Fallen Eagle-Chapter 38: Blood of My Blood

Fallen Eagle-Chapter 38: Blood of My Blood

Theodorus looked out over his company men as they minded the wooden outworks present below and beyond the main curtain wall, a typical arrangement for 15th-century fortresses, and one which that the Principality had mastered. From this height he could see the whole rough-hewn palisade, the recut ditch, the low earthen ridge that shed rain away from the fence. Men moved along it with a rhythm they had earned through trial and error.
Each company had charge of one side of the wall, being responsible for its repairs, inspection, and maintenance. It was a skill absent from the end-of-season competition, but which counted for much in the Lord’s eyes. In other words, a perfect metric to excel at without risking the embarrassment of actually winning the pageant he intended to lose.
“They’re getting the right shape of it, milord.” Stathis spoke at his elbow, a veteran whose patient, deliberate manner had caught Theodorus’s eye these last weeks. He was one of the non-sergeant veterans he’d recruited and perhaps the most unorthodox selection in that department. He was also the most valuable veteran his net had caught. “Using the Southern Quarter work to break them into this type of work was a good move. Their hands don’t flutter anymore.”
“And their work is faster, cleaner.” Theodorus allowed himself a small smile. “Rebuilding our ‘Dung Quarter’ was a distant happening far from the gaze of those watching from up above. The form we show here is the painting that will be hung for all to see. Mistakes and tumbles that aren’t seen might as well not exist.”
“So that is why we started with wall work?” Stathis mused, working his way through the thought. “Companies usually leave this to the last, call it ‘busywork.’ But it is easier to prove competence with plain building and maintenance than by staging a perfect drill. A quicker way to show our usefulness.” His reasoning slid straight to the heart of things, a quality that never failed to please Theodorus.
“And consider what it signals if our first accomplishments are gifts to others,” Theodorus went on. “Those houses we set in order will remain long after we move on. Ready for another company, or, most importantly, for those who need shelter - an easy way to curry favour.”
Below, his corps labored in the ditch, recutting its slope and casting the earth inward to crown a shallow berm that would keep the rains from undercutting the fence. Others worked the line itself, probing for softened soil at the base of each post, prying out rot, setting new stakes hacked from the logs they’d gathered. The men singed the buried ends over coals until the sap hissed and the wood blackened to form a crude bulwark against rot. Stouter recruits worked the mallets, driving home stakes into the near-frozen ground with tired grunts, shoulders bucking up and down in concert with each satisfying thud. It was music to Theodorus’s ears, who knew the other walls would only see proper repair after the thaw came. A long time for his company to hold the lead, a statement of competence that would stand for some time to come.
“Think of what the people see when they look upon our stout fortifications,” Theodorus added softly, almost to himself, “and compare them with the others that lie fallow.”
“Is that why you asked to be in charge of the main gate, milord?” Stathis wondered, his eyebrows jumping in realization. “Because it faces the town?”
Theodorus nodded. “I want the image of the bizarre company more labourer than levy front and center in people’s minds. It also projects security, a valuable balm in these trying times.” Stathis fell quiet, turning over all the different ripples Theodorus accounted for. If only he knew the stone he meant to drop into the long still pond that was Suyren. This was only the beginning.
“My lord.” Demetrios approached from the direction of the keep, Stefanos in tow. The two came at a purposeful clip, cloaks snapping, faces set.
“Demetrios.”
“We have secured a meeting with the servant you wished to question.” Demetrios kept his voice low, his gaze flicking briefly to Stathis with a meaning the veteran did not miss.
“Their angle on that berm is near true,” Theodorus said to Stathis, shading his eyes. “Make sure they break the crown at the scuppers so water has a path.”
“Aye.” Stathis started to move, then paused, watching the men along the palisade test each post with a practiced jab and twist. “They take pride in it,” he noted, almost to himself. “That’s new.”
“Pride follows purpose,” Theodorus said in parting. “We’ve given them both.”
