Darkening Skies

by eden Hudson

  Beneath the table, Koida took Raijin’s hand. He turned his focus to her, his gaze like jade ice.

  “Will you come riding with me again tonight?” Koida asked, her throat suddenly dry. She switched to a tone she had no experience using, that of a lover, and the words tumbled out in one quick breath. “I know a place where two could be alone without being observed.”

  Raijin’s mouth dropped open, stunned. He shook his head and leaned closer as if he hadn’t heard her, but before she could repeat herself, he answered.

  “No.”

  That was it. Just a blunt rejection.

  Fire blazed Koida’s cheeks, her skin suddenly too tight for her body. She turned away to look out over the crowd, the embarrassment making her movements jerky and awkward. The cascades of bells in her hair jangled to signal her loss of composure—though composure loss was the least of her humiliations at the moment.

  “A-apologies,” she stammered, slipping back into the respectful spousal tone of speech. “Your future wife thought perhaps...because we will be husband and wife tomorrow night...and the honored chieftain seemed as if he...as if he was interested in...but that was so ignorant of this silly child to think.” She tried to force a laugh, but the sound caught in her throat. “A man of Ji Yu Raijin’s age and experience would prefer someone more worldly.”

  Raijin did laugh, though it was tinged with self-deprecation rather than malice.

  “I’m not that much older than you, Koida, and I...I don’t have any experience. Not of that sort.” His long fingers cupped her chin, turning her face back toward him. His eyes were burning with that feral hunger once more. “Believe me, nothing sounds better to me than finding a secluded place with you. But it’s like training. We force our bodies to do what they never would on their own, without regard for what they want. That self-discipline makes us stronger. No matter how I feel, no matter what I want, I won’t treat you like a sensha in a cheap teahouse. If—when our marriage is sealed, I’ll take you to my home—your new home—and in comfort and safety, I’ll show you what you make me feel.”

  Koida’s face burned now for a different reason. As the cupbearer bowed up the stairs to fill their wine cups, Koida ducked her head. Beside her, Raijin had fallen silent again.

  When the servant bowed away, Raijin asked, “Is that woman one of your regular servers?”

  Koida glanced up, catching a glimpse of the woman as she disappeared into the crowd.

  “She must be,” Koida said. “She’s wearing the royal livery of the palace servants.”

  “You’ve seen her before during these wedding feasts?” Raijin pressed.

  Koida tried to remember the woman’s face. Except for Batsai and a few others she spoke to on a regular basis, she rarely looked past a servant’s identifying garb. They were just another staple of life in the palace, like the statues or the furniture. She searched the crowd, but any of the females with wine could have been the one to serve her only moments before.

  “Which one is she?”

  When Raijin didn’t respond, Koida turned back to him.

  His brows nearly touched, and his face had gone pale beneath its sun-burnished tone.

  “It’s here?” he whispered.

  “What is?” Again he didn’t respond. Koida touched his arm. “Raijin—”

  “I thought we would have more time together,” he said, his eyes finally meeting hers. “I don’t know if it’s been enough. I tried.”

  “What are you—”

  “Please, just listen. There’s a certain way this has to go. There have already been so many deviations from what I saw in the Dead Waters, but there’s only one sequence in which you and the world both survive, and it’s the same every time.”

  Raijin grabbed her wine cup and tossed the drink back in one quick gulp.

  Confused, Koida reached for his full cup, but Raijin’s hand shot out like a striking adder and grabbed her wrist.

  “Don’t,” he said, his voice strained. With his free hand, he made a signal in the air. “In some of the variations, it was poisoned, too.”

  “Poison?” Koida meant to whisper, but the word came out much louder.

  The merry rumble of feasting and laughter cut off in a collective gasp. Faces went gray, the Exalted Emperor’s included. There was nothing nobles feared so much as poison.

  Chaos erupted. Someone screamed. Plates and cups clattered to the floor. Nobles and officials ran for the private rooms, snatching at the vomiting medicines the alchemists had mixed for the night, knocking one another out of the way in their desperation and panic.

