Darkening Skies

by eden Hudson

  A tingle of fear prickled across the nape of her neck.

  Raijin must have seen it because he added, “Just remember that you’re not going through this alone.”

  Koida looked down at the sunbright pill pinched between her fingers, then put it in her mouth and swallowed. The taste of sun-warmed grapefruits filled her mouth.

  Nothing happened.

  “I don’t feel anything,” she said.

  “That won’t last long,” Raijin said, concern touching his expression. “I suggest getting to privacy sooner than later.”

  Koida nodded. They bowed goodnight to one another, then Batsai appeared at her side to accompany her back to her residence.

  Koida and her personal guard walked in silence, her mind on what a strange night it had been. The demon chieftain had turned into nothing more than a young man, and she had begun the process of leaving her life as the second princess to become his wife. What sort of conditions did the Ji Yu tribe live in? She knew they lived in the mountains, and Raijin had claimed that he wasn’t used to extravagance. What if she was leaving behind the Sun Palace for a village of mud huts?

  The sunbright pill lodged at the base of her throat. She swallowed hard, but couldn’t force it to move.

  When they reached her rooms, Jun waited at her side while Batsai and the rest of her guards conducted their routine search for hidden dangers. Finally declaring it safe, Batsai allowed her in. She stopped at the water pitcher and took a long drink to unstick the sunbright pill. It came loose reluctantly.

  Her ladies met her in the inner chamber, so excited about the wedding feast that it seemed to Koida they didn’t stop to breathe the entire time they helped her undress. She remained taciturn while they gossiped. A feeling of nausea swelled in her stomach, the familiar sickness of core stone rejection she’d felt so often as a child. Her mouth watered as her stomach threatened to force up everything she’d eaten and drank that night.

  She cupped one hand over her lips and pressed the other to her stomach.

  “Second princess, are you unwell?” one of her ladies asked.

  If she spoke, she would vomit. That Ji Yu snake had poisoned her. He must have spit out his own poison when she wasn’t looking or somehow tricked her into choosing the safe pill for him. He’d also sent her conveniently back to her rooms to die so he couldn’t be accused of her murder.

  But she’d seen the sweat beginning to form on his temple and felt the fire burning in his skin. No one could fake that, could they?

  “Do you wish me to call the alchemists, Second Princess?”

  This ailment had all the familiar sensations of core stone sickness—the nausea, the pressure at the back of her throat willing her to vomit, the whirling and twisting of her vision.

  Koida managed to stumble across the room, making the nightcaller floor squeal repeatedly in her clumsiness, and dropped onto her bed. The furs and silks felt like wool worm feet prickling against her skin. Millions of them marching over her body. She could hear the nightcaller floor creaking under them, marching, marching.

  “Hurry! Get an alchemist!”

  “What in blade and death is going on here?” Batsai demanded. “Koida?” His voice sounded so far away, as if he were shouting through the waterfall cave to her. His battle-roughened hands grabbed her by the shoulders. “Koida!”

  “Nnno,” she groaned, rolling her head on her neck.

  “Hold on, little dragon, Batsai will protect you,” the captain’s rough voice promised. His rough hands felt cold as he pushed the sweat-damp hair off her face.

  “No medicines,” she tried to say, though her voice sounded strange to her ears. Muffled and thick. “Raijin said—”

  “Did that barbarian do this to you? I’ll kill him!” Batsai’s icy hands left her face, and she fell back to the bed from thousands of miles up.

  Ruby light glowed through Koida’s eyelids. Was it blood or fire? She felt as if she were burning alive. But Batsai would never let her burn. The old bear always protected the little dragon. Unless she had set this fire. What if the little dragon had burned up the old bear? What if she was all alone now in this sea of fire and blood?

  “What did you do to my sister?” Shingti’s voice bounced around the inside of Koida’s skull like a ball of Ro, setting off angry sparks everywhere it touched.

  “It’s part of the Ji Yu wedding rites,” Raijin answered her in his scratchy rumble. The sound of it made Koida’s throat ache in sympathy. “Her body is trying to reject the sunbright. She has to use her Ro to pull it into her heartcenter.”

