The Wedding.
On the day of her daughters' wedding, Burqila Alshara rises a little bit past dawn. Her joints creak as she forces herself to her feet and she wonders, idly, how long it's been since she could get up without grabbing something to lean on. The others—her sisters Zurgaanqar and Saraangarel, Saraan's husband Ganzorig, Zurgaan's husband (but not Otgar's father) Boladai, Dorbentei herself—are still waging their war with sleep. It will not be long now. Outside, the camp is coming to life.
Alshara slips on her finest deel, which is also the least practical. She steps into her boots.
And then she kicks her sleeping niece in the shoulder.
For ten years now, this is how she's awoken Otgar each morning.
Otgar grumbles as she shoots up. One glance up at the ger's air vent tells her the time. She rolls her eyes.
[[Are they getting married so early?]] she signs.
[[Shizuka's idea,]] signs Alshara. [[Sunlight makes her feel at home.]]
Otgar huffs. She grabs her deel—she sleeps on it whenever she shares Alshara's ger—and gets it on. There are wrinkles. Otgar doesn't care. Otgar never cares about the way she looks, only the way she acts.
Together, they leave the ger. Otgar covers her eyes as the sun shoots arrows into them.
[[Plenty of sunlight at noon,]] she signs, [[and plenty of sleep. That girl. Barsalai hates mornings.]]
And though it pains Alshara to sign it, she must. [[Barsalai does not sleep. Time of day makes no difference to her.]]
How many times has Alshara pleaded with Shefali to come home for a night, to spend the evening beneath the stars as Grandmother Sky intended? Since her return she's spent one such day with them. One.
Is she ashamed of what she's become? Does she feel awkward, still, after her banishing? Temurin actually grinned on the day she returned. So what if the others don't like looking at her face? She is of the Burqila clan. All she must do is assert herself over them, and they will bow to her.
And yet…
Yet Alshara knows, in the pit of her being, that her daughter is not that sort of person. She will grin and bear their jabs, but she will never cut off the hand of the offender.
Well. To survive is Qorin, isn't it?
[[She hates the day time, Burqila, I'm telling you,]] signs Otgar.
Alshara nods to the guards and tossing them an ankle bone each from her bag. It's a sign of goodwill, on a good day. She mounts her liver mare to meet the ricetongues, and, to her surprise, Otgar mounts her gelding.
“What time is this set to start?” asks Otgar. “We've got to be there, don't we? For that foolery with the cups?”
[[I've got to be there,]] Alshara signs back, holding her hand up so Otgar can see it even riding behind her.
“What do you mean only you've got to be there?” Otgar snaps. “I'm her cousin. That's blood enough, isn't it? I'll be damned if she leaves me out of the ceremony, Burqila, I'll be damned.”
[[Then I will see you in the Grandfather's embrace, Dorbentei,]] Alshara signs back. She doesn't need her daughter's nose to sense Otgar's displeasure. Burqila Alshara smiles to herself. It is early in the morning, her daughters are getting married, and she's already upset Otgar before breakfast.
As they ride through the camps towards the palace—towards the gardens Shizuka so treasures—the crowds change. In the camps those who are are awake throw milk onto their path. In the camps, there is not yet singing. Sleepy mouths form old blessings as best they can. It is too early for backhanded compliments.
But someone tries, anyway.
“Congratulations,” says a woman Zurgaanqar's age. “Your daughter's following in your footsteps, marrying a ricetongue.”
Alshara had hoped, really hoped, that she'd get through the morning without having to discipline anyone.
She brings her liver bay to a halt. Otgar shakes her head at the woman, lamenting whatever her fate will turn out to be.
There are options. There are always options. Alshara has done this so many times, and she dreads repeating herself—but she does not have much time to think.
[[You speak to me in such a way, on the day of my daughter's wedding?]] signs Alshara. [[Apologize. Now.]]
Otgar translates it without alteration. The woman says nothing, but remains kneeling on the ground—she cannot even look at Alshara.
She wishes it did not have to be this way.
