Fireheart Tiger

by Aliette de Bodard

  It doesn’t have to harm. Oh, ancestors. Thanh thinks of fire: thinks of what it must have meant to be contained within a small charm and then again within the confines of a cabinet, and then stretching at the taste of freedom, of running, endlessly lost within a nightmare of fire and smoke and not finding the escape she’d dreamt of. Thinking of what it must have meant, to burn only small and insignificant things for eight long years, to deliberately diminish herself the same way she’d been imprisoned in the carving. “You’ve been with me all that time.” It’s vertiginous and frightening, suddenly throwing the last eight years in a different light. “Watching me.”

  “No, I have not been spying on you. Your life was your own. I just needed . . . a safe place.” Giang’s smile is bright and carefree, and so achingly fragile. “You were kind to me that night in the palace. I thought you’d understand.”

  She’s looking at Thanh with that expression on her face: trying to hide how much she’s waiting on Thanh’s approval, how much she’s hoping—how much it’ll hurt her if she doesn’t get it.

  Something shatters in Thanh’s chest. She reaches out, grabbing Giang’s hand before she can properly articulate what she’s doing. There’s that same weight she remembers, a reassuring firmness that spreads warmth into her limbs. “Oh, li’l sis,” she says, the endearment coming instinctively to her. “Of course I understand.” And, shivering, draws her nearer to her and hugs her until Giang’s trembling subsides and she curls up in Thanh’s embrace with a sigh that sets the lanterns in the rafters burning brighter.

  * * *

  Thanh goes to the ancestral halls.

  She leaves Giang in her bedroom, sitting on the bed and curiously looking at everything from steamed buns to carving: the fire elemental keeps fluttering in and out of existence, first solid, then not, as if the slightest breath of wind could blow her away.

  Thanh lights incense and prostrates herself in front of the altars of her foremothers—the empresses of the past, the archaic characters of their names giving way to modern script, and then to black-and-white portraits of women who look like they could take on the world, carrying swords as though they were extensions of themselves. “What do I do?” she asks.

  She waits.

  There’s no answer but the gentle smoke of incense as it burns. What should Thanh make of this, of all of this? Giang doesn’t seem fussed, but neither did she sound likely to leave. Sooner or later someone will find her. Sooner or later there will be an exorcist, or a monk, or both. They’ll say it’s necessary. That it’s for the good of everyone; that fire needs to be caged and contained—that Giang burnt down a palace already. They’ll ignore the grief in Giang’s eyes and the way she’s made herself smaller and smaller over the years, seeking an impossible atonement for what she’d done.

  “Please help me,” Thanh says. She doesn’t know if they will. What would her warrior ancestors make of her, of the spare daughter sent abroad and come back with only a dim sense of what home means?

  No answer. The pictures glint like fire, and in their light she sees Giang’s haunted face.

  She walks out of the ancestral halls and back to her room.

  Giang is waiting for her, sitting on the bed. “Are you okay?” she asks. She’s nibbling on a steamed bun from the breakfast basket the servants left in Thanh’s room. Her hair shines like dappled sunlight.

  “I don’t know,” Thanh says, finally. She should pretend, the way she’s always done, but something about Giang is familiar and comforting and she finds she has nothing to offer but the truth. “It’s complicated.”

  “Ah.” Giang fishes in the bamboo basket, and holds out another bun. “Want one?”

  Thanh can’t help laughing. “Why not?”

  They nibble together in companionable silence. Giang says, “Humans are weird. Why is there an egg yolk in the center?”

  “You don’t like it?”

  Giang makes a face. “No, but—but how did you get the idea in the first place?”

  “It’s for wealth,” Thanh says, and she wants to laugh again. All her problems suddenly seem very far away. “Like coins at the hearts of buns.”

  Giang makes a face. “You can’t eat coins.”

  “True. But you can eat salted egg yolk.” Thanh thinks, for a while, on wealth and coin and commerce. She doesn’t know what to do—about Giang, about Eldris, about any of what she’s embroiled in. “I need to write letters.” She holds up a hand to forestall Giang. “But you can stay here if you want.”

  Giang smiles. “There are more buns.”

