The Tiger's Daughter Page 5

  You scoffed. “The weapon of cowards,” you replied. “The weapon of those who think our only enemies come from the North.”

  And so we stood beneath the plum tree and spoke of other things. You spoke, and as always, I listened.

  Two days later, your mother returned from her assignment in Shiratori Province. In those days she left often. On that particular morning, your mother returned with a man on a stretcher. We were not told what had happened, and in fact, we did not learn your mother was back until she called the two of us to meet her.

  We stood in the healer’s rooms. She was a stooped old relic, with more bald skin than hair and more hair than teeth. And yet, despite her appearance, she was no older than twenty-two. Such was the life of a healer.

  When we entered the room, she tried to shoo us away from the man in the stretcher. “This is not a sight for young eyes,” she said.

  But I’d seen men die before this. I did not move. And you were made of iron and fire; you did not move, either.

  “Leave them be, Chihiro-lao,” your mother said. “They are here on my command.”

  “I am going to put this man down, O-Shizuru-mon. You cannot wish for them to see that,” she said.

  But your mother paid this no heed, and came to kneel at our side. “Shizuka,” she said, “I understand you’ve chosen the sword.”

  “I have,” you said. “And nothing you can show me will change my mind.”

  “I thought you might say that,” said Shizuru. “Shefali-lun. Have you seen what happens to those who challenge your mother?”

  I thought of Boorchu and nodded.

  “Was it fast?”

  Again, I nodded.

  “That is because your mother is an honorable woman,” Shizuru said. “At least as long as the situation calls for it. What I am about to show you is different. If you both insist on leading a warrior’s life, you must know what happens when you are not careful.”

  I’d done no such insisting. On the steppes, you are either a warrior or a merchant or a sanvaartain, until you are old enough to simply be an old person. But I did not want to correct a woman who slew demons for a living.

  “Step aside, Chihiro-lao.”

  The healer lumbered out of the way.

  The man in front of us was a man in the loosest sense of the term. How long had it been since he was infected? Black coursed through his veins, black pulsed at his temples, black blossomed at his throat. His skin was pale and clammy. An unbandaged stump remained where his arm should’ve been. His eyes were closed, but his face contorted in pain. As we watched, shadows played beneath his skin, forming faces with two mouths and too many teeth. Sometimes we’d hear a popping sound, and one of his limbs would snap out of place—with the man himself not moving at all.

  “This man slew a demon today,” your mother said. “But he made the mistake of letting its blood mingle with his. When he dealt the beast its killing blow, a gout of it landed on the stump of his arm.”

  The man thrashed. Your mother drew her sword.

  My eyes flickered over to you. There you were, still as the noontime sun. You clenched your jaw and creased your robes with white-knuckled hands. Ah, Shizuka, you tried so hard to tear yourself away from what you were seeing!

  “He is having a violent reaction,” your mother continued, stepping toward him. “Normally he would lie in bed and rot of a fever before he began thrashing.”

  The healer smothered him with a pillow while your mother wrapped her hands in cloth.

  You reached for me.

  Your mother made a clean slice.

  There was a soft sound, then an awful smell. It was done. Shimmers clung to the underside of the pillow as the blood seeped up into it.

  Chihiro-lao winced. She looked right at the two of us and mouthed, “I’m sorry.” You weren’t looking at her, but I was, and I appreciated that moment of warmth. Children remember who showed them kindness when the world tried to make them cruel.

  This was necessary cruelty, but it was cruelty all the same.

  I gave her a little bow from the chest. It was the least I could do to thank her. Satisfied that my soul wasn’t lost, she made the sign of the eight over the man’s body. Then she bowed to your mother and left.

  She must have gone to fetch people to move the body. You needed at least four to do it safely, and though she was young her body was not. It would have to be five.

  O-Shizuru tore the cloth off her hands and wiped her blade clean. When she glanced at us, we still had linked hands.