  “Water Lily!” Batsai’s face twisted until he did look like an angry old bear. He sprinted at the young chieftain, wielding a glowing red Serpentine Spear and Low Shield.

  Instead of attacking Raijin, however, Batsai fell on Shingti’s Dual Swords. The Dragonfly princess screamed with fury, hacking the captain of Koida’s guard apart.

  But when Koida blinked, none of them were there. Two of her ladies stood in the corner wringing their hands, and the third was showing a group of the palace alchemists into her room.

  “The second princess collapsed holding her stomach, and she hasn’t stopped moaning since.”

  The alchemists crowded around her bed, reaching for her with fingers that looked like venomous adders. She tried to scramble away from them, but she felt her arms and legs do nothing more than flail weakly.

  “What did she eat at the feast?” one of the alchemists asked before bursting into a cloud of brightly colored silk moths. Or perhaps he had only been overwhelmed by the countless number of wool worms wandering over her skin as they spontaneously transformed. Whatever had happened, he was gone now, nothing more than a swarm of motion.

  As one, the creatures swirled around Koida in a tornado of blues, purples, and greens. They were horribly beautiful, a parade of ghostly color that made her feel as if her heart was broken beyond repair. She choked on the tears pouring from her eyes, unable to contain the inexplicable sadness the sight inspired in her.

  Someone screamed, frightening the moths away. The scream came again, a noise like wood scraping against metal, then again and again. Something about the sound triggered recognition in Koida. When she heard that sound in the night, it was a warning. But of what?

  “Stand back!” Batsai snapped. “Out of the way. She’s with the Ji Yu envoy. The chieftain says she knows how to help the second princess.”

  Koida tried to ask Batsai why Shingti had run him through with her Dual Swords, but her throat was so dry that all she could manage was a low croak. Fire burned in her skull, hollowing out her eyes and mouth until only blackened holes were left behind.

  “A pill that mimics a core stone?” That sounded like one of the alchemists. Koida searched her mind for his name, but came up with nothing. “Impossible! No one can create medicines such as that!”

  “I didn’t ask you what was possible,” Batsai growled. “I told you to get out of the way.”

  A cool, slender hand pressed against Koida’s forehead. Soft, icy fingers plucked her eyelids open one at a time. The face staring down into hers was far, far away, down a pinhole of light, but she could see that the nose and mouth were covered in cloth wrappings.

  The face disappeared as her eyelid snapped shut again.

  “Why didn’t you bring the chieftain with you then, if he knows so much?”

  “He’s ill, too,” Batsai growled. “Same as the princess, shivering and sweating and burning with fever. But he said his physician knows how to help her.”

  The cool hands wrapped around Koida’s shoulders and pulled her to a seated position. The soft shake they gave her was an order to stay sitting up. Koida tried to concentrate on remaining upright, but it was hard to tell up from down just then.

  Had Batsai said that Raijin was suffering from the same sickness or had she imagined that? Before they left the feast, he’d told her to remember she wasn’t going through this alone. Apparently, he’d spoken the truth. If that was true, then perhaps he
was telling the truth about the pill. What else had he told her about it? To use her Ro to break it down before her body could reject it?

  His face appeared before her, carved in black ice. “Pull it into your heartcenter.”

  “I can’t,” she said. “I’m Ro-crippled. I’ve never advanced in all the years I’ve been training.”

  “Excuses.” His voice rasped like dry leaves skittering across pitiless, inflexible stone. “This can’t be avoided. Focus helps. You’re not going through this alone.”

  An icy thumb pressed against the burning flesh over Koida’s sternum, drawing her attention to her heartcenter. She followed the focus point inward and found the sunbright pill shining like a citrine catching the morning light. It had lodged just above her stomach.

  How was she supposed to use her Ro to break that down? Try to create a tiny Ro knife and chop it in half?

