by Emiko Jean
Asami’s chin jutted out as she stepped forward. Once again, she was dressed simply, in a tunic and pants, far better suited for the Winter Room climate. Mari’s kimono would only hinder her, but she couldn’t afford to lose the warmth in favor of her undergarments. Snow crunched under Asami’s feet, and wind whipped her hair as she entered the Winter Room.
Master Ushiba breathed deep, his white eyes filled with a swirling storm and the jagged edges of black frozen trees, and the landscape from Ushiba’s eyes was brought to life before Mari. A vast field of snow unfurled and, beyond that, a frozen forest. The Seasonist bowed again and gestured toward the Room, the sleeve of his yellow robe flapping with the frigid wind. “Lady Mari of Clan Masunaga, your destiny awaits.”
Hesitantly, Mari stepped forward. Wind lashed her cheeks, and her fingers numbed. Snow soaked her split-toe socks. A movement at the end of the Main Hall drew Mari’s attention. Taro. The Cold Prince stood, face serious and impassive. His dark eyes glinted in the torchlight. Ever so subtly, he nodded to her. Good luck? Goodbye? Maybe both.
Resolve settled in Mari’s spine. Another way. But there wasn’t time to think of that. To think of him. For a lean tiger in winter, survival always came first.
Chapter 30
Akira
The map Asami had drawn worked.
Akira smiled to himself. Hanako would be pleased. However, she would not be pleased to learn that Akira had stolen the map and returned to the Palace of Illusions. His smile dimmed. Late in the evening, he’d plucked the map from the wall and snuck from the clock tower. Fortune had smiled upon Akira—the geezer guards were sleeping. Too much sweet grass. On his way out, Akira had stolen their pipes and stash. You never know when sweet grass might come in handy.
His trip through the wards had been swift. He’d scaled a drainpipe, inching along the gabled roofs. No one knew an assassin was among them, creeping atop their homes. That’s what he was now. “You will be my wind and my assassin,” Hanako had told him after he’d mastered the throwing stars. Too bad Akira had no intention of being owned. At least not by the Weapons Master. He had to warn Mari about Asami, about her unknown enemy, and Hanako’s plan to storm the palace if it all went wrong. If it came down to it, he’d kill for Mari. If he did have a soul and it could be seen, he imagined it might be darker now, fringed in soot or ash. The Imperial City had changed him. For better? For worse? Only time will tell.
He found the entrance to the tunnel leading into the palace easily enough. The tunnels connected to the city’s sewer system. His nose scrunched at the smell. He tucked the map into his surcoat. In the tunnels, it would be too dark to read it. He’d have to rely on what he’d memorized. With a deep breath, he removed the grate in the sidewalk, climbed down, and then replaced it.
Water came up to his ankles. Akira trudged sideways in the narrow space. A couple of feet, and the sewer should give way. There was no sound but his breathing, the tinkle of water, and the squeak of rats. He kept moving.
He knew the moment he breached the palace confines. The water gave way, draining into an even deeper sewer system, and the tunnels opened up so that Akira could walk normally. From Asami’s drawing, he knew that the tunnels in this section of the palace weren’t guarded. He spent an hour combing the outer tunnels. Twice he took a wrong turn and had to light one of his precious three matches to illuminate the map to get back on the right path.
Hazy torchlight appeared in the distance, along with muted voices. Guards. He’d reached the main tunnels. Here, they would open up even more, and samurai patrolled in twos and at regular intervals.
Akira removed the pipe and stash of sweet grass from his coat. He struck his final match and lit the pipe, drawing out the smoke but being careful not to inhale it. The pipe smoldered. He wrapped his black cloth around his face, holding it tightly over his nose and mouth. For a moment, he stood still, letting the sweet grass gather, then disperse, chasing its way down the tunnels.
“Do you smell that?” a deep voice asked. Guards were close. Just around the corner. Akira’s breaths became shallow. There was nowhere to hide. If he was discovered and the guards sounded the alarm, he’d have to run. And it would all be over. He’d be hunted by the emperor and Hanako. The Snow Girl wouldn’t take kindly to Akira’s betrayal, nor the emperor to treason.
“It smells like honey,” the guard’s partner remarked.
“I don’t feel right.”
