This is a gross failing of your people, and I expect to see it rectified by the time I return. You have the power. Do not disappoint me.
The three of us stepped inside the Imperial tent. I tried not to reach for your hand. It was such a natural thing to do, Shizuka, like breathing, except I was not sure if I was breathing. I was sure that I needed to feel your skin on mine. Though we were only a handspan apart, I might as well have been in Ikhtar.
But we were not in Ikhtar, we were in Shiseiki, and we had a rice-eater to deal with. Uemura Kaito sat in front of a shallow desk. On it, a map of Shiseiki and the lands beyond the wall. He was younger than I expected; five years older than us at most. He kept his hair long, in the old style, tied into a topknot. The tip of his chin was prickly as a hedgehog. Bushy sideburns needed trimming. A thin scar ran from his ear to corner of his mouth. He wore deep green robes beneath gold-trimmed armor. One sword was tucked into his belt.
When we entered, he flashed us a friendly smile. The guard captain announced us. He used my Hokkaran name, of course. Uemura rose and bowed to you from the waist. For me, a short bow from the shoulder. He gestured to two mats for us to sit on.
“O-Shizuka-shon, it is always a pleasure to be near you,” he said.
Sycophants disgusted you. I prepared myself for your cutting retort.
“Uemura-zul,” you said, “you are courteous as ever, but we both know you did not come here simply to be near to me.”
“Would that I did!” he said.
And something bitter rolled in my stomach. By your standards, that was outright inviting!
Wasn’t it?
Laughter in my ears. See how she looks at him, Steel-Eye? She has always admired his sword.…
No. No, no, no. You were just being polite. Just saying hello. You were allowed to speak to other people, I did not own you, you were not a thing to be owned.
But what if?
I squeezed my eyes shut. Forced myself to take a breath.
“Oshiro-sun,” he said, “I was told you were … injured.”
Ah. So he did know I existed.
How to respond? How does one broach that subject? Yes, I was infected with a disease that kills its victims within three days before twisting them into abominations that must be slain lest they slaughter everything in sight. No, I don’t feel like slaughtering everything in sight.
I met Uemura’s eyes. Silently I nodded.
He tugged at his whiskers. “I was, in fact, told you contracted the blackblood.”
“It is true, Uemura-zur. I saw her myself. She wears O-Shizuka-shon’s clothing because her own was soaked in demon blood,” said the guard captain.
Uemura rapped his fingers on the table. For some time he said nothing. “O-Shizuka-shon,” he said. “What have you seen in this matter?”
Your parents did their best to instill in you something like decorum. You were not very good at it, but every now and again, if you tried, you could make your features blank as paper. You did so then.
“Barsalai Shefali was wounded fighting Leng,” you said. The captain spat on the ground when you spoke the demon’s name. “She now sits before you whole and unharmed. I fail to understand what is so confusing.”
“You know well what is confusing,” Uemura replied—but he kept his voice light. Friendly. Again, he turned to me. I think this is the most a Hokkaran noble has ever looked at me. “Oshiro-sun, baseless though this rumor may be, I kindly request you allow my healer to examine you. If only to assuage the fears of our guard captain, here.”
I stiffened. Healers never liked being near me to begin with. What would they think now? Would they know? How I wanted to reach for your hand. Perhaps then your thoughts could’ve melded with mine, and we could’ve made a decision without having to speak to each other.
But I could not.
“Uemura-zul, you cannot be serious. Barsalai Shefali slew a demon four days ago, and you want to have her examined?”
He smiled and laughed. Oil on flame, that was.
“You laugh? Uemura-zul!” you said, rising to your feet. “How many demons have you slain? Or have you never ventured far enough away from my uncle’s heels to see one?”
The smile died on his face. “O-Shizuka-shon,” he said, his voice low as a stalking cat, “you insult me.”
“Your presence insults me,” you said.
And I admit I gaped a bit. Not five minutes ago, you were all pleasantries with him. The guard captain eyed me; he must have thought this was my influence on you.
Why not tear his throat out and be done with it?
Because that is not what civilized people do. That is not what I do.
“O-Shizuka-shon,” said Uemura. “You will not speak to me in such a way. You are a young girl; your uncle worries for you. I am to bring you home safe. If that means restraining you, I shall not hesitate.”
A string snapped between my ears.
I rose. “You will not,” I said.
“What did you say?” he said. At this point, his hand fell to his sword. I did not want to hurt him. I did not. Ideally, no one would be hurt here, but …
But I could not let them take you away. I could not bear the thought of it.
I stood in front of you. “You will not,” I repeated.
“Oshiro-sun,” said Uemura. He rose to meet my eyes, or tried to. I had a hand and a half over him in height. “You understand I am the Emperor’s Champion?”
I nodded.
“And still you bar my path?”
Again, I nodded.
“I could have you arrested,” he said, though I cannot say with any malice. Simply a statement of fact. “You’d remain in the prisons here for years. Is that what you want?”
What I wanted was to hurt him. What I wanted was to strike him down and run off with you. The winds would lead us where we were needed.
Your foot brushed against mine. When I looked to you, your eyes spoke to me: Stand aside, my love, if only for a moment.