  With a colossal effort, Koida forced Ro toward the sunbright. As usual, it refused to follow the correct pathways in her body, instead reaching right through the walls of her heartcenter and skewering the pill through its midpoint. She gasped at the sudden pain and clutched her chest. It was like being stabbed.

  From far away, she heard Batsai shouting again, but she couldn’t focus on him. She had no attention to spare. The moment her Ro pierced the sunbright, it burst like a dying star, exploding outward in billions of sparkling orange-yellow shards.

  They were going to escape.

  Koida grasped at the pill shards instinctively, her Ro snatching them up like greedy hands. Each one she grabbed exploded again into infinitely finer pieces. Grabbing them wasn’t working. There were too many, and they were too small. She needed a net.

  Concentrating, she manifested an amethyst seine from her Ro and began netting the sunbright dust together.

  “Good,” Raijin’s voice said. “Now pull it into your heartcenter.”

  Koida tried to pull the seine full of sparkling orange-yellow dust into one of the Ro pathways, but it refused to budge. Always. Always, her Ro had to disobey her.

  Setting her jaw, Koida took a deep breath and then jerked as hard as she could with her mind. With a crack like breaking bone, the Ro and sunbright tore through the sheets of muscle tissue and organs, slamming into the roiling cloud of amethyst energy in her heartcenter. The Ro crackled and hissed as it consumed the pill dust. A brilliant lilac flare burst outward from her heartcenter, then settled in rings around her Ro like a tiny planet. Every so often, the rings sizzled with orange arcs like lightning.

  She felt...good.

  The orange arcs tapered off until they stopped completely.

  She felt better than good. Incredible. Like she could run for miles or fight a dozen demon beasts on her own. Had she advanced? Could she manifest bladed weapons now?

  Koida opened her eyes, eager to try every technique she had ever seen Shingti or Batsai use. But bright midday sunlight poured in from her open balcony, illuminating an inner chamber filled with alchemists, eunuchs, ladies, and her personal guard, each face displaying differing levels of concern, apprehension, and outright curiosity. On the bed before her sat the woman with the cloth covering her nose and mouth, her legs crossed and her fists pressed together, her dark almond eyes staring into Koida’s intently.

  When the woman saw that Koida was coherent once more, she bowed over her fists and climbed off the bed. The nightcaller floor screamed beneath her feet.

  The inner chamber erupted in a storm of questions and demands. Alchemists and eunuchs crowded the woman, all shouting at once about core stone medicine and magical properties transmuted into pills. The woman made no effort to respond, and suddenly, Koida realized why.

  “She can’t speak,” Koida said. She swallowed past the dryness in her throat. “That’s why she wears the face mask. Your questions are pointless. She can’t answer you.”

  The woman caught her gaze, then bowed once more, her horsetail of black hair sliding over her shoulder.

  “Apologies, Second Princess.” One of the eunuchs stepped forward. It was Ba-Qu, the one who had advised her father to stop her training before she hurt herself. “But if this physician can write, she can answer our questions. Learning about her tribe’s advanced magics and medicines is too great an opportunity to throw away just because she cannot speak.”

  The stink of rotting peaches and a backed-up private room turned Koida’s stomach. Her disgust grew as she looked down and found her nightdress soaked through with a foul, tarlike substance.

  “Everyone but my ladies get out,” she said, infusing her voice with authority. “I need to bathe.”

  Reluctantly, the alchemists and eunuchs bowed to Koida and backed out of the room, Batsai hurrying along anyone who lingered overlong. The silent woman left as well, no doubt to be barraged with more questions the moment she stepped from the outer chamber into the hallway.

  The trio of ladies bowed their way out of the room on promises to return immediately with a steaming bath. They still looked sick with worry. No doubt they had feared retribution from the emperor if the second princess died while they were in the room, but had been unable to leave until she recovered or risk being dismissed in shame for failing to tend to her.

  Koida watched them all go, relieved to see her inner chamber emptying of so many bodies.

  “Batsai?” she called before he could close the door behind himself.

  The battle-scarred old captain turned back to her, his dress armor dull with a night’s wear.

