When we were eight and I stayed with you for the winter, your father gave you a choice.
“Either you learn the naginata or the sword,” he said. “You may choose only one.”
You did not have to think about it. “The sword,” you said. “It is about time Mother recognized my talent.”
Your father smiled in his soft way. He reached out to muss your hair. Perhaps he decided not to; he drew back after half a second. But the smile stayed.
“Are you certain, my little tigress?” he said. “The sword may be your mother’s weapon, but it is far more dangerous. You must be closer to your opponent. If we lived in the best times, you would never have to draw your sword; if we lived in better times, you would only fight humans. But…”
“I do not care whom I have to fight,” you said.
O-Itsuki looked away. The smile on his face didn’t change—or at least the shape of his mouth did not.
Once, when he was a young man, O-Itsuki took the field against the Qorin. He did not do much fighting. For the most part, he sat in his brother’s tent, listening to their generals panic.
Many times, when he was a bit older, O-Itsuki accompanied his wife into battle. He did not do much fighting then, either. But he watched good men and women writhe in agony. He watched Shizuru put them down rather than let them become monsters. He watched Shizuru slay creatures twice her size. Perhaps these things were on his mind. But they were not on yours.
“I was born to hold a sword. If the gods saw fit to give my mother one, they’ve seen fit to give me one, too.”
“The gods did not give your mother her sword,” Itsuki said. “Her ancestors did.”
“My mother is an ancestor. I’ll have her sword one day,” you countered. You crossed your arms.
If your father had any more arguments, he did not voice them. Your teacher was selected, and swordplay was added to the schedule of your daily lessons. You left the room triumphant. For the rest of the day, it was all you could talk about. During our walk around your gardens, you spoke of it.
“A sword, Shefali!” you said. “At last! Now that I’m being properly taught, my mother will have to recognize my talent.”
Only the plum trees were blossoming. We stopped beneath one of them. Was it my imagination, or did the flowers turn toward you as we approached?
I plucked one of the sprigs of flowers, already tall enough to do so. I can’t say what possessed me to do it—the penalty for defacing the Imperial Garden is twenty lashes, at minimum. Perhaps I knew you’d never go through with such a punishment. What I did know, as soon as the flower was in my hand, was that it deserved to be in your hair. I stopped us with a small motion, swept your hair back between your ear, and slipped the flower there. The bright pink petals echoed the ones on your favorite winter dress.
What a pretty sight you were. I got the feeling it would be strange to tell you that you were pretty—that you might take it differently than you did when other people said it. So I changed the subject.
“Why not a naginata?”
You scoffed. “The weapon of cowards,” you replied. “The weapon of those who think our only enemies come from the North.”
And so we stood beneath the plum tree and spoke of other things. You spoke, and as always, I listened.
Two days later, your mother returned from her assignment in Shiratori Province. In those days she left often. On that particular morning, your mother returned with a man on a stretcher. We were not told what had happened, and in fact, we did not learn your mother was back until she called the two of us to meet her.
We stood in the healer’s rooms. She was a stooped old relic, with more bald skin than hair and more hair than teeth. And yet, despite her appearance, she was no older than twenty-two. Such was the life of a healer.
When we entered the room, she tried to shoo us away from the man in the stretcher. “This is not a sight for young eyes,” she said.
But I’d seen men die before this. I did not move. And you were made of iron and fire; you did not move, either.
“Leave them be, Chihiro-lao,” your mother said. “They are here on my command.”
“I am going to put this man down, O-Shizuru-mon. You cannot wish for them to see that,” she said.
But your mother paid this no heed, and came to kneel at our side. “Shizuka,” she said, “I understand you’ve chosen the sword.”
“I have,” you said. “And nothing you can show me will change my mind.”
“I thought you might say that,” said Shizuru. “Shefali-lun. Have you seen what happens to those who challenge your mother?”
I thought of Boorchu and nodded.
“Was it fast?”
Again, I nodded.
“That is because your mother is an honorable woman,” Shizuru said. “At least as long as the situation calls for it. What I am about to show you is different. If you both insist on leading a warrior’s life, you must know what happens when you are not careful.”
I’d done no such insisting. On the steppes, you are either a warrior or a merchant or a sanvaartain, until you are old enough to simply be an old person. But I did not want to correct a woman who slew demons for a living.
“Step aside, Chihiro-lao.”
The healer lumbered out of the way.
The man in front of us was a man in the loosest sense of the term. How long had it been since he was infected? Black coursed through his veins, black pulsed at his temples, black blossomed at his throat. His skin was pale and clammy. An unbandaged stump remained where his arm should’ve been. His eyes were closed, but his face contorted in pain. As we watched, shadows played beneath his skin, forming faces with two mouths and too many teeth. Sometimes we’d hear a popping sound, and one of his limbs would snap out of place—with the man himself not moving at all.
“This man slew a demon today,” your mother said. “But he made the mistake of letting its blood mingle with his. When he dealt the beast its killing blow, a gout of it landed on the stump of his arm.”
The man thrashed. Your mother drew her sword.
My eyes flickered over to you. There you were, still as the noontime sun. You clenched your jaw and creased your robes with white-knuckled hands. Ah, Shizuka, you tried so hard to tear yourself away from what you were seeing!
“He is having a violent reaction,” your mother continued, stepping toward him. “Normally he would lie in bed and rot of a fever before he began thrashing.”
The healer smothered him with a pillow while your mother wrapped her hands in cloth.
You reached for me.
Your mother made a clean slice.
There was a soft sound, then an awful smell. It was done. Shimmers clung to the underside of the pillow as the blood seeped up into it.
Chihiro-lao winced. She looked right at the two of us and mouthed, “I’m sorry.” You weren’t looking at her, but I was, and I appreciated that moment of warmth. Children remember who showed them kindness when the world tried to make them cruel.
This was necessary cruelty, but it was cruelty all the same.