  “Now see here!” Emperor Hao shouted, standing so quickly his heavy chair toppled over backward. A spire cracked off and rolled across the floor.

  Shingti climbed onto her chair and manifested her Dual Swords.

  “Bar the doors!” she ordered. “Seize every cupbearer! No one leaves this hall!”

  Before she finished speaking, the Dragonfly Guard was already running to do her bidding.

  The emperor cried out, a wordless howl of rage.

  At first, Koida thought he’d been bumped or disrespected by some panicking noble. But in the next moment, her father manifested a pair of sinuous ruby Scythe Blades along his thick forearms and turned on the closest court official.

  “Hellfiends!” the emperor howled. The official screamed as the emperor’s scythe chopped into the intersection of his throat and shoulder, nearly decapitating him. “To arms! Hellfiends in the castle!”

  Then Shingti’s scream filled the feasting hall, making Koida’s eardrums shudder with its force. She had never heard her sister make a sound like that. It was terrifying, insane and agonized. That scream paralyzed Koida in a way Pernicious’s Petrifying Shriek of Legions had never been able to. Suddenly, Shingti’s Dual Swords were flashing through the crowd, cutting down nobles, servants, and soldiers alike with the Thousand Darts of the Dragonfly.

  “Rally to me, Dragonflies!” the first princess shrieked, chopping her way through the room. “To me, rally to me!” But as the confused Dragonfly Guard flocked to Shingti, the first princess cut them down, screaming, “Die, hellfiends!”

  The remaining Dragonfly Guards gaped at their princess as if unable to comprehend that it was her Dual Swords cutting down their brethren.

  Blood fell like rain as Shingti danced across the feasting hall floor, hatred and fury twisting her beautiful face into something unrecognizable. Nobles tried to run, but none could escape her. The Dragonfly Guard tried half-heartedly to fight, but none could stop her. She slaughtered them mercilessly, alternating between opening their throats and running them through with ruthless efficiency.

  On the opposite end of the room, the emperor, too, had lost his mind. Heads rolled as he swung his glowing ruby scythes, cutting through every noble and official within reach. A hysterical part of Koida’s mind shrieked that the emperor was finally exercising his divine right to decide whether they lived or died, but no one was exposing the backs of their necks and accepting it quietly.

  Clouds of Ro, all varying shades of red, filtered through the confusion, leaving the dead and searching out their new, living homes.

  Shingti’s insane purple eyes locked on Koida’s.

  “Hellfiends!” the first princess screeched. She changed direction and began to slash her way through the terrified crowd toward Koida. “Die, hellfiends!”

  Koida couldn’t move. She had never seen so much blood before. Massacre. The word echoed in her head. This was a massacre. She was going to be slaughtered by her own sister, but she couldn’t move. She could only watch as Shingti’s twisted, blood-splattered face chopped its way through the forest of bodies to her.

  Batsai seemed to appear from nowhere. The captain of Koida’s guard threw himself in front of the raging first princess. He matched Shingti blow for blow, staggering her with his powerful High Shield and even piercing her side with his Serpentine Spear. But Batsai was aging, and Shingti quickly wore him down. When the twin tips of Shingt
i’s Dual Swords burst from Batsai’s back, Koida finally regained enough sense to start screaming.

  “No! Batsai, no!”

  Raijin jerked her out of her chair.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice strained raw, tendons standing out in his neck. “No one else can stop them. It has to be me. Please forgive me.”

  He shoved her roughly into the arms of the foreigner from his entourage. Koida couldn’t remember the yellow-haired man’s name. Fear had wiped her mind clean. She could, however, remember that the woman beside him with the cloth wrappings over her mouth was called Hush.

  “Get her to safety,” Raijin ordered them.

  “What about you?” the foreigner demanded.

  “Go!”

  Koida stared, mystified, as Raijin leapt over the table and off the dais. Time slowed to a speed that couldn’t be possible, as if it wanted her to see everything in perfect gory detail so that she could never forget.

