fists. Remembering the heat of conflagration on her skin, the screams of dying Guildsmen as the sky rained ironclads. Because of them. Because of her.
And it felt
The thunder tiger sighed. His stare fixed on the ancient forest below, glazed and distant, staring into a future stained a deeper scarlet than the poisoned sky above.
Buruu banked down into murmuring gloom.
Her bedroom trembled in the midnight hush, candles flickering on the walls like dawn through rippling autumn leaves. Yukiko watched the shadows play through the blur of her lashes, eyelids made of lead, the same blood-drenched pain that had plagued her for weeks pounding inside her skull. Fists to temples, breathing deep. Teeth clenched, focusing on the aching scar at her shoulder to stop her mind drifting back into the dark. The place where her father lay, cold and dead, the ashes of his funeral offerings caked on his face. The place where she was helpless. The little one. The frightened one.
She drew the back of her fist across her mouth.
Buruu’s low growl dragged Yukiko from the throb inside her head, the ache in her body. She closed her eyes, tried to look through the Kenning to see what he was grumbling about. But as she reached inside his head, the world flared bright and loud, screeching and clawing—the thoughts of a hundred tiny lives out in the gloom flooding her skull. An owl soaring through the velvet dark (
A figure stood in the shadows.
High cheekbones and steel-gray eyes. Dressed in dappled forest-green. An elegant, old-fashioned wakizashi sword at her waist, a scabbard embossed with golden cranes in flight. A long, black fringe cut to fall over one side of her face, almost concealing the jagged diagonal knife scar running from forehead to chin.
Another of Yoritomo’s legacies.
“Kaori.”
Daichi’s daughter lurked in the near darkness, wary eyes locked on the thunder tiger.
“He won’t hurt you,” Yukiko said. “Come in.”
Kaori hovered for a few uncertain moments, then slipped past Buruu as quickly as she could. The arashitora watched her, amber stare glittering. His metal-clad wings twitched, and he lay his head back down with a sigh and a hiss of pistons, tail sweeping in broad, lazy arcs.
The bedroom was ten feet square, unvarnished wood, wide windows looking out into a sea of night. The perfume of dried wisteria mingled with sweet candle smoke, doing their best to banish the pulsing ache at Yukiko’s temples. She lay back in her unmade bed with a sigh.
“The lookouts told me you had returned,” Kaori said.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come see you and Daichi-sama. I was tired.”
The woman looked her over with a critical eye, lips pressed tightly together. Her stare lingered on the empty sake bottle at the foot of the bed.
“You look awful. Are you unwell?”
“The Guild ships are dealt with.” Yukiko’s arm was slung over her face, words muffled in her sleeve. “They’re no threat to us anymore.”
“Your Guildsman is resting. He is torn. Bruised. But Old Mari says he will recover.”
“He’s not
“Indeed.”
“My thanks, anyway.” Her tone softened. “Your father honors me with his trust. I know what it means to have Kin here.”
“I sincerely doubt that, Stormdancer.”
“Don’t call me that.”
Uncomfortable silence fell between them, broken only by the whisper of dry leaves, the thunder-rumble breath of the arashitora outside. Yukiko kept her arm over her eyes, hoping to hear Kaori’s retreating footsteps. But the woman simply hovered, like dragonflies in the bamboo valley where Yukiko had spent her childhood. Poised. Motionless.
Finally, Yukiko dragged herself upright with an exasperated sigh. Pain flared at the base of her skull, claws curling up through her spinal cord.
“I’m tired, Kaori-san.”
“Thirsty too, no doubt.” Steel-gray eyes flickered to the empty sake bottle. “But we have news from our agents in Kigen city.”
She sensed the hesitation in Kaori’s scorn. The weight.
“Is Akihito all right?”
“Well enough. He cannot escape Kigen while rail and sky-ship traffic is locked down. But the local cell is looking after him.” Kaori walked to the window, avoided her reflection in the dark glass. “The city is in chaos. The Tiger bushimen can barely maintain the peace. We get new recruits every day. Talk of war is everywhere.”
“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? The body thrashing without its head.”
“The Guild seek to grow it a new one.”
Yukiko blinked through the headache blur. “Meaning what?”
The woman sighed, clawing her fringe over her face, kohl-rimmed eyes downcast.
“I take little pleasure in telling you this…”
“Telling me what, Kaori?”
The woman looked at her palms, licked her lips. “Lord Hiro is alive.”
Yukiko felt the words as a blow to her stomach, a cold fist of dread knocking the wind from her lungs. She felt the room spin, the floor fall away into a beckoning nothing. And yet somehow, she managed to sway to her feet, to hold her center and pretend she didn’t feel like a stranger clawing at the insides of someone else’s skin.
She could see him in her memory, lying on sweat-stained sheets, the light of a choking moon playing on planes of smooth skin and taut muscle. His lips, soft as clouds and tasting of salt, pressed against hers in midnight’s hush. Peeled back from his teeth as she drove her blade into his chest, as Buruu’s beak sheared his right arm from his shoulder in a spray of hot crimson.
How could it be? He was dead. They killed him.
“Gods,” she whispered. “My gods…”
“I am sorry,” Kaori said, still staring into the dark. “We hear but whispers. We only have one operative left who can move freely within the palace grounds. But we know Hiro is one of three seeking the title of Daimyo.
