by Renee Ahdieh
His posture alert, Raiden pushed away from the wall. “My sovereign.”
“I know you have questions.”
A thoughtful expression crossed the elder brother’s face. “Concerns more than questions.”
“Ah, but you forget: concerns are for the uncertain.” Roku smiled to himself, his back still turned. “And questions for the ill-bred.”
Raiden’s cool laughter sliced through the stillness. “I suppose I deserved that. Father would be proud to hear you remind me.”
“Even if he lacked in many ways, our father always did have a cutting remark at the ready.” Roku turned in place and glanced at his elder brother. “But I am not interested in having anyone openly challenge me, brother.” His tone was a warning, his features tight.
Raiden crossed his arms, the hardened leather of his breastplate creaking with the motion. “I do not wish to challenge you in the main. I only wish to spare you strife.”
“Then cease with being the cause of it.” The smooth skin of Roku’s forehead creased once. “Our father perished under questionable circumstances, and it is of great importance that we learn who is responsible for his untimely death. Failing to appear strong at this moment—failing to assert my sovereignty over all those who watch like prowling owls—will forever taint my reign. Decisive action is necessary, and I expect you to lead by example, with unwavering obedience.” His back straight and his chin proud, Roku shifted toward the stone staircase to begin his descent. A hand moved to stay him. One of the few hands still permitted to touch him with impunity.
“You believe this boy is responsible for Father’s death?” Raiden asked.
Roku did not answer. Merely shrugged off his half brother’s hand.
“This is beneath you, Roku.” Raiden’s voice was soft.
The young emperor arched a brow as though in warning.
A smile curved up one side of Raiden’s face. “My sovereign,” he amended, shifting back to bow.
“It is never beneath a true leader to face his enemy.” Roku took another step downward, his brother raising a torch to illumine the way. The light danced across the timber-bound stones. “I wish to look upon the face of Takeda Shingen’s only son and learn what kind of blood flows through his veins. What kind of fear lurks behind his eyes.” His smile was strangely serene, like ice braced against a howling wind.
Raiden followed closely, his attempts to marshal both his words and his thoughts all too apparent. “If you don’t believe him responsible for Father’s death, why must you know anything about him? Simply end him and be done with it.”
“I never said I believed him innocent, brother. The boy emerged from hiding within days of the emperor’s untimely death.”
“A coincidence. We drew him out of the forest.”
“I do not believe in coincidences.” A moment passed in silence before Roku spoke again. “Do you remember the water obelisk Father brought back for us from the west when we were small?”
“The device that reflected the time of day? It broke two days later. We were both punished for it.”
“It did not break. I took it apart.”
Raiden paused in consideration. “You wished to see how it worked?”
“Perhaps.” Roku met his elder brother’s gaze. “Or perhaps I wished to know what lay at its core.”
“You enjoyed breaking it, then.”
“Never something quite so infantile, brother.” Roku laughed softly. “I find it easier to control something when it is in pieces. The Black Clan, the son of Takeda Shingen, any enemy who would see our family fail …” His voice drifted into nothingness as he took another step down.
Raiden sighed, his frustration winning out. “Takeda Ranmaru is not your enemy. Believe me when I say the lore has bloated the boy’s reputation far past reason.” His lips curled into a sneer. “He has lived in the forest among drunken peasants for the better part of a decade. He’s a thief and a wastrel. Nothing more.”
Like a whip from the darkness, Roku’s words lashed from his lips. “That wastrel is the son of the man who thwarted our father and defied our family for years. Lord Shingen led the last uprising in our land.”
“That does not mean his son will amount to anything. I bested him without even once raising a sword in his direction.” The torch in Raiden’s right hand flared as a gust of acrid air blew around them.
Undeterred, Roku continued, his smile once more composed. “I’ve said this before, but your arrogance does not serve you well, brother.”
“Your curiosity here will not serve you well either, my sovereign,” Raiden said. “Allow me to simply kill him. Let us be done with him, quickly and quietly.”