I gave her a little bow from the chest. It was the least I could do to thank her. Satisfied that my soul wasn’t lost, she made the sign of the eight over the man’s body. Then she bowed to your mother and left.
She must have gone to fetch people to move the body. You needed at least four to do it safely, and though she was young her body was not. It would have to be five.
O-Shizuru tore the cloth off her hands and wiped her blade clean. When she glanced at us, we still had linked hands.
“When you use a sword, Shizuka,” she said, “you must get close to your opponent. And when your opponent’s blood is a poison to the gods themselves, you must be careful.”
Shizuru must’ve expected you to buckle. Instead, you ground your bare heel into the floor.
“Careful?” you roared. “I am O-Shizuka, born on the eighth day of the eighth month, eight minutes past Last Bell. I don’t need to be careful of the Traitor, Mother. He needs to be careful of us!”
And so you turned and stormed off before your mother could say anything.
You did not run. Instead, you walked as fast as you could while maintaining a degree of grace. Soon the plum tree rose above us, and soon we stood beneath it again. You stared up at it as if it offended you, and you finally snatched a fruit from it the way a queen backhands an unruly servant.
“Shefali,” you said, “promise me something.”
I nodded.
“If I am ever foolish enough to have that happen to me, you will put me out of my misery within the day.”
And at this, too, I nodded.
I nodded because I was eight, and you were asking me to promise something that I never thought would happen. Because we were eight, and battle was still a distant dream in our minds, no matter how often we’d seen its effects. Because we were eight and standing beneath a plum tree, and nothing could hurt us.
* * *
THE NEXT DAY you began your formal swordplay lessons. And, yes, it’s true—from the moment the wooden sword touched your hands, you were a natural. As a horse is made to run, so you were made to wield a blade. Your strokes painted bruises on your instructor like ink on paper.
But I was not so talented.
Hokkarans favor straight swords. They’re well suited to your obsession with showy duels. On horseback it is different: a straight blade gets caught in your enemy’s neck, and you can hardly stop to retrieve it. A curved blade is more practical.
Your instructor was an old man from Shiratori Province. The long years of his life bent his back and hobbled his knees, but with a sword in hand, he was spry as a youth. Complicated forms were to him as simple as rising up in the morning. Perhaps easier, given his age. He’d fought in the Qorin wars against my mother. Everyone his age had. But the color of my skin was the least of his concerns.
“Oshiro-sur!” he’d shout, the veins in his neck pulsing. “Have you no grace? I ask you to be flowing water; you are a cliff face!”
I frowned. I could be flowing water. When arrows left my bow, they were rain falling from the sky. When I was on my horse, we were the rampaging rapids of the Rokhon.
But put me on my feet, put a straight sword in my hand, and ask me to move like a dancer?
You noticed my discomfort.
As the days wore on into months and the Daughter brought spring back to the lands, you insisted we go riding after sword lessons. The forests around Fujino were dense, and from your castle we could see the morning fog like a cloud come down from the heavens. It stayed until midday, when Grandmother Sky called it back. White on emerald green, vibrant and pale; the sight itself refreshing and enticing.
It was your great-grandfather who commissioned that forest. In his day, it was only a thick circle of green around the palace. He was an avid hunter and wanted a place to keep his more dangerous game. Here, where he kept wolves and tigers and bears, you wished to hunt.
“Come,” you said. “My men always go hunting in that forest; they never take me along. Too dangerous for an Imperial Flower, they say.”
Forests intimidated me as much as castles did. No roof is a good roof, whether it be carved stone or a branch. I kept calm by remembering I’d see patches of blue, at least. Maybe I could stitch them together and make a patchwork sky.
I was too distracted by my little mental sewing experiment to keep track of where we went. Only when the scent of horses came to me did I realize you’d led us all the way to the stables. How you did it without anyone questioning us is beyond me—but then again, who would ever question you?
Once I realized our horses were nearby, a grin spread wide across my face. I could feel my gray nearby, I could feel her in my bones. How far would we ride? The forest was large. My gray didn’t have much experience navigating thorns and brambles. Would she be all right? Perhaps I should pack extra sweets … she likes them far more than any horse of her caliber should. They’re ruining her teeth. But how am I to deny her? How can anyone look into those soulful pools of brown and deny them a sweet?
“Your Imperial Highness, are you well?”
Ah. Right. In Hokkaro, you had hostlers instead of tending horses yourselves. This man was their leader if the plume on his cap was any indication. I’d forgotten his existence, and his voice startled me.
Before you opened your mouth to berate him, I touched your hand. You stopped and looked at me; I pointed to our horses.
“Ah, that’s right,” you said. Then you called to him. “Boy, ready our horses.”
“O-Shizuka-shon,” said the head hostler. “That Qorin girl touched you—”
You waved. He scrambled to his feet and prostrated himself before you. “That Qorin girl is Oshiro Shefali, my good friend, and you will treat her with the same respect you treat me.”
By then I had already begun preparing your red gelding. Hokkaran saddles are different; where we have stirrups, a horn, and a high seat, you have little more than a flap of leather. Hokkarans believe that a rider and horse should communicate without words. That is the Qorin way of thinking, too; except that we recognize the usefulness of gestures.
You banished the head hostler to his chambers. I helped you up onto your horse and swung into my own saddle. My horse nickered. I ran my fingers through her mane. Again, she nickered—but this time she stamped her hoof, too. A dark mood, then.
So I leaned forward and whispered to her. In hushed Qorin, I spoke to her of the sweets that awaited her at the end of the day, of the verdant places we were going, of home, of grass and wind.
As the words left me, my throat thrummed with more than air. No, this was a great wind. This was the voice of something larger than myself, compressed into a whisper.
It was then I realized I was no longer speaking Qorin. Imagine a language like swaying grass. Imagine vowels sounded like a seer’s horn, consonants the rattle of bones in her cup. My tongue was thick with the taste of loam.
My horse calmed.
