“I think,” she said, “you perhaps miss being the only intellectual around.” She grinned at him as she pulled her hair back over her shoulder.
“I may not be the smartest one here. I don’t care.” He shrugged his shoulders. Then he turned to her again. “I am someone without any secrets.” He, at least, could take this as a chance to change the trajectory of their conversation.
Eve looked down, her face becoming cloudy again.
“Why don’t you tell me?” Michel urged, soft again, his voice coaxing. “You don’t have to tell me everything. If you tell me something, then I can be better prepared.”
“I am your hired hand,” she asserted. “You don’t need to help me.”
“The girl in the market needed help. If that gigantic man comes after you again, you are going to need more help. If you don’t prepare me, Eve, you may end up needing more than I can give.”
She was quiet for a long time. He waited. He wanted her to work out whatever was in her head. In whatever language she was doing it.
Finally, she spoke. “You want to know why I am running?”
“Yes,” he said, giving no more words so the conversation wouldn’t change again.
“I am running, Michel.” She paused and looked out across the road that was soon to be swallowed up by the cliffs. “I am running because I murdered my husband.”
ChapterTen
Ganbold. Warrior. Hunter.
Ganbold was huffing through a little village somewhere north of the Tian Shen mountains. After killing the merchant who had sold her, Ganbold had continued along the same road. He thought he was close to the woman when he reached the Bukhara outpost. People had seen the blonde woman with the Frenchman there, but Ganbold could not be sure which way they went after. He had a choice—he could take the northern or southern route. Ganbold, knowing that the northern trail would lead into the mountains, chose to go south. A Frenchman would surely choose the easier path.
Ganbold was wrong. No one saw the woman along the route he chose. He lost their trail.
This made Ganbold very angry—anger in his eyes, in his chest. Ganbold poured tea into the ground as an offering, asking the ancestors why they favored the murderous woman over him, a warrior. Their voices did not answer him. Ganbold turned his path then and cut his own way through the mountains that separated him from the northern route he should have chosen. The ancestors may be laughing at him, but he would change their minds when they saw how determined he was.
Ganbold. Warrior. Hunter. Ganbold. Warrior. Hunter.
Ganbold did not know the name of the village he’d entered that afternoon, but he found the marketplace at its center. He stood at the edge, scanning the stalls, looking for someone who may speak his language. This land had been of his people many generations ago. Now it was Ganbold who was the outsider. It angered him that his people, the people of his great ancestors, had bartered it away for comforts. Comforts that led his people to become lazy and weak. Comforts that made women think they deserved more than their husbands chose to give them.
As Ganbold moved his eyes over the little square, he thought of the crime of the woman. Ganbold had watched the wedding from where he slept outside the camp. He watched later as the woman entered the yurt with the other wives. He watched when the wives left and then her new husband, Ganbold’s kinsman Bataar, entered. The pair would not emerge until the morning, and Ganbold had turned away, disgusted at the union.
The evening of the wedding, Ganbold did not return to his sleeping mat. Instead, he slept on the ground with no blanket or warmth, wanting to see the couple emerge in the morning. He woke before the sun and circled around the back of the wedding yurt, looking for the best angle to see the pain in the woman’s face, as was common in the new brides. He waited there for many hours, but they did not come out of the yurt.
At first, Ganbold could hear the laughter from the neighbors, joking that the new couple was exhausted from their activities in the night. Waiting, Ganbold paced. As morning became late morning, he walked through the high grasses to burn off his energy. His only solace in this union would be to see that Bataar had taught her that she was subject to him, that she would not influence this tribe. At almost midday, Ganbold discovered a small piece of fabric that had caught on a tree stump. He picked it up and examined it, just as he heard a scream peal across the plains.
Ganbold shot up to see Bataar’s first wife at the entrance of the yurt. Her screams called the other wives, who went into hysterics as well. Ganbold watched as, one by one, the elders entered, as well as the Il-khan. Someone had died, he understood. Someone else was missing. At first, the words he heard did not make sense, and Ganbold thought Bataar had killed his bride. Ganbold felt pride—in his chest, in his cheeks—for his tribesman who refused this woman from the soft tribe. But why would Bataar run away and not share the decision with his tribe?
Then he saw the elders carry the body of Bataar out of the yurt and heard the confusion as they searched for the woman, worried for hersafety. Ganbold looked down at his hand and realized the fabric he held was from her wedding deel. The woman had killed Bataar and escaped while the tribe slept. Anger shook Ganbold’s body—his feet, his fists, his chest, his shoulders.
He ran in the direction of where he had found the fabric to follow her path before the tribal leaders fully understood what had happened.
Now Ganbold was very far from his home, in a place that should still belong to the tribes but no longer did. He walked through the marketplace, listening to the ugly rhythms of words he did not understand. Finally, he stopped at a stall with a man who looked very scared to talk to him. “Woman,” Ganbold choked out the word.
The scared man said some words. Ganbold shook his head.
“Brothel?” asked the skinny man again, this time the language enough like his own that Ganbold understood.
“No,” Ganbold said. “Woman. Light hair. Tribal like me.” He tapped his face.
The man quaked before him, saying more words in the language Ganbold knew. “Yes, yes, I saw that woman.”
“When?”
“Three days? Yes,” he said. “Three days ago.”
