#sengtaiyo

Context: Sorqaqtaiyo has died, and has returned to Sengden as a ghost. Sengden has been impersonating her for years, using the name ‘Sorqaqtaiyo’. Why is this a journey? Because this is when Sengden learns, finally, that Sorqaqtaiyo is alive: and everything changes from here. 

The woman before her, unrecognisable, is bone-thin with a shorn head and feverish eyes. ‘Kalur Nenyet?’

Sengden stares. 

‘Kalur Nenyet?’ 

The voice comes from her throat. It is old with familiarity where the broken nose and hollow cheekbones are not: a hint, a smell, a clue. She wants to shut her eyes to it but she cannot look away. , 

‘That’s a funny name to call yourself. Did you choose it, or were you given it?’

No.

‘The silent weaver? That’s not really your style, Sengden.’ 

The woman stands opposite her, watching her intently. Her eyes are dark and endless, and she does not blink. Her hands are insect-thin and the skin on her face mottled and burnt, but she holds herself in that casual, arrogant way she always had. Like she knows she is beautiful, and like she is waiting to be told. 

Sorqaqtaiyo.

Sengden thinks: no. She thinks: no. 

But it is her. Under the thinness and the burntness and the shavenness it is her. But where is her hair, her broadness, her warm strong arms? Her eyes - coal-hard and challenging - are the only part of her that is the same. 

‘I do sort of like it though - don’t worry about that. It’s sort of wistful. It’s a bit too similar to seyenjhakul, though. Did you always want to be me?’

Sengden feels that she is becoming nothing: all parts of her, one by one, are going still. It cannot be. It is not. 

‘Taiyo,’ she says. 

It is. 

The woman’s face breaks into a smile: genuine and bright. It is dazzling, and Sengden almost cannot breathe. 

‘But it’s also quite a pretentious name, Sengden. The silent weaver? Really?’

At last she finds her voice. 

‘It’s hardly as pretentious as Sorqaqtaiyo.’

‘I was young! And it was quite - quite foresighted of me, quite prescient. Thus it begins. And I begun it, didn’t I? It began with me.’ She laughs, delighted at some past history. ‘Besides, it’s not my name anymore. It’s yours.’

‘I didn’t choose it,’ Sengden says. The words come without her permission, automatic. She is waiting to feel something, anything: joy or despair. Instead she cannot stop staring.

The woman is studying her, head cocked. The gesture is aristocratic and carelessly wealthy, entirely at odds with her ragged clothes and bloodied temple. ‘But you did choose to take it from me. Nobody forced you. That’s a kind of choosing. Anyway, I’m back now. Alive again, impossible returned to the world again - and so on. So what happens now, Sengden? Do I get to be you, now? Sengden and Sorqaqtaiyo, swapped. Or will you give me my name back and do I get to be Sorqaqtaiyo again?’

She blinks. That question is too big to answer for any moment, and in this moment she can only still only stare like a fool or a lover. Instead Sengden crosses her arms. ‘They call me Nenyet now.’

The woman laughs. It is a laugh of disbelief. ‘Nenyet? Do they really? I won’t. I can’t imagine I’ll ever call you that.’

‘Then don’t call me anything. It’s my name.’

The woman smiles, a viper smile. ‘You’re being rather prickly, Sengden. I’d almost think  you’re not pleased to see me at all.’

It is such a Sorqaqtaiyo thing to say. Not aren’t you pleased to see me? or you can’t be pleased to see me but I’d almost think you’re not pleased to see me at all, an assertion, an antagonism, archly provocative and always completely and utterly correct. Everything she says is correct, if only because she is the one to say it. 

Sengden smiles. Her reflex to please - only her and only her - is almost forgotten, but not quite. It surprises her how quickly it comes back. This was all I ever wanted, she could say. All I ever wanted was to see you again. 

Instead she takes her knife out of her holster, and begins to turn it delicately between her fingers. ‘No. I’m not pleased to see you.’

The woman pauses. Something flickers across her face, and then she laughs, once. ‘Well, I won’t blame you for that. I imagine it was quite nice to have me dead for a while. Peaceful. Was it?’

Sengden stares.

That is not her. It is the first thing that is wrong, the first jolt in her stomach. It cannot be her. 

