I have seen women arrested for stealing a handful of rice; I have seen hunters locked away for killing the wrong color stag.
Your uncle likes to say he is civilized—that your mother’s death enlightened him, that he realized executioners were a base thing for an Emperor to have.
But there is nothing civilized about flinging someone into a dark room, with no windows, for the rest of their life. There is nothing civilized about letting them stew in their own excrement and beg for week-old bread.
But I am only an illiterate brute. What do I know of civility?
I watched him go. Already gossip flew from mouth to mouth to mouth; by nightfall, you would again be a legend. A girl of thirteen who struck down a grown man with a single stroke. Your mother’s sword flashing in the light; her Daybreak blade come to life. More than one of them joked that you’d already slain a tiger, so a man was no trouble.
You stood proud in the face of it all. As sycophant after sycophant sang your praises, you nodded and smiled and thanked them in a distant way. For hours I stood by your side. When you needed a moment to yourself, you’d casually tap my leg with your sheath, and I would pretend I had something to say in private. And so we’d steal moments from the crowd.
“Bees,” you muttered. “With their incessant buzzing. Why should a phoenix concern herself with the buzzing of bees?”
I had some idea. Though your uncle did not speak to you, he made a point of looking in your direction. Every quarter hour, a messenger jogged up to you and whispered something in your ear. You never reacted well to that.
“Too mouthy,” you said to me after one such occasion. “Too unladylike. As if he has any right to define what a lady should be.”
I pressed my lips together.
By the end of Sixth Bell, purple fingers crept across that beautiful blue sky. Moon reaching for Sun. Courtiers began to make their excuses. Wives waiting in their rooms. Children who needed to be put to bed. Would they have the pleasure of your company, should they wish to call on you?
The answer, universally, was no. And you made no excuses when Seventh Bell rang. You walked right out of the garden, leaving a collection of awestruck faces behind you. Your guards followed; as did Temurin and I. And so you led us back to your rooms, where Temurin again waited outside.
When the door closed behind us, you let out a groan. “Shefali,” you said, “I think I would rather live on the steppes than let those fools nip at my toes.”
You sat before your mirror. With sharp motions, you removed the peacock feathers from your hair, removed the ornaments and the bells. These you set on your table. You yanked a cloth from its hook and wiped off your makeup. At least, you tried. Though you swiped only once, smearing blue and black and green across your painted-white face.
But you tossed the cloth at the wall anyway, rather than continue.
I sat on the bench next to you.
You held your head in your hands and slumped forward, as if your skull suddenly was very heavy.
“Meaningless,” you mumbled. “Meaningless tripe. Our crops are blighted, our livestock die in droves. Our fishermen bring up hundreds of terrible, blackened things. Every day peasants gather outside the palace and beg to be heard. But instead, we let grown men harass thirteen-year-old girls. Instead, we parade about in our finest and do our best to ignore the problem. ‘We will endure.’ What tripe.”
My throat hurt.
My people, too, had seen such things. Wolves that did not die when we shot them, that did not stagger. Dogs that laughed like men in the dark. Some of my clanmates’ horses died overnight, and in the morning, only their heads remained. The rest of their once-proud bodies was reduced to …
It was like stew. Raw meat stew, left out in the sun to rot.
I cannot describe to you the anguish on my clanmate’s face when he discovered his horses in such a state. For days he screamed at the sun. Foul blasphemies left his lips: How could Grandmother Sky allow this to happen? She saw all, did she not? She sheltered the souls of the fallen Qorin on her starry cloak—why did she not strike down the attacker with lightning?
Because there was no attacker.
Because dark things ride the winds at night, while we huddled near our fires and pretended we were safe.
Silence hung between us.
You reached for my hand. Yes, that was lightning, striking me dumb and deaf and blind. I was frozen in place by the slightest touch.
“Shefali,” you said, “you and I will stop this, one day. We will go North, where the blackbloods go, and whatever it is we are meant to do, we will do. Together, Shefali, like two pine needles.”
Your face smeared in half a dozen shades. Your hair not quite brushed.
Your eyes.
From our childhood, you’d been saying this. As we grew older, you said it with more and more conviction, as if you spoke of moving to Sur-Shar. Difficult, yes, but doable.
But you did not speak of moving across the Sands. You spoke of finding your way North, where the Traitor dwelled, and if I knew you at all, you meant to challenge him. As if he could not simply squish you between his forefingers like overripe fruit.
But may the Sky slay me where I sit now if I did not believe it more and more each time.
I swallowed and squeezed your hand. Then I reached for the cloth you’d thrown away. I dipped it in a bowl of water on the desk and I wrung it dry.
I reached for your face.
You did not stop me. Instead, you closed your eyes and let me wash away your mask. When I was done, only Shizuka remained. Only the finest sword in the Empire; only the finest calligrapher.
Only the most …
I shook my head rather than fully voice that thought. You were my best friend. I could not allow myself to think such things about you. I could not allow my heart to hammer as it did; I could not allow myself to dream about touching you.
When you began speaking, I wanted to heave a sigh of relief. Something to listen to other than my own thoughts.
