Darkening Skies

by eden Hudson

  Koida looked back toward Raijin, but he was gone. She searched the sea of faces, but didn’t see a hint of that strange blade or his unruly black hair.

  “Stay back!” Lao thundered in Koida’s ear, digging his Double-Crescent into the hollow below her lip.

  A trickle of warm blood rolled down Koida’s chin. Her heart raced, and she was certain she was about to have her lips cut off at the very least. She tried to hold still to minimize the damage, but a terrified shaking had taken hold of her entire body. As much as she had always hated being known throughout the empire as nothing more than a passable face to look at, she didn’t want to be horribly disfigured.

  “Let’s all juss calm down,” Lysander slurred in reply, still tripping tipsily forward. He stumbled and grabbed onto one of the Dragonfly Guards. “Oh, ah, whoops. I think you’ve had too much to drink, there, friend. Might wanna—”

  A force like a charging bison hit Koida in the ribs, knocking the air from her lungs and tearing her out of Lao’s grasp. All she saw was a blur of black and sun-burnished skin. Then she slammed to a stop, her cheek thudding into the hard wall of Raijin’s chest.

  Behind her, yelling and running boots.

  “He’s going to run!” Lysander’s shout cracked across the courtyard like a breaking branch.

  Koida twisted in Raijin’s grasp, turning in time to see Lao backing impossibly up the wall, his legs and left arm moving like a spider’s over the stonework. His right arm—sliced cleanly off below the elbow—lay hugged against his stomach, gushing blood. Hyung-Po and a few of the Dragonfly Guard sprinted to the wall and tried to climb up after him, Shingti hurling ruby Flying Knives, but Lao skittered up onto the wall without stopping.

  A dark streak blurred across the courtyard and up the corner where the walls met, knocking aside a climbing guard. Lao disappeared below the roofline. The blur following him slowed just enough for Koida to see the cloth face wrappings and long horsetail of dark hair.

  The silent woman’s head snapped from side to side, then she changed directions abruptly and shot below the roofline.

  “Dragonflies, surround the palace!” Shingti was shouting. “Move!”

  Koida stared at the splashes of red marking Lao’s escape route. It looked as if a calligrapher had slung red ink at the wall. Absently, she touched her bottom lip where Lao’s Double-Crescent Knife had been pressed. Still just a trickle of blood running down her chin, nothing major missing. Raijin had saved her, somehow ripping her from Lao’s grasp with inhuman speed, then spun them around just before she slammed into the wall, taking the impact himself.

  “Are you all right?” Raijin asked, his rasping voice right next to her ear. “Did I hurt you?”

  Koida untwisted, turning back to face him. “No, I’m—”

  She broke off as she realized that she was still cradled against Raijin’s chest.

  As if he’d just realized the same thing, Raijin straightened up and eased his right arm from around her rib cage. A wave of dizziness swept through Koida and she wobbled slightly, but he grabbed onto her elbow so she could steady herself.

  Her gaze lighted on the black butterfly sword. Just as she’d thought, it was no Ro construct, but made of a glassy black stone. Raijin held the blade safely away from his side, the tip dripping blood on the courtyard tiles.

  Except he wasn’t holding it. From his elbow to his hand, his arm was the butterfly sword. When he saw her staring, he cleared his throat and tried to pull the blade behind his back.

  Without thinking about the rudeness of her action, Koida caught his arm and held it in place. Before her eyes, the blade shifted from the black stone butterfly sword back to his hand and forearm, the sleeve falling in place over it as if nothing strange had happened at all.

  Then Shingti was at their side, pulling her away from Raijin.

  “What a mess,” Shingti growled, prodding at Koida’s chin and bottom lip. “That scum. I’ll execute him myself.”

  “I’m fine.” Koida pulled her head out of her sister’s hands. “Raijin saved me.”

  Assured of her sister’s wellness, Shingti turned to the Ji Yu chieftain. “What technique was that? How did you manifest a blade from real stone? Was that a Ro technique? Or, no, is it a constructed mechanism?”

  “It’s living lavaglass from the lower reaches,” Raijin said. “Not exactly a mechanism, but not a Ro technique, either.”