  She’s lying on the bed, taking the bun apart with the focus and attention of a very small child and making the occasional delighted noise. Thanh sits at her desk, writing with a brush—the sound of Giang’s laughter soothes and delights her, keeps her bolstered as she does what she needs to.

  She writes to the Quỳnh, to the Ngân Kỳ, to all of their neighbors. She tells them about the Ephterians, about the North, about the necessity of banding together to hold themselves together. Xứ Quỳnh Hoa is small and landlocked, but its warriors are fierce, and Ngân Kỳ . . . The Ngân Kỳ are Bình Hải’s former masters, before the Hải declared their independence and made themselves a space of their own on the continent. They’ve had two centuries of freedom, but now Ngân Kỳ itself is weak, beset by internal wars, and the northerners are encroaching there, too. Thanh hesitates for a moment, and then writes of the sea becoming mulberry trees, of a time of trouble and upheaval, and offers Ngân Kỳ an alliance: mutual access to each other’s markets, and help fighting off the northerners, in exchange for silver. Ngân Kỳ is poorer than Ephteria, but if Bình Hải taxes their merchants and if Bình Hải’s merchants can sell their silk and pottery into Ngân Kỳ’s much larger markets . . . then they can make it work.

  The time for equivocation is past, and she’ll need all the help they can muster if they are to survive.

  A knock at the door. Giang startles. “I’ll go.” And she vanishes like a blown-out candle.

  It’s Ái Vân, an unreadable expression on her face. “Your Highness . . . you have a visitor.”

  Eldris? But why would she? Surely she, more than anyone else, knows that they have to keep their relationship a secret?

  Thanh looks up and sees Captain Pharanea.

  Ái Vân quickly and unobtrusively goes around the room picking up Thanh’s letters and then exits, bowing to Captain Pharanea. She looks worried and why wouldn’t she?

  “This is irregular,” Thanh says, after Pharanea has bowed to her. “We have official sessions and official channels.”

  Pharanea smiles, her eyes glinting like steel. “For official things, we do.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “I know,” Pharanea says.

  “You what?”

  A smile that is all unpleasant sharpness. “What you get around to in the pavilions of such widespread gardens.”

  Eldris. “We’ve done nothing,” Thanh says. She feels chilled, and trapped.

  “Oh, don’t give me that.” Pharanea walks into the room as if she owns it, pulling out one of the dragon-carved chairs and lounging in it. “I know why she came. She’s hardly ever bothered with politics before, and certainly not with boring negotiations such as these.” She scoffs. “Of course it had to be about something else. War, or a woman. Or both.”

  Thanh says nothing. She doesn’t have any words left. “I don’t understand. There’s nothing wrong here. No mutual agreements.”

  “Oh, plenty wrong,” Pharanea spits. “The wrong time and the wrong person. But then she’s always had a wandering eye.”

  “She wouldn’t—”

  “Don’t bother,” Pharanea says. “She likes the unattainable. Challenges. And then she discards what she’s got as she has so many broken toys. You’re hardly her first.”

  Thanh opens her mouth to say Eldris wouldn’t—surely she meant it when she said it was serious—but then something deeper and colder, some gut reflex, stops her,
and the negotiator in her takes over. “You’re not here to insult me, I assume.”

  A snort, from Pharanea. Reluctant, grudging admiration. “No, I’m here to warn you.”

  “You’ve done it. Now what?” That’s not what she’s really here for: She’s angry, and she wanted to sharpen her claws on Thanh. Make her as uncomfortable as possible, but it’s not her end game.

  Pharanea smiles, again. “I could require you to be removed from negotiations. Conflict of interest.”

  “You’ll find that doesn’t move Mother much,” Thanh says. She keeps her face smooth and blank, but it costs her. Mother doesn’t know and she cannot know. She won’t stand for it: for the betrayal of Thanh sleeping with their overbearing, controlling partner that always seems on the verge of becoming their conqueror. For her making Bình Hải vulnerable because she can’t do as simple a thing as controlling her lust.

  “Oh, won’t it? But I forget—your mother doesn’t know.”

  Thanh opens her mouth to say don’t, closes it—but it’s already too late.

