Toshi tried to follow Uramon’s lead and keep his voice neutral. “You want me to take on the moonfolk? I’m flattered, Boss, but I’m not qualified.”
“Not on your own. With Kiku and a few of my hatchet men to back you up, you would have a much better chance. Especially if Marrow here brings you to his next meeting with the soratami so you have the element of surprise.”
Uramon rose, stepped forward, and fixed her heavy-lidded eyes on Toshi. “I am commissioning you and your hyozan for a reckoning, boy. The soratami stole from me. They’ve been stealing from me for weeks. Take whatever and whomever you need to Marrow’s next meeting. Kill as many of them as you can, and bring their heads back to me.”
Toshi held the drab woman’s gaze. “Too risky, Boss. Half the people you send won’t make it back. I don’t like those odds.”
“I’m already sharing the risk, as are Kiku and her clan. But if it’s compensation you’re worried about, we can come to an arrangement.”
Toshi shook his head. “Sorry, Boss. I refuse.”
Uramon lashed out, striking Toshi across the face with the back of her hand. The black enameled ring on her little finger gouged a line of flesh from his cheek.
“You presume too much, Toshi. You may not refuse, because I want this. Your odds against the soratami are far better than your chances against Kiku’s flower, and you will wear her bloom like a schoolgirl’s corsage until you return to me with the goods in hand.”
Boss Uramon turned. Her voice was soft and lifeless. “Take them out and clean them up. Kiku, my dear, I expect nothing short of brilliance from you. Toshi is a tricky one, but I have every confidence that you can keep him under control.”
Toshi wiped the drops of blood from his cheek and glanced at Kiku. He hid a smile behind his hand as he stared at the ring on Uramon’s hand. She didn’t always wear it, but now that he knew she still possessed it he was free to take his leave.
“Don’t do it,” Kiku whispered. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t do it.”
“I don’t have to do anything,” Toshi said loudly. “If you kill me, you’ll have the entire hyozan after you until my death is avenged. Your reckoners take revenge for you, Boss, to protect your business. Mine only work for each other.”
“Who said anything about killing?” Uramon cocked her head and folded her hands into her sleeves. “I asked Kiku to plant a camellia not to make you dead but to make you wish you were dead. The reckoner oath you amateurs swore only applies if you’re killed, am I right? Blind, dismembered, and in constant agony won’t count.”
The flower on his shoulder squirmed. Toshi looked hard at Kiku.
“The Boss is right,” Kiku said. “That’s a very special flower. It will never stop doing terrible things to you, but it won’t kill you. The ogre shaman and the others will never know.”
Toshi nodded. “I see you have all the angles covered, Boss. As usual.”
“Of course. Now. I want you to begin as soon as—”
“But you’ve overlooked one important thing this time.”
“Oh? And what might that be?”
“I’ve found religion—and the kami I pray to is one of the few that still answers.”
Uramon replied, but Toshi was concentrating too hard to listen. There were kami spirits for everything in the utsushiyo—storms, rivers, stones, swords, light. Even concepts such as justice and rage had patron spirits in the kakuriyo. Toshi had fallen in with the Myojin of Night’s Reach, the major spirit of darkness and secrecy, which held sway wherever there was no light. He made very few demands on her and she on him, but he had spent all of his time lately establishing what her power could do and how to invoke it. He was by no means expert, but he had learned to call upon her blessings in a manner that suited him perfectly.
The kanji carved into his arm months ago throbbed, invisible under his sleeve. Uramon was still talking, and he sensed Kiku shouting and waving her arms. The flower on his shoulder squirmed again, and the first painful points of its lethal roots pressed into his flesh.
Toshi disappeared under the probing tips of the plant, fading from sight like a wisp of steam. Invisible and intangible, he watched as the loathsome, wriggling bloom fell through the space he occupied and landed on the floor with a soft thud. He could still see and hear everything in the room as normal, but he could not be seen, or heard, or touched until the myojin’s blessing wore off.