  Koida’s brows nearly touched. There was nothing in the lower reaches but savages. What business could the civilized leader of a mountain tribe have there?

  A hand smacked down onto Shingti’s shoulder, making Koida flinch. Lysander had appeared behind her sister.

  But the hand on Shingti’s shoulder wasn’t his.

  Koida’s stomach lurched. That yellow-haired drunk was holding a forearm that had been cleanly amputated just below the elbow. It was covered in an array of colorful tattoos Koida recognized from Master Lao’s Heroic Record.

  Shingti swiped the dead hand off her shoulder as if it were nothing more than a bothersome insect.

  “Stop that,” the first princess snapped. “I am attempting to speak to your leader, one warrior artist to another.”

  “So am I,” Lysander said, the slur miraculously gone from his words. He turned to Raijin. “You let most of him get away.” Lysander used the dismembered arm like a Sword Hand, slashing it casually through the air. “Should’ve cut horizontal instead of vertical, taken his head and shoulders off.”

  “I didn’t want to kill him,” Raijin said. “Not until after he told us what he knew, anyway.”

  Lysander pointed the hand at Raijin. “Wipe that smug look off your face. Just because you were right about that Ro-sucker Lao being here doesn’t mean that Youn Wha is, too.”

  “Hush thinks it does,” Raijin said, glancing toward the rooftops again.

  “Her going after him doesn’t prove anything,” Lysander said. “She probably just wants to dissect him and see what’s inside.”

  Raijin looked as if he were about to protest, but Shingti interrupted.

  “Which hidden pocket did you pull your information from, Chieftain?” the first princess asked. “His actions betrayed him, but how did you know what he’d done? He’d obviously never seen you before or he should’ve run the moment he saw you, not stay around to spar.”

  “The abbreviated answer is that we’ve walked in on Lao’s aftermath more than once. He’s a...” The Ji Yu chieftain stopped suddenly, frowning, then said, “Lao has stolen Ro from two of my friends and allies—three, counting your sister. One of his former victims is a student of my path now. I have a responsibility to bring him to justice.”

  “My Dragonfly Guard will stop him before he leaves the palace grounds,” Shingti said with certainty.

  “I wouldn’t count on it.” Lysander held up the dismembered hand, reigniting the queasiness in the pit of Koida’s stomach. “One lost arm isn’t going to slow him down much. That pest has slipped through our fingers before minus bigger chunks of himself.”

  Shingti scowled. “You’re mistaken.”

  “I might be, but Hush never is.”

  “Then you’re exaggerating,” Shingti said.

  Koida nodded. “Lao has been whole and healthy as long as we’ve known him.”

  “Lao’s got some nasty secrets, princesses,” Lysander responded. “The least of which is leeching Ro from those who can’t afford to lose it.”

  “Lysander,” Raijin said, his low rasp a warning.

  “Have it your way, Raij. But while we sit here following your closed-mouth nonsense rules, he’s getting away.” Lazily, Lysander scratched his chin with the back of the dead hand.

  Koida felt the color drain from her face and pressure rise in the back of her throat.

  “Give me that.” Shingti snatched the appendage from Lysander, much to Koida’s relief. “If you’re so sure Lao will slip past my guard and outrun your woman, then go to my father and tell him I want messengers dispatched to every city wit
h Lao’s description. He can’t outrun or out-hide every citizen in the empire.”

  From the corner of her eye, Koida caught Raijin giving the yellow-haired man a nearly imperceptible nod.

  Lysander bowed. “It will be done, Princess.”

  “First Princess,” Shingti corrected. Then she pointed the dead hand at Koida, sending Koida’s stomach reeling once more. “We need to see the alchemists. With skin like yours, you’ll have a scar twice the size of the wound if you leave it untreated.” She beckoned to Koida with the limb. “You can talk to your future husband at the feast tonight. Come on, little sister. Elder sister will accompany you to the Eastern tower.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  PRESENT

  When the alchemists saw Koida’s tiny cut, they had to hear the story. It wasn’t every day—or even every year—that the second princess came to their tower for real wound care, superficial or not. Shingti was all too happy to recount it, using Lao’s dismembered arm to illustrate several points. By the time the first princess finished her account of Raijin’s strange technique and how the arm was severed, Koida needed a powder to settle the sickness in her stomach.

