Kou's eyes were so sad when he looked at her that Ashlyn focused on his eyebrows instead. No use twisting her heart around just to hear his story- and you know, now that she actually thought about it, his eyebrows were way more animated than she would have expected for such a stoic guy. Huh.
"Lord Li discovered shift almost a year ago," Kou began, "in a cave on Na Michico. I was told that he nearly died during the climb. When he realized how weak he had become, he made the decision to find someone to succeed him. But first…before he chose his successor, he had to know that you were truly gone. He offered a reward for any tips leading to your whereabouts." He met Ashlyn's eyes. "Or any proof concerning your death."
"You told him you saw me die," Ashlyn said, remembering what Skye had said that rainy night in Storim. "You lied about my death for the reward."
"Not for the reward!" Kou protested. "I would never lie for credits."
Ashlyn raised her eyebrows. "Then what?"
"I have…" He faltered. "Visions. Of things to come. My mother called it foresight, but I don't know what it is. I've had it since I was a child. I can see things before they happen. Sometimes seconds before- sometimes months- sometimes years. Long before I ever heard about the reward, I saw you in the Heavenly City."
"Being killed by a wolf, I'm guessing," Ashlyn said. She didn't attempt to keep any of the acid out of her tone; none of this psychic stuff had ever appealed to her, and it would take a lot more than some guy telling her it was true to make her believe in it. "At least, that's what I heard."
Kou forced a smile. "It must have been disconcerting, hearing a confirmation of your own death."
The experience of finding out she was widely regarded as dead had actually been less weird than finding out Kou was Devlyn, but the transformation she'd just seen with Tag mattered a lot more than changing names. She simply stared at him now, waiting impatiently for him to continue.
"Yes, by a wolf," he went on quietly. "I didn't know who you were, before. But when I heard the reports inquiring about your death-"
"I'm not buying this," Skye interrupted. "Telling Li that Ashlyn was dead wasn't a coincidental happening. You went to great lengths to make him believe you. You even presented him with Ashlyn's shuriken as proof."
"Yeah!" Ashlyn said, remembering suddenly that the bo shuriken had been missing for years. "Someone stole it from me in Storim. You must have stolen it! You lied- you said you'd never been to Storim before you stowed away on the airship!"
"Calm down," said Kou. He held up his hands in a defensive gesture. "I didn't steal your shuriken, and I certainly never gave it to Lord Li. He took it away from a peddler that came to Toryn. He said he recognized it as yours. It only served to confirm what I'd already told him."
"A peddler stole my shuriken?" Ashlyn shrieked, jumping to her feet. "He tried to sell it? Did it still have any stanes in it? Did you get it back? Did you-" She slurred the last word and trailed off, touching a hand to her aching forehead. "Gods, what's wrong with me?"
"I'm trying to finish so you can get some rest, if you would stop interrupting," Kou replied, standing and grabbing her elbow before she fell over. "You're exhausted. Sit down."
Too dizzy to do anything else, she sat. "Okay, fine. Tell the rest of the story. I'll listen."
Kou looked at Skye, who shrugged noncommittally. "All right," he said. "I'll start with my clan. You probably know that the people of Lunai severed ties with all other Toryn clans years ago."
"Right around the time that my dad started turning Toryn into a tourist trap," Ashlyn remembered out loud. "Yours must have been one of those clans who didn't agree with- um…" She bit her lip. "Sorry. Go on."
Kou shifted on the mat, sitting back so he could brace his hands on the floor behind him. It should have made him look more relaxed; instead he seemed awkward, uncomfortable. "We were virtually cut off from all avenues of communication with the outside world. My clan and I didn't even know you were missing until one of the Toryn Lords came to us and asked if we had any information. When I told him about my vision, he brought me here." He glanced around, as if he were seeing Ashlyn's home for the first time. "Your father liked me. I was chosen as a potential heir. So I stayed."
That must have been convenient, Ashlyn wanted to say. But she kept her mouth shut.
