Darkening Skies

by eden Hudson

  “You are a force of nature, Shyong San Shingti.” Raijin pressed his fists together and bowed, his eyes locked on hers. “I’m honored that you lowered yourself to fight me.”

  Shingti laughed again, louder this time, and lurched to her feet. She returned his bow exactly.

  “I am defeated,” she said. “And it was truly my honor, Master Ji Yu Raijin.”

  A cloud of vibrant ruby Ro filtered from Shingti’s heartcenter to Raijin’s. He accepted it graciously.

  Shingti winced as she straightened up. “Be aware, Chieftain, that I hold you personally responsible for seeing that my little sister learns everything you know.”

  “I will do everything within my power to see it done,” Raijin promised.

  But Koida saw a flash of concern in her betrothed’s jade eyes and realized with a pang of unease that what he was promising was not the same as what Shingti was demanding.

  Before Koida could say anything—before she’d even considered what she might say—Shingti had turned to face the accused soldiers.

  “You are responsible for delivering one month’s pay or one month’s care to the untouchables you wronged.” Shingti scrubbed away a dribble of blood from her chin with the back of one tattooed wrist, then raised her voice until it rang through the courtyard like a war horn. “It will be announced through the ranks of the emperor’s armies that anyone who has abused their power over a weaker party in a time of peace has one month to make the same restitution to that party if they still live. If they don’t, the restitution will be made to their family. Failing their having a family, the offending soldier will make the restitution to the community. Any soldier under my command who does not comply within the allotted one-month period will be divined by the court eunuchs and sentenced to forfeit one limb to the Exalted Emperor’s executioner. First Princess Shyong San Shingti, Dragonfly of the Battlefield, declares it so and so it will be.”

  It was much grander than the royal order Koida had given Raijin and Lao in this same courtyard only days before, but Shingti did have more practice issuing them.

  Slowly, shocked soldiers filtered out of the courtyard to begin seeing the word spread and amends made.

  “Gratitude,” Raijin said to the first princess.

  Shingti smiled brightly.

  “It is nothing.” She rubbed the binding shift over her sternum. “By blade and death, I could’ve sworn you shattered my heartcenter. I thought I’d start vomiting bits of my own Ro all over the courtyard.”

  Seeing the horror on Koida’s face once more, Raijin hurried to explain. “It’s temporary, no more than a disabling technique. The Ro is still in her body, just scattered throughout. Someone as talented as Shingti probably won’t take more than a few minutes to gather it all back into the right place. The impact point won’t even bruise.”

  “In that case, imagine that I’m limping off to begin dressing for my sister’s wedding feast, and not because I’m in incredible pain,” Shingti said. “Koida, would you mind sending for that masseuse we were discussing earlier?”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  6 YEARS AGO

  The return climb up the mountain from Kokuji passed in a haze of confusion and conflicting emotion for Raijin. His mother was dead, but he felt her Ro frolicking with his own. He had never absorbed Ro before, hadn’t even known that one could gift theirs to another. Master Chugi had said that his time with the school was over, but Raijin couldn’t think of anyone else who might know what this gift meant or what he should do with the strange new addition to his heartcenter. Perhaps if he begged, Grandmaster Feng would allow him to speak with the elderly Master Chugi.

  The sun was sinking into its evening bed, painting the sky above in a bloody magenta light, when Raijin stepped into the forest. The tree line closed behind him, the birches’ white trunks almost glowing in the eerie sunset light and blocking his last view of Kokuji. In truth, he was relieved not to be able to turn back and see the funeral pyre burning on the beach below.

  “You stink of smoke and death, Ji Yu Raijin,” an inhuman voice rumbled.

  Raijin jumped. The guai-ray had come seemingly out of nowhere.

  “Apologies, Zhuan,” he said, his legs beginning to walk once more. “I should have washed before I left the town.”

  The enormous beast swam along beside him.

  “Did you kill the ones who killed your mate and destroyed your nest?” Raijin asked.

