Traitor's Hope

by Virginia McClain

  It was a slaughter.

  The village itself seemed empty. The first few houses they passed looked as though they had been abandoned suddenly, but there was no sign of what had happened to anyone. They only found that when they reached the village square. It wasn’t a particularly large square, but it appeared that it could hold the entire population of the town.

  At least, that was Mishi’s best guess, as she took in the mound of bodies that filled the square. Men, women, children. No one had been spared. All the bodies were heaped into the center of the square with no regard given to who they had been, or that they had been people at all.

  On the wall of the village hall standing next to the square was a message, scrawled in dried blood.

  “The Yūwaku shall never rise again!”

  And below that, “No female monsters shall be allowed to live.”

  Mishi was too busy preventing her gorge from rising to pay much attention to the words of the message, but Mitsu asked, “The Yūwaku?”

  Mishi nodded, even as she pulled the sleeve of her uwagi up over her nose and mouth.

  “The all-female regime that ruled Gensokai for over a century,” she replied.

  “But that was over a thousand cycles ago,” Mitsu muttered, as he covered his own face. “Why would they care about that?”

  Mishi shook her head. She wasn’t entirely sure how the Rōjū thought and made their arguments, but she had a guess.

  “The supposed ‘threat’ of women with power rising up and taking over is what made the Rōjū Council accept the laws that killed newborn babes in the cradle for centuries. It makes sense that they would continue to use that mindset, even with their hired mercenaries.”

  Mitsu was quiet for a moment, as they both took in the devastation at the center of the village square. It seemed as though no resident had been spared.

  “You think these men were paid?”

  Mishi thought for a long moment, then nodded.

  “It would make sense. I mean, it’s possible the remaining Rōjū have found a large band of men who are allied with them and believe the same things as deeply as they do, but it’s more likely that they have hired men who don’t care who they are asked to kill, and perhaps a few of them have been convinced that female Kisōshi need to be prevented from existing, regardless of the cost.”

  Even as she said the words, Mishi felt the skin on her spine crawl like an army of beetles. She hoped that they could leave this place soon.

  “Mitsu-san, can you sense if there is anyone in that pile who might be living?”

  Mitsu’s face paled.

  “Do you really think they would have left someone there?”

  Mishi shrugged. She glanced at the pile of dead and felt bile rise in her throat.

  “Given what they’ve already done…I wouldn’t put it past them.”

  Mitsu nodded, his face still locked in a pale grimace.

  He closed his eyes, and Mishi wondered if that helped him to focus his kisō or if it simply prevented him from having to look at the pile of corpses that took up the main part of the square. Perhaps both.

  After a long pause, Mitsu started to speak.

  “Nothing. They didn’t leave any—”

  His voice cut off abruptly.

  “What?” Mishi asked, suddenly on alert. She felt her hand go to her hip automatically, clenching and unclenching in the place where her katana should have rested. Instead, she saw the scabbard and hilt poking out of the roll on Mitsu’s back. She had insisted that he continue to carry both of her blades, simply to make it that much harder for her to use them against him.

