by Claire Luana
The group would set off at night to avoid the still paralyzing heat of the lingering summer. They had arranged to meet in the rookery just before sunset.
Hiro walked the familiar path from his room to the rookery, Ryu at his side. The whitewashed stone of the citadel with its black tile roofs had once seemed stark and clinical compared to the warm red sandstone and copper tiles of the Sun Palace, but it had grown comfortable.
Hiro arrived a few minutes early and rifled through the provisions laid out. The kitchen staff had packed each of them satchels full of hard bread and cheese, dried meat and fruit. They would each bear two waterskins. Hiro packed his supplies onto the backs of one of the golden eagles, strapping it tightly. He tested each of the straps of Ryu’s harness, giving a quiet grunt of satisfaction when he found it sturdy. He was ready.
“I hear congratulations are in order.”
Hiro turned to find Hanae standing behind him, a smile on her face.
“She said yes,” Hiro said with a rueful shrug. “I’ll be honest; I’m relieved the asking is done.”
“It’s not love if you don’t leap off the cliff at least once,” she said. “And you know it’s true love if there is someone to catch you.”
Hiro chuckled, imagining falling into Kai’s arms. “I’ll try not to squish her,” he said.
“You’re good for each other, that’s plain to see. I know you’ll make her happy,” Hanae said. “But marriage isn’t for the faint of heart. You’ve had it easy so far. “
Hiro furrowed his brow. “Easy? You think the last year has been easy?”
“Perhaps not externally, but your and Kai’s interests have been aligned. You haven’t faced any true tests of your relationship.”
“What do you mean?”
“Where do you plan to live after you get married?”
Hiro frowned. He had always assumed that once they married, he would be able to convince Kai to move the seat of their rule to Kistana. But if he really thought about it, he wasn’t so sure she would agree. She wouldn’t want to leave Kyuden. And after his father died and Hiro became king, he wouldn’t want to live away from Kistana. How would they rule two countries?
“I’m not sure,” he said slowly. “Wherever Kai is feels like home to me. But once I become king, I will have other duties. I suppose we’ll have to work out some sort of traveling arrangement.”
Hanae nodded. “And what will you do if the interests of Kita and Miina diverge?”
“Then Kai and I will find away to align them again. Together,” he said, pushing down his annoyance. It was too early in the evening for a grilling from his future mother-in-law.
Hanae had always been friendly but distant. He couldn’t help but worry that she held his father’s actions against him. If it weren’t for Ozora, her husband, Raiden, would still be alive, and Kai would never have had to suffer exile in the Tottori Desert.
As if she sensed his annoyance, she relented, crossing to stand by his golden eagle. She stroked its feathered flank.
“I look forward to you becoming a part of our family, and I know you love her. I saw how you fought for Kai when we were losing her to the spotted fever,” Hanae said. “Just promise me one thing.”
“What?” Hiro said warily.
“Don’t force her to choose.”
“Choose? I’m not sure I follow,” Hiro said.
“Kai has another great love…every good queen must.”
“Miina,” he said, realization dawning on him.
“Kai is a good queen and this country needs her. There might come a time where she has to choose…between her duty…and you. If that day comes, don’t ask her to choose.”
“But it would be her choice.”
“Young love is powerful, maybe the most powerful thing in the world,” Hanae said. “But it lacks a rational side.” As she spoke, her gray eyes were sad, deep pools reflecting the ghosts of love lost.
“Ah,” he said, finally understanding. “You chose love. And you regret that choice.”
“Yes. And no,” Hanae said, her tone light. ”I’m glad to see you’re not just a pretty face.”
Hiro considered her request. If it came down to Kita or Kai, what choice would he make? If he was only giving up being a prince, being a king one day, he knew he would choose Kai. But what if that choice led to tragedy, to hardship for his people? Was his happiness worth the suffering of hundreds? Thousands?