  With the nausea powder consumed and the tincture for the cut applied to Koida’s chin, the princesses departed the tower to dress for the wedding feast. Thankfully, Shingti left the arm with the alchemist Sulyeon, who had expressed great interest in experimenting on it.

  As with the day before, Koida’s ladies invaded her bedchamber and spent the next several hours bathing, combing, dressing, and decorating her, all the while fretting over her shallow cut as if her bottom lip were a loved one who had been murdered horribly.

  Koida ignored their endless chatter, her mind wandering to what Raijin had said about the Ro-cripples he knew following his Path. Had he taught them that Ro-less fighting he’d used against Master Lao? And if other cripples had learned Raijin’s Path, could she? Was it even possible to switch Paths? She’d never heard of such a thing outside the old legends.

  The next Koida saw of her betrothed and her sister was in the royal waiting room outside the White Jade Feasting Hall. The nobles were all being seated from lowest ranked to highest for the second night’s celebration, while she, Shingti, Yoichi, and the emperor waited. Raijin was there as well. Tonight and each night after, the bride and groom would walk to the dais together, the final two to be seated.

  By the time Koida arrived, the Exalted Emperor Hao was raging at the young chieftain, his voice thundering through the halls.

  “You dismembered and chased a perfectly good Master of the Living Blade from my palace without royal permission,” the emperor bellowed, his face so dark red that it was nearly purple. “The only master in the valley who would take on a Ro-crippled child, and you dismissed him!”

  Koida’s brow furrowed. Clearly her father had forgotten that not so many nights ago, he had suggested she abandon training altogether. The sudden shift wasn’t a good sign. Her father became petty and argumentative whenever he was sinking into a low mood—usually when he had remained away from the battlefield for any stretch of time.

  Raijin stood silently through the emperor’s diatribe, his cold jade eyes betraying not a hint of fear at the ruler’s fury. But Koida knew the chieftain wouldn’t know how best to handle her father when he was like this.

  When Hao paused to gather more fuel for his fury, Koida stepped between them.

  “Apologies, beloved father,” she said in a respectful filial tone, bowing deeply enough to expose the back of her neck to her father and remaining bent. The cascades of bells slid a little, but did not ring. “But Ji Yu Raijin was only obeying a royal order. Your adoring second daughter gave it when she learned that Master Lao was a Ro-thief who sought to make a fool of the Exalted Emperor by living off of his good graces. When apprehended, Lao stooped yet lower and used your second daughter as a hostage and a shield against your first daughter and her personal guard. The chieftain of the Ji Yu saved me from Lao’s clutches and exacted a steep price paid in the man’s flesh.”

  Raijin’s eyes caught hers for half a moment. She looked away. She hadn’t technically lied; it didn’t matter that the royal order Raijin had obeyed was to submit to a divination by the eunuchs, not capture Lao.

  “But he didn’t catch the degenerate, did he?” the emperor retorted, taking a sharp right turn from his original tactic of bemoaning the loss of her master. “If he could move fast enough to snatch you back when Shingti couldn’t, then he should have had plenty of time to bring Lao back for execution.”

  “Raijin was concerned for my well-being.” Koida pouted. “Doesn’t Father care more about Koida than drawing and quartering some good-for-nothing false teacher?”

  “Of course.” Emperor Hao crossed his arms over his wide stomach. Though his face did not show it, he was softening.

  Over her father’s shoulder, Koida caught Cousin Yoichi’s gaze from his seat on the lounge. She expected a conspiratorial smile from the white-haired young man acknowledging the way she had turned aside her father’s anger, but the smile Yoichi sent her never touched his plum-colored eyes.

  Yoichi stood and joined them. “The chieftain saves the second princess from a false master with one hand, then disrespects her by withholding a bride price with his other.” He glanced from Koida to Shingti to the emperor. “Surely I am not the only one who sees this discrepancy.”

