Imagine you are underwater. Not something I like to imagine, of course, but I am not the one imagining it. You are.
Imagine you are floating in the water, completely submerged. Light filters down onto your face. The water’s cold, horribly cold. Shadows play upon your eyelids; strange shapes and colors come into existence. You want to name them, but your mouth is frozen shut. You want to breathe, but you realize your lungs are heavy, realize your chest is full of water. The longer you float, the paler the light on your eyelids.
Imagine that, Shizuka. A peaceful way to die. I wish I could tell you it was like that.
But it was not.
Instead, I floated in a sea of flames. Instead, constant cackling, constant growling filled my ears. Rot and death and burning threatened to empty my stomach. Smoke made my eyes water and my lungs burn. Whenever I coughed, the foulest taste coated my tongue. Like swallowing funeral ashes, Shizuka. Like a ripe plum suddenly gone rotten.
I threw up often. I threw up more than I thought I could. Instead of food, thick, oily black filled the buckets you held out for me.
Worst of all, I could see, and sometimes hear—but I could never speak.
Yes, Shizuka, I saw everything. Through the suffering, I clung to the fuzzy sight of your face. As terrible as I felt—and “terrible” does not begin to cover the anguish I suffered in that bed—you looked worse.
I did not need to sleep, for instance. The fever kept me awake. Or the screaming did; it is hard to tell. But though I felt exhausted, I never felt tired.
I think you wanted to keep me company—to be there when I fell asleep and when I awoke. Insomnia disagreed with your plan. The first time you helped me vomit, you were yourself; the second time, your cheeks sank in a bit; the third time, I thought I must’ve been sick for five years—how else would you look so different? No, I did not see you sleep in the three days I lay in bed. Nor did I see you eat.
I saw your altercation with the guards. I will say I saw it, at any rate; I saw blurs more than anything. Did they try to take you away from me? For I saw the flash of your blade, and I saw crimson spraying out. Later, I saw flecks of brown-red on your cheeks.
“Come back to me,” you said.
You held my hand. Did you wash me before you touched me? I hope you did. I hope you did not touch my marbled blood; I hope you kept yourself safe.
You hung your head. You still wore the butterfly ornaments from the day we went to the temple; their wings fluttered as you moved. In my haze, I swear I saw them fly right off your hair. They landed on my cheeks, turned black, and died.
“Come back to me,” you said, and your honey-sweet voice cracked. “Shefali. Please, if you have ever loved me, come back.”
I tried to open my mouth, Shizuka, I did. I tried to summon the strength to touch you, but even that was beyond me.
The demons laughed at me. “Look at Steel-Eye, laid so low!” they said. “Are you happy to join the family?”
The voices. The gravel, the rusty knife, the high squeal of a pig in heat. I heard them as if they were in the room with us. As you spoke, I saw them flickering in and out of existence. Shadows in full armor. A woman in robes with tentacles for arms and two mouths lined with needlepoint teeth. A man with a half-bare skull, the tendons and ligaments of his jaw holding on to bone. Laughing.
I forced myself to look away from them. You. Focus on you.
“Shefali,” you said. You cupped my cheek. I coughed; you did not draw your hand back. Instead, you sat me up and held a rag to my mouth. You kissed the tips of my ears. I was limp in your arms; you turned me toward you, and my head lolled backwards. With one hand you held up my head just so you could speak to me properly. “You cannot leave me.”
Again, I coughed; again, you reached for the rag.
“Listen to me,” you said, halfway between angry and afraid. “I…”
So exhausted. So hot. So much pain. My blood burned, Shizuka; with every pump of my heart, it seared my veins. A scream welled up in my throat; I writhed because I could not free it.
You wrapped your arms around me and squeezed. “I’m here,” you said. “I don’t know what’s going on behind those eyes of yours, but I’m here.”
But I could not stop squirming like a dying serpent. Wet gurgles left me; black spilled from my mouth and trickled down my chin. Shaking. I was shaking, I think.
“Shefali, please,” you said. You sniffed. I tried to look at your face, but my eyes did not listen to me; I couldn’t focus on anything at all. “This is my fault. Oh, my love, this is my fault.…
“Come back,” you whispered again, soft and desperate. “You are all I have left.”
Fingers going through my hair.
“My mother is dead. My father … I hope he is dead, it is better that way.”
Your hand in mine.
“My uncle does not care,” you said. There it was, the crack in your voice, like porcelain shattering. “You are all I have.”
For a moment, you went silent. Then you began to shake, too; then tears fell from your eyes.
“In all the Empire,” you croaked, “beneath sky and stars, I swear it eight times—you are all I have.”
I closed my eyes.
