by eden Hudson
On the ride to the city, Koida and Cold Sun had kept their demon beasts at a safe distance from one another, but riding shouting distance apart wasn’t possible on these narrow streets. She had promised to find Pernicious a sugary treat if he behaved, but she suspected he could only contain his nature for so long before the temptation to fight the war ram to the death became too much. She had no idea how Lysander thought they would keep the beasts from killing one another in the confines of a single ship.
As if sensing the danger, the crowd pushed back on either side of the street as the huge ram and bloodthirsty warhorse rode past.
The demon beasts’ riders were drawing quite a few stares themselves. A yellow-haired foreigner, a woman with cloth wrappings hiding the lower half of her face, and a half-clothed savage twice as wide as any man on the street were too conspicuous to blend in. Koida suspected she might be the only member of their group who looked close to normal, and even she was clothed in tattered and worn riding clothes that had once been handsome black silk fit for the second princess in all the empire.
As they came to the docks, work stopped and sailors stared, gapemouthed.
“The cargo junk up there,” Lysander said, leaning around Koida to indicate the ship he meant. “With the striped sails.”
Pernicious tried to twist around and bite Lysander’s arm.
“Get gelded,” Lysander grumbled, shoving the beast’s head away.
“Both of you stop it,” Koida snapped. “You’re like children.”
“Glad to see you took my advice about wearing the glass moon serpent,” Lysander said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Takate Iri isn’t the place to show off a valuable lavaglass blade, Princess. The thieves here don’t mind getting their hands dirty for a payday like that. Get yourself under control or use the serpent.”
Koida didn’t have to glance down to know that her left forearm was darkening, the skin going as smooth and shiny as lavaglass; she could feel it melting to the surface. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, rebuilding her Stone Soul as she tried to bring back the sensation of living lavaglass surrounding her bones. Soon the prickling, melting sensation dissipated, and her arm returned to its usual pale hue.
The cargo junk Lysander had indicated was one of the largest ships at the docks, big enough to dwarf Pernicious and the demon war ram as they approached. Koida counted six huge finned sails of teal-striped maroon canvas and two smaller sails of black high on the frontmost mast, all pulled closed while in port.
Sailors of all sizes and shapes carried crates, barrels of spices, and rolls of silk from the dock and up the gangplank, though none of them had straw-yellow hair or ruddy red complexions to suggest that they were from the same mysterious faraway land as Lysander. Unlike the citizens of Takate Iri, the sailors glanced at the demon beasts in passing, then went back to work as if the creatures were nothing they hadn’t seen before.
A hairless woman with leathery brown skin kept watch over the sailors, casually swinging a glowing Ro whip tipped with pointed ruby blades. When the woman caught sight of their strange procession, she nudged a tall man with gray-streaked black hair. The tall man had a single, thick black brow that spanned the bridge of his nose. It pulled low over his eyes as he looked up. When he spotted Lysander, he nodded a greeting.
“That’s our captain, Singh,” Lysander told Koida, returning the nod. “Keep your head down and do what he says with none of that princess lip, or his quartermaster’ll strip the hide off your back with that whip of hers.”
Before Koida could respond, Lysander slid off Pernicious and stumbled a bit as if he weren’t used to riding. Shoulders hunched and legs strangely bandy, the foreigner gave the captain a rough bow. Koida didn’t know how Lysander was doing it, but he looked more like a sailor than most of the men loading cargo onto the junk.
She reined Pernicious around and dismounted while Cold Sun and Hush came to a stop nearby and climbed down from the war ram.
“These are your friends, then?” the captain said, appraising them with muddy green eyes. He nodded at the towering Uktena warrior. “Strong arms, strong back.” Then he gestured at Hush. “And that one’s got power in her aura. They’ll be good workers.”
Hush bowed graciously to the captain.
He gave her a sparse nod, then clasped his hands behind his back as his gaze fell on Koida. His thick gray-speckled brow pulled down in a frown.
“The girl’s obviously never done a day’s work in her life,” he said. “Twenty silver links for her passage.”