  “Apologies,” Raijin said, “but it was my understanding that the custom of the groom giving gifts to the family was no longer observed in the empire.”

  Yoichi snorted. “You must have gathered your information from among the commoners, Chieftain. The previous second princess was married off for no less than a pristine demon stallion from which all royal destriers today are descended.”

  “Wasn’t that Father’s great-aunt?” Shingti asked with open incredulity. “That was nearly seventy years ago.”

  “Father had yet to even be born,” Koida said. “There is no precedent for a bride price in these modern times.”

  “The wagging tongues of the court say otherwise,” Yoichi insisted, expertly exploiting the emperor’s concern for saving face. “This chieftain is making a mockery of you, treating you as no better than a peasant, and I refuse to stand for it.”

  Koida’s heart sped up a step when she realized this was the perfect opportunity to bring up an idea she’d been turning over all afternoon.

  “In truth, elder cousin, I care less about saving face for those backbiters than I do about continuing my training,” she said. “I’ve just learned that I spent the last four years under Master Lao for nothing, and he was the last teacher to be found who was willing to tutor a cripple. But perhaps Ji Yu Raijin could teach me and count it as the bride price.”

  “Him?” Emperor Hao’s dark brows pulled low over his plum-colored eyes.

  Yoichi let out a sharp laugh. “He doesn’t even follow the Path of the Living Blade, little cousin.”

  Koida’s face burned, but she ignored Yoichi’s scoffing and turned to Raijin. His face was unreadable stone.

  “Will you teach me?” she repeated.

  “If you wish, I can teach you the Path of the Thunderbird, but your cousin is correct, my Path is not like the Living Blade,” Raijin warned her. “The training begins hard and only gets harder as you climb through the ranks. Progress comes slowly, and with your deficiency, you’ll have to work harder than any of the other practitioners.”

  “You’ll teach her.” Emperor Hao snorted. “Bold words are easily spoken, Chieftain, but Koida has been Ro-crippled since birth. The best masters in the empire have been unable to advance her.”

  “Apologies, Exalted Emperor,” Raijin said, “but that means nothing. Strength comes from facing adversity, not the indulgence of weakness.” His eyes locked on Koida’s as if she were the only one in the hall with him, and he switched to a familiar spousal tone. “Are you certain this is what you want, Koida?”

  “She is still my daughter for five more nights,
” Emperor Hao said, annoyed. “You may address your request to me.”

  But neither the second princess nor the chieftain was paying attention to the emperor.

  “I want to learn the Ro-less fighting you used against Lao,” Koida said. “Can you teach me how to do it?”

  Raijin dipped his head in a nod. “It’s one of the first things you’ll learn.”

  “Master!” Koida dropped to her knees in her dress robes, her bell cascades calling out her loss of poise, and bowed her head, pressing her fist to her palm.

  Raijin returned the bow, then helped her back to her feet. In the tangled lengths of her dress robes, the maneuver would have been impossible without his assistance.

  Emperor Hao glowered, but seemed to realize that, at best, he could forbid Koida to train under Raijin for five more nights, no longer.

  The waiting room doors swung open, revealing a feast hall filled with nobles and officials.

  In a resounding voice, the court speaker announced, “Decorated hero Shyong Liu Yoichi.”

  With one last cold, condescending glance at Raijin, Yoichi departed for his seat. Koida promised herself that she would speak to her white-haired half-brother alone at the first opportunity and convince him that there was no offense in the lack of bride price, and the training was what she’d been after all along anyway. She was certain he would back her once he knew how she felt.

  “Dragonfly of the Battlefield,” the court speaker continued, “First Princess Shyong San Shingti escorting the Exalted Emperor Hao, Conqueror of a Thousand Tribes.”

  As Shingti led their father into the feasting hall, Koida inhaled deeply, trying to contain her excitement. It was trying so desperately to escape that she could hardly hold still.

  “Are you all right?” Raijin murmured at her side. So quiet, his gravelly voice was nearly a growl. “You’re bouncing.”

  A radiant smile broke free. “When can your student begin training, Master?”

  “Are you talking up to me again?” he asked, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “If the cherished second princess insists on formality, her lowly chieftain husband will do the same.”