by Claire Luana
“She sounds like a good friend,” Kai said carefully.
“She was,” Nanase said.
“Was?”
“Yes. She died when she was young.”
“I’m sorry,” Kai said. Maybe Nanase didn’t know Azura was still alive.
“I often think that things would be different today if she had not died.”
“Did she have any children?” Kai asked. Quitsu’s tail flicked her ankle.
“What a strange question,” Nanase said, examining Kai across the fire
with her hawklike gaze.
Kai met her eyes, willing her to talk first. Did you give me this knife because you know I am her daughter? Kai wanted to shout.
“But no. She died too young,” Nanase said. “Though I do not doubt that if she had, her child would play an important part in things to come.”
“What things?”
Nanase sighed, “War.”
It was two more days before the other girls straggled in. The sigil on Kai’s neck itched, though she wasn’t sure if it was just in her head.
Her father had borne a similar marking on the inside of his left forearm. He had worn leather wraps around his forearms that she had assumed were functional, but now she saw them for what they were. A disguise. She remembered asking him about it. They had just delivered a calf that had been twisted in his mother’s belly. Her father had reached up into the cow to turn the calf and allow it to be born safely. As they washed off in the large trough, she asked him.
“Father, what is that marking?” It was outlined in white on his tanned skin, a circle and an upside down triangle, overlapping each other. He continued washing for a moment before he answered.
“Never let your brother get near you with a cattle brand,” he said, tweaking her nose.
Her eyes widened. “Your brother did that to you?” she asked.
“Just be glad you are an only child, my little fox,” he said. “It’s much safer that way.”
She had been so young. She had never made the connection between the symbol on his arm and the symbol borne on Kita’s flag. A circle and a triangle, the golden sun. The symbol that must be borne by all sunburners. Her father was a sunburner. She was certain. It explained so many things. She had to get to her mother. She needed answers.
Nanase packed her camp and gathered the new moonburners together. She addressed them.
“Welcome to the ranks of the moonburners. With your test to advance to samanera, you showed us your moonburning skills. With the ordeal of the last few days, you have proven your mental strength, dedication and ingenuity. Well done, sisters.”
There were a few whoops and claps.
She raised her hands to quiet them. “Unfortunately, there is no time for celebration. We are at war. We have word that a group of sunburners is stationed close to the border of the Tottori. They are being sheltered in a Kitan town, hiding themselves among the inhabitants. Our mission is to infiltrate and attack. We will be joining an additional force of moonburners by air and will execute the attack together.”
Nanase continued. “Make no mistake, this will be a difficult mission. There will be civilians present. But remember that the sunburners did not have mercy against the innocents at the citadel. Their attack was ruthless and many were lost. If they choose to use their civilians as a shield, we have no choice but to break through them.”
Nanase went on to lay out the details of their mission. It would be a quick airborne attack, with the hope that they would take the sunburners by surprise.
Before long, Kai found herself mounted on a koumori, Quitsu strapped in front of her. Their formation flew across the foothills of the Akashi Mountains and the Misty Forest, silent black shadows in the moonlight.
As they reached the borderlands, their koumori were joined by a squad of six other koumori and riders. The groups blended silently. Kai’s fingers ached from gripping the reins, and her backside was numb. Koumori riding was not the most comfortable means of transportation.
Quitsu’s eyes were closed, he was either asleep or terrified at the flight. As they finally slowed and began to descend, Kai got her first glimpse of their target. The moon illuminated the humble buildings below them. The town had a rudimentary wall, similar to the wall around her village in Ushai.
Nanase threw the first fireball, a look of grim determination on her face. There might not even be sunburners here; Nanase had admitted their intelligence was weeks old. But the lives of a few hundred Kitan villagers were a price the general was willing to pay.
The other moonburners followed Nanase’s lead, throwing fire and sweeping to the left and right to regroup, as they had been taught. Kai took her shot, purposely throwing wide and missing any buildings. The fires thrown by the others were spreading. Screams punctuated the night air as townsfolk ran out of their homes, driven into the open by the flames. As the fire lit the village, Kai’s eyes widened.
“I know this place,” she said to Quitsu, recognition flooding her mind with memories. The gates of the city were decorated with a phoenix in flight, one of the signs of the Kitan monarchy.
“How?” he asked from his perch before her, in a somewhat strangled voice.
“I came here many times with my father, to sell our cattle. This village is less than an hour’s ride from my hometown.”
A plan coalesced in Kai’s mind. She took another shot at the village and circled near Nanase. She shouted at the other woman. “No sunburners have come out to defend the village! If they were here, they would have showed themselves by now!”
Nanase surveyed the scene. “We pull back!” she yelled at the other burners.
The leader of the six from the citadel circled closer to Nanase. “Our orders are to keep attacking until the town is destroyed,” she said.
“You have new orders,” Nanase said. “Fall back and regroup.”
The moonburner grimaced but obeyed, shooting a white light into the air that signaled the burners to regroup and head back to Kyuden.
Kai reigned her koumori back a bit, circling once, so the other women fell in ahead of her behind Nanase. As they headed back towards the Tottori Desert, Kai silently directed her koumori to the west, away from the others.