I did. Begrudgingly.
“The Son of Heaven does not worry about me,” you said, your voice calmer and more level than I thought it would be. “He cares about his dynasty. I have the misfortune of being a part of it.”
Guards spat on the ground; Uemura winced. May as well slight the Father himself.
“You have been tasked with returning me to the capital. I say to you that I will return, on my own terms, in eight years,” you said. “And if you restrain me, you will have to get ahold of me first. Two dozen men you have waiting outside. I would fight them all at once and win.”
You paused, daring him to correct you.
“That is why you have not asked me to duel,” you continued. “Because you are well aware I would win.”
Uemura crossed his arms. “You cannot expect that to work,” he said. “O-Shizuka-shon, the Emperor himself sent me. I will not return to Fujino empty-handed because you told me to. Especially not when … when Oshiro-sun’s health is in doubt.”
“It is either you let us leave or I duel you,” you said. “And you do not want to duel.”
Being defeated by a sixteen-year-old girl would not be good for Uemura. Bad enough if he lost; the Champion was not supposed to lose. But to you? To a girl, to a young girl? No one would take him seriously again. Even if you were O-Shizuru’s daughter.
He tugged at his whiskers. “You have insulted me,” he said. “I cannot let you escape punishment for that.”
You scoffed. “You insulted Barsalai Shefali,” you said. “I do not know what you expected to receive in turn. She is too quiet to insult you herself, and so I spoke in her stead.”
Uemura and you stared at each other. This was a different sort of duel. If he wanted, he could call for the guards to intervene. We’d have to fight them then. I did not trust myself in such a situation.
We could surrender to him. We could let him lead us back to Fujino, where your uncle would marry you off to whoever curried the most favor with him, and I would likely be put to
death for my condition.
You could challenge him. You would win. I’d never seen him touch a sword, but I knew you would win.
Finally his posture relaxed. “If Oshiro-sun consents to an examination, then I will consent to your request,” he said.
I grunted. So it was up to me, then. I thought of you. I thought of your reputation, I thought of your stake on the throne. If this came to blows, you might lose favor.
You looked to me, your brows knit with concern. “You do not have to,” you whispered.
And then your face changed. Then your porcelain skin cracked; then your hair fell from your head in clumps; your tongue became a wriggling worm and maggots crawled out of your eyes.
“You could kill everyone in this room,” you said.
Except it was not you. The awake part of my mind knew this, but there you were—there it was—staring me down and smiling with blackened teeth. My stomach turned inside out. I staggered backwards.
“Shefali?”
Was that your voice? Was that the Not-You’s voice? Laughing, laughing, why couldn’t they just leave me alone? People were going to see. I took a few deep, rattling breaths and tried to blink away the apparition. Gradually its face melted back into yours.
“Shefali, are you all right?”
You reached for me. You. The real you. Sweat trailed down my forehead. I licked my lips and stood, knowing the sort of scrutiny you’d get for letting me touch you.
“Doctors,” I said.
For I no longer had the luxury of hiding it, and, more important, I needed to know if I would get worse. I needed to know if I would get bad enough that I might hurt you.
* * *
I REMEMBER EVERYTHING the doctors did, sharp as the knives they cut me with. As soon as I was taken into their rooms, the guards barred the doors, and no matter how much you shouted, they would not let you in.
Four of them piled on top of me. With great steel chains, they bound my hands and feet. One of them cut through my clothing, cut through that beautiful robe you’d lent me and tossed it to the floor like a pile of rags.
They called it an examination. They cut me over and over, to better collect my blood. They reopened my wound. They referred to me as “it,” as “the demon.” They heated a knife and held it against my skin to see if I felt pain. When I yelped and pulled away, they continued, for they had to see if I’d become a blackblood then and there, if my limbs would suddenly break and re-form into something great and terrible. The lead doctor pointed out my many scars, my height, the lean muscles of my arms. These things were “barbaric,” he said. But he made certain to joke that I arrived in such a state and it had nothing to do with the demon’s blood coursing within me.
Hokkarans hunt tigers. Trap tigers, I should say. They dig huge pits and cover them with leaves. When the tiger steps on it, it falls far enough down that it cannot easily leap back up. Hokkarans stand at the edge of the pit, firing arrows into the tiger until it dies.
Maybe the tiger we killed is haunting me in more ways than one. At least the hunters are smart enough to make sure the tiger does not leave the pit alive.
Yes, I was a wounded tiger when I loped out of that room, wounded and sick with hatred. They gaped at me in fear because they knew I could squash them between my fingers. With my bare hands, I could reach into their guts and tear out all the things that kept them alive. I could do these things and I could’ve escaped those bonds—but, Shizuka, Shizuka, I did not want them to take you back. I did not want to kill them.
No, that is a lie. I wanted to kill them.
But I did not want you associated with such an act. I did not want blood to soak your reputation; I did not want people to whisper about the company you kept. All I had to do was endure. A little pain, a lot of shame, and …
I should’ve killed them. I should’ve listened to the disembodied heads that watched as they cut into me. I should’ve slaughtered them.