  “I think someone’s alive,” he said.

  ~~~

  Mishi would never have thought to look in the mud puddle that sat on the edge of the town square, and she supposed that the sanzoku hadn’t thought to either. After all, who on earth would cover themselves in mud, almost drowning in it, in order to hide? Mishi’s gaze flicked to the town square once more, and she thought more people might have, if they’d known what they needed to hide from.

  Yet this mud puddle was where the life that Mitsu had detected was coming from. They had almost missed it, because he was checking the pile of bodies in the square and not the surrounding area.

  They approached cautiously, fully aware that they could be falling into a malicious trap, but thinking it unlikely. After all, who would come upon the town in its current state and think to check the large mud puddle where a collection of murky water and thick muck gathered between quick changes in slope from the square to the road? It seemed an unlikely place to leave an ambush, but perhaps a spy, or some other trickery, awaited them.

  Mishi reached the puddle first, her hands opening and closing, her flames calling to her like a faint itch, asking to be brought forth. She inhaled deeply and let out her breath slowly. She could just make out the outline of two bodies in the mud.

  They were children.

  “Mitsu-san,” she whispered, “are you sure they’re alive?”

  Mitsu was beside her then, and she could see him nod in her peripheral vision. The two small bodies were as still as statues, and it took a moment before she could see the soft rise and fall of their chests. They were completely covered in a thick layer of mud, with most of their bodies submerged, the tops so thoroughly coated that they only left a vague outline of a human shape. It would take a close inspection indeed to ever have spotted them. And if Mitsu hadn’t detected their life force anyway, they never would have looked.

  “You’re safe now,” she said, hoping that it was true. “We mean you no harm.”

  “Can you move?” Mitsu asked the small, motionless human shapes.

  Suddenly, two small hands shot forth and wiped away a thick layer of mud from one small face. A pair of dark brown eyes blinked open and inspected both of them very carefully.

  “You cannot take my sister away,” said a high voice.

  Mishi nodded, knowing very well what it was to fear being separated from the person you were closest to in all the world.

  “I promise we won’t try to take your sister away,” she said, putting kisō behind the statement to see if the child would sense it.

  The boy’s eyes widened slightly, but he said nothing, only looked at her more closely. Mishi sent out her own kisō then, even as she felt his reaching for her, and was surprised to find enough kisō to make a fairly formidable Kisōshi.

  “Do you know how to sense lies, little one?” she asked.

  The child nodded.

  “Then I’ll say it again, with none of my own kisō, and you can decide for yourself if I mean it.”

  Another nod.

  “We mean you no harm, and we promise not to try to take your sister away from you.”

  There was a brief pause, in which no movement came from either of the two forms in the mud, but then the child who had already cleared its face sat up, and the child next to it began its own slow rise.

  The two muddy figures stood, and Mishi wondered how to say what she had to say next.

  “I’m sorry children, but you appear to be the only survivors.”

  “They killed the whole village?” the first child asked.

  Mishi only nodded.

  She was startled when the second child spoke in a voice even higher than the first.

  “Good,” it said. “They deserved it.”

  ~~~

  Mishi watched the now familiar silhouette of the red-tailed hawk circling in the clear blue sky above their camp, and wondered how long the bird had been keeping an eye on them. Riyōshi had come down to check in with Mitsu most evenings while they had been making their way through the wilderness between Yanagi’s forst and these northern villages. She hadn’t seen him for a few days, though, and she wondered if the hawk had news, or had simply gone off hunting. Either way, the bird had been circling for some time, but didn’t seem inclined to land.

  The air held the smell of thawing earth, and, while tinged with the tang of mud from their two
small companions, it was free of the smoke and rot that had made breathing in the village so difficult. She didn’t think it was the smell that was keeping the bird away, but he generally didn’t spend this much time circling before he landed.

  Her gaze drifted to the still mud-covered children.

  “How did you know to hide?” Mishi asked. The children had been virtually silent since leaving the village. They had walked hand in hand, saying nothing, between Mishi and Mitsu as they had made their way to this camp about a league away from the village. Now they had settled into a small copse of trees and Mishi had set a cooking fire (an act that had caused both children’s eyes to widen substantially, as she had used fire she called forth from her hands) so she thought it was time to find out more about the two resilient little ones.

  The boy—Mishi was fairly certain that the children were a boy and a girl, though with all the mud caked onto them it was difficult to tell—shrugged his shoulders.

  “The people in the town have been trying to separate us for moons now. When we heard there were Kisōshi coming, we thought they must be coming to try again. We couldn’t get away before someone found us, but once the fighting started we knew we had to hide. They would have seen us if we’d run from the square.”

  Mishi didn’t need to see the terrified expression on the boy’s face, which she could barely make out through all the mud. She knew what had happened to anyone who had been caught running away from the square.