Because what would the old Sorqaqtaiyo have done? She would have been hurt by something like that, certainly; perhaps she would have thrown something, kicked something, raged and then gone silent whilst Sengden watched, amused, beginning to speculate in exquisite detail what exactly she must have said wrong. And what would the old Sengden have done, before the world went wrong? In the face of Sorqaqtaiyo’s violence she would have laughed, and kicked her shins; in the face of her silence she would have followed her around, talking endlessly and indelicately, until Sorqaqtaiyo rounded on her and finally, breathlessly, they sank to the floor.

But she never would have laughed. 

I will have to learn her again, Sengden thinks. It crashes over her, like waves of despair. Everything she has learnt: every list and every observation, secreted at the day’s end, every time she had watched her and watched her delighting in being watched. I will have to learn every inch of her once more and it will take me years.

Everything for nothing, she thinks, all over again. Everything all over again. 

Sengden looks at her knife. It is hers: both of hers, something she took from Sorqaqtaiyo’s dead body when she stripped her naked, but the most familiar thing she owns, more so than her own skin. 

‘This is yours,’ she says, and holds it out. 

The woman lifts an eyebrow, and lifts her hands pointedly. ‘That’s nice of you, Sengden, but you know I have better weapons now. Being dead.’ As she speaks a defiant flower of flame blossoms and dies in her open palm. ‘Keep it. If it’s served you well, I’m glad. Good steel is hard to get. When did you take it from me?’

‘After you died. I took a lot of things.’

Sorqaqtaiyo laughs. It is a proper laugh, surprised and proud. ‘Did you? Really? What else did you take?’

‘Almost everything.’

The woman’s smile turns sly. ‘Almost everything? Nenyet. Nenyet Kalur. Sengden. Did you bury me naked?’

Her eyes are challenging and her smile is hard. It had always been their game, this, the coldness and callousness of them both and the bored practicalities; because they weren’t like other people, they were different and better and higher than all of them, and the way they spoke in their nakedness and lazy firelight was in scorn and contempt of those people’s little lives. It had been a contest, mutual and daring, to see if anything they said would ever shock the other at all. Sengden has never known anyone quite so much like herself. 

Did you bury me naked? Sorqaqtaiyo had asked. She had. It was a wet clawed unmarked hole where she had rolled her corpse in, clammy and stiffening, and she had not scattered earth over it but pushed it in, kicking it in great wet clumps. She had been in a hurry. She sees the woman’s skin, greying and wet. For a moment she is someone else and the question horrifies her: the blasphemy and the ruining of the sacred, the forbiddenness of it. And then she is herself herself again, and she begins to laugh. 

‘Of course I did,’ she says. Relief breaks over her like a yolk, and she is giddy with it. 

‘Naked? All of me?’

‘Naked as the day you were born.’

‘How vile of you, Nenyet. How horrible. You even took my clothes?’ 

Sorqaqtaiyo’s smile is blinding; it burns through the starvation, the blood on her temple, the dirtied frozen cloak. Sengden had forgotten how beautiful she always was, how alive: it is not the same as memory but something more, as vivid and hurting as fire. She stands, unmanned.

‘Of course. I needed them.’

‘You needed them?’

Sengden folds her arms. ‘I needed them.’

Sorqaqtaiyo copies her, playing the petulant child. ‘You needed them. You needed them. Why? You needed them to be me? Did you need them to play dress up and be me?’

Sengden grins. She moves forward, surging, buoyed on a wave of staggering light. Taiyo. Taiyo. She cannot think for it and now, now she feels the happiness she was waiting for. Oh gods. How many years, how many mountains?

‘Sengden,’ the woman says quietly, and Sengden pauses. 

For a moment she hovers, hesitant. Sorqaqtaiyo - this new and dead Sorqaqtaiyo, flickering slightly with a silvered light - looks up at her under her eyelashes, dark and pooled and waiting. She lets herself be held as Sengden touches her with impossible fingers - her trembling skin, her throat, her temple.

‘Taiyo,’ Sengden says. Her hands are disbelieving, reverent. She strokes her arms, so thin and frail. ‘Taiyo - you -‘

‘What? Hmm?’ Her voice is teasing, lilting. Sengden does not understand how she had ever thought she was less than anything they all said she was. She is impossible, and alive. She is impossibly alive. 

‘Taiyo -‘

This is loosely interpreted because...there is no glass in this world...instead have some terrible gays being terrible and trying to enjoy a Cup of Wine

---

Will I see you tonight? Sengden had asked her in bed that morning, lazy and skin-warm. This is what Sorqaqtaiyo had done: turned her into the one who chased, the one who asked. She does not care that asking it makes her sound desperate. She is unmade with the smell of her. 