The voices cut off abruptly.
Akira stepped around the bend. Two imperial guards lay slumped over, snoring softly. Carefully, Akira wrapped one of the guards’ hands around the pipe. A few more feet, and Akira encountered his second set of guards, both sleeping, thanks to the sweet grass. His muscles relaxed, and he smiled under his mask. If you do not enter the tiger’s cave, you will not catch its cub. He whistled all the way to the East Hall.
* * *
Akira was back in the rafters, high up where he belonged. He’d used a trapdoor to access the East Hall. The emperor had seen fit to drill holes in his trapdoors, a way to keep a lookout, and Akira had used these to ensure that the East Hall was deserted. But something wasn’t right. According to Asami’s map, the East Hall was where the girls were kept for the competition. It should be heavily guarded. But all was quiet. Abandoned.
Steps reached Akira’s ears, and he scurried back into a shadowed corner of the rafters. Torches blazed and lit the hall. A silhouette of a robed man appeared, and as he approached, Akira saw that it was a priest. His hood was drawn, but Akira recognized him by his robe—white and adorned with a red sash. The High Priest.
During their drunken night, Hanako had spoken of him, calling him the “pretty” priest. “He’s the emperor’s bastard. But he walks around as if he’s the heir. He thinks so highly of his looks, he doesn’t tattoo his face like the other priests,” she said with a sneer.
The priest’s soul was marred with so many dark spots, Akira couldn’t discern what color it was. Most likely all yōkai kills. Akira’s gut twisted with disgust. No person, human or yōkai, should have so much power over another.
The priest paused at a door and knocked. A collared yōkai answered. Her dull brown eyes widened, beholding the priest’s white robe. She bent her head and bowed low.
“Invite me in,” the priest demanded.
“My lady Mari is not in,” she explained meekly. Akira’s muscles tensed. Mari’s apartment? What was the High Priest doing there? Slowly, he inched across the rafter. He needed to get closer.
“I know. I didn’t come to speak with her. I wish to speak to you.”
The girl froze.
“Lately, the emperor has been favoring the Summer Room for punishment. You are a Hook Girl, are you not?” Akira saw barbed hooks nestled in the girl’s hair. He didn’t know of her kind. Yōkai were as varied as blades of grass. “Hook Girls are particularly intolerant of the heat, isn’t that correct? I remember reading that you flourish in the dark and cold. By nature, you are nocturnal creatures. I imagine a room drenched in perpetual sunlight is your worst nightmare.”
The Hook Girl’s face paled, and she slid the door open a little more. “My lady will be back soon.”
The priest smiled with all the softness of a snake. “She won’t. The third Season has started. She’s in the Winter Room now. Let me in.”
The Hook Girl’s eyes darted down the hall. Searching for help? At length, she stepped from the threshold and gestured for the priest to enter the chamber.
Indecision kept Akira rooted to the rafter. She’s in the Winter Room with a dangerous yōkai. He needed to warn her. With haste, Akira swung down from the rafters and entered the tunnels once more.
Chapter 31
Mari
Endless winter, and Mari trudged through snow up to her knees. Her cheeks were red and wind-chapped. The kimono she wore was a mere scrap of warmth against the cold. Each step was like an icy dagger. She held the silver pick and copper canary tightly in her hands. To stave off the bitter chill, she
conjured images of fire, thick blankets, and miso soup. She couldn’t see three feet in front of her. A few moments ago, the sun had flared, lighting up the gray winter sky, brushing her cheeks with heat. Then it was gone. That’s when the storm started, swirls of ice and snow obscuring her vision. She lost sight of the frozen forest. She lost sight of everything, save her two feet trudging forward.
Mari kept moving. To stop was to die, to give in to the cold and the numbness. She didn’t know in what direction she headed. Amid the wasteland, she searched for a dot of black against the white, anything but the white. Mari’s pulse drummed in her ears, and she thought of the new riddle. You will find the scroll at a place that always runs but never walks, often murmurs but never talks, has a bed but never sleeps, has a head but never weeps. The first riddle had been about a mountain. The next about fire. Both about natural elements.