I felt like an empty river. I opened my mouth and stared at my hands and tried to understand what had just happened. And, as I did whenever I was confused, I turned to you.
And there you were, sitting atop your horse like a throne. When you saw the expression on my face, your brows knit together. “Shefali?”
I closed my eyes and squeezed my hands together. Opening them took some effort. Were they still mine, or were they, too, the tools of something else?
You urged your horse toward me. There, just outside the royal stables, you squeezed my shoulder. Golden butterflies pinned to your hair fluttered the closer you moved.
“Shefali,” you said.
I licked my dry lips. A deep, rattling breath shook me. “I am all right,” I said.
“You aren’t,” you said. “Do not lie to me. I know you as I know my reflection. What happened?”
I met your eyes. I could not meet them long. The second we locked gazes, my chest throbbed and ached and rang with a note I did not recognize.
You, too, flinched. Your ring-covered hand flew to your heart.
“Did you…?” you asked.
I nodded. When you turned to look around us, the ornaments in your hair sounded like temple bells.
A messenger rode up toward the stable cloaked in yellow and white—the colors of Shiseiki Province. Upon seeing you, he bowed at the waist, still mounted. “O-Shizuka-shon! Flower of the Empire! You honor me with your presence!”
Even at eight, you did not bat an eye at such praise. If anything, I think it exhausted you. When it came to you, the public knew only three ways to speak. The hostler earlier demonstrated mindless concern well; to those people, you were not a girl but a precious, frail object. The second thing a person might do was praise your parents. This did not trouble you much on its own, but by the third or fourth time you heard someone remark on your semblance to your mother, you made your excuses to leave. And here was the last: mindless praise from a passing messenger.
Seeing you alone was considered a great honor; you did not have to further honor him with words. No doubt this messenger would tell his family all he could about you: the colors you were wearing, the way you carried yourself, the small nod you gave him as he left.
Perhaps he’d mention how long your sleeves were, or the elaborate dragons embroidered in gold thread upon them. If he was an astute man, he’d mention the chrysanthemums secreted away by your wrists.
But he would not have mentioned how your hand gripped my wrist, how you squeezed mine when he called to you.
Long sleeves hide many secrets.
“We’re going,” you said. “We cannot talk here.”
I nodded.
Together we made our way out of your lands. In spite of our age, no one questioned us. Why would they? You, the Imperial Niece, were old enough to go out on a ride if you so wished. You had company. Qorin company, yes, but that was perhaps for the best. Everyone knows my people are born on horseback and sired by stallions.
On any other day, you consider silence an enemy you must cut down. As our horses took us from the palace of Fujino to the deep green forests surrounding it, you spoke not a word.
But then, neither did I.
I was marveling at the trees, for one. Wondering how anything the gods created could be so tall. Wondering what it was like to climb up onto the highest branches of the tallest tree we passed. What did your palace look like from there? Which was taller—a tree that grew from a sapling over dozens of years, or a palace men raised with their own hands?
After five hours of riding in silence, I called for a stop. Our horses needed water and rest.
We stopped in a relatively light portion of the forest. A small pool lay beneath the trees. From it our horses drank, from the grass surrounding it, they ate.
And as for us?
I laid out a thick felt blanket made by my grandmother. At one time, it had been white, but the grit and grime and sweat and smoke of our lives tinged it gray. My mother let me take it from her ger before leaving me with you. Such a thing was normally not permitted—but then, I would normally not be leaving the ger for so long.
On this blanket you sat. On this blanket, with wool taken from my grandmother’s flock. Your dress was blood on smoke.
“Shefali,” you said, “have you ever seen a man die? Besides the tainted one my mother killed?”
I started. What sort of question was that?
And yet …
Boorchu calling me a coward. Claiming my Hokkaran blood made me weak. The sight of him crumpling to the ground.
I nodded.
Clouds shaded your brow; the bright ornaments of your hair could not illuminate the darkness of your mood. When you spoke next, you stared at the ground.
“Shefali,” you said. As an inkbrush tints the water it touches, so did fear darken your voice. “What do you see when men die?”
My lips were dry. Dew on every leaf near us—but my lips were dry.
Because I knew the answer.
“Their souls,” I said. “I see their souls.”
On the blanket your hand twitched. You huddled in on yourself.
“Shizuka?”
“Right before I was born,” you said, “my mother was with yours, out on the steppes.”
I tilted my head. This I had not known. What was Shizuru doing on the steppes in such a state? For my mother, it is to be expected. But for a Hokkaran woman with a moon belly to be riding? To be riding in the winter?
And people say that you are foolhardy.
“Alshara insisted on taking my mother to an oracle before the week was out,” you continued. “And in this, as in all things, my mother listened to yours.”
“The oracle could not read my future,” you said. “When her bones fell to the ground, they shattered into dozens of tiny pieces. She said she’d heard of that happening in stories, in the presence of gods. So they went to another oracle, and another. Every time they tried to read my fortune, the same thing happened. Hokkaran fortune-tellers only said my birthday was important; they couldn’t say anything about my future.”
Around us, a hundred creatures lived their small lives. Trees and roots and mushrooms alike bathed in the fading light of the sun. Trickling down through the branches, the sun painted us, too, with streaks of white and yellow, with bright patches like oases on our shaded faces.
As the priests told things, each of those animals, each of those plants, and even the rocks around us were gods. Some gods are grains of sand; some are Grandmother Sky. A god can be anything it wishes—as small or large as it pleases. A god may live in a singing girl’s zither, imbuing each note with the sweetness of a ripe plum. A god may choose a scabbard as its home, and lend any blade it touches sharpness unmatched. Or a god might also live in a crock and burn everything it comes into contact with.
Gods can be anything.
But could we be gods?
Two pine needles, my mother always said, like two pine needles …
You pointed to a particular tree some distance away. Perched on one of its branches was a bright green songbird, the sort people travel into the forest specifically to catch. At the right market, it would fetch a fine price.
