Twiceborn Endgame (The Proving Book 3)

by Finlayson, Marina

  “That’s it?” I asked.

  Toko turned pleading eyes to me. “Wait until morning, great lady. A few more steps will take us into the jorogumo’s domain. We would be fools to go any further.”

  The man’s fear was infectious. I had to remind myself of the risk of delay before I could take another step.

  “You can stay here if you like,” I said gently. “But we’re going on.”

  He accompanied us a little further down the path, then chose a boulder a safe distance from the water’s edge.

  “I will sit here and play, and hope that the jorogumo is soothed.”

  He set the instrument on his lap, and soon its atonal music floated across the still water. The night was calm, the only other sound the gentle splash and gurgle of the waterfall emptying into the lake. It was beautiful, but I wasn’t fooled. Toko didn’t seem the type to jump at shadows.

  Luce drew two of her many blades and strode forward with one in each hand, her gaze constantly travelling over the quiet landscape, searching for danger. I watched the waterfall: its rippling movement seemed designed to mislead the eye. At any minute I expected a giant spider to leap out of it.

  In fact, I almost wished she would. The waiting was the worst part. Luce and I slowed right down, trying to watch every direction at once. Whichever way I faced, I had the uncomfortable feeling that something terrible was sneaking up behind me. My nerves were wound so tight I cried out when the music cut off mid-note, followed by a thump as the shamisen hit the ground.

  I whirled, and saw Toko straining against a rope wrapped around his leg. The other end of it disappeared into the water. I ran to him, but Luce was faster. She hacked through it with a few blows of her knife, and Toko scrambled away, his face a mask of horror.

  Luce caught at the rope before it retracted and looped it around the boulder Toko had been sitting on. She had trouble pulling her hands away, and I realised it was sticky.

  That was no rope—that was spider’s web.

  Holy shit, the spider that it came from must have been enormous. I backed away from the water, dragging a shaking Toko with me. Just as Luce managed to free herself from the sticky stuff the boulder twitched, then it flew into the lake, jerked on the end of the web as if it weighed nothing.

  I stared, open-mouthed, at the ripples spreading across the dark water, making the dried reeds in the shallows shake and shiver, the only sign that the boulder had ever existed. Miyako would be disappointed to find rock was the only thing on the menu.

  Luce hurried back to join us where we stood, a considerable distance from the water’s edge. Clearly my original estimate of what constituted a safe distance had been off. The shamisen lay abandoned on the shore, but none of us felt inclined to go fetch it.

  “Miyako!” I shouted. “Come out! It is I, Daiyu. I need to talk to you.”

  The boulder exploded out of the water, and we leapt out of the way as it crashed into the spot where we’d been standing.

  I drew a shaky breath. “I guess we wait for sunrise after all.”

  “Good decision,” said Luce.

  “I will warn the other kitsune to be ready,” said Toko, already beating a hasty retreat back up the path.

  We followed him, not much slower. Luce still had her knives out. She looked as shaken as I felt. Okay, so maybe there were some things dragons should fear. I fretted over the delay, but I’d hate to come this far only to become a spider sandwich. I’d just have to wait a little longer. Lachie was counting on me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I passed what was left of the night chasing sleep on a mattress unrolled on the floor. Luce didn’t seem to sleep at all: every time I woke, trying to find a more comfortable position, she was up, silhouetted against the soft light coming through the screens from the passageway.

  “Is it morning yet?” I asked a couple of times, until she told me sternly to go to sleep and that she would wake me in plenty of time before dawn. But knowing you have to get up at a certain time always makes sleeping hard. I kept rousing, worried that I’d overslept.

  When she finally did shake me awake, I was lost in a complicated dream involving hundreds of tiny spiders and a giant can of fly spray, and I felt groggy, as if I hadn’t slept at all.

  “Time to go,” she whispered. “The sun is rising.”

  I don’t know how she knew. When I staggered outside the cold slapped me in the face, but it was still dark. No stars peeked through the heavy cloud cover. Looked like Tokyo might be in for snow.