  “So you hid in the mud?” she asked, hoping the boy would continue.

  He nodded.

  “I like mud.” The way he said the words made it sound as though that were the only explanation anyone could need. She supposed it probably was.

  “How long did you stay there?” Mitsu asked, as he returned to the copse of trees they’d made their camp in. Mishi assumed he must be finished with scouting the area to make sure that no sanzoku were nearby.

  The boy looked unsure.

  “The sanzoku came before it was light out,” he replied.

  Mishi nodded, repressing a shiver. It would be sunset soon, so the two children had spent almost the entire day lying still in that mud. She sent a bit more kisō to the fire, increasing its heat. It was a cool day as it was, and the children would be freezing as soon as the sun went down, if they weren’t already. She wished they had some clean clothes for them, but Mishi and Mitsu were both traveling with just the clothes on their backs. Tomorrow, when there was plenty of daylight to dry them off, and they could be sure they were far away from the sanzoku who had destroyed the village, they would find a stream and let the children wash.

  Mitsu began preparing three large rabbits that he must have caught while he was scouting the nearby woods, and Mishi took a moment to marvel at how quickly he could find supper every day. She was in no danger of starving in the woods, but it would certainly have taken her longer to secure the camp’s perimeter and also find a meal than it had taken Mitsu.

  She returned her attention to the two small people before her.

  “Why were the villagers going to separate you?” she asked.

  The boy looked shy, and didn’t respond. For the first time since they had left the village square, the girl spoke up instead.

  “He’s a Kisōshi, and the villagers insisted on sending him away to train.”

  Mishi nodded.

  “They do that with all Kisōshi,” she said quietly. “Even girls now are being asked to train.”

  The little girl frowned.

  “There are no female Kisōshi,” she said. “Everyone knows that.”

  Mishi raised an eyebrow at that. For one, the two children had just seen her light their camp fire from her hands, a fairly obvious sign that she was a Kisōshi herself. For another, the little girl had clearly been lying when she made the statement—Mishi’s kisō told her that, along with her gut. What shocked her most was that the girl had used kisō to reinforce the lie.

  It seemed that she was looking at not one miniature Kisōshi, but two.

  4th Day, 3rd Moon, Cycle 1 of the New Council

  MISHI STARED AT the slowly lightening sky and tried to let the horror of the previous day leave her consciousness. Her nightmares had been even worse than usual, but she had expected as much, and made Mitsu sleep between her and the children. She had tried to insist on sleeping outside of the camp, so that if she were caught in any of her dreamscapes she wouldn’t be able to harm anyone, but Mitsu had insisted that she stay close to him, as he had for all of their journey so far. His arguments were the same as they had been for the past tenday; he was far more likely to wake up and defend himself if she were close by and he could sense her movement and react accordingly. He would be able to stop her from reaching the children, or at least distract her long enough for the children to escape. He had quietly added that she was warm, and the nights were still cold, as he did every time Mishi brought up the argument anew, and she had asked him if he was willing to die for warmth. He simply smiled, and said that a person had to die for something, and that was the end of the debate.

  In truth, Mishi had let it lie because she thought that his first argument was a strong one. When they had been traveling alone, sleeping beside her was Mitsu’s best chance of waking before he could be attacked, so that he might somehow escape her, and now that the children were with them it was still their best chance of survival. She ignored the tiny voice inside her that said she found Mitsu’s presence through the night comforting.

  Last night, they had discussed taking turns to keep watch, but Riyōshi had arrived then, having delayed until both children were asleep, and—after reporting that he had flown all day and seen no sign of the sanzoku who had attacked the village—had insisted that he would roost nearby and warn them of any intruders. Knowing that the bird was very quick to wake, and had keener senses than either of them unless they were using kisō to aid them, they had agreed.

  Mishi’s dreams had changed, and now included piles of corpses and the screams of innocent children. She hadn’t slept well, and a final nightmare had woken her just before dawn. But she hadn’t woken with dream visions still ruling her sight and mind, and she was thankful for that.

