by Evelyn Skye
He frowned. “What if there’s nothing in Tanoshi?”
Broomstick made a face. He may have been skinny as a child, but he’d more than made up for it over the years. He was one of the biggest Level 12s now, and he looked menacing with his shaved head and eyebrows half-singed from his experiments blowing things up. But the effect was countered by his constant smile and the fuzzy blond hair all over his arms. He was the kingdom’s most lethal teddy bear. “Why would it be bad if there’s nothing in Tanoshi?” he asked. “Are you afraid that the kingdom is perfectly safe?”
“No,” Daemon said. “I’m afraid that there’s nothing there, and we’ll come back with nothing to report, and our first mission will look like an enormous zero.”
“Don’t worry,” Sora said. “No matter what, we’ll make it an adventure. Anyway, we live and fight and die together, right?” she said.
Daemon grinned. “We do.” He clapped his arm around her and laughed. “But perhaps we should try not to die quite yet.”
Chapter Three
The next afternoon, Daemon and Sora made their way to Tanoshi. It was on the way to Sora’s parents’ home on Samara Mountain, where they would spend the Autumn Festival. They figured they might as well get their mission out of the way first, so they could relax during the rest of the break.
Before the discovery of tiger pearls made Kichona prosperous, the island kingdom had been unremarkable, subsisting mostly on fishing and agriculture. Many of the villages, like Tanoshi, still reflected this history, made up of small, well-kept wooden buildings with curved ceramic tiles on the roofs. Every few blocks, there was another impromptu shrine for this minor god or another. And thousands of acres of vineyards and apple orchards around Tanoshi perfumed the air with sweetness, especially now during grape harvest season.
They left their horses—and their taiga uniforms—at a coaching inn. In order to blend in to assess the state of the town, they wore ordinary layman’s clothes, which was always a bit jarring. While taigas wore stark black, civilians in Kichona embraced color, and lots of it—the more vivacious, the better. Sora wore a silk blouse modeled after a violet—lighter purple at the collar and sleeves, deep plum closer to her stomach, and a vivid starburst of yellow in the center—and her trousers were green, like the stem of the flower. Daemon had on a turquoise tunic embroidered at the hem with a pink-and-orange coral reef. He drew the line, though, at garish pants, opting instead for a pair of narrow gray trousers. There was only so much he could stomach to blend in.
Nevertheless, it was good enough, for the townspeople walked past them without a second glance. Everywhere Daemon and Sora went, people were smiling, pausing to chat with each other under strings of orange Autumn Festival lanterns or in front of crates of muscat grapes. They bought each other cold bottles of freshly pressed pear juice—traditional in this region of Kichona in the fall—and drank them together on the sidewalk.
“This place is so peaceful,” Daemon said, but it was more of a complaint than a compliment.
“Isn’t that a good thing?” Sora asked. “This kind of life is what the Ora emperors and empresses have always wanted for Kichona.”
Daemon shrugged. She was right, of course. There were pirates roaming the ocean surrounding the kingdom, but the Imperial Navy worked diligently to keep them away from shore so the regular citizens of Kichona didn’t suffer. The Imperial Army kept posts throughout the island to ensure that traders from the mainland were really traders and not anything more nefarious. And there were also local police forces of taigas to keep the peace.
Even so, Daemon was jittery. “I just want something to do today, something to show for our work. If we’d been sent to a bigger ocean-side town, we could have investigated the harbors for suspicious ships. Maybe we would have found some pirates or smugglers or, I don’t know, a spy from another kingdom. But here in farm country . . . what are we even looking for?”
“Don’t worry,” Sora said. “As long as we’re thorough, we’ll get good marks.”
He knew it was hard for her to understand his need to prove himself. Sora was naturally good at magic. She had the luxury of not caring, because everyone knew that if she ever became ambitious, she’d blow them all out of the water. Daemon, however, constantly questioned whether Luna had made a mistake in marking him as a taiga.