Burqila Alshara dismounts. She tears a length of cloth from her saddlebags, grabs the woman by the hair, and shoves the balled up cloth into her mouth. Then Alshara quickly signs for felt. Otgar sends out the call. Soon a roll of it is brought out. The woman begins to shake. Alshara stands in front of her, looking down, and grabs her by the hair again. She yanks her up so that they're seeing eye to eye, and signs to Otgar with her free hand.
[[Today is not a day for killing you. Tomorrow, maybe. But not today. So you're going to ride on the back of Dorbentei's horse like a saddlebag, since you seem to love horseshit so much.]]
With that said she flings the woman onto the waiting roll of felt. The guards roll it shut, then tie it with belts, and fling it roughly onto the back of Otgar's horse.
And then Burqila Alshara mounts again.
It is easy to cast the writhing woman from her mind. There have been, in the past, many like her. Alshara did not hesitate when it came to killing her brothers. This is nothing. Besides, soon they turn towards the gardens. The northerners are playing music. That instrument Kenshiro loves so much—a lot of that. Harps, too, and guzhengs. Winding songs recount stories of love fulfilled. Here they throw rice instead of milk, and here, despite how much everyone fears her—along this causeway Alshara is hailed as Dowager Empress.
It is an easy thing to forget the woman in the felt—but much harder to forget that Dowager Empress is Shizuru's rightful title.
At least until she hears her daughter's voice, so rarely heard it cuts through the din of the crowd.
“Mother!” she shouts. There she is, standing in the saddle of her grey, wearing that bronze fox mask. But it is unmistakeably her. Who else could mount that horse and live? Who else would dare to wear the tiger-striped deel? Peonies and chrysanthemums, woven together, crown her in red and violet and gold.
She looks ridiculous.
Like a young woman about to be married should look, carefree and joyous.
“Mother!” she shouts again. “I will beat you to the dais!”
“Like hell you will, Needlenose!” says Otgar.
But Shefali's grey takes off at a gallop anyway, and Shefali herself stays standing in the saddle, looking back at them and waving.
Alshara laughs. This is tradition, of course—racing your child on their wedding day. But it is a tradition that slipped her mind until this moment, until she whips her horse into a gallop amidst the crowd. The words form at the tip of her tongue—I will win no matter what—but they die there, unspoken, as the wind slashes her across the face.
She races. The people around them fall to the background, fall away to uselessness. All Alshara sees is grey and brown and gold and red. All she hears is Shefali laughing and laughing, the way she did when she was a child. The crowd applauds as she sits backwards onto the saddle. Someone holds out a garland of flowers. Shefali swings off the saddle, legs above her head, and swings back in with the garland around her neck. Her flower crown is still in place.
It's the sort of move that would make her uncles proud, if they saw it. The sort of move that sends the crowd into an uproar.
When she was younger Alshara could've swung underneath the saddle while her horse was at a gallop. Shefali's never seen her do it. Maybe one day, she thinks, when it's the two of them, and the clan cannot see how slow Alshara's gotten.
As they cross into the hunting grounds Shefali finally takes a proper seat—though she's so far ahead Alshara can barely see her. Behind her, Otgar is huffing and puffing.
“We'll catch up to you!” she screams.
“Fuck off, Otgar!” Shefali shouts back. “It's my wedding!”
“Fuck off?” echoes Otgar. “Come over here and say that to my face! I swear to the Sky, Barsalai, I will throw you into the Father's sea!”
By now, deep belly laughs fall from Alshara's mouth. They only get louder. Shefali stands back up in the saddle and makes the most obscene gesture known to any Qorin.
“Catch me, then!” shouts Shefali.
Alshara's never seen Otgar ride so fast. In the end, it doesn't help her—Alshara beats Otgar to the gardens for second place. When they dismount, still giddy with excitement, they see Shizuka at the dais. Her kimono is a radiant white in the early morning sun. She wears a crown matching Shefali's, and a glimmering phoenix ornament on her scarred ear.  Alshara can't stand to look at her too long; Shizuka's glowing with joy.
And she looks too much like Shizuru.
But Alshara embraces her anyway, and holds her tight, her child and Shizuru's.
“Mother,” says Shizuka in her broken Qorin. Her scar pinches her skin when she smiles. “We're overjoyed you came. Imagine if we had only Dorbentei for company.”
