The Tiger's Daughter

by K Arsenault Rivera

We will speak of this later.

  I cleared my throat and averted my eyes as if I had not already seen you. As if I were the shy virgin I had been last night.

  As she jostled you, you stirred, your eyes adjusting to the half light. My mother tipped the waterskin to your lips before you could protest; you choked as the water trickled down your throat.

  “Burqila,” you gasped, clutching your chest.

  She slapped you hard on the back. Then, with unexpected tenderness, she took your temperature with her hand. A sigh of relief left her. She touched her fingers to her lips and held them to the sky in praise. I took the opportunity to drape the blankets around your shoulders.

  Otgar came in not long after that—a good thing, too, as my mother had many questions for you.

  “Did you lose a duel with your clothing?” Otgar teased.

  “I won the duel with the fever, that is all that matters,” you said. I must admire your aplomb; the question did not faze you in the slightest. Your princess’s dignity shielded you from shame.

  My mother interrupted us with a raised hand. Signing followed. Otgar let out a small laugh.

  “Burqila says that if you allow yourself to get so sick again, she would treat with demons to revive you just so she can kill you again.”

  We called the sanvaartain in to check on you. She affirmed your health the same way one might declare a woman pregnant.

  “Give thanks to Grandmother Sky,” she said, “who shielded you from the Mother’s grasping hands.”

  When we were eight, we faced a tiger. From it we received our names, and I received a scar. The image of it is still vivid in my mind—the way it sank low to the ground with its hindquarters raised. I remember its golden eyes and the proud, sagacious way it regarded me just before it attacked.

  So, too, did you regard the sanvaartain. “I will thank no one save Shefali and Burqila,” you said, “for they are the ones who aided me. If the gods wish for me to thank them, then they shall come into the ger to speak to me.”

  Skies darken over the Silver Steppes. It is the moment before a thunderstorm. Animals run for shelter; Qorin hurry to their gers, leaving bowls and cups to catch the rain. If anyone were outside, they would hear the perfect stillness in the air—the worried whisper of the grass.

  So it was after you spoke. Otgar, my mother, and the sanvaartain all spat on the ground. Even I, who knew you so well, found myself staring blankly at you. Qorin and Hokkarans may hold different gods, but you challenged all of them to speak to you. A mortal.

  But …

  If the gods spoke to anyone, perhaps they would speak to us.

  You did not wait for mortals to chide you. Instead, you wrapped yourself in your robes and got to your feet.

  “Barsatoq,” said Otgar, “has it occurred to you that you are daring the world to slay you?”

  “I will dare and dare again,” you said, “since I cannot die.” You tied your robes closed and tucked your sword into your belt. “Not until I finish what I was meant to do.”

  And as you spoke, your eyes met mine. Our night together played out again in my mind, bringing a flush to my face I coughed to conceal.

  “Let all the gods of man and beast face me, if they so wish,” you continued. “I cannot be humbled by my equals.”

  Honey-sweet lips summoned thunder and lightning. When you opened the red door, light crowned you.

  I did not know what to say. What is there to say to such a thing? Boasting was as natural to you as archery is to me, but you’d never insulted the gods like this before.

  You stood silhouetted by the dawn in the doorway. I thought of the second time we met—when you stood like this at Oshiro’s garden gates, cloaked in golden silk, a thousand flowers swaying behind you. Now there was only the tall silver grass and the Eternal Sky.

  But the image was no less striking.

  “Shefali,” you called, “you are coming, yes?”

  “She is not,” cut in Otgar. Strange. My mother did not sign anything for her to translate. “We have much to discuss.”

  You wrinkled your nose. “You intend to leave me alone?”

  I opened my mouth, but Otgar spoke first. Again. She had a knack for that. “Well, Barsatoq, if you are so comfortable threatening the gods, then being alone should be no problem.”

  I stood. My quiver, bow, and whip were within easy reach; I needed nothing else to survive. I walked to the red door.

  “Shefali, your mother wants you to stay,” Otgar said.

  But I looked to you crowned with daylight’s glory.