Maybe, Sorqaqtaiyo had said. She had shifted, and her hair - loose, scented - had tumbled over her broad shoulders. Her finger danced up Sengden’s bare chest, rising, teasing. Her hand hesitated, and a wicked smile had bloomed on her face. Or maybe not. 

And then she had pinched Sengden’s arm until she cried out.  

Their place is a waterfall over the steaming underground river, and they meet there often at the end of a long day. Often, but not always: Sengden is aimless and spends her days wandering the caverns and Sorqaqtaiyo’s days are filled with time, endlessly busy, spent mostly alone. Whatever it is that she does she will not tell Sengden. She will not even credit Sengden’s questions with an answer; instead she raises an eyebrow, distant and disappointed, and turns away. 

‘You’re asking me again,’ she says. It is distasteful, ill-pleased. Not please don’t ask, not a command, but only you’re asking me again: it is Sengden’s responsibility to understand how and why this is wrong. 

But Sengden has become someone who chases: and she will take anything that Sorqaqtaiyo will give her. And so on the promise of a maybe she runs up the steps two by two, giddy and alive, and traces her hand like a child along the water-slick cave wall. Sweat trickles down the back of her neck. 

Spray drifts towards her, and she feels its sticky warmth on her face. She rounds the corner and she is there: the passage opens out into a cavern, immense and impossibly large. The roar of the waterfall and rush of the boiling river is thunder-loud and deafening. It falls in sheets of white, hanging for a moment in the air and finally crashing down in rivulets of silver onto the slick rocks below. From there it races down into a cauldron of churning white and disappears, whisked away under the earth. 

There is nobody there.

Sengden laughs. It echoes through the cavern, inaudible over the rushing of the water, and she feels giddy and impossible and so very light. She is not hurt by that. She is not surprised. Even this is beloved to her, this promise-breaking, because it is so very arrogant: there are not many people in any place who dare to keep Sengden waiting.

She leaps forwards, and climbs on top of a slippery, blackened rock. From here she can feel the spray of the waterfall on her face and clothes. She opens her mouth, leaning forwards like a child, and catches the hissing spray on her open tongue. It is so hot it scalds her lips and burns her tongue. She licks her lips, numb and slick and burning. They taste of metal and the hot belly of the mountain. 

Down through the tunnels she goes, and her gait is almost skipping. It still feels reckless and giddy to chase her, knowing what she knows. Sorqaqtaiyo is smiling, probably, and cat-happy with warm wriggling power. She will be thinking of Sengden: she will be wondering where she is, if she has gone to the waterfall, if she has jumped at her word like a dog, how fast she is running, how angry she will be. 

Sengden is not angry at all. 

She walks slowly through the corridors, following the light at the end of them until she is passing folk that glance up at her, disdainful, as she passes. She is known here as Sorqaqtaiyo’s thing: her woman, her servant, hers. The possessiveness of that is warm and pleasingly acrid. These folk are star-readers, archers, rope-weavers: all of them are needed, and she is there because she is wanted. And still: she gets the best food, the softest bedding, and Sorqaqtaiyo sends someone every night to draw her a bath from the hot springs when others are cold and dirty. It is a power she has never felt. 

Sorqaqtaiyo is not in her sleeping place, and she is not in the training grounds, a cavern that is full with dirty sand they have dredged up from the downriver village. Sengden does not run. She walks, languid and tall and desired, feeling her hips, feeling her long legs, the space between her ribs. She can feel Sorqaqtaiyo’s invisible impatient eyes. 

Let her wait. For once she can be the one who waits. 

Outside the cavern of the mess hall she pauses. These caves are almost shaped like they are god-made for Sorqaqtaiyo’s little army, riddled with volcanic bubbles and expansive cavernous spaces for their little weapons and their little wheat. The mess hall is the most cavernous of all. It is a bloated bubble rising in oil-smooth rock that can seat four hundred or five and rises up into the dark, no matter how many lamps they light, to a ceiling far above anything they can see. She can hear the rise and fall of voices. She can smell spice and warmth. 

She steps inside. It is dark, and flickering with yellow light. No lamps are lit today, but the gleaming obsidian walls are still bathed in a sourceless orange warmth. What do lamps matter? Sorqaqtaiyo is nearly a god.

There are not many folk here this late for the evening meal; thirty or forty, cross-legged in circles on the rush-covered floor. There is a group of silk-stealers with their red-ribboned braids; there is a family with a hollow-cheeked son; there is an uneasy sitting of old wealthy folk, clothed uncomfortably in warm ragged wrappings just like the rest of them. They all stare at her as she walks in.

