NAKARI SPEARDANE

Before I met my Lord I lived downriver, in the town at the end of the year. My father raised horses for the oracle. I was his oldest child, and his favorite. Sometimes, when I was too young to walk, he would swaddle me and set me on the back of a saddled foal, so that the foal would learn how it felt to be ridden, and so he could listen to my cheerful toddler burble as he worked. My father preferred horses to people; I was the sole exception. He decided early on that I would be too valuable, or perhaps too difficult, to marry off. I would stay here, where I knew I belonged. And so, while my mothers taught my sisters how to be wives, my father taught me how to treat colic. By the time I first bled, I could tell a horse was going lame nine days before he could.

 

For half the year we ran our own oracles. Only improvised ones, of course, nothing official, but it kept the horses in practice. People would pay to ask questions, and the horses carried answers. Simple yes-or-no questions were cheap. You only needed two horses. The more answers, the more horses, and they all had to be born in the same spring to make it fair. We could run oracles with up to seven options before we'd need to borrow horses.

 

When the year was about halfway down the river, we stopped; we didn't want to risk any injuries before the Oracle of Horses, and we spent the remaining months ensuring our horses were fit to run. This was the final great oracle of the year, and the Lord of the Valley would come to our town to watch the hundred red horses run the last long stretch down to the sea. All the questions belonged to him, though sometimes he would ask questions on another's behalf; it was considered a sign of great favour.

 

But you did not want to be the subject of inquiry at the Oracle of Horses. Usually this meant you had been accused of some great crime, and the Lord wanted to know if you were innocent or guilty. He would pick one horse to bear your innocence and one horse to bear your guilt, and whichever horse was the first to wet its hooves in the sea was the one that carried the truth. I must have spent half of my childhood teaching horses not to panic when they stepped onto the sand. The horses had to be identical: the same glossy red coat, the same drumbeat gait, the same proud and forceful fearlessness. Otherwise the Oracle might be tainted. Perhaps this could be forgiven at the Oracle of Fish, or the Oracle of Lighting the Fire; but the new year opened with the Oracle of Falling Water, where the guilty were executed and their organs examined, and the Oracle of Horses was the last of the year.

 

The year the Lord married Lady Ruwashin, the Oracle of Falling Water predicted treason; nothing too specific, but enough to instil a vague sense of paranoia in the Lord of the Valley. It often went like this - the Lord was erratic while the year was still up in the mountains, where the rocks were jagged and the air was thin. As always, he softened downhill, and by summer he was smooth as a pebble, the omen forgotten.

 

Almost forgotten. The months meandered. The Lord's second wife, the Lady Araihal, gave birth to a son. The river gave birth to mosquitoes. The boy was already feverish the moment he took breath. Lady Araihal asked the Oracle of Fish what would happen to the boy, and the fish that answered was a fat red koi with four white dots splashed across its back. The boy would live; he would take four wives; he would inherit the Lordship of the Valley. So, when he died that very evening, the only explanation was treason.

 

Nobody could say why suspicion fell on Geseran Dajooli. Nobody could say very much about Dajooli at all, only that someone upstream had improvised an oracle, and that oracle had blamed Dajooli. Of course, nobody really trusted an improvised oracle - they could be tainted, mistaken, or simply made up - but neither did they question it. The only question now was why. One of my mothers told me that Dajooli was the most loyal of all the lord's advisors; if the boy knew he was fated to inherit, he would someday kill his father, and so Dajooli had acted to protect the Lord. Another told me that Dajooli was a spy from two valleys over, here to sabotage the Lord and cause war in the Valley so that we would sell them turquoise more cheaply. One of my sisters begged me to run the horses for her; she had heard that the boy was Dajooli’s child through adultery, and he had killed the child to hide the crime. I refused. I would not risk our horses on an improvised oracle when there was less than a month until the Lord arrived. And anyway, it would be a waste. Everyone knew Dajooli was guilty.

 

Still, the oracle had to be fair. This was a busy time for me and my father. We brushed the horses’ coats until they shone like walnut shells, filed down uneven hooves, and cut their manes down to a hand’s length. His wives brought his meals to the stable and scolded him for not even leaving to eat, but secretly I think they enjoyed his absence. I think they sat at the husband’s table, and used the husband's spoons, and laughed with their mouths wide open, the way they didn't around me.

