The wind howls across the steppe, whipping the frayed edges of the chieftain's yurt into a frenzy. Naci crouches behind a stack of weathered saddlebags, her breath shallow, her fingers digging into the sun-baked leather.
A goat rams its horns into the saddlebags, nearly toppling them. Naci swats at the beast, hissing, "Khuukhai! Shoo!" The goat bleats indignantly, drawing the attention of two passing clansmen hauling a slaughtered sheep. She freezes, her burgundy tunic blending with the dyed wool sacks, until their laughter fades. When she dares to peek through the yurt's parted flaps, she sees him—the Alinkar heir, Horohan. Slender as a sapling, face smooth as river stones, eyes downcast in demure obedience. But when he reaches for a cup, the firelight catches the curve of a wrist too delicate.
Naci whirls to find her mother, Gani, arms folded beneath a cascade of silver bracelets. The older woman's weathered face is a mask of exasperation, but her eyes glint with pride. Behind her, the camp churns with pre-wedding chaos: children chase a runaway lamb, elders hunch over a dice game fueled by fermented mare's milk, and a trio of aunties bicker over the proper way to roast a wolf's heart for the feast.
"Mother, did you see—" Naci begins, bouncing on her heels.
"I saw you skulking like a fox in a henhouse," Gani interrupts, snatching her daughter's earlobe between calloused fingers. "Come. Before your father smells your mischief."
She drags Naci past a gaggle of giggling girls stringing dried juniper berries for the bridal canopy. The air reeks of seared mutton.
"But Mother," Naci persists, shaking free, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "The groom—Horohan—she's a woman! I saw it! The Alinkar are playing us for fools!"
Gani halts so abruptly her braided hair whips her cheeks. For a heartbeat, Naci thinks she's won—then her mother's hand cracks across her face. The slap echoes like a whip, silencing nearby herders mending a bridle.
"You will never," Gani growls, low and venomous, "speak those words again." She yanks Naci into the shadow of a towering prayer pole hung with wolf skulls. The carvings snarl down at them. "That 'fool' is the key to peace. You think the Moukopl care if we starve? If our children are sold as slaves? The Alinkar have herds enough to feed ten clans. Their warriors could turn the steppes red with our blood. This?" She jabs a finger toward the chieftain's yurt. "This is mercy. Wrapped in silk, yes, but mercy all the same."
They turn to see Horohan himself—herself—emerging from the yurt, flanked by her two comrades. A child darts forward to offer a handful of wildflowers; Horohan accepts them with a smile that doesn't reach those hollow eyes.
"Look at her," Naci murmurs. "She's a ghost in her own skin."
Gani's grip softens. "We're all ghosts here, girl. The trick is to haunt the right places." She plucks a stray feather from Naci's hair, her voice gentling. "Your father once rode three days through a sandstorm to bring me a bolt of silk. 'For your wedding,' he said. I burned it that night."
Naci blinks. "Why?"
"Because my mother said it made me look like a merchant's concubine." Gani's smile is all teeth. "The next morning, I wore his armor to breakfast." She adjusts Naci's veil with sudden tenderness. "Pick your battles, little storm. And when you strike…" She nods toward the feasting area, where a red-faced uncle trips over a goat and faceplants into a platter of sheep's brains. The clan roars with laughter. "…make sure they're laughing with you."
A horn blares—the signal for the bride. As Naci turns to go, Gani catches her wrist.
"Oh, and Naci?" Her mother's nails bite flesh. "If you shame us tonight, I'll marry you off to old Rurul. He still drools over your baby braids."
The threat hangs between them, absurd and deadly serious.
Naci grins. "Rurul's so blind he'd think I was a prize mare."
"Don't tempt me." Gani shoves her toward the bridal yurt, where smoke curls from a vent like a sly wink.
As Naci slips inside, the last thing she hears is her mother muttering to the wind, "Stubborn as a donkey, that one. Let's pray the Alinkar like donkeys."