Memories filtered forward. Let nature work for you. The sound of the water will hide your footsteps, her mother had advised. As when she’d solved the fire riddle, everything crystallized at once. A river. A river ran and never walked, murmured and never talked . . . Her whole life passed before her eyes—hunting wolves, the killing shed, sparring with her mother—each of these separate events had prepared her for the competition. Even when she hadn’t thought she was training, her mother had been carefully teaching her—how to navigate the wild, how to channel the forest, how to survive the Seasons.
A sudden growl made Mari swivel to the right. Out of the white, five hunched black figures took shape. Mari recognized the curve of their backs, the yellow flash of their eyes. Wolves.
Without thinking, she’d drifted closer to the wolves. She ached for her naginata. But she had only the silver pick and the canary. She shoved the silver pick into her obi and tried the same with the canary, but her hands were stiff. The bird fell from her grasp and sank into the snow, lost. She didn’t have time to dig.
The wolves snarled, but the growls weren’t directed at her. They surrounded something else. A girl. Sachiko? Nori? Asami?
The wolves pounced on their prey. From the center of the pack, a flash of red kimono caught Mari’s eye. Sachiko. The human who had betrayed her friend with a pit viper was fighting a wolf pack. Fighting and losing. She could not stand by and watch another girl die.
Mari inched forward, stepping over two slain wolves. She glanced to her left and right. No one else was present; no one else would see. She summoned her beast. The bones in her hands crackled and popped. Her fingernails lengthened to sharp talons.
The wolves had closed in on Sachiko. She lay pinned by their massive paws, their muzzles digging into her sides, shredding her kimono.
Mari lunged, hands swiping at the wolves just as they went for Sachiko’s throat. Flesh tore. Everything blurred into yowls and screeches. Hot blood. Then silence. Stillness.
Mari withdrew, retracting her claws, her breaths hot in her frozen lungs. She’d killed the remaining wolves, but not in time to save Sachiko. The girl lay in the snow, her eyes open. The Rooms choose you, Master Ushiba had warned. Was this Sachiko’s punishment for the Summer Room, for betraying her friend? It seemed the Seasons had collected, just as Ushiba had promised. Carefully, Mari closed Sachiko’s eyes.
Nori and Asami were left. She didn’t want to compete against her friends. Need coupled with dread burned inside her. A lean tiger in winter has no friends. She trudged on.
What if there was another way? Taro’s words echoed in Mari’s ears. Miles and hours passed. She couldn’t make out the sun in the sky. She knew that the day grew long only by the decrease in temperature. Her steps were slow and staggered. Still no sign of a river.
Trees, scraggly and laden with snow, rose from the tundra like broken bones popping through skin. Mari nearly collapsed at the sight. Shelter, respite from the wind. She ran toward the Ice Forest. The trees blocked the cutting wind. Blood rushed to Mari’s cheeks, her hands, her feet. Pain prickled where warmth tried to seep in.
A lump rose in the snow, and she fell, landing on a solid form. Not ice. Not rocks. A body. Mari scrambled back.
Nori’s snow-dusted profile came into view. Her lips were blue, her eyes closed. Mari searched her for signs of injury. There were none. No blood. No broken bones. She felt for a pulse. The battle-axe girl was dead. Who would carry the news of her demise to her family? My parents don’t know I’m here, she’d said. Mari sat back on her haunches, staring at the battle-axe girl’s profile.
Nori’s mouth twitched, and Mari stilled, terror-struck. A fat black spider with white stripes pried itself from Nori’s blue lips. Mari remembered seeing a spider like that before. In the Summer Room. Mari’s pulse pounded. They were poisoned, Taro had said of the girls in the Fall Room. But he didn’t know by what. By a spider, that’s what.
Mari’s eyes traveled with the spider as it skittered onto a frozen river, where Asami crouched in the middle of the ice, an arm of her tunic pulled up to the elbow. In between them, almost equidistant, lay a red satin pillow. And on that pillow lay a scroll encased in a glass tube.
Mari rose, a dark sense of foreboding growing within her. She stepped onto the river. The ice whispered in complaint, but Mari didn’t notice. She was too caught up in watching the black spider. Her former ally hadn’t yet sensed Mari’s presence.