  We trudged back down the path to the lake, our footsteps crunching on the frosty ground. Luce carried a sword that she hadn’t had last night; she must have found it among Daiyu’s things, or “borrowed” it from one of the displays we’d passed in the house.

  By the time we crested the rise that looked over the lake, an orange glow had appeared in the sky to the east, in the small clear space between the horizon and the thick grey clouds. My breath made billowing clouds of my own in the cold air when I spoke.

  “Let’s hope she’s in a more receptive mood this morning.”

  We entered the ornate teahouse that jutted over the lake. Its large windows were open to the elements, allowing an unobstructed view of the pretty waterfall across the lake, everything washed to grey in the dim light.

  “Miyako,” I called. “Show yourself.”

  Luce stood beside me, her sword drawn, watching the dark water below us. Nothing stirred except the hairs on the back of my neck, which were insisting we head back to the safety of the house right now, dammit.

  What was wrong with me? I was too old to be afraid of the dark, and too powerful a shifter to be afraid of another. The temptation to take trueshape and be sure of my invincibility hovered, but I couldn’t risk it. Miyako might be too blind to tell the difference between my trueshape and Daiyu’s, but who knew if Blue’s seeming would survive the transition to trueshape and back? I couldn’t risk losing the protection of my disguise before I had to.

  “Miyako! Come out. I need to talk to you.”

  A shivering among the reeds had Luce bracing for action, but no boulders appeared this time, only a woman’s head, rising from the water like the birth of a Japanese Venus.

  “Who calls?” She spoke English, as I had, and it only then occurred to me that I probably should have used Japanese. Oh, well, I could use Luce’s supposed inability to understand as an excuse, as I had with Akira.

  “Daiyu,” I said.

  She glided closer, more of her body rising from the lake as she did. She wore a soft pink kimono, and looked the picture of Japanese beauty—until she heaved herself up onto the bank, and I saw that her bottom half was still in spider form. She reared over us, even though the teahouse was raised above the lake, and I stepped back.

  The spider body was huge, coated in thick dark hair that dripped water. Each leg ended in a vicious claw the length of my hand. It seemed all the more hideous for coming out of the bottom of that pretty pink kimono with the lovely dark-eyed face on top. If Shelob ever played dress-ups, this is what she would look like.

  “Your voice sounds different.” Her eyes looked in our direction, but there was a vagueness to her gaze, as if we were unclear to her in the shadows of the teahouse. No one else had noticed my voice was wrong for Daiyu, too taken in by the evidence of their eyes. But the jorogumo didn’t rely on her eyes.

  “I have a sore throat.” Okay, it was lame, but it was the best excuse I could come up with at short notice. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Luce wince, but the jorogumo didn’t pursue it. She sniffed at the air—probably checking out my perfume—and seemed satisfied.

  She settled her bulk on the lake shore, and I was glad she didn’t want to share the teahouse with us. At least, with the spider head gone, I didn’t have to worry about poisonous fangs, but those hideous claw-tipped legs were enough to give me a whole new set of nightmares, and I didn’t want to get any closer to them than I had to.

  “Who is your companion?”

 
; “This is Lucinda Chan. She is helping me with the Australian situation.”

  “Ah. I was hoping you had brought me a snack.”

  I shuddered. The light was growing, though the sun hadn’t yet topped the horizon, but better illumination wasn’t doing Miyako any favours. The sooner she could take full human form, the happier I would be.

  “No. No snack.”

  “Another time, perhaps. It has been too long since I have felt live prey squirming in my grasp.”

  She sounded wistful. Clearly here was a shifter who had never adapted to modern life. I wondered how old she was. Her human face had the unlined beauty of youth, but that told me nothing. Toko had called her “old and crazed”. She could be centuries old, if jorogumo were one of the more long-lived types of shifter.

  Not that I was interested enough to prolong our charming interview with personal questions. Miyako yawned, delicately covering her mouth with a dainty hand. Soon she’d be too tired to be any use.

  “I need the hoshi no tama you guard for me.” No point beating around the bush.