“Where are we going?” Quitsu asked.
“To get my mother.”
Kai set her koumori down outside the walls of Ushai, by the sun gate. The village looked much as it had when she had left. Signs of rebuilding dotted the town—scaffolding, new construction and piles of building materials. They still had a long way to go.
Kai and Quitsu crept into the town, sticking to the shadows. It was after midnight and most townspeople were in bed. Kai realized, wryly, that she had truly grown used to sleeping during the day and being awake at night. The silence of these streets felt wrong.
They made their way into the center of town, Kai remembering each turn. She led them to the servant’s entrance of the town hall, at the back of the building.
“I think we should try Youkai’s room first. If my mother is not there, we try the servant’s quarters, or last, the dungeons.”
“And if she’s not in any of those places?” Quitsu voiced the question she had been pointedly ignoring.
“We figure out a new plan,” Kai said.
Kai moonburned, wrapping them both in shadow. She opened the door into the town hall. It let out a loud creak and they both cringed. She waited for shouting voices or guards to be called, but there was no response.
They crept into the building. As they rounded the corner that opened up to the hallway in front of his room, Kai sighed with relief to see there was no guard posted. There must be a rotating guard throughout the building. They crossed the hallway on tiptoe, and Kai gently turned the doorknob. It was locked.
She stepped back and burned light into the lock. It began smoking. She moonburned a thin line of heat, severing the threads of the bottom portion of her tunic. She ripped it off, and wrapped her hand in it. She pulled the door open, the bolt of
the lock melted.
She crouched outside the door and motioned for Quitsu to go in and examine the situation. He padded silently into the room and quickly returned.
“Youkai is asleep in the bed. Your mother is sleeping on a mat on the floor. Her ankle is chained.”
She entered the room, crouching on her hands and knees, pulling the door mostly shut behind her. She could see her mother’s prone form on the far side of the room. Youkai’s snores were loud and constant. Her blood began to boil as she thought of her mother chained in that man’s bedroom.
She reached her mother’s side and put a hand over her mouth, shaking her slightly. Hanae awoke with a start and began to cry out, but Kai looked intently in her eyes, putting a finger to her lips. Hanae’s eyes widened in recognition and she nodded slightly.
Kai removed her hand from her mother’s mouth and listened for the snores. Still even.
“Kai?” her mother whispered. “What are you doing here?”
Kai found herself grinning. “I was in the area. I figured I may not have a better chance to rescue you.”
Kai took the piece of cloth from her tunic and wrapped it around her mother’s ankle, inside her shackle. She moonburned heat into the hinge of the shackle and waited. She touched it experimentally, and when she found it cool enough to touch, she pulled, ripping the two sides apart.
Hanae pulled her into a fierce embrace, and for a moment, Kai almost let her guard down, almost let the madness of the past year wash over her. But she pushed those emotions down and pulled away. There would be time for sharing and mourning, later. When they were safe.
Quitsu was already at the door, waiting for them to follow. As they approached the door, Hanae turned, surveying the room. Before Kai could even register what she was doing, she grabbed the knife from Kai’s forearm sheath, leaped onto the bed where Youkai slept and slit his throat.
Kai was so shocked that she couldn’t help a small cry escaping from her lips. She had been prepared to face Youkai if she had to, but to kill him in cold blood was another thing altogether.
Hanae wiped the blade on the bed cover and returned it to Kai. “Now I’m ready to go,” she whispered.
Kai, mouth still hanging open, shook her head to clear it. They would talk later. She peered out the door and found the hallway empty. She wrapped the three of them in shadows as they made their way back to the servant’s entrance, but it wasn’t necessary. They didn’t encounter a living soul.
As they reached the sun gate, Kai breathed a sigh of relief. Her koumori was just around the corner, waiting in the dark shadow of the town wall. She wasn’t sure if he could carry three of them, but they would figure something out. She couldn’t believe they had done it.
Kai turned back to her mother and saw a flash of metal in the moonlight. The world went dark.
CHAPTER 29
Kai came to in a rush. Her head was pounding, and the skin on her face felt stretched, as if covered in dried blood.
She was chained to a pole in the middle of a tent, her hands behind her back. The tent was large and well-lit with lanterns. A rich rug carpeted the floor beneath her, flanked by a simple sturdy desk and what appeared to be a bedroll. A washbasin with a bowl and pitcher stood by the entrance flap. As she craned her head around behind her to get a view of the rest of the tent, she froze. A suit of golden armor stood against the back wall like a hollow metal man. It was polished to a shine and had ornate sunbursts across the chest. The helmet was styled like a lion. She knew that armor.
The tent flap opened and Kai met the narrowed eyes of the man who stood in the doorway. It was as if all the malevolence and hatred of hundreds of years of war had been funneled into those eyes.
“Daarco,” she said, willing her voice to be strong and sure. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
A look of startled confusion passed over his face, and for a second, he was just a man.
A deep, throaty laugh sounded behind him and Daarco stepped to the side. The man with the golden ponytail stepped into the room, clapping Daarco on the shoulder.
“I told you this one had spirit.”
