The Tiger's Daughter Read online

  I’m going to see you again. You’re not getting out of that. My uncle is the Son of Heaven, you know. I don’t really like him but that means people have to do what I tell them.

  Respectfully,

  O-Shizuka

  After horse riding, reading your letter was my favorite way to spend my time. Kenshiro had other things to take care of, though. My mother insisted he learn how to wrestle and shoot and ride in the traditional way.

  The trouble was, I didn’t have any friends while my brother was away.

  While Hokkarans hate me because I am dark and flaxen haired and remind them of a horse, the Qorin dislike me because they think I am too pampered. When I was a child, it was worse.

  My nose didn’t help.

  I have my mother’s round cheeks, which you always seemed to have an unending fascination for. I have her wavy hair, her skin, her height, her bowleggedness, her large hands, her grass green eyes.

  But of all the features on my wide, flat face, my nose stands out. It is narrow, pinched, and begging for a fist to reshape it. My father’s stamp on me.

  Qorin children are not known for being well behaved. One day I was out riding on a borrowed colt, and when I returned, I found a half circle of my cousins waiting for me. At their head stood a pudgy ten-year-old whose face was round as a soup bowl and flecked with freckles.

  “You’re Burqila’s daughter!” she said. “The one with the stupid nose!”

  I frowned and covered my face. I tried to nudge my horse forward, but my cousins did not move.

  “Needlenose,” called my cousin. “Come off your horse, Needlenose! We’ve got to wrestle!”

  Wrestling is my least favorite of the three manly arts. Riding? I can, and have, ridden a horse all day. Archery is more a passion than a chore. But wrestling? I’m still a lean little thing, Shizuka; my cousins have always been able to throw me clean across the ring.

  “What?” sneered my cousin. She slapped her broad chest, smacked her belly. “Are you afraid?”

  I touched my horse’s shoulder. Horseflesh is always solid and firm and warm.

  “No.”

  “Then you’d better get down off that horse!” she said. “Don’t make us get you!”

  I raised a brow. I was on a horse. The entire purpose of riding was to be able to get away from things fast.

  But maybe I was a bit too cocky about that, seeing as I was surrounded by people who spend their whole lives around horses. Who own horses. And, as fate would have it, the colt I was riding belonged to one of my bully cousins. My mother thought I should learn how to handle a stranger’s mount as well as I could my own. I thought that was silly—as if I was ever going to ride anything but my grey. Still, she plopped me down on this colt and set me off for the day. My cousin couldn’t have been happier. He whistled and pulled out a treat from his deel pocket, and the horse trotted right up to him.

  Which meant I was now close enough for my half dozen cousins to pull me off my horse and slam me to the ground.

  What followed was a beating that I shall not waste any words on. You know how savage children can be. Qorin traditions forbid us from shedding one another’s blood, but that has never stopped us from beating the tar out of each other. Kicking, punching, hair pulling—none of these draw blood. So it was.

  I limped back to the ger in tears. The moment my mother laid eyes on me, she sprang to her feet and wrapped me in an embrace. Through sign language and interpreters, she told me she’d take care of things.

  It wasn’t hard for her to find out who put me in such a state, given how few Qorin are left. Within two hours, my mother corraled a half dozen of my cousins near her ger. Mother paced in front of them. Her fingers spoke in sharp, punctuated gestures.

  “I understand the lot of you beat my daughter,” Kenshiro translated.

  My cousins shifted on the balls of their feet. A boy toward the end of the line cried. I stood behind my mother and sniffled.

  “You are children,” Kenshiro continued. “My sisters’ children, at that. If you were anyone else’s brats, I’d have the beating returned two times over. But my sisters have always supported me, even if they have spawned lawless brutes.”

  She came to a stop and pointed to the tallest cousin, the chubby girl who wanted to wrestle me. As she stepped forward, I wrapped my arms around my mother’s leg.

  “Otgar,” said Kenshiro, “Zurgaanqar Bayaar is the meekest of my sisters. When she was young, she was quiet as Shefali, and half her size. Tell me, would you have pulled her from her horse and beaten her senseless?”