“My mother let me into a tournament, you know,” you said. “The Challenge of the Sixteen Swords.”
Held every eight years to commemorate the first Challenge of Sixteen. Being allowed to enter at all was a great honor. Each province was allowed only two participants. To think that Imperial Fujino sent a small girl as one of their champions!
I laughed. Oh, how I pitied anyone who crossed swords with you.
“For years I begged her, but all she ever did was speak to me of danger. My father pointed out the Challenge is to first blood, and healers would be nearby. He pleaded and pleaded. Finally my mother relented.”
As I wiped the last of your lipstick away, you smiled like a knife.
“And, of course, of the Sixteen finest blades in Hokkaro, mine is the finest.”
Ah, Shizuka, how I wish I could’ve seen it! How I wish I could’ve seen you strike down fifteen duelists—fifteen adults who prided themselves on their swordplay. Sometimes I imagine it. I’ve tracked down a few descriptions of that tournament, and had Otgar read them to me. You must tell me one day if you really lopped off Isshi Keichi’s nose with just the point of your sword!
“Was she proud?” I asked.
Your amber eyes darted toward the shrine. Your mother’s war mask stared back at you.
“She was,” you said. “She called me a pompous show-off. But she was proud, I think. Before…” You licked your lips. “Before she left, she promised we’d begin lessons together.”
Gods, but that hurt to hear. Again, I squeezed your hand.
And it was then I noticed you had a scar on your palm from that day in the woods, when we were eight. I touched it with my fingertips.
“Together,” I said.
“Together,” you said.
And you leaned your head against my shoulder, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. You slipped your arm around my waist. The smell of peonies met my nose. My lips went dry, and for a moment, I wondered what might be the right thing
to do.
I pulled you closer, leaned my head against yours.
We held hands. Scars brushed together.
I decided that I did not care whether or not it was right, so long as I was doing it.
HOW WILL I TELL HER?
I could write to you forever about those heady days spent in Fujino. I could write of how silly I looked when you let me try on your dresses—how the billowing sleeves came just past my elbow, how none of your belts fit around my waist. I let you try on my deel. It was massive on you, pooling on the floor around your feet. You left the collar mostly undone.
I saw your collarbones, accents to the slender curve of your neck. I tried not to stare at them.
I was fascinated by you. By your motions, by your expressions, the smallest details of your life. In the mornings, you rose at Third Bell. After rising from the bed, you moved to your writing desk. In careful strokes, you wrote a line from one of your father’s poems—first in Hokkaran, then in Qorin letters. We’d read it together, so that you understood the pronunciation and I understood how to read it.
We took tea together. On the second day, I realized you were not let out of your rooms unless you were going to court. You did not say it aloud. I suspect you did not want to admit defeat.
And so you spoke of anything and everything except your parents.
“My uncle despises me,” you said one night.
I drummed my fingertips against the desk.
“He has not said this, but I know it to be true,” you continued. “He picked these rooms for me. He summons me to court, but only after peasants have worn him thin.
“To him,” you said, “I am nothing but a passing amusement. Someone to write his edicts, I suppose. But I have seen the jealousy festering behind his eyes. I am never invited to dinner, never allowed to greet our people.”
As you spoke, you wrote. Another set of notices, from what little I could read. You took no joy in this. You stabbed your brush into the water.
“He hopes people do not think of me,” you said. Brush met paper. You took a deep breath. A single, short, stroke.
“Three wives,” you said. “Three wives, no children; no bastards running amok. Peasants call him the Limp Emperor.”
It came together in my mind. Without any children, you were the only Hokkaran heir.
You were crown princess now.
Rocks against your window. You ignored them. The dark clouds on the horizon were somewhat harder to ignore. To the north of Hokkaro—toward the Ruined Lands—inky clouds marred Grandmother Sky’s skin. It was just the way of things.
“I shall be a woman soon, of proper age, and then no one will cage me,” you said.
Again, you spoke with certainty. But as your lips shaped the words, my heart forged them.
Cages were not meant for people.
* * *
TWO WEEKS AFTER I barreled into the palace in the dark of night, my mother followed in my footsteps. It was past Last Bell when we woke to clattering weapons outside the door. Qorin shouting reached my ears.
“Stand down, you Imperial dogs!” Temurin shouted. No one understood her, but she shouted all the same. When I opened the door, my mother stood outside. In her hand, a bared blade; on her face, a wolf’s fury. Temurin stood back to back with her.
“Stand down!” you shouted from behind me. And because it was you who spoke, they listened.
With a snarl my mother, too, sheathed her sword. The gesture she made couldn’t have meant anything nice.
And yet when she laid eyes on you, her whole manner changed. Waves of anger gave way to tides of sadness; bittersweet joy replaced red-hot wrath. My mother, Burqila Alshara, the Destroyer, the Terror of the Steppes, embraced you with a whimper.
I watched her run her fingers through your hair. She pressed her nose to each of your cheeks, took a breath of you. Then she perched her head atop yours and held you so tight, I wondered if you could breathe.
Temurin watched with lips parted. I hugged myself, a few steps away.
Because I saw what Temurin did not.
