by eden Hudson
More of the opportunistic little beasts descended upon him while he was distracted, clawing into his shoulder, burrowing into his side, chewing on his face. A vicious bite laid open Raijin’s thigh to the bone. Lifeblood flooded out like a cloudburst.
With every new gush of blood, Raijin grew weaker. There were too many. He couldn’t defeat them all. He was going to die.
In a final desperate effort to take at least one of the pack hunters with him, Raijin pulled back his arm and smashed the creature gnawing on it into the solid stone floor over and over again. He could feel his body being torn apart by the others, but he focused everything he had left on killing the creature that had attacked him first.
Finally, the creature’s jaws relaxed, but it didn’t fall away. Dead with its teeth still embedded in his flesh.
Raijin knew he should try to dislodge it and free his arm, but he didn’t have the strength left. Something tugged faintly at his heartcenter, but he was too far gone to take note of it. He collapsed to the stone floor while the rest of the pack hunters ate him alive.
Chapter Eight
MORTAL LANDS
After leaving Pernicious below, Koida followed Quartermaster Rila up into the bright sunshine and down the gangplank to the docks. Koida thought the hairless woman would tell her to join Hush, Lysander, and Cold Sun carrying cargo aboard, but they crossed the line of empty-handed sailors going back for another load and kept walking until they came to an oxcart filled with barrels and sacks. The driver, a heavy man with a hunched back, nodded at Rila from his seat.
“The provisions for the trip,” Rila said, waving her Demon Fox of Nine Tails at the supplies. “Get them down to Cook in the galley before we set sail, then he’ll put you to work.”
Koida looked from the heavy-laden cart to the ship. She turned to the quartermaster, who was already heading back to supervise the cargo line of sailors.
“Apologies, Quartermaster Rila, but where is the galley?”
“Down the ship-tail stairs and straight ahead,” Rila said over her shoulder. “You’ll smell it before you see it.”
The sacks in the cart were perhaps a quarter the size of the grain sacks the sailors were loading. They might be heavy, but she thought she could carry them. The barrels, however, were full size. They would pose a problem.
Koida set that aside to solve after she had dealt with the sacks. For the time being, she grabbed one sack by its corners and pulled it off the cart. Before she could catch its weight, the sack crashed to the dock with a lumpy rumble of hard vegetables.
Through the glass moon venom numbness, she realized she should have been expecting the sack to be heavier than the size let on. Whatever it contained, the contents wouldn’t have been stored in such a small sack if it were light enough for one person to carry four or five sacks at a time.
From his seat on the cart, the hunched driver watched her, frowning.
Koida ignored him and hefted the sack onto her shoulder. It wasn’t as if he was the one who would have to eat the bruised vegetables.
With the sack securely on her shoulder, she trudged back to the gangplank, squeezing between the two lines of sailors—one empty-handed, the other laden with cargo—and onto the deck before she realized she didn’t know which of the two staircases leading down into the junk was the ship-tail stairs. She stopped, looking around for Hush or Cold Sun. Even Lysander would do if she could find no one else. But they were nowhere to be seen.
“Lost, little sister?” a wiry, gap-toothed sailor asked.
It was a presumptuous address from a man at least three times her age, but Koida couldn’t feel any offense through the glass moon venom.
“I was just hired as the ship’s boy, elder brother,” she returned in his familiar tone, “but I fear I don’t know where the stairs to the galley are.”
The sailor’s sunburnt features crinkled into a friendly smile. “Let me guess—little sister’s never been on a ship before? No need to be ashamed. I wasn’t that much younger than you when I was first pressganged. We come to the sea at all ages and for our own reasons.”
Once more Lysander’s suggestion to embrace her weakness as a strength came to mind. It would not have to be as a loose woman. The sailor had already guessed her true weakness—that she had no idea what she was doing.
Koida nodded, demurely lowering her eyes like the noblewomen at court did when they feigned embarrassment.
“Don’t worry, little sister, you’ll figure it all out fast,” the sailor said. He turned and pointed toward the sharp front end of the junk. “Ship-neck end.” Then switched and pointed toward the looming half deck at the back. “Ship-tail end.”
