by eden Hudson
“What happened to him?” she asked the warhorse.
Pernicious shook out his mane and snorted. If the half-demon knew, he had no way to say.
Chapter Fifteen
LAND OF IMMORTALS
Raijin’s chest heaved as he spun, searching the room for Misuru. He had heard Koida’s voice, but the last time he had dreamed of her as he’d known her from the Sun Palace, Misuru had plucked out his eyes.
In one of his death dreams, hadn’t the Thunderer mentioned that Ha-Koi could manipulate what the ear heard? Misuru seemed to have used an ability like that in the attack that threw him into this pit. If she had an ability such as that, then she could have made it seem as if he’d heard Koida’s voice. She could be there, lurking just out of his reach. Without eyes, he would never know.
The guai-ray found two signatures in the cavern with Raijin, but neither was Misuru or Koida. The signatures leapt and shifted endlessly with the telltale patternlessness chaos of madness.
Raijin spun to face them. The demon ray in his chest urged him to attack.
If you wait for them to strike first, you’re already dead.
But they’re human.
Humans kill other humans all the time.
Not all of them do!
“He knows we’re here,” an outside voice interrupted the argument taking place in Raijin’s mind.
“But he can’t see,” a second one objected.
“I think he can smell you.”
“No, he can’t. Sky immortals can hardly smell anything.”
“Can you smell us, Thunderer?”
In spite of his newfound wariness of his hearing, Raijin cocked one ear toward them unconsciously. The voices were so familiar. The strangely musical back-and-forth, the leaping madness of their electrical signatures... It wasn’t until he realized that neither the guai-ray senses nor his ear could tell whether the speakers were male or female that he realized who they were.
“The twins from the Dead Waters Kingdom,” Raijin said.
“That sounds like confirmation to me,” one said.
“We should take up bathing.”
“You do it. I won’t.”
Their signatures were near the mouth of the tunnel he had collapsed with that massive bolt of electricity. Though the guai-ray senses didn’t detect any threat stemming from the twins, Raijin couldn’t bring himself to trust them enough to get close. He felt his way in the opposite direction until he reached the far wall of the cavern and put his back against it.
“Is the Thunderer afraid of us?” one twin asked.
“We did help imprison him here the first time,” the other said.
“He can’t remember all that, he’s just barely reached the first tier.”
“How did you come to be here?” Raijin asked. “Were you killed as well?”
“We’re Wanderstars, Tier 6.”
“We can move between the lands.”
“You’re immortals?” Raijin asked.
“Obviously. Mortals can’t travel the Immortal Path.”
“So it only stands to reason.”
“We were in the Dead Waters Kingdom to speak with you.”
“And now we’re here to speak with you.”
Though they made no move to approach him, Raijin raised his hands in Inviting Attack. There was something strangely comforting about returning to his accustomed fighting stance after so long fighting like a demon.
“Did Misuru send you?” he asked.
The twins were silent for a moment.
“It’s a reasonable question,” one finally admitted.
“We don’t answer to her,” the other said.
“Living in terror of someone is not the same as answering to them.”
“We don’t have a ruler.”
“Which means we also don’t have a protector.”
“Unless you come back, of course.”
Raijin’s shoulders relaxed a fraction. “Me?”
“The Thunderer, god protector of the heavens,” one twin said, as if he should already know.
“Saying it like that isn’t going to suddenly make him a Tier 5, Tsune,” the other said.
“It’s not going to break his fragile mortal mind to know who he was, Kitsu.”
“Why did you tell him my name?” Kitsu demanded.
“Because you told him mine first,” Tsune said. “If I get in trouble for this, I don’t want to do it alone.”
Raijin inhaled deeply, then let the air out of his lungs slowly, forcing himself to concentrate. It felt as if a very long time had passed since he’d listened to people talking. Making sense of the twins’ endless stream of words after all the fighting was a struggle in itself.
“You are not here because of Misuru?” he asked to clarify.
