by Claire Luana
“You shouldn’t,” Hamaio said. “The barriers between the world must be breaking down further. We have little time before they make their move.”
Kai shuddered and slipped inside the familiar doors of the library behind Hamaio.
The other woman shook herself a bit and straightened. “We should be safe in here for a few moments.”
“Thank you,” Kai said gratefully. “You saved me from that thing.”
Hamaio whirled, her porcelain face angry. “You can’t keep bumbling in here. You’re like a babe in the woods!”
“I know,” Kai said, her face heating. She felt like a child being scolded by her mother. “I lost your charm in the lake, and I didn’t make another. I didn’t think I would need it here.”
Hamaio huffed. “Now that you are back at the citadel, you can get something better. In the treasury is a ring made of three linked circles. One of gold, one of silver, and one of iron. If you wear it, it should prevent you from traveling over.”
“It could take me hours to find it,” Kai lamented. “We need to leave shortly.”
“Make time. Unless you’d like to be eaten by a tengu!” the other woman said.
“Of course not.” Kai sighed. “I’ll find it. If…I got eaten by a tengu in the spirit world, would I die in the mortal world?”
“A burner cannot live without their spirit,” Hamaio said. “No human can.”
Kai nodded. It was as she suspected. “I have so many questions for you. Will you tell me how you sealed the walls between the realms?”
“It was a desperate, cobbled-together thing,” Hamaio said. “The tengu had broken through the final barrier and were under the direction of their leaders, two greater tengu.”
“Yukina and Hiei?”
“I see you’ve heard of them.”
“They’re the ones pretending to be Tsuki and Taiyo. They have incited war between the burners for hundreds of years.”
Hamaio set her jaw. “They are very old and very powerful. They have been waiting for many thousands of years, testing the defenses of this world. They had driven us back to the castle at Yoshai, and we were fighting a desperate battle.”
“Yoshai?” Kai asked.
“It was our capital,” Hamaio said. “A beautiful city of courtyards and terraces. You could see all the way to the sea from its upper courtyard.”
Kai furrowed her brow. Her words struck a chord somehow, as if a memory had been plucked, but only the ringing afterglow lingered in her mind. Was it the place she had seen in her fever dream?
“We linked together. Sun and moonburners, and their seishen. Through the seishen, we were able to draw the raw power of the creator. My husband and I did the burning together, but it was intuitive… We pulled the power of the creator and wove it back into the barrier between the worlds, knitting together the hole the tengu had created. As it closed, the rest of our burners pushed the tengu back into the spirit world. We drained so much power from the earth that it scorched the land, forming what you call the Tottori. Thousands died and our city fell into the desert. Most of the burners lost their lives.”
Kai grew paler and paler as Hamaio told her tale. The only way to defeat the tengu was to destroy Kyuden and everyone she had ever known? Was she willing to pay that price?
“I am sorry I do not have better news. If there was an easier way, I would gladly share it.”
“It’s all right,” Kai said slowly.
“Perhaps because the creator has touched you, you will be able to seal the barrier without such a loss of life.”
“Perhaps,” Kai said, rubbing the mark on her chest. If I knew how to use this power, she thought. “What about the gods? The seishen elder showed us the box, the map. Surely the gods can help?”
The spirit realm reeled slightly around Kai and she stumbled, grabbing a nearby chair for support.
“Someone is trying to wake you,” Hamaio said. “You should go.”
The room reeled again. “What about the gods?” Kai said.
“Forget the box. It should not be used. That’s why I sent it to the elder. I knew it would keep it safe and free them only when the tengu threat was neutralized.”
Kai felt a stab of guilt, which was quickly overcome by a wave of nausea. She was waking. She reached out a hand to Hamaio, and then the woman was gone.
Kai awoke to find Chiya in her chamber, shaking her.
“What is it?” Kai asked, unable to keep the grumpiness from her voice.
“You’ve got to get up. There’s a mob at the gates.”