  When I met my mother’s and Otgar’s gazes, I shook my head. I was sixteen. If I wanted to disobey my mother, I could. It did not matter that my mother happened to be the greatest fear of most Hokkarans—at the time, she was keeping me from the person I wanted to be with.

  So I said nothing, only shook my head, and left out the red door. I did not look behind me as I left, but I imagine they were frustrated. They did not chase after me, however. Whatever words we were all going to share would wait until you and I returned from wherever we were going.

  Come to think of it, I did not know where you were leading us.

  But as we made our way through the camp, you laced your pinky through mine and I decided not to think on it too hard. Better to savor the moment. Better to savor the way the wind tousled your hair, the simple sight of you on the steppes. I cannot say you were ever truly at home there—more than once, you complained of the smell, or longed for a proper shower—but you were here among the rolling hills of my childhood. For that sight alone, I am forever grateful.

  Watching you, it occurred to me you might not remember what happened the night before. Sometimes fever claims one’s memories. And what if you didn’t remember? What if you woke naked and confused?

  As you approached your stocky red horse, I summoned my courage. I could not bear the thought of you not knowing.

  “Shizuka,” I ventured, “do you remember what happened?”

  You turned from saddling your horse. Somewhere between mirth and embarrassment was the look you gave me. “Shefali,” you said, “do not be silly. I could not forget … I could not forget such a night.”

  Relief left me in a long gasp. After a quick look around, I embraced you tight. You kissed the tip of my chin and pushed me away—more playful than condemning.

  Then you squeezed my shoulder. “Which is why,” you said, “we are leaving today.”

  THE EMPRESS

  FOUR

  The Empress of Hokkaro surrounds herself on all sides with splendor. The many-faced gods of Ikhtar, rendered in gold and ivory, guard the four corners of her room. Her gilded bed is larger than a peasant’s hovel; its sheets made from silk dyed in a hundred different colors. Paintings and woodcuts adorn her walls; Surian carpets prevent her sacred feet from ever touching the ground. Even the robes clinging to her small frame are woven from gilt cloth. A single thread would beggar an entire village.

  Yes, she is surrounded by a hundred splendors.

  But not a single comfort, save for the far-off voice of her lover. Nothing but ink and paper to soothe the ache of loneliness. Nothing but words and memories.

  With one gold-taloned hand, O-Shizuka rings the small bell by her desk. Before she can take another breath, a servant slides the door open and touches her forehead to the ground.

  “Imperial Majesty,” she says, “I am yours to command.”

  “Bring me a bottle of rice wine,” says O-Shizuka. “Another.”

  Is that hesitation on the servant’s part? For O-Shizuka swears the girl does not immediately skitter off to her task. Yes, there is a pause, minuscule in span. A beat. A hesitation.

  A memory, perhaps, of the orders Lai Baozhai left with the staff. Of the dark times, before Baozhai stayed with her.

  The girl knows better than to question the Daughter of Heaven, the Virgin Empress. With another bow, she is gone.

  It is another ten minutes before the girl returns with a full bottle of w
ine. She slides open the door and sets it down, along with the Empress’s cups. Then she slides the door shut. It’s Seventh Bell now, and the Imperial Timekeeper is pacing the halls, reading from the Divine Mandates.

  O-Shizuka sniffs. The room spins a bit. What use was there in such a tradition? Why remind everyone of gods who had clearly abandoned them? Two hundred years. Two hundred years since the Daughter-Made-Flesh last visited a temple. Having someone shout her family’s words at the top of their lungs would do nothing to bring her back.

  That was what the commoners failed to understand. None of their prayers were being heard, none except the ones Shizuka herself tried to ignore in the middle of the night. No—that was not right. She did not ignore them. Much as she wanted to. She listened, and if she thought it might be something she could help with—

  It sounds so foolish to say she willed something to happen, but Shizuka can find no other words for it. She shuts her eyes and sends … sends something of herself out into the world.

  Does it help? She isn’t certain. All she ever hears are requests for crops to grow, or flowers to make it through the winter, or for a duel to go well. At times she does not hear the words, only feels the emotions tugging at the back of her mind like an upset child.