“If I asked you to shoot that bird,” you asked, “you would be able to, would you not?”
I frowned. I didn’t really want to shoot that bird—someone hungrier than we were might need it in the future. Nevertheless, I swallowed my protests and nodded.
“Sitting here with me on this blanket,” you said, “you could draw your bow, fire an arrow, and rob this forest of a singer.”
It would not be an easy thing to do. Qorin bows are made to be fired from compact spaces; sitting was not the issue. Drawing it without startling the creature would be the problem.
And yet I knew I could do it. As that same bird was born knowing a hundred songs, I was born knowing a hundred ways to fire a bow.
“Does it not occur to you how strange that is?”
Strange was a walking fish. Strange was water spreading out across the horizon no matter where you looked. Being able to hunt was not strange. It was a skill I needed if I was going to feed myself out on the steppes.
“You are eight.”
I gave you a level look.
“You are eight and you can strike a target as small as my fist from this far away,” you said. “Shefali, there are grown men who cannot do that.”
“Then they would starve,” I said.
You sighed and shook your head. “Earlier,” you said, “when you spoke to your horse—did you not feel strange? Did you not feel like someone else’s inkbrush?”
I stared at the backs of my hands. Warm, brown skin, pockmarked here and there with unhealing white. If I made a fist, I could see my pulse throbbing. I counted the beats, waited for you to continue. If someone was using me as their brush, what were they writing?
You swallowed. Near to us was a shrub full of blossoms I could not name. They were all bright violet—so bright, I did not like to look at them. You reached out toward one of them. It struck me that your hand shook, that there was this fear in your eyes you cut down like an enemy on the field.
When your fingertips met the petals, they turned from violet to gold.
A soft sound escaped me, and I covered my mouth in surprise.
“Shefali,” you said, and you took my hand in yours. I could not help but stare at you—your pleading mouth, your wide eyes. “As candles are not stars, we are not like the others. You must promise me, no matter what, that we will always find our way back to each other.”
Your words hammered against the bell of my soul.
“I promise,” I said. “Together.”
“Swear it,” you said. The fire of youthful conviction filled you. “Swear it to me.”
Without hesitation, I stood up and walked to the great white tree on which the songbird sat.
When you walked to me, it was without fear, without a trace of nervousness.
I drew an arrow from the quiver hanging at my hip. I held out my hand, the flat of the arrowhead resting on my palm. Then, together, we cut our palms against it.
Sharp pain jolted through us.
And yet neither of us flinched.
When I drew my hand back, the arrowhead was dark with blood. It stuck to my palm, and it was only with some effort that I removed it. Then I nocked the arrow. Sweat and grime from my grip pressed into the weeping wound we’d just made.
When I drew back the bowstring, when the pressure against my palm set my whole arm alight, when the pain screamed inside me—when all these things happened, I pointed my bow at the sun.
“I swear by sky and blood,” I said. “I swear by my mother’s ger, and my grandmother’s spirit. I swear by the blood of Grandmother Sky, who birthed the Qorin and taught us to saddle lightning. Together. I swear this.”
Only then did I loose.
Like the songbird, the arrow soared overhead, straight on toward the sun. I turned before it reached the peak of its arch. Once Grandmother Sky tastes your blood, you may not hide from your oath. Where can you go to hide from her bright gold eye, or the dull silver one? All things return to the sky in time.
As we walked back to the blanket we called our camp, I wondered if we would return to the sky.
Only the stars and the clouds deserved to be in your company. Only the sky could be home to you. Only the sky was a splendid enough throne for you.
* * *
WE STAYED IN that clearing that night. I urged you to let us ride back, or at least to ride toward somewhere a little better populated. But you insisted in your bullheaded way that we could stay wherever we pleased. After all, hadn’t you just told me that we were not normal?
I did not like that. It was the sort of thing said by a girl who has never had to keep watch for wolves in the dark of the night.
And so, as you crept into my tent to sleep, I set about bundling together our belongings and hanging them from a tree. Once this was done, I sat before the fire and resigned myself to a sleepless night.
It rained not long after you went to bed. My fire, reduced to smoldering cinders, did not give me much light. I slipped my arms inside my lined coat and huddled closer to the embers.
Yes, I remember the orange of the cinders, the low rumbles of the night creatures. I remember rain on leaves and their fresh green smell. I remember closing my eyes and listening to the hundred thousand sounds of life. I tilted my head back and let the rain fall into my mouth.
When it rained in the steppes, we’d put out every bowl we could to catch it. A hundred li away, my mother and cousins were running out into the darkness. They’d turn and dance and sing praises to the sky. In Xian-Lai—so far away, I could not imagine its distance—my father and brother slept in their warm beds. Kenshiro might be awake. Knowing him, he’d be sitting up in bed, looking out the window. In his hand I pictured a brush; on his mind, poetry. He kept writing to me of Lord Lai’s youngest daughter. Kenshiro said she was more beautiful than the wind through a silver horse’s mane, which might be the wrongest thing I’ve ever heard. How could he look on you and say such a thing about any other woman?
But love makes fools, as they say—and in my brother’s case, it drove him to write terrible courtship poetry.
Thick drops of rain fall like beats. One, two, three, four, five …
And then there was you, asleep in my tent, not even a length away from me, yet given over to the world of dreams. I wondered what you dreamed of. I wondered if you were safe.
* * *
BY THE TIME dawn came upon me, my eyes were heavy with sand. I rose and moved toward the tent.
It was then that I saw the tiger.
You must understand I did not hear it, did not see it before this moment. A creature three, four times my size moved with the silence of death itself.
Your ancestor Minami Shiori hunted tigers for sport. Looking at the beast now, I did not know how she did it. Every sinew in its body, every muscle, tensed for attack. Great green eyes froze me in place. So astounded was I that I did not notice the beast was hurt.
Yes, yes, as it turned toward me, I saw dried blood on its paws like rust. On its side, a yawning mouth of a wound; on its side, claw marks. Red was its muzzle, red its teeth.
