Darkening Skies

by eden Hudson

  Koida thought through the fight between her betrothed and Master Lao. Shingti had been watching, as had half a dozen of the Dragonfly Guard and Koida’s personal escort. Any of these battle-hardened warriors would have spotted rehearsed or play-acted combat, and all were loyal enough to have told her if her future husband was a fraud.

  On the day he’d arrived at the Sun Palace, Raijin had single-handedly defeated not only every member of the Emperor’s Guard, but Shingti’s Dragonfly Guard as well. The Ji Yu chieftain had brought the empire to peace with a formidable enemy whom the rest of the valley feared, and he’d even rushed in to catch her when Pernicious threw her. These weren’t the actions of a coward.

  Koida eased herself up onto her knees, careful not to tip backward off the ray’s gently waving wing, and pressed her palm to her fist, bowing to Raijin.

  “Master,” she said.

  He returned the gesture. “Gratitude for giving your future husband the opportunity to prove himself, Cherished Princess.”

  “Second Princess,” Koida corrected him.

  “Not to me,” he said.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  PRESENT

  Eventually Pernicious calmed, and Koida leapt deftly from the demon ray’s back onto the monstrous destrier.

  From his seat on the ray, Raijin clasped his hands and extended them to her in a show of admiration. She thanked him with a seated bow as Pernicious danced and whinnied.

  “Shall we return to the palace?” she called up to Raijin. “You’ve only just come back from the lower reaches, and you’re certainly tired after such a long trip made so quickly.”

  “The work of traveling was all done by Nael,” Raijin said, patting between the ray’s eye bumps. “I would enjoy a tour of the countryside if the cherished princess would lower herself and her beast to ride along with a mere chieftain.”

  Koida laughed. “If you can keep up.”

  Without another word, she gave Pernicious free rein. The inky black half-demon tore off across the field and into the dark forest.

  Branches and vines whipped by on either side of Koida. At first she thought they had lost Raijin at the forest’s edge, as his ray’s wingspan was too wide to fit between the dense foliage, but soon a glimmer of silvery Ro filtering through the canopy overhead caught her eye. The ray skimmed above the trees, keeping pace with them easily.

  They bisected the forest from east to west in under an hour, a testament to Pernicious’s determination to lose their guests. Finding no prey for the half-demon—or in any case, no prey he felt worth trampling while a much bigger challenge flew overhead—they turned south and galloped out of the forest once more.

  Raijin and the enormous ray fell in beside them now that they were out in the open. Inspiration struck when Koida saw the silvery strand of water to the east. She nudged Pernicious toward the Horned Serpent River until they were racing along its winding banks.

  The demon ray skimmed out over the surface of the water in obvious delight, dragging its tail and throwing up huge sprays as its wings rilled. Once it even dove under, exploding back out of the water with Raijin sputtering and shaking off droplets like a wet horse.

  Seeing someone else’s demon get the better of him for once set Koida to laughing again. Raijin grinned and rose up to his knees on the ray’s back, reaching up and behind his head with both hands, then bringing them down and slamming his palms forward in a technique she’d never seen.

  A wall of water laced with Ro raced up the banks after Koida. Still laughing, she leaned low over Pernicious’s head and whispered, “If you don’t want to be soaked, you’d better run faster.”

  The proud warhorse triggered Demonic Speed, his hooves’ flames flaring brilliantly in the darkness, and blurred ahead of the watery construct. The wave splashed harmlessly behind them.

  Raijin was laughing as his ray caught them up with a burst of its own Ro-enhanced speed. He made the sign for admiration once more.

  “You two work well together when you aren’t trying to kill one another,” he called to Koida.

  “It’s a rare occurrence,” she responded. “You must be blessed by fate to have seen it with your own eyes!”

  The moon was leaving the sky when they reached the base of the waterfall where the Horned Serpent River poured down from the cliffside. By unspoken agreement, they dismounted to let Pernicious drink and the ray swoop in and out of the falling spray. Koida leaned against one of the huge moss-covered boulders on the bank. Raijin wandered aimlessly nearby, picking flat stones among the myriad of river rocks and skipping them across the surface of the churning pool.