Roku linked his hands behind his back. “Even if he proves innocent, a spectacle should be made of his death.”
“Very well, then. We can drown him in Yedo Bay. Upside down, as Father did with Asano Naganori. Or stretch him from the ramparts until his arms split from his sides.”
“Eventually,” Roku agreed. “But not yet. It does nothing to merely chop down a weed. One must tear it out by the roots.” He closed his eyes as though the motion would clear his mind. Lend clarity to his thoughts. “This was the mistake our father made. He did not wish to unearth the seed of Takeda Shingen’s discord. He did not take the time to reduce his enemy to pieces, and it resulted in his death.” His eyes flashed open as a shadow fell across his face, like storm clouds gathering over a lake. “I will be a better emperor than our father. I will find every last one of these weeds and tear them out by their very roots.” He spoke the last softly, in a voice tinged with menace.
When Raiden replied, it was with great care. “Perhaps you are right, my sovereign. No one can deny that the Takeda family has been a problem, ever since Lord Shingen questioned our father’s designs for the empire.” He inhaled through his nostrils. “But perhaps if we learn to control his son—or even sway him to our side—it could be possible to do what our father failed to do, and unite our land.”
Roku considered his brother as though he were considering a foolish child. One for whom he held fond feelings. “Unite our land?” His features hardened for an instant, a caustic laugh bursting from his lips. “I know where my strengths lie. Do you?”
“My strengths are in serving and protecting my sovereign.” A cold light sparked in Raiden’s eyes. “And enacting vengeance on those who seek to destroy us.”
“If you wish to protect me, brother, you must learn how to exert control over those around you.” Roku took an apprising breath. “Vengeance will come in time. Control is what I seek. Fear will be my weapon.”
Understanding settled onto Raiden’s face. “You wish to control Takeda Ranmaru through fear.”
Roku nodded. “First we must give him reason to fear—not about something as simple as death. Something deeper. And that task begins with the mind. If I wish for the people of Wa to respect me without question, this must be my course of action.”
Raiden paused in thought. “You are concerned your people will not respect you? They will, because you are their heavenly sovereign. It is their duty and your right.”
“No, brother.” Roku shook his head. “Respect is not a thing granted. It is a thing earned.” With that, he quickened his stride over the last few stone steps and glided to a halt. Allowing time for his eyes to adjust, he began murmuring to a wall of darkness before him.
Like a ghost, a man emerged from the reaches beyond. Between his skeletal hands rested a small wooden trunk, bound in bars of dull iron. At first glance, the iron seemed to be marred by rust, but the hint of something far more sinister pervaded the air, like the scent of copper left too long in the rain. The man bowed, his cowl falling lower across a forehead peppered with burn marks. Without a word, Roku motioned for the hooded man to follow him.
Raiden lingered, his features caught in turmoil. He glanced about at the darkness before him, then turned toward the remaining light at his back, his gaze catching on signs of motion near the top of the sta
irs.
The flowing figure of his mother passed beneath a haze of torch fire. She stopped when she saw him, her head tilted to one side, her unbound hair an inky waterfall over one shoulder. Without a word, she bent the wisps of smoke from the nearby torch between her palms, rolling her fingers in a slow circle. Shapes began to form at her command. They solidified in the firelight and came to life as she blew a soft stream of air their way, sending them wafting toward her son.
A wily vermin being crushed beneath the hooves of a massive ox.
Raiden frowned at his mother. When he was younger, his mother’s magic had entranced him. With it, she’d brought stories to life in ways other boys could only dream of. Her magic had granted him solace from the judgment of others at court. It had been a reason for the nobles to show him a measure of respect, despite the circumstances of his birth.
This fear of his mother’s magic had been a form of control, for magic was a rarity. And magic like that of his mother? Rarer still. Granted once in a generation, by the spirits of a world lost for countless lifetimes.
