Tiger Queen

  PRAISE FOR

  TIGER QUEEN

  “From the beginning to end, Tiger Queen had me eagerly drinking in every page with great anticipation of what would come next and left me thirsting for more.”

  BRENDA DRAKE, New York Times bestselling author of the Library Jumpers series

  “A tumultuous tale of shifting sands and political pressure, Tiger Queen chronicles one warrior princess’s high-stakes path to the throne. A compelling, all-consuming story of strength, duty, and danger. An absolute must-read.”

  NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR ALETHEA KONTIS

  “In a world where water is scarce and danger is plentiful, Kateri discovers that the most defining points in her history are not what she thought. But she refuses to back down. With its gripping characters and fascinating creatures, Tiger Queen will sweep you away on the desert sands.”

  SAVANNAH GOINS, author of The Gwythienian

  “Annie Sullivan’s Tiger Queen will grab you by the throat and not let go until the final, blissful word has swept past, leaving you captivated, satisfied, yet wanting more. I couldn’t put it down. Walk—no, run—to your local bookstore to snatch up your very own copy. Best book I’ve read all year!”

  MICHELE ISRAEL HARPER, award-winning editor and author of Kill the Beast

  “An absolutely thrilling, action-packed adventure set in a richly crafted world with a fierce heroine you’ll root for—Tiger Queen is impossible to put down!”

  KIM CHANCE, author of Keeper and Seeker

  BLINK

  Tiger Queen

  Copyright © 2019 by Annie Sullivan

  Requests for information should be addressed to:

  Blink, 3900 Sparks Dr. SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

  Hardcover ISBN 978-0-310-76877-7

  Audio ISBN 978-0-310-72965-5

  Ebook ISBN 978-0-310-76876-0

  Epub Edition July 2019 9780310768760

  Any internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers in this book are offered as a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement by the publisher, nor does the publisher vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of the book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Interior design: Denise Froehlich

  Printed in the United States of America

  * * *

  19 20 21 22 23 / DCI / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Once again, to my family: Mom, Dad,

  Katie, Pat, Michael S, Danny, John,

  Maggie, Michael K, and James

  Also to my middle school English teacher,

  Mrs. Desautels, for first asking me the

  question, “The lady or the tiger?”

  CONTENTS

  Praise for Tiger Queen

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  CHAPTER

  1

  I watched as two guards pulled a thin boy into the arena. His feet left trails in the sand as though two yellow-spotted sand snakes followed his path. The guards chained him to the short center post so he couldn’t move more than five arm lengths in any direction. Then they retreated, leaving the boy and his puddled shadow alone to face the crowd.

  The boy stood like a lopsided cactus in the sun, with his elbows away from his body to keep the thick metal chains from burning any more skin than necessary.

  He couldn’t have been more than eight or nine.

  Now he’d come to my arena—my home—where I fought each month. And we all were waiting to see if he would leave it alive.

  My father rose from his chair. The jeers and shouts of the crowd quieted, leaving only the sound of the breeze drifting in across the desert, shifting and remaking the far-off hills of sand.

  My eyes darted back and forth between the two doors that stood shut before the boy. Which door concealed the tiger? It was impossible not to wonder while I waited for my father to speak.

  “My people,” he said, “we have before us an accused Desert Boy. One of the very same urchins who plagues our kingdom by stealing from our wells, forcing me to ration what little water we have.” He let the cries die down before continuing. “This particular Desert Boy was caught leading a caravan of contraband goods into the city.” He paused while the crowd reacted.

  The boy couldn’t even bring himself to face my father. He kept his chin tucked close to his chest. Probably to hide his tears.

  I steeled my face. Let him cry. Let him return even the smallest fraction of water he’d taken from us, from our people, over the years. I wouldn’t let the sight of him get to me. It didn’t matter that he was so young. I couldn’t let it matter. If this boy’s only crime had been bringing in forbidden goods, it might be forgivable, even understandable. But he was a Desert Boy, a water thief. And that could never be forgiven.

  The drought had hit all of us hard, and yet these boys thought they were above the law, that they had the right to take more than their allotted share. How many more people would live now that there was one less Desert Boy stealing our water? Sacrificing his life would save countless of my people’s lives—people who fought to survive despite the number of times he and his kind raided the wells, people who were dying in the streets from thirst while he and his friends drank their fill.

  I squared my shoulders. Justice needed to be carried out until the water returned and Achra could once again take its place as the thriving oasis it once was. It was the only way we would survive—and if there was anything Achrans were known for, it was surviving. We had turned the harsh desert into a sanctum for merchants, artisans, and caravans—at least until the water ran out and groups like the Desert Boys formed.

  But we would rise again, and until we did, we had to do what was best for the people. That meant making this prisoner face justice.

