The Tiger and the Wolf (35 page)

She could not tell if she was being welcomed as the scion of
their lost royal line, or as a sacrifice for the Tiger’s claws. She
was wise enough in the way of the world to know these fates
need not be mutually exclusive.

After all
, she thought,
someone else has been ruling the Tiger
since my mother was taken from them. How happy would they be, to
find they have just been keeping a place at the fire for someone else?
No, better to be rid of the newcomer, to denounce her and do away
with her.

She was being led upwards through the maze of nested stone,
climbing towards the sun. Maniye made the resolution then that
she would run – girl feet, tiger or wolf – if the chance presented
itself. She would run, and head for Loud Thunder’s house,
wherever or how far that was from here, or for the Horse Society, or even just walk all the way to the southern lands and speak
them Hesprec’s name, and hope . . .

But the Shining Hall of the Tiger had few windows, and it
was busy with thralls and priestesses and people of the Tiger
staring at her with a weird, unhealthy anticipation. They had a
haughty grandeur to them, as if they did not see the broken
carvings, all the small repairs that they no longer had the
masons to perform. Here, wearing her Wolf’s face, she was surrounded by the scars of the war the Wolf had brought against
them, the wounds that an entire generation had not healed. Even
now the lair of the Tiger echoed hollow to the tread of too few
feet. Even now the work of a hundred hands was left undone.

She was still looking out for some opportunity to bolt when
they led her suddenly into a far larger room, where the carvings
seemed to have grown outwards from the walls, forming pillars
and buttresses that crept inwards to support the great and intricate expanse of the ceiling. There were many already gathered
there, yet the place felt empty still, resounding with the echo of
the greater multitudes which had once graced it. There was a
seat at one end, on a semicircular dais which rose seamlessly out
of the floor and wall. The carvings surrounding it demanded the
eye follow them: from all corners, a constant stream and progression towards that raised seat: thousands of human figures
worked in miniature, bearing corn, wood, stone, weapons, tools,
or else leading strings of thralls by the neck. They all of them
faced that same empty seat, as though they were bringing the
whole world to that point. It came to Maniye that the people of
the Tiger set all they had in stone, immortalized and recorded
and imprisoned there, save for the thing they valued most. Their
soul, their heart, their god, they did not dare limit by trapping it
in some rigid form: they knew the Tiger was smoke and flame
and fear.

Many of the Tiger gathered there were priestesses like
Aritchaka. They wore striped fur cloaks and ornamental cuirasses of stones and precious metals, and all of them were
armed. The others of their people, also mostly women and all
immaculate in furs and fine cloth, gave way to them deferentially.

Amongst them, she saw a delegation quite different in dress.
She knew them as Eyriemen from the moment she set eyes on
them, a band of haughty, hard-eyed men, their clothes embroidered with bone and feathers. Their leader wore a wooden
harness about his shoulders, twin spars arching over him like the
horns of the moon, the quills that decorated them turning them
into perpetually spread wings. The Eyriemen’s faces were tattooed on one side or the other, but they were careful to look at
Maniye only through the painted eye. There was only one
woman in their number, Maniye saw, and she looked at nobody.
She wore a cloak of feathers over her plain shift, and there was
a leather collar tight about her neck.