“Wrong,” Tsune said. “We are here because of her.”
“We hate her, and she scares us,” Kitsu added.
“So we need you to save us from her.”
“All of the heavens, if it’s convenient, but just us if it’s not.”
Raijin rubbed his forehead, careful not to anger the raw wounds where his eyes had been. “Didn’t you just say that you helped imprison me in this pit the first time?”
“Of course we helped,” Tsune said. “We’re white fox twins.”
“You were always demanding that we follow the law,” Kitsu explained.
“Order is not in our nature.”
“We thought the Land of Immortals would be more fun without you.”
Against his will, Raijin felt his mouth twitch into a smile. “Was it?”
“For a few millennia,” Kitsu said.
“But without order, there isn’t anyone to upset with chaos,” Tsune said.
“Without clarity, there isn’t anyone to mislead.”
“And without laws, there is nothing to break.”
“You’re here because you’ve grown bored,” Raijin guessed.
Tsune snorted. “How can anyone get bored when they’re living in constant fear?”
“The Whisperer corrupted the land,” Kitsu said. “Now the spirits that used to serve you are ravening akane.”
“They serve her, but she doesn’t make them obey.”
“They eat whoever they want.”
“It hurts so much to be consumed.”
“I’ve noticed,” Raijin said.
“And whatever you know when you’re eaten becomes her knowledge,” the twins went on.
“They send it straight to her.”
“There’s no privacy.”
“How can you deceive anyone when there’s no privacy?”
Raijin’s first instinct was to protest that the akane couldn’t answer to Misuru, as one had tried to attack her when they first met and she’d killed it, but he quickly saw the genius to such a pretense. After all, her deception had gained his trust in a matter of moments.
“Then you’ll both want to help me escape this prison,” he told the twins.
“No, we certainly won’t,” Tsune said.
Kitsu agreed. “She would skin us and eat our pelts herself.”
“And leave us alive to suffer until they grow back.”
“We only came to ask for your protection when you finally do escape.”
Raijin nodded. “But what will she do to you if I’m eaten by akane again and she learns that you were here, asking for my help?”
A heartbeat passed in dumbfounded silence.
Followed by a sharp slap that rang through the cavern.
“I can’t believe you told him our names,” Kitsu growled.
“I already told you, I won’t take the blame alone,” Tsune said.
Raijin tried to hide his grin, bowing politely over his fists.
“Apologies for my loss of manners earlier, immortal friends,” he said in the direction of their madly fluctuating signatures. “I’m glad to finally meet allies here, even if we were once at odds.”
“Already I dislike him again,” Kitsu said.
“We endure a touch of politeness now or we spend the rest of eternity hiding from her,” Tsune said. “Remember how much trouble there is to be made during a well-ordered rule.”
“The violation of courtesy alone would be well worth it,” Kitsu admitted. “What do you want of us, Thunderer?”
Raijin’s mind tumbled through potential answers. The white fox twins must at least know their way in and out of this prison, but to make it back to the mortal world, he would have to reach at least Tier 6. Who could say how long he had fought already? It felt as if centuries had passed in this hole, and yet his movements still stuttered and struggled. He’d made hardly any progress on the Immortal Path.
Escape could be meaningless anyway, perhaps even detrimental, if he had no idea why he’d been imprisoned in the first place.
“I need to get out of this prison and return to the mortal lands, and I need to know why I’m here,” Raijin answered. “I have had dreams or memories about Misuru attacking me and Ha-Koi, but the dreams seem to contradict prophecies and things I’ve been told about the Dragon. I need to know the truth of what happened.”
“Those memories were obviously not enough,” Tsune said.
“You should be terrified of Misuru’s power.”
“Instead you’re talking about defying her.”
Raijin frowned in frustration. “Isn’t that why you came? To convince me to defeat her and return as the protector of the heavens?”
“Well, yes,” Tsune said. “But look at you. You’re barely Tier 1.”