“I see the wisdom in your request,” Hiro admitted. “But I cannot agree to it. If I’ve learned anything about Kai, it’s that she chooses her own path. She would flay me for just having this conversation with you.”
Hanae was silent.
“But,” he continued, “I will make you this promise. If someday she must choose Miina, I will not stand in her way.”
Hanae smiled, her smooth face lighting up. “I suppose that’s the best I can hope for.”
“What are we hoping for?” Kai chose that moment to walk through the rookery door, her slender figure sporting soft gray trousers and a sky-blue shirt. For the first time in weeks, she looked well-rested, and her cheeks were flushed with color.
“Safe travels for you, my daughter,” Hanae said, kissing her on the cheek. “Be careful. Take care of each other.”
“We will. Hopefully we’ll come back with new wisdom about how to defeat these enemies.”
“I will pray for that,” Hanae said before nodding to Hiro and slipping out the door.
“You seem chipper,” Hiro said, snaking an arm around Kai’s waist and pulling her close.
“I am,” she admitted.
“Excited to get away from the citadel?” he asked.
“Is it that obvious?”
“No,” he said.
“You’re lying,” she laughed, tapping the black pendant that hung on a silver chain about her neck. It had the magical ability to detect lies, and it grew warm to the touch in the presence of untruth. Hiro wouldn’t have believed such a thing existed if Kai had not let him test it himself.
“You caught me once again,” Hiro admitted, nuzzling the curve of her neck with his nose. Her faint smell of pear and lemongrass stirred his senses.
“All right, lovebirds, that’s enough of that!” Colum cried as he barged into the rookery, a pile of weapons slung over his shoulder. “I didn’t sign up to babysit a doe-eyed couple here. We’re on business, eh? Saving the world business.”
Kai stepped away from Hiro, suitably chastised.
Hiro glowered. It was going to be a long journey with this strange man guiding their way.
The man wrinkled his nose at the smell. Rotting trash, raw sewage, unwashed bodies—all mingled together in a potpourri of mankind’s suffering. They were truly a disgusting species.
He stepped over piles of fallen brick and timber, discarded furniture, bodies of unfortunate souls who had been at the wrong place at the wrong time during the earthquake. He had to give it to the tengu. The devastation was impressive. A real work of art. Far more than was necessary to shake a few stones loose and “reveal” the scroll planted in the library. As much as his master griped and complained about the current state of affairs, the man could tell the demon was enjoying itself.
Two weary citizens of Kyuden approached and he instinctively pulled up the hood of his cloak, ensuring its deep cowl cast a shadow over his face. It was an unnecessary precaution. The haunted eyes of the gaunt couple never even looked up from the ground, never questioned why a passerby would be wearing a dark cloak in the sweltering heat of the day. These people were broken. Their era had come to an end.
The man idly pulled raging torrents of sunlight into his qi as he walked. He liked to hold sunlight, to feel its liquid fire swirl through his spirit like a connoisseur might taste a fine wine. He would miss sunlight the most when this was all said and done.
He pondered the recent turn of events, his nimble mind whirring and spinning, considering and discarding myriad plans and possibilities. The queen’s decision to visit the
seishen elder was an unknown variable. Would the elder know the truth behind Tsuki and Taiyo’s long sleep, and caution them against reawakening the gods? But if it did, it might also know where Tsuki was located, a piece of information the man desperately needed. It was a risk he must take.
He idly tugged at a hangnail, letting go of the sweet sunlight. This visit to the elder was too important a piece of the puzzle to be out of his control. The man let out a frustrated hiss, startling a grimy street boy out of his path. At the lad’s presence, an idea came to the man like a gust of a cool wind. He needed a distraction. A treat.
He pulled back his hood, rearranging his features into a friendly expression. “Hello there! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
The boy froze, peering at him through a curtain of stringy black hair. A mangy brindle dog bounded out of a nearby alley, scooting to an alert stop in front of the boy. The dog came up to the boy’s waist, and though its ribs protruded painfully, it still managed to look threatening. It was a miracle it hadn’t been captured and eaten by Kyuden’s citizens. The man had heard such things were happening.