But then Sora smiled at him, and he was momentarily dazed. She was tall and lean, all grace and muscle, and when the sun hit her just right—like it was doing now—he could see her curves silhouetted through the thin silk of her blouse. She had a spattering of freckles across her cheekbones, and her nose ended in a button that was an adorable contrast to her fierceness. He fought the urge to run his fingers through her hair, which fell like a painter’s brush along the edge of her jaw.
He touched his own hair. His blue roots were due to be colored soon. Technically, he didn’t have to dye it; it was dark enough in its natural state to comply with Society Code. But a genetic quirk gave him blue hair, and the strangeness meant he’d been teased mercilessly during their early years at the Society. As soon as he turned seven and became a taiga apprentice, he’d dyed his hair black and had kept it that way ever since. Daemon winced at the memory.
But Sora was still smiling, and his embarrassment faded away. Her mere presence made everything better.
“Should we check the north side of town first and make our way south?” she asked. They knew Tanoshi fairly well. Other than Shima, Tanoshi was where apprentices liked to go when they had weekend leave from the Citadel.
“You want to do the south side last because you’re hoping to end up at a restaurant there, huh?” Daemon smirked. “Always letting your stomach lead.”
“You know me so well.”
His heart skipped happily.
They started down the first street. This section of Tanoshi was all business, made up mostly of stern wooden buildings bereft of decoration, lined up on a straight grid of streets numbered one through five from north to south, and named by trade from east to west. There was Accounting Street, Bookbinder Way, Architect Road, and many others. It was quiet here, and Daemon and Sora finished sweeping through the streets quickly.
Next was the residential district. The buildings here had considerably more character than the ones in the business grid. Although the homes themselves were simple in architecture—compact wood structures with brown tile roofs—each door was painted brightly to express the family’s personality. One was rainbow striped. Another featured a fisherman catching an enormous fish, bigger than the sun. Another depicted the life cycle of a phoenix, from egg to bird to flames and ashes, in a never-ending circle.
In front of all this, a small group of children played in the middle of the dirt road, chasing after a ball and swatting at it with sticks.
“I wonder what it would be like to live in a place like this?” Daemon said.
“You’d go stir-crazy,” Sora said. “It’s lovely, but there wouldn’t be enough to occupy you.”
“Good point.” He never seemed to have enough outlets for his energy. It was part of the reason he was so good at combat; he spent extra hours in the sparring yard to attempt to wear himself out each day. It worked. Sort of.
Farther down the road, a woman poked her head out of a doorway decorated with a pink elephant. “Keni, time for homework!” she yelled at one of the boys playing in the road. “Your father will be home soon for dinner.”
Daemon quickly turned away and hurried onto the next block. If he stayed any longer, he’d start thinking again about life in a village like Tanoshi, with parents who cared about him. And then he’d wonder about knowing who his parents were at all.
As the mother’s voice receded behind Daemon, he slowed his steps. Sora caught up but didn’t say anything. She would know through their gemina bond how he was feeling. For years, he’d smothered his questions about who he was and where he’d come from.
But frankly, he was tired of it.
“It’s our last year before we
graduate,” Daemon said. “After this, we won’t have as much time on our own because we won’t have school holidays. So I was thinking . . .”
Sora stopped in the middle of the road. “Yeah?”
He shook his head. “Never mind. It’s stupid.”
“Nothing you think is stupid, Daemon. What is it?”
He scrubbed his hand through his hair. That irritatingly black-but-actually-blue hair. “I was thinking that maybe I’d try this year to figure out who my parents are. Or were. I want to know where I came from, who I am.”
Sora smiled. “I think that’s a great idea.”
He brightened. “Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“Okay then.” The cloud over him dissipated, and knowing that Sora supported him allowed him to put the idea aside for now. It took only another minute for him to refocus on their mission. “Let’s wrap up the residential area and go downtown.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Sora said.