“My sincerest gratitude, kind elder brother.” Koida bent into a bow, spilling the sack perched on her shoulder onto the deck. Without the pain of straining to carry the extra weight, she’d forgotten it was there.
She bent to pick it up, but already the sunburnt sailor was hefting it off the deck for her. He helped her return the sack to her shoulders.
“Steady?” he asked, eyes twinkling.
Koida nodded, both hands bracing the sack, and returned his friendly grin. “Even more gratitude, helpful brother. Please forgive your little sister if she does not bow this time.”
The sailor chuckled. “It’s nothing, little sister. You won’t find much ceremony on deck anyways. Captain Singh don’t stand much on it. You have to give a bit extra to keep her royal quartermaster self nice and happy, but with the rest of us, don’t get too worked up about it.”
He tipped her a wink, then went on his way to rejoin the cargo line.
Koida followed the sailor’s instructions down the wide stairs near the looming half-deck, once more into the darkness of the ship’s belly. Though there were no livestock pens crowding this deck, the passageway retained the cramped, claustrophobic feeling.
Happily, the lack of livestock also left the air free for more pleasant smells, one of which Koida recognized immediately—the scent of blood oranges. Steadying the sack on her shoulder with her free hand, Koida followed the smell toward the rectangle of light shining from a doorway near the end of the hall.
Inside, the floor had been covered in tin, and a wide iron stove hung from the rafters from chains as thick as Koida’s arm. The contraption swayed slightly with the gentle rock of the ship, but none of the glowing embers tumbled out. Wooden barrels and metal bins lined the walls, and a roughhewn table stood in the center of the room. A hulking form sat on a thick stool at the table, slicing blood oranges with a wide-bladed Ro knife and sliding the pieces into an open barrel at the edge.
Koida stopped on the threshold, trying to discern whether it was a man or woman, but the swollen, lumpy body hinted at both and neither at once.
Bright gray eyes shining from the form’s flushed, round cheeks caught sight of Koida.
“Well? What do you want?” The voice was a woman’s, harsh and too loud for the small space.
Around Koida’s wrist, the glass moon serpent constricted, most likely feeding on the rush of uncertainty she should be experiencing.
“I am the new ship’s boy,” Koida said, pausing to search for an appropriate address. When none came to mind, she decided to take the helpful sailor’s advice and ignore etiquette among the crew unless she was told to do otherwise. “I was ordered to bring supplies down to the galley.”
The huge woman’s gray eyes jumped to the sack on Koida’s shoulder. “Turnips, eh? Well, they don’t get cheaper than Takate Iri turnips, as the saying goes. Fill the bin in the corner, then take the remainder to the storeroom next door.”
Koida nodded, then turned to go.
“Girl,” the woman called after her. “What’s your name?”
“Apologies for my lapse in manners. My name is...” Was Koida a common enough name that it would not give them away? She had never heard of another noble with the same name, and she’d spent so little time among commoners that she could not say whether it was in use among them. Either way, if Yo
ichi was still alive as Lysander expected, then using her true name would leave a trail for him to follow.
Koida’s mind leapt back to the night Raijin had accompanied her to Boking Iri’s beggar’s row. He had called her something to allow her to remain anonymous... What was it?
“Ha-Koi,” she said as she remembered. “My name is Ha-Koi.”
“Sure it is, just like my born name was Cook,” the brash woman said. “I don’t care what you call yourself as long as you answer to it when I yell. Get me?”
“Yes, Cook,” Koida said.
“Good.” Cook went back to slicing blood oranges, the pieces splashing into the barrel. “Get moving. Empty those turnips into the bin, then go get another sack.”
“Yes, Cook.”
Koida went to the enormous bin built into the corner of the galley, the tin crumpling and popping under her boots, and lowered the sack to the floor. The cloth had been stitched closed and knotted at the end. She picked and pulled at the knot, but try as she might, Koida couldn’t untie it.