Theodorus and Demetrios cut back toward the castle proper, Stefanos ghosting a pace behind, his head on a swivel, sifting the passage for unwanted eyes - or ears.
“The nanny?” Theodorus asked, voice low and face set.
“Yes,” Demetrios confirmed.
Hypatius’s moves against Theodorus had been increasingly overt; the tithe obstruction his most frontal engagement yet. He was now actively thwarting Theodorus, so a reaction was needed - to stand still was to fall behind. He would catch the predator before he became prey. The hunt had begun.
Whether Lord Adanis, Hypatius or both suspected his true mission remained its own gnawing problem. If they ever learned he was the Doux’s spy sent directly to the heart of Suyren to take measure of its true pulse…it would not merely end his career, it would likely end
him.
A dangerous game to take part in with a player of Hypatius’ calibre. Even more so when you consider the home court advantage they held.
He’d spun a fanciful story to garner the Steward’s support, but he didn’t actually believe any of the nonsense. It was bait, nothing more, a desperate move to keep the steward’s power relevant before the innocent man let it slide from his grasp. That the rotund man was the most powerful tool in Theodorus’s arsenal was a daunting prospect.
The solution was clear: he needed more weapons, more information. He’d been careful in his moves so far, playing the long game. It was time to act.
Between Theophylact, Othon, and the various servants that he’d cultivated, Theodorus’s net had widened. Extra rations and better pallets were not only to buy goodwill from his troops. It was about cultivating personal loyalty to him, not to Suyren, grasping a foothold in hostile territory. But they were still a laughable force. He had to navigate around his enemies and avoid direct engagement. It was the first art of war for a reason: know your enemy, and know yourself.
Thus, he’d tasked Demetrios with finding ways to crack the safe, or people who knew its combination. Their target was the perfect, ready source of information. But one that came with a whole host of complications.
“I said a lighter touch on the needle, Hilda.” Old Zeta’s voice, thin as a drawn thread, cut through the air of the weaving room. Her posture was a rod of iron despite the years, as if they had not bowed her so much as straightened her. “How many times must I remind you of this?” Her pitch carried the creak of decades schooling the ladies of House Nomikos. On the table sprawled a grand tapestry, the tale of a grand hunt spread across its threads, soldiers and animals tearing each other apart in savage gore.
“I’m. Trying.” A prepubescent girl with stark, black hair sat, hunched and uncomfortable, over a piece of the gargantuan effort.
“Try harder,” Zeta said, weary rather than cruel. A ripple of giggles rose from the older students working the far panel.
An arm, pale as fresh parchment, slid from the curtain of copper hair beside Hilda and steadied her clumsy wrist. From the door left slightly ajar, Theodorus watched. Old Zeta, catching him at the edge of her sight, tipped the barest nod.
“That’s enough, needles down.” She declared, rapping the frame. “You’ve worried this piece enough for one day. Cool your heads. Next session I want you properly focused. The work must be perfect for the end-of-year feast.”
The room loosened at once, silk whispering and stools scraping. The ladies clustered and flowed out in small constellations, drawn to twin centers: one orbited the tall, dark-eyed eldest Nomikos dressed a Neptune blue, another hovered about the copper-haired Venus he had met outside Adanis’s office. Red hair, rust-colored eyes; he remembered both, and the ease with which she gathered the stragglers to her side spoke to a certain measure of gravity.
She noticed him as her group exited last, eyes glinting in surprise. It seemed Theodorus wasn’t the only one who recognized the other. She dropped into a low bow, the hem of her dress scraping the floor, a gesture her entourage copied a heartbeat late and a shade too shallow.
“Captain Theodorus, to what do we owe the pleasure of your visit?” The interest behind the eyes seemed sharper than simple curiosity.
“There is a matter I must discuss with Madame Zeta.” Theodorus felt the costumary smile settle into place - the one he wore when sizing up a new predator…or a new prey.
“With the old stooge?” The black haired menace asked with exaggerated surprise, voice cracking. “What could you possibly want with her?”