  “Was Shingti here last night?” she asked. The image of her sister murdering Batsai in a twisted fit of rage seemed etched onto the backs of her eyelids.

  “No, though I imagine by now the first princess will have returned to her rooms from wherever her post-feast festivities took her. She’ll most likely be along as soon as the gossip reaches her.”

  “Were you truly going to kill the Ji Yu chieftain or did I dream that?” she asked.

  Batsai scowled. “I was. Luckily for him, he explained what he’d done before I ran him through. The words came dear, though. He wasn’t doing much better than you were when I broke down his residence door.”

  “You could have been killed,” Koida said. “If not by him or his guards, then by my father when he learned that you endangered the empire’s first chance at a tribe who can make Ro-altering medicines.”

  Batsai snorted.

  “If you think I care more about that than your life, then you don’t know me at all, little dragon.” He hesitated a moment, then said, “A father’s life is of no concern to him when his daughter is in danger, whether she is the true blood of his blood or only the blood of his heart.”

  Before Koida could reply, her ladies bustled into the chamber with buckets of steaming water, leading young servant boys from the kitchens wearing yokes carrying more of the same.

  Batsai bowed himself out. Koida watched the gruff old bear go, the image of him dying horribly on her sister’s ruby Ro-swords playing out again in her mind.

  “But to the daughter, the father’s survival is everything,” she whispered. “She’ll protect you in any way she can.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  6 YEARS AGO

  Raijin spun into a back kick, firing a Battering Volley at Yong Lei. His friend received the storm of Ro-hail with a single-handed blast of Changing Air, then struck out in return with the other hand, a Hammering Rain backfist.

  Raijin had grown cautious over the past year, maturing with his abilities. As the first solid stage in the Path of Darkening Skies, Hail techniques hit much harder than anything he had learned in the previous ranks, and since the day he had almost killed his best friend, he’d gained a healthy respect for his art. Yong Lei still occasionally struck too close, but Raijin was always quick to counter and careful never to do the same.

  Today, Yong Lei was flagging, his attention waning. Raijin could see it in his friend’s poorly timed motions. This happened often on the days Yong Lei helped Raijin with his serving tasks. Though he joined Ra
ijin in hauling the wood and water at least once a week now, Yong Lei’s body had yet to become accustomed to the added strain of serving the school on top of their daily training.

  Yong Lei sliced his arms through the air in his favored Driving Sleet technique, hurling a barrage of hair-thin, icy projectiles at Raijin like needles made of Ro. But Yong Lei’s knees buckled as the strike left his hands, and he went down, sending the shots flying wildly in every direction. Raijin lashed out with a quick Shattering Crescent Wind, his foot smashing the projectiles with a focused sheet of Ro-wind before they could hit any of the other practicing Hail students.

  Threat to others averted, Raijin turned back to help his friend up. But Yong Lei had not fainted from exhaustion like Raijin guessed, he had dropped into Resting Meditation. Now he sat on the flagstones shivering with cold while the hot summer sun beat down from above. His body steamed, and the sweat on his skin turned immediately into tiny balls of ice that bounced upward, then pelted back toward him, gaining mass from the moisture in his skin and the air around him.

  “Master Palgwe,” Raijin called. “Yong Lei is advancing to Hail!”

  The training master, who clearly expected to hear that his two youngest combat students had finally killed one another, relaxed visibly when his eyes landed on the shivering Yong Lei.

  “Continue on your own,” Master Palgwe told the pair he had been working with. “I’ll be back to check on you.” He tucked his arms into his sleeves and joined Raijin. After a moment’s study of the shivering Yong Lei and the little balls of hail bouncing around him, the training master said, “He doesn’t seem to be having any serious trouble with it. His collection is good, and his Ro is strong. The only concern would be hypothermia. It’s much more likely in an autumn or winter progression than summer, but it still happens at times.”

  Raijin remembered the bone-shattering cold of his last advancement. “What if I were to keep blasts of warm Changing Air focused on him, Master?”