Pale gray-blue eyes lowered softly.

  Beneath her fur hat, two rough braids fell forward. The girl riding at the head of the caravan sat astride her beloved horse, the animal burdened on both sides with bundles. A bulging sack—filled with winter supplies bought at the seasonal market—swayed heavily against her back.

  The grassland had begun to fade into the dull colors of late autumn. A cold wind carried the scent that preceded powder-snow. The sky arched high and clear, thin clouds stretching into streaks of white.

  Behind the girl followed a short line of about twenty people: a middle-aged man with distinctly southern European features wearing Mongol clothes, a sharp-faced captain clad in black lamellar armor, and a dozen armed guards. In the center rumbled four wagons loaded with supplies needed to survive the deep winter.

  The carts were stacked high—bundles of thick wool cloth and felt, herbs bartered for dried meat and hard cheese, bottles of oil and spices, blocks of salt, coils of wire, carving tools—all tied down tightly with coarse rope.

  Preparing for winter was as serious as preparing for war. The wagons were hauled by sturdy oxen and small long-haired steppe horses. The rhythm of hooves and creaking wheels beat comfortably through the open plain.

  They were only twenty or so in number, yet in the vast landscape they carried an odd sense of weight.

  They had camped three times on the way out, and three times on the way back. This was the seventh morning. Soon, smoke from the orda should begin to blur the horizon.

  The girl, dark horse beneath her, rode with her head bowed. Her expression looked as though she were remembering something she would rather not.

  —I didn’t forget anything… did I?

  She went over the list in her mind for the hundredth time.

  This was her first time leading the trading caravan alone. Choosing the goods, calculating quantities, reading the market, negotiating—until now she had always been an apprentice, stretching her neck from behind the broad back of the old caravan captain, studying every open-and-close of his mouth, every pause, every silent calculation.

  …But that back was something she could not bear to recall yet.

  The memory was too sharp—his face, his voice, the way he spoke. Thinking of him made something tighten painfully in her chest.

  She forced her attention back to the list.

  The Winter Market—a massive seasonal bazaar that appeared and disappeared across the Jochid grassland. Kipchak tribesmen, Rus merchants, and even Genoese traders from the Black Sea mingled freely in this wandering free port of the steppe. It was overseen by the tarkan, the governor of the temporary outpost set up under the name of the House of Jochi.

  When she went to greet the tarkan, he had welcomed her politely—while peering behind her, waiting for the usual caravan captain.

  The girl had pressed her lips tightly together. She refused to say, “I’m the leader this time.” If she said it aloud, it would feel like she was making excuses. She would rather die.

  When no captain appeared, the tarkan’s face shifted—surprise, then concern.

  But he was wise enough not to ask, “Are you alone?”

  If he had said such a humiliating thing, she already had a line prepared to cut him down with cold precision. She had practiced it on the road.

  But he never said it. The anticlimax made her bite her lip. Realizing he had somehow displeased her, the tarkan panicked and shouted for attendants.

  “Tea! No—chairs first! Quickly!”

  He knew exactly who she was. She was not someone one handled carelessly.

  The memory of his flustered fumbling made her mouth relax slightly.

  She finished walking through the list in her head. No mistakes.

  At the bottom of the list was the thing she had bought for herself. The Genoese trader had opened a piece of velvet with deliberate drama. The moment she saw it, she understood what it was—no translation needed, no haggling required.

  It now rested against her chest, warm inside her coat.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Smoke ahead!”

  One of the guards called out. The girl lifted her gaze.

  The smoke from the orda was now clear—thousands of tents spreading smoke thick enough to gray the sky. Tens of thousands of people and animals lived here: the palace of Batu Khan.

  White and brown tents stretched to the horizon. Horses, sheep, cattle, and camels made the grasslands ripple like waves.

  Batu’s great royal ger had traveled with him to Karakorum, leaving only an empty ring of trampled earth where it once stood. In its place, or rather beside that bare circle, stood the second-largest tent in the entire orda: the ger of Borokchin, first wife of Batu Khan, who oversaw the court in his absence.

  As the caravan arrived, attendants hurried out from around it.

  The girl dismounted lightly, handed her reins to the captain, and slipped through the entrance.

  Inside, directly opposite the doorway, stood the seat of Borokchin—Batu’s first wife. This ger served as her audience chamber, office, and private space all at once.

  Borokchin emerged from the women’s quarters, attendants at her back.

  “Zaya, my darling girl. Welcome home. How was your journey? Come, sit. Are you hungry? I’ve got fried bread—still warm.”

  Her voice, soft and warm, wrapped around Zaya like fur.

  Zaya had no memory of the woman who gave birth to her. Her mother had died in childbirth. For a short time Zaya was raised in her mother’s tent by a wet nurse, but soon her father—Jochi—entrusted the motherless infant to his young son Batu and his wife Borokchin, who still had no children of their own.