“Hilda.” The red-haired beauty cut in, voice crisp. “Manners. Madame Zeta watches.” Across the room, the old mistress was indeed watching, head tilted, measuring Theodorus from afar with a dry, appraising stare.
Hilda only shrugged. “She watches, but she does not listen. I don’t think she even roused during the last thunderstorm-” The sentence strangled as the lead Nomikos girl’s hand lifted, a light motion that carried a heavy touch of command. Presence, Theodorus noted. And some sense.
“I apologize for the lapse in decorum, Captain.” She flicked two fingers; Hilda rolled her eyes, then mirrored the words and dipped clumsily. “My cousin is merely curious. I confess I am as well.”
“It is no bother, my lady,” Theodorus assured her, his excuse ready and well rehearsed. “It is quite simple, really. My station has risen, but I have not yet found a match. I hoped to consult Madame Zeta on which ladies-in-waiting are presently in residence, nothing more.” The claim detonated softly among the group crowding them. A cluster of explosive whispers and huddled shoulders told Theodorus it might not have been as unnoticed an affair as he had thought. None personified the surprise felt more so than the feisty black-haired Nomikos.
“You’re doing what?!” Hilda blurted, eyes all but springing from her head.
“Hush. Everyone.” The lead Nomikos struggled to corral them, her burgundy skirts swaying with her brisk motion - and perfectly mirroring her own complexion. “W-well, that is certainly an important matter, Captain. W-We will not keep you from it any longer.” She hurried a hasty curtsy, eager to flee.
Theodorus stopped her with a courteous palm. “A moment, my lady.” She had pricked his interest; presence plus poise marked a potential player, however young. He wasn’t someone to overlook even the smallest piece. “I do not believe I’ve had the pleasure of learning your name.”
“C-Cassandra.” Color swept up her throat to her cheeks; she met his gaze only to flinch aside and then force herself back. “It is Cassandra, my lord.” Another name placed on the board. Whether asset or obstacle, he could not yet say.
He took her hand lightly and guided it to his lips. “A pleasure, Lady Cassandra,” he said, letting his gray eyes meet her bronze ones for one measured beat before releasing her.
Cassandra barely managed to bob her head and trace a quick escape. Her little court flowed after her in a frantic rustle of silk and breathless giggles.
Demetrios drifted to Theodorus’s shoulder, voice just above a breath. “Really, my lord?”
“What is it?” Theodorus asked, while Stefanos - reading the need for a quiet conversation - slid toward Madame Zeta with a servant’s easy chatter, drawing the old hawk’s attention.
“I told you we should have used a different excuse,” Demetrios murmured.
“No other excuse would have held up upon closer scrutiny; we talked about this.” Theodorus watched the ladies cross the corridor in record pace, all giggles and gossip. “As I told you before, I have no intention of falling for any of the ladies, rest assured.” Besides the fact that he was placed here to spy on and indict the Nomikos House head, a fact that placed him squarely against the family, Theodorus was in spirit a sixty-plus-year-old divorcee. He actively recoiled against the idea of entering a romantic relationship with a teenager. Life had also tamed his base instincts; beauty was a poor measurement of the worth of a person, however insistently his young, hormone-filled body might disagree.
“Then what was that, my Lord?” Demetrios asked. “Word would have spread anyway; now I fear how far - and how fast.”
“Good.” Theodorus’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “A confused enemy trips on his own two feet.” And the brothers would certainly wonder what on earth Theodorus was doing.
“I fear you are not taking in the whole picture, My lord.” Theodorus could tell Demetrios was holding back a sigh. “For as cunning and astute as you are. You are certainly blind to matters of love.”
God, it had come in full circle; Demetrios now sounded like his ex-wife. “I’m well aware that the girl might be interested in me, Demetrios. Do not treat me for a fool.” The edge in his voice came sharper than he liked.
“Then what are you doing?”