 

“Don't tell father, but we saw Dajooli,” one of my sisters whispered when I came into the children's room to sleep, the night before the Oracle of Horses. Another sister hissed, then punched her on the shoulder. I had eight younger sisters, and I found it very difficult to tell them apart.

 

I had spent all day checking horses for ticks. I had little patience for girls. “Why shouldn't I tell father?” I snapped.

 

A groan. A little shrieking laugh. Another voice: "Girls need their lord’s permission to go into town!” Said as if I didn't know, said like a mother explaining to a baby. More giggles. My sisters enjoyed telling me about rules I had no interest in following.

 

I was busy undressing, shaking my shirt to knock off the horse hair. “So? Father doesn't care what you do.”

 

“Namaji Hanoo doesn't care that horse shit smells!” a younger sister crowed, and was rapidly elbowed into silence. I did not react; I had heard this before. This was the kind of thing that people in town always said about my father and me.

 

The first sister continued bravely on: “We went to watch the Lord come to town, and Dajooli was there on the ship, and, well, he did look like the kind of man who might murder a baby. And we saw Lady Kirijawin, and Lady Araihal.“

 

“Lady Araihal was crying! Because she's secretly in love with Dajooli, and they're going to cut him in half - “ This ghoulish mock-horror came from the sister who had begged me to race horses for her.

 

“Idiot! She was crying because her baby died. Even if she loved him before she wouldn't love him after that.”

 

“People kill babies all the time.”

 

“Yes, when they can't afford a son. The Lord of the Valley can have as many sons as he wants...”

 

"You're all idiots," I said, a little sharper than necessary. My sisters went quiet and clung to each other as I got into bed. "Oh, you heard some rumors, you saw some strangers' faces from a distance. Very impressive! You won't even need to go to the Oracle, then, since you know everything already! But I do have to go, because it's my job to bring the horses. So stop talking and let me sleep."

 

If I was sentimental, I might say: if I had known how little time remained together, I would have listened to them argue about nonsense until the river ran dry. But I am not sentimental, and I do not lie. I was five years older than the oldest of my siblings. They annoyed me immensely. I avoided them whenever I could and openly resented them when I could not. On the morning of the oracle I woke early and escaped the bed before they could stir.

 

We took twenty two horses to the Oracle. We were only supposed to bring seventeen, but having so many spares made us look impressively reliable. If any of our horses was a hair less than perfect, we could offer immediate replacement; if anyone else's horses weren't up to standard, we'd be paid well to fill in. I spent the morning ferrying our horses from our paddock to the annuals' stalls, squinting at other people's horses to try and spot any flaws before the annuals did, leading our flawless horses from the stalls to the holding pen, hopping over the fence to repeat the process. The world churned beneath four hundred hooves. The sun was hot, my back was stiff, the air was pungent with animal sweat. I was grinning as I worked. Not one of our horses had been judged unfit, and nineteen of them would be running.

 

People were already gathering around the paddock, and by the time I delivered our last horse, the crowd was thick enough that I had to shout for them to let me through. Somehow, despite standing on the path the horses were meant to take, they seemed very surprised whenever a horse appeared. One man even tried to pull *me* out the way. "Where's your lord, girl?" He had an upriver accent and unpleasantly sweet breath. "Are you lost? Day-dreaming? There's a horse right behind you!"

 

"Of course there's a horse behind me," I yelled back at him, "I'm the one holding the tether!"

 

I shoved my way past him and hoped the horse would step on his foot. Finally we made it to the paddock, and I could breathe again for a moment. I couldn't remember the crowds being so bad any other year. I didn't need the oracle to tell me to blame Dajooli. And this was only the paddock. The course followed the river all the way to the sea. The beach itself was fenced off - that was where the Lord would watch the end of the race. Interference could not be permitted. But I could imagine the mass of people pressed up against the fence to try and catch a glimpse, and even thinking of it made me sweat.

 

I spotted a quieter section of crowd and wriggled over the fence to slot myself in. The women complained at first, but I ignored them, and soon they settled back into their conversation. I watched the horses circle each other. Each had a white mark chalked on its flank to show what answer it was carrying. It didn't take much eavesdropping to figure out which horses were Dajooli's. One of my stallions, the one we called Whistle, had been assigned to carry his guilt, and his flank bore the image of a kestrel in flight. A mare I didn't recognise had the same symbol, upside-down; she would carry his innocence. She was perfect, strong and proud-necked.

