The late afternoon sun paints the Jabliu steppe in molten gold, but within the chief's great yurt, the air crackles with a different kind of heat. Tarun, chieftain of the Jabliu, weathered face etched with the permanent sorrow of a love lost too soon, massages his temples. Before him, vibrating with barely contained fury like a bowstring drawn too tight, stands his eldest daughter, Gani.

"You lie, Father!" Gani's voice isn't a shout; it's a low, guttural snarl that makes the felt walls seem to tremble. Her fists clench at her sides, knuckles white against the deep tan of her skin. She wears practical riding leathers, her dark, unruly braids escaping their ties like wild vines. "Old Man Bekzat named his daughter heir last year when his sons proved useless! The Orogol have had shaman-chieftains! Tradition? Hah! Tradition is a flimsy shield you hide behind because you're scared!"

Tarun flinches, not from the volume, but from the painful truth grazing his heart. He sees his late wife, Altàn, in Gani's blazing dark eyes, in the defiant set of her jaw. Altàn, who died bringing their third daughter, little Tali, into the world. The grief had hollowed him, left him incapable of taking another wife, leaving him without a son, without a clear heir. And now, this whirlwind, this glorious, impossible storm of a daughter, demanded the burden he so desperately wanted to shield her from.

"Gani," Tarun sighs, the sound heavy as worn saddlebags. "Bekzat's daughter tends goats and settles petty squabbles over stolen butter. The Orogol lands are rocky and poor. The Jabliu? We are the wind riders, the horse lords. Our chieftain faces… complexities. Raids. Alliances. The Moukopl boot on our necks. It is not a life of glory, daughter, it is a life of constant worry, of impossible choices that steal sleep and shorten lives." He gestures towards the yurt entrance, beyond which the vast, demanding expanse of their territory stretches. "I would not wish it on my daughter."

Gani scoffs, a sharp, dismissive sound. "Your daughter doesn't need your wishing! Your daughter earns!" She plants her feet wide, a wrestler's stance. "Name me heir. Test me. Set any challenge against any warrior you choose. Lukür?" She jerks her chin towards the entrance where Lukür, a broad-shouldered, hopeful suitor known for his strength, lurks awkwardly. "He asked for my hand yesterday. I told him he must first beat me in a wrestling bout, then outride me to the Singing Stones and back, then recite the epic of Demoz without stumbling. He managed half the ride before his horse went lame and he forgot the second verse." A fierce, mocking grin splits her face. "Tradition says the suitor sets the challenge? My tradition says I set the terms until they break."

Lukür flushes crimson outside, shifting his weight. Tarun suppresses a weary groan. Gani's "courtship rituals" were legendary, brutal obstacle courses designed to humiliate and exhaust. She wielded unfairness like a bludgeon, a deliberate mockery of the expectations placed upon her. She didn't just want to avoid marriage; she wanted to shatter the very idea that it was a path to power for her.

"Gani," Tarun tries again, his voice thick with a father's futile love. "Power gained through marriage is…"

"Is given!" Gani interrupts, slamming her fist onto the low table between them, making the bone cups rattle. "Given by men who see me as a broodmare to breed the next chief! I want it taken! Earned by me! By these hands!" She thrusts her calloused palms towards him. "By this mind! I see the Moukopl draining us, Father. I see the cracks in the alliance with the Alinkar. I see how we could be stronger, if we had a leader who wasn't shackled by fear and… and outdated stories!"

The accusation hangs in the air, sharp as a newly honed blade. Tarun's shoulders slump. He sees the fire in her, the fierce intelligence, the raw strength that makes her toss seasoned warriors onto their backs in the wrestling circle with effortless hip throws and joint locks. He's seen her running at dawn, barefoot and laughing, outpacing the yearling colts across the open steppe, a blur of wild energy against the endless grass. She is everything the Jabliu needs: vibrant, fearless, unbroken. And that is precisely why he cannot bear to see the weight of leadership crush her spirit, as it crushed his joy after Altàn.