  “When you use a sword, Shizuka,” she said, “you must get close to your opponent. And when your opponent’s blood is a poison to the gods themselves, you must be careful.”

  Shizuru must’ve expected you to buckle. Instead, you ground your bare heel into the floor.

  “Careful?” you roared. “I am O-Shizuka, born on the eighth day of the eighth month, eight minutes past Last Bell. I don’t need to be careful of the Traitor, Mother. He needs to be careful of us!”

  And so you turned and stormed off before your mother could say anything.

  You did not run. Instead, you walked as fast as you could while maintaining a degree of grace. Soon the plum tree rose above us, and soon we stood beneath it again. You stared up at it as if it offended you, and you finally snatched a fruit from it the way a queen backhands an unruly servant.

  “Shefali,” you said, “promise me something.”

  I nodded.

  “If I am ever foolish enough to have that happen to me, you will put me out of my misery within the day.”

  And at this, too, I nodded.

  I nodded because I was eight, and you were asking me to promise something that I never thought would happen. Because we were eight, and battle was still a distant dream in our minds, no matter how often we’d seen its effects. Because we were eight and standing beneath a plum tree, and nothing could hurt us.

  * * *

  THE NEXT DAY you began your formal swordplay lessons. And, yes, it’s true—from the moment the wooden sword touched your hands, you were a natural. As a horse is made to run, so you were made to wield a blade. Your strokes painted bruises on your instructor like ink on paper.

  But I was not so talented.

  Hokkarans favor straight swords. They’re well suited to your obsession with showy duels. On horseback it is different: a straight blade gets caught in your enemy’s neck, and you can hardly stop to retrieve it. A curved blade is more practical.

  Your instructor was an old man from Shiratori Province. The long years of his life bent his back and hobbled his knees, but with a sword in hand, he was spry as a youth. Complicated forms were to him as simple as rising up in the morning. Perhaps easier, given his age. He’d fought in the Qorin wars against my mother. Everyone his age had. But the color of my skin was the least of his concerns.

  “Oshiro-sur!” he’d shout, the veins in his neck pulsing. “Have you no grace? I ask you to be flowing water; you are a cliff face!”

  I frowned. I could be flowing water. When arrows left my bow, they were rain falling from the sky. When I was on my horse, we were the rampaging rapids of the Rokhon.

  But put me on my feet, put a straight sword in my hand, and ask me to move like a dancer?

  You noticed my discomfort.

  As the days wore on into months and the Daughter brought spring back to the lands, you insisted we go riding after sword lessons. The forests around Fujino were dense, and from your castle we could see the morning fog like a cloud come down from the heavens. It stayed until midday, when Grandmother Sky called it back. White on emerald green, vibrant and pale; the sight itself refreshing and enticing.

  It was your great-grandfather who commissioned that forest. In his day, it was only a thick circle of green around the palace. He was an avid hunter and wanted a place to keep his more dangerous game. Here, where he kept wolves and tigers and bears, you wished to hunt.

  “Come,” you said. “My men always go hunting in that forest; they never
take me along. Too dangerous for an Imperial Flower, they say.”

  Forests intimidated me as much as castles did. No roof is a good roof, whether it be carved stone or a branch. I kept calm by remembering I’d see patches of blue, at least. Maybe I could stitch them together and make a patchwork sky.

  I was too distracted by my little mental sewing experiment to keep track of where we went. Only when the scent of horses came to me did I realize you’d led us all the way to the stables. How you did it without anyone questioning us is beyond me—but then again, who would ever question you?

  Once I realized our horses were nearby, a grin spread wide across my face. I could feel my gray nearby, I could feel her in my bones. How far would we ride? The forest was large. My gray didn’t have much experience navigating thorns and brambles. Would she be all right? Perhaps I should pack extra sweets … she likes them far more than any horse of her caliber should. They’re ruining her teeth. But how am I to deny her? How can anyone look into those soulful pools of brown and deny them a sweet?

  “Your Imperial Highness, are you well?”