“Take that one back to his cell,” snapped Uramon, gesturing at Marrow-Gnawer. She turned to Kiku and snarled softly, “I did not know Toshi was capable of such things.”
“Nor I, Boss.” Kiku scooped up the flower and closed her fist around it. When she opened her hand, the bloom was gone. “He kept saying he’d gotten religion, but he lies so often I barely listen to him anymore.”
Uramon nodded, her slack face unchanged, her eyes hard and furious. “Gather your fellows and a dozen of my hatchet men. Search the grounds. He may have vanished, but he can’t have gotten far. When you find him, bring him back here.”
Still in the precise spot he had been, Toshi watched Kiku exit. Uramon was right—he was completely safe in this shroud of shadow, but he could not move quickly and could not stay concealed forever. As a phantom, he was too insubstantial to cast spells or cover great distances.
Fortunately, he didn’t need to go far. With a colossal effort of will, Toshi floated after Uramon as the boss skirted the edge of her sand pit and exited the chamber.
She still wore the ring, which was half of what he wanted from her. If she didn’t lead him to the other half soon, he would strike out on his own and search the manor himself. So long as the guards and Kiku were searching outside, it wouldn’t even matter when the myojin’s blessing faded. By then, he meant to be well on his way, safe with the information he came for.
Solid and visible once more, Toshi trudged through the muck at the south end of the great Takenuma Swamp. He had learned all he needed to in Uramon’s manor before slipping out and following the slow, tortuous route of a phantom to safety.
When Night’s blessing finally left him, he was just outside Uramon’s property. He knew someone in Uramon’s employ would be able to track him—either the nezumi by scent or the jushi by spell. He moved on as quickly as he could, taking no special measures to hide his trail. Toshi had a gift for self-preservation and improvisation that had kept him alive and out of extreme poverty among the fen’s cutthroat community. Uramon’s interest in him changed the order of his long-term goals but not the goals themselves. Let them follow. He could actually use a gang of expendable thugs, provided he stayed one step ahead of them.
The ground slowly began to firm under his feet as he left the outskirts of the swamp and headed into the cold, rocky realm of the Sokenzan Mountains. Toshi saw the thin, needle-like spires that littered the horizon and tightened his cloak against the dry, chill air. He had traveled from the fen to the mountains and back a dozen times or more, but normally he was much farther east. His present heading took him along the western edge of the range, where the cold was more constant and the snow never melted but was driven into drifts by the bitter wind.
He had done far more than pray since his last trip to the mountains. There was a surprising amount of commerce between the fen and the Sokenzan, and his ability to go unnoticed permitted him unprecedented access to private conversations between bandits and black marketeers.
He collected quite a bit of useful information about the western quadrant of the range. Here was where the greatest concentration of akki goblins lived, tribes of a thousand or more dug into the frozen hills like bees in a hive. Here the great sanzoku bandit chieftain Godo had escaped the daimyo’s troops time and again, raiding the great lord’s riches then melting away into the rocky wastes. Here the spirits of stone and bloodlust roamed, as sharp and unforgiving as the landscape itself. Here were peaks blighted and accursed, haunted by wild spirits more terrible than anything society had encountered—even the twisted and corrupt society of the swamp.<
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Toshi wasn’t sure how much of this was truth and how much was sanzoku bragging, but he was sure that the next step in his spiritual evolution waited for him at the top of one of these frozen spits of rock.
He plowed on through the dusty, ankle-deep snow for the better part of a day. The farther south he went, the colder it got. At last, he reached the foothills of the western Sokenzan and saw his path rising up before him, a long, treacherous way that disappeared into the mist and low-lying clouds above.
He had memorized the only maps of this region, so he was able to identify the mountain he wanted. The akki and bandits called it the Heart of Frost and they avoided it at all costs. Toshi grinned, hoping that whoever was following him on Uramon’s behalf did not share the superstition.