“Cut it open,” Cook said, her boisterous voice filling the room. “We sail today, girl.”
“Yes, Cook,” Koida said. The question was where she would get a knife. Her Ro wasn’t sufficiently advanced to manifest a blade, and taking off the glass moon serpent and shifting her arm into the lavaglass moon broadsword seemed unwise.
“Oh, for the love of a decent pot! You can’t even manifest a knife?” The huge woman rounded the corner of the table and squeezed past the hanging iron stove. Her gait was strange, almost a limp, as she walked to the washtub along the far wall. She groaned as she went down on one knee before it and wheezed a bit as she muttered, “Coddled little sissy. Can’t even manifest a bladed weapon yet and thinks she’s ready for the high seas. Ought to tan her hide and send her home myself.” Metal clinked and water sloshed as the cook dug around in the tub. “Here.” She came up with a small hooked knife with a blade shorter than Koida’s hand. “Think you can use that without cutting your arm off at the shoulder?”
The little demon adder encircling her wrist squeezed with delight as it fed off a flare of anger Koida couldn’t feel.
“I’ll manage,” she responded flatly.
“The mouths on your generation.” Cook harrumphed. “It’s no wonder you’ve already got Quartermaster Rila’s mark on you.”
Koida ignored this and sliced through the sack’s knot with the hook blade. After a few moments’ struggle, she hefted the sack up and tumbled the turnips into the empty bin. The dirty turnips rolled around with a few shriveled, moldy vegetables Koida didn’t recognize that must have been left behind from the previous voyage.
“Should I dispose of these...” She lifted one out since she couldn’t decide what they might be, holding it between her thumb and forefinger. “...leftovers on my way out, Cook?”
With a resounding groan, Cook pushed herself to her feet. Her face flushed and broke out in a thin sheen of sweat from the effort.
“Eh?” She looked Koida’s way. “No, no. Put them on the table there. You’ll need something for dinner.”
Though she felt no revulsion, Koida’s brow furrowed. She couldn’t tell whether the cook was having a laugh at her or giving her an order. Even when she pulled the three of them out of the bin, Cook’s expression didn’t change a bit in either direction.
Would moldy vegetables kill her if she ate them? There was no part of Koida that wanted to find out. If Cook really did serve them to her that night, she would just toss them overboard and keep the glass moon serpent attached until her next meal to numb the hunger pains. She dropped the trio of rotting vegetables on the table and left the galley to get the rest of the supplies.
For the next three hours, Koida did nothing but haul turnip sacks from the oxcart. A punishing sun climbed high in the sky, and soon she was dripping with sweat. Without the demon serpent feeding on her pain, Koida doubted she could have gone so long under such a burden without collapsing.
She caught sight now and again of Hush, Lysander, and Cold Sun as she worked, but didn’t dare stop to speak with them under Quartermaster Rila’s watchful glare. At one point, a squabble broke out between a pair of sailors. Koida couldn’t tell for sure, but it sounded as if they thought one of the crates was much lighter than the others and both had been on their way to pick that crate up. Rila stepped in without a word, her ruby Demon Fox of Nine Tails slicing through the air and ending the fight where it stood. After seeing the bleeding sailors pick themselves back up and return obediently to the line, Koida wanted no part in angering the hairless quartermaster. She could talk to her friends when they were all safely finished with their tasks.
Although she attracted no fury from Rila, the driver of the oxcart apparently felt Koida was working too slowly. After a time, he climbed down from his seat and began unloading the few remaining sacks and the contingent of barrels onto the docks. When his cart was emptied, he collected his silver links from the quartermaster, then whistled to his ox and drove away.
In truth, Koida was grateful for the man’s impatience. She had been working out how she would get the barrels down from the cart on her own, but hadn’t come up with a solution yet. Now that they were already on the dock, she thought she could turn them on their side and roll them up the gangplank and onto the ship.
She rolled the first barrel as far as the gangplank before she saw the flaw in this approach. The weight had aided her as she rolled it over the mostly flat surface of the docks, adding momentum, but the steep incline of the gangplank effectively doubled it. She hunched down behind the barrel to stop it from sliding backward and pushed.