 

Usually I'd have stayed there until the race began, watching the paddock and listening to the crowd. I liked to know what answers my horses were carrying, even if the questions didn't make much sense to me. But this crowd only cared about two horses, and I had eighteen more to account for. I slunk away and went looking for the gamblers.

 

At noon it began. The Lord of the Valley asked the Oracle for answers, then opened the gate to the racecourse. One of the judges had mounted his own horse, and had been riding in circles around the paddock, making the others follow. At the Lord's signal he kicked his horse to a gallop and rode through the gate. From there the horses knew what they were doing. The judge pulled his mount aside, and the Lord boarded the waiting boat, and between them the great red herd flooded forward.

 

I was a little way downriver, listening to men making bets. By the time I felt the ground begin to shake the horses were at full speed. I scrambled to my feet and leaned as far over the fence as I could. Their hooves sounded like rain, like thunder, like life. Among them - I could pick out mine, my copper-necked strong-chested fierce-hearted horses who I had loved from before their spindly legs could carry their weight. Oh, I loved them always, but when they ran in the Oracle I loved them almost unbearably. My blood was hot with pride. They carried the fate of all the valley but they belonged to me.

 

I was looking at the horses themselves, not the symbols on their flanks. I had learned how to identify them by the smallest possible details so that I could tell mine apart. And so I was the only one who could tell something was wrong.

 

"The mare," I said, turning to the men, who mostly ignored me. "The mare carrying Dajooli's innocence. She's hurt."

 

Only one of them answered, and even then he was still staring after the horses. "She's probably just gone lame. Sad, but some answers just can't be carried." Then I think he realised I was dangerously close to becoming a problem he'd have to deal with, and he began to look around for someone else to take responsibility. "Hey, where's your lord, kid?"

 

"No. No, she's not lame." I was babbling. "Her gait was balanced; if she'd hurt a leg she'd be uneven. There was blood on her nose. That's normal for some horses when they run, it's - they breathe too hard, it doesn't hurt them. But her ears - did you see her ears were back? She's in pain. Something's happened to her. Something's really, really wrong." I sucked in a shaky breath. "We need to... stop the boat and tell the Lord. Or we need to - "

 

He laughed in a clear attempt to calm me down. "Sh, it's okay, just... stay here and take a breath. We'll go find your lord. Then after the Oracle you can go tell - "

 

"After the Oracle it's going to be too late! We have to stop the horses!"

 

He tried to grab my arm but I was too fast. Anyway, I wasn't going the direction he expected. Looking over my shoulder I saw the men realising I wasn't worth the trouble to chase; then I put my head down and kept running. The two spare horses were still grazing in our holding paddock. They trotted up to the fence, whickering to greet me, and I climbed up, took hold of the closest mane, swung myself up onto the horse's back. Butterfly. I had watched his first steps only a few years ago. He'd never run in the Oracle before.

 

From his back I saw the flat broad line of the river, the yawn of its mouth as it opened into the sea. I saw the white sparks of the sun on the water, and the Lord of the Valley's boat moored on the beach. The crowds were gathered in the grassy dunes, whooping and glittering. And the tide of red horses was almost halfway to the sea. From this far I couldn't tell them apart; I saw a thick knotted mass of animal rushing forward. I saw the lonely dots of stragglers in their wake, wandering like debris after a shipwreck. I thought of the injured mare, and slapped Butterfly's flank.

 

We hadn't put Butterfly in the Oracle because he was still a little young. Young horses are easier to distract, and sometimes they get intimidated by their duty. We often use them in improvised oracles - it lets them practise carrying the weight of truth. But that day Butterfly carried my fate, and the mare's fate, and Dajooli's innocence, and my physical self on top of that; a heavier weight than I had ever asked of a horse. Butterfly made it look light. He had a beautifully even gait. His hooves were gentle on the ground. He sailed smoother and stabler than the Lord's own ship.

 

I told myself I just needed to find the mare. Perhaps I was mistaken, and nothing was wrong. We galloped down to the riverside, then parallel to the fence. I clung to Butterfly's neck and squinted at the horses left behind. One had broken a leg. Two were mating. Most were grazing. I did not see the mare. We galloped further downriver. We were faster than the mass of horses ahead of us, but there wouldn't be time to catch up. The crowd thickened and curved outwards ahead of us. Soon we would run up against the fence where it blocked off the beach. I would watch helplessly from Butterfly's back as the horses ran into the sea. I would never know what had happened to the mare.

