The Withering Flame (The Year of the Dragon, Book 6)

by James Calbraith

“Well, I clearly don’t!”

  “It’s a pattern your father used to call for help in the Abomination’s prison.”

  “My father’s — ”

  She looked closer at the pattern. It did seem similar to the runes woven into the glove she got from Master Tanaka. She jabbed the tip of her finger with the dagger and ran the trickling blood along the pattern. A barrage of images flooded in her mind: Ganryū attacking Shūhan; a prison cell carved in black stone; the mummy of a Butsu monk; a spell, drawn in blood on the cell floor and…

  She reeled back and opened her eyes. “You were there.”

  Tokojiro nodded. “The Abomination used my knowledge of the Gaikokujin’s secrets. We were both rescued by Koyata-sama… but it was too late for your father. I’m sorry.” He leaned towards her. “We, too, know who’s the real enemy of Yamato, Takashima-sama.”

  “Is this enough to convince you, Satō-sama?” asked Takasugi. “We can only rely on your judgement here.”

  Another bell, from another temple, joined the first one’s gloomy drone.

  “I — I think he’s telling the truth,” she said. The blood magic rush was making her dizzy. “But I still don’t believe we should wait any longer. Illness or no, the Mikado will have to hear us out.”

  “I agree,” said Takasugi. “We’re out of time.” He turned to Tokojiro. “Tell Izumi-dono to prepare his men. I will send word to Kunishi-sama.”

  “No.” Shōin laid his hands on the table, clenching trembling fists.

  “Shōin?” Satō tilted her head and frowned.

  “There must be another way,” said Shōin. “One that will not lead to bloodshed between the Yamato. Perhaps if we were to send just a small delegation to the palace first—”

  “What is wrong with those bells?” Tokojiro looked up. There were now at least five bells ringing out in mournful unison, and more joined them, one by one, until at length the entire city was filled with the sound of brass beating on brass in a slow, mournful rhythm.

  “Oh, no.” Tokojiro grew pale. “Oh, no, no.”

  “What is it?” asked Satō.

  The interpreter rose up and bowed to the setting sun. After a moment he turned to them, pale.

  “His Exalted and Divine Majesty… Kōmei-mikado… is dead!”

  Nagomi leaned back against Bran’s chest and raised her face to the sun, smiling.

  She was beginning to grow used to flying a dorako, though her stomach still churned whenever she looked down at the tiny world under her dangling feet: the fishing boats treading the sea like pond striders, the lattice of rice paddies like the tatami mats, the glistening ribbons of irrigation canals… it was more than she could bear. Luckily, most of the time they were flying above the low clouds, with Bran rarely breaking cover to figure out their position.

  However, it was worth bearing a little discomfort, just to be able to sit in the saddle with Bran, his rein-holding arms around her, and the burning summer sun above her. It was almost enough to forget all about the hardships and trials of the previous days — almost… She rubbed her shoulder where the assassin’s dart had struck. Poor Koro. Why did you have to die, so far from your homeland?

  Bran clicked his tongue; she already knew what it meant, and she held on to the leather strap wrapped around the dorako’s neck. The beast dived into a hole in the clouds. The instant, seamless shift from the bright blue sky above to the drab grey below still stunned her.

  Now I will always know that no matter how bad things may seem on the ground, somewhere high up, the sun is always shining.

  “Is that it?” Bran asked, pointing.

  Overcoming the dizzying fear, she looked down. Jutting out into the sea at the end of a mushroom-shaped cape was a flat-topped, symmetrical hill, covered with a dense forest and rounded with a thick stone wall. A snow-white, five-tiered castle keep rose above the tree tops and purple clouds of flowers.

  “I — I think so…” she said, hesitantly. All she knew of Karatsu was the name of the castle and the memory of the sound of the waves crashing against its foundation. They had been searching for it all over the coast since morning. “Can you see the banners from here?”

  Bran raised a spyglass to his eyes. It wasn’t as decorative as the one she’d seen him use before, and marked with the VOC runes of Dejima. “It looks like an outline of a castle tower, black on white background—”

  “Ogasawara! That’s it. We have to get closer, so that I can—”

  “Wait, no. I can’t simply fly down there in broad daylight. If they’re working with the Black Wings, I can’t let them spot us. We’ll have to wait somewhere until twilight.”

  She considered his reply and decided he was right; her plan had greater chance of working at night, anyway. But such a delay worried her. This was supposed to be just a detour.

  Last night, she’d dreamt again of a burning city. She had never been to Heian, but the inn terraces lining the riverside, withering in the flames in her dream, looked a lot like the ones on a painting titled Cool Evening at Shijo, which was hanging in Lady Kazuko’s room. Nagomi had often noticed that painting as it was an unusual one to decorate a High Priestess’s quarters, showing merchants merry-making with geikos on a calm summer night, rather than a famous shrine or a scene from a myth.

  If this is Heian’s future… will I make it in time to save Satō from it?

  “Fine,” she said. “We can wait… but not too long. We have to be in Heian as soon as we can.”

  Bran laid a thick slice of cheese on top of a hardtack cracker. Nagomi watched him prepare the sandwich with fascination.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” he noticed her staring. “You must be hungry too. I’m afraid I only have these.” He handed her the cracker.

  “What is that yellow thing?” she asked.

  “It’s… uh… like tofu, but made of animal milk instead of soy?” He was surprised how difficult it was to explain the concept of dairy. “And these are just wheat crackers.”

  “Oh, I remember these,” she said. “Mom would sometimes get a box of these from Dejima.” She bit into the hardtack and her face twisted in disappointed. “This isn’t sweet!”

  “No, it’s not.” He choked back laughter. “But I have some dried apricots, if you prefer.” He reached for the saddlebag.