He looks away, towards a small, worn carving of a horse. "The tribe would not accept it, Gani," he murmurs, falling back on the flimsy, familiar refuge. "The elders… the warriors… they expect a man. It is the way it has always been."

Silence. Thick, suffocating silence. The fire crackles in the hearth. Tarun expects another torrent of fury. Instead, Gani goes utterly still. The vibrating energy drains from her, replaced by a chilling calm. The fire in her eyes doesn't die; it turns cold, hard, like obsidian.

"Always been," she repeats, her voice flat, devoid of inflection. She looks at her father, not with anger now, but with a profound, devastating disappointment. "Yes, Father. The way it has always been."

She doesn't slam the felt flap open. She pushes it aside with a terrifying quietness. Tarun watches her stride out, past the startled Lukür, her back straight, her head held high. He sees her walk, not run, towards the horse lines. A familiar sight – Gani storming off after an argument. He sighs, the weariness settling deep into his bones. She'll be back by dusk, he thinks, turning back to the maps of grazing lands that suddenly seem meaningless. She always comes back. She just needs to run it off, like one of her colts.

Beyond the yurts, Gani reaches her favorite mare, a fiery chestnut named Salkhi. She doesn't saddle her. She vaults onto the mare's bare back with the fluid grace of long practice. Lukür approaches, hesitant, holding out a water skin. "Gani? Are you…?"

Gani doesn't even look at him. She gathers the mare's thick mane in her fists. Her gaze isn't fixed on the familiar grazing lands, the training circles, or the distant smoke of the campfires. It's fixed on the horizon, where the molten gold of the setting sun bleeds into the vast, unknown purple of the southern steppe.

"Always been," she whispers again, the words lost in the rustling grass. Then, she digs her heels into Salkhi's flanks, not the gentle nudge for a trot, but the sharp, unmistakable signal for flight.

Salkhi explodes forward, a bolt of chestnut lightning. Gani leans low over her neck, braids streaming behind her like dark banners of defiance. She doesn't gallop towards the familiar hills where she usually vents her frustrations. She points the mare's nose straight south, towards the vast, open emptiness, towards the distant, hazy shapes of mountains Tarun's scouts rarely visited. She rides with the wind, faster and faster, the camp shrinking rapidly behind her, not a tempest fleeing, but a comet breaking orbit.

...

The steppe at dusk is a vast bruise – purple shadows pooling in the hollows, the last embers of sunset smoldering on the western horizon. Gani rides Salkhi hard, the wind whipping tears of pure, incandescent rage from her eyes. Freedom tastes like dust and betrayal. Always been. Always been. The words beat in time with the mare's drumming hooves, a maddening tattoo against her skull. Her father's weary face, his pathetic reliance on that flimsy shield of 'tradition', fuels her flight. She pushes Salkhi until the mare's sides heave, foam flecking her chestnut coat, trying to outrun the suffocating cage of expectation.

Night falls, cold and immense. She makes a sparse camp in the lee of a rocky outcrop, chewing tough strips of dried goat meat with the ferocity of a wolf gnawing bone. At dawn, she hunts, bringing down a hare with a single, brutal throw of her weighted rope. The kill is efficient, bloodless, a brief flare of satisfaction quickly drowned by the lingering bitterness.

For two days, the rhythm is relentless: ride, hunt, camp, seethe. The landscape shifts subtly – drier, rockier, the familiar grasses giving way to scrub and thorn. On the third evening, as the light bleeds away again, a thin, grey finger of smoke stains the lavender sky far ahead. Not the column of a camp, but a single, lonely thread. Curiosity, a predator's instinct honed on the steppe, pricks through Gani's simmering anger. She guides Salkhi towards it, moving with the silent caution of a snow leopard stalking prey.

She crests a low rise. Below, in a shallow depression offering scant shelter from the biting wind, a pathetic fire struggles against the encroaching dark. Beside it, a figure huddles – a man, young but worn thin by hardship, his clothes ragged Moukopl infantry issue, now more dust than dye. Cradled against his chest, wrapped in a threadbare blanket, is a small bundle. A child. The man holds a cracked waterskin, his hand trembling violently as he tries to tip precious drops towards the child's slack lips. Most of the water misses, trickling into the sand. A low, rasping whimper escapes the bundle.