  The thrill of riding through the night with another person had boosted Koida’s flagging energy, but it wasn’t enough to stave off the bone-weary exhaustion that had been threatening to drag her down all day. She wanted to talk to Raijin about cultivating, how she had spent the night before Pouring Ro into Itself, but her lips felt heavy and uncooperative. The inside of her eyelids felt as if they were coated with a thin layer of sand and her eyes as if they were roasting over a bed of coals. She blinked to wet them, and the world dissolved.

  She woke being lifted onto the glowing silvery back of the demon ray.

  “My apologies,” Raijin said, laying her gently on the velvety surface. “I was afraid you would be thrown if I sat you on your demon asleep.” He grinned. “I also couldn’t get close to him without being kicked.”

  “Now you’re starting to get to know him,” Koida said.

  “Would you like to ride back to the palace with Nael and me?”

  “I would love to.” She sat up. A jingling weight in her robes bumped against her stomach. The silver links for the beggars. “I have an errand to do before returning, however. Do you mind going into the city? I could ride Pernicious if you’re in a hurry to reach your bed.”

  “It would be our honor to escort you,” Raijin said, bowing deeply. “Just tell us the way.”

  As they skimmed back over the river to Boking Iri, Pernicious kept pace with them, loudly making known his displeasure at being ignored. Following Koida’s directions, Raijin guided his mount down the canal and into the city. They twisted and turned through the streets until they reached the beggar’s row.

  Koida pulled the bag of silver out of her robe and made ready to throw it into the largest crowd, a group of six clustered around a smoldering fire.

  “This is where you were going?” Raijin asked.

  A strange note in his rasping voice made Koida lower her arm and turn to him. His face wore a stricken expression. Only then did she realize how bizarre it must seem for the empire’s second princess to have business with untouchables.

  “I wasn’t planning to stop,” she said defensively. “Just to leave this with them.”

  Raijin shook his head. “It’s just that this isn’t how you were when...I mean, how I imagined you would be.”

  Koida’s face heated. She wasn’t sure she could explain to him her need to carry out this errand. Someone as talented as Raijin would never understand what it was like to be given so much in spite of having no real worth.

  Raijin directed his demon ray to a stop in the alley.

  “What are you doing?” Koida hissed.

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he hopped down from the ray’s back and offered Koida a hand.

  “Raijin, these are—we can’t—if someone found out...”

  “When you’re ready, I’ll be over there,” he said, then left her behind on Nael while he approached the fire.

  The untouchables cowered, the ones still mostly in their right minds disappearing into piles of rubbish and unseen escape routes. One frail old man remained, raving in an endless stream of babble about chosen ones and great darkness until a thin woman stepped forward, pushing him behind her. In her fist, she brandished a plank torn off a crate, a trio of bent, rusty nails poking from its larger end.

  “Stay back!” she snapped at Raijin. “We ain’t got any more silver, so you mongrels can just go torm
ent someone else!”

  “Apologies, aunt,” Raijin said, bowing respectfully to the woman. “I am not here to collect from you. I only seek to share your fire.”

  The woman cocked her head at him warily, then pointed her plank at Koida and the ray. “That thing yours?”

  “It is, aunt.”

  “What is it?”

  Raijin laughed. “A great help when I don’t want to walk, but an overgrown nuisance when he wants to swim. Might my friend and I stand by your fire until we’re warm?”

  “You ain’t soldiers?”

  “Neither of us,” he said.

  “You’re welcome to it, such as it is,” the woman said, shrugging. She went back to kneeling beside the bank of coals.

  Raijin nodded at Koida as if to assure her there was no danger, then went to the fire and knelt beside the filthy woman.

  Koida swallowed hard and looked around. Did Raijin not notice that these people were hunkered in a back alley filled with refuse? They were untouchables. Half of those who’d scattered had been covered in the weeping sores of addicts, and to pick up a plank of wood rather than manifest a weapon meant that the woman was either Ro-crippled from birth or had broken her heartcenter in some sort of trauma.