  Her snout dipped. “It is done. They sent their poisoned wasps flying at me from long tubes of bamboo, but the pill you gave me protected me from their cowardly attacks. I spitted one on my stinger and cooked him through, then I decapitated the other.”

  Raijin nodded. He couldn’t congratulate her for taking revenge on the men who’d murdered her mate—such conduct was strictly against the Path of Darkening Skies’s central philosophy—but he thought it likely that justice had been served in this case.

  “Tell me why you stink of death, legged one,” Zhuan prompted when Raijin had gone a great distance without speaking.

  “My mother is dead,” he said. The words cut like a knife to the stomach. They were so simple to blurt out, and yet so impossible to grasp, so bloody and slick.

  “You are unable to mourn her because her murderer still lives,” the guai-ray said as if this explained everything. “Zhuan will help Ji Yu Raijin find his mother’s killer and take revenge.”

  For several steps, Raijin remained silent, trying to order his thoughts.

  “You can’t,” he said. “She was her own murderer.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “My mother killed herself with qajong.”

  Zhuan fluttered her wings in agitation. “Why do you keep speaking nonsense? Tell me who your mother’s killer was.”

  “She was.”

  “She who?”

  “My mother.”

  “What does it mean?” the guai-ray hissed, clearly frustrated. “Why do you say that your mother is the killer? Who did she kill?”

  “Herself,” Raijin said.

  “Enough!” The demon beast snapped both wings down at once. “Your circular talking makes no sense! Just tell me how we will find the one who killed her.”

  Raijin rubbed his gritty, tired eyes. The lids felt chapped from the tears he’d cried as he set the fire under his mother’s pyre. This concept of a being killing or harming oneself must be unheard of in the world of guai. Trying to explain it to Zhuan would be a waste of time; the idea simply wouldn’t translate.

  “We can’t find her killer,” he said. “The killer is already dead and gone.”

  “If vengeance has been enacted, then you are free to mourn, Ji Yu Raijin.”

  “I think I am mourning, Zhuan,” he said.

  The guai-ray made a skeptical noise, but seemed content to let the subject fall to the wayside as they continued up the mountain.

  Raijin walked through the night, the enormous ray accompanying him. Zhuan talked of the sensation of letting blood and the healing satisfaction of killing her mate’s murderers as if the details might entice Raijin to admit that he knew who his mother’s killer was and agree to seek out revenge. Raijin’s attention wandered back and forth from the strange conversation to the double Ros swirling in his heartcenter.

  “Zhuan, how long have you ruled the mountains?” he asked.

  She undulated through the air with obvious pride. “Many times your own years, legged one. I was born on this mountainside in the same cave where my mate and I made our nest. A double century we ruled this territory together.”

  “Do you know of Ro?” Raijin tapped his heartcenter. He knew all creatures had it, but he didn’t know whether they used it instinctually or were aware of its properties.

  “More than a legged one can learn in his short lifespan.”

  “What does it mean when someone has two Ros? What should you do with the second one?”

  “You mean when you’ve absorbed Ro from your enemy,” the guai-ray said. “So you di
d kill your mother’s murderer!”

  “I promise you, I didn’t.” Hoping not to let Zhuan become distracted, he returned to the question. “My mother gifted her Ro to me as she died. Have you ever heard of a creature doing this before?”

  Zhuan floated along thoughtfully for many long seconds.

  Then she said, “Were you your mother’s murderer?”

  “No,” he answered wearily. “Does this mean you’ve never heard of a creature giving their Ro to another?”

  “It is the way of things,” she said, irritation creeping back into her voice. “One creature kills another, and the dying surrenders their Ro to the victor.”

  “What I’m talking about is different. My mother gave it to me as a gift. I didn’t win it from her, she gave it to me.”

  “Gift, gift,” Zhuan repeated as if testing the word with the sensor branches around her jaw palates. “What is it?”

