A flurry of hisses from the raised barrels clutched in the Guildsmen’s hands. Ami cried out, Jun shoving her aside as whistling projectiles filled the space between them; tiny needles set with syringes, filled with gleaming black liquid. Jun moved, his sword a blur, rolling and swaying, slicing one, two, three from the air. The samurai lunged, war clubs raised, closing about the boy as he swayed in the hail of fire. Jun struck, swift as quicksilver, slicing through the join at one man’s elbow, stepping behind another as the Lotusmen fired again, the samurai’s back sparking under the needle flak.
“Stop this,” Ami roared. “I am the First Lady of this Shogunate, and I command you to stop this!”
Jun struck again, pushing his blade through the eye socket of one samurai’s mask, the soldier screaming and falling to his knees. Jun vaulted up off the man’s shoulders, flipping himself overhead, landing amidst the Lotusmen. His blade a whistling, crimson blur, weaving in the air to the tune of murder, blood spraying in haphazard patterns across the dojo walls. One Lotusman collapsed screaming, two more forever silenced. But as the fourth fell back before Jun’s onslaught, he let loose a last volley from his weapon, one of the tiny needles striking the boy in his shoulder, burying itself to the hilt.
Ami cried out, drew the tanto hidden in the small of her back. She stabbed the Lotusman in the throat, a gush of crimson warmth flooding over her hands, painted upon her lips. Bubbling nausea in her belly as the Guildsman fell, clutching the spray at his neck. The floor slippery beneath her feet. The first man she had ever killed. Gods …
Jun turned back to the samurai, the figures surrounding him now. His chest heaving, frown forming between his brows, shaking his head as if to clear it. Blade dripping gore. Plucking the empty needle from his shoulder. Swaying on his feet now. Ami crying out as the samurai lunged.
He fended them off for a moment or two more, opening up another at his throat. Yet his footsteps were unsteady. Head drooping. Shoulders slumping. Sword hanging limp in his grip. Ami cried out, stepping into the fray only to be seized by iron hands, flung into a corner. She hit the wall hard, breath knocked loose, blood on her tongue. A club stuck Jun’s sword arm, breaking it clean, the boy crying out as he fell to his knees. His sword clattering to the dojo floor as another blow crashed across his shoulders, splayed him flat upon the boards. Clenched fists rising and falling, Ami trying to catch breath enough to scream. Jun falling still, beaten senseless, head lolling on his neck as they slapped manacles about his wrists. Hauling him from the room now, supported between two hulking iron figures, his bare feet trailing through pools of cooling blood. Leaving her there, clutching her breast. Staring at his sword, gleaming in the crimson puddle, now as useless as his certainty. His prophecy. His destiny.
Weeping. Cursing. Hair in ragged curtains over her eyes. And dragging herself across the floor, through the blood, she clutched the blade, the hollow scabbard, hauling herself to her feet.
She had to find Tatsuya …
Three figures in a shadowed hallway, lit by the scarlet light of flickering lanterns.
The first, a son of the great Kazumitsu Dynasty, son of Sataro-no-miya, victor of the Battle of Four Sisters. Absolute Lord of all he surveyed. Shogun of the Shima Imperium. Unquestioned. Unchallenged. Untouchable.
The second, a widowed bride. Her belly swollen with her beloved’s child. Still dressed in the mourning black, barely a month since her husband’s passing.
Standing together, heads bowed, speaking softly.
A third figure, hidden in the shadows. Quiet as whispers. Still as stone. A bloody sword clutched in her white-knuckle grip.
She watched them. The pair. Speaking in hushed tones. Dread and disbelief in her belly. Recalling his face in the battle’s aftermath, drenched in blood. The gentle kiss he had placed on her brow—the first touch from him she had felt in years.
She was certain now. But she had to see.
The pair of them. Soft voices. A wicked, curling smile.
A hand, placed on a swollen belly.
Lips, upturned to a gentle kiss.
The Shogun removing his golden tiger mask, the face beneath one she recognized at last. Almost identical to his brother’s. A near perfect symmetry. But still, she should have known …
Not a bull upon the throne.
A bear in a bull’s skin.
And just as certain, the thought that pulled her back from the brink.
The truth that loosened her grip on the blade’s hilt, and all desire here to remain.
I was not there that day.
I did not see him dragged through the streets before a wondering crowd. The figures in leather and brass on either side of him. Eyes of bloody-red glass. The four stones, newly erected in the Market Square. The mob gathered around it, as if some new sport. The blind boy there chained, eyes open and seeing nothing at all.
I did not hear the figures in their white tabards, reading of “impurity” from ancient and twisted scripture. Proclaiming a new order, a new law, set with the Shogun’s seal. I did not hear their lies. The feeble justifications for atrocity you monkey-children so love to weave. I did not hear the sound of the flames flaring at their wrists. The tinder beneath him crackling.
His screams.
I did not smell the blackening meat, the burning hair, the charring bones.
I did not touch the cooling remains when all was said and mercifully done.
I did not taste the ashes on my tongue.
I was not there.
I did not see, nor hear, not smell, nor touch, nor taste. Not any of it.
So how do I know, you ask?
Foolish monkey-child.
Death told me.
Ninety-nine years after the birth of the Kazumitsu Dynasty, at the beginning of a boiling summer, I watched a twenty-two-year-old woman limp to the highest summit of the Four Sisters Mountains.
Not the most spectacular of finales, I will grant you. Not one to bring audiences to their feet, rippling with vibrant applause. Not the way a story about heroes should finish. And you need not be availed of facts about how high the peaks, or how hard the trek or how the skies around those magnificent mountains were prone to rain samurai.
All this, you already know.
She was dressed in heavy black cloth and furs. Eyes hidden from the burning sun behind goggles of dark glass. A heavy cowl pulled up over her newly shorn hair.
But still I recognized her.
Seated at my Khan’s right flank, I was. Raising my head at the warning cries of our scouts, Rahh’s tail whipping in agitation. Curled there in his warmth, the embers of my first flushing still glowing faint. And beside me, he, the one I had chosen when it pressed upon me with all its insistent heat.
We do not know love as you, monkey-child.
But that is not to say we do not know love.
A summer storm was gathered above our heads, cooling showers to wash away the smoke curling ever upward from the monkey-scabs below. Thunder pressed down on us like our father’s smiles. Butterflies in our bellies. The taste of home.
And now the Lady Ami, here in my Khan’s court. No sign of Jun beside her. Confusion in my thoughts. Cool dread in my heart. What had happened, that she was here alone?