"It wasn't as easy as I had anticipated," Kou admitted. "I…I was one of many, lost among the other selected potentials and eager to prove myself to the Lords. Elder Lord Li seemed to hold me in great esteem, and I, foolish as I was, tried my utmost to capitalize on his favor." He met Ashlyn's gaze. "He used to tell me that I had your eyes. I think that, even with my power of foresight and the…other reasons I was chosen, he would not have paid me any heed if I did not in some way resemble you. He told me that if you did not return, there could be nothing he would delight in more than allowing me to assume leadership of Toryn."
Ashlyn stared at the floor, deliberately ignoring the lump in her throat, the tears that stung at the backs of her eyes. "I understand," she said softly.
Kou shifted, glancing sideways at Skye- or maybe at Skye’s sword, which was balanced against the wooden beam next to the blond. The giant sword looked formidable enough on its own, but the magic-charged stanes that gleamed from its hilt added to its deadly intimidation factor.
"I'd been here less than a month before Lord Li showed me shift." Kou drummed his fingers nervously on the floor, hunched over and looking more vulnerable by the moment. Almost like a child who was confessing to a lie. Ashlyn stayed still, waiting for him to continue.
Finally he said, "This was a new magic, one that wasn't in the scrolls. Li made me keep it a secret." Here he looked at Ashlyn, his gaze pleading. "I thought that we should take it to Cosmea and let the scholars study it, find out if there was any history of its use. I couldn't believe that he had found a magic that no one had ever discovered before- it just didn't seem possible. But Li said that we had to hide it, keep it locked away, and Drago help me, I let him make that decision. I let him keep shift for himself while I tried to find mention of it in the Elders' scrolls."
Kou shook his head, miserably tracing patterns on the mat beneath him. "It was a mystery to us all, you see. The other Lords had tried to use shift and could make nothing of it, and yet Lord Li could shape-shift with ease. One by one, each of the Lords endeavored to use the magic, but none could…except for him." He looked up, smoke-dark eyes hollow. "In the early months, I was forbidden from attempting the magic. After the Lords failed, Li gave his consent for me to try."
"Makes sense," Ashlyn said. Her heart was pounding and her mouth was dry, but she refused to show any emotion. The way Kou was talking about her father, the fact that he wasn't here to hold her and tell her that everything would be all right because he was her dad and he could make it okay again, was somehow more terrifying than the sickening display she'd seen in the basement. But it all seemed so impossible, so surreal.
"I hate the feeling of shape-shifting," Kou admitted after a long pause. Done with drawing shapes on the floor, he had started to twist the long ends of his belt into complex knots. "Although it is really just a simple physical reconfiguration, your entire body feels as though it is being torn to pieces. I'm sure you could see it with Tag."
"Yes, it was fairly obvious," Skye said, staring unsympathetically at the ceiling. "So go on. Why were you and Ash’s father the only ones who could use the magic? And if it was just the two of you, then how do you explain that?" He jerked his chin towards the stairs, presumably referring to Tag's transformation.
Kou wet his lips, eyes flicking back and forth from Skye to Ashlyn. "It took some time to understand why some could channel the magic, and some could not," he said. "I continued with my research until at last I found mention of the shift magic."
"It's been discovered before?" Skye said, raising an eyebrow. Taking his sword in one hand, he slid down until he was sitting with his back against the support beam, and laid the weapon carefully across his lap.
"Yes. Well- not in so many words. It was not called shift in a century long ago; in fact, it is not even mentioned in our Toryn scrolls. I read of it in a translated text from Cosmea, which spoke of an appearance-altering magic, so powerful and so dangerous that even the Angels themselves feared it. To protect themselves, and future generations, they buried it deep in the mountains of Na Michico."
"So it- the magic- didn't start out here on Toryn Island?" Ashlyn asked, eyebrows knitting. She had no idea where this was going.
"Not originally, no. In the text it says that one of the reasons the Angels were afraid of this magic was because its powers not only altered one's physical appearance, but one's mental capacities also. It could evolve itself to match the person who cast it- in the first instance, the Angels. They were, and as far as I know still are the only true masters of shift."
