Darkening Skies

by eden Hudson

  Shingti burst into the inner chamber while the ladies were unwrapping the second princess’s embroidered silk sash.

  “Where was he, little sister? Where was your groom?”

  “Do I know everything?” Koida snapped, raising her arms while one of her ladies pulled the dress robe over her head. She wasn’t in the mood for the accusatory tone in her sister’s voice. “Raijin said he had important matters to attend to. They must be taking longer than he expected.”

  “That old dog Lysander is gone, too.”

  “But Hush is still here,” Koida countered. “I saw her at the feast.”

  The mute woman had stalked the perimeter of the hall with the palace guards, not touching food or wine, her dark almond eyes roving constantly.

  Shingti acted as if she hadn’t heard Koida. “Do you know what they’re all saying? They’re saying he realized the runt of the litter was being pawned off on him and broke the agreement.” She manifested a flanged ruby mace not unlike their father’s Ro scepter and tested a barbed flange with one thumb. A bead of blood welled up immediately. “I nearly had to knock the asinine grin off Duchess Ongri’s face. And she’s not even the worst of them! If that scum hasn’t slithered back by tomorrow morning, I’ll hunt him down myself.”

  “You can’t leave the palace,” Koida said, massaging her throbbing temples. The exhaustion headache she’d started the day with had only gotten worse over the last four tense hours of pretense. “If you go off after him, they’ll assume the rumors are correct and that Raijin did break the agreement. You’ll be confirming it for them, and it isn’t true.”

  At least, she hoped it wasn’t true. He wouldn’t have lent her Hush or promised to train her if it was all a lie, would he?

  “Well, what do we do, then?” Shingti snapped.

  “We wait,” Koida said. “He’ll be back by tomorrow night.”

  He wasn’t.

  Once more Koida sat alone on the dais, trying not to imagine the cruel things the painted and decorated nobles were saying behind their wine cups about her. By then the rumor had spread far and wide that Raijin had rejected her, and they were only carrying out the wedding feasts because the emperor had promised a week of feasting and would lose even more face if he reneged. A scowl attached itself to Batsai’s face and would not come loose. The old captain muttered that he should have killed Raijin the first night of the feasting, when the young chieftain was sickly. Shingti seethed and vowed to Koida that Ji Yu blood would be spilt. Their father went on with his drinking and feasting as if he hadn’t even noticed the absence. Koida wondered whether the emperor felt this embarrassment was her just reward for disobeying him and taking on Raijin as a master.

  Strangely, it was Cousin Yoichi who made Koida feel slightly better.

  Late into the wedding feast, after the second cask of hard wine was opened, a drunken duke let slip blunt speculation about Raijin’s absence a little too loudly.

  “Found out she was Ro-crippled.” The duke was practically shouting, his voice carrying over the general din of the celebration. “No man in his right mind would want that tainting his bloodline.”

  Koida cringed. The hall fell silent, expectant. Surely there would be retribution for speaking so bluntly about the second princess’s disgrace.

  But Shingti was nowhere to be seen, and Emperor Hao seemed content to pretend that he hadn’t heard the slighting of his youngest daughter.

  “Sit down, Fi-Ping,” Yoichi said in a loud voice. “We all know no man in his right mind would forfeit a treasure like the second princess. You yourself have been eyeing her since I came to court—since far before it was proper for a man to admire her that way.”

  As he spoke, Yoichi sent Koida their secret conspiratorial glance. She smiled gratefully down at him, relieved to know that he still backed her, no matter what his feelings about her betrothed were.

  Emperor Hao let out a braying laugh at Yoichi’s cutting reprimand.

  “It’s true!” the emperor shouted, sloshing wine onto the table as he banged down his cup. “I’ve turned down half of these fools’ offers for her, Fi-Ping included. He thought he could buy her as a third wife! My daughter, this white jade ghost lotus of a child, second princess to the whole empire, a third wife!”

