Leong saw Li’s weight shift,

backed up,

went for a left heel kick—

Li pivoted,

the captain’s hands a blur

as he hurled Leong hard

to the ground.

Leong lay there. Winded.

In no state to appreciate

Li’s skill, the minimal exertion,

maximal precision with which the captain

had converted Leong’s momentum

to his downfall.

Li gave the merest dip of his head to Leong,

withdrew to stand by the king.

Leong managed a sitting position,

looked up at Gan, muttered,

“Sorry.”

Gan shrugged, helped him to his feet.

“You were thinking with your balls.

I should have known better.”

“You both should have known better.”

The woman—right there—

her eyes on a level with Leong’s—

“Next time I’ll bring

ankle bones so you two can play

like the other little boys.”

“Ankle bones?” echoed Gan

as Khidyr walked over to her horses.

Next time, thought Leong,

watching the sway of her ample hips.

There was going to be a next time.

PROPOSITION

Leong arrayed his many weapons

on a scarlet cloth near the king’s tent,

pulled off his tunic

to display his muscled chest,

picked up his sword,

thinking to clean and oil it

where Khidyr would see him.

No. Not the sword.

Khidyr was from the horse tribes,

she would value bows over swords.

He took his second-best bow from its case.

And then the object of Leong’s calculations,

the marvelous, magnificent Khidyr,

midwife and horse archer,

emerged from the tent.

Khidyr strode past him—

her beaded braids swinging,

her ample hips swaying—

to where Captain Li and King Xau

were training with weights.

Khidyr said something.

King Xau’s eyebrows shot upward.

The captain nodded.

Khidyr strode back over to Leong:

“Captain Li tells me you are off duty.

If this exhibition is aimed at me—”

she gestured at Leong’s naked chest,

at the weapons laid out below her—

“I presume you wish to have sex?”

“Here?! Now?”

“Well, I imagined we’d choose

a less conspicuous location.”

∗

He didn’t ask her why.

Of course not.

Too overexcited and distracted

even to stow his weapons

without help,

his fellow-guard Gan

taking pity on him.

If Leong had asked,

Khidyr would have told him

she wanted a lover who offered

no complications,

a man who would be gone

at summer’s end.

That a part of the truth,

not the whole of it.

She wanted a child.

Twenty-nine years old,

ready to nurse her own baby,

not help other women birth theirs.

And with no wish to become

the second or third wife

of a horse lord.

∗

Both of them bared

to the sun’s heat,

braced one atop the other

on an old felt blanket,

amid the smell of wild thyme

and a profusion of blue irises

so thick they seemed a second sky,

Khidyr the Horse Woman

rode Leong first at a gallop,

and then, Leong as eager

but less hasty,

at a walk.

Afterward,

Leong lay on his side,

curved round Khidyr’s curves,

watching a tiny beetle