  The old man was tottering down the alley toward Koida, pointing a gnarled finger at her. She recoiled.

  “Thunder of the clouds says yes to look down the tunnel of seconds at the great destruction end of war-peace at the war piece the dragon became in the wake of the water lily so thunder of the clouds throws himself an arrow at the dragon to change the path and change the great destruction and the war piece to bring war-peace on the water lily when the silk moths fill the sky swimming on air all those loved ones! All those souls,” he screamed, spittle flying from his toothless mouth.

  “Ha-Koi,” Raijin called from the fire. It took a moment for Koida to realize he was talking to her, shortening her name to the diminutive so she could remain anonymous. The sound of his voice broke the old man’s insane hold over her. Her betrothed gestured for her to join him and the woman.

  Cautiously, Koida slipped off the ray and edged around the old man.

  “The dragon piece,” the old man crowed, following her to the fire. “Dragons, like moths to flame, run to the thunder!”

  “Come sit, grandfather,” the kneeling woman coaxed gently. The old man staggered over to her and sat, suddenly docile.

  Koida knelt on the opposite side of the fire from the lunatic. Her muscles jumped and hummed, ready to flee at the first sign of movement.

  Apparently, Raijin and the woman had been talking before the interruption, because he leaned forward and gestured for her to go on.

  “Please continue, aunt.”

  “So then they go on and kick the lice right off Pai-Leng,” she said, “laughing all the while. I think there’s bleeding in her stomach from it, as if she didn’t have enough trouble with the qajong. I swear to you, we ain’t had one night of peace since the emperor and his legions got back. Wish the whole lot of foul wolves would march back to war again and die, every last one of ’em.”

  Koida was too startled by the venom in the woman’s voice to even gasp.

  “Surely you don’t mean the Exalted Emperor Hao’s soldiers,” she said.

  The woman spat into the fire. “Don’t know no other armor-wearing, rotten-Ro containers spoiling for an easy target. I sent a couple off all tore up and down their arms by my trusty club. May they get the locked jaw for their crimes.”

  Someone hissed behind Koida. She jumped and twisted around to find a man with a leathery face scratching open sores.

  “You oughtn’t talk like that, Ni,” the addict said, digging into a bloody spot on his arm. “They’re masters. Masters do as they like, and it’s good and right that they do. Yeah. Just shouldn’t act better than your place around them. Yeah.”

  “Go drum up some currency for you next fix, Sin-An.” The woman—Ni—dismissed the addict with a wave. “I’m not so defeated yet that I’ll accept all that untouchable talk. I wasn’t born broken, and I don’t allow for this being my rightful destiny. Was an accident that broke me, a split second of unlucky when I could’ve used luck. Could’ve happened to anybody.” She turned to Raijin and pointed a finger at his face. “I’ll fight that destiny nonsense to my pyre, don’t care who’s spouting it.”

  Raijin nodded. “You should fight it, aunt. There are only a handful of people whose fate is written in stone—” He sent Koida an enigmatic smile. “—and even they can surprise you now and then.”

  “Exactly.” Ni thudded a dirty fist onto her thigh.

  “If you would like,” Raijin continued, “I know a healer who may be able to help you, and a place where you can live as everyone else, not as an untouchable. You and any here who wish to go with you.”

  Ni made a rude sound. “Keep wasting that honey, nephew, and you’ll get all the bees angry.”

  “It isn’t a lie,” he said. “There’s a village up the pass, in the Shangyang Mountains. My tribe lives there, and among them are masters of many paths, one a healer who surpasses any other. But you don’t have to believe me. Right now, it sounds like your greatest need for healing is Pai-Leng. If she really is bleeding inside, she’ll need help immediately or she’ll die. I can give you silver. Do you know of a healer in the city who will see you?”