  The guests lapsed into hilarity, and the humiliated duke slunk unsteadily back to his seat for more wine, mumbling about making offers out of altruism. With Yoichi’s stance on the matter heard and cheered on by the Exalted Emperor, the nobles stopped their blatant gossip and returned cheerfully to matters of eating, drinking, and purging in the private rooms.

  If Yoichi hadn’t been on her side, Koida thought, it would be frightening how much sway her white-haired half-brother held over the court’s opinion.

  That night, when the feast ended, Koida returned to her chambers, changed into her hidden riding clothes, and slipped off to the stables.

  Pernicious was in a vile mood, but then so was she. The half-demon and the princess fought and stamped and bit and kicked and screamed at one another until they had exorcised the venom from their systems. Then Koida leapt up onto the huge beast’s back, and they stormed from the palace stables like a hart from a burning forest. They could find no demons or even regular predators in the forest for Pernicious to kill, so Koida turned him toward the mountain and they rode up to her overlook spot.

  Koida dismounted and sat down with her feet hanging over the edge. Below, the lights of Boking Iri slowly winked out as the people went to sleep. Probably all laughing about the rejected second princess. She should face the fact that Raijin had lied. He was gone and wasn’t coming back. Even Hush had disappeared. Probably off to rejoin the chieftain. There would be no training, no new Path, no marriage.

  A yellow-orange spark popped in her heartcenter, causing her to jump.

  Pernicious screamed and pawed the earth with one enormous hairy hoof. He didn’t like it when she sat on the edge like that.

  “Settle down, you scared kitten. I won’t fall.”

  Pernicious snorted and shook out his mane contemptuously.

  Koida ignored him and turned her focus inward. The spark had been the very last of that sunbright pill, a bit of it she must have missed integrating finally being consumed. That pill alone was a treasure worth half the silver in her father’s treasury. And the Breath of the Underwater Panther Raijin had given her the second night of wedding rituals, that was worth all of it, if not more. Who would waste riches like that on a lie?

  No, Raijin was coming back. And when he did, he would begin training her in the Path of the Thunderbird. He would teach her to fight without Ro and maybe even to eventually overcome her deficiency altogether. For that, she could endure whatever embarrassment waiting might cause her.

  Mind made up, Koida folded her legs and raised her fists to Resting Meditation. She may as well exercise her Ro while she waited. Maybe she could surprise him with her progress.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  PRESENT

  Sharp pain bit into the soft flesh over Koida’s left shoulder blade. She shrieked and tried to jerk away, her eyes flying open. She was thousands of feet above the ground, dangling over a sheer drop to the thundering water of the twin Horns’ pool in the valley below. She stopped struggling, scared stiff.

  But she was moving. Something was pulling her backward, away from certain death.

  Pernicious.

  The half-demon horse’s big, square iron teeth were digging into her skin through her black riding shirt as he dragged her away from the cliff face. A look over her shoulder showed her the huge beast on his belly, slowly slinking backward to safety.

  She had spent the night Pouring Ro into Itself. Still just that airy, sizzling strand, but she had managed to do the exercise nonetheless. She hadn’t wanted to quit the first time she dropped the strand, had gone directly back into the arduous process of threading it around and around the lilac ring. At some point, the strain must have become too much, and she must have passed out. Only Pernic
ious’s Demonic Speed had saved her.

  When they were safely away from the edge, the big brute dropped onto the grass, shivering. Koida had never seen him sweat, but the half-demon’s fear and panic had worked him into a lather. She crawled over to him on trembling arms and legs and fell on him. Her arms barely reached halfway around his thickly muscled neck, but she hugged him as if she were still dangling over the drop and clinging to him for dear life.

  After her shaking calmed to a tolerable level and she could see her surroundings again, Koida realized that she hadn’t just stayed out past sunrise this day. The sun had passed its apex and was falling; she had stayed out past noon. Batsai would have burned half the empire down looking for her.

  Still jittering, Koida pulled herself up onto her half-demon warhorse’s back, and they began the climb back down to the valley.

  When they arrived at the palace, the stables were filled with the banging and bleating of unfamiliar stock.

