by Laura Legend
“My friends,” Miranda began, “I’ve loved you for many years. I’ve loved Kumiko like my own mother. But she is wrong. The Shield is stuck in the past, blinded by its prejudices, and bound by its own traditions.”
Miranda rattled her chains for effect. Kumiko moved to take back the initiative, but Miranda forged ahead.
“We cannot return to the way things were. We cannot save the past. We can only work in the present to save the future. The moment for decisive, transformative action is upon us or all will be lost. You’ve been hiding from the truth for years!” Miranda’s voice cracked with emotion.
The audience rumbled again, a murmur of surprise and incredulity washing through them. This wasn’t going how they’d expected. Cass, on the other hand, wasn’t sure what to think. She loved Miranda but she lacked the context she’d need to make sense of the bigger picture.
“Silence!” Kumiko commanded, addressing both Miranda and the audience. Her fox was primed for action.
Miranda turned to face Kumiko, tears streaming down her face, and addressed her in a low, quiet voice as if only the two of them were present. Miranda’s voice, though, carried through the whole of the frozen room with a force unmatched by her previous exclamations.
“You’re wrong, Kumiko,” Miranda whispered. “You never believed in her. Her heart was too big. She scared you too much. If you’d had the courage to hang on to her, everything would be different now.”
At this, Miranda shot a look straight at Cass on the balcony, meeting her eyes as if she’d know the whole time that Cass was there, watching and listening.
Is she talking about me? Cass wondered. Was Kumiko frightened of me because I’m the Seer? Did Kumiko abandon me after my mother died?
No one moved. No one breathed. Everyone waited for Kumiko.
“No,” Kumiko said, wiping a single tear from the corner of her own eye. “I did what had to be done. I loved you both. And now, because of your shared recklessness, I’ve lost you both.”
Kumiko’s fox jumped up into her arms and she turned her back to the audience. She gestured for the Dogen to take over.
“Council of Elders,” Dogen called, “what is your verdict?”
The lead elder, a tall, thin woman in her fifties, stepped forward. She glanced at Kumiko, then at Miranda, then back to Dogen.
“We find Miranda Byrne guilty of high treason and—effective immediately—sentence her to death,” she said.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The sun was up, streaming through the windows embedded in the upper level of the assembly hall.
Cass stood, the sun magnifying the light emanating from her, and shouted, “No!”
Every face in the room swiveled toward her.
With one step Cass leapt onto the balcony railing and with the next she propelled herself from it, launching herself across the room like a missile. In midair, she drew her sword. She landed with a somersault on the stage and directed all her momentum into a sword stroke that shattered the manacles that bound Miranda. Cass gathered herself and turned to the crowd. Both she and her sword glowed white hot in the full light of the morning sun, trailing wisps of smoke.
The crowd gasped. “The Seer,” some murmured.
The elders cursed. Miranda rubbed her wrists. Dogen, absorbing the whole of Cass’s flaming figure with a single, immovable glance, raised a wild eyebrow. Kumiko sighed and spun slowly back around, loosing her fox.
“Oh child,” Kumiko said mournfully, “you don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Neither, apparently, do you,” Cass retorted, her sword raised, sensing there was some truth to both of their claims.
Miranda bared her teeth in a fierce smile. Guards rushed the stage. Dogen, moving with remarkable speed, grabbed for Miranda. Miranda’s fingers danced, instinctively casting a spell that deflected Dogen’s lunge with a shimmering green field while she jumped to the side, out of his grasp.
Cass caught all this out of the corner of her eye, but she didn’t dare turn her attention away from Kumiko. Cass wasn’t sure what to expect. The one thing she did know was that she couldn’t give Kumiko any room to cast the spell that had laid her low last time.
Cass feinted high with her sword and then kicked low, sweeping Kumiko’s left leg and sending her stumbling backward. Cass couldn’t believe that had worked. Whatever else Kumiko might be, she wasn’t, apparently, invincible.
Cass advanced on Kumiko but, almost before Cass could react to the unexpected success of her blow, Kumiko had planted her foot and regained her balance. Kumiko drew from between two pinched fingers the emerald specter of a katana and used it to parry Cass’s second attack. Caught off guard by the ghostly green sword appearing out of thin air, Cass ended up on the defensive. She struggled to ward off a flurry of Kumiko’s strikes that, with each deflected blow, nonetheless siphoned some of the heat and light from Cass.
Not good, thought Cass as she continued to retreat.
Kumiko advanced and Cass gave ground until she bumped into what she assumed was a wall. But it wasn’t a wall. It was a Dogen.