It was a magic he did not possess. A magic Raiden had once tried to understand, only to discover he never could, for he was not meant to wield it.
He had not been blessed with talent.
Irritation passed across his features. He’d been right to rebuff his mother’s counsel. After only a moment of hesitation, Raiden followed in his emperor’s footsteps, his back turned from the magic that had saved him as a child.
Kanako watched her only son disappear into the darkness below. A deep pang unfurled behind her heart. It writhed through her chest and nestled in her stomach, a slithering eel lurking in the reeds, ever present.
She’d known her warrior son would not falter in his allegiance to his sovereign, but she had tested him anyway. Just to see how he would respond. To see if he might change his mind. Raiden was at that particular stage in life in which he wished for all, thought he knew all, and expected to live forever. On occasion, it prompted unforeseen outcomes.
But time had taught Kanako that what was expected rarely came to pass. Death always collected its due. The only thing that remained steadfastly true was power. The power you had. The power you gave.
The power you concealed.
Raiden’s loyalty to his younger brother ran as the river Kamo through the center of the imperial city, cutting the land in two. Perhaps Kanako and her son would stand on opposing banks from time to time, but when the plans she had carefully been laying for years finally came to pass, he would be standing beside her, without question.
It was true Raiden loved his brother with an admirable kind of ferocity. But Kanako was his mother, and she had lost much to give him all. Taken much from many, even their very minds and thoughts and hearts.
She would not see him waste it, especially not on a sniveling rat dressed in yellow silk.
With a sigh, Kanako turned in a circle, the edges of her kimono taking to the air, swallowing her like withering petals until she vanished, leaving behind nothing but a trace of her perfume.
Possessed by the Wind and Sky
It was a night for magic. A night swirling with mystery, an unknowable energy pulsing in its depths.
A promise and a threat.
It had begun earlier, as the scent of metal and moss had collected in the air. The summer storm that had followed had livened all it touched, forming a lushness that lingered long after the sun graced the clouds.
The promise.
Following the first smattering of rain, lightning had cracked across the sky. Thunder had growled from the distant mountains.
The threat.
The fortress of Akechi Takamori stood stalwart against the storm, as it had for five generations past, in unflinching service to the Minamoto clan. After all, a dusting of rain was nothing compared to the monsoons that were sure to come in the future months. Tonight, the thunder and lightning felt strangely at odds with the indifference of the rain. As though the threat levied by the clouds had been halfheartedly carried out.
As the rain collected—its patter becoming one with the echoes of chirping insects and burrowing creatures—a new sound rustled through the trees on the edge of the Akechi domain.
From the deepest reaches of shadow, figures began crawling forth. Their angles and contours seemed fashioned from night itself. Each of their footsteps pressed against the earth as though choreographed by an unseen hand. Tales of old would have cast them as demons crawling from the forest, summoned beneath a darkening sky. These stories had been lost over time, just as the ancient magic became rarer with each passing season. Now only those born into the skill and those willing to risk their very lives to acquire it lived to breathe truth into them.
But these were not demons of the forest, come to life. Save for one, they were men. At least forty of them. Masked and dressed in black, an air of urgency propelled them through the darkness to the very foundations of their enemy’s lair. They crouched low to the ground and made their way across the gently flowing creek bed just beyond the stacked stone walls of the Akechi fortress, stopping in unison beneath a rise of shadows. The unseen hand split the group of men in two, without a word. One half crouched lower, gliding single file toward the reeds near the rear gate, their synchrony perfect, their strides an unbroken ripple. If the night breeze were to fall to its death without warning, the only sounds that would be heard would be the stretching of climbing rope, the whisper of blades being drawn.
The short breaths of anticipation.
The second group of men moved toward the wall on the opposite side of the compound. They pressed their backs against the stacked stone as their leader—the lone demon of their ranks—studied the grooves above: the notches worn into the surface, the space between the mortarless stones. Then the masked demon made a call like a starling, his signal rising crisp and clear into the night. It was something he’d learned from his father, Asano Naganori. This ability to sound a call above detection.