  “But,” my father continued, “this boy claims he was out hunting for moonstones and stumbled upon the caravan just as my guards arrived.”

  I scoffed and rolled my eyes, chiding myself for even thinking of giving the boy sympathy. It was unfortunate one of the ever-increasing sandstorms we’d been experiencing hadn’t wiped him out in the desert and saved us the trouble. He may look young, but he was clearly a Desert Boy through and through—using the same excuse they all gave when we caught them. And as the sun rose higher—and the temperature of my blood along with it—heat radiated from the sword sheathed at my side, begging to be unleashed. This boy was clearly trying to slip through our fingers
so he could run straight back to our wells and bleed them dry, bleed us dry, make us so weak we were unable to fight back.

  We couldn’t let that happen. As the future queen, I couldn’t let that happen.

  “We should never have brought him to trial,” I turned and said to my father. When Rodric, my father’s captain of the guard, hadn’t been able to get the location of the other Desert Boys out of the kid, we should’ve kept him locked up. He would’ve broken eventually.

  “Kateri,” my father snapped, bluntly cutting off my name as the crowd roared around us. “Control yourself and your tongue.” He pursed his thin lips—ones identical to mine—as he stared down at me.

  His eyes said what his lips didn’t. Be in control or someone else will take control. He’d drilled that phrase into me as my fighting trainer over the years. But it’d been a while since he’d scolded me like that. I crossed my arms and sank back into my seat, pulling my long braid over my shoulder. I tugged at the loose tail, twining the dark strands between my calloused fingers.

  I was in control of myself. One of my mother’s killers stood before me—was on the verge of escaping—and I hadn’t leapt into the arena to make him pay for his crimes. I ignored the fact this particular boy would have been too young to take part in the raid that killed my mother and baby brother. He was still a Desert Boy. Leading the illegal caravan into the city was the least of his crimes.

  “While the desert offers no justice, I do,” my father said, turning back to address the boy. “Before you are two unmarked doors. Behind one is the cart of contraband goods, which will be yours to keep should you choose that door. Behind the other door is one of my pet tigers, which will be released into the arena within moments should that door be selected. The decision is yours, and yours alone. But fail to choose, and the tiger will be released.” He let his words float around the arena.

  For the first time, the boy raised his head and faced the crowd. His eyes held my father’s for a moment before swinging to mine. There was a pleading weakness in them that made my stomach churn. How could he help bleed the Achran wells dry and then expect pity from those he caused to suffer?

  He wouldn’t find any pity here. I leaned forward and stared him down until he turned away.

  The boy focused on the doors in front of him. The chains fettering him to the post clanked together as he lifted his arm and pointed to the door on the right.

  I snuck a glance at my father’s face. He always knew which door hid the tiger, and he couldn’t hide the upturn at the edges of his lips that would curl into a smile when the accused picked that door.

  No smile played about his lips. My heart flipped faster than a dune in a sandstorm. I bolted up in my seat. Hot afternoon air grew unbearable in my lungs as I held my breath.

  The door creaked open to reveal a cart piled with earthen jars full of still-living spiral snails waiting for nobles to use their shells to flavor their water, bolts of spider silk netting fine enough to catch sand and keep it from coming in windows and doors, and clay containers full of nogen nuts and spiked rainberries waiting to be crushed into spices and perfumes.

  “No,” I whispered. And then I was shouting it over and over again. The cry was drowned out by the roaring of the crowd.

  I shook my head in disbelief. The desert wouldn’t do this to me. It couldn’t. My heart pounded in my chest as my stomach twisted at the thought of the boy walking free. Free to raid our wells. Free to attack our guards. Free to cause suffering to those left in the city as water rations were cut more and more because of the never-ending drought that had started before I was even born.

  The boy threw his arms into the air and stomped his feet into the sand in celebration, laughing uncontrollably.

  It reminded me so much of my mother, of the laugh I would never hear again—the laugh the Desert Boys took away from me. And they would just keep taking things away unless we stopped them. Unless I stopped them.

  I pulled my sword out of its scabbard.

  I had one hand on the railing, ready to vault into the arena, when my father’s hand shot out to stop me. His fingers wrapped around my arm in an iron-like grasp as he gave me a silencing look.

  I ground one palm against the searing metal of the railing while the other gripped my sword’s hilt. My chest shook with rage. “He’s a Desert Boy,” I said through gritted teeth. “We can’t let him escape.”

  “Sit down.” My father’s eyes turned cold. When I was little, I couldn’t imagine how anything that icy could exist in the desert.

  And now I couldn’t understand what my father was thinking. But I did know what happened when I disobeyed. Ripping my hand away from the railing, I slid back into my seat and dug the tip of my sword into the floor to keep from staring at the smile on the boy’s face. Chunk after chunk of rock chipped away from the crumbling arena. I drilled the blade farther and farther until I couldn’t feel the muscles in my arm.

