The Tiger's Daughter

by K Arsenault Rivera

  Are you going to deny the hole in your wall, too? Or only my skill?

  Like Shizuru, she took everything we’d come to expect from honorable combat and turned it upside down. Unlike Shizuru, Burqila Alshara was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Hokkaran civilans and a thousand soldiers; likely more on both accounts. And now she was sitting here in a teahouse in Fujino, surrounded by veterans who hated her more than they hated the Traitor himself, having a cup of warm fermented milk.

  “I’m going to go give her a piece of my mind,” said Shizuru. “Who does she think she is, coming here?”

  “No,” said Keichi. “We don’t want a fight, Zuru, not here. If we get kicked out of this tournament, what are we going to do?”

  “This is more important than the money,” said Shizuru, which was the first time I’d heard her so much as hint at anything of the sort. She was already on her feet. My heart sank into my throat as I realized she had one hand on the Daybreak blade.

  “Shizuru,” I said, standing and following along after her. “Think about what you’re doing. She’s not your enemy anymore, she’s not hurting anyone—”

  “She’s hurt enough people already,” said Shizuru. And by then we saw her.

  And, as with Shizuru, the Wall-Breaker looked nothing like I imagined she would. Instead of a hardened woman in her forties, covered in scars and the hint of coming wrinkles, I saw a girl at least ten years my junior. The baby fat clinging to her cheeks undermined the small scars pockmarking her brown skin. Instead of a pampered Hokkaran’s finery, she wore a practical green coat in the Qorin style, embroidered with circles and squares in yellow thread. The coat intensified the viper green of her eyes, which now fixed us with silent expectation.

  Her eyes were the trick of it. The rest of her was young, but those eyes had seen much.

  All of a sudden Shizuru burst into laughter. “Which one of you idiots had the idea to prank me, hm? Someone told my brother that the Demon of the Steppes was here. You people think all Qorin look the same?”

  Keichi, who had followed along after us, put a hand on his sister’s shoulder. “Shizuru, that’s—”

  Shizuru didn’t listen. As bold as ever, she pointed to the young Qorin woman with the sheathed Daybreak blade. “That’s a child,” she said, “who wandered off her mother’s teat.”

  I loved the woman, but at that moment I was absolutely certain she was about to start a war. Yet how does one stop a hurricane once it’s made landfall? The best I could do was stand at her side and pull her away if she tried anything.

  All eyes fell to the Qorin woman. She pulled slate and chalk from her pocket. That was when I knew, without a doubt, that this was not going to be a good night.

  Burqila Alshara was famously mute.

  Apparently, this was all the confirmation of identity that Shizuru needed. She shoved the Daybreak blade back into her belt and launched herself across the table before I could get a hold of her. Time slowed like ice creeping through lake water as I saw my future wife punch Burqila Alshara square in the nose.

  There was one wet pop, and then a moment of perfect silence.

  And then—the explosion. The other patrons tasted blood in the water. Soon, two thirds of those who remained in the teahouse started swinging at one another. Cups and pots flew through the air, shattering, sending shards careening through the room. I held up my arm to shield myself as much as I could.

  Burqila Alshara was no exception. She grabbed Shizuru’s wrist, rose, and with one hand on Shizuru’s back, shoved her right into the wall. To my horror Shizuru bounced backwards from the force of the blow. Blood ran down her chin from her now-split lip, glistening red as moist fruit.

  But Shizuru was not yet finished. She tackled Burqila Alshara with enough force to send the two of them tumbling to the ground.

  This was the worst thing she could have possibly done. Hokkaran wrestling was to Qorin wrestling as a wooden sword was to the Daybreak blade. And, though it was not so noticeable when she was seated, Burqila Alshara was at least two heads taller than Minami Shizuru.

  Thus, the moment Shizuru took them to the ground, Burqila Alshara wrapped her long arms around Shizuru’s shoulder and leg, and then stood up with Shizuru slung around her shoulders like a sack of millet.

  “Shizuru,” I shouted. “Stop this! You need to let it go; this isn’t a proper duel, with rules—”

  “I’m not a proper woman!” she shouted—still stretched across Burqila’s back, mind you.

  To her credit, Burqila did not continue their fighting until my little outburst was through. But as soon as Shizuru finished her boast, Alshara fell backwards, breaking the table with Shizuru’s body, only to be confronted with a knee to the kidney.

  “Get the magistrates,” I said to Keichi.

  “I’m not leaving her, you get them,” he said.