He cleared his throat before going on, "The original Angels, unchanged by life on this planet, could wield it without danger, but later generations were too weak- too human to successfully maintain control over the magic. It began to change them. At first they dismissed it as something trivial. A passing illness, a head cold- whatever seemed fitting at the time. Eventually however, the infection worsened, and they realized the truth. Without the immunity of pure immortal blood, the magic began to overpower them. It began to control them."
Ashlyn had heard stories about Kresmir's beginnings. She knew that all humans were descended from the Angels, at least in theory, and that life on the planet had been simple and unchallenging enough that the lesser members of the race eventually devolved into what they were now. Humanity. Personally, she'd pretty much always taken offense to that theory. But she didn't- couldn't- reject it, because in all honesty, there was too much proof to dispel its possibility.
"Okay," she said, keeping her tone light. "I got the history lesson. Now tell me why you, my father and Tag are the lucky ones. Why doesn't everyone else get to wield the magic?"
"I was just getting to that." Kou smiled faintly at her, but there was no humor in his expression. "Shift has been buried beneath Na Michico for the better part of two thousand years. The magic has already proven itself an evolving force. It could not lay dormant for such a length of time without some sort of mutation." He scratched the side of his temple, looking a little embarrassed.
Truthfully, Ashlyn would have been embarrassed, too. If she'd known all this technical lingo when she was in her teens, she would have buried it in the deepest part of the ocean and never let anyone know how much of a social life she didn't have.
"Based on what I have read and researched on magic adaptation," Kou said, "I believe that shift has made itself indigenous to Toryn, or more specifically, to the Li bloodline. Thousands of years ago, it called to the Angels, and they discovered it. This time it called to your father, and he was the one who found it, which was the magic's intention all along." He swallowed as he stared at Ashlyn. "The magic is calling to you now- it’s why you feel ill. Shift has changed itself so that only a Toryn whose veins flow with the blood of the Li clan is able to wield it."
Blood of the Li clan.
Ashlyn could have babbled for hours about how ridiculous the initial part of Kou's proposed theory was. He spoke as if the magic was thinking for itself, which was of course utterly impossible. But those five words- blood of the Li clan- stopped her cold. She stared blankly at Kou for a single heartbeat, then another. It took three more, and a sudden roaring in her ears, before Ashlyn realized what he had meant.
The world abruptly tilted, and she started to her feet.
"The blood of the Li clan," she said, "is my blood. My father's blood."
He said nothing, perhaps waiting for her to realize what she was determined to deny. But Ashlyn was just warming up.
"My blood," she growled, "is the blood of kings. Of ninjas and emperors and- and me- and you can't…you can't possibly claim to have even a toehold in my gene pool!" She knew she sounded like an absolute snob, but her righteous pride was more important to her than anything, and somehow she couldn't stop herself from halting this ridiculous charade. "I can trace my ancestors back a hundred generations. I know my grandfather's grandfather and every frigging one of his cousins by name and birthright. The line has never been broken. You are not Li. You are not, because it is simply not possible!" She turned away from Kou and began to pace the length of what used to be her bedroom, fuming.
"Ashlyn," Kou said, standing and moving towards her.
"What's more," Ashlyn continued, her voice rising with each word, "is that you are younger than me. Younger. Don't try to deny it. You can't be more than- what, seventeen? Eighteen?"
"Seventeen," he said, "but, Ashlyn-" He tried to touch her arm. She shrugged him off and promptly stumbled over a steel trap, a remnant from the days she had lived here, which thankfully had already been tripped by some unlucky soul. Seeing it there and knowing that Kou had been staying in her house under false pretenses just made Ashlyn angrier.
"This is just ridiculous! I'm appalled you would even suggest a thing like that! Most of my father's family died before I was born, and my uncle died when I was just a child," she spluttered, slapping a hand to her forehead as if it should be so completely obvious. "My father and I are the last of the Li bloodline."
"Ashlyn!" Kou snapped, grabbing her arm and yanking her towards him. "You don't believe me? Fine. Have Skye try to use the magic. Any of your friends- try it. They won’t be able to. But you will.”