He glanced back through the swirling snow. He could not see anyone in the distance, but he knew they were there. He had backtracked just before he left the swamp, careful not to be seen but ready to invoke his myojin if necessary. Sure enough, there were a half-dozen nezumi and several humans struggling to keep up with him. They kept Marrow-Gnawer on a leash, forcing him to keep his nose buried in the muck so as not to lose Toshi’s trail.
They were only a few hours behind, which suited him perfectly. Once up on the mountainside, he could stand aside, let them take the lead, and see if the stories about the Heart of Frost were true.
The wind changed direction, and for a moment Toshi was at the calm center of a whirling vortex of wind and snow. He felt a tingling on his skin that had nothing to do with the cold and a dull pressure on his eardrums.
“Muck and mire,” he swore. He didn’t have time for this.
The air continued to swirl around him as a huge, amorphous shape formed overhead. These were all the signs of a kami manifestation, of a spirit completing the journey from the kakuriyo to the utsushiyo. Once a random occurrence like a flood or a lightning strike, these intrusions had become more frequent and more violent over the past two decades until the conclusion was inescapable: the kami had declared war on the material world.
Once the spirits were draped in flesh, they were vulnerable to physical attacks, but they were savage, focused, and powerful enough to pose a real danger to anyone they encountered. Toshi had battled several kami during his life, but his experience did not shore up his confidence. He preferred to keep clear of such encounters altogether, especially when he was being pursued.
The form in the air reminded him of some great misshapen bird, half-obscured by the driving snow so that he could barely determine its outline. It had broad wings that didn’t move, four clawed feet, and a long stinging tail. He could see no head, but its eyes glowed yellow in the space where a head might be. A flock of hovering blue fish as thin as needles hovered in the cold, whirling wind around the creature. It let out a grating shriek, turned, and sliced toward Toshi like a thrown blade.
The ochimusha dived aside and rolled through the snow. Whatever it was, it was fast. He glanced at the ground where he had been standing and saw a clean, precise furrow that the kami had cut into the ground. If he had been a little slower, he would have been in pieces.
Toshi cursed his luck. He had made his reputation as a kanji mage, but his recent conversion to kami worship required him to relearn some of his most basic maneuvers. A year ago, he could have dispatched the snow kami in minutes with his swords and the right character. A year from today, the blessings of Night would stop the spirit bird in mid-flight. Right now, however, he had to figure out a way to blend both together before the hostile kami split him down the middle.
The kami made another pass, which he narrowly avoided. Toshi drew his swords and crossed them in front of him, turning to keep them between himself and the kami. If it were mindless enough, it might shred itself against his blades on its next strike.
The wind redoubled, and the flying kami became a blur. Toshi felt a shock and heard a metallic crack as the spirit slammed into his crossed blades. Thrown back by the impact, Toshi lost his long blade when his back met a large boulder alongside the path.
His vision doubled, and he shook his head to clear it. The kami darted like a dragonfly, dashing to Toshi’s left and right so quickly he could scarcely follow its motion. He was safer with his back to the boulder, but the loss of his sword balanced that advantage. He felt a warm liquid running down the back of his empty hand. The spirit’s sharp body had split open the flesh between his knuckles, and blood dripped down onto the frozen ground.
Reflexively, Toshi tried to come up with an appropriate kanji symbol he could inscribe using his own blood—a kanji inscribed with bodily humors was far more powerful than one done in ink or chalk. The bird moved too fast for him to mark it, but maybe he could mark something else.
With his short sword held out in one hand, Toshi kept his eyes fixed on the slashing kami and probed the rock behind him with his bleeding fist. He quickly traced the kanji that had allowed him to escape Uramon and Kiku, the first spell he had cast after accepting the blessings of Night’s Reach. Normally, it was a straightforward concealment charm. With the power of the myojin behind it, it was something far more profound.
The wind-shear kami came screaming forward, its wings spread wide. Toshi focused his thoughts and felt the sting of the myojin-powered mark on his forearm.
“Fade,” he said, rapping his bloody fist on the rock behind him. He pressed his palm flat against the center of the character he’d inscribed.
The kami came on, gathering speed. Toshi felt his body melt away. He lowered his sword.