I did not know if tigers traveled in packs. I’d only heard of them in stories. There was only ever one tiger in the stories. Perhaps they were not like lone wolves, or lone Qorin.
But this one?
This one was. I knew that look in its eyes.
I licked my lips. The tiger crouched down. I’d seen cats do the same sort of thing, when they were about to pounce on mice.
I did what any Qorin would do: I mounted my horse and drew my bow, in a smooth ripple of movement. My palm still ached from the wound, but I did not have time to dwell on it.
“Shizuka!” I shouted. Hopefully, the sound of me raising my voice was enough to rouse you. If not, perhaps hooves pounding against the undergrowth would.
The tiger leaped forward, landing not far from me and my horse. In the moment before I kicked into a gallop, I found myself in awe.
On the steppes we have only these animals: stoats, sheep, dogs, wolves, birds, and horses. For most of my life, I was surrounded by these creatures. I knew the best place to aim for when hunting a stoat. I knew how to skin a wolf. I could talk to horses, if I wanted.
But never in my life had I seen anything so graceful as that tiger. The Sun herself sang its praises, spinning gold from the orange of its fur, turning the black to brushstrokes. As it stalked us, I saw its thick muscles sliding beneath its skin, like eels beneath a river.
We were wolves once, we Qorin—but there was nothing wolfish about that creature. When I looked into its great eyes, I did not see anything human. I didn’t see anything I recognized. How could something so large move with such fluidity? With those bright stripes, how could it hide in the forest? What did it eat?
It did not belong here, I decided. That was why it was so lean, that was why it was covered in battle wounds. Whoever the game master of this forest was had captured it and placed it here—but this was never its choice.
I frowned.
I knew, a bit, what it was like to be dropped into a forest you hate.
And so something about its terrible beauty was familiar to me, like a favorite song forgotten.
But it was trying to kill me. I could not admire it for long.
I loosed an arrow at it as my horse pulled ahead. With a satisfying thunk, the arrow pierced the beast’s pelt. A solid blow to its chest. A gout of blood watered the roots. The tiger roared, clawed at the ground.
And then it began running.
Riding through the forest is a difficult thing to do given the best conditions. Qorin horses are trained for speed and endurance, not sure-footedness. A good Hokkaran gelding would be ideal here. But I did not have a good Hokkaran gelding; I had a Qorin mare with a blackened steel coat and fire in her heart. As we barreled through the trees, I ducked low-hanging branches, whispered to her, told her we were going to make it out of this. I had to trust her. How else could I fire at the tiger? I could not guide us through the forest and aim. It was one or the other.
I thought of you scrambling awake in the tent. I thought of you watching the tiger follow me into the vast green growth.
Inside me was the thrumming power of a hundred horsemen; the light of a hundred dawns; the fire of a hundred clans meeting together. In the moment I realized this, a strange calm came over me. My horse could handle the woods, as long as I handled the tiger.
Another arrow, another, another. Each found its mark. First one of its paws, then its haunches, then its flank. Whatever agony the beast was in, it did not stop chasing me. My horse may be the fastest of the Burqila line, but it cannot outrun something that has lived and breathed this forest as I have lived and breathed sand and grass and snow.
The tiger jumped up onto a tree.
I nocked an arrow.
Could I hit a target small as my palm while it was moving?
Could I hit it while I was moving?
Could I hit it while seated?
I loosed.
The arrow whistled through the air. There! It hit the tiger in the eye. The beast recoiled.
But it did not stop.
My heart hammered in my chest. It was going to jump. It was going to jump from the tree and it was going to land on my horse and me and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
I held her mane in my hand and flattened myself against her warm back. I took a deep breath and braced myself for what was coming. Would my mother be proud of me?
Wood creaking. The tiger, in the air. Claws tearing through my deel, tearing through my skin, baring my bone to the world. Red. Red. Red. Rank breath thick with the smell of corpses. Hot blood washing over my arm. A roar …
“Shefali!”
I forced my eyes open.
You stood before us.
But how? Unless … Yes, this was the camp. My horse, wily as ever, had led us in a circle.
There you were with your blunted training sword, there you were standing tall and proud in the face of this horrible creature. I opened my mouth to shout at you, to tell you to run.
You charged ahead.
The beast, woozy from lack of blood, clawed at you. As fire crackling, you moved away.
I could not let you do this alone, no matter how much pain I was in. Drawing my bow was so agonizing, I thought I might pass out, but I could not allow myself to, not when you were in danger. My hands shook.
This would not hit. This was not going to hit. There was no way.
I loosed.
Another arrow landed in the beast’s neck, near its shoulder.
You let out a roar to rival the tiger’s. Then you plunged your sword into its stomach.
I was dizzy, swaying, straining to open my eyes as my body fought to shut them. Coldness cut through me like winter’s harsh knife. Pain grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled, pulled, until my boot slid out of the stirrups and—
The last thing I saw before I fell off my horse: you under the morning sun, covered in the tiger’s blood, your dull blade alight with dawn’s fire.
When I awoke, you sat next to my bed. Worry lines dug their way onto your heart-shaped young face. Either your attendants had not seen you, or you did not let them touch you; the many knots and ornaments in your hair hung in disarray. Still you wore the red and gold dress.
“Shefali!” you said as you touched my shoulder. If I wore the ragged remnants of sleep, that touch and its resulting pain tore them off me. I screamed. You drew back and bit your lip. “I did not mean to hurt you,” you said. “It’s the tiger’s fault for wounding you there.”
I frowned.
You glanced away, hiding your hands within your wet sleeves.
These were your rooms in Fujino. In each corner, a different treasure, given to you by a courtier to try to curry favor. A golden statue of the Mother. An intricate porcelain doll, dressed in identical clothing to yours. A calligraphy set. Fine parchments. Gold-leaf ink. A bamboo screen, painted with O-Shizuru’s story.