  Otgar crossed her arms. “Mom doesn’t have a stupid nose,” she said.

  What was it with her and noses? Hers was dumb-looking, too! Her whole face was dumb!

  “Otgar Bayasaaq,” said Kenshiro, “you speak Hokkaran, don’t you?”

  Otgar nodded. “Who doesn’t?”

  “A lot of children your age don’t,” Kenshiro said. Ironic. My mother chuckled at her joke, making my brother speak those words. “And you can read it?”

  “Yes,” Otgar said. “My father is a merchant, Aunt Burqila, you know this!”

  My mother nodded.

  “Very well,” she said through Kenshiro. “Since you have such a fascination with my daughter, you are now assigned to be her companion. For your first task, you will help her learn to read and write the Ricetongue. She’s received a letter from Naisuran’s daughter. Start with that.”

  “What?” Otgar and I shouted at once.

  “She’s scrawny and dumb-looking!” Otgar protested.

  “She hates me!” I said.

  But my mother shook her head.

  “My word is final,” Kenshiro spoke. “Get into the ger now, or I will throw you in it.”

  We trudged into the ger, all right, but it was some time before either of us spoke to each other. Two hours in, I decided that even if she was uncouth, if she could read Hokkaran, she could help me.

  So I handed her your letter.

  She yanked it from me and read it with a frown. “Grandmother’s tits,” she said with all the grace of a ten-year-old. “It really is Naisuran’s daughter. Guess I shouldn’t expect any less from a spoiled tree-baby like you.”

  “Don’t like trees,” I said. “Too tall.”

  “Yeah, well, they don’t move around either,” said Otgar. “And neither do you.” She sighed. “Fine. Let’s take a look, I guess. Can you write?”

  I shook my head.

  “Can you read this?”

  Again, I shook my head.

  She tilted her head back and groaned. “I didn’t think Burqila hated me this much,” she said. “But I guess we’ve got work to do.”

  I can’t remember how long it took us to write back. I knew what I wanted to say to you, of course. Otgar wrote it down for me and walked me through each character ten, twenty times. She’d write them in the soot and ash of the campfire.

  The trouble came when I tried to write them myself. Invariably I’d write a different character from the one I was instructed, and it would be flipped or upside down. Missing strokes, superfluous strokes; it was a mess, Shizuka. And after weeks of trying, I hadn’t learned a single one.

  Otgar was at her wits’ end over it. “You speak Ricetongue like a native.”

  Pointing out my Hokkaran blood upset people, and she was beginning to think of me as more Qorin than Hokkaran. I kept quiet.

  “It’s the writing,” she said. She cracked her knuckles. “Needlenose, you don’t plan on going back there, do you?”

  I shook my head. From the way my mother kept talking about things, I’d be spending more time with her on the steppes in the future. According to her marriage contract, she was not allowed to style herself Grand Kharsa of the Qorin, but her children were not bound by such rules. My father wanted Kenshiro to succeed him as Lord of Oshiro. That left me to take up her lost title.

  I didn’t know what any of that meant, except for two things: One day I’d be as terrifying as my mother, and the
steppes were home now.

  Otgar nodded. She reached for one of the precious few pieces of vellum we had. It was a rough thing, jagged at the edges, that reeked of old skin. She grabbed an old ink block and sat down in front of me.

  “Repeat what you wanted to write,” she said. “I’ll do it for you. If you do go back to Hokkaro, you’ll have servants to write things down for you anyway.”

  Then, as if she realized what she was saying, she grunted.

  “But I’m not a servant,” she said. “Don’t you ever forget that, Needlenose. I’m your cousin. I’m helping you because we’re family, and because Burqila asked—”

  “—told—”

  She pursed her lips. “Asked me to,” she finished. “Now, let’s hear it one more time.”

  So I spoke, and so Otgar wrote.

  O-Shizuka,

  Thank you for saying sorry, even though you didn’t have to. I’ve never seen a peony, or a chrysanthemum. There aren’t many flowers here. Mostly it’s grass and wolves, and sometimes marmots. Every now and again, we will see one or two flowers. Of the ones I’ve seen, I like mountain lilies the most. They grow only on the great mountain Gurkhan Khalsar. Gurkhan Khalsar is the closest place there is to the Endless Sky, so those flowers are very sacred.

