Sleep came easily to Regbi. Curled contentedly on a warm pallet with a camel wool blanket to cover her, not even the heavy breathing of the desert shaman on the other side of the ger could disturb her. It shamed her to admit just how beholden she was to him. He might just as easily have tied her to a post outside as given her a comfortable place to sleep. She wouldn’t have blamed him if he had. After all, he had been beaten, broken into, and nearly robbed by her in the span of one day.

Regbi nestled under the blanket and closed her eyes, taking a moment to breathe in the scent of her new surroundings. The spicy incense hanging in the air overwhelmed everything else. It made her think of the smells that drifted their way into the little attic where she used to sleep in the house on the hill. The dark smoke of her grandmother’s pipe, dried herbs and leather hide, sap from the snow-capped pines that swayed in the wind outside her window. That place had smelled of magic too for all the good it had done her. She tugged her coat tightly around her shoulders and willed herself to sleep.

It was the smell of smoke that roused her from her pallet. Not the greasy sort forever hanging in the air above the city, but the clean kind that accompanied a newly kindled fire. The sort that spoke to a warm breakfast and hot milk tea. It took Regbi a moment to remember where she was. For a moment she imagined she might be back in the house on the hill, but the light musk that clung to the blanket she was wrapped in said otherwise. It was as decidedly male as the voice that hummed a low song by the fire.

“Good morning, Magpie,” Khadan said once he noticed her stirring. He was already dressed for the day in a long tunic the color of summer apples and ripe plums. Even in the dim morning light peeking through the rafters, Regbi could make out the quality of its cloth. Warm and quilted with fur lining its collar, it made her feel the itch of her hand-me-down dress and coat. Maybe she should have robbed him if he could afford to dress himself so well.

“Come and have some tea. There’s porridge too if you want it,” he told her.

“Are you sure I’m not too underdressed to join you?” Regbi asked through a yawn. She rolled her way out of the pallet and took her seat by the fire.

“It’s not often that I have company. I thought I might dress up for the occasion.” He handed her a cup of warm tea and nodded for her to serve herself from the pot of porridge hanging over the fire. “It would be big on you, but I have something you could change into as well if you like. It would be warmer than what you’re wearing at least.”

“Why? Am I allowed outside?” The ger was warm enough as it was. There was no need for anything heavier than what she already wore.

“If you like. You’re not a prisoner.”

“No? Then what do they call a person who’s held against her will where you come from?” Regbi sipped her tea. It had a broth-like quality to it that left her belly feeling full.

“A guest,” Khadan replied, his gray eyes sparkling with good humor.

“Remind me never to accept an invitation from your people,” Regbi grumbled, attending to her porridge.

Khadan crossed the room to rifle through the painted chest where Regbi had first spied his ceremonial knives. He dug through it for a moment before pulling out a folded bundle of cloth. Its color made her think of ground spice and it smelled vaguely of it too when she touched it to her cheek to inspect its quality. It was far sturdier than the threadbare clothes she was dressed in and only lightly worn.

“Unfortunately I don’t have anything to fit a tiny creature like you, but if you roll up the sleeves and tie it with a sash you’ll be comfortable enough until we can find a place to buy proper clothes for you.”

Regbi didn’t like the sound of that: you didn’t think about buying clothes for someone you planned on releasing. She was tempted to toss the tunic right back in his face, but the soft feel of its cloth under her fingertips was too satisfying to give up.

“I’ll wait outside for you to get dressed. Come out when you’re done and I’ll introduce you to the animals.”