Theodorus gazed out a window opening over the inner court. Below, the gaggle poured into sunlight, cutting diagonally across the flagstones toward the women’s hall. At their center, Cassandra burned red with the quick heat of a crush, head bent as if to hide from the light that had found her. Theodorus studied the little constellation, the way the others orbited her, the way she held their attention even while flustered.
“I am casting a line into the sea,” he said at last, his tone of a frigid callousness.
Demetrios’s silence judged the words all by itself.
Theodorus did not look away. He wasn’t above using an innocent girl’s heart to accomplish his goals. He guessed his wife had been right. He could be quite heartless when it came to love.
Nur felt the age of the coarse horsehide map in its grainy drag, in the way the hide pulled its lines crooked with time. The information was old, distorted - a lie told in its contours. It stirred a flash of salty pain in Nur; the Theodoran map had been much the same.
Good
, Nur thought savagely. The worse the information, the better. A poor map was less a crutch and more a warning. In an invasion, what mattered most was flexibility; nothing could be taken at face value.
He had learned that the hard way.
His fist, covered in scars and dark, thick hair in equal measure, tightened until the skin split, another red line to add to the collection he’d gathered of late.
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Anything that reminded him of that disaster, no matter how faint, only drove him on. Its pain was a perverse, miserably wonderful voice that had guided Nur in the two months since. Stepping down as Kalga had proved a boon after all. No more useless, fussy ceremonies. No more politics and public faces. Now he was free to think like a nomad should: war, blood, and plunder-“AHHHG!”
Nur seized the bowl of Kumi wine he’d half emptied - the fifth such cup he’d downed the last hour - and hurled it with all his strength. It shattered against a tent pole, slopping white across the felt and ropes of the command tent he’d claimed since his demotion. He refused to sleep in the comforts of the Palace halls, with its vipers and sycophants. Nur smashed his bloody fist - scraped and pierced with pottery shards - onto the table, damn near breaking the plank clean through.
The fucking disaster down south had derailed all his plans, his entire way of life. It had been his greatest humiliation, and here he was trying to dress it as a minor setback? Was he lying to himself now? Was he fucking delusional?
Lying to himself even in the confines of his mind, how low he had fallen. Lies, even whispered in the skull’s dark, were still lies. A true warrior faced his wounds head-on, he did not hide under veils of excuses.
Nur clenched until his knuckles burned. Blood slid from his palm and pattered onto the yellow, trampled grass underfoot, staining it a dark red, and clearing his mind from the kumis haze.
The main flap snapped open. A young man, clean-shaven, dark and wind-tanned, smelling of horse and speed, slid inside with no more warning than the wind.
“My Kalga! Are you alright?” His sabre was already out, armor fastidious and well-tended, as he squared to meet an unseen foe. “Who is there? Show yourself, mangy cur!” he barked, prowling the dim corners as if the canvas itself might strike.
“There is no one, you damn fool.” Nur snapped, the words hot with drink and shame.
Adel kept moving, meticulous even in alarm, until his gaze snagged on the glitter of shards. He traced the splashed kumis across the floor to Nur’s blood-slick hand. His eyes widened, concern overtaking fury.
“What happened, my Kalga?” He took a careful step nearer, tense as a bowstring. The set of his mouth was the spit of his elder brother. Nur cursed himself for being saddled with so green a recruit as his second-hand, and cursed the need that had made it so.
“Nothing. Go back outside.” Nur said as he began to tear out pottery shards from his palm with blunt indifference. It had been a moment of lapse, he he breathed deeply, centering himself.
The wet crack of a shard leaving flesh drew a visible wince from the spotless young warrior. “Careful, my Kalga. The bleeding…” Adel’s face blanched slightly even as he moved to fuss at Nur’s arm.
“I have no need of your help, boy.” Nur’s order came flat as a blade. The youth only half heard it, drifting closer until his gaze snagged on the map, now blotched dark where blood had spattered across the horsehide.
“The çapul planning, is it not going well?” he ventured, throat working as he braced for the blowback.