“A mob?” Kai asked, her sleepy mind not comprehending.
“An angry mob. They seem to want…your head.”
“An angry mob?” Kai squealed. She cleared her throat and took a deep breath to calm her frayed nerves. I can do this. Whatever comes my way, I will handle it. “Let me put some clothes on.”
Chiya led them to the guard-tower on the western wall. Nanase stood examining the scene, a grim expression on her face and her seishen, Iska, on her shoulder.
“What do we have here?” Kai asked, stepping forward and looking down. Thankfully, someone had had the wherewithal to close and bar the gate before the mob arrived. The citadel’s walls were high and strong—no match for the axes and clubs she saw in the grubby hands below. But having a mob at her gate meant that her moonburners and guards would be stuck here, guarding the citadel, rather than out in the city helping people. This couldn’t stand.
“It’s more of what we’ve been hearing for months,” Chiya said, her ponytail flapping in the breeze. “They think the natural disasters are Tsuki’s wrath for our alliance and peace with the sunburners. It seems they have grown tired of complaining.”
“It’s madness!” Kai said. “And now we know the truth, but I cannot tell it, for fear our enemies will learn our plans. We need to stall. I need a few more weeks to free the real gods.”
“You should address them,” Nanase said. “We can’t have this kind of discord at our gates and not say something.”
“What would you have me say?” Kai asked. “It’s all a trick by tengu masquerading as gods? Only the reappearance of the real gods will convince these fools of the truth.”
“I don’t know,” Nanase said. “But underneath their anger, these people are scared. We have to try to reason with them before it turns to violence.”
Kai sighed. Nanase was right. She had to try diplomacy before she sent her moonburners to disperse and probably kill her own people.
“Very well. I will try to reason with them.” She looked at the roiling mob below. The people were chanting something about Kai’s head. They didn’t seem particularly amenable to reason. “Will you announce me, Nanase?”
Nanase stepped to the edge of the wall and sent up a shot of moonlight into the sky. “Fall silent to hear the words of the queen of Miina, Kailani Shigetsu.”
The crowd quieted but for the shuffling of bodies and weapons. Sporadic curses and slurs burst forth from those bold or foolish enough to draw attention, words that drew an angry flush to Kai’s face and twisted her insides.
Kai stepped forward and took a deep breath. “I know you fear for your families, your livelihoods. In this time of troubles, any sane man would fear. I understand that fear curdles into anger, and anger into hate. It is natural that your hate would fall upon the sunburners, who have been our enemy for so long.”
“But your hate is misplaced. We are at war, yes. But not with the sunburners. Our great nation has had war declared upon it by a force that until now went unseen and unknown. Demons.”
The crowd stirred with expressions of disbelief and outrage.
“I understand you may find it hard to believe. But if you believe in the goodness of the gods, is it so hard to believe that evil might oppose them? This evil feeds on our fears, our angers, our suffering. And it is hungry.”
“We have a plan to defeat them and to right the world. But we cannot be distracted by talk of war or by mobs at our front doors. Do not
play into their hands! Go home, care for your families, your neighbors. Give us the chance to fight this battle and win.”
“Lies!” someone shouted.
“Sunburner whore!” another voice said.
Kai ground her teeth, looking back at Nanase and Chiya. Her anger flared. She had enough problems without these men trying to foil her plans. Her attention was needed elsewhere.
“It was a good speech,” Nanase said, stepping forward behind her. “They’re too far gone. The mob knows no reason.”
“What would you have me do?”
“You have two choices. Let them be, or fire upon them.”
The crowd rumbled, angry voices growing louder now. Someone threw a rock, which bounced harmlessly off the wall ten feet below where Kai stood.
Kai’s anger boiled as she looked at her subjects, people she had bled for, that she would gladly die for. Angry at the injustice of it. Angry at the drought, the hunger, the spotted sickness. The shriveled husk that had once been the plentiful land of Miina. Her anger raged within her at what the tengu had reduced them to in so few months.