The man raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’m sorry if I scared you or your friend. I’ve come from the citadel. I’ve been sent to provide relief for the earthquake victims.”
The boy continued to regard him with suspicion. The dog growled. The man burned a tendril of sunlight, sending it into the pleasure center of the dog’s brain. He had spent years studying human and animal anatomy, learning exactly where to put heat and pressure to invoke different reactions. Pleasure. Pain. Terror.
The dog’s tongue lolled in its mouth and its eyes glazed. The man stepped forward, his hand stretched towards the creature’s snout.
“Careful,” the boy said. “He don’t like people much.”
The dog, floating in a fog of bliss, let the man pet its wiry head.
“Wow,” the boy said. “He don’t let most folks get near ‘im.”
The man smiled warmly. “I have a way with animals. I am staying in a building near here. I could get you some food, some clean water to wash up in. Would you like that?”
The boy eyed the man, scrunching up his dirty face in contemplation. He looked at his dog, who continued to wag its tail in lazy arcs.
“I am hungry.”
“Let’s fix that,” the man said.
The man led the boy through the maze of rubble towards the empty warehouse building that served as his base of operations outside the citadel.
“What kinda food ya got?” the boy asked.
“Some apples, some rice, pickled fish. Nothing fancy.”
But from the widening of the boy’s eyes, the man knew this sounded very fancy indeed. “In here,” he said, pushing aside a door hanging on one iron hinge.
The inside of the warehouse was dark; it took a moment for the man’s eyes to adjust to the dim light.
The boy looked around at the empty interior. He turned back to the man. “Where’s—”
The boy fell silent when he saw the dagger in the man’s hand, its ebony hilt inlaid with a pastoral scene of ivory. In a flash, the man slit the boy’s throat, catching his body as it slumped, lowering it to the floor.
The boy’s eyes held a look of betrayal as his lifeblood pumped out of his arteries, mingling hot and metallic with the dust of the warehouse floor.
“You should be thanking me,” the man said. “It’s only going to get worse.”
The dog had shaken off its pleasure-induced fog and snarled at him, baring its sharp white canines. Its hackles stood along the ridge of its skinny back.
“I have plans for you as well, my friend.” The man smiled gleefully, his spirits buoyed by the afternoon’s events. He dipped his fingers in the boy’s blood and began chanting, pulling on the dark twisted magic of the tengu. He directed it at the dog, wrapping it around the creature in cords of blackest evil.
The dog’s ferocious barks turned to whimpers as the magic sunk into its flesh, immobilizing it, beginning to twist it into something new.
The man took the blood on his fingers and smeared it on the dog’s forehead, drawing the symbol his master had taught him, completing the dog’s transformation from mortal beast to demon.
He stood with a satisfied smile, admiring his creation. The dog had quadrupled in size, its limbs growing into long distended arms with curving claws. Its skin blackened and cracked, its brindle coat hanging off it in patches. The head was truly monstrous, filled with yellowed fangs and bulbous dead eyes.
The man licked the rest of the boy’s blood off his fingers. Yes, this would do just fine. He may need the heirs to free Tsuki and Taiyo, but their companions were expendable. Might as well make their trip a bit more eventful.
He grinned.
The group flew silently in a loose formation. Colum flew in front on one of the golden eagles borrowed from the sunburners. Hiro and Daarco followed, and Kai and Emi brought up the rear, their koumori giving the eagles a wide berth. The night was warm and cloying, the unnatural heat a reminder of the importance of their mission.
“Are you excited to go home?” Kai asked Quitsu while leaning forward in the koumori saddle so her voice wouldn’t be carried away by the wind.
“Nervous,” he said. “But excited.” Quitsu, strapped into the harness before her, had learned to tolerate flying. Barely.
“Why nervous?”