“I can work,” Koida protested.
The captain shook his head. “The only work I could give you would be ship’s boy, and you’d slice those pretty hands to pieces the first time you picked up a rope. Twenty links. Or, if you don’t have the money—” He glanced at the enormous war ram and inky black destrier behind them. “—we could work out a trade. The demon beasts in exchange for all four of your passages.”
Koida took a sharp breath to refuse, but from nowhere, a sudden overwhelming desire not to speak washed over her, silencing her as effectively as a gag.
Lysander stepped forward.
“Apologies, Captain, but we can’t trade with our master’s demon beasts,” he said, his speech taking on the rough tone of a laborer to a superior. “He’ll kill us all if we come back without them. You’re right, the girl’s got hands as soft as yak butter, but that’ll change with a day or two of ship’s boy’s duties. And she can be a lot more of an asset than your last boy. Kid probably wasn’t quite as nice to look at, and she don’t mind it so much if somebody gets fresh.”
Koida’s eyes flew wide open at the suggestion, but the pressure to keep her mouth closed doubled. She glared at Lysander, certain that the coercion was coming from him, though she had never heard of anyone doing such a thing.
“Fine,” the captain said, waving a hand as if he had no more time for the dickering. “But the day she fails to complete her assigned duties, one of the beasts belongs to me.” He turned to the whip-wielding quartermaster. “Rila, stable the beasts and put these four to work.”
“Aye, Captain,” the hairless woman said.
Koida rounded on Lysander, but he grabbed her by the shoulders, turned her around to face the captain, and hissed in her ear, “There’s a time to show no weakness and a time to embrace your weaknesses, Princess. Your pampered, pretty face can be a liability or it can be your greatest asset. Now’s the time to choose.”
Before she could smack his hands off her, they let go.
“Beasts’ handlers?” the quartermaster demanded.
It took a moment for Koida to keep up with the woman’s swift, terse speech. When she realized what was being asked, Koida raised a hand in response. By the war ram, Cold Sun’s expression hadn’t changed, but an air of confusion seemed to float around him.
“Myself and the Uktena,” Koida told the quartermaster.
A loud crack split the air. A brilliant red line of pain seared across Koida’s upper arm. She sucked in a surprised breath and grabbed the red-hot streak, her palm coming away marked with a thin line of blood.
“Watch your tone, trash,” the hairless woman said, flicking the Ro whip back down at her side. It shifted from a single precision lash back to the hide-stripping multiple-bladed monstrosity. “If you ever speak down to me again, it’ll be the last thing you do. You’ll address me as Quartermaster Rila and your captain as Captain Singh, and you’ll use a respectful common laborer to authority tone while you do it, or you’ll answer to the Demon Fox and all her nine tails.”
The flames of anger licked up Koida’s throat and the whip cut across her arm throbbed, but she pressed her fist to her thundering heartcenter and bent in an apologetic bow.
“Yes, Quartermaster Rila,” she said, switching speech tones to the groveling, servile tone the hairless woman had demanded. “Apologies. Your servant did not know the appropriate—”
“You and you,” Rila cut Koida off, pointing from Lysander to Hush. �
�Get in line and get this cargo loaded. Beast handlers, follow me with the demons.”
Lysander and Hush fell into the line of emptyhanded sailors coming from the ship and made their way toward the stack of grain sacks.
Cold Sun glanced at Koida’s torn sleeve, the hint of a disapproving frown pulling at the corners of his lips, then the hulking Uktena chirruped at his war ram and the pair of lumbering giants followed the hairless quartermaster.
At Koida’s side, Pernicious snorted and rolled his eyes, backing up a handful of steps from the gangplank.
Koida scowled at him.
“Don’t you start,” she muttered. “This is the fastest way.”
According to a drunk foreigner.
As if he could sense her doubts, the demon destrier grumbled low in his chest. With one enormous brimstone hoof, he pawed the wooden bridge.
“Move your feet!” Rila called from the deck of the ship. “You’ve got work to see to once that beast’s in his stall, little girl. If any of it doesn’t get done, that beast belongs to Captain Singh.”