The mob was chanting now, savage words calling for Kai’s head, her death. But Kai didn’t hear it amongst the inferno of rage within her. Somewhere that felt very far away, she knew Nanase and Chiya spoke to her in urgent tones, that Quitsu pressed against her foot to comfort her and bring her back to herself. She didn’t care. What she felt was anger and sorrow at her own impotence. The need to do something that would make a difference.
A violent wind rose and whipped around Kai, tossing her silver hair about her face. The handprint on Kai’s chest flared to life, glowing white through the fabric of her dress.
The air crackled with energy as clouds began to gather, dark and thick, filling a sky that had hung limp and dry for months.
The tenor of the mob changed from anger to fear. Venomous shouts dissolved into nervous murmurs.
Thunder rumbled across the citadel as more black clouds materialized. Kai wasn’t sure what she was doing, not exactly. It was instinctive. The creator’s power sang to her, called out to her. It wasn’t like burning, where she pulled moonlight, or even this strange light of life, into her qi. It was more as if she spoke to the clouds themselves, to the lightning, to the raindrops in the sky.
Kai’s voice rang out over the crowd, sounding foreign in her ears. “We are at war. But not for superiority of our nation. For our survival. We fight on the side of light! Against an enemy that would plunge our world into darkness. Our creator has not abandoned us. But he will not abide petty bickering! Return to your homes and ready yourself for the battle to come!”
Lightning forked across the sky, punctuating the final words of Kai’s strange speech. As the afterglow of the lightning stung her retinas, the heavens opened. Rain poured from the dark clouds in sheets, the monsoon drenching the mob, snuffing their torches with a sizzle.
Shouts of awe and rejoicing sounded from below as men upturned their faces and opened their mouths to let the cool rainwater wash over them. The first rain in months.
Kai stumbled back, her rage doused by the water. She was suddenly chilled and shivering. Nanase and Chiya caught her, leading her towards the stairs, their eyes wide with wonder.
CHAPTER 28
Kai walked down the stairs of the tower into the courtyard below, careful not to slip on the slick stone steps. She was suddenly weary to her very bones. Though she had just awoken, she needed rest.
Hiro and Emi were waiting in the muddy courtyard, their faces impassive. Daarco slouched behind them, refusing to make eye contact. Water dripped down his crooked nose.
“It looks like you all have a story to tell,” Kai remarked, blinking the water from her eyes.
“Yes, though not such a story as you,” Hiro said, taking her hands in his own. His shook slightly, but not from the cold. She could see the apology written across his face. Her heart softened. So he had gone to retrieve Daarco. To bring him back.
“Let’s get you inside,” Hiro said. “Then we need to plead Daarco’s case to you. Emi and I believe he is innocent.”
“Innocent men don’t run,” Kai said.
“I knew this was pointless,” Daarco said, turning to go, his boots squelching in the mud.
“No.” Emi pointed at him. “You stay.”
And surprisingly enough, he did, turning back around with a glower.
“I know he slipped his guards,” Emi said, “but he returned. If he was guilty, would he have come back?”
“I’m not sure if it speaks to his innocence or his stupidity,” Kai grumbled. “But tell me. Do you vouch for him? Are you certain he did not free Geisa?”
“Yes,” Hiro and Emi said.
“Let’s see if you’re right.” Kai stepped before Daarco. She examined him, remembering the twisted hatred in his face the night of their first meeting when he had bound her hands and savagely kicked her. Was this really the best they could do for allies?
“Did you free Geisa?” she asked, weariness filling her voice.
“No,” he said.
Her necklace lay cool on her slick chest. Truth.
“Do you still hate all moonburners?” she asked.
He was silent for a moment. His eyes flicked to Emi, an almost imperceptible movement.
“Not all,” he said. Truth.
“Will you try to kill me again?”
“No,” he said. Truth.
“Why did you return?” she asked.
His cheeks colored. “I’m just here to kill tengu.” His eyes flicked to Emi again.