“That is none of your concern,” Nur said, ice in the syllables. He upended the jug of kumis over his palm in a single brusque pour and wrenched a cloth tight around the wound. He couldn’t even properly cow one nervous foal - how low his word had fallen. He knotted the cloth harder at the sting of the thought.
“I can help you plan the raid, my Kalga,” Adel tried again, looking down shyly. “I… I haven’t much experience, but I’ll help however I can.” The boy’s earnestness triggered something dark in Nur.
He moved with fury towards the boy. “Do not ever presume again that I require your help.” He spat, jabbing his bloody hand up into the boy’s face, slapping him across with it. “You are an ignorant welp, not your brother. Not Mustafa.” He all but spat the name; its violence the only way to force those ash-dry words through his teeth. Saying it felt like prying a splinter from bone.
The hurt landed on the foal, too. That Nur was forced to continue the tradition of taking beys from the Ak-Kaya clan was a bitter medicine to swallow. A cruel joke to add to the recent tragedy of his life.
The boy’s mouth trembled, coming perilously close to crying. Nur stopped the boy from further shaming himself. “Get the fuck out of my tent.” He rasped, a mean thing that scraped through his weathered, parched lips. “And never call me by that title again. I’m not Kalga-Sultan. Not anymore.”
Adel couldn’t escape the tent fast enough, mind reeling.
Nur dropped onto the rawhide campaign stool, the frame creaking under his weight. It was time to plan the next one. An excursion into the Dykra, the wild southeastern frontier the europeans had all but abandoned to raids, leaving its people to fend for themselves.
Lithuanian settlements there shifted like a cloudcover buoyed by a steppe wind - ever-changing. Far-flung villages empty of coin, full only of hardy serfs who had learned to lift stakes at the first dust of hooves from Tatar marauders. Their ‘Grand’ Prince toasted his alliance with the Khanate while letting the border rot, leaving them these scraps to maintain the status quo. Disgusting. What kind of suzerain abandons a third of his country? A European one.
It mattered not. Nur needed a victory so resounding it would scour his shame clean. The peasants were starving and silver-poor, but the Khanate had no need of neither grain nor greens; what it needed was slaves. He had lost close to three-quarters of the çapul in the disaster. He would earn back thrice the amount in chattel and coin.
With the Kalga seat open, all four of the Khan’s sons were suddenly racing to distinguish themselves by any means: currying the clans, meddling in feuds for pledges, even sending feelers to foreign courts. Nur spat in the face of it. These were important, of course, but he, better than anyone, knew his father. There was one thing he prized above all. Martial prowess.
The clans were finicky and needed a stern guiding hand, and the fear of the whip if they stepped out of line. That is what had won them their independence, and what would keep it. Which was why the failed raid had marked him unfit in his father’s eyes the instant the news arrived.
So he’d take the lessons, he’d take the hatred that sat lodged in his heart, and he would use it for fuel until he won back all the power owed to him. He’d not slept properly since, pouring his lifeblood into the coming attack, revising routes and relays, scouts and signals. This raid would work. It had to.
The tent snuck open when he was deep in his work once more.
“My Kalga…” It was Adel once again, chastened, eyes lowered this time.
“Did I not tell you not to call me that, welp?” Nur didn’t bother to turn. He squinted at the fading light, tracing the route of destruction he would wrought. “You had better have good cause to disturb me twice in one night.”
“It is about my brother,” The boy began.
Nur’s quill fell. He rose in a single motion, turning with an intensity that startled the little foal, eyes boring into Adel with a honed edge.
“Mustafa. He is alive.” The boy breathed out the words, barely believing them.
Nur nearly fell from the revelation. Mustafa wasn’t dead; he hadn’t killed his blood brother. At least one of them still lived.
“Where is he?” Nur demanded as soon as he realized his lack of composure, cursing the relief he’d shown. “Is he here?” He was already forcing on his kaftan and burka, robe and outer coat both.
“Not quite, my Kalga…”
Nur marched upon Chufut-Kale’s main corridor like a commander leading a cavalry charge - stride quick and deadly, visage contorted in savagery, ready to heap destruction upon his enemy. In the distance, he sighted his target.