  I gritted my teeth. I, too, could not bear to leave her—yet there was no doubt someone needed to get help. I broke off for a moment to find the teahouse matron, who was hiding beneath a shelf of pots. She was the one I sent out to get the guard. As I spoke to her the crashing behind me continued. Shizuru’s pained groans heralded the slap of flesh against flesh.

  By the time I looked back, Shizuru was on top again. Any hope I had to see her triumph was soon dashed. Burqila rocked forward, scooped up Shizuru’s arm, and twisted. In that moment I learned that broken arms sound very much like broken twigs.

  She screamed, cursed, rolled off of Burqila. I was at her side in an instant, holding her hand, doing whatever I could to ease the pain. Sweat left a thin sheen on her body; her lips were dry and chapped. Next to us, Burqila Alshara knelt and wrote on her slate. I glanced up to see what she had to say for herself.

  You should have submitted, old woman, before I had to break your arm.

  I scowled. The worst thing was—she was right. Shizuru must have realized on her own. She, too, glanced over at the slate—and then she lay back down, laughing.

  “Yeah,” she said, “you might be right about that.”

  Behind us I heard the marching of Imperial boots. Barked orders to disperse followed not long after. The guards were coming—and yet Burqila Alshara did not run. As Keichi did his best to cobble together a splint for his sister’s arm, Burqila Alshara scrounged up a plank of wood to help him.

  I frowned. What was she getting at?

  “Itsuki,” said Shizuru. I turned my attention to her instead of the warlord helping us. “Next time I try to fight a Qorin, you talk me out of it.”

  I winced. “I tried,” I said, “but you were an arrow in flight.”

  She laughed at that, too. In the haze of her injuries she gestured to Alshara, of all people. “Listen to him!” she said. “Arrow in flight. My poet!”

  Burqila did not have time to react. The guards, by then, were on us. Without so much as asking what had happened, they seized Burqila. Apologies to Shizuru fell from their mouths like leaves from autumn trees.

  Shizuru squinted. “Where are you taking her?”

  What sort of question was that?

  “To prison,” said one of the guards.

  Shizuru lurched up, yelping as she inadvertently put weight on her now-broken arm. “Wait, wait,” she said. “I started this fight. You take her, you’ve got to take me, too, and I’ve got a feeling you don’t want to take me in.”

  I could not believe what I was hearing. She was lobbying for Burqila’s freedom? Burqila Alshara, the warlord? Even the woman herself raised a skeptic brow.

  The guard looked to me for confirmation. I cleared my throat.

  “With all due respect,” I said, “it’s true. Minami-zul started the fight. However…”

  I faltered, for I could not bring myself to use my power in so corrupt a manner. The guard must have caught on to the situation from my awkward silence.

  “Well, there’s been a lot of property damage here, your Imperial Highness,” she said. “Someone ought to pay for it.”

  “Of course,” I s
aid. I could already see the list of damages forming, and it would be longer than I was tall. “Rest assured, it will be taken care of.”

  “You heard him,” said Shizuru. “Let her go! She won a fight, damn it, isn’t that why we’re all here? To win fights?”

  Her voice was a little slurred from all the head injuries, but I got the feeling she’d make the same argument lucid. That was the most worrisome part of all.

  The guards released Burqila. That fearsome warrior stood a horselength away from us, unsure of how to hold herself or what to say.

  After a long silence, the captain bowed to us and departed. In so doing she snapped the tension of the moment like twine, and the rest of us were free to resume breathing.

  “Hey, Burqila,” said the concussed woman in my arms. “Teach me how to do that arm-breaking thing when you get a chance, yes?”

  After all that fighting—that was what Shizuru wanted to say to her?

  A smile broke out across Burqila’s face like sunlight through storm clouds. She nodded.

  And as we sat in the wreckage of the White Leaf, White Smoke teahouse, I thought to myself that it was a good thing I did not ask for Shizuru’s hand that day.

  For one thing, that hand was mostly useless at the moment.

  And for another, with an introduction like that, there was no way Burqila Alshara was going to end up anything but Minami Shizuru’s greatest friend.

  * * *

  A SCANT TWO days after this incident, I asked Minami Shizuru to marry me in the Imperial Gardens, beneath my favorite dogwood tree. To my delight, she agreed.

  * * *

  I WAS TO be proven wrong on the first account. Shizuru fought a great many of her most famous duels with her broken arm in a sling—after we got her to a surgeon. The woman outright refused going to a healer. As she put it, she didn’t want to be responsible for my wasting several thousand ryo and ten years of someone’s life over a broken arm. I should have expected nothing less from a woman who laughed in the face of death.