  Raijin struggled for a definition that would suit the guai-ray. “When you give something to someone—something they’re not expected to repay—or that they can’t repay—for no reason other than that you want to.”

  “Gift. When my mate or I hunted food for our cubs, we brought the prey back and gave the cubs its meat. They could not repay us, but we wanted to give them the meat. Is that gift?”

  Raijin felt a smile tug at his lips.

  “Yes, I suppose so,” he said.

  Before he could steer the conversation back to Ro, however, Zhuan darted ahead. With a start, Raijin realized they were within running distance of his school, the ever-present mountain mists painted in shades of blue and gray by the rising sun.

  What was Zhuan doing? Her shadowy form darted at the ground over and over again.

  Raijin craned his neck to see better through the mist. Her stinger was tucked under her belly and jabbing at something lying on the trail. Lightning from her stinger crackled and popped each time she made contact.

  As he drew closer, Raijin realized the thing she was stabbing was a decapitated human body. Just beyond it was a crispy husk of another. The combined smell made him shudder.

  “These were the legged ones who killed and butchered my mate,” Zhuan explained happily when Raijin stopped beside her. She hovered low over the corpses and let loose her bowels on them. “You should do the same to the remains of the one who killed your mother, Ji Yu Raijin. It is healthy for the soul.”

  Raijin decided against replying. Both because he knew he couldn’t make her understand and because his stomach was threatening to spill its contents. His mother was the first lifeless body he’d ever seen. Hers had been strangely peaceful in spite of its wasted appearance. These, however, were the product of brutal violence, and Zhuan’s continued desecration of their corpses was disturbing on a level Raijin could hardly comprehend.

  He circled wide around the bodies and continued on his way toward the school. The grandmaster might never allow him back inside, not after breaking his serving agreement, but he would be glad just to stand in its familiar shadow once more. If he could just make it back there, then everything that had lurched out of true square since he’d left would fall back into place.

  The sun was peeking over the horizon when the school’s hulking form emerged from the mists.

  Immediately, Raijin felt the weight lift from his shoulders. There were the fading forest green tiles of the roof, the upturned eaves, the wooden porch. Off to the side was the implement shed housing the water buckets, around the corner he would find Fatty’s beloved covered garden, and in the very center of the structure was the courtyard where he’d spent the last ten years of his life training.

  Raijin started toward the nearest set of sliding doors, which displayed the Deep Root character for wisdom when closed. As it was the middle of a harsh summer, however, the panels had all been left wide to capture any stray breeze.

  “Wait,” Zhuan hissed. Her wings fluttered in sudden agitation, and the branching organs surrounding her crushing jaw palates flashed with blue lights as she sensed the air. “Something is wrong.”

  “What is it?” Raijin asked, searching for anything awry. The only unusual thing he could see was that a few of the lanterns had scorch marks on their paper, as if someone had let them burn too long.

  The guai-ray cautiously swam closer to the school. “Your stench nearly masked it, but this close I sense the signature of the poisoned wasps that killed my pack. Many, many more of them.”

  Raijin was about to ask if she could be sensing extra needles stored in the robes or pouches of the bodies on the trail behind them, but the words died on his tongue.

  There was a bare foot sticking out of the school’s open doorway.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  PRESENT

  That night, Koida rushed her ladies through the routines of dressing, then hurried off to the royal waiting room outside the White Jade Feasting Hall, hoping to be the first to arrive. She wanted a moment alone to speak to her betrothed.

  As it happened, Raijin was already there. At his look of surprise, a smile broke across Koida’s face.

  She pressed her palm to her fist and bowed to him in greeting. He returned it.

  “I was hoping to speak to you before my family arrived, Ji Yu Raijin,” she said.

  “Nothing would please me more, Shyong San Koida,” he said, using the same tone of spousal respect as she.