Kitsu agreed. “You can’t even—”
The sound of running footsteps filled the cavern. The guai-ray senses let him know that one of the white fox twins was darting toward him.
Raijin dropped into that hunched fighting stance, ready to attack.
A finger flicked his ear. But that couldn’t be right. His attacker wasn’t even a quarter of the way across the stone floor.
“—do that,” Kitsu finished, reappearing at rest next to Tsune’s electrical signature.
Slowly, Raijin forced himself to straighten from the guarded stance. The white fox had used celestial speed on him.
“That’s why I need your help,” Raijin said. “I can’t escape this prison on my own.”
A moment passed in silence. Though the guai-ray senses couldn’t feel any changes from the twins’ signatures, Raijin got the distinct impression that they were communicating with one another. Yong Lei’s face appeared in his mind, raising his brows in that silent language of glances they had developed over years of friendship. Twins who had been together since birth wouldn’t need words to speak to one another.
Finally, Tsune let out a disgusted sigh.
“This way, Thunderer,” Kitsu said. “We’ll travel while we talk.”
Chapter Sixteen
MORTAL LANDS
Throughout her tasks the next morning, Koida thought of little else but her few moments with Raijin the night before. Somehow, in her dream, she had found that smoky, blue-gray world without hurting herself. Before, when she had stumbled upon it, she had collapsed in fits, blood pouring from her nose and eyes. Those times had always begun with her in resting meditation, attempting to use Raijin’s Ro. Hush and Lysander thought her betrothed’s Ro was too far advanced for Koida to use without harming herself, but what if she had just been using it wrong?
As she built up the galley fire in the hanging stove and carried buckets of water, Koida thought back to the dream she’d been having before waking up in that strange other world. That amethyst lotus unfolding in her chest and stretching from her head to her feet. The jade cross pattern, like the New Script character for Thunderbolt. What if she hadn’t only dreamed them? What if she had truly been cycling the Ros in her sleep? Was that even possible?
Koida hurried through the cargo junk, passing out heavy rusks and each sailor’s ration of rum for the day. Blood orange chunks floated in several of the ladlefuls. The sailors ate these chunks, skin and all.
“All the good’s in the peel, little sister,” the gap-toothed sailor Won-Shik explained when he saw Koida wrinkle her nose at this. “Stops us getting the weeping sores, and after a week or so soaking, it holds more liquor than you’d imagine. Can’t be throwing away good booze.”
“Hear, hear!” Lysander agreed heartily, toasting Won-Shik with his ladleful of rum in one hand and his ivory flask in the other.
For once, Koida kept her opinions about Lysander and drink to herself. After all, the foreign devil was taking all of Hush’s sailing work on himself so she and Cold Sun wouldn’t have to, and besides, she didn’t have the time to spare arguing with him. She wanted to finish her tasks and spend some time trying the Ro cycles she had dreamed of. If she could replicate them, perhaps she could get back to Raijin again. Perhaps she could help him.
As she started to turn away, Lysander grabbed her arm and lowered his head to whisper in her ear.
“Give this to Hush.” He passed one of his spiced rusks back to Koida. “Tell her she needs to eat something or she’ll just keep getting worse.”
“What about you?” Koida asked, glancing down at the biscuit. She might not have spent much time laboring in her life, but even she understood that with the amount of work Lysander was doing now, he would need more food, not less.
“The quartermaster’s going to cut off Hush’s rations because she’s not working,” Lysander said, as if this were an answer rather than a deflection of her question. “If not today, then soon.”
“I’m in the galley all the time,” Koida said. “I’ll sneak something out—”
“Get that out of your head,” Lysander cut her off. “You’re a terrible thief and a worse liar. If you get caught, you’ll be strung up from the sail beam and flogged. And that, Princess, will kill someone as weak as you.”
“I’m not weak.”
“Care to prove that by having your hide stripped off your back? I’m certain Rila’s Demon Fox of Nine Tails would be more than happy to oblige.”