Fire in my lungs, fire in my veins, everything was burning.
When I opened them next, you loomed over me. Floating behind you were three severed heads, ghastly and dripping with gore. Toothless mouths cackling.
“Steel-Eye!” said one of them. “Did you know your mother lies with your cousin?”
“Steel-Eye!” said the other. “Your father complains about how dark you are! Perhaps if you were light as snow, he’d care about you.”
The first one cackled. “Or if you could read!”
I growled at them.
But you recoiled, and guilt stabbed into me. For your lips quivered with unspoken fears, your cheeks were puffed and red from crying, and in your eyes my own anguish was reflected.
“Shefali,” you said, your voice low. I could hardly hear you over the demon’s cackling. “Barsalai Shefali Alsharyya, I call you now. Eight times I call you. Eight times I beg for you to return. On this, the fourth day of your sickness…”
You swallowed. You licked your cracked, swollen lips.
“On this, the fourth day of your sickness, you must be killed,” you said.
A shout died on my lips: No, not yet.
But yours was the expression of a young woman who knows her children will not remember their father. Wrath and fury; sorrow and despair; all these mingled together.
You cupped my face and pulled me up toward you. “But I know you are still there, my bullheaded love,” you said. “I know you are not dying!”
Spittle flew from your lips. “I have watched the blackblood take a life, and it looks nothing like this!”
So loud, so vehement were you that I thought you were going to slap me.
You did. I did not much feel it; do not let it weigh on your conscience.
“You swore to me we’d be together for all our lives!” you roared. “Are you a woman of your word, or are you a coward?”
Speak. I had to speak. Though I could not breathe, I had to find the wind to shape my words; though fire coursed through me instead of blood, I had to find the will to live.
Speak. Fight. Return.
Over and over I repeated this, over and over I tried to drown out the voices.
No one survives the blackblood. It is an awful disease; in three days, the victim is dead, and on the fourth, they rise as something different.
But I had not died, had I?
No, this could not be death. We were together and I refused to believe that you’d died, too. So I was alive. And if I was alive, then …
Then I had already lived longer than anyone else with this affliction.
My mother once attacked a Hokkaran border village. The first time she attacked, she was young and unlearned. While the Qorin made camp at night, the Hokkarans diverted a river toward them. Alshara had to leave in shame—for how could she attack them after such an incident?
But the next village she raided, she made sure to flood beforehand.
So it is with all Qorin. We take the things that defeat us. We use them. We master them.
And I resolved in that moment as you held me that I would do the same for the blackblood. I would not let it kill me. No. I had too much to do. I had a people to rule; I had to ride with you against the Traitor.
No disease would slay me.
I would take this weapon the Hokkarans used against my people, and I would welcome it into myself. I would strike fear into their hearts.
I would become something more than human.
I coughed. I coughed, and coughed again, black spewing out of my mouth. I sat up. With one hand I braced myself; with the other, I cleared the hair out of my face.
I opened my eyes, and there you sat on top of me. And as the dawn breaking over Gurkhan Khalsar, so was your smile.
“Shefali,” you said, “you’ve returned to me.”
I ached to kiss you. I could not—if my lips touched yours, they’d bring with them my affliction.
“I would not let it kill me,” I said.
You wrapped your arms around me, and I smelled peonies. You pressed your lips to my forehead, and I swear to you the laughing stopped, if only for a moment.
“Good,” you said. “I will not allow you to die. Royal decree.”
And somehow, despite the color of the blood seeping from my wound, despite the pain and the fever, despite your exhaustion and mine, we laughed.
It did not last long. Knocking on the door roused us from our reverie.
“O-Shizuka-shon! You cannot keep us from entering!”
I looked toward the door. You’d piled all the furniture in the room in front of it. Whoever was on the other side was pounding so hard, everything rattled.
You bit your lip. “I could not let them near you,” you said.
I nodded. I needed new bandages; you had no idea how to bandage to begin with, and could not touch me as I was. This was not our bed, and so I did not care what happened to it. I tore cloth from the sheets and set about bandaging myself.
“When I’m done,” I said. You nodded. My head throbbed and throbbed. That awful taste was still in my mouth.
But I was alive, and that was all that mattered.
As I finished, you tossed me one of your robes. It was far too small for me—the sleeves ended half past my elbows, and it covered me to the knee only. To say nothing of the fact that you could never wear this again, and it must’ve cost you more than some villages produce in a year. We had other things to concern ourselves with.
Like what they would say when they saw me standing and breathing.
You helped me to my feet. Again, the doors rattled.
“O-Shizuka-shon, the Emperor’s Champion is here to collect you. You will allow us entry, and you will allow us to remove the corpse from this room!”