Dogen looked over his shoulder at her with his typically bemused expression—Cass’s head barely cleared his belt buckle—and swung a jug-sized fist at her head like he was swatting away a fly.
Cass ducked and Miranda took advantage of the distraction. Swinging her arm in three looping circles, Miranda drew a thin green cord out of the air and stretched the cord taut. She dove between Dogen’s legs, looping the cord around his ankles, and then, as he began to topple, she looped it once more around his knees and twice more around his arms and torso. When he hit the ground, the floorboards buckled and splintered beneath his weight. Miranda tied the loop off, signaled for Cass to follow her, and then sprinted for the exit, dodging two more guards along the way.
But before Cass could follow, Kumiko struck her left shoulder with the green blade. Cass felt it pass right through both muscle and bone, crackling with an electric charge. Pain flashed through her shoulder and her left arm went limp and lifeless. Cass tried to scream but the blow had also knocked the breath out of her. All she could manage was a wheeze.
Cass wheeled around—short of breath and one armed—in an effort to keep Kumiko at bay.
“Dear girl,” Kumiko tried again, “please stop. You truly don’t understand the harm you’re doing. Let me help you.”
Again, Cass felt the truth in what Kumiko was saying. There was so much she didn’t understand. But Cass also knew her ignorance wasn’t the only thing in play. There was much more at stake than Kumiko was saying, maybe more than she knew.
While Cass tried to sort this out, Kumiko stood motionless, holding Cass’s eyes with her own. Cass glanced at Dogen, still trussed on the floor and struggling against the glittering cord that bound him. At the same moment, from the opposite direction, Kumiko’s fox launched itself at Cass’s head. Cass caught sight of it out of the corner of her eye and, too late, flinched.
But the fox never reached her.
Atlantis intercepted the fox in midair and, in a ball of fur, the two of them tumbled off the stage and into the crowd, hissing and clawing and biting.
Kumiko struck again. Cass parried, guarding her limp arm. With some power still coursing through her, Cass could already feel her fingertips tingling, coming back to life, as the light counteracted the blow.
“Help me,” Kumiko pressed. “Help me to protect the world we both love. Help me to protect the ancient traditions that your own mother died fighting for.”
Cass wanted to believe her. But Miranda’s earlier words echoed in her mind. This wasn’t about traditions. This wasn’t about the past. In the end, this was about a hope for the future.
“Kibo,” she whispered to herself, “kibo, kibo.”
This was about hope.
It was about the hope that had anchored her mother’s soul. It was about the hope that she’d found, everywhere she’d looked, tangible and immediate in Zach’s mind. It was about the hope that he, from the
start, had invested in her. Or, more truly, it was about the hope that he, from the start, had invested in the two of them.
“No,” Cass said, hopeful, as time thickened and slowed around them, “we can’t go back.”
Cass attacked, forcing Kumiko onto her heels.
For everyone but the two of them, time had almost stopped. The rest of the room was filled with statues. Kumiko, though, seemed immune to the effect.
Still, as Cass continued to press her, Kumiko struggled to keep up. Playing on Cass’s native turf, the drain on Kumiko’s powers was enormous and her ghost blade began to weaken and flicker as she barely deflected Cass’s continued blows until, with an enormous crash, Cass’s final stroke shattered the spell and the blade.
Kumiko dropped to her knees, defenseless, with Cass’s sword at her throat.
“We can’t go back,” Cass repeated, raising her sword ominously, “we can’t go back.”
Kumiko bowed her head and exposed her neck, indicating acceptance of her defeat. But, more than that, Cass sensed, the gesture indicated that, at least in part, Kumiko also accepted that Cass was right: they couldn’t go back. There was, in Kumiko, still a spark of belief, a willingness to hope.
Cass hesitated.
The raised sword felt hot and heavy in her hand. But, teetering on the brink of a decision that she hadn’t yet made, Cass was brought up short by the surprise of a quiet voice whispering in her ear.
“Cass,” Zach said from behind her, one hand on her hip, the other gently restraining her arm, “stop.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Cass dropped her sword with clatter and, before Zach could react, spun around and wrapped him in a fierce hug. Startled, Zach waited a moment to see what would happen next. But when Cass pulled him even closer and squeezed him even tighter, he returned her embrace with a fierce relief of his own.
“Cass,” Zach said, tucking her head under his chin, not letting go.
“I thought I’d lost you,” Cass replied, finishing Zach’s sentence for both of them.
“Never,” Zach said as he pulled back to look her in the eye. Right away, he could tell that something had changed. He cocked an eyebrow and posed the question without needing to ask it out loud.