...
The coach rolls across the steppe like a gilded scarab, its lacquered wood gleaming under the merciless sun. Six Alinkar warriors flank it on horseback. Atop each rider's shoulder perches an eagle, hooded and still as stone, save for the occasional twitch of talons sharp enough to flay a man to the bone. Inside, Naci sits swaddled in silk the color of bruised twilight, the veil over her face suffocating as a shroud.
"Stop picking at the stitching," Gani snaps, swatting her daughter's hand away from the hem of her gown. "You'll unravel a year's worth of labor before we even reach our destination."
Naci glares through the veil's gauzy filter. Beyond the coach's latticed window, the world bleeds into a watercolor of gold and green—endless grasslands rippling like the pelt of some great, restless beast. A herd of wild horses thunders past, manes aflame in the sunlight, and for a heartbeat, she imagines wrenching open the door, seizing the nearest mount, and vanishing into that untamed horizon.
Gani, sharp as a falcon's beak, reads her silence. She unscrews a jade flask of fermented milk and takes a swig. "The last bride who fled her wedding procession? They say her ghost still wanders the Black Hills. Naked. Missing three toes. Frostbite, probably."
"Comforting," Naci mutters.
"Truth isn't meant to comfort." Her mother leans back, bracelets clinking as she gestures to the landscape. "See those burial mounds? Your great-grandmother's there. Stabbed her groom mid-vows when she learned he'd poisoned her favorite stallion. Romantic, in its way."
Naci bites back a retort as the coach lurches over a rut. Outside, a shepherd boy leaps onto the roof of a passing hay cart, moons his bare backside at the Alinkar guards, and is promptly yanked down by his furious mother. The eagles ruffle their feathers in disdain.
"Why the birds?" Naci nods at the nearest rider. "To peck out my eyes if I misbehave?"
Gani snorts. "Haven't you learned anything? Their clan's been training them since forever. There is a legend, that many generations ago, when a wise Khan's second son schemed to usurp the throne, the Khan's eagle tore out the imposter's throat before he could draw his knife." She pauses, eyeing the nearest eagle's curved beak. "They're also great at hunting game."
A shrill cry pierces the air—one of the eagles takes flight, spiraling upward until it's a speck against the sun. For a breathless moment, Naci imagines enemy scouts crouched in the rocks, blades glinting. But the eagle swoops down, a fat marmot clutched in its talons, and the warriors cheer.
"See?" Gani says.
The coach plunges into a narrow pass, shadows swallowing the light. The air grows thick with the mineral stink of hot springs bubbling up through cracked earth. The Alinkar riders tighten formation.
As the pass widens, the land unfurls into a valley of such violent beauty it steals Naci's breath. Rivers braid through meadows of sapphire poppies, their petals trembling in the wind. Nomadic herders tend flocks of spiral-horned sheep, their children chasing lambs with whistles made from bones. An old woman sits cross-legged beside a smoking dung fire.
As dusk bleeds across the sky, the coach climbs a ridge, and there it rises—the Alinkar stronghold. A constellation of yurts sprawls across the steppe, their felt walls dyed indigo and crimson, their smoke holes crowned with iron spikes to ward off evil spirits. At the center looms the chieftain's dwelling.
Naci steps from the coach, her boots sinking into carpets of crushed lapis lazuli—crushed gemstones, she notes with a twinge of disdain, for a path. The Jabliu would have fed their children with the coin wasted here.
A trio of barefoot children dart past, their laughter sharp as jaybirds, chasing a goat adorned with a stolen silk scarf. One pauses to gawk at Naci, his face smeared with honey and dirt, before his mother snatches him by the collar and drags him into a yurt.
"Daughter of Jabliu."
The voice is warm, edged with the melodic lilt of the Alinkar highlands. Naci turns to find two women approaching—one tall and willow-slender, her silver-streaked hair coiled beneath a headdress of jade and wolf teeth; the other barely out of girlhood, cheeks round as dumplings, balancing a tray of steaming teacups with precarious grace.