  It is no wonder she drinks.

  She tips another cup. Another. One more. It’s gotten to the point where it takes this many, and she is faintly proud of herself, faintly ashamed.

  And the alcohol starts to drown the memory replaying, like painted opera, at the back of her mind.

  “Itsuki!” O-Shizuru sputtered, black blood flecked on her deathbed. “Where is Itsuki?”

  Itsuki was dead. O-Shizuka explained that to her ten, twenty, thirty times. O-Shizuru either could not hear her or did not want to, but O-Itsuki was dead, and no one had found his body.

  To this very day, no one had ever found the body of the Poet Prince. His funeral services were a farce, at best, performed with scrolls of his work instead of his body. O-Shizuka attended—but as drunk as she is, she cannot remember the details.

  She is too focused on what her mother looked like lying in a dirty, stained blanket on a dirty, stained Imperial bed. Her mother’s bone peeking out from the rotting, gray flesh where her arm used to be.

  O-Shizuru, Queen of Crows, lying in agony on a soiled bed.

  O-Shizuru, Shizuka’s hero and namesake. O-Shizuru, who was imprisoned in her youth by a Demon General for eight days and emerged with his head. O-Shizuru, who should’ve been Empress if the world were anything like it should be; O-Shizuru, who always brought her daughter a new story whenever she returned home; O-Shizuru, quick with boasts and bawdy jokes and blades; O-Shizuru, who loved O-Itsuki more than even he, master of poetry and song, could ever convey.

  O-Shizuru.

  Her mother.

  Lying in agony on a soiled bed.

  By the end of the sixth cup, O-Shizuka, the Empress, Light of the Empire, Eternal Flame, Serene Phoenix, has forgotten all this anew.

  But she has not forgotten what it was like to end her mother’s life. She has not forgotten the terror, the despondency, the resignation, the realization that if she did nothing, her mother was going to rise as a blackblood within a day’s time.

  And it is a strange thing, to realize you are utterly alone. To realize you are not the person you’ve pretended to be, you are not the infallible, unreachable god you keep saying you are. To realize you are nothing but a child on the verge of adulthood; to realize there will never again be anyone in your life you can trust as completely as you’ve trusted your parents.

  She was thirteen, at the time. The sole heir to the Imperial throne. No siblings, and her only cousins too far removed to inherit; only a single friend, one whom she’d not seen in years, and an uncle who saw O-Shizuka as an ominous loose end.

  An uncle who knew what he was doing when he sent a forty-nine-year-old woman—mother—wife—to fight two dozen risen blackbloods. You send seventy soldiers to deal with that many. Seventy, if you live recklessly and do not care how many come back to you. One hundred eight would be preferable.

  But her uncle sent only O-Shizuru.

  It filled O-Shizuka with unspeakable rage to think of him. To think of what he’d done. There were no blood trails spattered on his hands, never, but he had done this all the same.

  Yes, Shizuka remembers hovering over the trembling lump of flesh that was once her mother.

  If only her mother were still herself, if only her mother could think clearly. That’s the irony of it—if their positions were reversed, then the Queen of Crows wouldn’t have hesitated. O-Shizuru never left room for doubt. She would have demanded that Shizuka give her a clean death.

  So why was it so hard, then?

  If O-Shizuka was going to be a warrior, she was going to have to take lives. And yet, looking at her mother she saw more than the present, mangled form. She saw O-Shizuru and O-Itsuki having tea together in the mornings, stealing kisses when they thought their daughter wouldn’t notice. She saw O-Shizuru’s stern face, heard her voice shouting to put the sword down and get back to the zither.

  O-Shizuka has not forgotten what it was like to lift her mother’s pillow. She has not forgotten how heavy it seemed, steeped with the weight of her childhood memories.

  She has not forgotten her own grim determination: if she hadn’t done it, then Uemura would have had to, and she could not bear to let her mother be killed by an outsider.

  O-Shizuka has not forgotten how wrong it felt to hold the Daybreak blade. How her hands shook, disrupting the balance. The rattle of drawn metal as she pressed it against her mother’s pallid neck.