  “So that you do care about.” Pharanea shrugs.

  “What do you want?”

  “Oh, such unseemly haste. Did you not learn patience in Yosolis?”

  Thanh has had enough of games. “What I learnt in Yosolis is that even the oldest stone can burn.”

  Pharanea grimaces. “You posture, but it won’t avail you of anything, Princess. What do I want? What everyone would want, in my situation.”

  A favor. Thanh’s weight brought to bear in the negotiation—and isn’t that a formidable asset to have, the chief negotiator of Bình Hải secretly on her side? “You’ll have to be more specific.”

  A smile. “You’ll find that I don’t have to.”

  So, not just a favor. An unspecified, untimed favor. A blank bank draft. “That’s too much.”

  “Do you want me to take this up with your mother, then?”

  “No.” Thanh thinks of Mother—quick to anger, quick to discard the flawed, the weak. “Don’t.”

  “Good.” Pharanea smiles. “I didn’t think she was right to pick someone so uncouth, but perhaps you are capable of learning proper manners. So good to see we’re seeing things from the same point of view, Princess.” She gets up from the chair, pushes it so that it scrapes on the floor, the wooden parquet screaming under the weight of its legs. “We’re going to have such a lovely time together.”

  * * *

  Thanh takes a deep, shaky breath. In her clenched hand is the summons to Mother’s chambers. A simple message with her seal, brought by Adviser Long, one of the eunuchs who has been with Mother the longest.

  The Empress of Heaven, the Fateful Prosperity Ruler, summons Five-Pearl Princess Ðoan Thanh to an audience.

  It’s in the script of the court and below Thanh’s full name it also lists each of her titles—not that the list is long—and it includes things like “The Princess Who Went to the Heart of Winter,” as if being sent to Yosolis as a child is some kind of achievement worthy of being endlessly recorded and celebrated.

  There’s only one kind of formal summons that warrants Adviser Long: a reprimand.

  Mother knows. Thanh doubts Pharanea told her—and she’s only seen Eldris on the other side of the table in official audiences, but it’s been so hard to keep impassive and casual, and of course Mother would see it. Of course.

  She’s not twelve anymore. She’s the woman Eldris came all this way for—the woman with whom things are utterly serious. She is . . . desired. She can bear her mother’s displeasure. She—

  Everything she has—every appointment, every title—flows at the empress’s pleasure. She’s Thanh’s living ancestor and her elder, and she’s owed not only respect but also filial piety, that of a subject for her empress, and that of a daughter for her mother.

  It will be bad and there’s nothing she can do about it.

  And Giang hasn’t been back. She vanished when Pharanea came in and hasn’t returned. Thanh could use her now: could use the easy, relaxed companionship they seemed to have when she was writing letters—but who knows what drives a fire elemental? No, there is no hope here: it’s just Thanh and the summons, and whatever may come of it.

  She crumples the summons and—taking a deep, burning breath—enters the room.

  Inside it’s dark and cool and smells faintly of incense. Mother sits on a dais in front of a chessboard that’s been cleared of everything save a couple papers. Her golden crown, flaring on either side of her, frames her face like the wings of a bird of prey, and her lips are tight with displeasure. Thanh doesn’t even need to be close to feel the tension in the air. “Child,” Mother says. It’s short and snappish.

  Thanh comes closer, and bows, head touching the floor. “Mother. I humbly apologize, but—”

  Something hits her: the papers, thrown at her face. “How dare you, child? How dare you offer what is not yours to offer?”

  Thanh pulls herself up, pushing the papers aside. “Mother, surely I—” And then she stops, because she’s seen the script on the papers. It’s not Ephterian. It’s a forceful character, not in alphabet, but in the Ngân Kỳ language. It’s a letter and it’s addressed to her, but she’s never seen this before. It has to be an answer to the letters she sent before Pharanea came to her chambers.

  Of course. Still on her knees, Thanh makes a show of putting the Ngân Kỳ letter aside, but she uses that time to quickly scan it. Only a few words and sentences, but they tell her all she needs to know. All she needs to defend herself against. “I had to,” she says.

