Chapter One: In Which Kyrokh Learns His Accent is the Least of His Problems

“…ah, just a moment, Kyrokh-qara.”

Kyrokh had not heard the female honorific applied to his name in years. He paused in his stride across the center of camp. If anyone else had called him “qara” and not “qar”, they would be face-down in the dirt. But this was not “anyone else”, it was —

“Khan Hroz,” Kyrokh muttered, bowing formally before flicking his gaze longingly back at his tiny tent on the edge of the camp center. If he had only been just a little quicker, he could have been safe and asleep…

Instead, he was stuck staring down one of the most unpleasant people he had the misfortune of meeting in a relatively short life — and he could calmly make that statement after only having known him six weeks. Willful misuse of honorifics was only the smallest tip of a malicious little tuber.

“Tomorrow is an important day for all of Nazva,” Hroz was saying, smiling broadly and sweeping out his hands to indicate their pitiful little camp, supposedly representative of their entire state. Oh, Hroz would have loved to preside over a diplomatic retinue one thousand men deep, but his father, the Great Khan, was sensible. Instead, Hroz was stuck with a score of men — a few guards, servants, two advisors, and one specially chosen translator fluent in Long-hua.

Such a lucky thing to be chosen, Kyrokh, the Head Archivist in Nazva had told him when the summons came, to accompany a prince, and to be one of the first to speak with the Long. A dream.

And it had been a dream, for someone who had been studying a dead language all their life, to find it was alive and breathing just on the other side of mountains that no one had thought to cross.

“You do not have to remind me, Khan Hroz,” Kyrokh said obsequiously, bowing low. “It will be an event to be recorded for the ages.”

Hroz preened. His thin moustache twitched upward into a greasy smile, his unnecessary circlet and flurry of hair beads shining in the flickering firelight. There was no one to impress here — not yet, not until tomorrow. Even the three guards flanking Hroz looked bored and unfocused. Until the official audience, there was no one around but the dusk and the sentient whispers of the cold steppe.

“You’ll agree with me in my sincere wish that nothing hinder our first meeting.” Hroz was not subtle, his personal guards even less so, cracking their knuckles and leering in an overwrought fashion.

But Kyrokh was quite capable in what he did — and was in fact one of the very few who had any knowledge of the Long-Hua language, thought extinct or even mythical for so long. “I promise that you have no need to worry. My translation tomorrow will be flawless.” He hoped. No one had ever heard more than bequeathed single lines of Long-Hua poetry or folklore. Kyrokh’s greatest nightmare was that he had a terrible accent.

“Your prowess is not what has me concerned, qara.”

There it was again. “Qara.” But Kyrokh was not a woman — had not lived as one, not since childhood. And Khan Hroz had moved forward, just slightly, subtly crowding Kyrov and he was absolutely not comfortable.

There was no one to turn to, however. The only others in camp were retainers and guards and they were loyal, they would not step in because the prince of their land was bullying some lowly translator.

“I am concerned,” the Khan continued as the blood started to rush into Kyrokh’s ears, “about you”.

“Me?”

“Don’t be disingenuous,” the Khan snapped. “It’s not clever or becoming. Your presentation is a farce at best. I can turn a blind eye to your Archives in Nazva humoring your proclivities, but it is time now for professionalism.

Kyrokh’s skin felt cold and numb. He had gotten very good at being seen as a man even at first glance — had grown his hair and shaved the side into the traditional clan braid. He took daily poisons to shrivel his monthlies and boost his testes. He was not tall, but was broad and thick and had hoped, darkly and secretly, that his transformation was complete. Khan Hroz’s leering glances dashed that hope completely.

“I am nothing but professional,” Kyrokh muttered, trying to appear demure. He was not ashamed of being “caught”, but there was a wicked sort of cast to the Khan’s gaze, and a warning bubbled in Kyrokh’s chest.

“Hardly,” the Khan persisted. His guards had flanked Kyrokh now and his muscles tensed. There was no way to fight his way out of whatever the Khan had planned — even if he could take the huge Golums advancing on him, it was certainly a crime to resist the Khan. “I cannot have a woman mocking our very culture by parading about in men’s clothing. It’s an abomination and would make us a joke to those who we want to impress.”

Kyrokh bristled. “I am no woman. I am — “

It happened very fast — the first guard grabbed Kyrokh’s right wrist, then his left, holding them easily behind his back. The second guard, with quick and practiced strokes, pulled a belt knife and sliced through Kyrokh’s shirt and chest bindings, nicking skin as he went.