 

We slowed to a canter. People were beginning to notice. I heard shouts about a stolen horse. A gaggle of men peeled away from the race to try and catch us. I saw the opening and tightened my fingers in Butterfly's mane. He understood. We jumped the fence. Interfering with a Grand Oracle is punishable by death.

 

I saw the red mass of horses charging onwards before us. Beyond that, the sea. Between them, the tent set up to shade the Lord as he waited. We just had to get there before Whistle. I just had to tell the Lord there was something wrong with the Oracle. As long as we got there in time he would listen. I clung to Butterfly's neck and looked down. The crowd was already angry and I didn't want them seeing who I was. Under Butterfly's hooves, grass became sparse, soil became sand. I raised my head as we caught up to the herd. We were almost to the sea.

 

The Lord of the Valley was watching us. I tensed up; his soldiers went to run, but he raised an arm to hold them back. I had never seen the Lord of the Valley up close before. He was younger than I'd imagined him, and his crown much smaller. His cheeks were round and his eyes were glittery. Handsome in the way a rooster is handsome before a fight.

 

"You need to stop the Oracle!" I shouted. "Something's wrong!" He didn't react. Butterfly wouldn't stop until he reached the water, so I grabbed his mane hard, pulled my leg up, held my breath and jumped off into the sand. "Something," I spat out grit, "is wrong with the Oracle. You have to stop it. Please. Something is wrong."

 

"I noticed, yes." A dry laugh. "Explain yourself."

 

"One of the horses is hurt," I wheezed, "The Oracle's been sabotaged."

 

This was the first time, too, that I saw the Ladies Araihal and Kirijawin. Lady Araihal was distraught. She was staring at me with one desperate eye, covering the other with the hem of her tunic. Lady Kirijawin had a baby on her lap and mostly just looked bored.

 

The Lord of the Valley's teeth were very sharp. "You have done all this to tell me a horse has gone lame?" There was amusement in his voice, or perhaps disbelief. He thought I was a soft-hearted girl who had never seen the Oracle before. My idiocy astounded him. "Who owns you, girl?"

 

He was asking for my lord so he could get rid of me. I spat. "The valley owns me, the truth owns me, I speak for them! The horse that carries Dajooli's innocence - you have to find her!"

 

Lady Araihal curled up in her seat and sobbed.

 

"Namaji Hanoo's her lord!" the annuals were whispering, "Someone fetch Namaji Hanoo!"

 

They were getting closer to me, and I glanced around, ready to run - and there she was, Dajooli's mare, slowing to a trot. I dashed to her. Butterfly had been breathing heavily with effort, but this mare was breathing so thinly I did not know how she still stood. I lay my hand on her nose and she flinched away. I talked softly as I unwound the tether from my waist, and she allowed me to place it around her neck. The mare's red coat shimmered like the waves, rising and falling. Her nostrils flared as the men approached. "It's okay," I whispered to her, "I know it's not your fault. I'll tell them you were hurt." Her shoulder was damp with sweat. I put my head against her neck and listened to her heart. There was a circle on her coat that didn't shine the same.

 

"We have most of the answers," the annuals were saying. "I think, under the circumstances, we can ask the horses to run again..." The circle was the same rich copper as her coat; unnoticeable from any further back. I touched smooth metal, and felt for the edges.

 

The Lord of the Valley said, "She's volunteering for the Oracle of Falling Water."

 

Two annual priests appeared at my sides. They took one arm each and began to drag me away. I kicked uselessly for a moment, throwing up sand - but they thought I would be weak, and I was not. I had won fights with foals stronger than them. I wrestled my arm free and grabbed the metal disc and pulled.

 

Later, they said I was smiling as I turned to face the Lord, hot animal blood dripping down my wrist, holding high the long thin copper blade. 

 

​

 

I was sent away so that the men could talk. I sat on the beach and watched the horses. Any other year, the horses' owners would be gathering them up by now, lassoing them and walking them back to the paddocks. This year they were busy. The horses paraded up and down the shore. I watched one of my horses dip his muzzle in the water to drink, fold his ears back in shock at the salt, and then rear back. An old horse; Ember. He had run in the Oracle seven times. Seeing me, he trotted over and whinnied, pointing his nose towards the sea and then tapping his hoof against the ground; back in the paddock, this was how the horses told me their water trough was dry. I didn't know how to explain my uselessness to him. For a while he stood by me, stamping his hooves and neighing with increasing urgency. I folded myself up into my robe and shivered. Eventually Ember gave up on me.