  Shingti lunged, blood flying from her ruby blades as she tried to run Raijin through. He sidestepped the blade, but his motion stuttered and he nearly fell. Raijin pulled himself upright just in time to avoid being disemboweled by Shingti’s Dual Swords. His palms slammed into the first princess’s shoulder, using her insane recklessness against her. She spun off course, and Raijin followed, finger-striking where the weak points in her armor would have been if she hadn’t been wearing dress robes. He finished the technique by thrusting an open palm into her back, over her heartcenter.

  Ice crackled and Shingti’s Ro blades disappeared. She whirled on Raijin, clawing with her fingernails.

  Thunder shook the walls as Raijin intercepted her with a brutal kick to the stomach. A jagged bolt of jade lightning leapt from Shingti’s heartcenter, leaving behind shredded fabric and blistered skin. Raijin stumbled away from her motionless form.

  A thin moment later, Shingti dropped to the floor. A cloud of glowing ruby Ro filtered into the air over her body.

  Strong hands grappled with Koida, and she realized with detached awareness that she was trying to break free and run to her sister. A foreign voice shouted in her ear, but she couldn’t understand the words.

  Out in the sea of blood and death, Raijin’s quick, graceful movements had devolved into a tripping stagger. His hair was soaked with sweat and clinging to his temples, but he fought on to the emperor.

  Hao saw him coming and turned away from the court speaker whose limbs he’d been furiously hacking away at.

  Raijin ducked under the emperor’s glowing Ro-scythes and kicked the older man’s legs from beneath him. As he fell, Raijin slammed his knee into the emperor’s heartcenter. Thunder boomed once more, and the Exalted Emperor’s scythes flickered, then disappeared. Hao scrabbled to grab hold of Raijin, howling the whole time, but Raijin slipped behind him. The younger man’s left arm shifted into a long, thin lavaglass blade no wider than an awl. The black blade pierced the emperor’s spine, just below his skull.

  The emperor sprawled facedown, dead. His Ro left his body, but it didn’t filter to Raijin as it should have.

  Instead, it flowed through the air toward the back of the room, meeting up with many more like it on the way.

  Koida tried to pull free of Hush and the yellow-haired foreigner, but they were too strong. They dragged her kicking and fighting toward the servant’s exit in the far wall.

  A familiar voice rose above the wailing and screaming.

  “Murderess!” Cousin Yoichi stood near the back of the room, his robes splashed liberally with blood. His finger stabbed into the air, accusing someone Koida couldn’t see. “She conspired with the Ji Yu to poison and murder our family!”

  Raijin’s sinewy form stumbled into Yoichi’s path. Her betrothed’s back was to her, but Koida could see that he was barely holding himself upright. His dark complexion had gone an ashen gray. Sweat soaked his robes and matted his hair to his head in wet, black spikes. He dropped to his knees on the stone floor, shoulders heaving with effort. He lurched, trying to throw himself at the white-haired Yoichi, but fell to his hands and knees instead.

  The poison, Koida realized. Raijin was dying.

  A cloud of radiant dark jade Ro like none Koida had ever seen before rose from Raijin’s back, over his heartcenter. Brilliant tongues of green flashed through it like a lightning storm.

  Yoichi’s purple eyes locked on it.

  “What I have,” Raijin shouted at the floor, corded muscles standing out in his neck, “let it pass to you, Koida!”

  Raijin’s arms spasmed and gave out. The moment he hit the ground, a chunk of ice encased him like a rough-cut diamond coffin.

  All the while, Hush and that yellow-haired foreigner pulled Koida toward the servant’s door. Just before they managed to drag her through, the flashing cloud of dark jade Ro slammed into Koida’s chest and cut its way into her heartcenter.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  6 YEARS AGO

  The body in the doorway was Yong Lei. Silver needles stuck out of his hands and face. Looking at them, Raijin could see his friend standing with his hands raised in Inviting Attack. The yoke and two empty water buckets lay on their sides behind Yong Lei as if he’d thrown them off in the midst of returning to the spring for another load.

  The corpses of a few higher ranks and several masters were scattered around the corridor, but Raijin could only see his best friend.