His steps lightened as they entered the noisier part of Tanoshi, full of shops and restaurants. There were artisan pottery stores, dry-goods shops carrying everything from rice to fishing rods, and stores for every other service the townspeople might need.
Daemon and Sora swept through the streets a little more slowly, since there was more to observe. But all was also in order here.
“Sorry we didn’t find any illegal warehouses full of opium,” Sora said.
“Guess we couldn’t be that lucky on our first mission.”
“Or maybe we can. A different kind of lucky.” She smiled broadly as she stopped in front of an enormous red lantern. It was the entrance to an iz, a tavern that specialized in skewers of all variety of meat, from chicken thighs to chicken livers to more acquired tastes, like gecko marinated in squid ink. Panels of blue cloth hung in the doorway, and raucous conversation wafted out of the iz along with the charcoal smoke of its tireless grills.
Sora’s stomach growled loud enough to be heard even over the street noise.
“Hungry?” Daemon asked.
“What else is new?”
They pushed through the cloth panels into the iz and found a seat at a table in the corner. A boy a few years younger than them appeared and asked for their order. He also appraised Daemon’s shirt and, after a second, nodded, a silent compliment.
Daemon really hadn’t needed garish pants to blend in.
Sora perused the menu. “We’ll have two orders each of bacon-wrapped shrimp, mushroom beef, and the ginger-honey chicken skewers, please.”
“And a carafe of cold sake and some tea,” Daemon said.
The serving boy had been gone hardly a minute when he returned with their drinks. Daemon poured. “Cheers to us finishing our first mission.”
She clinked her cup with his.
Soon, their meal arrived. The skewers were perfectly charred, each with a different sauce drizzled over the meat. Sora picked one and put it to her lips. Daemon watched, mesmerized by her mouth. Heat flushed through him.
Damn it! He jerked up his mental ramparts to block their bond, hoping Sora hadn’t felt his reaction through their connection. It’d been harder and harder recently to see her simply as his gemina. Everything he’d taken for granted about her in the past had started to captivate him—her sharp intelligence, her ferocious chokehold, even the way her pinkie stuck out a little when she held a skewer in her hand.
He flinched, though, at what those feelings meant. It would be disastrous if a romantic gemina relationship failed, because you’d still be bound to that taiga for life—sharing emotions, working with each other, together despite the desperate or angry desire to be apart. That’s why the Society forbade it.
Daemon poured himself another cup of sake and swallowed it in a single gulp to wash away the heat of his feelings for Sora.
At the bar behind her, shouts broke out. A glass shattered. Six men began to advance on each other, fists clenched.
Thank the gods, Daemon thought. A distraction.
He and Sora both stood.
“May I?” Daemon asked.
She flourished her arm in front of her. “Please, be my guest.”
He grinned, hopped over his chair, and pushed his way into the fight. He bounced on his toes. This was part of what had been missing today. Adrenaline. The feeling that he could do something.
“Gentlemen,” Daemon said, “would you kindly take it outside? You’re ruining the atmosphere in here.”
Two of the men who’d been in each other’s faces spun around and sneered at him. “If you knew what was good for you, you’d stay out of this, boy,” the bearded one said.
“Actually,” Daemon said, “if you knew what was good for you, you’d leave like I asked.”
“Smart mouth,” the other man said, “but not such a smart brain.” He wound up and took a swing.
Daemon dodged easily, grabbed the man’s arm, and hurled him through the air. The man sailed toward the exit, landing with an ungraceful flail as he hit the ground under the blue curtains at the door of the iz.
“Now, you can leave quietly,” Daemon said to the five others, “or I can throw you out like that fellow.”
The men’s faces turned bright red, and despite fighting each other only a minute ago, they now united against Daemon. They all pulled out knives.
“Right,” Daemon said. He could pull out a weapon too—gods knew he had enough little daggers, darts, and throwing stars hidden on his body—but he didn’t want to hurt them much. They were just drunkards getting a bit out of hand. Instead, Daemon cracked his knuckles and smirked while they approached. The rest of the iz had gone silent in tense anticipation.