  Instead, she had woken to the sound of two small voices whispering in the darkness.

  “Do you think that they know?” the boy asked.

  “No. Why would they?” replied the girl.

  “I think that lady is a Kisōshi.”

  Silence had greeted that statement, and Mishi had heard nothing more from the children as she lay awake watching the sun recapture the sky from darkness.

  After the little girl had lied to her yesterday, she and Mitsu hadn’t asked them any more questions, aside from their names. The boy had replied that they didn’t have any, and the four of them had eaten in near silence, with the children drifting into an exhausted sleep when they had barely finished their portion of the food.

  She understood all too well why the little girl would have lied about the existence of female Kisōshi. Why she would have done anything to hide the truth of what she was. And it was now clear why the two children would have done all that they could to keep from being separated. The two of them together could pretend that the strong level of kisō they presented was only the boy’s, as long as no one looked too closely. But if the boy was taken and sent to train as a Kisōshi, the girl would be left alone with her own kisō exposed to anyone who might look for it, and no way to deny that it was hers. Apparently, she hadn’t yet mastered the art of damping her power, as Mishi had been forced to do in childhood. Yes, she understood the siblings’ motivations to stay together all too well. What she didn’t understand was why the little girl hadn’t shown the slightest remorse that the whole village had been killed, why she had said that they all deserved it.

  It was clear that the two children didn’t trust them at all, and with good reason, Mishi thought. After all, aside from arriving and saying they meant them no harm, what had they done to prove that they were worthy of
trust? Especially considering all that the children had just been through. She tried to imagine lying still in a pool of mud while hearing a group of people you had known by name being slaughtered. Even if the girl truly thought the villagers deserved their fate, hearing them die horribly couldn’t have been anything less than terrifying.

  She would have to build some trust with them today, if she could. She would like to know which elements they were tied to, and offer the girl training, if she wanted it. Either way, these children would need her and Mitsu to protect them until they could be safely escorted to the Zōkame estate, or to the school that Ami was rebuilding in the south.

  That thought in mind, Mishi rose from her bed roll and began doing her old morning routine of unarmed kata.

  As she had hoped, both children, who were now awake and had enough light to see by, were keenly interested in watching her. Once she had their attention, without breaking her concentration, she called a small globe of fire to her hand and began moving with it through the forms of her unarmed kata.

  Both children gasped when they first saw the globe, and their attention only grew more intense as she began to roll the ball around her arms and upper body with the fluid movements that came from cycles and cycles of practice. After she had finished her fifth form, she stopped and turned to the children.

  “Would either of you like to try?” she asked.

  The children both looked eager for a moment, before their faces fell in unison. At least, that was the impression Mishi got through the mud; it was difficult to tell for certain.

  “I’m not a fire kisō,” the boy said, hanging his head.

  Mishi looked at the girl, but she just averted her eyes and said nothing.

  “You don’t have to be a fire kisō,” she said. “What element can you call?”

  The boy glanced sideways at his sister before replying, “Earth.” Then he muttered, “And a bit of water.”

  Mishi sensed the lie, wondering how often he had repeated those words, and if anyone had believed him. Of the very few people who could call more than one element, no one was ever able to call both water and earth, or both wind and fire. No one knew why exactly, but Tatsu had always told her it was a question of balance and the way the elements interacted. If a person was able to call more than one element, it would be a healing element like water or earth, and a combative element like fire or wind, but water and fire cancelled each other out, as did earth and fire, so the only options for working with more than one element were earth and wind, or water and wind. Earth and wind allowed people to be kisōseki, strong trackers like Mitsu, and water and wind…well, very few people had that combination, but Mishi had heard that they were called raiko, or stormcallers, and the legends of their powers were terrifying. If Tatsu hadn’t assured her of their existence, she would have simply thought them a myth created to frighten travelers around a campfire.