Their eyes turn to her. They are drawn to her. She picks her way through them, delicately, and they scramble out of the way and part for her. The clattering and the chatting falls into silence. With their mistrustful eyes on her, Sengden finally relaxes. Finally she smiles. 

She sees Sorqaqtaiyo almost instantly. The woman is sitting at the furthest end of the room, deep in conversation with a large robust woman with heavy swinging braids; with one hand she is gesturing, expansive, and with the other she is touching the woman’s arm in the casual, flirty way she uses with almost everyone. She is magnanimous, personal, outraged, and she is easy to find: in a room of grey and nervousness she is vibrant and bright, and her cloak is a gleaming bloodied red.

‘ - and you were waiting the whole time?’ Sorqaqtaiyo’s voice is scathing. ‘And nobody came? What was Uzangtordun expecting of you, exactly, that you -‘

She stops. Their gazes meet. 

‘After what he’d done to the others,’ the other woman says, dismissive, ‘it hardly came as a surprise. But we were still waiting for -‘

She breaks off. She, too, has seen her.

‘Ter,’ she mutters.

Sengden inclines her head.

Sorqaqtaiyo lifts her jutting jaw; their eyes are locked, a trail of fire across the room and the distance. Sengden feels something warm settle in her satisfied stomach.

The other woman looks uncertainly from one to the other. ‘Jha, should I -‘

Sorqaqtaiyo leans forwards, a smile budding on her broad face. Her black curls slither over her golden muscled shoulders to tumble over her chest.

‘Sengden.’ She spreads her arms. The glint in her eyes is a challenge already. ‘Where have you been? You missed dinner.’

‘I wasn’t hungry.’ She pauses, and smiles gently at the other woman. ‘I’m afraid I might need to borrow her for a while, Tetsang. There are some things we need to discuss.’

‘Ter -‘

Sorqaqtaiyo stretches, and clicks her hands. ‘No, stay. Don’t listen to her. Sengden, why don’t you sit down with us? I’m sure we can find you something to eat.’

Her gaze is provocative, daring. Make a scene. Go on. Make problems for me, and see what I do.

She always thinks she is winning: it is one of her many arrogances that Sengden loves. 

‘If you find me something to drink, I’ll stay.’ Her eyes meet Sorqaqtaiyo, and the words are delicate and deliberate on her tongue. ‘Like I said. I wasn’t hungry.’

Sorqaqtaiyo raises an eyebrow. ‘I’m sure I can find you something.’

‘I don’t want anything. Get me a drink.’

She holds up a cup, wooden and held with a careless hand. ‘There’s water here.’

‘Water? I said a drink.’

‘There isn’t any wine left.’

‘Because you drank the last of it last week.’

‘Because we drank the last of it last week.’

‘You told me there was more.’

‘There isn’t.’

‘So you lied.’

‘I said there was maybe more.’

‘That wasn’t what you said.’

‘Maybe isn’t a promise, Sengden. There’s a lot of room in maybe.’

They stare at each other. 

‘Jha.’ It is the other woman, eyes flicking between them in uncertainty. ‘Perhaps I should - ‘

‘No. Don’t.’

‘Stay.’

They speak almost at the same time. They are leaning forwards, competitive, shifting. Every conversation with Sorqaqtaiyo is a contest, every accusation an aggression. It kindles a hunger deep in her belly. Sengden can feel every inch of her skin like it is made of fire or godlight; and when Sorqaqtaiyo shifts under the light it is dappled and gorgeous over her face. The torque high on her arm digs into the meat of it, and when she shifts, Sengden can see the rippling of her muscle.

‘Did you go to the waterfall, Sengden?’

Sorqaqtaiyo’s voice is husky.

‘No. Why would I go there?’

‘Oh. How disappointing. So you broke your promise.’

‘What promise was that, Taiyo?’

Now Sengden is the one daring her, sweetly, by calling her that name. Sorqaqtaiyo’s eyebrows raised with delight.

‘You’re being coy. Is this what you’re doing? Are you being coy? You know what promise.’

‘Well, you broke yours too.’

‘I never made any promise.’

‘No?’

Sorqaqtaiyo throws her a patronising look. ‘I only ever said I would maybe go. Didn’t I just say there’s a lot of room in that? A lot of space in a maybe? But you actually promised. You said you would.’

‘Did I?’

‘You have a terrible memory. You promised you’d meet me there at dinner.’

‘Maybe. If I did, then I suppose we both lied.’