None of these things did Maniye understand.
Then she was standing before the seat, the throne, wondering
what must happen now. Aritchaka was some steps away from
her, and the guards also. The room was full of people, but she
wondered how far she might get with a sudden surprise Step
and a dash . . .
But there stood the throne, and it was empty still. Perhaps
this was the test. Perhaps they were waiting to see if she would
take what was hers by right.
That
was a strange and heady thought. Surely it could not be
so simple? To just sit down on that stone seat that all the walls of
the room were marching towards? But if she did not, was she
giving the lie to her own story? Perhaps
then
she would be transforming herself from queen into sacrifice.
By now she was very alive to the way that everyone in the
room was watching her. It was not obvious, not an overt stare,
but their attention was on her nonetheless. It was exactly the
way that a tiger stalks its prey, she thought, subtle and subtle
and again subtle, then suddenly the pounce. Sensing the minute
shifts of stance and attitude all about the room as she drew
closer to the throne, she became convinced that they were
not
waiting for her to seat herself there. To do so would be an unforgivable usurpation.
In her mind, that left only one possible fate they could intend
for her.
She took a careful step back, trying to seem casual. Still that
dreadful focused attention encompassed her, and it was the
Tiger watching her through the eyes of his priesthood. It was
there in the room with her: it was all the empty space that was
not peopled.
I will run
, she told herself.
I will be swift and sure, and I will
run
. And she turned, ready to Step down onto her Wolf feet for
extra speed, and saw him. A cry escaped her lips and died there.
It was impossible!
There, in the doorway, standing between her and freedom;
there, in the den of his enemies who should have cut him down
in moments: there stood a lean Wolf-tribe man in well-worn
leathers and furs, with ice-coloured eyes.
Broken Axe
. Broken
Axe was here for her. Even the Tiger could not stand in the way
of his hunting.
She pointed, but she could not say anything. Right then, she
did not honestly know if anyone else present could see him. She
would have believed anything.
He was smiling slightly, that expression that was becoming
more familiar to her than her own would ever be. Of all of them,
only he looked at her directly.
‘Many Tracks,’ she saw his lips form, and he took a few steps
into the room. She saw the eyes of the Tiger people track him,
then slide off him. They did not want to acknowledge him;
somehow they could not deny him. Their warriors tightened
their fists and scowled, yet nobody challenged him. And he
advanced on her, step after step, like a terrible dream.
Then he had stopped, and everything had changed. The
room had shifted around her, again like a dream, so that all the
attention that had been moving between her and Broken Axe
was abruptly elsewhere, following the great sea of stone figures
until it reached the throne.
Maniye turned. It was now occupied.
The woman who sat there was hard featured, and there were
scars on her hands and one on her chin. Her eyes were like
green stones, lustrous as emerald, and as cold. Compared to the
bright display of the priestesses, she should have seemed drab,
wrapped as she was in a dark pelt.When she moved, though, she
smouldered, and light gleamed and glittered in red bands within
the fur, like fire in the deep woods.
It was plain to Maniye that the Tiger had spared no time in
finding a new ruler, for this woman commanded their attention
entirely. From the moment she took her seat, her hand lay on
everyone in the room, stilling them. Even the proud Eyriemen
kept their disparate eyes low.
‘Come forwards,’ she said, and that chill green gaze cut into
Maniye. She took a stumbling step, knowing only that all chance
of escape had been stripped from her. That cool gaze anatomized her calmly, tallying her faults and features, until the
woman said, ‘I see only
him
.’
There was movement at Maniye’s shoulder, and she flinched
as she realized Broken Axe had come up behind her. She still
could not understand how he could be here.
The enthroned woman laughed at her reaction. ‘It seems you
make friends everywhere you go, Broken Axe.’
And Maniye felt like shouting at her, shouting at all of them,
Don’t you know who he is? Don’t you realize that he’s the man who
killed your . . .
The man who killed my . . .
She felt something, some certainty she had lived with forever,
fall out of her world. Suddenly the woman before her was different, entirely different in every particular, even though she
looked exactly the same.
My mother . . .
‘Now she knows me,’ the Queen of the Tigers declared with
satisfaction.

In the now-emptied room the question hung in the air
between them. The Queen of the Tigers had sent them all away:
the priests, the warriors, the Eyriemen, even the thralls. Every
one of them she had banished from the chamber, save for
Maniye – and one other.