"I am Ailana," the elder says, pressing her palms together. "And this is Sarnai, who has spilled more milk than she's poured, but her heart is pure."
Sarnai flushes, nearly upending the tray. "Auntie!"
"Truth stings, little cloud." Ailana's eyes crinkle as she appraises Naci. "Come. The ceremony's tide waits for no one, not even a bride."
They lead her through a maze of yurts, past artisans hammering silver into torques and armorers quenching blades in barrels of blackened ice. The air reeks of saffron and sheep fat, of ambition and sweat. At the market's heart, a toothless crone sells live scorpions pickled in wine, crooning, "For vigor! For vengeance!" to a cluster of snickering warriors.
"Ignore her," Ailana murmurs. "Last week, she sold a two-headed rat as a love charm. The divorce petitions are still piled to the sky."
Sarnai giggles, then claps a hand over her mouth.
The bridal yurt looms ahead, its entrance flanked by totems carved with bears and women holding their own severed heads. Inside, the walls shimmer with tapestries depicting battles and the floor is heaped with cushions of embroidered silk, and a copper bath steams beside a brazier of smoldering juniper.
"Sit," Ailana commands, nudging Naci toward a stool draped in lynx fur. "Sarnai, the comb."
The girl rummages through a chest, producing a comb of ivory inlaid with turquoise. As she begins untangling Naci's wind-knotted hair, Ailana unfolds the bridal gown—a cascade of indigo velvet stitched with constellations in silver thread.
"Your mother sent these." She holds up Naci's embroideries, the uneven stitches glaring under the lantern light.
Naci stiffens. "They're… flawed."
"Flaws are what the light catches first." Ailana runs a calloused thumb over a lopsided motif. "Yours are dignified."
Sarnai snorts, then feigns a coughing fit.
As Ailana stitches the embroideries onto the gown's sleeves, she begins to hum—a low, resonant tune that curls like smoke. Naci recognizes it as a mourning song.
"You knew Horohan as a child?" she ventures, watching Ailana's reflection in a polished bronze mirror.
The needle stills. "I knew the babe they swaddled in wolf pelts. The child who played with wooden swords and wept when the goats ate his flower crowns." Ailana's voice softens. "The stars are cruel jesters, girl. They gave our chief a daughter when he bayed for a son. So he reshaped the sky."
Sarnai leans in, her whisper conspiratorial. "Once, when we were little, Horohan climbed the Sentinel Pine to rescue a fledgling eagle. The clan swore for weeks it was a sign from the gods—until we found Horohan's trousers snagged on a branch, riddled with holes!"
Ailana swats at her. "Hush. That tale stays buried. Naci, when you speak to the groom, remember to consider him as a man. Always."
Naci's fingers brush the dagger at her hip, hidden beneath layers of silk. "And the chief's wives? Do they… accept this?"
Ailana says flatly. "First Wife put an end to her life long before that happened. Second Wife?" She smirks. "She tried to strangle the chief with his own beard when he announced the ruse. Now they play xiangqi every solstice. Love is a peculiar rot."
A sudden commotion erupts outside—shouts, the clang of steel. Sarnai peeks through the door flap. "Oh! The blacksmith's son tried to ride a bridal yak. It's trampling the dumpling cart."
"Idiots," Ailana mutters, threading another stitch. "That yak's worth ten bridegrooms."
When the gown is finally fitted, Naci stands before the mirror, a stranger draped in starlight and shadow. Ailana fastens a collar of twisted silver around her throat, its weight familiar as a blade.
"Remember," she says, catching Naci's gaze in the bronze, "the finest masks are those we carve ourselves."
Sarnai offers a vial of crushed rose petals. "For your wrists."
Laughter bubbles in Naci's chest, bright and unexpected. Outside, a drum begins to pulse—a deep, hungry rhythm that shakes the earth.