Behind the man came a golden lion, huge and muscled and menacing. Kai gaped at it. She could tell by the uniformity and brightness of its golden hair that it was a seishen. It was magnificent.
Daarco took up a place by the door, scowling and stiff, arms crossed over his chest. The seishen took up a post on the other side of the door, sitting on its haunches and licking one giant paw.
The other man pulled up a stool before her and sat. Kai’s heart fluttered. She mentally shook herself. She was probably going to die here, and it likely wouldn’t be pleasant. Was she such a foolhardy girl that the thought of being close to this man outweighed those truths? In the end, it didn’t matter if she was tortured and killed by an attractive man or an ugly one. She would be just as dead.
“I’m sorry about the manner in which we brought you here. I had my physician look you over, and he assured me you are unharmed.” His words were fine and educated, his voice rich. She could tell he was trying to put her at ease, which only made her more nervous.
“Where is my seishen?” she asked. “Is he all right? And the woman with me?”
“Your seishen is fine,” he said. “Fought like a little devil after you went down, but we were able to subdue him without hurting him too badly.”
“May I see him?”
“Later, if you cooperate and tell us what we want to know.”
“And the woman?”
The ponytailed man and Daarco exchanged a glance. “She is in our holding cells. She was not cooperative. And it became known to us that the prefect of the town we found you in was recently discovered dead in his bed, his throat slit. His slave woman was missing. She is the likely suspect.”
Kai kept her face impassive. “I don’t know about that, but that woman is much more than a simple slave. Do not mistreat her.”
The man inclined his head, as if he would consider her suggestion. Kai knew she didn’t have a lot of bargaining power, but what she did have would be well spent protecting her mother.
“May I ask you a question?” Kai asked.
The man chuckled. “Technically, I’m supposed to be the one asking the questions. I don’t think Daarco would let me hear the end of it if things didn’t go that way. But, before we begin, go ahead.”
“Who are you?” She had a sneaking suspicion, but needed it confirmed.
“My name is Hiro,” he said simply.
Now it was Daarco’s turn to chuckle. “Make no mistake, moonburner whore.”
Hiro shot him a look, but Daarco forged ahead. “You are speaking to the crown prince of Kita.”
If Daarco was hoping for a reaction, she didn’t give him the satisfaction. But inside, her mind was whirling. She had direct access to the crown prince of Kita. And, if she wasn’t mistaken, he seemed . . . sympathetic. Even friendly. He had spared her once, and she had spared him as well. By her account, that left them even. He didn’t owe her anything. But maybe . . .
Kai wished she had a better head for political intrigue. She hadn’t paid close attention in History class, so she didn’t know much about King Ozora’s background and lineage. It had been enough that his decree had condemned her to die in the desert. Maybe she should have paid more attention.
“It is a pleasure to officially meet you, Prince Hiro,” Kai said. She could have ended the royal line of Kita with a flick of her wrist just a few days before. And hadn’t. If anyone ever found out . . . the queen would have her flogged, then killed, and probably flogged again for good measure.
“And who are you?” he asked.
“My name is Kai. I am a moonburner. But I grew up in Kita.”
“Thank you for your honesty.”
“What do you want with me?”
Hiro leaned forward, putting his well-muscled forearms on his knees. “Information.”
Hiro didn’t seem like the type to mistreat her for information if i
t wasn’t necessary, but she couldn’t say the same for Daarco, who watched the whole interaction with a predatory interest.
“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, on two conditions.”
“A little presumptuous of you to think you can make conditions, but go ahead.”
“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. But just you.” She inclined her head towards Daarco. “No audience.”
“Second?”
“Bring my seishen here with me.”
The prince looked at her as if weighing his options. “Agreed.”
“Hiro!” Daarco sputtered. “She wants to be alone with you to work her feminine tricks . . .”
Hiro looked sternly at Daarco, who fell silent. “I’ve made my decision. Bring her seishen.”
Daarco glowered at her, but obeyed, ducking out of the tent.
They stared at each other, eyes searching, probing, evaluating. His eyes were the green of a pool of water in the forest, reflecting the sunlight. A hint of yellow or gold . . .
She finally looked away, and much to her dismay, found herself blushing.
Pull it together.
“I must admit,” Hiro said, “that I did not expect we would meet again, especially so soon. But it seems Taiyo is not done with us yet.”
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
Daarco returned a short while later leading Quitsu on a thick chain. He was limping and had a gash over one eye, but he was in one piece. Daarco chained Quitsu to the side of the tent opposite Kai and stormed out. His deliberate cruelty of placing Quitsu out of reach grated on her, but she ignored it. Quitsu was here, and he was safe.
Quitsu was clearly having the same reaction, straining against the chain to reach her. Finally, he settled down, sitting down at the end of his chain in obvious distress. Hiro’s golden lion seishen rose from its near statue-like seat by the door and padded to Quitsu’s side.
Hiro rose, alarmed. “Ryu,” he said, with a tone of warning.
The seishen gave Hiro a condescending look and sniffed Quitsu. He licked Quitsu’s wound twice, his huge tongue dwarfing Quitsu’s delicate face.