By the door, a quiet presence, was Broken Axe.
‘I am named Many Tracks,’ she declared, seeing the slight
twitch of an eyebrow when she glanced towards Broken Axe.
‘But my name is Maniye.’ Because, if this was really her mother,
then here was someone she must give her true name to.
The Queen’s face was rigid, her posture stiff, as though she
was fighting to control something. Her eyes skittered across
Maniye, unable not to look at her, yet never still enough to properly take her in. ‘Always the Wolf way, the backwards way,’ she
murmured. ‘To hide the birth name that means nothing, when it
is the given name – the hunter’s name – that tells the truth about
us. That is why it is the secret name. They are fools, to reveal it
so.’ She stared at Maniye, seeming to steel herself. ‘I am Joalpey,’
she continued, and then, ‘but I am called Strength Under
Moonlight.’ The words left her with a shudder, a concession
born of customs alien to Maniye.
‘Thank you,’ the girl replied. She was waiting for some sense
of connection to arise between them – mother to daughter. That
was how it should be, she knew. That was how the stories had it,
whenever estranged family found one another. They always
knew
. The connection of kin drew them inexorably together. She
thought Joalpey was waiting for the same thing. There was a gap
between them that was not mere distance though.
‘They say you are my child,’ the Queen of the Tigers declared
awkwardly.
‘They told me you were dead!’ Maniye had not meant to say
it. ‘I lived all my life
knowing
you were dead, that my father
ordered you killed, and that
he
did it!’ jabbing a finger at Broken
Axe. And then she rounded on him furiously: ‘And why didn’t
you tell me? Any time, you could have said, “Your mother lives,”
and made all the difference to my life. I’ve lived in
fear
of you all
these days. And you
hunted
me. Even at Loud Thunder’s fire,
when we were free of the Winter Runners, still you tried to take
me back. Still you said nothing.
Why?
’
Broken Axe drew a deep breath. ‘Why would I take you back
to the Winter Runners? Because that was your home. Because it
was safer than the teeth of winter. Why would I keep this secret?
Because it
is
a secret. Because better Stone River believes
Joalpey dead, and that he thinks any Queen of the Tiger he
hears of is another woman. For my own sake, as much as hers.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Maniye complained bitterly.
The Wolf hunter shrugged, suggesting that neither he nor the
world were there simply for her to understand. ‘I am the Wolf
that walks alone,’ he said simply. ‘I am not Stone River’s pack
follower. I do what is right.’
‘By whose reckoning?’ she demanded.
‘My own. That is the true path of the Wolf, not the leader, not
the follower.’ He spread his hands self-effacingly, as though
embarrassed by how grave he sounded.
There was the scuff of a footstep: Joalpey had stood up, taken
a step closer. Her presence was as demanding as a fire, and yet
where was the heat?
One of Joalpey’s hands moved a little, rising towards her
daughter then drawing away. There was a thing she was not
saying, perhaps not even letting her own mind light upon, but it
was there in the chamber with them. Maniye felt it, that unspoken thing. It was What Had Been Done. It was the history of
Joalpey’s captivity amongst the Winter Runners, her humiliation
and all of what she had endured. It was a history that had a
sequel, though, and the sequel was Maniye.
‘I feel nothing.’ Joalpey’s voice was fractured with emotion.
For you
, she meant. Maniye felt herself begin to tremble very
slightly. She met her mother’s eyes desperately and saw the same
need there reflected back at her.
‘You are my daughter.’ It was spoken as though the words
were alien to her. ‘Broken Axe has vouched for it. After he took
me away and swore to Stone River I was dead, he watched you
grow into what you are now. He gives his oath that you are my
blood.’ The Queen brought her hands up before her, clenching
them into fists over and over. ‘But I look at you and see only a
Wolf.’
‘I can Step—’
‘I know what they say. But it means nothing until you have
cut a soul away and become one thing or the other. And you
have a Wolf face, Wolf eyes.’ Her own had gone very wide. ‘I
cannot see myself in you.’
‘I fled the Winter Runners!’ Maniye insisted. ‘I fled them. I
want to be nothing of theirs.’ But she was lying, of course. When
she had passed Kalameshli’s trials, she had been proud to take
her place in the tribe. It was only when Akrit had revealed his
plans that she had run. She was false to the Wolf, so why not to
the Tiger as well?
‘I kept Broken Axe here to remind me that not all born in the
Jaws of the Wolf must be an enemy,’ the Queen said softly.
‘Mother.’ And the word seemed as leaden and strange to her
as ‘daughter’ had been to Joalpey.
‘I will make you one of us,’ the Queen declared, not as a
threat but more out of desperation. ‘You will train alongside our
daughters. You will learn how to fight, and how to worship. You
will eat of our meats and dance to our music. You will learn our
histories. With these flames I will burn the Wolf out of you, I will
sever all his claims to you. And then I will know you, at the end.
You will be mine: my blood, my child.’
As Maniye stood before her, she sensed that chasm between
them, knowing only that Joalpey felt the need to bridge it even
more than she herself did. Was that some way towards a mother’s love? Maniye did not know. She did not have the real thing
to compare it with.
She decided that it would do, that it was close enough. It was
all the world would offer her, and she had seen enough of the
world by now to know its meagre generosity.