The nomad is at a stream, flushing out waste from an argali bladder while strips of meat dry on the bank-side. No sun and intermittent rains makes it longer for meat to cure, but humidity will preserve the elasticity of his koumiss-skins.

There is unknown peacefulness in a camp not kept on the footing of war.

Gingerly taking another bladder between teeth, he wades from an ice-rimmed edge and out into the vigorous waterflow.

She is faceless. In a palace of nobles, only the underbelly of their bodies.

Day in, day out, searching the low ground mountains. Time moved with her, and yet He was unchanging. With each rise of sun and fall of moon, Lord Fenyang’s doors creaked to a close. But she could feel its shadows covering, sticking to the bottoms of pelt-covered pads. Crude cutouts pasted with sap, protecting the soft and delicate skin of a woman.

It would be often Lady Sekhet to secure those things, and wash the inner ears of the girls. Together, they would clean away one another’s stomachs in nile pools, but she had dreamed one day of bathing with the oiran’s in their warm springs. If only to know what might that warmth had felt like before her second sale.

Why now did she think of it?

Below, the rush of a stream which she approached with bundles of herbs. Above the waters, her paw which was flipped, and there she looked at the peeling of the pad covers.

A man worked ahead. Large like that of a huntsman, she could tell by the legs and thick wintered coat. Built for warm travel.
And so she did not meet his eye with a coyote face. Paw quietly placed down upon pebbles, and teeth moving to grab a potent scented skin.

Batu turns his head, the faint lines along his eyes deepening over the small companionship of a woman. His teeth gleam white against the bladder’s flesh, mouth pulling into something of a squinted welcome.

Loyalty at court is as fluid as ink in water. A bow given at dawn might be withdrawn by dusk. From afar, he has spent time observing those close to the royal family. He has watched this woman before.

“I see you with the son of heaven,” the nomad notes her angular face, her vibrant eyes. “You are his seedwoman? A shaman?”

You think great things of me, honored sir.

A deep bow, succumbing to hunched legs and holding there for the better portion of many seconds. Her rise was slow, and in that same stream which he washed his skins, the covered pouch was whirred twice in the water, the first time with a loose mouth so that it might fill properly, and the second so that the holes from wear could flush through the properties.

My lord would not take me for consort.
Lady Sekhet would make a high market value, and present Myyrh along with the other shinzō, the young virgin girls of the high velvet pavilion, hosting a mizuage for an empire’s such as Shenlei to take pick from the many. Such as she had done for the traveling Egyptian men before her second sale was made.

He has many beautiful women to pick from. I’m an apothecary and brothel girl from the far reach deserts. He would likely not soil himself with a serf.

The third swipe, moved to bank so that its properties may drain and dry.

She failed to recognize the horseman. I have.. heard you, but not seen.

The coy makes a modest presentation of herself, something that should not have surprised him given how the willow women vie for the emperor’s eye. She did not share the look of the imperial wives, but her appeal was no less for it.

“Batu.” The man’s initial grin broadens. “The emperor will keep those he needs, the ones skilled in crafts, as well as those who please him most in the bedchamber. You are among those he takes into new lands. So he finds you useful.”

The ice in the river numbs his hocks. The nomad returns his second bladder to the drying stone and wrings out the dribbling coat with a firm shake.

So, she had heard him. And in a brothel where traders seek rest, one hears many things in many languages. He expected a girl in these spaces to be quicker than most at learning them.

“What do you hear?”