and we did not look at each other and did not speak for half a watch, and the felt between us was the thing both of us were carrying, and we were not carrying the carrying.
I fell the eighth time at the third watch of the fifteenth morning, when the bird-eye, through Khaghan-bürkii at the willow twenty li to the north-east, watched the soldier with the water-bowl say her own name into the open-air wind of the salt-pan at the lee of a supply-wagon three times, and saw the wolf at the south line of the smith's wagon lift his head and lay it back down and lay his right ear flat to the ground at the third syllable.
I have fallen eight times in fifteen nights, and I will not, on any night of the breakout or the chase or the One Yurt at the foot of the Iron Gates pass, undo a single one.
The third thing I have learned is the thing I will not, in this tent, say in any voice at all.
The third thing is what I am for.
I have been, in the bowl of my father's chest at the ordu of the Black Banner, the ildü — the saber — for twenty-four years. I have been sent into hard places. I have been brought back, twice, with my legs at the inside of my own saddle-blanket because my back was at the rear of my own pommel and the saddle-blanket was the only thing holding the back of me to the back of the horse. I have killed, by the count of my father's master-bowyer Naqu, ninety-six men. I have, on three of the ninety-six, killed at the close of a single breath with the small hand-axe my father gave me at the third naadam of the eleventh year. I have, on twenty of the ninety-six, killed at the close of a salt-iron quarrel under the angle of the Vermillion plate at the upper edge of the shoulder where the lamellar leaves a finger's-breadth of cloth-and-throat. I have been the ildü in the room where the steppe-tongue cut and in the room where the steppe-tongue did not cut, and the ildü in both rooms was the same ildü because the ildü's hand was on the same hilt, and the hilt was the open-air word of the Khan, and the Khan, at the open-air word, was my father.
I have been, in the bowl of my own chest, something else. I have not, in twenty-four years, told my father what the something else is. I have not told my mother. I have not told my sister Yesüi, who is eight years old and who will, by the count of any man at the ordu of the Black Banner, not see me alive past the seventeenth day. I have not told Khaghan-bürkii in the small low syllable of his open-air name, because Khaghan-bürkii has been telling me what the something else is for twenty years and is, this morning, sitting at the upper bough of a willow twenty li to the north-east with Berke's thumb on his jess and a clean line of sight at the south line of the smith's wagon and a clean line of sight at the lee of a supply-wagon at the eastern edge of the camp, and Khaghan-bürkii does not, on any morning of the twenty years, need me to tell him the something else.
I will tell, in this tent at the third quarter of the lamp on the morning after the soldier with the water-bowl said her own name into open air for the first time, the thing I have not told anyone.
I am, in the bowl of my own chest, a man who would like, on one night of his life, to lie down at the felt at the centre of a small ger at the foot of the Iron Gates pass with a soldier who has, in the back of her own throat, said Arsulan for nineteen years, and put my hand at the back of her cropped head, and put the back of my own right wrist against the place over her heart where she has been holding the warmth that is not hers, and say to her in the steppe-tongue, in the small low syllable, into the back of her ear at the hem of the cropped hair, I would have, on any night of my life, lain down at this felt with you. I will, on this night, do it.
I will not, in this tent, say it.
I will say it, when the felt of the ger at the foot of the Iron Gates pass is between us, in the steppe-tongue, in the small low syllable, into the back of her ear at the hem of the cropped hair, on the night the bird-eye is at the line of the ger's smoke-hole and Khaghan-bürkii is at the rafter inside and the wolf at the south line of the smith's wagon is at her hip and the kam who has called the wolf through the door is in the snow outside with her bear, drumming softly, and the snow outside is the snow that will hold us until the kam and the bear are done.
I will say it on that night.
I will not, in any other watch, say it.
I have not slept past the third quarter in fifteen nights.
I am, this morning, at the third quarter of the lamp on the morning the soldier with the water-bowl has said her own name into open air for the first time.
I will, at the changing of the fourth watch on the morning of the seventeenth day, be at the same centre-pole in the same lamp at the same third quarter.
I will, at the second watch of the seventeenth night, be in a wagon under a black canvas riding south to a city I will not see.
I will not, at the second watch of the seventeenth night, be in the wagon.
The bird-eye knows.
The bird-eye is at the willow at the head of the frozen creek with Berke's thumb on his jess and a clean line of sight at the south line of the smith's wagon, and at the second watch of the seventeenth night, when the lamp at the centre-pole has been let down to its fifth quarter and the felt of the prisoner-tent has been pulled back and a soldier with a water-bowl has crossed the trampled grass and unlocked the iron at my ankle with a key she has stolen at the cost of her own throat, the bird-eye will be at the rafter of a ger at the foot of the Iron Gates pass three nights' ride east, with Berke's thumb gone and the jess loose and the ger's smoke-hole open to the small grey light of the salt-pan dawn that will not, on the seventeenth night, be snow yet.
I will, on that night, kneel at the felt at the centre of the ger.
I will, on that night, not be the prince at the centre-pole.
I will be the man.
I have told the soldier with the water-bowl that. I have told her, in the third voice into the felt at four paces on the night of the lamellar-correction speech, that the second part of the kindness was done without my knowing, and that there was a third part I would not do before the breakout, and that the third part was that I would kneel in this tent on the night of the breakout on the felt at the centre of it and let the soldier with the water-bowl unlock the iron at my ankle with the key she had stolen at the cost of her own throat, and I would, in the moment the iron came off, not be the prince who had been chained to a pole for thirty nights. I would be a man who had been let up by a soldier who had cost herself her throat for him.
I have told her.
She heard me.
I will, at the third watch of the seventeenth night, do the thing I told her.
I will, in the steppe-tongue, in the small low syllable, into the back of her ear at the hem of the cropped hair, on the night of the ger at the foot of the Iron Gates pass, say the thing I have not, in twenty-four years, said to anyone.
I will say it.
I will not, until then, say anything else.
Sky-mother. The lamp is at the third quarter. The wolf at the south line of the smith's wagon is up off his belly and walking, this hour, behind the soldier with the water-bowl at three paces along her line. The bird-eye is at the willow. The soldier with the water-bowl is, in this hour, asleep on a cot in the under-shirt and the lamellar at the lambing-felt at the eastern end of the squad-line, and her mother in a village south of the Yellow River, three thousand li south, is, in this same hour, holding a kitchen-knife in her own right hand at the cutting-board with the steam of the morning rice at her wrist, and she does not, in this hour, know that the riders from the orange-peel man are at the line of the village's wagon-road two days off, and she will, in three nights' time, know.
I cannot, on the chain at this centre-pole, save the mother.
I can — at the second watch of the seventeenth night, at the felt at the centre of the ger three nights east, in the steppe-tongue, in the small low syllable, into the back of the ear at the hem of the cropped hair — save the daughter.
I will save the daughter.
I will save her, sky-mother, in the way a man chained to a centre-pole for thirty nights can save a daughter who has saved him for fifteen.
I will love her.
I will not, until the felt of the ger, say it.
I will say it then.