Ailana presses a hand to Naci's back, steering her toward the noise. "Time to dance, child. And pray your steps are fiercer than your stitches."
As they emerge, a flock of cranes arrows overhead, their cries slicing through the din. The Alinkar chieftain ascends the dais, his shadow stretching like a war banner across the sea of faces. His cloak, stitched from the pelts of snow leopards slain by his grandfather, ripples as he raises a staff topped with the skull of a stag. The crowd stills—herders, warriors, toothless elders sucking on marrowbones—all eyes locked on the man who holds the tribe's balance in his fist. Behind him, the sacred totems loom: wooden gods with eyes of obsidian, their mouths gaping in silent howls. Lanterns strung between poles sway like drunken fireflies, casting wavering light over the bloodstained stones where countless alliances have been sealed and shattered.
"Today," his voice booms, "the wind changes course."
A murmur sweeps the crowd. Somewhere, a baby wails, swiftly muffled by its mother's breast. Naci stands at the edge of the dais, her gown heavy with silver constellations, her pulse a wild drumbeat in her ears. Horohan waits beside her, a shadow in a groom's embroidered tunic, face veiled in accordance with custom. The scent of burnt juniper and roasted lamb hangs thick, but beneath it, Naci smells the iron tang of fear.
"Let the Jabliu bitch choke on her vows!" someone hisses in the throng. The chieftain's gaze narrows, and the offender is dragged away by guards, his boots carving furrows in the dirt.
Gani, seated among the Jabliu elders, catches Naci's eye and mimes sipping from a cup. Stay sharp.
The chieftain's staff strikes the earth. "We bleed as one!"
A roar rises as warriors slam fists against breastplates. A troupe of musicians erupts into discordant frenzy—horsehair fiddles wail, drums throb like a racing heart, and a bone flute trills a melody older than the mountains. Naci's breath hitches as Horohan's hand brushes hers, cold and deliberate.
"Names," the chieftain commands.
Naci's tongue feels swollen. "I am Naci of the Jabliu," she recites, "daughter of Chieftain Tseren and Gani."
Horohan's veil shifts as they speak, voice low and honeyed. "I am Horohan of the Alinkar, son of Chieftain Urumol and Lizem."
A crone emerges, her spine bent like a bowstring, bearing a cup carved from the skull of a two-headed eagle. The liquid inside swirls murky and gold—fermented mare's milk laced with powdered amber, the drink of pact-makers. She croaks a blessing, spits into the dirt, and thrusts the cup at Naci.
"From the womb of the earth," Naci murmurs, her lips grazing the rim. The milk burns, bitter as betrayal.
Horohan's veil lifts just enough to reveal a sliver of jawline, smooth and unmarred. Their lips touch the same spot on the cup. "To the shadows we cast."
The crowd erupts. A cascade of dried flowers rains down, catching in Naci's hair like shards of sunlight. Drunken warriors begin a stomping dance, their boots kicking up dust that blurs the lines between clans. A trio of Alinkar children, emboldened by the chaos, dart forward to poke Naci's gown with a stick until their mother snatches them away, hissing apologies.
"Ignore them," Horohan murmurs, voice taut. "They think you're a ghost."
A flicker of something—amusement?—flashes in his eyes before the veil falls back.
Across the field, Liara stamps her hoof, her moon-pale coat glinting. The horse's tether strains against a post as she tosses her head, nostrils flaring at the stench of smoke and strangers. Naci's chest aches. Run with me, she wills silently. Run and never look back.
But then the chieftain is upon them, clasping their joined hands with a grip that crushes bone. "The cup does not lie," he intones, though his eyes dart to Horohan's throat. "What is woven tonight cannot be unwoven."
A cheer rises, but it's cut short by a sudden commotion—a spotted goat, drunk on spilled milk, careens through the crowd, butting a tray of honeyed figs into a chieftain's wife. The woman shrieks, swatting the goat with a slipper as it leaps onto the dais and snatches Horohan's veil in its teeth.