  If you teach me more about flowers, I can teach you how to wrestle, but I’m not very good.

  My cousin is helping me write to you. Hokkaran is hard.

  Shefali Alsharyya

  I sent that off and waited every day for your reply. Our messengers all hated me. Whenever I saw one, I’d tug their deel and ask if there was anything for me.

  We take some pride in our messengers. Before we began acting as couriers, it was almost impossible to get a message from the Empire to Sur-Shar. My mother saw how foolish that was. After she’d traveled the steppes to unite us, she established one messenger’s post every one week’s ride. With the help of the Surians she recruited into the clan, each post was given a unique lockbox that only the messengers could open. Anyone could drop any letters they needed mailed inside the lockboxes. For a higher fee, you could have one of the messengers come personally pick up whatever it was.

  Everyone used our couriers—Surians, Ikhthians, Xianese, and even your people. Oh, the nobles would never admit to it, and we had to employ Ricetongues in the Empire itself—but they used us all the same.

  Which meant they paid us.

  People seem to think my mother is wealthy because of the plunder from breaking open the Wall. In fact, she is wealthy because of the couriers. That and the trading. You’d be surprised how canny a trader Burqila Alshara can be.

  But the fact remains that I pestered our messengers so much that they came to hate visiting us. Every single day, I’d ask for news.

  For months, there wasn’t any.

  But one day there was. Another bright red envelope dipped in priceless perfume. Once I read it, it joined its sibling in my bedroll, so that I could smell it as I went to sleep.

  Alsharyya Shefali,

  Your calligraphy is terrible. Father says I shouldn’t be mad at you, because it is very strange that I can write as well as I do. I’m mad at you anyway. You are going to kill blackbloods with me someday. You should have better handwriting! Don’t worry, I’ll teach you. If I write you a new letter every day, and you reply to all of them, then you’ll be better in no time.

  Where are you now? Mother says you’re traveling. Qorin do that a lot. I don’t understand it. Why take a tent with you, when you have a warm bed at home? Do you have a bed? Do you have a room, or do you have to stay in your mother’s tent? Do you have your own big lumpy horse already? My father says I can’t have a proper one until I can take care of it, which is silly, because I’m the Imperial Niece and there will always be someone to take care of my horse for me.

  Maybe you can do it. Mostly I just want to go into the Imperial Forest. Father says there are tigers.

  My tutors tell me that I should be afraid of you and your mother. They say that Burqila Alshara blew a hole in the Wall of Stone and burned down Oshiro, and it took years before it was back to normal. They tell me that if your mother hadn’t married your father, then we’d all be dead.

  I don’t want us all to be dead, but if your mother could talk to my uncle—he keeps arguing with my father and making everyone upset. Do you think your mother could scare him?

  Are you afraid of your mother? I’m not afraid of mine, and people keep whispering about how dangerous she is. No one tells me not to talk to my mother, but everyone tells me not to talk to you. I think it’s because you’re Qorin.

  My tutors won’t tell me why they don’t like Qorin, but I’ve heard the way they talk about your people. I’m five years old. I’m not stupid. They don’t like Xianese people, either, but they’ll wear Xianese clothes and play Xianese music all the time.

  It doesn’t matter. I like you in spite of your awful handwriting, so they have to like you too.

  I hope you’re doing well.

  O-Shizuka

  So began our correspondence. You’d write to me; Otgar would read the letter out loud, and I’d say what I wanted them to write in return. I’ll have you know Otgar was indignant when you insulted her calligraphy. She was a ten-year-old, and she was trying hard! Not everyone is born with brush and sword in hand, Shizuka. There are scholars who write little better than Otgar did at the time.

  (She’s improved. You’ll be happy to know that, I think. The last time I had her write to you was when we were thirteen, and you commented on the marked improvement. She pretended not to take it to heart, but she made a copy of that letter before giving me the original.)