As the spider drew closer to Asami, she smiled, her heart-shaped face softening. Purple-black ink began to swirl down her forearm, like a creeping vine. The spider crawled into Asami’s palm. The ink then took another form. A web. It absorbed the spider, its body flattening and becoming part of Asami’s tattoo, part of her skin.
All the puzzle pieces came together. “You killed Nori!” Mari yelled.
Asami stood. “Sachiko?”
Mari jerked her chin.
“So it’s just you and me.”
Mari turned her head up to the gloomy sky. Her teeth chattered. “So it appears.” Another step closer to the satin pillow. She had to have the scroll. She had to move to the next Room. She called her beast forward. Her bones popped, her fingers receded, and talons appeared.
“An Animal Wife?” Asami asked, unmoved. “I wouldn’t have guessed it based on your looks. No offense.”
“None taken.” Mari flexed her hands.
“It’s a neat trick you’ve got,” Asami said. “But I have something better.” She splayed her forearms, and spiders appeared, rising from her skin like bodies from the grave, then dropping onto the ice. The spiders swarmed Asami’s feet. The whites of her eyes receded and turned black. More ice splintered around Mari’s feet.
“I don’t want to fight you!” Mari shouted. “Let me have the scroll. I’ll leave you here. You’ll be disqualified, but you’ll live.”
Asami laughed. “That scroll is mine. What makes you think you would be able to defeat me? I am a jorōgumo, the most feared of the yōkai. You may be an Animal Wife, a formidable opponent, but my guess is that those claws are all you’ve got.”
Mari took another step. If she threw herself, she might be able to reach the scroll. “What are you doing here?” she yelled. “What is it you hope to accomplish? You want to be Empress?” None of it made sense. Asami didn’t answer. She moved toward the scroll. The spiders followed. The ice groaned. Vicious wind flung Asami’s tunic open, and Mari gasped. Abrasions and burn scars covered Asami’s neck and chest. “What happened?”
Asami tensed, her features tight. “My mother burned to death removing my collar. And I burned too. I can’t transform anymore. My people have been reduced to nothing. Only a few of us remain.”
The spiders scurried from Asami’s feet, rounded the pillow, and headed toward Mari. She crouched and began smashing them with her hands.
“That hurts!” Asami cried.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Mari said, trying to reason with her while frantically squashing the spiders.
“What was your plan, Animal Wife? To steal the emperor’s fortune? Crawl back to your village and hide? It’s not enough! The emper
or and prince must be punished!” Asami shrieked. More spiders cascaded down her arms. Mari couldn’t contain the onslaught. She found a crack in the ice and slammed down a fist, scrambling back just as a fissure opened up. The spiders tumbled into the water. The pillow slid in. It wobbled with the current, but the scroll stayed intact, perfectly safe in its encasement.
Asami’s words penetrated Mari’s battle fog. “You plan to kill the emperor and the prince?” Mari asked in a choked whisper.
Asami laughed. “Of course I plan to kill them. Why do you think I’m doing this? What do you think my mother sacrificed her life for? My sister choked to death on her metal collar because she couldn’t pay her taxes!”
Sei had mentioned taxes. The spiders began to circle around the fissure, creeping toward Mari.
Something inside her snapped. Her heart expanded and contracted at the same time. The beast inside her roared, hungry to feed. Her eyes melted to black. “I can’t let you kill him,” Mari said, surprised to find her voice low and roughly edged. The sound of the beast.
Mari charged, leaping over the crack in the ice and barreling into Asami. Mari’s hands wrapped around Asami’s throat, and they both tumbled to the ice, the weight of their bodies causing more shards to splinter off. Spiders slipped under Mari’s kimono and onto her bare skin. She rolled, taking Asami with her. A deafening crack echoed through the forest. The ice tilted, and Asami and Mari slid, plunging together into the frigid water.
Mari’s kimono pulled her down. It felt as if a thousand tiny, icy hands were grabbing at her legs, twisting her lungs. Desperate for air, she swam upward, fingers and legs numb. She broke the surface just as Asami climbed from the water. In her hand, Asami held the scroll. Mari watched as the red pillow saturated with water and sank. Frantic, Mari dug one claw into the ice to keep from being pulled under again. Asami approached Mari, hair dripping, a sneer curving her mouth. She lifted a foot and slammed it down on Mari’s hand.