  Ah. Right. In Hokkaro, you had hostlers instead of tending horses yourselves. This man was their leader if the plume on his cap was any indication. I’d forgotten his existence, and his voice startled me.

  Before you opened your mouth to berate him, I touched your hand. You stopped and looked at me; I pointed to our horses.

  “Ah, that’s right,” you said. Then you called to him. “Boy, ready our horses.”

  “O-Shizuka-shon,” said the head hostler. “That Qorin girl touched you—”

  You waved. He scrambled to his feet and prostrated himself before you. “That Qorin girl is Oshiro Shefali, my good friend, and you will treat her with the same respect you treat me.”

  By then I had already begun preparing your red gelding. Hokkaran saddles are different; where we have stirrups, a horn, and a high seat, you have little more than a flap of leather. Hokkarans believe that a rider and horse should communicate without words. That is the Qorin way of thinking, too; except that we recognize the usefulness of gestures.

  You banished the head hostler to his chambers. I helped you up onto your horse and swung into my own saddle. My horse nickered. I ran my fingers through her mane. Again, she nickered—but this time she stamped her hoof, too. A dark mood, then.

  So I leaned forward and whispered to her. In hushed Qorin, I spoke to her of the sweets that awaited her at the end of the day, of the verdant places we were going, of home, of grass and wind.

  As the words left me, my throat thrummed with more than air. No, this was a great wind. This was the voice of something larger than myself, compressed into a whisper.

  It was then I realized I was no longer speaking Qorin. Imagine a language like swaying grass. Imagine vowels sounded like a seer’s horn, consonants the rattle of bones in her cup. My tongue was thick with the taste of loam.

  My horse calmed.

  I felt like an empty river. I opened my mouth and stared at my hands and tried to understand what had just happened. And, as I did whenever I was confused, I turned to you.

  And there you were, sitting atop your horse like a throne. When you saw the expression on my face, your brows knit together. “Shefali?”

  I closed my eyes and squeezed my hands together. Opening them took some effort. Were they still mine, or were they, too, the tools of something else?

  You urged your horse toward me. There, just outside the royal stables, you squeezed my shoulder. Golden butterflies pinned to your hair fluttered the closer you moved.

  “Shefali,” you said.

  I licked my dry lips. A deep, rattling breath shook me. “I am all right,” I said.

  “You aren’t,” you said. “Do not lie to me. I know you as I know my reflection. What happened?”

  I met your eyes. I could not meet them long. The second we locked gazes, my chest throbbed and ached and rang with a note I did not recognize.

  You, too, flinched. Your ring-covered hand flew to your heart.

  “Did you…?” you asked.

  I nodded. When you turned to look around us, the ornaments in your hair sounded like temple bells.

  A messenger rode up toward the stable cloaked in yellow and white—the colors of Shiseiki Province. Upon seeing you, he bowed at the waist, still mounted. “O-Shizuka-shon! Flower of the Empire! You honor me with your presence!”

  Even at eight, you did not bat an eye at such praise. If anything, I think it exhausted you. When it came to you, the public knew only three ways to speak. The hostler earlier demonstrated mindless concern well; to those people, you were not a girl but a precious, frail object. The second thing a person might do was praise your parents. This did not trouble you much on its own, but by the third or fourth time you heard someone remark on your semblance to your mother, you made your excuses to leave. And here was the last: mindless praise from a passing messenger.

  Seeing you alone was considered a great honor; you did not have to further honor him with words. No doubt this messenger would tell his family all he could about you: the colors you were wearing, the way you carried yourself, the small nod you gave him as he left.

  Perhaps he’d mention how long your sleeves were, or the elaborate dragons embroidered in gold thread upon them. If he was an astute man, he’d mention the chrysanthemums secreted away by your wrists.

  But he would not have mentioned how your hand gripped my wrist, how you squeezed mine when he called to you.

  Long sleeves hide many secrets.

  “We’re going,” you said. “We cannot talk here.”