  Ni shook her head. Her filthy hair, dry as twigs, scraped over her shoulders with the motion. “You really ain’t from Boking Iri, are you, nephew? No, no apothecary or healer in this city will see us. Untouchable, you get it?”

  “What will you do?” Koida whispered.

  Ni shrugged. “Guess when the time comes, we’ll try to get together some of this rubbish for a pyre.”

  Koida felt her stomach lurch at the unfairness of it. No healers would see this Pai-Leng because of her status. The woman would die in this filthy alley, the victim of a soldier who could do whatever he liked to a Ro-crippled untouchable peasant without fear of retribution. Meanwhile a Ro-crippled princess could sit in the palace at her wedding feast, where legions of alchemists who kowtowed to her mixed vomiting potions so she and her subjects could gorge themselves with more food.

  Koida’s hands shook as she held out the bag of silver links she’d intended to throw the beggars.

  “Do you think they’d see you if you had this?”

  Ni glanced down at it hungrily, but a grim acceptance settled across her face. She shook her head.

  “Not for all the coin in the empire, niece,” she said. “Ain’t no respectable body out here willing to lose that much face. Though the soldiers will be glad to take all that shiny off our hands tomorrow.”

  Raijin stood suddenly. “I have a friend who might be able to help. I’ll send her along as soon as I can. She’ll have a mask over her nose and mouth. She doesn’t speak, so please don’t attack her when she shows up.”

  Ni shrugged. “She don’t attack us, we won’t have no reason to attack her.”

  “Gratitude for your hospitality,” Raijin said. With that, he bowed respectfully to their hosts. “Aunt Ni, Uncle Sin-An, Grandfather—”

  At the appellation, the old man stirred back to life. “Thunder clouds the sky over its head and rains justice on the flowers, but never can if you let the darkness take her. Time is shorter than you think.”

  Koida shifted uncomfortably. The old man’s insane rambling made her skin crawl. On the opposite side of the fire, Ni shushed the old lunatic, rubbing his back like a mother with a fussy baby.

  Rather than an understandably confused expression, however, Raijin wore a look of concern.

  “How much shorter?” he asked the old man.

  “Yes, that is true.” The old man shook a finger at him. “Don’t lose the dragon to the darkness, grandson.”

  “I won’t,” Raijin said. Once more, the low rasp of her betrothed’s voice rang like a vow. He turned to Koida. “Ha-Koi, are you ready?”

  “Yes.” She stood and bowed to the untouch
ables just as Raijin had, as if they were her equals. Because if her title and fortunate birth were stripped away, she was no different from them.

  When she rose again, she pressed the bag of silver into Ni’s hand. “Please, aunt, take it. Maybe if you give it to the soldiers, they won’t hurt you.”

  Ni sighed, a defeated sound.

  “Gratitude, niece,” the woman said. “May we one day live in a world where we can all afford to be so naïve.”

  Chapter Thirty

  6 YEARS AGO

  “Why am I here?” Raijin wondered aloud.

  He sat outside his mother’s shabby hut in the burning heat of the afternoon in the place where he had taken to sleeping at night, scratching the sand flea bites on his legs and arms and neck—everywhere he had skin, really—and wondering why Master Chugi would send him away from the school he loved to find this dying woman who’d given him up at birth.

  Half of the time she was in such a stupor that she didn’t even know he was there. The rest she was either raging at him for not giving her more “medicine” or screaming in agony. At least twice a day he feared that she had reached her last breath. And yet every day, she breathed on.

  After the first day spent with Lanfen, Raijin had begged Daitai for fresh clothes and blankets for his mother. The madam was all too happy to give the chosen one anything he would ask for. Raijin had thanked her—not bothering to point out that she hadn’t extended the same courtesy to the chosen one’s mother, whom she proclaimed a sister—and gone back to burn his mother’s soiled rags on the sand. Over the next few days, he’d washed Lanfen, tried to coax her to eat the food Daitai sent, scooped out all the stale, disgusting, packed sand she’d been lying on for one couldn’t know how long, and refilled the lean-to with fresh sand from farther down the beach.