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.