  Floating beside him, Zhuan dipped her snout to Yong Lei. Raijin flinched, fighting back the instinct to shove the demon beast away from his friend. Blue lights flashed along the branching sense organs on her underside.

  “Yes,” she said. “These needles have the same electrical signature as the ones used to murder my mate.”

  “But you killed those men.” Raijin’s voice sounded foreign to his own ears, harsh in the silence.

  “I killed the ones whose signature trespassed upon my nest and surrounded my mate’s butchered body,” she said.

  But Raijin wasn’t listening. If Yong Lei had been bringing in water, doing Raijin’s serving tasks, then whoever had done this had struck early in the morning, before the rest of the school was awake. They planned to take the school by surprise, but Yong Lei must have raised the alarm. That was why Library Master Tang-Soo and Training Master Palgwe lay dead in the corridor, along with many higher-ranked students. They had died defending the school.

  But the longer Raijin stared, the less likely this looked. The bodies of the higher ranks seemed to spread out in waves from Palgwe and Tang-Soo. Needles gleamed in the masters’ flesh.

  “Master Chugi,” Raijin said. “He must have escaped with the rest of the students.”

  Raijin knelt beside Yong Lei and touched his face to the floor three times, then did the same facing each of the dead masters.

  “Ji Yu Raijin, I do not sense any living electrical signatures large enough to be legged ones like you in this lower section,” Zhuan said. “Nothing but insects and mice living in the walls.”

  “That’s because everyone else escaped while Yong Lei and the masters held the attackers off,” Raijin said, bowing his face to the floor one final time. He stood. “We’ll make a pyre for them after we find Master Chugi and the rest of the students.”

  “And kill those who murdered them,” Zhuan said.

  Raijin didn’t respond. There was no time for thoughts of vengeance, not when Master Chugi and who knew how many students were out on the mountainside, perhaps still running for their lives.

  Raijin had to pick his way through the corpses to traverse the corridor. Zhuan swam along beside him at shoulder height, floating above the dead like a ghostly silver cloud of Ro.

  In the dining hall, they found the side door to the courtyard hanging open, letting in bright yellow sunlight and illuminating even more students, these surrounding and piled on top of the Master of Letters. A few of the students were no higher ranked than Wind or Rain, barely a decade old. Their blood had splattered the benches away from the master.

  Raijin shut his e
yes and swallowed. That couldn’t mean what it seemed to.

  Through the doorway into the kitchen, he caught a glimpse of a scene much worse. The swell of Fatty’s stomach and a group of Cloud students. None were older than six, and none had been spared. One small head still had the cook’s cleaver lodged in it.

  Turning away from the kitchen on numb legs, Raijin wove through the dining hall and stepped out the courtyard door.

  More dead, young and old, students of all ages and ranks. At the center of the carnage lay the broken bodies of Master Chugi and Grandmaster Feng. Silver needles gleamed in the sunlight.

  Raijin dropped to his knees.

  This couldn’t be right. It looked as if the entire school had turned on one another. It was like a nightmare.

  In fact, that must be what this was. Master Chugi would never harm a student. He would never harm anyone. And Grandmaster Feng had found the trick to immortality; he couldn’t die. This was all just a nightmare brought on by inhaling too much of his mother’s qajong smoke. All Raijin had to do was wake himself, then he would be back in the sand by her lean-to, scratching at sand flea bites and waiting for her to call him inside.

  “Legged one.” Zhuan floated in the doorway, her wings flapping with agitation.

  He wanted to feel fury, outrage that the master who had raised him had died in such opposition to his chosen Path. The very idea of hurting a student would have broken Master Chugi’s heart. Raijin bowed to the old man’s body. When Raijin rose again, he used the back of his sleeve to scrub away the dirt sticking to his wet face.

  “I hear footsteps above,” the guai-ray said.

  Raijin sprang to his feet and sprinted through the dining hall back out into the corridor. As he ran for the stairs to the second floor, he ran through the faces he could remember seeing. Who had he missed? Who was still alive? The physician’s hall—he hadn’t checked there! Perhaps Akidori was still alive. Perhaps she could tell him who had done this.