Yusuf, the Khan’s deadly enforcer, detached himself from the black rock flanking the Khan’s private study. “Well, well. Look who it is,” he said with a smile that was half bored drawl at the lack of commotion and half mock. “Strolling the castle in the dark?”
“I must see the Khan at once.” Nur’s voice was less human pitch and more animal growl. He strode directly to the door, but the royal executioner bodily stopped him, heaving his massive gut in the way.
“The Khan is busy.” Yusuf said, eyes glinting. Excitement had found him in the nick of time; he was just thinking of drifting off.
“I do not care.” Nur angled to slip past, testing his speed against Yusuf’s bulk.
“I’m not sure I like your tone, boy. Or your intent.”
“This is the second time you’ve barred my passage,” Nur said, his voice a cold, icy steppe breeze that scoured the Taiga. “Move. Or there won’t be a third.” Nur’s hand dropped to his blade, fully ready to skewer the brute in one clean thrust.
“Really?” The fat man licked his lips, almost pleased. “And how will you do that?” His fist dipped to the holster and closed around a six-flanged mace. Yusuf’s deadliness with the Gurz was well known.
The hallway went taut. Silence stretched thin as a horsehair, the sort that frays once then parts when met with a jagged knife, until a voice rolled from beyond the door.
“Yusuf.” The Khan’s tone was a gravel that seemed to emanate from the stark stones themselves, stopping the blood barely a heartbeat before it ran.
“Let him in.”
The enforcer’s eyes narrowed at the order. Nur watched the battle play out behind that loyal hound’s stare: the taste for blood yanked short by the Khan’s leash. Yusuf forced himself back into his usual alcove, the weary stone polished and scraped to his shape.
Loyalty had won this time. Yusuf’s eyes promised the next might not be so simple.
Nur wrenched the door open with fury, his already foul mood further tested by the encounter.
Inside, the study was a furnace. Incense pooled in a cloying haze, smelling of amber and musk - the scent the Khan immersed himself in as if it sharpened thought. The walls bore only what mattered: a fine lambskin saddle, a braided rawhide bridle, a pair of hawking gloves, and the Khan’s own weapons - a light, smooth-curved sabre with a plain bone hilt, and a pale laminated bow of wood and horn - each kept oiled to a quiet sheen.
All of it ready to be seized on a moment’s notice for any need that arose, be that a hunt, a sudden journey,
or war
. His father tended the kit himself and had always harried Nur since boyhood with the same lesson: a nomad must be able to ride on a moment’s notice. The treasured memory only made his fury even more incandescent.
“What is it you want?” The Khan didn’t even look up from the Qu’ran he consulted, finger following a neat line of script for some dispute that required his word.
Nur towered over him, his shadow swallowing the torchlight, growing to match his anger. “We are negotiating with cattle herders now?”
The Khan flipped a page unhurriedly, seated cross-legged on the luxurious futon that sat on the raised dais beyond his desk - the step itself a clean border between a guest’s ground and the Khan’s domain.
“You plan to make peace with them? To forgive their transgressions and the blood they spilt?” The Khan’s nonchalance only stoked Nur’s fury even further.
“A necessary sacrifice after the humiliating defeat my son orchestrated.” He still did not look up. The Khan’s tone was smooth, unruffled, as though humoring a child’s tantrum.
“Is Mustafa also a ‘necessary sacrifice’?” Nur could not contain the bitter venom that spread from his tongue. “We learn that he is alive, and then we promptly hand him to our enemies as a hostage? Bow to our subjects and let them tread on our necks?” Spittle flew, Nur’s eyes gaped wide and hot. “We leave him to live or die by their whim?!” Dots of wet struck the Qur’an’s margin. The Khan’s hand stilled.
“What if he is?” He asked quietly, setting down the reed pen and closing the book with deliberate care. “Does a worthless loser have any right to speak on the matter?”