  I nodded.

  Together we made our way out of your lands. In spite of our age, no one questioned us. Why would they? You, the Imperial Niece, were old enough to go out on a ride if you so wished. You had company. Qorin company, yes, but that was perhaps for the best. Everyone knows my people are born on horseback and sired by stallions.

  On any other day, you consider silence an enemy you must cut down. As our horses took us from the palace of Fujino to the deep green forests surrounding it, you spoke not a word.

  But then, neither did I.

  I was marveling at the trees, for one. Wondering how anything the gods created could be so tall. Wondering what it was like to climb up onto the highest branches of the tallest tree we passed. What did your palace look like from there? Which was taller—a tree that grew from a sapling over dozens of years, or a palace men raised with their own hands?

  After five hours of riding in silence, I called for a stop. Our horses needed water and rest.

  We stopped in a relatively light portion of the forest. A small pool lay beneath the trees. From it our horses drank, from the grass surrounding it, they ate.

  And as for us?

  I laid out a thick felt blanket made by my grandmother. At one time, it had been white, but the grit and grime and sweat and smoke of our lives tinged it gray. My mother let me take it from her ger before leaving me with you. Such a thing was normally not permitted—but then, I would normally not be leaving the ger for so long.

  On this blanket you sat. On this blanket, with wool taken from my grandmother’s flock. Your dress was blood on smoke.

  “Shefali,” you said, “have you ever seen a man die? Besides the tainted one my mother killed?”

  I started. What sort of question was that?

  And yet …

  Boorchu calling me a coward. Claiming my Hokkaran blood made me weak. The sight of him crumpling to the ground.

  I nodded.

  Clouds shaded your brow; the bright ornaments of your hair could not illuminate the darkness of your mood. When you spoke next, you stared at the ground.

  “Shefali,” you said. As an inkbrush tints the water it touches, so did fear darken your voice. “What do you see when men die?”

  My lips were dry. Dew on every leaf near us—but my lips were dry.

  Because I knew the answer.

  “Their souls,” I said. “I see th
eir souls.”

  On the blanket your hand twitched. You huddled in on yourself.

  “Shizuka?”

  “Right before I was born,” you said, “my mother was with yours, out on the steppes.”

  I tilted my head. This I had not known. What was Shizuru doing on the steppes in such a state? For my mother, it is to be expected. But for a Hokkaran woman with a moon belly to be riding? To be riding in the winter?

  And people say that you are foolhardy.

  “Alshara insisted on taking my mother to an oracle before the week was out,” you continued. “And in this, as in all things, my mother listened to yours.”

  “The oracle could not read my future,” you said. “When her bones fell to the ground, they shattered into dozens of tiny pieces. She said she’d heard of that happening in stories, in the presence of gods. So they went to another oracle, and another. Every time they tried to read my fortune, the same thing happened. Hokkaran fortune-tellers only said my birthday was important; they couldn’t say anything about my future.”

  Around us, a hundred creatures lived their small lives. Trees and roots and mushrooms alike bathed in the fading light of the sun. Trickling down through the branches, the sun painted us, too, with streaks of white and yellow, with bright patches like oases on our shaded faces.

  As the priests told things, each of those animals, each of those plants, and even the rocks around us were gods. Some gods are grains of sand; some are Grandmother Sky. A god can be anything it wishes—as small or large as it pleases. A god may live in a singing girl’s zither, imbuing each note with the sweetness of a ripe plum. A god may choose a scabbard as its home, and lend any blade it touches sharpness unmatched. Or a god might also live in a crock and burn everything it comes into contact with.

  Gods can be anything.

  But could we be gods?

  Two pine needles, my mother always said, like two pine needles …

  You pointed to a particular tree some distance away. Perched on one of its branches was a bright green songbird, the sort people travel into the forest specifically to catch. At the right market, it would fetch a fine price.

  “If I asked you to shoot that bird,” you asked, “you would be able to, would you not?”