  My abruptness didn’t seem to bother her, despite the famed Japanese preference for indirectness. Daiyu was a dragon: I figured she didn’t bother with chitchat.

  “Which one?” she asked.

  “All of them.”

  “Really?” Her face became more animated. “Are you finally going to kill the meddlesome little foxes? A kitsune or two would make a tasty treat.”

  “My plans need not concern you. Only my wishes.”

  She bowed, a sullen look on her face. “I was only asking. I don’t have many opportunities for conversation down here.”

  She hulked to her feet, and Luce’s sword arm twitched reflexively, but she only lowered herself back into the water and headed out into the lake. I watched until her dark head disappeared under the water, but I saw no movement at the waterfall. The entrance to her cave must be below the waterline.

  Luce eyed the sky, a worried look on her face. The clouds covered the horizon now, so we couldn’t check on the sun’s progress, but it was light enough to see colour returning to the world.

  “I hope she doesn’t forget what she’s doing and fall asleep in there,” she muttered.

  “Relax,” I said, though I felt far from relaxed myself. “Why do you always assume the worst?”

  “Because that way I only get pleasant surprises, not nasty ones.”

  “Here she comes!”

  A dark bun, held in place by a long, lethal-looking hairpin, rose from the water, soon followed by the rest of Miyako’s head. Did she walk on the bottom of the lake or was she swimming? Her progress seemed too smooth for swimming.

  My hopes that she might be fully human now were dashed as she heaved her hideous bulk up onto the shore and approached the teahouse. Between her soft white hands nestled a carved wooden box. I eyed it doubtfully. It wasn’t very big. Did it really hold the hoshi no tama of all the kitsune?

  She placed the box on the window sill and bowed, scattering drops of water from her hair.

  “Is that all of them?” I asked.

  She opened the box to display its contents, which gleamed with yellow light. It was like looking at a box of golden eggs.

  “This is all you gave me. Thirty-five hoshi no tama, and the one you took before makes thirty-six.”

  That would be Kasumi’s, which Daiyu still held in Sydney. It would be up to Kasumi to secure that one.

  Were there truly only thirty-six kitsune left in the world? Kasumi had said they’d been hunted almost to extinction, but I hadn’t realised quite how dire the situation was. No wonder the children were so carefully guarded. They’d be worth their weight in gold.

  “Thank you.”

  I took the box and stepped back hurriedly, anxious to be out of the jorogumo’s reach. But she only smiled, as if my fear of her was only her due.

  Then she lifted her head, sniffing the air. “Someone comes.”

  Faster than I had imagined the bulky spider body could move, she melted away from the window. I turned, just as Akira crested the rise above the lake. It was bright enough now to see him clearly, and his brows drew together in anger at the sight of Luce.

  “What are you doing?” he asked. “Why do you spend so much time with this wyvern?”

  We moved up the path to meet him, conscious of the jorogumo lurking somewhere among the ornamental bushes. I didn’t like to turn my back to her, but I had no idea where she’d gone. Hopefully back to her cave to sleep. There was no sign of her, not even a ripple on the lake’s still surface.

  “I had business to attend to.”

  “Here?” His gesture took in the lake, now catching the orange glint of the sky as the sun rose. Then his gaze fell on the box in my hands. “Is that the hoshi no tama?”

  He looked up, not quite suspicious yet, but aware something strange was going on. Luce moved casually to place herself and her sword between the two of us.

  And of course Blue’s potion chose that very moment to expire. I felt a peculiar ripple run over my body, from my head down to my toes, and saw Akira’s eyes widen in shock. He roared in baffled fury, and leapt forward.

  Luce’s swing nearly took off his head, but he managed to avoid it by rolling to the side. That didn’t turn out to be such a great move. Two monstrous hairy legs darted out of the bushes and snared him. His roar changed to a squeal of surprise.

  Luce and I fell back as Miyako reared to her full height, her beautiful face contorted into a vicious snarl. Her legs worked to roll him in webbing, but he had a knife out, and was hacking at her and the webbing. When the terror of the moment wore off, he would think to take trueshape, and then she’d be in trouble.