  One frazzled stable hand ran out to meet her. “A thousand apologies, adored second princess, but this lowly stable hand begs you to put Pernicious in the paddock today.” He dropped to his knees and held up clasped hands. “They’re full-blood demon beasts, each and every one.”

  Through the open stable doors, Koida saw war rams as tall as Pernicious butting heads in the throughway while hands threw themselves out of their path. The impacts sounded like great trees shattering to splinters. Farther in, a giant gecko walked across the ceiling while a pair of stable hands followed along on the floor, trying to coax it down with an apple.

  Pernicious let loose a Petrifying Scream of Legions, prancing in place. He smelled them. Koida sawed on his mane. He fought, turning in a tight circle, but she didn’t loosen her grip. Giving him the slightest freedom now would only end in bloodshed and even more chaos.

  “Whose mounts are these?” She had to shout to be heard over the gecko’s barking and Pernicious’s whinnying.

  “Your father the Exalted Emperor’s,” the stable hand answered. “We haven’t had time to sort them into different stables yet, they only just arrived.”

  Before she could ask anything further, a cry went up inside the stable and someone shouted, “He’s loose! Shut the doors!”

  The ground shook as an enormous brindled bull with glowing red eyes charged toward them.

  Pernicious reared, shrieking for blood. Koida held her seat by throwing her arms around his huge neck and squeezing his shoulders with her shaking knees.

  The stable hand ran to the open door and threw his weight against it. Several others added their bodies to the pile just before a boom rocked the entire structure.

  “Please, Second Princess!” the stable hand begged.

  Koida wheeled the obstinate Pernicious, fighting him every step of the way.

  “All the fillies and mares will be in the paddock,” she yelled into his flattened-back ear. “Get us there before that demon bull breaks free, and you can impregnate as many as you want.”

  The half-demon destrier took a few lunging steps toward the stable, then turned toward the paddock. Clearly, the temptation to fight his own kind to the death was as strong as the one to spread his seed. And these strange demons were trespassing in his territory.

  Koida leaned up to his ear and shouted, “I’ll bring you so many candied blood oranges you’ll make yourself sick!”

  That decided it. With a toss of his head, Pernicious galloped off toward the paddock. In eight months, the hands would have their hands full of quarter-demon baby warhorses, but for now the bloodshed had been averted.

  With Pernicious safely stored with the rest of the non-demon mounts in the paddock, Koida limped back to the palace. She was too exhausted to drag herself over the garden wall, let alone make the climb to her balcony. If she wanted to rest today, she would have to walk through the front entry of the palace wearing her riding clothes.

  Well, her father couldn’t get that much angrier than he’d already been. And if he did, she would only have to put up with his cruel moods until the wedding feasts and rituals were complete. Just three more days.

  Koida trudged wearily in through the front doors, ignoring the scandalized looks on the faces of the servants. She met no nobles or court officials in the halls. Odd. They should be in their best robes by now, parading themselves around the lower floor for the entire palace to see.

  She was plodding past the throne room when its huge double doors were thrown open by pages.

  Courtiers bustled past, talking amongst themselves so eagerly that they did not even notice the bedraggled second princess in her disgraceful peasant’s riding clothes. She backed into an alcove behind a jade statue of a demon dog and watched as the flood of people dispersed down the hall in both directions.

  After the courtiers came a cluster of muscle-bound wild men, each one a head taller than the tallest noble and twice again as wide. Clothed only in furs draped over their shoulders and around their loins, their skin was a deep umber, and their chests, arms, and legs were bare. Bright red clay had been worked into their hair and beards, smoothing it into long ropes decorated with bones and teeth. Every savage had a double-line of shiny black stone on the back of their left arm, cutting through their Heroic Record from shoulder to elbow, surrounded by jagged lines of pale pink scar tissue.

  At the center of these hulking barbarians stood tall, lean Ji Yu Raijin, like a rangy wolf leading a group of well-fed bears. As Koida watched, the young chieftain showed the savages politely down the hall toward the guest residences.