  “To bypass me and offer diplomatic ties to our old masters?” Mother’s voice is cold. “I put you in charge of negotiations. I didn’t give you license to bow and scrape to those who already conquered us once.”

  “I offered an alliance.” Thanh keeps her voice low and even. She pulls herself up, then—watching Long. The eunuch’s face is closed, but he’s frowning. Not entirely in agreement with Mother, then. “As with any alliance, the final word on the terms would be yours. And the final rejection, if you wanted.”

  “I didn’t give you leave.”

  “We need options!” Thanh says, finally throwing filial piety, and caution, to the winds. “We can’t just keep depending on Ephteria to maintain ourselves! We can’t negotiate from a position of utter dependence.” She stops. It doesn’t matter. None of it matters, because Pharanea is going to make sure it doesn’t. Thanh won’t be able to say no to whatever terms the Ephterians offer, because her secret still holds, because Mother doesn’t know about her and Eldris—and she ought to be feel relieved, but all she feels is a sickness in her belly, as if someone were slowly slicing through her innards with a blade. She’s burnt her bridges asking Ngân Kỳ for an alliance, and it’ll be for nothing.

  Long says, “Your Highness.”

  Mother’s face is cold. “You’ll defend her?”

  “Princess Thanh merely did what she thought was best,” Long says, slowly and smoothly. “As you taught her from the earliest age.”

  Thanh has a flash of herself at twelve again, watching the shores of Bình Hải recede, watching Mother’s face, which is expressionless. Not a tear, not a frown, as if it cost her nothing to send a daughter abroad. But of course Thanh had been nothing more to her than a bargaining chip—her worth measured by her usefulness, by how much Mother gained from Thanh’s presence in Yosolis. Silver and guns, and look what this bargain has wrought. Look what position it’s left them in—Thanh has hollowed herself, and doesn’t even have any value to show for it.

  “A dutiful daughter,” Mother says.

  Long’s voice is soothing. “Always.”

  A pause. Then Mother says, to Thanh, “No letters to other countries.”

  Thanh opens her mouth, closes it. “I can’t negotiate if you tie one hand behind my back!”

  “Then maybe you shouldn’t be negotiating at all.”

  It would be so much easier, wouldn’t it? Pharanea would ask for her favor, but Thanh wo
uldn’t be in a position to grant her much of anything. She could go on with Eldris, could work out what to do with Giang—except she’d once more be small and insignificant, and at the mercy of what others choose to do to her. “No,” she says. “Please give me another chance.” And, slowly and carefully, forcing herself to sound quiet and humble when she feels anything but, “A scholar is nothing without the four jewels in their study.” Meaning that no one can write without paper or brush or ink, or inking stone, and neither can she negotiate without leverage.

  A silence. Long isn’t speaking, and Thanh is kneeling, unable to see Mother’s face. Finally Mother says, “I will do anything, use any means, to ensure that Bình Hải survives. Do you understand?”

  Of course she does. Of course she always has. Everything and anything will be sacrificed on that altar. Mother will use any means, and any people. She’s been doing it too long to see how much it twists everything around her. “I know this. Let me do the same.” She has to try. Even if Pharanea hobbles her, even if negotiations are fraught and complicated by that favor she can’t get out of owing, there has to be something she can do. Ephteria needs trade and the money from the trade, too: there must be something she can exploit there.

  A snort, from Mother. “Fine. You will run your letters through Long before sending them.”

  Thanh lets out a breath she wasn’t aware of holding. “Thank you, Mother.”

  “Don’t thank me. Get out, and get us a bargain that will keep us alive and fighting.”

  * * *

  Thanh gets out and into the gardens—to the pavilion where she and Eldris made love—with the letter from Ngân Kỳ in her lap, the only thing she’s been allowed to keep after her audience. She reads it, slowly and carefully—and then stares at the sky, blinking back tears.

  There’s no salvation there. Ngân Kỳ is skittish: they’re unhappy at the current state of things, but not near unhappy enough.

  It is true that the foreigners have been acting like barbarian louts, not understanding propriety or benevolence or righteousness, but they have brought much into the country . . . It is, after all, our duty to be an example to children, and likewise our behavior will be a model for them. In time, they will learn to become filial . . .