Alshara sniffs Shizuka's cheeks. She's wearing perfume, as always, so it's hard to get an idea of her scent. For all the words she's learned, for all the bits of culture she's picked up and sewn into her Imperial kimonos—the basics still escape her.
It is the effort that counts.
“Do I not count for anything?” says Kenshiro. He's wearing a deel, too. By the shoddy worksmanship Shefali made it herself. Alshara embraces him, too, and sniffs his cheeks—but she does not dwell on him the way she dwelled on Shizuka. Kenshiro…
He was never hers, was he?
But it is good he is here. Good that he is trying. Standing next to Kenshiro is his twig of a wife, that Xianese woman who reeks of flowers. Alshara's never cared much for her. But standing at her side, with one small hand in hers, is Lai Dailan.
“Grandma doesn't like us,” says the girl, in wobbly Hokkaran. Is that her first tongue?
Alshara's only grandchild is three years old. She has her father's dark skin, bushy brows, and puffy cheeks—but the rest of her is all her mother. Her posture, her hair, the brightness in her eyes—that is all Baozhai. So, too, is the pout on her lips as Alshara scoops her up.
[[I love you as much as I love my prized mares,]] Alshara signs. Otgar sighs.
“She loves you a lot,” she says.
The girl wrinkles her nose. “Then how come you won't talk?”
The Xianese woman goes pale and reaches for her daughter. “Eighty pardons, honored Mother-In-Law, she does not know what she's saying.”
Alshara touches the girl's nose, then her mouth. Then she touches her own mouth. Just as she starts to sign, Otgar butts in.
“Your grandmother can't talk because she lost her voice to a Qorin Sand Dragon.”
Kenshiro, Shefali, and Shizuka all cover their mouths to stifle their laughs. To Alshara's surprise (and mild consternation), the Xianese woman plays along.
“That's right,” she says. “The Sand Dragon couldn't speak, either, and your grandmother made fun of it. The Sand Dragon stole her voice to punish her.”
The little girl is wide-eyed and scared in the way only children can be. “Grandma, you saw a dragon?”
One learns, over time, when it is proper to lie to a child. And in this case perhaps it is easier to say a dragon stole her voice. Much easier than saying her mother tortured her best friend, and Alshara is still guilty over it.
So she nods. With her free hand she squeezes her own throat. Dailan gasps.
“Auntie! Auntie, get her voice back!”
Shizuka laughs. “We'll get right on it,” she says.
“Take me with you?” says Dailan.
“Only if you promise to be good,” says Shizuka. “And if you get your mother's permission.”
“Not her father's?” says Kenshiro. “You have my permission to go chasing dragons with your aunts. No place safer than that.”
“No place indeed, except our palace,” says Baozhai.
Alshara passes the child back to her mother. Perhaps she was wrong about Baozhai, she thinks. Perhaps she is not all bad. Her daughter shows promise.
“Everyone here, then?” says Otgar. “Tell me no one invited that water-brained coward.”
Shefali and Shizuka share a glance. It'd be impolite not to invite Yuichi—but as far as Alshara was concerned, politeness could milk a stallion. This was Shefali's wedidng, not Kenshiro's. Yuichi had no real hand in raising her.
“No,” says Shizuka. “We didn't. But we are waiting on one more person before we can begin.”
[[Your Altanai cousin?]] signs Alshara, wrinkling her nose in disapproval. [[Isn't the ceremony for close family?]]
“Can't we start without her?” is what Otgar says instead. “It's barely Third Bell!”
Alshara pinches her nose. [[Keep blowing smoke out of my mouth and I'll show you the flames, Dorbentei.]]
If Otgar has anything to say about it, her good sense prevails over her yammering tongue. She crosses her arms and waits. It does not take long, after all, for the Altanai to show up. Her kimono competes with the flowers for attention, to say nothing of the ridiculous white face paint she's plastered onto herself. Crushed gems dust her fingertips. Fine gold bells in her hair colored the air, even as her mouth sullied it.
“Third Bell,” she says, sauntering to stand by her cousin. “You've got some nerve. Do you know how late I was up last night?”