  She slumped back against the wall, too tired to feel anything but a weary relief that Raijin was back. The gossips would have to start some new rumor about her father or Shingti tracking him down and dragging him back to complete the wedding rituals. Koida found she didn’t care much. This meant they could begin her training today.

  A wave of blackness washed over her, and she woke on the floor, looking up at the demon dog statue. She’d fainted.

  Tomorrow. They could begin her training tomorrow.

  Checking for nobles, officials, or her father, Koida slipped out into the hallway and turned toward her residence. Maybe she would collapse on Batsai; forestall the inevitable tirade before he managed to start.

  When she opened the door to her outer chamber, however, the furious captain of her guard only pointed. In the corner, a distraught-looking messenger dropped to his knees and held a scroll over his head.

  “S-summons from the Exalted Emperor Shyong San Hao for the Second Princess Shyong San Koida,” the man announced, his hands shaking so that the wooden seals dangling from the scroll twirled and clacked against one another. “For th-this morning...immediately after the fast is broken.”

  From his seat, Batsai’s expression somehow managed to convey both rage and a grim satisfaction.

  Koida’s mind and body were exhausted. She wanted nothing more than to fall into her bed. Or a sitting cushion. Or the floor. The floor was starting to look quite comfortable.

  “Gratitude, gracious messenger,” she said, taking the proffered scroll with clumsy hands. “Inform my father the Exalted Emperor that the second princess sends her regrets, but she is ill and will not be attending court.”

  Batsai gave an indignant snort. “You were summoned to a morning court, Second Princess. Hours ago. It will be over by now.”

  So that was what she had seen on the way in. But if that had been court letting out, then who were those barbarians with Raijin? More of his tribe? They hadn’t looked or behaved like he did, but then neither did Hush nor that drunk Lysander.

  “Well?” Batsai snapped, returning Koida’s slipping focus to the outer chamber. “Are you going to give this man a writ explaining your absence, or are you going to allow your father to behead him for neglecting his duties?”

  The already terrified servant blanched as the captain addressed the second princess in the tone of a disappointed caretaker to a wayward child. Even a Ro-crippled princess outranked the lowly captain of a royal guar
d like the stars outranked the Earth.

  The man couldn’t know that Batsai’s predictable disciplinary tone was far more welcome to Koida than her father’s cruel mood shifts.

  “Of course,” she answered.

  The nightcaller floor squealed as she crossed the room to the calligraphy desk, too tired to pick her way across the solid boards. She rolled out a small length of parchment, weighted its ends, and scrawled a formal apology to Beloved Father, making it sound as if her monthly pain was the cause of her absence and exonerating the messenger by claiming she had sent him to the alchemists for her powders. She sanded the ink, cut the parchment free, and bound it with the royal seals from the summons.

  “Apologies, dutiful messenger. Take this reply to the Exalted Emperor.”

  The messenger pressed his forehead to the floor and backed out of the room, scroll in hand.

  When she and Batsai were alone, Koida raised a weary eyebrow to him. “Is there more or may I retire to my bed now?”

  The old bear opened his mouth to growl out some further castigation, but as he did, the door to the hall opened again and a trio of chattering ladies sashayed into the outer chamber, their arms draped in dress robes, bell cascades, and jewels.

  Rather than being surprised at Koida’s deathly tired and bedraggled state, the eldest among the ladies took the bells from the youngest. “Go find the kitchen boys and order a bath. And find those lilac oils and the strong-toothed comb. If it pleases the adored second princess,” the lady said, hustling Koida into the inner chamber, “I will have her dressed and ready for tonight’s feast in the fall of a raindrop.”

  As the nightcaller floor shrieked beneath their feet, Koida looked over her shoulder at the captain of her guard. Batsai didn’t look as if he were about to berate her anymore. Instead, a smug smile cracked his scar-crossed face.

  Obviously enjoying her misfortune, the old bear returned to his favorite cushion and picked up the book on the low table beside it.