  It was not only pity. It was politics—the blood and inheritance of Jochi’s deceased concubine strengthening Batu’s standing as heir to the western lands.

  Zaya owed her life in the orda to that mixture of affection and calculation.

  A maid took the sack from Zaya’s back. Though it was an awkward time between meals, the table was already filled with steaming dishes. The familiar smell stung her eyes.

  “I’m not hungry,” Zaya snapped, sitting down despite herself.

  Borokchin ignored the tone completely. She loaded fried bread with butter, piled dish after dish onto a wooden plate, and pushed it toward her.

  “Eat first. We’ll talk after.”

  Zaya tried to pretend the smell meant nothing. She thrust a velvet-wrapped bundle into Borokchin’s hands.

  “A souvenir. I just… saw it. It’s nothing. Since it was my first trip alone. Just take it.”

  “Oh? What could it be?”

  Borokchin unwrapped the velvet. Inside lay a shard of blood-red coral, ten centimeters long.

  “You could make beads… or use it for a belt ornament—”

  Before she could finish, Zaya froze. Borokchin had quietly taken her hand.

  Normally, Zaya would pull away. Today, she could not.

  “Thank you, Zaya.”

  Borokchin’s genuine delight struck something deep within her. Zaya yanked her hand back, grabbed a fried bread, and bit into it. Once the taste hit her tongue, she couldn’t stop. Nothing she ate on the road compared to this.

  Seeing her eat, Borokchin signaled the maid with her eyes.

  “Zaya, welcome back.”

  A voice behind her. She coughed, choking, and twisted around.

  The man she had tried not to think about for the entire trip stood there—tall, bright-smiled, effortlessly confident.

  Zaya’s heartbeat thudded painfully. She turned her face away, pretending to study the fine decorations along the walls.

  “Taghlai worried about you every day,” Borokchin teased. “He let you lead the caravan, but he kept wondering if a message would come saying something happened—every single day.”

  “I’m not a child anymore,” Zaya retorted, sounding exactly like one.

  The next moment, her feet left the ground.

  “Zaya, you’re still light as a twig!”

  She had been so focused on Taghlai she failed to notice the giant behind him. The smell of mutton fat and his breath made her gag.

  “Dogan, put me down!”

  “Hah! You need more meat on your bones! You’re like a stick!”

  He spun her around. Children might have laughed—but Zaya was no longer a child.

  “Dogan. Enough.”

  Taghlai’s sharp command stopped him. In that instant Zaya jabbed Dogan’s throat with the bone still in her hand. He choked violently. Zaya leapt back, ready to strike again, but Taghlai seized her wrist.

  Dogan rasped, “What’s wrong with you? You should try to look more like my type. If you don’t—”

  “If I don’t what?” Zaya hissed.

  “Enough. Zaya, you are a princess of this orda. Try to act like one.”

  Borokchin’s reprimand forced Zaya to swallow her fury.

  Taghlai plucked a steaming buuz from a platter, popped one into his mouth, and pressed another against Zaya’s tightly closed lips.

  “Hey—!”

  She opened her mouth to protest and the hot dumpling went straight in.

  Borokchin chuckled kindly.

  “At this rate, the only men who’ll want to marry you are Dogan and Taghlai.”

  Dogan was the youngest son of an old general’s family—in a society where the youngest inherited everything. Crude, yes, but secure.

  Taghlai was the third son of a noble line that had followed Chinggis Khan himself. Brilliant, capable, Batu’s chosen favorite. Both had known Zaya since she was small.

  Marriage. Again the same topic. She understood the pressure. And the meaning: Choose one of them.

  Taghlai.

  Just saying his name in her mind made her ears warm.

  She swallowed the dumpling and jabbed a thumb toward the sacks she had brought.

  “These are gifts. For everyone.”

  Then she strode out of the tent.

  Zaya stepped outside. A guard waited at the entrance.

  “Ehau, we’re leaving. You divided the goods already?”

  “This half’s ours,” he said, nodding toward the remaining wagon.

  Zaya mounted her mare and clicked her tongue.

  “Zaya.”

  Taghlai’s voice behind her. A warm bundle flew through the air; she caught it instinctively.

  “Have it later. Mistress Borokchin made it herself.”

  Zaya opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came. She turned her horse forward.

  Why am I like this? Every kindness irritated her. Every word rubbed her raw. She knew it—and yet couldn’t stop it.

  Marriage. The real problem was obvious. She wasn’t avoiding the thought. If anything, she thought about it too much.

  Whenever she imagined her future, the one standing beside her was always Taghlai.

  The warm bundle suddenly vanished.

  “Mmm. Good.”

  Ehau was chewing the dumpling.

  “Hey! What do you think you’re doing!?”

  “It’ll get cold.”

  “Ehau!”

  Laughing, he urged his horse ahead.

  Zaya followed, half exasperated.

  Ahead lay another cluster of tents—the home of her birth mother’s tribe. Her true people. Those who shared her eyes, her skin, her blood.