“You heard her.” Koida grabbed Pernicious by the scruff of midnight hair at the base of his chin. “Either you put up with me, or you’ll be putting up with her from now on.”
The temperamental warhorse stamped one huge hoof, smashing through a trio of weathered dock boards, but allowed Koida to lead him up the slowly moving gangplank and onto the ship.
Chapter Five
LAND OF IMMORTALS
Raijin had trained to exhaustion before, continuing on when his body screamed at him to stop, forcing himself to persist while his fellow students dropped to the ground around him. It had always been possible for him to put one foot in front of the other, complete one more strike or kick or block, hold the stance for one more moment, then another, then another. He had never before reached a point where his determination couldn’t carry him one step farther.
Until now.
He collapsed on the rain-soaked ground, unable to take another step or even lift his head out of the mud. He needed to roll off his arm, which had been tucked against his broken ribs and was aggravating their splintery pain, but he couldn’t. The fatigue was pulling him under like a man trying to carry a millstone through sinking sand.
Misuru’s pale feet appeared in his blurring vision. Was it his imagination, or had her flesh taken on an almost human tone? Was the grass turning green? His eyes refused to remain open long enough to check.
“Misuru must have pushed the Thunderer past the point a lowly Tier 0 could handle.” As she spoke, the immortal woman’s voice seemed to be moving farther and farther away. “I suppose we could stop for...”
Raijin never heard the rest. Between one word and the next, the forest floor and Misuru disappeared. He was in the bedchamber of the guest apartment he had been given in the Sun Palace. The room was as he remembered it, crowded with thick seating cushions, an enormous platform bed piled high with luxurious demon beast hides, and a handsomely crafted wardrobe so large that it made his single set of sturdy robes look silly when he hung them in it. The palace was by far the most lavish place he had stayed in his lifetime, though draftier than he had always imagined a royal residence would be.
He stood on the balcony, looking into his bedchamber. The hammered brass brazier in the corner had burned low, but in the dim light, he could see Koida’s silhouette. She was drenched, rainwater dripping from her long hair, but then so was he. She must have been out in the downpour as well.
There was none of the bizarre sense of vertigo he had felt looking at her on his first night in the Sun Palace, that feeling of infinite familiarity that had battled with his curiosity at who she would actually be in this life. In the dream, when Raijin caught sight of the curve of her pale moon cheek and the glint of purple in her wide eyes, the pit of his stomach tumbled over itself. He grinned.
“You’re all right.” He strode across the room and grabbed her hands, reminding himself at the last moment to take care not to crush the delicate bones there. He pushed a strand of wet hair away from her face. “I didn’t know if I had done enough. Are Hush and Lysander with you?”
Koida’s lips moved, but Raijin couldn’t hear what she was saying. He leaned in closer, but she pushed him away.
Under normal circumstances, it would have been a simple matter of shifting his feet to catch himself, but in the dream, he landed flat on his back on the bed. Koida climbed into his lap. His heart thundered, trying to burst through the wall of his chest. He reached for her, but she batted his hands aside easily.
“Are you here to kill me?” he asked her, though the dream had digressed so far from the first time they had spoken that the question no longer made sense.
Rather than answer, Koida grabbed the side of his head, her nails digging into his neck and jaw. She reached for his face with her free hand, each fingertip gleaming with sharp black talons. He tried to twist away, but she bore down, holding his head in place.
“Hold still.” That voice did not belong to Koida.
Raijin tried to fight, but he was pinned in place by a strength far greater than that of any opponent he had ever faced before. The claws plunged into his right eye, scraping the bone around the socket as they rotated.
He screamed and thrashed, now fully awake. Through his remaining eye, he saw Misuru’s face hovering over his, pulling back a hand tipped with claws and covered in wet red gore. In her palm, she cradled a small blood-splashed ball attached to dripping strings of meat.
“What are you doing?” Raijin shouted, his voice ragged with pain.