You winced.
You tried to move the heavy desks and wardrobes you’d forced in front of the door. I think you must’ve put them there at night, and it must’ve taken you hours—you struggled against them now, your meager weight not enough to move them.
The wound in my side burned. All of me burned, and my limbs were wrought iron. But I wanted to help you. I grasped one of the desks by its leg and pulled. As easily as a child moves a toy cart, I moved that desk. It felt so light!
You stared at me. “Shefali?”
I cleared my throat again. Do not think about it. There was a reason for it. Probably just my greater size. And I have always been stronger than you. That was surely it.
But I moved the dressers, too, with hardly any effort, and the wardrobe taller than I was. Cold fear prickled the hairs on the back of my neck.
I was still myself. Of course I was. My body was not distorted. I was still Shefali.
You must have thought the same, for you squeezed my arm. “Do not worry, my love,” you said. “You have not changed in your appearance.”
And it was then that they burst open the doors. Two dozen armed guards just to retrieve you. Two dozen armed guards who stopped in their tracks when they saw me.
I met their eyes, each and every one of them. Some were afraid. Others angered. But that did not change the state of things.
I held up my hands, palms out, to show I was not going to hurt anyone.
You stepped in front of me. “Barsalai Shefali lives,” you said.
The guard captain stepped forward. Slack-jawed, he stared at me. With the butt of his spear, he moved my head this way and that. I suffered this, though I know you rankled at it. I did not particularly feel like being impaled that day.
“Oshiro-sun,” he said, despite my proper name being used not two moments before. “I saw your wound myself, three days ago. You have the blackblood. How is it you stand here before me? Have you risen?”
A voice in the back of my mind shouted that I should tear his heart out for questioning me. I closed my eyes long enough to banish it. My hand twitched. The guards fell into position as one.
I opened my eyes to find two dozen pikes leveled at my face.
“No,” I said. “I didn’t die.”
“Impossible!” shouted the guard captain. “I saw it myself—”
“And now you see us standing here, Captain, and hear her words,” you said. You stood between the two of us, your arms on your hips. “If Uemura-zul is here, then you may bring us to him. But you are not to restrain Barsalai in any way. Am I understood?”
“She’s a demon!” shouted one of the men. “Look at her eyes!”
“Sir! We have to kill her, she’s enspelled the Imperial Niece!”
I wanted so badly to roll my eyes. As if magic were real, beyond the simple things healers could do. As if we lived in the Age Long Gone, as if anyone had seen a fox woman or a phoenix or even a lion dog in centuries.
“She has not,” you said. “I will offer you any proof you like.”
You reached for your short sword and pricked your finger. A single ruby of blood flowed from the tip.
It looked delicious, like a cherry ready to be eaten and …
I am sorry, my love. My affliction is … it is like hearing your most base urges shouted back at you by an entire army. Things that would normally be fleeting distractions become horrible drones.
But if you have read this far, then you deserve to know what I thought, and when I thought it, and all the terrible things that came to mind. As I have wondered what went on behind your amber eyes, so you must’ve wondered what went on behind my green ones.
And so I say to you now that since my infection, blood has not looked the same. It has not tasted the same, either, on the few occasions I’ve been made to taste it. Gone is copper, gone is metal. Instead, it is sweet as the first fruits of spring.
I do not consume it. I will not reduce myself to such acts. But I have had to leave a room more than once.
At the time, this was not so familiar to me as it is now. I was sickened by myself. How could I think such a thing about you? About your blood?
What if this was how it started?
You smeared the blood in a lotus shape on your palm and named the Heavenly Family as you did. Your last petal was the Daughter’s, and you kissed that one when you were done with it.
“I swear it to be true in blood and spirit, and if I am wrong, may I wilt where I stand. Barsalai has not bewitched me.”
A moment of silence. I think they were waiting for you to wilt. Occasionally it has been known to happen with false oaths. Or at least it did, when the gods-in-flesh still roamed.
When you did not wilt, the party relaxed as much as they could when confronted with someone who is possibly a demon.
“Now, Captain,” you said, crossing one arm across your chest and gesturing with the bloody one. “Lead us to Uemura-zul. And do be sure to introduce us properly.”
The guard captain grit his teeth.
But he did lead us through the barracks; he did lead us out near the Wall. A large pavilion tent with Imperial flags stood not far away. Such tents have always puzzled me. The felt walls of a ger are more warm, more comfortable, than canvas could ever be. Why, then, do outlanders insist on canvas tents? A small tent is one thing. If only one or two people are traveling, a tent is preferable. But any tent large enough to fit four or more should be a ger.
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.