  Through the letters our friendship grew. You wrote to me of your endless lessons, of your mother’s insistence that you take up the zither despite your hatred of it. You’d tell me about the courtiers you met over the course of your day. Soon the letters grew several pages long.

  When I was seven, my mother announced we’d be returning to Oshiro for the summer. I told you all about it.

  “We will be sure to meet you at the gates,” you wrote. “I will have a surprise for you. Do not be late.”

  I cannot tell you how much that simple statement vexed me. A surprise. A surprise for me, from the Emperor’s niece. Kenshiro said it must be a pretty set of robes—something you’d like, that I would hate. Otgar said it would be something foolish like a mountain of rice.

  I remember when I came riding back to Oshiro. I didn’t see you at the gates, as you promised. Rage filled my young heart; doubt wrung it dry. What if we were late? I’d pestered my mother into moving faster than she’d planned, and I was riding ahead of the caravan by a few hours. What if that wasn’t enough?

  I took my first steps up the stairs into my father’s palace. Servants greeted me with bows and hushed whispers of “Oshiro-sur, welcome home.” My bare feet touched the floors.

  And that was when I saw it. The first pink peony, laid out with utmost care at the threshold. I picked it up. It smelled just like your letters. I smiled so hard, it hurt my face, and looked around. Yes, there was another, and another!

  I ran along the trail of flowers as fast as I could. Soon I was standing before our gardens, where I came to an abrupt stop.

  For there you were, standing in the doorway in your shining golden robes, your hair dark as night, your ornaments like stars. There you were, smiling like dawn itself. Behind you were hundreds of flowers, more than I’d ever seen in my entire life, in colors I could not name. There was the angry red of our first meeting, next to the deep scarlet of our last; there was day’s first yellow, swaying in the wind next to a gloaming violet.

  But it is you I remember most, Shizuka. Your face. Your happiness upon seeing me. And all the flowers somehow staring right at you, as if you were teaching them how to be so bright and cheerful.

  “There you are,” you said. “How do you like your flowers?”

  To this day, I do not know how you got them all to Oshiro. Whoever heard
of transporting an entire Imperial Garden? Who would believe me, if I told them? The future Empress of Hokkaro and all her Children, doing such a thing to impress a Qorin girl? Oh, the servants believe it, and I’m sure they’re talking about it to this day.

  It is just like you, I think, to casually do the impossible.

  THE EMPRESS

  TWO

  Flowers. Yes, Empress Yui—no, no, that was not the name she chose for herself, and it was not the name Shefali called her. Yui, a single character meant to shame her.

  Solitude.

  Her greatest friend, as her uncle saw things.

  But he was wrong. Besides Shefali and Baozhai, Shizuka’s greatest friends have always been the flowers.

  All her life, they have been at her side. One glance outside will show her the Imperial Gardens, where she spent so much of her youth. If she leans back, she can see them, swaying in the breeze outside like the dancers her father so treasured.

  It was her father who took her to the gardens. He’d always had a fondness for them. When she imagines his face, she sees a dogwood tree in the background and a sprig of the blooms tucked behind his ear. He is smiling in the midday sun, humming a tune he is too shy to share with anyone else.

  “My little tigress,” he’d say, helping her up onto the branches of a cherry blossom tree. He’d touch her on the nose, then pick the brightest flowers for her. Soon they wore matching adornments. “The Daughter is the finest poet in the land,” he said, “and see how her flowers always turn to greet you! She must have excellent taste, for you have always been my favorite poem.”

  How many times has she clung to that phrase?

  Is it still true?

  She shakes her head. O-Itsuki is long gone, she tells herself. Only his poetry remains, dropping from the lips of amorous scholars, lending bravery to the timid.

  Only his poetry, and his brother.

  Thinking of her uncle makes the Empress wince. Yoshimoto is nothing like his late brother. He does not even have the common decency to share a resemblance. Where Itsuki was tall and thin, Yoshimoto had always been short and stout. Where Itsuki’s cheeks were smooth, Yoshimoto wore a thick beard to hide his youth. Itsuki was a wild maple tree, Yoshimoto was …