The scything air spirit soared through him without resistance and on into the now-insubstantial boulder. It banked and tried to come up short of the mountainside beyond the phantom stone.
Toshi concentrated on his palm and the kanji beneath it. He felt the point of contact between his body, the symbol, and the stone, then stepped away.
The surface of the rock clung to his palm for a moment then peeled off. Robbed of its living energy, the kanji spell winked out like a candle between moistened fingertips. The boulder became solid once more—Toshi could see the wind-driven snow change course as the mass of stone returned to deflect it.
Trapped inside, the wind-shear kami found its body irrevocably woven into the rock. Only the tips of its wings and its glowing eyes protruded. Its last shrieking cry slowly lost strength and volume until it died against the wind in Toshi’s ears.
He stood and watched until the spirit’s form had shimmered and vanished from sight. They always evaporated after they died. In the growing storm, he could see strange patterns in the surface of the rock where the kami’s wings had poked through.
Toshi retrieved his sword. He bandaged his hand, tightened his pack, and started up the mountain trail.
From here on in, he knew, things were going to get tricky.
They had been climbing for three days. Toshi’s trail meandered but never strayed far from the path thawing snow had carved into the Heart of Frost. It was a monotonous and exhausting enterprise, made all the more so by the nezumi trackers and the hatchet men.
As a professional Kiku was obliged to retrieve Toshi. The others were merely slaves or prisoners, pathetically trying to cling onto their lives before Uramon took them completely. The jushi swore to make Toshi pay. She had known him for years, had worked with him when he was one of Uramon’s reckoners. They had never come into professional conflict, so they had managed not to make any serious attempts on each other’s lives until now.
A nezumi stopped on the path in front of her to sniff the air. Without slowing or breaking stride, Kiku kicked the rat-man aside and kept trudging through the snow.
He squawked and growled, “Hey! How am I—”
Kiku turned and glared. The craven little vermin suddenly curled himself into a ball and covered his face, mewling piteously. Kiku pulled her heavy hooded cloak tight and cursed the ochimusha once more.
She would kill Toshi for this. She hated the cold, she hated nezumi, and she hated owing Boss Uramon. If Toshi
had just knuckled under and agreed to do the job, things would have been perfect. Uramon would have sent them out to ambush the soratami, and they’d have been obliged to deliver. Apart from that, whatever arrangement she and Toshi came to once the job was underway would have been entirely up to them. She did not trust him, but she did like the idea of putting his skills and his devious mind to work for her benefit.
The wind cut through her clothes, and she grimaced. Look at us now, she thought. You’re running to the least hospitable place in the world in the hopes it’ll keep us from following you, and I have to bring you back. There’s no chance of any side deals or limited partnership now, Toshi Umezawa. I’m readying another very special flower just for you.
Soon there wouldn’t be enough light to continue. The nezumi could track at night, but the temperature on the mountain dropped dangerously low in the dark. If they didn’t take shelter they’d be dead in a matter of hours.
Kiku stopped. “Marrow-Gnawer,” she said, “come here.”
Marrow-Gnawer growled something at his fellow rats and skittered back down the path. He was wearing a leather collar that fit tightly around his neck.
“How far ahead is he?”
Marrow-Gnawer grunted. “Half a day or less. Hard to tell in the cold.”
Kiku pulled out her fan and snapped it open. She used it to cover her face from the eyes down and leaned down to Marrow-Gnawer.
“Send two of your friends ahead. Have them go as far as they can. If they catch sight of him, they can come back and tell us.”
Marrow-Gnawer glared, but his voice was calm. “Excuse, ma’am. They’ll die before dawn.”
Kiku leaned closer, the fan undulating slightly. “I don’t care. If he’s close enough to catch, I want to know tonight.”
Marrow-Gnawer nodded, his face grim. “Even if they see him, they’ll die. Why not just kill them here?” He put his hand on the jagged rusty blade on his hip. “Or let me.”
Heretic, Betrayers of Kamigawa: Kamigawa Cycle, Book II Page 3