Gani observes, unseen, from the shadows. Disgust wars with a colder, clinical assessment. Weakness. Stupidity. She nudges Salkhi forward, the mare's hooves crunching deliberately on loose scree.

The man jerks upright, eyes wide with terror, clutching the child tighter. He fumbles for a short sword lying nearby, his movements clumsy with exhaustion and fear.

Gani reins in Salkhi a spear's length away. Her voice, when it cuts the silence, is sharp as a lash, echoing the guttural tones of the Jabliu. "You! Stranger! Name yourself! What fool brings a sick whelp to die in this emptiness?"

The man stares, bewildered, uncomprehending. Fear tightens his grip on the child. Gani's lip curls. Moukopl? She switches languages, the harsh consonants of the Empire's tongue rolling off her tongue with practiced contempt. "I said: Who are you? What madness is this?"

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Understanding dawns, followed by fresh panic. He stammers, his gaze flickering from her fierce beauty to the sturdy horse, to the hunting knife she wears openly. "I... I am no one. A traveler..." He trails off, looking down at the child, a fresh tremor shaking him. "My son... he burns..."

Gani's eyes narrow. The man's uniform, though ruined, is unmistakable. The desperation, the furtiveness... it clicks. "Traveler?" Her laugh is short, brutal, devoid of humor. "You wear the stink of Moukopl barracks, 'traveler'. And you flee. Like a kicked dog." She dismounts fluidly, landing lightly on the balls of her feet. She stalks closer, her presence radiating contained violence. "Deserter."

The word hits him like a physical blow. He flinches, colour draining from his already pallid face. "No! I... Please..." He looks down at the child again, despair cracking his voice. "He will die... if I cannot... the water... he cannot swallow it..."

Gani stops before him. She doesn't look at the man; her gaze is fixed on the small, flushed face peeking from the blanket. She reaches out, not to comfort, but to assess. The back of her hand touches the child's forehead. The heat radiating from the tiny body is alarming. She looks back at the deserter, her disgust deepening into something colder, more profound. "Traitor. Coward." She spits the words. "You flee your masters, fine. But you cannot even tend the life you dragged into this misery? Pathetic."

The man shrinks under her scathing judgment, his mouth working soundlessly. He is indeed bewitched – not just by her startling beauty, fierce and untamed under the dusty sky, but by the sheer, terrifying competence radiating from her, a stark contrast to his own helplessness.

Ignoring him, Gani pulls her own waterskin – sturdy leather, well-maintained. She uncorks it, not to drink, but to soak a corner of the rough wool scarf tucked into her belt. Kneeling with the swift, economical movement of someone used to treating injured livestock or warriors, she presses the back of her hand firmly against the child's forehead and neck. Her lips thin in disapproval, aimed squarely at the useless father.

"Fever burns his water away, fool," she snaps, the Moukopl words harsh. She wrings the soaked wool scarf slightly, then presses the cool, damp fabric firmly against the child's flushed temples and the pulse points on his thin wrists. Next, she peels back the blanket trapping the heat. Without ceremony, she dips another dry corner of her scarf into the water, wrings it just enough to stop dripping, and gently presses the damp cloth against the child's cracked lips. The child, semi-conscious, instinctively moves his dry tongue against the welcome moisture, drawing tiny sips. Gani repeats the action, soaking the cloth corner anew each time, letting the child absorb water slowly, safely, without choking.

The deserter watches, frozen, a mixture of awe, terror, and profound relief washing over his haggard features. Tears well in his eyes.

Gani straightens, her expression unchanged: hard, disgusted. She looks from the child – who gives a weak, shuddering sigh – to the deserter, then to the pathetic, sputtering fire. Without a word, she lifts her booted foot and kicks a cascade of dry sand directly onto the meagre flames. They hiss and die instantly, plunging the hollow into near darkness, save for the cold starlight.