‘I never lied. I went to the waterfall, Sengden, but you never came.’

Sengden laughs out loud. ‘You went to the waterfall? No, you didn’t.’

‘I did.’ Sorqaqtaiyo is not even trying; there is nothing the slightest bit authentic in her voice at all, only a petulant smirk. ‘I waited there for an hour, but you never came. I was so worried, Sengden. I was waiting for you that whole time.’

Sengden grins. It is so blatantly ridiculous. ‘No, you weren’t.’

‘Wasn’t I?’

She is laughing still, again and again. ‘No! No.’

‘Maybe not. But how do you know that?’

Sengden pauses. Then she laughs once more, and tosses her braided head. She is giddy with this, with the sparking of her skin and the ball of light nestled tightly under her ribs. She is buoyant; she is caught. Has she ever laughed so much?

Sorqaqtaiyo is grinning ear to ear like a wolf. ‘You went!’ She is delighted. ‘How loyal of you, Sengden! You really did go. Whatever did I do to deserve someone so loyal?’

‘You’re right,’ Sengden says, and steps forward. She feels languid, new-born into this skin and bold with desire. ‘I’m far more than you deserve.’

‘Oh!’ Sorqaqtaiyo’s voice is scandalous and pleased. ‘That’s cruel, Sengden!’

And then she moves with that easy grace, a casual shift, and Sengden is caught again by the twisting of her neck and the thoughtless arrogance of her hands. She can feel Sorqaqtaiyo’s fascinated gaze on her empty skin.

‘I think I should leave now,’ Tetsang says. Neither of them look at her. ‘Jha - if you don’t mind -‘

Sorqaqtaiyo is smiling, unstoppable. ‘I don’t mind,’ she says, and she does not break their heated gaze.

‘Can we - can we meet tomorrow?’

Now Sorqaqtaiyo turns away, and Sengden lets out a breath as her tense-sprung body relaxes. Sorqaqtaiyo’s smile is warm and kind, a suddenly different benevolent saintly smile, and Sengden sees the flustered way that Tetsang looks away. It almost makes her laugh. The effect Sorqaqtaiyo has on everybody is remarkable: the children, the old, the ones who want to touch her. Everybody wants her, in their different ways. They all do.  

‘Of course,’ Sorqaqtaiyo says, and she stands. She grasps the woman’s hands between her own. ‘You must come tomorrow. You need to tell me more about Uzangtordun, and if you can, I’d like you to try and find Latsurgendan as well. I’d like to hear his side of the story.’

The woman’s face goes slack. ‘You know Latsurgendan?’

‘Of course I do. You told me yourself, ter, last month.’

Her voice is gentle, warm. 

‘Jha,’ she says, shaken. ‘Yes, jha, I remember now.’

And she glances at Sengden out of the corner of her eye. Sengden can almost hear the thoughtless thoughts in her head: but I only mentioned him once and how many people must she speak to? and how good she is to care about me when there are so many folk here and how have we found someone so kind? They all love that kindness, Sengden knows. It seems absurd to her, when there are things so much more interesting. But that is the woman that they think they love.

The woman stands with difficulty, and lifts her hands. ‘Jha,’ she says, and to Sengden: ‘Ter.’

‘Be safe,’ Sorqaqtaiyo says. Her hand, casual, comes to rest on the bones of Sengden’s wrist. She is drawing a little circle, possessive, light. 

They wave, and watch her go. Sengden is so tense she can hardly breathe. 

Eventually she breathes out. 

‘Who’s Latsurgendan?’

Sorqaqtaiyo laughs. ‘Oh, him. He has a broken arm. And his wife died, it was awful.’

‘What did she die of?’

‘A knife in the back, I think.’

Sengden bursts out laughing. Breathless she laughs. Sorqaqtaiyo’s hand on her wrist is sharp and strong, and there is a warm pressure on her back, and she stumbles forward and now Sorqaqtaiyo is dragging her along, past the food table and past the wide-eyed chefs.

‘Come on,’ Sorqaqtaiyo is saying. ‘Come on. Let’s leave. Let’s go -‘

‘That is awful,’ Sengden says, and laughs again. ‘But what are you supposed to do about it?’

They are running now, giddy as children with their secrets, and they step over and around the folk who stare at them in shock. 

‘Do about it?’ Sorqaqtaiyo calls over her shoulder. ‘Nothing. But it’s been causing some problems because other people want her share of the food.’

‘They are hungry. So who did you give it to in the end?’

‘You, of course.’

