Shuli Go Stories Vol. 6: Liars and Cheats

Part 12

Jingyi never did stop loving her father. His death haunted her for months, kept her from eating and sleeping. Each bite tasted like the bile she'd tasted as his head fell from his neck, each time she closed her eyes the vision was there waiting for her. Haunting her.

But mostly she missed him. She missed the way he had been able to make her laugh with a silly face and a bad pun. She missed the way he'd read to her when she couldn't sleep and she waited for Fang's mixture to kick in – taking her to mythical places of beauty and adventure. She missed the way he could set her body on fire with a few small touches, the feel of his beard on her midsection, his fingers inside her. She missed his warmth on the cool nights and his reassuring presence by her side in the middle of a hot day.

Her brother sold most of the land and within two years they were forced to give up the estate. She and her mother lived together in a small home on the edge of Ying, just two servants and a single horse. By the time she'd forgotten what he looked like – both his face as he'd lived and his head as he'd died – she tried to trigger her memory of him by riding as hard and as fast she could on that horse. When she was young they'd ridden together. Those were her fondest, warmest memories of him, when the two of them rode away to some secluded spot and made love for hours at a time, every minute of it feeling so right and natural and pure. She rode that one horse almost to death that year, trying to remember her father, and remembering to hate Zhao Lian.

She would never stop hating Zhao Lian, either. Just as much as she forgot her father's face, she remembered the Shuli Go's. The murderous, evil intent on every corner of her visage. The sadistic joy she'd had cutting Jingyi's father's head off. The typical Shuli Go lie that she was pursuing justice when all she brought was suffering. Jingyi fed her hatred with every ride into the country, and every faded memory of a memory of her father.

Her mother tried to find her suitors, but inevitably the gossip caught up to them. "Well, we'll just have to go where the rumors can't find us!" Her mother declared one day. The next year they were in an even smaller home in Chengwa, clear across the Empire, this time just one servant and no horse. Jingyi had no interest in the parade of men who came through, offering her a good match. None of them looked like him, and none of them would ever compare.

She pitied her mother, who she knew was just trying to do her best. They'd never talked about her father, and Jingyi couldn't blame her. She knew her mother could never understand. No one could. But she couldn't marry any of the men, and she knew eventually that would kill her mother just as surely as marrying one of them would kill Jingyi. So in an act of salvation for them both, one night she stole all her mother's remaining jewels, emptied the family bank account, bought a horse, and rode away.

She rode in no particular direction, travelling the countryside until her money started to run out. She returned to a city to sell the last of the jewelry and an anxiety joined her grief for her father. She knew continuing to run would do nothing, and serve as no fitting tribute to him. Wherever his spirit was, she wanted him to be proud of her. But she couldn't imagine a path towards goodness, no matter where she turned.

Eventually, the last bits of her wealth disappeared, and she found herself in Nianjang, the great capital of the Central Empire, to sell her horse. She received four silver for the beast. Soon that was gone too, and she was left wandering the streets of the Empire's greatest city, lost in the great mass of people and too close walls and stenches and bustle. Hunger began to replace her grief in gnawing her from the inside out, and she grew so desperate she inquired in a brothel. They turned her away. She was terrified to learn that at twenty-eight her youth had left her, and the anger and sorrow she'd carried for all the years had robbed her even of her beauty, which she'd assumed had remained intact, the way her father would have recognized it. She'd lost everything, and she thought finally of the sweet embrace of steel upon her chest, plunging into her heart, ending its longing for him forever.

She stole a dagger from a stand and kept it close to her all day, then wandered into a quiet corner of the city to perform her deed.

"Oh Gods!" she prayed, holding the blade out in front of her trembling hands, weak from hunger and soaking in another winter rain. "Gods! Send me to him. Send me to him in heaven. Please, I beg of you!"

A timid flash of lightning, some distance away, illuminated the building she was standing in front of. She hadn't seen it in her daze. The outline was of a Shei temple, and she remembered it all at once: her father taking her to temple on the tenth day of the week, to pray to the Gods. And his beautiful face appeared before her and she remembered him saying, "One day I will be gone, and you will need to find me. Come to the temple. Come to the temple and pray to your father, and all will be well."

She wandered into the temple and cried out for a father, a priest. It was the middle of the night and the one she woke was cranky and exhausted, but he saw her and her blade and his attention fell upon her in rapture. "My child," he said to her, "put down the knife. We can talk."

"Father?" She asked, and she saw him in the dim light. He looked nothing like her father, but now even that memory was gone. All she remembered were his instructions, to come to the temple and pray. She fell to the ground and began to wail. The priest knelt next to her, threw the knife away, and clutched her. "Father," she wept into his robes. "I need to pray. Please, father, help me pray."

"I will, my child, I will." And he did, and gradually she became a human again, as her love poured into the Shei pantheon, the many gods and their stories and their instructions for a better world. She found order and sense and beauty in the many fathers who gave birth to the world, to humans, to demi-gods and monsters. Jingyi had seen the world, known humans, hated a demi-god, and been a monster herself. She fell in love with religion, and each night she prayed to her father that he might show his face to her one last time. And she promised him if he did, she would never forget.