It hardly budged.
She renewed her efforts, but her soft leather boots slipped on the planking, and the barrel shifted sideways and began to roll toward the water. The glass moon serpent wriggled in ecstasy as it fed on the surge of fear and anger which must have swamped her. Koida grabbed for the barrel, but knew she couldn’t stop it. More likely, she would be dragged in with it, then she would almost certainly taste a full dose of Rila’s whip.
“Ho there!” A pair of sunburnt leathery hands grabbed the barrel, stopping it before it rolled off the edge. The friendly gap-toothed sailor she’d spoken with earlier grinned up at her. “Barrel of salt beef is a tetch heavy for such a small thing to be carrying on her own, now isn’t it?”
Koida straightened up, realizing as she did that she was short on breath and her hands shook. Her body must be far more exhausted than she thought.
“I didn’t think I was allowed assistance, elder brother,” she said.
The sailor let out a bark of laughter. “Rila’s going to eat you body and soul, little sister. Come, Won-Shik will help with the barrels. Rest of the cargo’s nearly loaded anyways.”
Together, they rolled the barrel up onto the deck, then carried it down the ship-tail stairs to the galley. Though Won-Shik was no taller than Koida, his wiry arms and back were powerfully strong. Between the two of them, he and Koida had the remaining barrels stored in Cook’s larder in half the time it had taken her to load the turnip sacks.
“There!” The gap-toothed sailor slapped Koida on the shoulder. “Now, the next time you’re struggling under a load of Rila’s...ah, orders...you give a holler for your elder brother. Aren’t none of us sailing this ship alone, little sister. Remember it.”
Chapter Nine
LAND OF THE IMMORTALS
Raijin stood before an immortal whose skin was striped like a tiger’s. He tried to move, to look around, but found he had no control over his body. He could only see through its eyes and wait for it to act.
A cool drizzle hissed against the leaves and grass, but a small crowd of immortals had gathered to watch the proceedings in spite of the weather. Some conjured shelters of immortal energy. Others had sparkling spirits holding canopies over their heads like royal attendants.
It all seemed familiar. Less like a vivid dream and more like reliving a memory.
“You broke the law,
Xun-Li,” Raijin heard himself say. “You destroyed the lives of seven mortals with your schemes and diverted two from their path to one another and immortality.”
The tiger immortal glared down his proud nose at Raijin.
“It is so simple for Jin-Rammael to judge what he knows nothing of,” he scoffed. “A sky immortal could never understand the passions of a land immortal. Your lightning is a cold fire, Thunderer. You can control yourself because you have nothing but sleet in your veins.”
“You are sentenced to mortality,” Raijin said, ignoring the man’s insults. “One lifetime for each that you destroyed.”
At this pronouncement, the tiger immortal’s insolent demeanor vanished. Fear flashed in his golden-brown eyes, and he dropped to his knees, clutching Raijin’s robes.
“Please, not that! It wasn’t my fault, Thunderer! Her beauty tempted me beyond a tiger’s ability to resist.”
“You do not know the height nor the depth of temptation because you have never resisted it,” Raijin said, his eyes boring into the tiger’s. “You have always given yourself leave to surrender when it reached a certain point. May your time in the mortal world remind you of the fragility of what you destroyed and the responsibility of immortals to both planes.”
The tiger snarled, leaping up from his crouch, and slashed a Ro-clawed hand at Raijin’s head. Raijin sidestepped the swipe and his fists shot out, one hooking around the tiger’s elbow, the other landing with a thud against the back of his striped neck. With a sharp twist, Raijin threw the stunned tiger to the ground. Kneeling on the tiger’s arm and shoulder, Raijin reached into the man’s heartcenter. A shimmering, crackling aura exploded from Raijin, and the tiger immortal disappeared.
Sentencing concluded, the small crowd of gathered immortals split up, murmuring amongst themselves as they left. All save a violet-eyed woman with pale moon cheeks and dark brown hair.