  Even as I thought that, the spider body convulsed. At first I thought he’d stabbed her, but then I saw it was the other way around. She had a stinger on the back of her abdomen, like a bee’s, and she’d curled her body to bring it into play. As it withdrew from his back, venom dripped from its point.

  Maybe Luce had got it all wrong, and it wasn’t the jorogumo’s fangs but her stinger that dragons needed to worry about. How effective would the poison be? It wasn’t the full du recipe, but it might slow Akira down enough for Miyako to drag him into the lake and drown him.

  “Think he’s toast?” I asked as we backed slowly away from the struggle.

  “If we’re lucky. Let’s not hang around to find out.”

  When I looked back from the top of the rise, they had reached the edge of the lake. Akira had both arms free and was hacking furiously at Miyako’s legs. One of them dragged at an odd angle, but she was still determinedly pulling him toward the water. A gap in the clouds showed the sun three-quarters above the horizon. If he could hold on until she was forced into fully human form he would make it. Was it wrong of me to cheer for the spider?

  Luce and I dashed up the path to the house. Things would get ugly fast now I no longer looked like Daiyu. The first guard who saw us spent a second too long in confusion. He didn’t know who I was, but had seen Luce in Daiyu’s company before, and didn’t realise she was hostile until an instant before her sword took off his head. His gun was only half out of his holster when his body thudded onto the verandah.

  We raced along the verandah to the west wing. A servant girl shrieked and dropped the bowl she was carrying at the sight of Luce’s gory blade. It rolled on the wooden floor with a clanging that sounded loud as a gong. No doubt it would soon summon guards to investigate. We left her screaming in our wake. Speed was our best option.

  Luce didn’t bother opening the door when we arrived at the kitsune living quarters, but leapt straight through the paper screen. The woman inside sat up from her bedroll with a small squeak of alarm at the sight of us.

  “Quickly!” said Luce. “Find Toko.”

  The woman scrambled to her feet, and I noticed she was fully dressed, in dark pants and shirt, ready to go.

  “Follow me.”

  We hurried down the corridor after her. She shouted som
ething in Japanese—probably “time to party!”—and doors flew open as we passed. Toko appeared in one, and his eyes lit up at the sight of the box I carried.

  “You did it.”

  I shoved the box at him. I could hear guards calling to each other outside. “I hope you’re ready to go.”

  He nodded, and hugged the box to his chest. “We need nothing more than this. We are ready.”

  A child whimpered, and was quickly hushed. He opened the box. A sigh of relief rippled through the assembled kitsune at the sight of their hoshi no tama softly glowing. Eager hands reached out to receive them, and the box was soon empty.

  An angry roaring outside penetrated the solemn hush in the corridor.

  “Who is that?” Toko asked.

  Damn. Sounded like the jorogumo had come off second-best after all. “That’s Akira. Get ready to fight.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “I have a better idea,” said Toko. “May I?”

  He reached out before I could guess what he meant and plucked several hairs from my head, passing them out among his kin. A young woman did the same to Luce.

  I’d seen a kitsune transformation before, but it was still fascinating to watch. Each kitsune placed the stolen hair on their own head, then held their precious hoshi no tama up to their face and breathed in its shining yellow aura. As the golden light suffused them their features changed, and just like that, there were three new Kates and three new Luces standing there, dressed identically to us.

  It was quite the experience, being able to see yourself from the outside like that, but I had no time to decide if my arse really did look big in that. While I’d been focusing on my own clones, the other kitsune around us had changed too. All but the children were now dressed as guards. One even looked like Akira.

  “Toko?” I asked, a little hesitant, even though they hadn’t moved.

  “Here,” said the Akira one.

  “You guys have been busy.” It must have been difficult to obtain a hair or personal possession of so many people, particularly here, where the kitsune threat was so well known. Whoever had stolen a piece of Akira must have had nerves of steel. Dragons were very careful of their personal effects. I couldn’t imagine the danger they must have faced to get it. “What now?”