“Yeah, something’s different. I took a little trip inside your head,” Cass teased, tapping her finger against Zach’s temple, “and I found a missing piece of myself . . . inside of you. Or, at least, I found a piece of you that I’m going to keep as part of me.”
Zach arched his eyebrow a little higher, pulled Cass in close again, and tipped her backward with a serious kiss. The wisps of white hot smoke that had almost disappeared roared back to life and enveloped them both.
The kiss went on long enough that Kumiko felt compelled to interrupt them with a polite cough.
Cass started, immediately on the defensive as she began to reach down to recover her sword. Despite her raw, involuntary joy at seeing—and forgiving—Zach, she had just been fighting the leader of the Shield in order to save her aunt from a death sentence. Zach, however, just tried to compose himself, straightening his jacket and running his fingers through his still smoking hair.
But Kumiko did not appear ready to restart their fight. Instead, she sighed and shook her head, settling into a steely, determined demeanor as she straightened her back. As she did so, Cass realized that Kumiko was one of those people who stood taller in order to disguise the weight that leadership cast across their shoulders.
With a gesture of reverence and deference, Kumiko handed Cass back her sword.
Cass accepted it with a tiny bow, wary and confused as to exactly what had changed for everyone else.
“I am willing to acknowledge,” Kumiko began, reluctant but resolute, “that your arrival has changed the dynamic significantly. The judgment rendered against Miranda will have to be suspended. We need to sit down together and begin again.”
Cass nodded, grateful for the olive branch.
Kumiko took stock of the room. Most of it had cleared out in the commotion. “Miranda, however, is gone,” she said, her voice tinged with disapproval as her attention fell on Dogen.
Dogen had just managed to free himself. He brushed off his pants, rubbed the back of his bruised head, and smiled sheepishly. Kumiko frowned in response. Cass and Zach shared a look, registering the subtle dynamic between the tiny woman and the mountain of a man.
The conversation, though, didn’t have a chance to go any farther. A monstrous crack of thunder shook the building and, visible through the balcony windows, a bank of dark, heavy clouds rolled over the mountain range, blotting out the morning sun. The assembly hall, brilliantly lit a moment before, was shrouded in darkness. The few flickering candles that remained only accentuated the contrast.
Cass reached for Zach’s hand. The monastery bells begin to toll loudly and with more than a hint of panic.
“An alarm,” Dogen rumbled, cracking his knuckles. “We are under attack. The Lost must truly be wild and desperate to come after us here.”
As if in testimony to their wildness and desperation, the balcony windows shattered and a pair of feral vampires crashed into the room, teeth bared. Instinctively, Cass stepped protectively in front of Zach, sword raised, braced to meet them.
Cass, though, wouldn’t need to handle them.
The pair of vampires had barely cleared the balcony and landed on the main floor of the assembly hall when they were greeted by Dogen.
With two giant strides Dogen bounded across the room, covering the thirty yards between him and vampires. He grabbed one vampire by the head, the whole of its skull disappearing inside of his hand, and squeezed, the bones crunching audibly. Then he scooped up the remaining vampire with his other hand, banged the two of them together like he was playing with action figures, and impaled them both at the same time on an iron pole meant for displaying torches. They dissolved in a pile of white ash.
“Time to go,” Dogen said, looking back over his shoulder. Cass, Zach, and Kumiko mechanically nodded their heads in agreement, their eyes wide.
“Yeah,” Cass repeated, “right. Time to go.” She still didn’t trust Kumiko—it would take more than handing her sword back and a nicely phrased diplomatic olive branch to smooth over the fact that the woman had chained her up in a dungeon—but given the present options, Kumiko seemed like the more immediately safe choice.
“Yes,” Kumiko said. “We must go. This attack is no coincidence. They are here for Miranda. We must find her before they do—or we may lose her forever.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Dogen waited for them at the door to the assembly hall, scanning both directions for trouble. A handful of indeterminate screams and crashes sounded from elsewhere in the main building, but their immediate path was clear.
When they reached the door, Zach took the lead and they headed to the right. Cass was surprised at first but then realized that he’d probably spent years of his life here. For Zach, Kumiko and Dogen weren’t strangers but mentors and allies. As they hurried down the hall, she couldn’t help but see him differently against the opaque background of this unfamiliar part of his life. He was strong here, and decisive, and—following him around a corner—Cass also couldn’t help but notice that he looked amazing in the tight black jeans he was wearing.
Focus, Jones! Cass thought. You can’t go around filled with light, indiscriminately responding with hope to every butt that wiggles in front of you!