It was beginning to seem more and more likely that he had a long stay in mind for her.

~~~

Khadan wasn’t like any shaman Regbi had ever met. In the several long days she spent living in his ger she had seen him do no shaman’s work. It seemed that all he did was sit outside in the sun playing music on his wooden flute and smoking from his carved bone pipe. He didn’t ask her to work either. In fact he seemed perfectly content for her to do as she pleased, even if that meant sleeping the day away in her corner of the ger and filling her face with his food.

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Sometimes she walked to pass the time. He didn’t stop her from doing that either. And why would he? No one was coming for her and they were miles and miles from the closest city. She could only get so far and so fast on her bad leg before he caught up to her. Not that he ever followed her. Perhaps he took it for granted that she would return no matter how long she strayed for; it was cold and hunger that kept her captive as much as any magic. She had tasted enough of both to risk a wild dash into the steppe.

One afternoon Regbi returned from one of her walks to find the shaman lounging in the scrub outside of his ger. She noticed the rings of smoke meandering above his head before she saw him, content as a serpent sunning itself as he took a languid drag from his pipe. Flicking his eyes lazily up at her, he beckoned for her to join him. He let a cloud of sweet smelling smoke pour from his nostrils and obscure his face as she arranged herself on a bare patch in the undergrowth.

“Hello, Magpie,” he said once the smoke had dissipated. “You’ve come back. Would you like to smoke with me?”

“I don’t have much of a taste for it.”

“Not yet you don’t. Try this. It should relax you.” He placed the pipe in her hand before she could refuse and settled back against the wall of the ger.

Seeing nothing for it, Regbi sucked in a breath of the sweet smelling smoke and let it settle in her chest. “Slowly,” Khadan instructed as she began to breathe it out. Resisting the urge to do so all at once, she found her head growing pleasantly light as a cloud of incense poured from her mouth to veil her face.

“See, you do like it,” Khadan said. He took the pipe from her and puffed a series of halo-like rings into the air. They wafted lazily overhead before dissolving into the hazy afternoon air.

“Don’t you ever do any shaman’s work?” Regbi asked him once her head floated back onto her shoulders.

“Why? Would you like to help me with it?” Khadan asked.

“No,” Regbi said with a snort.

“Then I suppose we’ll content ourselves with smoking. Unless you’d like me to sing for you?”

“Is that all you do? Smoke and play music?”

“Why not?”

“How do you expect to make money doing nothing but that?”

“I don’t. But why does it matter to you?” He offered her the pipe, but she waved it away, not trusting the giddy sensation it gave her.

“It matters because you’re keeping me prisoner here. If you didn’t want the burden of providing for someone else, then maybe you should have thought about that before you decided to trap me in your ger.”

“You’ve been getting enough to eat, haven’t you? I hope you haven’t been holding back because you don’t think I can keep food on the table.” He took a lazy drag of the pipe and let a mouthful of perfumed smoke drift dragon-like through his nostrils.

“That’s not the point.”

“Then what is it, little bird?”

“Shouldn’t a shaman be useful? Shouldn’t you be…” Regbi wasn’t exactly sure what he should be doing. There was no village for him to be working in. No houses to cleanse, colds to cure, or slippers to bless.

Khadan fixed her with an indulgent smile. “I’m not concerned about being useful. I only concern myself with what interests me.”

“What a charmed life you lead.”

“A journey like mine isn’t marked by its usefulness: it’s marked by what I learn from it.”

“And what did you come here to learn?” Regbi asked, looking at the flat expanse of rocky soil and scrubby undergrowth that spanned as far as the eye could see.

“I don’t know yet. I only know that I was drawn to this place. Maybe it was only so I could meet you. Maybe I’ve gotten all I can from it and it’s you who still has something to gain.”

“The only thing I feel drawn to here is my pillow.”

“Then you should follow your instincts. There’s always something to be gained in sleep,” the other shaman said with a solemn nod of his shaggy head.

Muttering under her breath, Regbi stole into the ger. Khadan had erected a wooden screen beside the pallet she slept on. In the snug confines of the ger it gave the illusion of privacy. If she ignored the bare space where her feet faced the door, she could pretend it was a tiny room of her own. She crawled into the nest of pillows arranged behind it and curled underneath the camel wool blanket. It still had the smell of the other shaman clinging to it; it brought to mind sand and smoke and far off places.

Regbi felt her eyes growing heavy. She wondered if there wasn’t something in the incense wafting from the fire that made her feel that way. Her entire body had been stricken with such a sluggishness that she could hardly lift her head from her pillow. The shadows from the fire lurched like waves in a rocky sea. She closed her eyes and felt her body sway in time with them. Maybe it was the effect of the pipe Khadan had offered her…she should have known better than to accept something like that from a strange shaman. A desert shaman; she could hear her grandmother rasping out the words like a curse. Good for nothing sand scoundrels. Seven spirits take them all and their chieftain Teb-Tengri too! Regbi opened her mouth to laugh but no sound came out. Only her soul, which departed from her body before she knew to call it back.