Kinslayer

“Don’t do it again, please.”

“Do not be angry at me.”

“I’m not angry…”

“You are.” Tears welled in the girl’s eyes. “I am sorry. It is just … everything, all this…” She shook her head, groping blindly for the words. “Now I have the chance to feel something, I just want to feel it all…”

The tears spilled over her new eyelashes, down those moon-pale cheeks.

“I am so sorry, Kin-san.”

“It’s all right.” He opened his arms, offered an awkward hug. She pressed against him and shivered, chest heaving softly, and he ran his hand over the stubble on her head and whispered, “It’ll be all right, don’t cry, hush now,” feeling altogether wretched.

Not long ago, he was just like her, spreading his wings for the first time in a world he’d never known. He remembered what it was to feel that way; to be the unwanted one, the one outside looking in, and for one brief, impossible moment, he forgot about a girl with long dark hair and skin like smooth cream and eyes so deep he could drown, flying away on her thunder tiger and taking his heart with her. Forgot that she was missing, that she could be dead, that the last time he spoke to her could be the last time they ever spoke at all.

Forgot about her entirely.

But only for a moment.

A single, empty moment.

* * *

Angry stares prickled on the back of his neck.

Ayane walked beside him, seemingly lost in the flood of sights and smells, a small smile on her face as she squinted at the treetops and breathed deep, as if every lungful were her first and last. But Kin could feel it. See it in the Kage’s grim expressions, shoulders set, pausing in their labors as the pair walked by and making the warding sign against evil when they thought he could not see.

Some looked upon Ayane with vague approval; it seemed rumor about her saving Daichi’s life had spread. But for him, there was only mistrust. Anger and contempt.

They stepped onto a footbridge, Ayane chattering about the way the wind made the hairs on her arms stand up in tiny rows, how it felt like static current, and how strange it was to have hair on her arms at all. Kin prickled under the angry stares, teeth gritted, rankling at the injustice of it all. If not for his ’throwers, that oni war band would have been unstoppable—the Kage could never have met them in battle, let alone bested them. If not for his perimeter, even now those hellspawn would be roaming the forest with abandon, and the Kage would be holed up in their trees and praying for Yukiko to return. Before they failed, the emplacements had taken out more than a dozen of the monsters. But did that matter to anyone? Did anyone take even a second to think what might have happened if Kin had not been here at all? And did no one else think it suspicious that every single ’thrower failed within seconds of each other?

How the hells did they get those seals to rupture?

“Guildsman.”

The voice was a fist in his gut, hard and freezing, the memory of the knife twisting his input jack setting his teeth on edge.

Skritch.

Skriiiitch.

“Go away, Isao,” Kin said.

The boys were standing at the end of the footbridge, cutting off their passage to the bathhouse; Isao in front, Atsushi lurking like a shadow behind. Kin stopped, pulled Ayane to a halt. The girl blinked and looked around, doe-eyed and confused.

“What is it, Kin-san?”

“Go back to the prison.” He kept his voice low. “Wait for me there.”

“I told you what would happen if you didn’t leave.” Isao hefted a pair of tonfa; wooden clubs with a short handle perpendicular to the shaft. “You should have listened.”

Kin noticed movement behind him; Takeshi standing at the other end of the bridge, smile stretched across that crooked face. He looked around to the villagers on the other platforms, but none would meet his gaze. They picked up their bundles, or simply abandoned their tasks and walked away. The boys were all oni killers—if they had issue with the Guildsmen, it seemed not many Kage considered it their business after the disaster at the ’thrower line.

Kin squeezed Ayane’s hand, pulled her behind him.

“Stay out of the way, Ayane.”

“Your accursed shuriken-throwers nearly got Daichi-sama killed,” Isao spat. “I warned you.”

Ten feet away.

“My ’throwers?” Kin hissed through gritted teeth. “You’re the bastards who sabotaged them. That’s why you begged Daichi not to fight at the line. You set them to fail, but you wanted them to blow in the test run with the whole village watching, not in the middle of—”

“How the hells would I know how to sabotage your machines, Guildsman?”

“I saw your hands after the battle, Isao. They were covered in grease.”

“Grease, you fool?” Isao scoffed. “Was it black? Sticky? Like oni blood?”

Five feet.

“When Daichi hears about this—”

“And how is he going to hear about it?” Isao smiled. “Dead men don’t talk.”

Two feet. Close enough to see the sweat beaded upon the boy’s skin. The hatred unveiled in his eyes.

“Isao, don’t—”

The tonfa whistled past his jaw, Kin jerking away and cracking the back of his head into Ayane’s nose. The girl squealed and put her hands to her face, staggered back, grasping at the rope railing for balance. The bridge swayed beneath them.

Kin stepped forward and grabbed the second tonfa, wood smacking sharply against his palms. He tried to wrestle the weapon from Isao’s grip, but the boy lashed out with the other club, once, twice, cracking into his solar plexus and ribs, bringing the wind up from his lungs with a mouthful of vomit. Kin aimed a clumsy elbow as he fell, clipping Isao’s chin. A foot to his gut curled him up on the deck as he heard Ayane cry out, a sharp snatch of laughter from Takeshi as he seized the girl’s arms.

Isao hauled Kin to his feet, punched him in the stomach again, and again, and again, until the pain burned white and his breath turned red and the world lurched side to side as if a giant were shaking it in clumsy, fat fists. He felt himself being pushed against the railing, bridge rocking beneath them, Isao’s hand wrapped in his collar, the other clutching his obi and dragging him upward, dangling him out over the sixty-foot drop to the forest below.

“Do you have a machine to help you fly, Guildsman?”

Kin wheezed, tasted blood, clutching the hand at his throat. He could feel the forest breeze, cool and crisp, leaves the color of fire tumbling from the canopy and falling into the space below. Would he flutter as they did? Spinning end over end, down to sudden rest, closing his eyes and dreaming no more? Was this how he ended?

Was the Chamber of Smoke all a lie?

Hundreds of eyes, red as sunset, aglow and unblinking and staring up at him with as much adoration as glass could muster.

His own face, but not his at all.

“Do not call me Kin. That is not my name.”

Stray sunlight glinted through the canopy, a lance of bloody red, dazzling his eyes.

Yukiko, where are you?

He felt a wet spray across his face, heard a scream over whistling, silver music. Isao released his grip, lurched away, Kin crumpling to his knees as sharp cries of fear and pain filled the air. He blinked into the shifting light, saw Ayane standing over him, bloody face, hands outstretched, trembling fingers splayed as if feeling the air. The spider limbs were arched at her back, each one glazed with a thin film of scarlet.