I saw my mother whispering in your ear. I saw her scarred lips moving. Frozen in awe, you were, your eyes carved from glittering ice, your skin turned to gooseflesh.
In the ages to come, drawings and woodcuts tried to imagine this scene. Most of them bear captions. It seems everyone has an idea what my mother said to you. A thousand purple promises; a hundred boisterous boasts. I’ve seen some that make a joke of it. Yes, some people make a joke of my mother breaking her vow of silence.
“I left the firepit alight!” I would like to see that writer try to lead an army without making a single sound. I would like to see him raise two children without speaking to them.
But the truth of the matter is this: My mother only ever spoke to your mother. The first time she broke her oath was during the Eightfold Trial, when one of the Generals imprisoned them together. As you well know, the most popular story goes that Shizuru kept cracking jokes about the prison needing more bamboo mats—the Minami clan being bamboo mat merchants at the time.
My mother looked at her and said, “If we live, I will buy your mats.”
Shizuru told this story whenever she got the chance; I believe it to be true with my whole heart. To hear her tell it, the whole reason she never lost hope was that she had a hut full of mats to sell.
But Shizuru could not tell that story anymore.
And that was why my mother spoke to you.
In a minute it was over—this moment frozen in my mind. The two of you parted. Only then did Alshara embrace me and sniff my cheeks. But she did muss my hair.
Then she gestured that we should follow her.
You laughed.
“Alshara-mor,” you said. “I have guards.”
Among the many things in the chest pocket of her deel, my mother keeps a slate and chalk. She produced it now. In confident, if inelegant, Hokkaran strokes, she wrote. I couldn’t read it, of course, but you’ve told me this story so many times, I thought I might return the favor.
I am Burqila Alshara. O-Shizuru entrusted me with the care of her daughter. If you doubt me, you are welcomed to try and stop me. I have killed in front of my children before.
She held it up so it was plain to read from behind you. You covered your mouth. Only my mother would be so blunt, so audacious.
Yet still she stared each of the guards down, fingering the hilt of her knife.
“So the stories are true!” said one of them. He was smiling. Sky rest his soul, he was smiling. “You use slate and chalk! What kind of a warlord does that?”
“Kai-tsao, don’t be a fool,” said another. As he spoke, his upper lip trembled. A certain smell fill the air. Acrid, warm, stale. The same smell that filled any ger in the morning.
Piss.
A dark trail trickled its way down the second guard’s pants.
“When you broke down the Wall of Stone, did you write it a sweet love letter beforehand?”
You held your head in your hands. Temurin bit the back of her palm. I winced.
My mother never wastes time with elegance. Whenever she attacks someone, it is quick and brutal, vicious as a dog. This occasion was no different. With one hand, she slammed the guard called Kai-tsao against the wall and held him there. With the other, she drew her hunting knife. He wriggled, he tried to kick, but she only slammed him again. That’s when she slid the knife between his lips. That’s when she made a single cut. Then she dropped the knife, shoved her fingers into his mouth, and pulled.
A flopping pink tongue landed on the ground.
Alshara stepped on it.
The man screamed. It was less scream and more wet gurgle. The other guards looked away as Kai-tsao dropped to his knees and collected the pieces of his tongue.
My mother erased her words. She wrote a few new ones.
I am mute by choice. Now you are not. When you pray for your tongue to be regrown, you should write it a letter beforehand.
So it was that t
he guards parted like reeds in the wind before us. No one questioned us as we left. Perhaps because my mother was covered in blood. Perhaps because my mother was my mother, and also covered in blood. It is hard to say which frightened them more. Whatever the case, we were not stopped. Outside, our horses waited, saddled and ready.
All except yours.
You could not ride with me. Not then, not in front of my mother. Only husbands and wives rode the same horse. Despite the fluttering in my stomach when I looked at you, I could not have us riding together with others watching.
Alone, yes. You did not know what it meant. You would wrap your arms around my waist for steadiness. I could let you hold the reins, while I held the whip. Together we could ride.
But not in view of others.
So I offered you one of the spare horses I’d brought along and tried to wipe the idea from my mind. Later. Alone.
Since we did not have a ger, and the Daughter’s warm breath swept Hokkaro, we slept beneath the stars. My mother brought bedrolls, at least. You’d never slept in one before, and it took you some fumbling before you were able to open it. The first time I’d ever seen you fumble with anything at all. I laughed as I watched you, the heir to the Empire, slap your bedroll against the ground.
I came over and opened it for you.
Pouting, you turned a bit away. “I could’ve figured that out,” you said.
I dragged my bedroll next to yours. Temurin, the guards, and my mother slept closer to the fire. We had here some small amount of privacy. As you eased into the bedroll, you shot a glance toward the others.
“Does your mother always do that?”
I looked over. Alshara sat on a log, fletching arrows.
“Only when needed,” I said. She found fletching a relaxing activity, but she was not very good at it. Other clans presented her with gifted arrows so often, she used those instead. They flew straighter.
You rolled your eyes a bit. “Not that,” you said. “I meant … When we were leaving Fujino. She tore out that man’s tongue.”
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