The first man charged at him with a knife raised above his head. Amateur, Daemon thought as he sidestepped while simultaneously smashing the side of his hand like an ax into the man’s forearm.
The man immediately dropped the knife and fell to the ground cradling his arm. It wasn’t broken, but it would feel that way to him for a little while.
The next man advanced on Daemon with quick, continuous slashes.
Daemon stepped backward, straight into a bunch of huddled diners, too frightened to be caught up in the fight but too paralyzed to flee. Daemon had to adjust his path, arcing away from the table and back toward the bar.
Of course, that’s where the other three men were waiting. Their knives were out and pointed at Daemon as he backed toward them, like bayonets ready to impale him.
Daemon continued to edge closer and closer.
“He really is an idiot, isn’t he?” one of the men said.
At that moment, Daemon slid himself backward, taking out the man directly behind him. Daemon swept his leg right and then left, knocking out the feet of the other two. They landed with profanity-laden crashes at the base of the bar.
Daemon spun to meet the lone man standing, who was advancing faster now. The slashing of his knife grew quicker but also sloppier, driven by rage and likely several ounces of fear.
So predictable, Daemon thought.
He lunged forward and slammed a fist to the man’s throat while simultaneously grabbing and twisting the knife arm. He locked the arm, kneed the man in the ribs, and stripped him of his knife.
Only now did Daemon unsheathe a short sword from the scabbard strapped to his calf, hidden beneath his trouser leg. He brandished it at the five men on the ground.
“I’ll give you one last chance to get out of here with your limbs and innards intact,” Daemon said.
They glared at him, pride severely wounded. But all five of them—excluding the one already thrown to the exit—hustled out of the tavern without any further threat.
The iz erupted into hoots and applause.
Daemon nodded his head in a small gesture of acknowledgment and went back to his table, where Sora waited.
She was smiling. “You really are art in motion when you fight.”
He flushed from the tips of his ears down to his neck.
Luckily, he was sav
ed by the bartender, who set another carafe of sake on the table. “You two are taiga apprentices, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Daemon said, beaming proudly. “You could tell?”
The bartender chuckled. “Normal people don’t fight like that, and they aren’t as honorable. Thank you for keeping the peace.”
“It was my pleasure,” Daemon said, his cheeks beginning to hurt from smiling so hard. “And thank you for the sake.”
Chapter Four
Finished with their mission and officially on Autumn Festival break, Sora and Daemon rode all the next day to Samara Mountain, and then up dusty switchbacks, passing only a handful of people with their mules, and even fewer houses. The mountain sliced into the cerulean sky like jagged shards of slate, its crooked pines tucked into crevices and clinging to the steep rock. It was always with mixed emotion that Sora returned here. She loved her parents, but she’d spent her whole life with the Society of Taigas, and after eighteen years, the Citadel felt more like home than this place where she’d been born.
Across Kichona, the other taiga apprentices were also home to celebrate the Autumn Festival. They would light lanterns with their families and hang them over their doorways. There would be feasts to pay homage to the major gods—steamed whole fish to honor Nauti, god of the sea; bowls overflowing with noodles for Silva, goddess of wealth; platters of sautéed morning glory stalks for Sola, goddess of the sun; and a variety of stewed vegetables on beds of rice for Emmer, god of the harvest.
Daemon had come home with her because he didn’t have family to return to. Unlike the other apprentices, he hadn’t been brought to the Citadel by adoring parents and dedicated to service to the kingdom. Rather, until age five, Daemon had lived in Takish Gorge, a remote, uninhabited part of Kichona, with a family of wolves, eating, hunting, and playing in the forest with his lupine brothers and sisters. The trapper who found Daemon would have left him in the canyon—ferocious as he was, with his snapping teeth and his nails grown out long and sharpened like claws—if not for Luna’s silver triplicate whorls on the small of his back, a mark that glittered even when the sun was gone.