The conviction in his words couldn't be false. Ashlyn could always tell when people were lying.
But…but…there was no way her father would have betrayed her mother, before or after Susyn's death.
"You're lying," she said evenly. "My mother died when I was six. My father walked around in a stupor for years afterwards. He wouldn't have even noticed another woman."
"He noticed my mother," Kou said, dropping his hand to his side. "Tag's, too."
A silence followed his vengeful reply as she stared at him in horror, the reality of his words sinking in through her denial.
Kou, for his part, looked absolutely miserable. "I'm so sorry to tell you like this," he said. "He sent me away because he didn't want you to know. Even afterwards, when you'd been gone for so long, he couldn't acknowledge me outright as his son. I don't think he realized-"
Ashlyn's knees gave out very suddenly, and she crumpled to the floor before the thought even registered that she didn't feel much like standing anymore. "You liar!" she cried, smashing a fist into the floor and sobbing with the pain. "I know what happened. I know you lied to my father and said you'd seen me die, just so you could worm your way into his good graces. You are a disgrace. The Li bloodline is pure. I am the rightful Elder heir! I am-" hiccup- "I am-" hiccup- "I am the only heir!"
Skye was beside her now. As she moved to hit the floor again, he intercepted her hands, preventing her from injuring herself. "Leave," he said to Kou. "We'll continue this later."
Ashlyn pulled free and wrapped her arms around herself, sobbing uselessly. Keeping his hand on her shoulder, Skye stood and faced Kou, and she found herself wishing that the swordsman would simply kill this awful man, this strange ninja who had deceived her from the beginning and now claimed to share her birthright.
"This cannot wait much longer," Kou said. "There are things I must say-"
"You have said enough," Skye cut him off, and even in her distress Ashlyn could feel the anger radiating off of him in waves, the unspoken challenge that she knew no man in his right mind would accept.
Kou hesitated a moment longer, then nodded and turned, his sandals scraping against the wood floor in time with her own laboring heartbeat. Below, Ashlyn could still hear the horrible screams of the beast that had once been Tag, in the basement of what had once been her happy home.
Chapter 12
Severed Ties
Ashlyn scrubbed at her legs with the sanding stone, water sloshing loudly against the sides of the metal tub in time with her furi
ous movements. The dirt on her feet seemed to be encrusted there permanently, but that made no difference to Ashlyn. Her goal was the small symbol that had been tattooed on her left ankle at birth- the sign of the House of Li. The dark green ink was gone now, lost in a complex myriad of deep, criss-crossed scratches gouged into her tanned skin. Tiny rivulets of crimson dripped down her leg and swirled into intricate patterns in the water.
"Pure of heart," she growled under her breath, rasping the stone jerkily back and forth across her ravaged skin. "Pure of blood, pure of flesh. My ass. Battling with the five Lords- for what? To earn the respect of a womanizer who tainted an ancient bloodline and betrayed my mother for no reason besides…" She sniffled. "…besides common lust…"
Her hand slipped and the stone scraped against the side of the tub, sending a metallic screech resounding through the tiny bathroom. Ashlyn shifted in the cold water, trying to ease the awkwardness of her position, but the tub was too narrow for any other angle of attack. Grimly, she braced her ankle up on the side of the tub again and continued scrubbing, noting for the first time how shriveled her bloodstained fingertips looked. No telling how long she'd been in here.
There was a knock at the door. "Ashlyn?"
It was Skye's voice.
She contemplated for a long moment on how to answer, finally deciding against responding at all. What could she possibly have to say to him?
"Ashlyn, come on out. I know that water's freezing by now." He hesitated. "The others are on their way. I…I told them what happened."
Oh, great. Way to go, Skye, shout it to the masses and bring the rest of FLD to Toryn when they weren't even entirely sure of Kou's- Devlyn's- intentions. Ashlyn threw the remaining scrap of sanding stone down and wrapped her arms around herself, sinking nearly to her chin in crimson-tinged water. Maybe Skye would go away if she maintained her silence.
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