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.