The groom staggers, grasping at fabric, but the goat prances away, veil flapping like a victory banner. Then, a cackle. Old Rurul, the Jabliu's half-blind elder, squints and hollers, "Handsome lad! Looks just like his mother!"
Laughter erupts while the goat is chased into the night. Gani sidles up to Naci, reeking of fermented milk. "Well," she mutters, "at least the beast has taste."
The feast drags on. Naci counts the stars. But when Horohan offers an arm to lead her to their yurt, she takes it, her fingers brushing the pulse beneath their sleeve. Alive. Trapped. Same as me.
The totems watch, silent and eternal, as the bride and groom disappear into the dark.
...
The night air bites like a starved jackal, sharp and unrelenting, as Horohan leads Naci through the labyrinth of yurts. Above them, the Milky Way spills across the sky, a river of ice and fire, indifferent to the fragile dramas below. The raucous laughter of the feast fades, replaced by the hollow whistle of wind through bone chimes hung from empty saddles. They pass a pen where a disgruntled yak chews on a discarded bridal sash, its eyes glinting with contempt.
Horohan stops before a yurt no grander than a shepherd's hut, its felt walls patched with hide and stitched with fraying sinew. A single lantern gutters above the entrance, its light staining the ground the color of old blood. Naci stares at it, her jaw tightening.
"You'll sleep here," Horohan says, voice frayed at the edges. He gestures to the yurt, then to the horizon where the Jabliu's fires glow like distant embers. "Or ride home at dawn. The choice is yours."
A choice. The word hangs between them, brittle as dried bone. "Is this a test? Or a joke?"
Horohan's voice trembles. "Neither."
"Then what?" She steps closer, close enough to smell the bitter myrrh on their clothes, to see the pulse fluttering at his throat. "You pluck me from my clan, drape me in your lies, and now—what? You discard me?"
"You think I asked for this?" The words crack like thin ice.
Horohan turns to go, but Naci grabs his wrist. "Wait." Her fingers dig into the cold metal of their bracelets. "If you didn't want this, why—?"
"Why play the groom?" Horohan's laugh sharpens. "Why breathe? Why bleed?" He pulls free, the bracelets chiming a dirge. "Ask the stars."
A sudden clatter—the yak has escaped its pen, trotting toward them with the bridal sash still dangling from its jaws. It pauses, belches loudly, and deposits the sodden fabric at Naci's feet.
"Even the beasts pity you," Horohan mutters.
"Pity?" Naci kicks the sash aside. "You think I want pity?"
"I think," Horohan says softly, "you're a pup who's been handed a collar and told it's a crown." His gaze flicks to the distant feast, where shadows dance around the fire. "Go home, Naci. Ride your snow-white mare into the dawn and never look back. This cage isn't yours to die in."
The words land like a blow. She imagines Liara's warm flank beneath her, the sting of wind in her eyes, the sweet rot of freedom. But then she sees her mother's face—Pick your battles, little storm.
"And you?" she challenges. "Will you keep playing your father's puppet?"
He turns, his silhouette dissolving into shadow. "Sleep well, Wolf Daughter. The dawn is… kinder than dusk."
The yurt swallows Naci whole. Inside, the air tastes of mold and old smoke. A moth batters itself against the lone lantern, wings leaving ghostly smears on the walls. She tears off her headdress, the silver bells clattering like broken promises. The dagger slips free, its edge catching the light—For cutting meat. Or throats.
"Coward," she snarls, hurling it at a post.
Hugging her knees, she allows herself to grieve for the expectations shattered. But deep inside, a resilient spark, that intrinsic part of Naci that makes her who she is, begins to smolder.
She will not let this night define her. She will rise, as she always has. The dawn will bring clarity, and she will find herself again amidst the winds of Tepr.