"Imbecile," she mutters, the word thick with exasperation. She turns on her heel and strides back to Salkhi, vaulting onto the mare's back with effortless grace. She gathers the reins, her posture radiating furious energy. She glares down at the deserter, who is still kneeling, clutching his son, staring up at her like a pilgrim witnessing a wrathful deity.

"You," she snaps, pointing a finger like a dagger. "Follow. Now." She doesn't wait for a response. She spurs Salkhi, the mare turning sharply. "Because of your incompetence," she throws the words over her shoulder, her voice rising with renewed fury, the rage against her father momentarily redirected onto this convenient target, "I must return to my father way before I planned! And I am still boiling!"

Salkhi breaks into a trot, then a canter, heading back the way Gani came – back towards the Jabliu, back towards the cage. The deserter scrambles to his feet, fumbling to gather the child and his meagre possessions, his heart pounding with terror, gratitude, and the bewildering force of the whirlwind that had just swept into his desperate existence and irrevocably altered its course.

...

The molten gold of the steppe has hardened into a cold, grey expanse under a sky heavy with unshed snow. Gani rides Salkhi at a punishing pace, the mare's breath pluming white in the frigid air. Behind her, lagging like a shadow tethered by fraying rope, the deserter clutches his child on the swaying back of an ancient, sway-backed gelding they'd scavenged from a deserted herder's outpost days ago. Gani speaks not a word to the man. Her silence is a wall, icy and impenetrable, broken only by curt commands barked over her shoulder when they stop for water or to force drops of fever-reducing broth between the child's lips. She tends the boy with the same ruthless efficiency she'd skin a hare – clean, quick, devoid of tenderness. The deserter, whom she mentally labels 'Carrion Bird' for his scavenger's desperation, watches her every move with a mixture of terror and awe, flinching whenever her dark eyes flicker towards him.

Days bleed into a monotonous rhythm of hooves crunching on frozen earth and the wind's mournful song. The child clings to life, a fragile ember shielded by Gani's grudging ministrations and the residual heat of his father's terrified embrace. The deserter himself seems to shrink, consumed by dread as the landmarks of Jabliu territory begin to scar the horizon. The air itself feels different, charged with the scent of woodsmoke and horse dung, the intangible weight of people.

One morning, as the weak sun struggles to pierce the cloud cover, painting the snow in dull pewter, they crest a final rise. Below, nestled in the lee of winter-bare hills, sprawls the Jabliu winter encampment: hundreds of felt yurts like grey mushrooms, corrals teeming with steaming horses, smoke curling lazily from central hearths. The distant sound of a blacksmith's hammer rings clear and sharp on the cold air.

The deserter's breath hitches audibly. He kicks the old gelding, pulling it level with Salkhi, though still maintaining a respectful, fearful distance. His voice, when it finally breaks the days of silence, is a raspy whisper, frayed with panic. "Please... Mistress... Warrior..." He fumbles for words. "The camp... they cannot know. Who I am. What I am."

Gani doesn't turn her head. Her gaze remains fixed on the distant yurts, her father's great one undoubtedly among them. A slow, cold smile touches her lips, devoid of warmth. "Why," she asks, her voice cutting through the wind like a shard of ice, "should I weave silence for a crow who flees its own shadow?"

He flinches as if struck. "They... they will cage me. Send me back. The Moukopl... they hang deserters. They hang them!" The image seems to strangle him. "Please. A mercy..."

"Mercy?" Gani finally turns, her obsidian eyes locking onto his. The contempt in them is scalding. "You craved freedom, worm. Did you imagine it came without cost? Did you think the wind would simply carry you away from consequence? You gambled your life, and the whelp's." She gestures dismissively towards the child, bundled and listless against his father's chest.

The deserter's face crumples. Tears, frozen tracks on his grimy cheeks, glint in the pale light. "What can I offer?" he pleads, his voice cracking. "I have nothing! Less than nothing! Look at me! I couldn't even..." He glances down at the child, shame warring with desperation. "His mother is..."