“The seishen elder is the wisest creature I’ve ever encountered,” Quitsu called back. “But also the most enigmatic. After being alive for several millennia, it doesn’t have patience for trivial matters.”
“How could two tengu trying to destroy the burners be a trivial matter? It’s tied to the burners through the seishen. Without burners, there would be no seishen. It’d be…out of a job, right?”
“Maybe it’s ready for retirement,” Quitsu quipped. “I hope I’m wrong. It may want to help us. All I am saying is it’s old. And…”
“Unpredictable?” she said.
“Unpredictable,” he agreed. “Be ready to convince it that it has to help us.”
Kai swallowed. Convince the thousand-year-old ornery seishen to see things her way. No problem.
After several hours, the Misty Forest came into view below them, a deep swath of green frosted with soft white clouds.
Colum’s eagle banked to the left along the edge of the mist, losing altitude until it landed in a wide clearing with a flourish of wings. The rest followed, landing about the clearing. The koumori and eagles couldn’t navigate in the mist, so they would continue on foot.
The air was cooler here, almost crisp, and Kai drank it in deeply. The forest felt alive, buzzing with energy. Perhaps the false gods’ stranglehold on the world wasn’t as strong here.
Trees stretched above them like green sentinels, tall hemlock and cypress, broad-leafed oaks and maples. The scent of pine colored the air, mingling with the loamy smell of soil. Kai sat still for a moment listening to the sounds of birds, the swishing of insect wings—simply enjoying the presence of the forest around her.
“Kai and Emi, I’d fly your koumori into the neighboring clearing to the east of here. The eagles and koumori won’t want to stick around each other, so if we separate them, we’re more likely to find them where we left them when we get back,” Colum said.
Quitsu, eager to be unstrapped from the harness, let out an audible groan. But Colum’s suggestion made sense.
Emi raised an eyebrow to Kai, a silent question.
Kai nodded. “We’ll rendezvous here.”
Kai and Emi quickly found a suitable clearing within a few minutes’ walking distance of where the eagles had landed. Their koumori dropped onto the forest floor and Kai let Quitsu loose. He hopped to the ground and danced around like a pup, bucking and stretching wildly.
Kai and Emi laughed, unbuckling the harnesses and saddles from the koumori. The animals would have to roam free for a few days, and so it wasn’t fair to make them wear the harnesses.
&
nbsp; They stacked the equipment neatly under the swooping emerald boughs of a large tree, covering the pile of leather with dead branches and leaves. Hopefully, that would keep the harnesses out of the rain and free from the eyes of roving thieves. Not that Kai thought that this forest would have any of either. It hadn’t rained in months, and from what she knew of the Misty Forest, it had few inhabitants. The forest was a wild place that still belonged to the earth.
They shouldered their packs and strapped their weapons on. Kai had brought her jade-pommeled knife (a gift from Nanase) and a short sword. Emi had two wicked-looking knives peeking out of her boots and a portable rimankyu bow slung through her pack.
“Colum,” Emi said as they set off towards the others, ducking around branches and tree trunks. “You trust him?”
“For now,” Kai said. “I asked Master Vita about him before we left. Whether we could trust him. He seemed to think we could.”
“Based on what?”
“Colum used to work for the citadel. Master Vita said he didn’t like the man at first; apparently, he was just as offensive back then as he is now. Perhaps more so.”
“Hard to imagine,” Emi muttered.
“But Master Vita said he won him over. He was widely traveled and had a keen mind. He quickly worked his way up under Queen Isia’s reign. My grandmother.”
“All that proves is that he’s crafty and ambitious. Which doesn’t tell us he can be trusted on this mission. Or in general,” Emi pointed out.
“He said he wants to help us,” Kai said. “He wasn’t lying. My necklace would have told me. And Master Vita told me that before King Ozora started the Gleaming to test all female babies, Colum led covert missions into Kita to rescue girls with moonburning ability before they were found by the sunburners. He’s rough around the edges…but I think he means well.”