Upon seeing me, your whole countenance twisted. The Mother herself feared you in that moment. Your delicate hands became talons; your doll-like features now were a war mask.
“What have you done?” you roared at the doctor.
“We gave Oshiro-sun a thorough examination,” said the lead doctor.
Already I was not in my own body. Already I leaned against you for support and did not care who saw. But as the doctor spoke, I saw the Not-You standing behind him, cackling.
I whimpered.
“We have determined she is, indeed, infected with the blackblood; how she lives, we do not know. All blood drawn ran black as the Traitor’s Heart, yet the subject seems docile enough. Certainly it did not—”
“You shall cease talking,” you snarled. “You shall fall to your knees and you shall apologize for what you have done. You shall crawl, on elbows and knees, back to Uemura-zul’s tent. You shall tell him what you have done, in detail. You shall tell him I have sent you in such a state. Go. Crawl. If you stop for a single moment, I will cut off your hands.”
And as he sank to his knees, the Not-You sank with him. Its head twisted all the way around on its neck, like an owl’s, so that it could stare at me.
I could not stand it, Shizuka. I turned away. I did not want to return to Uemura’s tent, I did not want to look at it, I did not want to hear the awful voices in my mind. I wanted it all to stop. I longed for darkness; I longed for the silence of the steppes. Anything.
Anything that was not this pitiful excuse for an existence.
Did you glance down the hallway before you kneeled next to me? Did you check if anyone saw us? For you pressed your forehead to mine and you embraced me in the way lovers do.
“Shefali,” you said, “do not worry. I am here now, my love; you are safe. I am sorry. If it … You have suffered so much on my account, and…”
And there comes a point when one has suffered so much in one day that one no longer feels, that one no longer exists. A snuffed candle leaving only a smoldering wick and smoke.
For me it was that moment. I could think of nothing to say. The word “suffering” meant nothing until I woke from my deathbed. Now it was everywhere. It was the air I breathed, it was the beating of my heart, it was my blood and my flesh and my bones.
We did not leave the Wall that day.
When we returned to our rooms, you held me close and whispered in my ear of better days. You told me of your garden and all the flowers you had. You recited to me from memory the letters we’d written to each other as children. You told me with such certainty, with such fire, that everything would be all right. That you would never let anyone hurt me again.
You kept whispering until you fell asleep, but I stayed awake.
* * *
THAT NIGHT—and most nights since—I lay awake, staring at the ceiling. Though I tried to calm myself enough to sleep, though I closed my eyes and prayed to all the gods for just a moment of peace, nothing came.
Only the Not-You. Only its taunting. Only its fungus-stained nail dragging down my cheek.
“Come with me, my love,” it said. “Leave her behind. Kiss me, that you might taste true power.”
I turned away and nuzzled closer to you.
Still I felt it there next to me. “Does it not bother you how you are treated?”
I shook my head.
“Does it not bother you, how she makes you suffer? How she swears to keep you safe but only hurts you?”
Bile in my mouth.
“Think of what you could do on your own, Steel-Eye. What you could do with me at your side. All you have to do is crush her throat. Simple as that. Hokkaro will crumble without an Empress to lead it. You and yours will overtake it. Never again will you struggle beneath their heels, Steel-Eye. You could do it.”
I covered my ears, knowing it would not help.
Its wormy tongue lapped at my earlobe. “But you are weak, aren’t you? You’ve always been weak. A coward. When was the last time you slew a man with your sword? I do not think you could do it. So you will
weep in your bed like a child rather than do what needs to be done.”
You woke to the sound of my weeping.
* * *
FOR MANY NIGHTS it was like that. I did not leave our rooms, and so you did not, either. Uemura called on you. You wrote him a polite—if dismissive—letter informing him you would not leave until I felt ready to travel. You mentioned, casually, that the doctors who “examined” me should be imprisoned. So they were.
Two weeks we stayed in Shiseiki. I slept twice in that time, and ate perhaps four times. I no longer felt hungry, no longer felt sleep calling to me. Only in the dark hours of the night did I leave the room. I left the barracks altogether, mounted my horse, and rode for a few hours.
What did I have to fear from the dark?
Demons? I was near enough to one.
Bandits? Let them come, I could throw them like toys.
Guards? I was a monster to them. A thing to be avoided.
So I split my time between you and my horse, the two most important women in the world. Alsha did not try any of her smart tricks. No, she cantered about as if I were a child. That was fine with me. I did not want to go too fast. I did not much want to do anything.
It was on one such nighttime ride that I saw campfires in the distance. I was out farther than the patrols went.
I found myself riding closer. If they were bandits, I could end them. I might welcome the distraction it’d bring to the demons haunting me. If they were not bandits, I could leave and bring back word of what I’d seen.
But the closer I came, the clearer it was: three bright white gers guarded by one dozen braided warriors.
My mother had finally found us.
OUR SLEEVES, WET WITH TEARS
I did not spend much time around your mother, and for this I will always feel some regret. O-Shizuru exists in stories as a dark woman, hands forever coated with blood, trailed always by crows. I know these stories cannot hope to capture her essence, just as the stories of my mother fail to capture hers.
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