  “I wanted to convey to you my sincerest gratitude for what you did today.” Koida hesitated, frustrated by her inability to express the earnestness she felt. “Not only for beginning the training of a student no master in their right mind would accept, but for fighting my sister on behalf of the untouchables.” She shook her head. “No, more than that! You didn’t just fight for them, you talked to them. You treated them like humans. Even I didn’t treat them like humans, and I’m one of them. If I had been born a peasant instead of a princess, I would be out there with them, starving and cringing and dying alone. Who would ever fight for me like that? Who would care enough to right the wrongs done to me then?”

  Raijin grabbed her hand, his cool fingers closing around hers.

  “I would do it,” he said, the low gravel of his voice once more making the statement sound like a sacred oath. “Princess, beggar, untouchable, royal—I would find you, and I would fight for you, no matter what you were born.”

  The intensity of his promise and the cold fire burning in his jade eyes made Koida look away, suddenly embarrassed.

  Raijin started to speak, then stopped himself. Indecision warred across his sun-burnished features. He squeezed Koida’s hand, the strength in his grip evident even in his restraint.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “You’ve already done so much I didn’t expect. You’re so different than I thought you would be. Who knows if this is even the right variation?”

  “You aren’t making any sense,” Koida said. “What are you talking about?”

  “There are things that you don’t understand,” Raijin said. “Things I can’t tell you. But you have to know that I would find you, no matter who you were. I would do anything within my power to save you. It’s why I was born.”

  Koida’s mind scrabbled for purchase and found nothing. “Please just speak plainly. I can handle whatever you think you’re protecting me from. I can help.”

  The waiting room door slammed open, admitting Cousin Yoichi and his small contingent of personal guards.

  Raijin and Koida stepped apart guiltily as the soldiers searched for any threat to the white-haired young man. Yoichi went to his accustomed spot on the blood-orange lounge and kicked his tooled leather boots up onto the rest.

  “Please excuse the interruption,” Yoichi said, flipping a lock of hair out of his plum-colored eyes. “Better me than the Exalted Emperor, though. Hao’s angry enough that he was duped into betrothing you to this Recordless scum, there’s no telling what he might do if he saw you cozied up to the man just days after you pledged yourself as his disciple against y
our father’s will.”

  Koida drew herself up until she towered over Yoichi, easy enough to do when her taller illegitimate brother was lounging on a couch.

  “Ji Yu Raijin has proven his worth to the empire a thousand times over,” she said, forgoing the polite familial tone for the harsh language Shingti used when intimidating someone. “I notice you didn’t conquer the Uktena single-handed, elder cousin. Were you too busy in your life of luxury here at the palace not making more bastards?”

  Koida knew she shouldn’t take the argument down such a hateful road, but Yoichi’s rudeness toward Raijin offended her as she hadn’t known anything could.

  Rather than retaliate in anger, however, Yoichi stood and stretched his slender form into a polite bow, fist pressed to his heartcenter.

  “Apologies, little cousin,” he said. “I forgot my place in our family. A brother would have every right to call out the betrothed of his sister if he perceived the man to be undeserving of her. Can you forgive me?”

  Koida realized she was standing as still as death, staring at Yoichi in shock. She grabbed his folded hands and pulled him into a hug.

  “It is nothing. Little sister bears no ill will toward her elder brother.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  PRESENT

  As the feasting began and servants bustled through the ranks of nobles pouring wine and filling plates, Koida shifted in her goldwood chair. Raijin was busy glaring out at the sea of faces, his cold jade eyes following something diligently.

  Was he angry that she’d dismissed Yoichi’s insults so easily? She did feel a bit guilty about that now, realizing that it hadn’t been very loyal to her future husband, but Yoichi’s admission that he felt more like a true brother to her than a bastard relegated to the rank of cousin had touched her.

  Koida studied Raijin’s stony mask. She didn’t know whether what she felt for him was love or infatuation, but she didn’t want him to be angry with her. There had been a hunger in his eyes when he swore that he would fight for her no matter who or what she was that made her heart gallop like Pernicious using his Demonic Speed.