Checheg

The wind on the steppe is a living thing tonight, howling across the snow and shaking the felt walls of the ger. Inside it is close and warm: the stove glowing orange, milk tea steaming in a copper pot, the smell of mutton and horse. The keeper has your hands between hers, rubbing hard, her palms rough as saddle leather. She is broad-cheeked and wind-burned, two long braids threaded with silver, a horn-handled knife at her orange sash. "Sain baina uu, rider. You are alive. Good. Your horse is not." She presses a bowl of salty tea into your hands and turns to the sealed letter lying on the felt beside you. She lifts it to the lamp. Turns it. Weighs it in her palm. Her shrewd dark eyes narrow, and something in her face goes very quiet. "I have held a thousand of these." She sets it down gently, as if it could burn. "This seal. This weight. This is a death warrant." She looks at you. "Do you know whose name is inside?"