“We ought to be invading the insolent wretches for even suggesting such terms!” Nur’s fist slammed the desk, crushing the book beneath it. “Not cowering and bending ourselves backwards to please them!”
The Khan rose with the surge of a bull and the speed of a loosed horse. Nur had to jerk back to keep from being cracked by the sudden lift of his father’s head. He towered over Nur from his elevated perch.
“And I ought to whip you before the whole court for this disgrace!” His bare chest smelled of oil and grit, his breath of warm kumis. “And now you dare to question my decisions? Decisions brought about by your folly?!” He roared, face carved from hardened leather.
Nur had never been one to back down. He guessed he got that from his father. “Tell me this isn’t some petty revenge for my mistakes?” He leaned into his father, feeling the heat he let out - a brazier given form.
The Khan’s mouth twisted into a scornful, malefic smile that told Mustafa all he needed.
“Mustafa played no part in it. Demand him back.” Nur said, and there was command buried in it.
His father’s hand struck out like a viper, scoring him across the face and slinging him into the nearest wall. His skull thumped a tapestry showing the clans sworn to the Giray clan; the cloth tore loose and went skidding to the floor.
“Or what?” The Khan taunted, his eyes chips of jagged ice.
Nur answered with a guttural roar. He vaulted the desk and hit his father in the waist. They crashed together onto the ground, grappling for leverage like two bulls in a tight pen.
The Khan hooked Nur’s leg and twisted. Nur broke the hold with a shove to the hip and a shoulder that drove his father against the trophy wall. Antlers rattled, a boar’s skull clattered free and an armour set belonging to Nur’s great-grandfather crashed to the ground along with them. The Khan seized a porcelain vase - the single most valuable piece in the room - and, without a blink, smashed it over Nur’s crown. White shards and dust exploded, the pain singing a grating tune that left Nur’s ears ringing.
He caught the Khan’s chin with a savage uppercut from his bloody right hand, breaking his fist across his father’s jaw. The hit dazed the Khan, but it also drew a painful howl from Nur, who gritted through the pain as he wrapped his father’s middle between his arms and heaved, throwing him bodily across the desk.
Ink, quill, and the closed Qur’an slid and tumbled with Haci’s flying form. All hit the lower floor and sprawled out in a heap as Nur forced himself upright, ready for another strike.
The door exploded outward on its hinges as Yusuf charged through. For one stunned second, he simply took in the utterly unbelievable scene: father and son, Khan and Kalga, scraped and bloody from fighting each other, a host of toppled furnishings between them.
In the next moment, his mace was out of his holster, the flanges catching torchlight. His eyes went flat and final as he started forward to crush Nur.
His father rose from the ground, pushing off one knee as he spat a bloody phlegm onto a treasured Persian rug. “Yusuf.” He said, tone level, flat. “Leave.”
The enforcer checked mid-stride, puzzlement creasing the heavy planes of his face. “My Khan-”
“-This is between me and my son.” The Khan’s visage was a blank page, stained red by a trickle of blood that flowed out of the corner of his mouth. “Do not disturb us again.” It was a voice that promised death for disobedience - immediate and untheatrical.
Yusuf’s jaw bunched. He stepped back, slid the mace home without looking, and withdrew in a silence so complete Nur heard the door settle against the frame.
The Khan took to tidying the study, picking up the Qu’ran and smoothing its bent pages, righting the inkpot, corking it to keep the black from breathing out. Nur stood motionless, chest heaving, wondering, through the seethe, why he wasn’t dead.
Giray walked over to the futon for esteemed guests he kept and eased down with the grace of a
kaplan
, every joint fluent and silent as a tiger.
“Sit.” his tone was a banked version of the roaring fire that it had been a moment ago. “Please, son.” Nur had rarely heard such a tone from his father, much less such a heartfelt request coming from him. He was a man who commanded, not one who asked.
Nur dropped from the dais on his side and crossed to the opposite cushion, settling cross-legged. He kept his gaze fixed, wary, schooling his face to stillness.