  It had to be her. This was the duty of a warrior. Of a future Empress. Of a loving daughter who would never have her mother’s blessing on her wedding day, who would never again clamber into her parents’ bed during a nightmare, who would never again make her mother proud.

  O-Shizuka wept as she slit her mother’s throat. She wept and she crumbled and she threw her arms around the corpse despite the danger her mother’s blood posed. She stayed there for …

  She cannot remember how long.

  But she has not forgotten what happened afterwards. She has not forgotten her hatred, burning like a forge in her stomach, how she’d thought it could grow no larger—but it was merely the first blossom beneath a frost. Her uncle had done this. Her uncle had given the order. Her uncle, who then kept her locked in her chambers, except when he paraded her at court like a mare in search of a stud. And only in her own rooms was she permitted to wear mourning white.

  O-Shizuka drains the last swallow from her cup.

  When the time had come to seize her uncle’s throne, she did not kill him. Yoshimoto—the Toad, the Limp Emperor—lived on private lands far, far away from Fujino. Let the souls of his ruined family, his tattered Empire haunt him. Let him toil in the fields. Let him see, from a distance, what his niece makes of the nation he could not salvage.

  That will be his punishment, she thinks. The day that she returns with Shefali at her side, happy and healthy and thriving despite all his efforts to the contrary.

  A sight her parents will never get to see, for they left not even bones to bury.

  So she throws the bottle of rice wine against the wall. It shatters, sending shards flying through the air. By some miracle, none hit the Empress, at least not until she lies on the ground and weeps.

  When sleep takes her, she is too drunk to notice.

  In the morning, she awakes to a pounding headache. Whatever mess she’s made has disappeared as if by magic. O-Shizuka winces. She has a dim recollection of falling on the floor, and no memory of getting in bed.

  Yet here she is, tucked in and comfortable in her sleeping gown.

  The servants must’ve done it. Dimly, she thinks again that she must pay them more.

  O-Shizuka forces herself to sit up. The room goes topsy-turvy for a moment, and she grabs her nightstand to steady herself. Hair falls like inky brushstrokes again
st her sleeping gown. The first few rays of the morning pierce through her blinds. She shields her eyes and sighs.

  The scowl drops off her face the moment she sees Shefali’s letter. She laughs, in fact. Shefali never had to deal with hangovers. Maybe it was that rancid milk she insisted on drinking. O-Shizuka can picture her now: sipping from a skin in the eastern side of the ger, wearing her brightly colored deel. She takes a deep gulp and chuckles in that quiet way. “Try some.”

  And Shizuka did, every time. And she forgot, every time, how much she hated kumaq. Shefali looked so happy drinking it, so it must be good, right?

  O-Shizuka reaches for the manuscript. For her old friend, for her joy. She opens the pages, and her headache melts away.

  THE MIDNIGHT MOON

  “We are going back to Hokkaro,” you had said, “to the Wall of Flowers, where we are needed.”

  At this, I put my hands on my hips and frowned. Even if we managed to avoid bandits, wolves, or worse, the Wall of Flowers was four months from Fujino. You could not just up and decide to ride that far. You could not do such a thing without careful planning. You could not do it without at the very least informing my mother of your intentions.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” you said. “The Sun spoke to me this morning. Blackbloods creep—”

  “The Sun?” I asked.

  You frowned. I tried not to smile, but—you do have a cute frown, you know. “Yes,” you said. “The Sun. Does it not speak to you?”

  “Does it … what does it sound like?” I asked. Oh, you looked foul! But I did not mean to make you feel awkward. I really was only curious.

  You pursed your lips. Your eyebrows reached for each other. “Music,” you said. “All your favorite music, all playing at the same time, but … it does not sound jumbled. Whenever I hear her, my face gets warm. She makes me feel taller.”

  I rested my chin on my hand. “Just the Sun?”

  “And the flowers, sometimes,” you admitted.

  That did not surprise me, after what you did when we were children. Whenever I see a flower, even now, I think of you. Sometimes I consider asking it how you are doing.