  “Justice has prevailed,” my father shouted. “The boy is free to take the cart and go.”

  Guards moved forward to unshackle the boy. He whooped and hollered and kicked sand into a wide arc as he sped toward the cart.

  My knuckles turned white around the hilt still in my hands. “There is no justice in this desert,” I said.

  “Perhaps justice has been kinder than we thought, Kateri,” my father replied. He motioned, and a figure melted out of the shadows at the top of the arena.

  Rodric sauntered down the steps, pausing to bow before my father.

  “Your trap is working perfectly,” my father extolled.

  Rodric bowed again, but he couldn’t hide the smirk sliding across his lips. He was only a few years older than me, but the tiny scars running up and down his arms and neck—left there by fire-legged flies—spoke to his upbringing. He hadn’t grown up behind curtains of spider silk to keep the flies and sand out. No, he’d grown up at the mercy of the elements.

  He’d adopted the closely shaven hair favored by most of the soldiers. Of course, that was after he’d shown up to one of their training sessions months ago, emerging from the tail end of one of the sandstorms as though the desert were depositing him on our doorstep. He’d looked haggard and windblown, with hair down to his shoulders. But appearances had been deceiving; he’d marched up to my father’s then captain of the guard and stabbed him before the man could even get a word out. When the other soldiers brought Rodric before my father, he’d stood tall and said that if the head of my father’s security was that easy to kill, he should find someone else to fill the job.

  Someone like Rodric.

  My father had seen something in Rodric and took him on.

  But I’d never seen what my father had. My father had been a strict yet even-tempered teacher. When I got injured while training, he’d see to me himself—refusing to let the apothecaries do it. He’d bind up my arm or leg or whatever I’d injured while drilling into me what I’d done wrong. He’d say pain was earned by inattention and lack of skill, that it was up to me to avoid pain by doing better. After he’d bandaged me, he’d make me repeat the move I’d messed up until I could do it perfectly one hundred times in a row. It had been rough at the time—all those nights I wasn’t allowed to go to sleep until I’d executed the move flawlessly again and again—but I knew my father did it for me, for us. He wanted me to win, and that meant I had to be the best.

  Though when my father handed off my training to Rodric a few months ago, after seeing his skill with a blade, I learned what truly harsh training was. Sure, Rodric conditioned me in ways similar to what my father had, like building up my stamina and strength by having me hang above pits of raw worms that would bite into me if I fell in or tying me to a rope during the start of a sandstorm, making me run against the wind. Those I could handle. But unlike my father, Rodric didn’t wait for me to bandage my wounds. He’d give me small cuts and then purposefully flick sand toward them.

  And he thought everyone fought better when they were mad. So he’d do everything he could t
o goad me. He’d steal my sandals, making me fight barefoot in the burning sand. He’d shove my face into that same sand, one hand holding my face down while the other tried to bury it, suffocating me. He’d grab me from behind and pull my eyelids open, making me stare into the sun until I could fight free from his grasp.

  I hated his methods, preferring a more calculated fight—one where I studied my opponents and found their weaknesses. That’s what my father had always taught me. Look for a weakness and exploit it.

  So while I couldn’t see whatever it was my father valued in Rodric beyond his brute strength, it was obviously something exceptional, because my father had been turning to him more and more these past few months. And I was being left out of decisions. Like this one.

  “A trap?” I scanned the arena as people emptied toward the streets. I didn’t see any guards waiting to ambush the boy, so I studied my father. He’d seemed oddly calm—oddly indifferent—during the trial. My eyes landed on the doors across the arena. “You put carts behind both doors,” I said, wishing it came out more as a question than a statement.

  Rodric leaned against the railing and squinted down at me. “Of course.”

  Heat pulsed through my body. “You let him get away? You’re the captain of the guard. It’s your job to catch him. He’s not some water beetle you buy in the marketplace that the merchant swears will lead you to some underground spring. No, that boy is a scorpion—you have to squash him while you can so he doesn’t crawl away and hide, waiting to sting you when you’re not looking.”

  Rodric clenched his jaw before replying, “It’s better to let one scorpion go when it’ll lead you to all the rest, so you can kill them where they sleep.”

  I started to retort, but my father interrupted. “Rodric, send as many guards as you think necessary. I want their hideout found and destroyed.” Once his order had been conveyed, he moved toward the exit.

  Rodric turned and motioned for two guards to come forward. He gave them brief instructions before the men headed out after the boy.

  I shook my head. If that child had any brains, he’d already ditched the cart and melted back into the desert like the loathsome creature he was. Those guards would never find him—especially since they were scared of venturing past the crumbling city wall. They’d seen too many of their comrades carried back in with the yellow-and-black veins that accompanied a bite from a yellow-spotted sand snake. Or they simply didn’t return at all.