And there Kyrokh hung, suspended in a single moment — bent over with his hands levered behind him, the scarred mess of his bruised chest slipping into view in the silent firelight. For all of their ugliness, women’s breasts were clearly visible.

“Need I examine lower?” Khan Hroz asked pointedly.

Bare and grossly exposed, Kyrokh bowed his head.

He was shoved to his knees, and the Khan and his retinue took their slow leave.

“Ask a serving girl to lend you her clothes,” the Khan threw delicately over his shoulder, “if you were so remiss as to forget your own.”

He was gone from sight soon enough but Kyrokh stayed on the ground for a long time. The confrontation was loud enough and the camp cramped enough that many others must have heard, but no one approached Kyrokh for either comfort or condemnation.

He should sleep, he thought, blood dripping sluggishly from his chest to the soil beneath. His body stung, though, with real wounds and echoing shame. It would not settle, and Kyrokh wanted nothing more than to run.

He could run fastest astride his horse. Buca had been hobbled and pastured for the night, but it took only a moment to whistle her close to camp. The huge, powerful roan came happily to her master’s side. He might not be terribly good at riding bareback, but Kyrokh did not wish to return to camp — not even to grab his tack. Or another shirt. There was no thought of all that, just the natural upswing onto Buca’s back and the quick trot out onto the steppe.

As always, as soon as Kyrokh was alone under the vast bowl of the sky, he could breathe.

Buca cantered along, pleased to stretch her legs, her flanks warm under Kyrokh’s thighs. He had his fingers tangled in her tough mane and, as she slowed her wild, joyous run, Kyrokh let his head fall back, staring blearily at the dark dome above him.

The stars were a spill of milk, tonight; they were thick and bright like a woman’s hair. Heaven was the darkest, bloody blue.

It may have occurred to Kyrokh to be wary, in this foreign land, but it seemed so similar to his own home on a steppe like this, before he moved to the city of Nazva. He remembered spending long nights lying prostrate under the same arched sky in his youth, watching the stars spin and thinking of not much at all.

The Long shared this sky as well, though Kyrokh had still not met them. Even now, presumably so close to their capitol, to their king, they had only spoken via messenger bird, flown from so far across the horizon that it disappeared with the gentle curve of the earth.

Not many living had laid eyes on the Long; perhaps only the Nazva raiders who had first crossed the Kush mountains and stumbled so fatefully across a race long thought to be extinct. They brought back only half-remembered rumors of their encounter, stumbling into Nazva panicked and unsure themselves of what they had seen. They knew only this: they had met the Long, and the Long wished to meet their leaders. The traders had a rough vellum sheet with strange runes upon it echoing that invitation — Kyrokh and his teacher Aliman had been called to court for the exact purpose of reading it.

The Great Khan had sent his eldest son as an emissary to answer the request, as well as a full retinue, and the best translator the city could provide. No one knew what to expect, not even Kyrokh, who had studied this race all his life. All he knew were myths and legends, regaled untruthfully in unsteady and ages-old story, and he did not know what parts to believe — the scaled patches of skin, the filed teeth?

For all their oddity, surely the Long were no more fantastic than any other people that came through Nazva. Kyrokh knew that no human could shine like a jewel or fly unaided, the way the stories professed.

It was perhaps this certainty, the comforting hope that, despite race and culture, humanity would unite them all, that allowed Kyrokh to let down his guard in the face of the deserted and starkly beautiful steppe.

The wind howled in joyful freedom through the long, dry grass, and Kyrokh tucked his torn shirt about his chest. Even such beauty could be tempered by the desert cold. Despite the glow of shame still about him, the ride had made him feel just a bit calmer.

Wheeling Buca, Kyrokh turned them back toward the damp glow of the Khan’s camp, just out of sight.

The wind was following them, the rustle of the grass keeping pace with them as they rode. Kyrokh started to feel as if it were a living being, blowing deep grooves in the stalks, flanking him and his horse.

Then, one of the shadowed grooves veered sharply right, cutting Buca off mid-stride. In the dark, Kyrokh could only make out the glint of reflected moon on an eye, impossibly large, and a body, impossibly long, before gentle Buca reared with a squeal and did something she hadn’t done even once since Kyrokh purchased her for this journey — she bucked him, and he fell hard to the ground.