Gani's eyebrow arches, a predator sensing a shift in the prey's scent. "Ah. The mother. Conveniently absent. Did the desert wind steal her too? Or did your cowardice leave her behind to face the hangman alone?"

The man shudders, a full-body tremor that rocks the old horse. He looks away, unable to meet her piercing gaze. His voice drops to a whisper, almost lost in the wind. "I... abandoned her." He hunches over the child, as if trying to vanish. "I am sorry..." A sob wracks him, ugly and raw.

Gani throws her head back and laughs. It's a harsh, barking sound, devoid of joy, echoing strangely across the snowy plain – the laugh of a hawk spotting a crippled mouse confessing its sins. "Oh, magnificent! Not just a deserter, but a wife-abandoning coward! A veritable tapestry of failure!" She wipes imaginary tears of mirth from her eyes, though her gaze remains chillingly cold. "Perhaps I should hang you myself? Save the Moukopl the trouble? A little justice for the woman you left to rot?"

The deserter weeps openly now, great, heaving sobs that shake the child in his arms. The man is a portrait of utter abjection, broken and pathetic against the vast, indifferent steppe. Gani watches him, the cruel amusement fading slightly from her face, replaced by something colder, more calculating. A flicker, not of pity, but of… opportunity. An idea, dark and mischievous, ignites in her mind, fueled by the embers of her still-burning rage towards her father.

"Stop your sniveling," she commands, her voice suddenly crisp, businesslike. "You reek of despair. It offends the horses." She spurs Salkhi forward a few paces, forcing him to follow. "Very well, Carrion Bird. I will not sing your secrets to the campfires."

He looks up, disbelief warring with desperate hope in his red-rimmed eyes. "Truly? You swear it?"

"By the Eternal Sky and the Four Winds," Gani states flatly, though the oath feels like a dry leaf in her mouth. "Your past is ash. But silence alone is a flimsy shield." She points a finger at his tattered uniform tunic, the faded Moukopl insignia still visible beneath layers of grime. "That shrieks your story. Strip it off. Bury it. Now. Under those rocks." She gestures towards a cluster of frost-heaved boulders. "Leave anything that smells of empire."

The man scrambles off the gelding with clumsy haste. He fumbles with frozen fingers at buckles and ties, peeling off the hated tunic and undershirt, shivering violently in the biting wind. He stuffs the garments deep into a crevice, kicking snow over them.

"Good," Gani observes, watching his frantic movements with detached interest. "Now, your tongue. You speak only speak Moukopl. Keep it locked away. If anyone asks, you remember nothing. Not your name, not your land, not how you came to be wandering the steppe with a sick child. You are empty. A blank scroll. You understand? Amnesiac."

He nods frantically, wrapping his thin arms around himself for warmth, teeth chattering. "Yes... nothing... blank scroll..."

"What's the child's name?" Gani presses.

"My son... Tukol..."

Gani shakes her head slowly, a predator claiming its kill. "No. That name is dust now. He is Dukar." She pronounces the Jabliu name with finality. "Strong. Steadfast. A name for a warrior, not a whimpering scrap." She fixes her gaze on the shivering man. "And you? What did the Moukopl call you?"

"G-Gujel," he stammers.

Gani makes a dismissive sound, like spitting out a bad piece of meat. "Gujel? Sounds like something a sick goat coughs up. No. You are Tseren." She chooses another Jabliu word. "Long life. Irony amuses me." A ghost of that harsh smile touches her lips again. "Tseren and Dukar. Foundlings of the wind. My father adores a mystery." She turns Salkhi's head decisively towards the distant smoke of the encampment. "Now, Tseren, try not to look quite so much like a man awaiting the axe. It spoils the surprise. And remember: silence, amnesia, and deep, deep gratitude to the daughter of the Jabliu chieftain who saved your worthless lives." She digs her heels into Salkhi's flanks. "Keep up. Dukar needs warmth, and I," she adds, her voice dropping to a low, dangerous purr as she stares towards her father's yurt, "have a gift to deliver."

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