“You are right,” the Khan said. “I agreed to offer Mustafa as punishment for your defeat.” Nur began a biting retort, but held it back, feeling the weight of his father’s meaningful gaze. “The clans would accept nothing less. The warriors weren’t the real loss of the çapul. It was the sons. Too many sons. And the clan heads lay that at your feet.”
“Seit painted a self-serving picture that denigrated—”
“I am well aware of what was spoken,” the Khan cut in. “But the Bozkurt came away with their prestige least bruised by this whole debacle, the Shirin clan backs them, and their boy weaved a pretty little tale.” He reached to a low stand, drew out a small lacquered bowl, and set it precisely between them, dead center. As if marking a boundary neither should cross.
“The Shirim answer to us. You hold the power in the Khanate.” Nur shot back, his vexation at the loss of title bleeding through.
“That answer,” The Khan began quietly. “Shows how little you truly understand.” His gaze held Nur steady and told the truth as it was, not as Nur wanted to hear it. “The power rests in the clans. In the herds. You do not command a great herd; you guide it toward the direction you want. And even then, only if the ground is right and the wind favors you.”
He drew a blade from his belt. Ornate finery dressed the scabbard, but the steel within was honest - narrow, keen, balanced to the hand. The Khan owned no showpiece that could not draw blood if required, not even for ceremony. He turned it once, the oiled edge catching the light, then laid it across his knees.
“I could have protected you from demotion, but your prestige would have been in tatters. You would not hold any real influence.” The Khan said into the stunned quiet. “I stripped you of your title not only to punish you - though that is true, yes - but because I wanted you to wrest back the title of Kalga by your own hand.” He poured from his personal winseking, filling the cup between them with the vice they shared.
Nur could not help but scoff. “Do not lie to me.”
The Khan’s gaze did not waver. Nur felt the steadiness of it, the plainness. “Why me, then? Meñli has already stacked military honors at an age when most boys can barely sit a saddle.” He hated admitting it, but the brat had talent and wit.
“Meñli is a wild card.” The Khan’s face darkened. “He is a steppe fire, brilliant and devastating, but as much a ruin to us as to our enemies if the wind shifts. Genius and madness often ride the same horse.”
“You cannot deny his talent.”
“And I will not, I want to see him thrive. As I want all my sons,” the Khan revealed. “Do you know why the Great
Orda
, the largest empire the world has known, fractured? Infighting. Petty disputes. Blood fighting blood. For the Giray clan to thrive, we need
to hold
together
.” His hand closed on Nur’s forearm with sudden, urgent strength.
“I need you to lead the Giray,” he went on, voice low but intent. “And to keep Meñli on a leash loose enough to run, but firm enough to turn. To rule our people steadily and make use of all your brother’s talent.” Giray’s face turned melancholy. “Among my children, you alone best know the price we paid to rid ourselves of the Golden yoke.”
Aye, he did. Many sleepless nights on the cold steppe, where only the wind was your company, and disaster could come in a thunder strike. “I dream of a Khanate as broad as the ones of old, with my children soft, lazy, and content.”
Giray’s face hardened, and the moment passed. The mask of the intractable ruler was put on once more.
“But for that, you must master yourself.” The Khan took his dagger and cut a straight, unhesitant line deep across his palm. He did not flinch. Nur’s mouth fell open despite himself as understanding dawned on him. “Promise me this, blood of my blood.” The Khan squeezed; dark red welled and ran, drumming into the kumis. “You will claw back the throne, and you will temper the fire eating you. Harden it to serve this Khanate.”
Nur unwound the stained bandage from his ruined hand. Like him - like his standing - it was bruised, gashed, swollen. He clenched his mangled fist through the pain, opening the cuts until they dripped a torrent of blood into the wine, mixing with his father’s. “I promise, my Khan.” And so the blood oath was sealed, a scarlet tether binding Nur to the most important charge of his life.
Father and son shared the sour wine, gulping from it greedily amidst a cloud of incense as thick as the destiny they dreamt of from afar.

.
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Chapter 38: Blood of My Blood