“Taking these.” Misuru stuck the ball into the empty hole where her right eye should have been. When she blinked, a bright jade iris stared down at Raijin. “Good. But it could be better.”
Raijin tried to twist his hips and throw her off. When that failed, he tried to wrap his leg around hers and jerk, unbalancing her. He even tried to bite the arm holding his face down, but none of the Ro-less grappling or dirty fighting Lysander had taught him worked. The force holding him in place seemed to triple, and the claws securing his head dug into his jawbone like daggers.
Misuru’s gore-splattered fingers darted in again. Raijin’s one-sided vision went completely black as she dug out his left eye, ripping another scream up from the bottom of his stomach.
“There,” she said. “That is better.”
Raijin could just barely hear her over the agony in his eyes, his own harsh breathing, and the blood pounding in his head. Misuru’s claws released his face, and the weight holding him down disappeared.
He lurched onto his hands and knees, grasping blindly for her but finding nothing except clumps of wet grass and fistfuls of mud. Hot wetness oozed down his cheeks.
Misuru chuckled, the sound coming from behind him.
He spun around, then slipped in the mud and landed flat on his stomach. He didn’t hear her footsteps, but again the sound of her delighted laughter rang out behind him. He pushed up onto shaking arms and turned toward it.
“Why?” he demanded. His reeling mind could spit out nothing else that made sense.
“Do you have any idea how long I’ve been blind?” It sounded as if Misuru were standing to his right, but when he turned that way, her voice shifted to another point on his left. “I could take everything else from her, but I could never get my eyes back. All’s well, however. Yours suit me just fine.”
Raijin struggled to his feet, sliding a little in the muck, and forced his heaving lungs to calm so he could listen for her.
“Over here, Thunderer,” Misuru said, her voice alight with glee. “Follow my voice.”
She sounded as if she were off to his side, but Raijin didn’t move. He heard the slightest squelch behind him, like a foot being pulled from the mud. He shifted his weight and redirected his stance, turning himself to face her without lifting his feet from the treacherously slippery ground.
The air whispered as something cut through it toward his right side. Raijin twisted his torso away and
thrust his arms out in a Ro-less cross block, one fist low and the other high to cover as much of his body as possible.
A muddy heel slammed into his opposite ear, rocking him nearly off his feet. His skull rang with the impact as he tried to regain his balance.
“Close,” Misuru said from behind him, “but not good enough.”
Her foot bashed into Raijin’s chest. He stepped backward to catch himself, but his foot dropped through empty air. He tried to throw his weight forward onto solid ground, but an elbow smashed into his face, making his ragged eye sockets scream with agony.
A final muddy kick to the broken ribs sent Raijin tumbling backward into nothingness. His stomach lurched into his throat as he fell. He wheeled his arms, grabbing blindly, but caught nothing.
Moments or eons later, he crashed into solid rock, the impact taking him by surprise and knocking the air from his lungs. Lightning flickered inside his head, and he curled in on himself like a crushed wool worm.
“Not a very graceful landing for a thunderbird.” Misuru’s voice drifted down from high above. “But I imagine you’re not very happy to be back in your cage.”
Raijin couldn’t draw enough breath to shout at her.
“Maybe you’ll fly away again someday,” Misuru called. “It only took you ten thousand years to escape last time. Of course, that was with your eyes.” Her voice began to fade as she retreated. “I’ll give your greetings to the Dark Dragon when I see her.”
Raijin rolled onto his side and slammed a fist into the rock. High above, thunder cracked the sky and rain poured like a waterfall.
Chapter Six
MORTAL LANDS
Koida blinked her eyes rapidly as they descended the livestock ramp into the cramped lower decks of the junk. She had grown so used to the scorching sunlight above that she felt blind in the dim glow of the occasional safety lantern.
The passage Rila led them down was barely wide enough for Cold Sun and his enormous war ram to walk side by side, and the hulking Uktena warrior had slung one arm over the beast’s back to make enough room for his wide shoulders. Pernicious’s muscled shoulder rubbed against Koida’s as they followed, making the already hot confines of the narrow passage feel claustrophobic and oppressive.