“My mother will be here soon,” you said. “Be ready. She’s not pleased with either of us, though I imagine she will take it easier on you.”
I tilted my head, gestured around the room with my good hand. You understood me without my having to speak.
“After the incident,” you said, “I rode out to find the nearest guards. When I explained what happened, they followed me to camp. I carried you back and graciously allowed them to carry the tiger. My parents have no idea what to do with it. I have informed them that it is your decision to make, by any rules that matter.”
Your mother was not going to listen to that, and you knew it. But your father would. No doubt he found the whole situation poetic. A boon for us, then, if your father put ink to parchment in our behalf.
I pointed to my shoulder.
“Torn,” you said. “We brought in a healer. Not a very good one.”
You shifted in your seat. Picked at your nails. At court, the latest fashion was to dust one’s fingertips in crushed gems mixed with oils and lotions. Between when I passed out and that moment, you’d dipped yours in crushed garnets.
“She said that healing you was beyond her power,” you said. “It’s my opinion that if you call yourself a thing, and you cannot do that thing, then you are nothing at all. But that is my opinion. And as always, my parents do not want to listen to me. So the healer was compensated for her utter lack of work.”
With some effort—and some help from you—I sat up. Breath came in rattles.
When I was six, one of the Burqila clan riders came back from a hunt with his left arm in his right hand. His entire left arm. His left shoulder was a bloody stump; he and his horse were cloaked in rusty brown. Everyone ran to him. The women carried him off his horse and took him to the oracle’s tent. Two sheep were brought in, too, and I remember hearing the shrill cries they made. When my mother sent me to get the oracle’s blessings on her choice of camp a few days later, I saw the man. Sweat beaded on his brow like dew; fever painted his brown face red.
But his arm was attached again.
I reached for my own arm. It was still there. Why, then, was I beyond healing?
I thought of our promise again.
I grunted.
“I agree,” you said. “On the bright side, we do not have to attend court until you are healed.”
Small victories. Standing on my feet beneath a jade ceiling listening to Hokkarans prattle—was there any worse fate? At least they would not stare at me.
“Shizuka, you say that as if it’s a fitting reward for your foolish decisions.”
Ah. O-Shizuru opened the door. You sat a bit straighter, though I’m not certain you meant to.
“You will accompany me to court tomorrow. Your uncle has been asking about you, at any rate. Before the night is through, you shall write one of your father’s poems for him on fine white paper.”
You tugged at your sleeves rather than roll your eyes. If you rolled your eyes, you were lost.
Your mother was a force to be reckoned with when she was in the most pleasant of moods. Now worry and anger clouded her features. My mother may have conquered half of Hokkaro with nothing but horsemen and Dragon’s Fire, but bandits had whole rituals dedicated to keeping your mother at bay. Right then, I would’ve liked a ritual or two.
Your mother fixed me with a harsh, unyielding glare. Her brown eyes became slabs of earth, her mouth a canyon. “Shara,” said O-Shizuru, the only person who could call my mother that and live, “is never going to believe me.”
I drew back. The clouds broke; she cracked a smile.
“Two eight-year-olds attacked by a tiger, and neither of them dead,” she said. “If I told her that story, she’d give me a look, her look. And yet. Here we are.”
What was I to say to that? Not a word of it was wrong. Just—when she put it that way, we did sound foolish.
Your mother cleared her throat. “How is your shoulder?”
I held up my hand and closed it tight into a fist.
She nodded. “Yes,” she said, “it’s going to hurt for some time. The healer couldn’t do much; the doctors say it’ll be at least a few months before you can shoot a bow with that arm again.”
Wrong. I’d be shooting a bow again within a few weeks at most. My young brain could not imagine a life where I went any longer than that without firing it.
“I’d ask you what happened,” said your mother, “but you’ve never been one for words. So I will tell you this.”
Now the solemnity crept back in; now her words were heavy as the first rain of the season.
“What you did was foolish. Beyond foolish. If a man strapped raw meat to his person and ran to the Emperor’s dogs—that would be less foolish. You are children; there are grown warriors who’d never dream of fighting a tiger. You lived this time. Next time, you will not. It is by the Mother’s intervention alone that you live.”
I wanted to say something. At the base of my throat, I felt it building. I wanted to tell her that, no, it was not the Mother’s grace, it was my own skill at riding, it was my horse, it was your blade striking the final blow. It was us.
But no, no, it was not the time.
So I sat. I sat and I listened as your mother outlined all the things we’d done wrong. As she told us again and again how foolish we’d been.
“There are bandits in those woods,” she said. “What would you have done if they came for you?”
“Shot them,” you said. However long she’d lectured you before I awoke, you could take no more. “She would’ve shot them, Mother. As she shot the tiger. Repeatedly.”
“Men are not tigers,” O-Shizuru snapped. “I’d rather fight a beast. At least they have dignity. Those men would’ve cut your horse’s legs out from—”
I yelped and drew the covers around my knees. My brown face went lighter, my mouth hung open, my breath left me in harsh gasps.
Your mother reached out a hand. No doubt it was meant to be reassuring, but the thought of my horse being hurt was still on my mind—the image of her crumpling as some godless bandit cut into her. Her cries of pain rang in my ears. I pressed my head against the pillows to drown it out.
You whispered something to your mother.
The Queen of Crows eyed me and sighed. “Shefali-lun,” she said, “no one is going to hurt your horse.”
I peeked out from my self-imposed exile and wrinkled my face.
Your mother pinched the bridge of her nose. “Don’t give me that look,” she said. “You are on our lands. If anyone hurt your horse while you were lying here, I would execute them myself.”
Slowly, slowly, I began to relax. But the look in her eyes still brooked no arguments.
“This changes nothing,” she said. “However incredible it is you slew the tiger, it was a foolish thing to do. You should’ve run, Shefali. You should’ve taken Shizuka up on your horse and the two of you should’ve gotten away, somewhere safe.”
I hung my head.
