throat.
Aisha collapsed, gasping, her mountain of pillows scattered, thick drifts of hair tangled about her face, like a child’s plaything thrown into a corner when it was no longer wanted. The pup licked her fingers, whining. Hiro shrank from the ruin of the bed and staggered to his feet, gasping for breath.
“Very clever, my Lady.” He wiped sweat from his lips on the back of his real hand. “The men always spoke of how you played us like a shamisen. But not today.” He swallowed, shook his head. “You do not die today.”
Regaining his breath, he knelt by the bed, rearranged the pillows, straightened the bedclothes. And with trembling iron fingers, he brushed the stray hair away from her face.
“No escape,” he sighed, caressing the new bruises along her jaw. “For either of us. You will be my bride. The line of Kazumitsu will live on through us. At least long enough to see that bitch buried in an unmarked grave. After that, I don’t care what—”
She spit at him, then. A glistening spray, right into his face. He closed his eyes and flinched, lips drawing back from his teeth.
“You bastard coward,” she breathed.
Hiro grabbed a handful of her long, black hair, used it to wipe the spit from his eye and cheek. He coiled it in his fist, pulled her head back as she hissed in pain.
“I will leave you now, love.” He planted a gentle kiss on her brow. “Think well of me until I return.”
She glared at him, boiling hatred unmasked in her eyes. He stood and straightened his kimono, the swords at his waist, marched to the rice-paper doors. Sliding them apart, he turned to look at her one last time.
“Consider your position carefully, my Lady. Consider the people you hold dear. The maidservants who even now languish in their cells, awaiting judgment for their complicity in your betrayal.”
“Leave them alone,” she hissed. “They knew nothing of this.”
“So you say. But consider your life is not the only one at stake here. And consider there are far worse fates than death.”
“To live as you do, you mean?” she said. “On your knees? A Guildsman’s slave?”
“It is honor that bids me kneel, Lady. Honor to my oaths. My fallen Lord.” Contempt curling his lips. “A concept you would have no understanding of.”
“Honor,” she spat. “If you had any notion of it, you would have already committed seppuku, Hiro-san. Bad enough you allowed your Lord to perish. But for a member of the Kazumitsu Elite to live on while his Shogun lies slain…”
She glared with narrowed, hate-filled eyes.
“You are a disgrace, boy.”
The ghost of a smile graced Hiro’s lips.
As empty as the jade-green eyes that rose to meet her own.
“As I said,” he nodded. “You always were an insightful one…”
14
INTOXICATION
Nothing.
They sat together at the tip of a black spur, dropping away into a raging sea. Buruu curled up, chin pressed to stone, a barrier of fur and feathers against the howling wind. Yukiko huddled against him, almost drunk on his warmth, the rhythm of his pulse entwined with her own as she pored over her grim prize, line by painstaking line.
Bishamon’s scroll was not, as she’d hoped, a work concerned with the Kenning’s mysteries. Rather, it was a compilation of mythologies concerning Stormdancers and their mystical bonds to the thunder tigers they rode. Though Yukiko had never really considered it in the past, it made sense that every Stormdancer in Shima’s history was possessed of her gift—how else would they bond with the arashitora they rode into battle? The scroll contained accounts of Kitsune no Akira’s battle against the Dragon of Forgetting. Kazuhiko the Red’s triumph over the One Hundred Ronin. An incomplete account of Tora Takehiko’s heroic charge into the Devil Gate (she presumed the rest of the legends were inked on some other part of Brother Bishamon’s body). But as to clues about how to control the power, or even accounts of it surging beyond control, there was no mention.
Yukiko hung her head, fighting back bitter tears, pushed knuckles into her eyes. Her hair hung over her face, the rain slicking it to her skin in sodden skeins. Lady Amaterasu was sinking to her rest, the Sun Goddess burning the cloud-choked western skies a scorched and bloody umber. Night was falling, and with it, all her hopes.
Slipping into Buruu’s mind, lips pressed tight, trying to focus the Kenning to a tiny point, like sunlight through an aperture of flesh and bone. Her skull ached, warm sickness swelling in her belly, pressing at her gorge. Sharp teeth waiting just beneath her skin.
Wincing. Licking slowly at wind-parched lips. Too tired and disheartened to build her wall, to push bricks into place that would only come crashing down again.
A bitter and helpless fury curled her fingers to fists. She looked up at a black sea rolling overhead, searching the skies for answers she knew were not there. The ache in her skull tightened its grip. The frustration made her want to scream.
The arashitora unfurled one clockwork wing, wrapped it around her shivering form. The static electricity made her tingle, wrapping her up in lightning’s scent.
She smiled, closed her eyes and rested her head against him. Holding him tight, she pushed warmth into his mind, the gratitude she felt for him just being near. The promise he’d made her was bright in her memory, etched on the stone she set her back against.
He heaved a sigh, wind curling in the feathers beneath narrowed, amber eyes.
She pouted amidst her snug kingdom of fur and feathers.