From the ring of tall shadows at the edge of the forest beyond, an expert bowman took aim, his black leather kosode and shining eyes framing his motions. The first arrow sailed through the darkness, whistling as it neared its mark. Its steel tip embedded between the stacked stones an arm’s reach above their heads.
Asano Tsuneoki took hold of the arrow. Checked his weight. Then levered upward in a graceful stroke. Before his other hand even made it to the next hold, a second arrow sailed through the night, just above the first. The arrows continued flying toward the wall as he swung his way toward the battlements above, each of his movements unhurried and precise, aided by the strength of the demon that thrashed through his veins. The same demon that—when left unchecked under the light of the moon—rose to the surface in the form of an otherworldly creature: half wolf, half bear.
Once he reached the top, Tsuneoki breathed deep and waited, staving off the desire to crow in triumph. Their task had only just begun. Though the Black Clan had already cast two of the emperor’s loyal subjects from their lands in only four days, this particular stronghold would provide a bastion for his men. A place for them to regroup and strategize in safety, for however long it might last.
Moreover, Tsuneoki wanted this fortress. After all, Akechi Takamori had been the first daimyō to turn his back on Tsuneoki’s father a decade ago. The first to set fire to the Asano stronghold and watch with glee as it burned.
Now—after ten long years—Asano Tsuneoki would take back a measure of what his family had lost. Beneath him, a spark of flint striking stone flashed through the darkness. An arrowhead dipped in pitch caught flame, multiplying into many tongues of fire, forming an even row below.
In unison, the men of the Black Clan nocked their fiery arrows, then loosed them all at once. The flaming arrows reached skyward—suspended for an eerie instant—before looping over the wall and striking the thatched roofs on the other side.
In the moment it took to blink, the straw caught flame. Hoarse voices and sleep-laden shouts began e
manating from within the Akechi courtyard. An eerie wail unfurled into the darkness, like that of an animal caught in an iron trap, watching its life slowly bleed from its limb. Most of the men ringing the perimeter waited. Two more figures clad in black began scaling the wall, using the same embedded arrows to brace their weight.
As the fire grew fast and bright, the wailing within intensified, its sound caterwauling into a midnight-blue sky. Unnerved, the second group of men hovering in the reeds near the rear gate stilled, the hairs on the backs of their necks standing on end.
Atop the battlements, Tsuneoki signaled to those below as he watched Akechi servants with jars and pails begin shambling toward the gate. Soon enough, the iron bars were lifted by the unsuspecting people within, and the entrance creaked open. Men and women began lurching toward the water. Triumphant in the success of their plan, the members of the Black Clan waiting nearby took to their feet, anticipation unfolding between them.
Before more than a single step could be taken, they halted in their tracks, their triumph muddied by a sense of alarm.
The caterwauling rose in pitch until it became a screeching buzz. A drone. It took flight in their ears, causing several of the men to clamp their hands to the sides of their heads. Wordlessly, the people who’d stumbled past the gates began filling their pots and pitchers. A figure on horseback galloped past them, cracking a whip in its wake.
Concerned by the mounting strangeness, Tsuneoki removed a loop of sturdy rope from its place at his left hip. After securing it to the battlements, he slid toward the ground of the Akechi courtyard, the rope smoking between his sandaled feet. The instant he relinquished hold of the cord, he tore his katana from its scabbard and began searching for signs of soldiers. Finding none, Tsuneoki grabbed the shoulder of a young woman tripping toward the blaze with a cracked pitcher in hand. She whirled in place, the blacks of her eyes twitching. Her mouth hung open as though in a silent scream.
Tsuneoki gasped. Nearly stumbled back. The girl’s head blurred as it shook. Moved in all directions like a broken doll, unhinged at its neck. She began vibrating into solid motion. Her face appeared contorted in horrific pain, yet she said nothing. Did nothing, save attempt to shake his grip from off her shoulder.