Her necklace warmed on her chest, but not with the full burn of a lie. A half-truth then. Well. His secret was safe with her. For the time being.
“If you’re here to kill tengu,” Kai said, “you’ve come to the right place.”
A hot bath and a plate of food awaited Kai when she returned to her room. The sight of it nearly made her weep for joy. She snagged a hot fluffy bun stuffed with spiced chicken and took a bite, savoring the flavors that played across her tongue.
Next to the tray of food lay a soft emerald cloth bearing a ring—three interlocking circles of sparkling metal. Kai had dispatched a servant on her way up to the citadel walls with Chiya, and it looked like the woman had been able to find it amongst the jumble of the treasury. Kai slipped it on, praying that the ring truly had the power to keep her in the mortal world while she slept. She didn’t need another run-in with the spirit world or its tengu inhabitants. What she needed was a good night’s sleep.
Kai’s servants had drawn the thick curtains and her moon orbs had been dimmed, leaving her room cast in maudlin shadows. She undressed and stepped into the steaming bath water lightly scented with orange blossoms. The temperature was perfect. As soon as she settled on the tub’s porcelain bottom, the heat of the water began to soothe her weary body and soul. The chill of the rain leeched out of her, replaced with pleasant warmth.
Kai tried to slow her racing mind, pulling back the many threads of herself into a coherent whole. She felt as if she was stretched thin, a piece leather over a tanner’s tool. Another inch might break her. The questions swirled in her mind, whipped about by the wind of her worries. What was she becoming? She couldn’t moonburn anymore—but she could access the creator’s light instead. But that didn’t explain how she’d done what she had done with the rain and the clouds. And in the Misty Forest, when the trees attacked. She touched the handprint on her chest, her nerves jangling. She remembered only glimpses of what she had seen when she lay dying from spotted fever. She needed to understand how to use these powers if she was going to defeat the tengu or seal the barrier between the worlds.
She closed her eyes and tried to remember, to draw the memories into her mind’s eye. A tan castle. A view of the sea. Talk of guardians. Of the tengu. And falling. Anything beyond those memories seemed too far out of reach.
She splashed the surface of the water in frustration, huffing.
“What did the bath do to you?�
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She turned towards the door and found Hiro standing there, his deep green eyes shining in the low light. His tone was friendly, but he stood stiffly. Warily.
“Spying on me in my bath?” she asked.
“Just jealous. I need one myself,” he said, his boots squelching on the floor. He was still soaked through from the monsoon that had doused them at the citadel wall.
“Hand me that towel,” she said. “I’ll pour another bath for you. You’re going to catch a cold in those wet clothes.”
He walked to the chair that sat against the wall of the bathing chamber and picked up the fluffy white towel. “This towel?” he said, holding it just out of reach, a smile cracking across his face.
“Give it to me, you scoundrel,” Kai said, grabbing at it, patently aware that the water of the bath left little to the imagination.
Hiro relented and gave it to her, turning his back as she stepped out of the bath.
Kai toweled herself dry and retrieved a colorful silken robe from the corner of her dressing screen. When she emerged, Hiro had removed his boots and was stripping off his sodden shirt.
She swallowed thickly, thoughts of the creator and tengu slipping from her mind like water down a drain. The firm muscles of Hiro’s back were slick from the rain, and his wet pants hung low across his hips and taut stomach as he turned.
Their eyes locked and she forgot to breathe, molten energy crackling between them. “Hiro,” she said huskily, hardly recognizing her own voice. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too.” In two steps he crossed the distance between them, enveloping her in his arms.
She shivered as he kissed her, simultaneously flushed with the heat of her own body and chilled by the rain on his skin.
He tangled his fingers in her wet hair and her head arched back, her mouth eager for more of him, her body pressing to his with a will of its own.
Her hands traced the hard planes of his arms, the curve at the small of his back, and she found them slipping around to the front, fumbling with the clasp of his belt.
“Wait,” he gasped, pulling away from her kiss, shuddering under her touch.