  But—I was right on the second account. After that confrontation, Burqila and Shizuru’s respect for one another only continued to grow. Soon, whenever we traveled, it was the three-and-one of us—Keichi, Shizuru, Burqila, and myself. Sometimes the two of them ran off together on some madcap adventure they’d later refuse to explain between tearstained bouts of laughter.

  Burqila made good on her promise to teach Shizuru Qorin wrestling, and Shizuru repaid her with lessons in bare-handed fishing. Or tried to, anyway. It turned out Burqila had never been more than knee-deep in any water at all. The fact that fearsome Burqila could not swim brought Shizuru endless joy; it took two weeks of practice before Burqila could so much as doggie paddle.

  Sitting on the banks of the Jade River, watching the Wall-breaker herself flounder in the water, Shizuru leaned on my shoulder with a grin.

  And it was hard not to smile along with her—with them.

  What a puzzling thing to behold, this newfound friendship. This woman who’d waged war on us took Shizuru out riding and drinking. She let us try to draw her bow and laughed at us when Shizuru could hold it back for no more than a second.

  I admit, it did not feel quite right to me, to be so trusting of a woman who’d tried to kill us. And yet there was no end to Shizuru’s enthusiasm for her.

  That is my favorite thing in the world about Minami Shizuru—my favorite even among a host of favorites. I will never, I think, fully understand my Queen of Crows. Our cores are too different. She is iron and I am woven silk. We are strong in our own ways, but where I am soft she is rough. Or perhaps she is the silk, for she is far more flexible than I, who hold on to my grudges.

  It is that difference that I yearn for. She is a puzzle I cannot figure out; she is a story with endless delightful little twists. Just when I think I’ve discovered all there is to know about her, she reveals something new.

  It was only after our daughter’s birth, for instance, that Shizuru admitted she was a fan of my poetry before we met.

  I asked her, incredulous, what she thought when she read my long-ago war poem.

  She tapped me on the nose.

  “You’re pretty, and your words are too,” she said, “but nothing you’ve ever written about me has been quite right.”

  How many poems have I written about her? In some small way she lives in everything I’ve written since we’ve met—for she is always on my mind.

  I suppose I will have to keep writing until I get it right.

  Praise for The Tiger’s Daughter

  “Rich, expansive, and grounded in human truth. It is a story of star-crossed loves, of fate and power and passion, and it is simply exquisite.”

  —V. E. Schwab, New York Times bestselling author of the Shades of Magic series

  “The epistolary tale at the heart of The Tiger’s Daughter unfolds with deceptive elegance, leading the reader to a conclusion at once unexpected, touching, and apt.”

  —Jacqueline Carey, author of the bestselling Kushiel’s Legacy series

  “An incredible debut that takes all my favorite fantasy elements and adds the queer romance I’ve been waiting for in my magical fiction for years. If you love women who love women standing side by side to face off against a seemingly impervious foe, you will love The Tiger’s Daughter.”

  —Sam Maggs, author of The Fangirl’s Guide to the Galaxy and Wonder Women

  “A layered and mesmerizing tale of love and legends, this fierce story will settle in your bones like a chill and leave your heart aching.”

  —Roshani Chokshi, New York Times bestselling author of The Star-Touched Queen

  “Delicate, intricate, inevitable … a stunning debut. It took my breath away.”

  —Seanan McGuire

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  K Arsenault Rivera was born in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, but moved to New York when she was a toddler. While not managing a nutritional supplement store in Brooklyn, K is an avid participant in the role-playing community, from which she drew inspiration for her debut novel, The Tiger’s Daughter. She currently lives in Brooklyn with her partner. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Map

  The Empress: One

  The Colors of the Flowers

  The Empress: Two

  Let The Winds of Heaven Blow

  When In Dreams I Go to You

  Winter Loneliness in a Mountain Village

  The Empress: Three

  If I Should Hear the Sound of Pine Trees

  How Will I Tell Her?

  The Empress: Four

  The Midnight Moon

  It was not for this I Prayed

  Our Sleeves, wet with Tears

  If It Were My Wish to Pick the White Orchid

  The Empress: Five

  Let me Remember Only this

  The Autumn Time has Come

  If I Could, I’d Come to You

  The Empress: Six

  An Excerpt from the Poet Prince, O-Itsuki’s Unfinished Memoir

  Praise for The Tiger’s Daughter

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THE TIGER’S DAUGHTER

  Copyright © 2017 by K Arsenault Rivera

  All rights reserved.

  Edited by Miriam Weinberg

  Cover art by Jaime Jones


  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates

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  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-0-7653-9253-4 (trade paperback)

  ISBN 978-0-7653-9254-1 (ebook)

  eISBN 9780765392541

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  First Edition: October 2017