“It's my wedding,” says Shizuka, firmly. “Why should I care how late you were up? Today is important, Sakura.”
“You should care because I'm in charge of your speech later,” says the Altanai. Baozhai looks as if she's heard the name of the Father.
“With all due respect--” she begins.
“You try and stop me,” says Sakura.
“We've spent a great deal of time planning this ceremony--” says Baozhai.
“And I spent a lot of time writing this speech, so you're going to have to sit down and enjoy it,” says Sakura. “Are we all ready?”
No one else is willing to argue, except perhaps Shizuka. The consternation on her face falls away when Shefali reaches over to clear away a shock of hair. She tucks it behind Shizuka's ruined ear. They link hands. Shizuka looks up at Shefali. Her amber eyes turn to honey, and that is the moment that makes poets useless. How could anyone hope to capture it? Beauty and love—you cannot track these things down, you cannot hunt them and mount them on your wall.
Alshara told Shizuru this, once. Zuru said a poet's job was not to hunt beauty, or to track it. She said it was the job of a poet to take you to a place beauty had been, to point out where it left bent twigs or clumps of fur, so that these small clues would form a grand image in your mind.
Horseshit, of course. But Shizuru liked it. Must be worth something. You can grow crops with shit, if you try.
The girls walk to a set of cups and a bottle of ricewine. They're sitting in front of...is that the golden flower? It must be. There's no other like it in the whole of the empire. Alshara smiles. How like Shizuka to pick the flower of her birth as an altar. A clipping from it lays next to the empty cups, along with a bowl of water.
 Both kneel down on either side of it, Shefali helping Shizuka to manage it without ruining her dress. Kenshiro kisses his wife and child, then bows to his mother.
“Mother,” he says, “will you be doing all the drinking for the girls?”
[[Their parents are supposed to do it,]] signs Kenshiro. [[But without father here, and with what happened to Naisuran and the poet…]]
It brings Alshara a measure of relief that her son speaks to her in Qorin, that he remembers how to sign. But he is wrong on one account. Shizuru and Itsuki are here. As long as their daughter's here, as long as Alshara wears that locket—they are here.
She kneels in front of the altar.
Kenshiro picks up the cutting. He dips it into the bowl of water. Next to him, Baozhai lights a censer of incense. The two of them walk in a slow circle around Alshara and her daughters. Dailan totters around after them.
“Who comes before the Gods to announce their marriage?” asks Kenshiro.
“Barsalai Shefali Alsharyya, daughter of the steppes.” Alshara has never heard her sound so confident.
“Minami Shizuka, daughter of Minami Shizuru, granddaughter of Minami Shizuma; daughter of Itsuki Shinno.”
“And who has brought them to be married?” asks Baozhai.
Alshara swore her oath of silence at fourteen. Thirty-five years, now, since she watched Nadyya jam a blazing hot poker into Erdene's mouth. Thirty-five years since Alshara begged her mother to stop. She can count on one hand the amount of times she's spoken since. Two hands, maybe. She forgets how often she spoke to Shizuru.
Will she speak now, at the wedding? With Kenshiro and Otgar here she could continue signing. Would it go against the spirit of her vow to speak now, knowing Erdene can never do the same?
But when was the last time Erdene spoke to her? The last time Alshara heard of her? For all she knew, Erdene ran off to join the Rassat. Nadyya severed their friendship when she severed Erdene's tongue.
“Burqila Alshara Nadyyasar,” she says. The sound of her own voice startles her. “Wall-breaker.”
Kenshiro misses his next step. If it weren't for Baozhai reaching out, he'd have fallen clean over. Shefali opens her mouth in shock; Shizuka squeezes her hand. Dailan, gasps, loudly.
“But the dragon took your voice!” she shouts. Otgar, of all people, scoops her up and speaks to her in quiet Xianese.
Alshara laughs. At least she can be surprising, still.
“The, uh—I call upon the--”
“The gods, darling, the gods,” says Baozhai.
“Right,” says Kenshiro. Shizuka chuckles. “I call on the Heavenly Family, and all the Gods of the rivers and roads; I call on the Gods of dreams and futures to witness this wedding. With this sprig of—With this golden flower, with this water,