“People will tell you what you did was brave,” Shizuru said. “My husband among them. But you must remember how easily it could’ve gone wrong. This wound you bear will scar. When you feel stiff skin tugging in your shoulder—you will remember.”
And I drew the sheets closer to myself. I clutched them close. My throat tightened. So many things I wished to say. As she spoke, I watched you squirm in your seat. Each time you parted your lips, your eyes fell on my bandages, and you fell silent.
When your mother left, so did you. Urgent business, she said, that the both of you had to attend to. I watched you go. You looked back at me as you walked out of the room.
And then I sat up. I watched the moon rise. I thought of the tiger somewhere in the castle, rotting. What was I going to do with it? I’d never heard of anyone eating a tiger. An old Qorin poem came to mind. The Kharsa’s daughter has tiger-striped arms.… I could not remember the rest. I racked my brains for it, but I might’ve been milking a stallion for all the good it did me. Eventually my frustration surrendered to exhaustion. I fell asleep and dreamed of the steppes.
At least until you crept into bed next to me.
Still half asleep, I thought I must’ve dreamed you—your hair unbound, your skin flush with anger or embarrassment or …
“Shefali,” you said, lying next to me. How small you were for an eight-year-old, how tall I was. “I’m sorry.”
I must’ve been dreaming.
“I should’ve moved faster.”
I must have been dreaming. Those words would never leave you in the waking world.
“I won’t let it happen again.”
Sleep, then.
* * *
I WENT TO court more than once. I did not like it. There, in the halls of jade, I was stared at by scholars and advisers and sycophants.
“Ah, O-Shizuka-shon!” they might say, when they saw you. They’d bow so low that their beards swiped against the ground. “The Tiger-Slayer! Heaven’s blood runs pure in you.”
“I did not kill the tiger,” you’d say. You said this each time we went to court, at least five times. “I struck the last blow, but I did not kill it.”
“Do not be so modest,” they might say. Or “Your humility is an inspiration.”
With a sharp gesture, you’d wave them away. Under your breath, you would mutter curses at them. A bit louder, you would apologize to me on their behalf.
But me?
“Oshiro-sun,” they might say, if they were being charitable. “Yun” was far more common from them than “sun,” as if I possessed the Traitor’s cunning simply for being born darker than they were. “Your father is a fine man, and your brother fares well.”
But these courtiers never seemed to have any words for me. Nothing for Shefali. No praise. Did they know my name? Was I simply Oshiro to them? I must be. Not once during those summer months did I hear my personal name, save from your family.
And that honorific—“sun.” I do not pretend to understand Hokkaran honorifics. Some things are beyond explanation. My people have twenty different words for the color brown, most of which relate to the color of a horse’s coat. Your people have eight sets of four honorifics, one for each god. Using the wrong one in the wrong context was as bad as spitting in the eye of a person’s mother right in front of them. To make matters worse, half of them sounded the same.
I knew only a few. “Sun” was the lowest form of the Grandmother’s honorific. Depending on the person speaking it, it might be affectionate. Most of the time, however, it indicated that the speaker thought themselves far above the subject.
The other ones I knew were “mor,” which was the highest for the Mother; “lor,” the second highest for the Sister and your father’s favorite; “tono,” used for the Emperor alone; and “shon.”
Shon was the Daughter’s highest. Who better to wear it than the girl born on the eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth year, at Last Bell?
You are doomed to be Shizuka-shon all your life, as I am destined to be Barsalai-sul for all of mine.
Honorifics were the least of our concerns, however. If we were annoyed by them, that meant we were at court, and if we were at court, there were other matters to distract us. Court itself, for instance. I had no clothes to wear. Your father was kind enough to buy me a new dress, for I was too tall to use any of yours. It was not so bad, for a Hokkaran dress—green, with painted horses along the sleeves and hem.
There was the matter of etiquette, of which I knew little. I solved that problem by letting you do all the talking, and bowing only when you glanced toward me expectantly.
And though it involved me little, there was also the matter of what people were saying.
* * *
AS THE SPACE between a hammer and a pot, that was the court in those days. Emperor Yoshimoto could do little to stop the worries faced by his people.
“We will increase patrols along the Wall of Flowers,” he said.
Two weeks later, those patrols were found mangled and broken just outside the Wall.
“We will consult the oracles,” he said.
When the Hokkaran oracle was brought in to read the future in her vapors, she frothed at the mouth, screamed, and died on the gilded floor.
And then came Yoshimoto’s famous motto:
“We will endure.”
It became something of a saying among the peasants.
A farmer struck his hoe against the ground—a new hoe he had made himself with fresh wood not a week ago. Sure enough, it would splinter. He’d pick up the metal end and heft it high overhead. After getting his wife’s attention, he would grin a sad, gap-toothed grin.
“We will endure,” he’d say.
A fisherman strikes out to sea. He takes with him a good net and a good rod. He sails far out and casts his net. Soon it is filled with pink salmon, flopping about, taking their last breaths. Just as he closes his eyes to thank the kami for his bounty, he smells something off. He opens his eyes.
The fish are rotten.
“We will endure” is his bitter laugh.
Already the words began to haunt us.
* * *
NOT LONG AFTER I started healing, your mother left for another one of her missions. The magistrates out in Shiratori were having issues with a rebellion—they’d already caught the leader, but wanted your mother to make an example of him for the crowd. She did not look happy when she left—although your father managed to make her smile, whispering some secret promise in her ear.
Your father sat at the head of the dinner table and spoke blessings over our food. He teased you constantly. In his easy way, he would smile and call you the most read woman in Fujino.
“After all,” he said. “Your notices hang on every door. Your poetry is clear and simple, as refreshing as spring water—”
“Father,” you’d say, scrunching up your face as if you’d tasted something sour. “They are your brother’s words.”
For, yes, your uncle forced you to write all his notices. WE WILL ENDURE, eight hundred times each morning.
