The drying went up on the north side of the fold, under a lip of rock that took the weather off it all day.
As Temüjin was minding that, Bekter came and looked at it when it was hung, and said it was right. It was right. Nothing followed from that.
The fold was everything he had said it was, too, and Temüjin went through the checklist twice like a man checking a debt. Old grass past the knee: the horses went into it and did not come out for three days. Standing dead wood on the north side, dry. No river anywhere, and the wind came over the top of them instead of down the middle.
In the second week it snowed and the snow stayed, and Temülün went round with the small kettle packing it in, and nobody had to break ice for anything all winter.
***
He rehearsed the lines for four days and then talked to Bekter at the wood, because nobody looks twice at two boys cutting wood.
They worked a while first. Bekter took the standing stuff and left him the fallen, which was the easier job and he wasn't the one to complain.
"I want to ask you for something," Temüjin said.
"Ask."
"When you're the one who calls shots here," He put the axe down so his hands had nothing to do. "My mother keeps her own fire."
Bekter went on with the branch he was on until it came away. Then he straightened up.
"She keeps it now."
"I know."
"Then what are you asking me?"
There it was, the whole difficulty of sending his words across. Temüjin made himself go further out.
"Later. However long it is. Her fire stays hers, and it doesn't get put together with anybody's."
Bekter looked at him for what felt like a long time. He was not angry and he was not amused, and he was not working out what was underneath that statement, because he had no reason to think there was any other meaning.
"All right," he said.
"All right?"
"It stays hers." He picked up the next branch. "Why would I want it any other way? Two fires is two fires. My mother would sooner die than share one."
"Say it again."
Bekter stopped. He said it again, slowly, seemingly deciding that the other one is having a strange day and it costs nothing to be kind about it. And he did not ask why, which reminded him of Khasar, and hearing it out of the wrong mouth made it worse rather than better.
"Her fire stays hers. Nobody puts it together with anything."
"Thank you," Temüjin said.
And there was a pause then as he gathered strength to say and he had it all ready and he could not do it at all.
What he wanted was one sentence long. Let me be the one who says what this household does. He had turned it over four nights and every version of it came out either as a demand a younger boy cannot make of an older one, or as gibberish. There was no shape in the language for it. You could ask a man to leave your mother's fire alone. There was nothing to ask for the control of the household, because it was Bekter's rights. Because customs decided it be so.
Bekter was waiting.
"Was there something else?"
"No," Temüjin said.
"Right." He got the branch up on his shoulder. Then, half turned away: "If you think of anything about the horses before the cold comes properly, say. You see things I don't."
***
He carried the conversation around for two days and could not put it down, and the reason was that he had got exactly what he asked for.
The trouble was what he had got it verbally. In the other life a thing like that would have been put into writing and two names at the bottom of it, and the agreement would have gone on existing whether either man meant it or not.
Here there was between a boy and another boy and some cut wood.
He went through it properly, just like he did everything else. His mother could not be told, because telling her required the whole reason, and there was no word for it. He would have had to invent the word that would cut through age-old customs.
Sochigel could not be told for the same reason and a worse one. Khasar would hold anything he was handed without asking why, which made him the best brother on the steppe and no use at all as a witness. Belgütei would tell his own brother inside a day, cheerfully, meaning nothing by it.
An oath, then. There was an oath in this world that bound like blood—men swore themselves brothers who were not brothers, exchanged something, and were held to it by every person who knew they had done it. He had read about it once and it had struck him even then as an elegant piece of machinery.
It took him most of an afternoon to realize the two things wrong with the method. You choose an anda. Bekter was already his brother; there was nothing to swear that they were not already. And an oath holds a man who means to keep it, which Bekter did at this age of fourteen. It does not reach a man he will be, who changes his mind eight years from now for good reasons.
Which meant what Temüjin wanted was not a promise. What he wanted was somebody standing behind the promise.
***
There were eleven households wintering in the next fold, half a morning's ride, and their oldest man had been at it forty years.
Temüjin went over on a pretext about the grass and was given drink and food before he was asked his business, and he sat all of it out without hurry. The old man was small and pleased to have company and talked about his geldings. When it had gone on long enough, Temüjin asked him, as a thing that might happen in some hypothetical household, and got no further than half of it before the old man's face changed into polite bewilderment.
"Whose household?"
He could have gone on lying but he decided against it. "Ours."
"Has your brother done something?"
"No."
"Has he said something wrong?"
"No."
"Then there is nothing to say to him." The old man turned his bowl round in his hands. He was not being hard. He was genuinely trying to find the question in it. "You want me to go and speak to a boy who has done nothing."
"I want to know who would speak to him. If it were done."
"Speak to him about what? It's his rights."
Temüjin went silent with that.
"Suppose it were wrong," he said.
"Then it would be wrong," the old man agreed comfortably, "and he would have done it, and it would stay done."
He seemed to feel he had settled something, and refilled the bowl.
"Look. I've eleven households out there and I'm the oldest man in this fold, and my sons hear me because they are my sons. But If I got on a horse tomorrow and stood in front of your brother and told him what he might and might not do in his own mother's ger. He would still treat me as a guest as a good host should." He laughed. "But there would be nothing else, and then I would ride home."
Temüjin did not have anything to put after that.
"You are not mine, boy. Nobody's mine who hasn't come to me." He said it the way a man states the price of a sheep.
"Is he hard on you?"
"No."
"Does he feed you?"
"He hunts for all of us."
"Then you have got a good one, and you should sleep." The old man reached over and knocked him twice on the knee with two fingers, kindly. "Come back when something has happened."
***
He rode home into a wind that had turned north while he was inside, with his head churning and he got nothing.
The old man was not stupid; he had answered every question exactly and correctly, and he had told Temüjin the truth twice, and the truth was that Temüjin had ridden half a morning to find somebody who could tell his brother no, and there was nobody who could. It was not shut, or far away, or expensive. There was no such place, and no such man.
And that's the way it had been. Nobody past and present stops and questions it. It is the way his grandfathers had done it before and it will be the custom his grandsons will follow as well, and everything rolls the same way whether anybody pushes or not.
Both women in this camp were his father's widows. Bekter could take Temüjin's mother and Temüjin could Bekter's. The custom did not care which way it ran. Giving up his half of the right would cost him nothing at all, because he did not want Sochigel and never would.
Which meant he was not against the custom. He was against it happening to him.
He came up the last rise with the light going and stopped Khar for a moment to look over the two fires below him in the fold, two threads of smoke going up separately in the cold and bending north, and a boy he had a promise about both of them.
***
Terms
- anda — sworn brotherhood. Two men who are not kin swear themselves brothers, exchange a gift, and are held to it afterward by everyone. It is the only thing that binds like blood without being blood.
- whose man you are — the only shape of authority on the steppe. A man is heard by the households that have come to him, and by nobody else.
- winter neighbours — the households that share a good fold for the cold months.