She yanks her arm, and Sengden stumbles to a halt. They have left the cavern of the mess hall by a second entrance, and are standing at the crossroads between the flickering orange and the dark. It is quieter here, and Sengden can hear their mingled breaths. 

‘Me?’

‘Well. I will give it to you. I’m giving it to you now. Come here.’ Sorqaqtaiyo is striding ahead, her legs longer, but Sengden is just as fast as her over short distances, and faster over long. They know because they have raced against each other time and time again until it was certain who the winner was. 

Sengden twists her hand and digs her crescent moon fingernails into the meat of Sorqaqtaiyo’s hand. In response Sorqaqtaiyo yanks her, and Sengden gasps, laughing again and again and again. 

‘Where are we going?’

Her voice is breathless, petulant. 

‘Asking again! You’re always asking questions. Didn’t we talk about that, Sengden? You and your questions?’

Sengden stops dead, and snatches her hand from Sorqaqtaiyo’s. Where her grip has twisted it burns along her skin. They are standing now in the dark of the corridor, frozen still. 

‘I asked you: where are we going?’

‘Why? Don’t you want to come?’

Sengden is feeling playful. She is feeling bold. But Sorqaqtaiyo is larger than her and taller than her and when she steps forward towards Sengden as a dark shape in the glistening tunnel Sengden looks up, and her heart is thudding in her chest. 

‘Sengden,’ Sorqaqtaiyo says with a frown. Her gaze is dispassionate and medical as it drags along her collarbone, up her neck and along the bones of her cheek. 

‘I have a lot of things to do.’ Sengden turns around, and looks back down the corridor, because she knows it will anger her. ‘So -‘

‘You? You have a lot of things to do?’ Sorqaqtaiyo’s voice is amused. ‘Like what exactly?

‘I do, actually.’ She studies her nails. ‘I have to bathe, and I have to eat, and there are some knottings I have been waiting to study. So tell me where we’re going and I can decide if it’s worth the effort at all.’

Sorqaqtaiyo pauses. For a moment Sengden thinks she will not answer: that she will kiss her into silence, bent into submission, or that she will simply turn around and walk away. 

Then she raises an eyebrow.

‘You wanted a drink. I was going to get you one.’

Sengden laughs. It is true, but she had not noticed it: they have been walking to the storerooms, the hidden caches where they sat last time and drank until they were sick. 

‘I told you I don’t want water.’

‘Not water. Wine.’

Sorqaqtaiyo steps closer. Her hand rests lightly on Sengden’s shoulder, and she plays with one of Sengden’s braids.  

‘You said there was no wine.’

Sorqaqtaiyo pauses. ‘I lied.’

‘You lied? So what did you tell the others?’

Her black eyes are taunting. ‘The same thing I told you. I told them there wasn’t any left, and that you finished it. They don’t like you anyway.’

Sengden bursts out laughing, because it is such a hateful thing to do. How do Tetsang and the others ever think their Sorqaqtaiyo is kind? When there is food she gives it to Sengden; when there is wine, she tells the others there is none. She is hateful; she is petty; she is arrogant. She is the most delightful person Sengden has ever known. 

‘Then maybe I will stay. Maybe just for the wine.’

‘Just for the wine. Is that what convinced you?’

Her hands, soft, are tracing her lips. Her breath tickles her ear. Sengden draws in a sharp breath, and pushes her away.

‘Give me a cup and some wine and then you can touch me,’ she says archly. ‘I want the wine first.’

Sorqaqtaiyo stares; there is a waiting and a hunger in her eyes, a tension. Then she smiles. It is nothing like the smile she has given Tetsang, or the one she gives the others: this is a smile only for Sengden, sharp and brittle and cruel.

‘That’s very wise of you, Sengden. Very sensible.’ Her voice is irritated, but Sengden knows she is amused. She likes to be defied, to be surprised. Sengden can do both.

There is heat on her skin, and a trembling in her throat. Breathless and craving her touch, she wonders: Is it better to be honest than to be kind? Is it better to be true to yourself?

She is not sure. She is not sure that they cannot do both. But she knows that of all Sorqaqtaiyo’s smiles, Sengden likes the sharp ones best. 

‘Come on,’ Sorqaqtaiyo calls. She waves a lazy hand over her shoulder, beckoning. Before Sengden can move, blinking and someone hazy, Sorqaqtaiyo has already rounded the corner and already she is gone. 

Sengden waits. She takes a deep breath. And then leisurely, at her own pace and nobody else’s, she turns to follow.