 

The sky's colour softened. The cluster of men at the tent broke apart; half remained, the others began to collect their horses. An annual approached me; I stood up, knees unsteady, ready to hear my fate. He handed me a folded blanket. "From the Lady Kirijawin," he said, and immediately retreated. The wind rushed around my legs. I sat down, wrapped the blanket around my shoulders, and watched the yellow moon rise.

 

Eventually my father came and sat beside me. I leaned my head on his shoulder, and together we looked out at the sea. He kept breathing in as if about to speak and then changing his mind. Speaking had always been difficult for him. He did not get on well with the other men.

 

"Tell me what's happening," I said. "The mare, will she live?"

 

"She is Henfeather, from Kariso Jalirin's stable. She will not run again, but she should recover."

 

A little of the tension in my shoulders relaxed. "And the Oracle?"

 

"The Oracle of Horses has been declared void," he said. "The Lord has lost trust in the annual priests. They are either incompetent or complicit. Whoever killed his son interfered with the Oracle to frame Dajooli. This is why the Oracle of Falling Water warned him of treason. Perhaps even that first Oracle was tainted." A quiet exhale. "This whole year was rotten from the beginning."

 

"Then what will happen? With the Oracles?"

 

My father did not answer. "Little filly," he said, the name he had always used for me. "The Lord of the Valley wants to know if you are a woman."

 

I flinched. "What? Why?"

 

“Well," he said, picking at the tassels of his tunic, "are you?”

 

He didn't know. Of course he didn't know. Why would I have told him? My bleeding was nothing to me but a maturation of the body. It hadn't changed who I was or how I lived in the world. I had asked one of the mothers how best to stay clean and that was the end of the matter. I had never begun to think of myself as a woman. Even now I struggled to say yes. Instead I said, "It began two years ago."

 

He nodded. "My daughter," he said, wonderingly, as if the word was new to him. I think before this day, it had genuinely never occurred to either of us that I was female.

 

The mother who bore me died the moment I left her. She was my father's only wife at the time. He told me once that he could not find a wet nurse. Instead I drank from a mare’s udder. This was what made me so different; I was a filly instead of a girl. Later, he said he was only teasing, of course he had hired a wet nurse, but who knows? Perhaps that too was a lie. The children of the town said my father fucked horses and my mother was a mare. They used to throw stones at me to make me run.

 

I know that my father was alone when I was born, and he had never raised a child before. Usually when this happens the child is given away or killed, but my father had raised motherless foals before, and I suppose he thought this had prepared him. But humans and horses are very different. A foal can stand within one hour of birth and walk within two. By the next morning it will outrun you. The same process takes a human child years. I was a mewling, flailing, helpless mass that required his constant attention and care. He could not be further than an arm’s length from me. His world changed shape around my needs. I slept on his back, I ate from his spoon, I kept him company as he worked. He learned to love me as a mother would. Even when he married again he never shared me with his wives. I was too much a part of him to be trusted to anyone else. I was his child, his companion, his equal.

 

But my sisters - they had mothers to raise them. My father was busy; he allowed his wives to get on with it. His daughters did not interest him. They were a giggling flock of interchangable girls that took turns to bring him meals and would one day need to be married off. He was never cruel to them. He never hurt them, or insulted them, or denied them permission to go to town when they wanted. In this way he was more lenient than many lords. Exerting control took too much effort. My father was not an unkind man. He simply did not care about women.

 

"Why?" I said. "Why does it matter?"

 

"I would have kept you with me all my life, little filly." His voice was strained and soft. "I would have asked the Lord to name you my son. I would have given you everything, summit to sea, all of the world... You are my brightest, my bravest, my best. There is nobody else in this valley who would do what you have done today."

 

This open display of affection frightened me more than anything I could imagine. "What's wrong, father? How can I help?" I was so afraid, so desperate to know, that I lowered myself before him and begged like a girl in a play. "My lord, please, tell me what's happening!"

 

We could not look at each other any more.

 

"The Lord of the Valley has decided to reward me," he said, and he sounded very hollow and very old. "He will marry my eldest daughter, Ruwashin Hanoo."

 

It was over, it was decided, it could not be undone. The last year of my childhood spilled out of the valley and into the sea.