The prospect of being torn to pieces by the bladed whip was sobering enough to stop Koida from arguing further. She reluctantly agreed not to risk it, hiding the rusk in her pocket, then went on serving the rest of the sailors their breakfast.
As Lysander predicted, just before Koida made her way down to the sleeping quarters to find Hush, Quartermaster Rila stopped her.
“The mute doesn’t eat if she doesn’t work.” The hairless woman locked eyes with Koida as if daring her to protest.
Koida nodded. “Yes, Quartermaster.”
Suspicion glimmered in Rila’s brown eyes. “I’ll be counting those rusks when they get back to the galley. I know exactly how many we took on board and exactly how many we should have every day. For each one that goes missing, you’ll feel the bite of the Demon Fox.”
Koida didn’t have to fake the shiver of fear that ran down her spine.
“Yes, Quartermaster,” she said.
After returning the empty rusk box and the rum bucket back to the larder, Koida slipped away from the galley—flinching at every clunk of the tin and fearing that Cook would call her back to start another task—and found her way through the interior of the junk to the sailors’ sleeping quarters.
Net hammocks swung from the beams, several occupied by the sailors who had stayed awake through the night from fourth watch to first. Koida crept around until she found Hush’s long black horsetail of hair hanging over the side of one. Less than a day had passed since they’d set sail, but already the silent physician looked terrible. Though she was asleep, dark ruts encircled her eyes, and her skin was clammy and ashen. The white cloth wrappings covering the lower half of her face had clearly been washed very recently, a thought that Koida’s delicate stomach wouldn’t allow her to dwell on for long.
“Hush?” Koida whispered, gently squeezing the woman’s hand. “Can you wake up for a moment?”
Long lashes fluttered, and Hush’s dark almond eyes opened.
“Lysander says you n
eed to eat this or you’ll get worse.” Koida held out the rusk.
Hush swallowed audibly, closing her eyes, and turned her head away. After a moment, however, she gave a weak nod and let Koida press the food into her hand. Hush broke off the smallest crumb possible and rolled it between her fingers as if stalling while she roused enough courage to eat it.
Finally, she poked the tiny morsel under her cloth facemask and, Koida assumed, into her mouth.
Hush grimaced, but there was no immediate rejection, for which Koida was very grateful. That bite had been barely enough to feed an ant, however.
“Apologies, esteemed physician, but I think you will have to eat more than that.”
A hint of a smile creased the corners of Hush’s eyes, and the silent woman took Koida’s hand.
Something brushed gently against Koida’s heartcenter, startling her. She turned her focus inward immediately, afraid that something might be attempting to steal Raijin’s jade Ro, but the soft red glow she found there did not attempt to break through to the dual life forces she held. It touched the wall of Koida’s heartcenter again, and this time she felt a series of impressions and images. The rusk, a short passage of time, eating a full meal, a promise, and then the place where the rusk had been but was no longer.
Koida turned her attention back to Hush. “Are you... Is this...”
Hush nodded feebly and tapped her heartcenter, then pointed to Koida’s.
“Then you’re promising you’ll eat the rest of it?”
Again, Hush agreed.
“Gratitude,” Koida said, smiling down at her. “I have to return to the galley.”
It was true, but she hesitated. She felt guilty leaving the silent master like this.
Another wash of impressions flowed through her heartcenter—a common occurrence, a wide-open sea, the end of a journey, dry land, and return to full health. Hush was telling her that there was no reason to worry and that she would recover as soon as they landed.
Koida nodded and, because she could think of nothing else to say that might help, squeezed Hush’s hand one more time before weaving her way between the hammocks toward the sleeping quarters’ door. She had meant to ask the silent physician about the different Ro-cycling patterns she had dreamed, whether it was even possible for someone to cycle outside their Ro pathways, but seeing Hush so frail and exhausted had driven the thought from Koida’s mind.