“Ah, yes,” Itsuki said. He held his teacup beneath his nose. Its sweet aromas filled his lungs and lent his smile a warmer air. “But your brushstrokes are the poetry.”
You palmed your face and I laughed. O-Itsuki watched you with a bemused look. This was how he always was: calm and relaxed, somehow above stress or worry. I cannot remember a wrinkle crossing his face, save for the lines winging his eyes when he laughed. And he laughed often. Whenever he and Shizuru attended court, he could not contain himself—always a twinkle in his eye, always some unheard joke rolling around his mind.
Many nights we passed like that, speaking with your father. The jokes were a welcome change from his brother’s proclamations. That was the year your uncle announced the eightfold path to plenty. All farmers had to bury specific stones attuned to their patron god in their fields—one every li, in each direction. For farms less than a li square, eight idols had to be buried, each one-eighth of the distance apart.
A superstitious gesture at best, meant to play on current fears. Your uncle claimed that it was Hokkaro’s lack of faith that prompted the Heavenly Family’s abandonment. Only proper veneration would bring them back. Anyone who failed to perform their pious duties would face Imperial justice.
Of course, burying things in a field like that, planting things the way he said to plant them, following all those rules …
I am no farmer, Shizuka. When I die and you leave me out for the vultures—that is the closest I shall come to farming, for flowers will grow where I last lay. But even I saw starving commoners curse your uncle.
Oh, when we were eight, it was not so bad. When we were eight, one could eke out a living, just barely.
But do you remember, Shizuka, when we traveled after—?
I am getting ahead of myself. That part, too, will come.
I had my own set of rooms in Fujino, but that did not stop me from visiting yours. I slept in my own bed perhaps twice in the entire three seasons I was with you.
In the dark of night, when the moon was high, I worked on my project. I’d had the tiger’s pelt brought up to me. With my clumsy hands, I sewed and cut and sewed and cut. The end result was not going to be impressive—but it would be mine.
My mother arrived on the twenty-second of Tsu-Shao. With her came about a third of the Burqila clan, including two of my aunts. And Otgar, of course. I suspect she would’ve come even if she was in the sands at the time. I met them at the gates on my horse.
Otgar came riding up next to my mother. In the absence of my brother, she was a capable interpreter. All that time spent in our ger clued her in to my mother’s language of gestures.
“Needlenose!” she shouted in Qorin. “You live! I heard a tiger ate you!”
You blinked. You sat on your horse next to me. I do not think you’d seen other Qorin before, or at least not so many. Otgar’s loud, long greeting—several times longer in Qorin than it would’ve been in Hokkaran—might’ve startled you.
I waved at her as she pulled in. She clapped me hard on the shoulder and mussed my hair. A little over a year it’d been since I saw her, yet in that time she’d grown into her body far more than I had. Seeing her wide face, her red cheeks, her beautifully embroidered deel, made me feel more at home already. Then she took me close and pressed her nose against my cheeks.
She recoiled. “You smell like flowers!”
I laughed and pointed to you. You drew back.
“What is the matter?” you said. “Why was that girl smelling you?”
“To make sure she is the same Shefali,” Otgar said. Time lightened her Hokkaran accent; she almost sounded native. “Smell never changes, no matter how long she is with pale foreigners.”
Something changed in your posture. “You speak Hokkaran,” you said.
“I do!” she said. “I am Dorbentei Otgar Bayasaaq, and it is my honor to serve as Burqila’s interpreter.”
Next to us, our mothers exchanged their customary greetings. Despite the crowd, my mother embraced yours, held her tight, with her fingers in O-Shizuru’s hair.
But I was more concerned with what Otgar had said.
“Dorbentei,” I repeated. “You are an adult?”
Otgar beamed from ear to notched ear, proudly displaying her missing tooth. “I am!” she said. “When I learned to speak Surian. No braids yet, but soon!”
“I am O-Shizuka,” you said, though no one had asked. “Daughter of O-Itsuki and O-Shizuru, Imperial Niece, Blood of Heaven—”
“Yes, yes,” said Otgar, waving you off. “You are Barsatoq. We know of you already, we have heard the stories.”
I tilted my head. Barsatoq. An adult name, like Dorbentei. But where Dorbentei meant “Possessing Three,” Barsatoq meant …
Well, it meant “Tiger Thief.”
I’m sorry you had to find out this way.
“So you’ve discussed me!” you said. Color filled your cheeks, and something of your old demeanor returned. “Yes, yes, I am Barsatoq Shizuka.”
I covered my mouth rather than laugh. Tiger Thief. My clan bestowed upon you the great honor of an adult name—something only a handful of foreigners received—and they named you Tiger Thief. You were so quick to embrace it! Someone must’ve told you what a mark of acceptance it is to be named by the Qorin.
And yet.
Tiger Thief.
I was saved from hiding my amusement when my mother rode over. As animals sense storms, so I sensed her coming, and all the mirth fell from my face. My mother’s eyes were vipers, her quick gestures as fangs in my flesh. Otgar, too, lost her mirth.
“Shefali,” she said, “Burqila is displeased that you would act in such a foolhardy fashion.”
“She is your daughter, Alshara,” said O-Shizuru. “You are lucky she did not stuff the tiger with fireworks and set it soaring through the sky.”
Alshara shook her head. Another series of gestures, though less sharp.
“Burqila will host a banquet tonight, in her ger, to celebrate her daughter’s well-being,” Otgar said. “You are all welcome.”
Good lamb stew! A warm fire, with my clan sitting around it! My grandmother’s nagging; my aunts beating more felt into the ger; my uncles trying to convince them to do other things instead. The acrid smell of the fire pit, strips of meat hanging just above it to cure. Wind whistling outside, rattling the small red door. I’d get to see our hunting dogs again, too—how big were they now? The russet bitch must’ve had her pups.
And the kumaq. By Grandmother Sky, the kumaq!
I bounced in my saddle the whole way to camp, no matter how upset my mother was.
Home.
I was going home again.