  “I thought all Bataavian food was sweet,” she said, finishing the sandwich. “But that would be silly, wouldn’t it?”

  “Do you like it?”

  She nodded, her mouth full. “Salty,” she said, covering her hand with her mouth.

  Sometimes she really is just a child, Bran thought, smiling. He cut another thick slice of cheese and swallowed it whole.

  “Why Heian?” he asked, once they were done with the sparse supper.

  “I believe that’s where the Prophecy is guiding me. I should seek out the young Prince, the Mikado’s son.”

  “The Mikado’s… are you sure?”

  “I’m not. But it’s all I have to go on. And there’s more — I’m almost sure that’s where Satō and the others are now.”

  Satō! Bran’s heart raced. It wasn’t until he heard her name spoken that he realised how badly he wanted to see the wizardess again.

  “I thought you said she was in Iwakuni.”

  Nagomi shook her head. “That was weeks ago. The rebellion’s long over, and the Kiheitai have not been heard since. As I said, it’s just a hunch… but that’s the only thing I’m good at, isn’t it?” She tilted her head and smiled a rather forlorn smile.

  Why aren’t we there yet! Bran thought. We should finish whatever we’re here for and fly to Heian at full speed.

  He stood up. “It’s dark enough. What do you want me to do?”

  She swallowed an apricot loudly and stood up as well. “Give me a minute alone.”

  It wasn’t just the confusing air streams that were making it difficult for Emrys to approach the roof of the seaside keep, it was something else: an unknown force, dark and thick like molasses, playing havoc with the Ni
nth Wind, shielding the castle from intruders. Bran could almost smell it, taste the iron on the tip of his tongue.

  Blood magic.

  “I can’t get any closer,” he said. “I’m worried I’ll hit something.”

  Nagomi did not reply. Her head dropped to her chest. Bran froze. “Hey!” He shook her by the shoulder. She snapped back up.

  “There.” She pointed to a small window on the topmost floor of the keep. The shutters opened. Someone — some thing — was crawling out of it, precariously, onto the curved roof. It was vaguely humanoid in shape, covered in red silk cloth, black, thin-limbed and grotesque in its movements. Somehow, it reminded Bran of the Shadows he’d had to fight in the Otherworld.

  “Burn her,” Nagomi said. “Please.”

  Her?

  Bran spurred his dragon and struggled to stabilise the flight long enough for a precise strike. He didn’t want to burn down the keep by accident. This may have been an Ogasawara property — an enemy castle — but inside there were bound to be families of the retainers, servants, visiting merchants, courtesans…

  One strong spurt, that should be enough. The creature on the roof was small, roughly the same height as Nagomi, but much thinner.

  “Hurry!” pleaded Nagomi. A man appeared in the window, shouting and waving at the creature, but he was too fat to fit through. He returned inside — no doubt to ask for help, or find another way out, Bran guessed. What’s going on here?

  He closed his eyes; the aiming had to be done by Emrys. The dragon found a stable updraft that carried it steadily over the target, and spat a thin line of fire. First the silk robes, then the creature’s body, burst in bright flames, as if it was soaked in oil. Billows of thick, black smoke engulfed it in an instant, reaching even to Bran’s nostrils. The smoke smelled of… pine resin?

  The window was shattered from the inside, and the fat man ran out onto the roof, but it was too late; he couldn’t get near enough to the flames. With a blood-curdling shriek, the creature crawled up to the edge and fell down onto the battlements below, where it splattered into a mess of flaming oils and bone.

  The man looked up and raised his fist at Emrys, still hovering on the updraft. Bran pulled on the reins and steered out into the sea. Fascinated by the unravelling drama, he hadn’t noticed until now that Nagomi had her face buried against his chest, clutching tightly at the shirt of his uniform. He hugged her with one hand. Slowly, she looked up; her eyes were red with tears.

  “What was all that about? What was that… thing?” he asked.

  “A girl called Kyokō,” she replied, after a pause which lasted well over a minute.” I met her in the Otherworld. She… saved me.”

  “A girl, huh…”

  He was scanning the horizon with his mind to make sure no Black Wing had followed them from Karatsu. To his left, the Yamato shoreline zoomed past in the darkness; below them, the jagged, desolate mountains of northern Chinzei.

  According to the rough Bataavian map he had taken with him from Dejima, they were flying in an almost straight line in the direction of Heian. They had so much distance to make up — by his calculations, they had to go back almost halfway to Kiyō on Nagomi’s “brief detour”.

  “She had a talent for seeing the future … Ganryū experimented on her. What we burned was just a shell animated by her spirit. She is free now,” Nagomi stopped speaking and looked to the stars.

  “Ganryū.” Bran spat the name with disgust.

  A shimmering triangle of light appeared on the horizon: the moon’s reflection in the sea; they were nearing the coastline. The shadow of a tall conical mountain cut off the stars to the south; to the north, there was nothing but open water.

  “I don’t want to cross the Inland Sea by night,” he said. “We will land soon.”

  Nagomi watched a cloud of steam rising above the treetops, light blue in the moonlight. Below the ridge upon which they were sitting, at the bottom of a mountain ravine, was a hot-springs village, still busy and loud long into the night.

  I wish I could go down there with Bran, she thought.

  If what Bran had told her was true — about the treaties, about the foreigners in Kiyō and Edo — it meant he soon wouldn’t have to hide his Western face anymore. They would be free to go anywhere they wanted. Of course, that was just the law. Law did not prevent the Yamato from bullying her because of her foreign hair; it would take a lot of convincing to make them accept somebody with a foreign face. It had even taken her a while to get used to it, to link the familiar voice and touch with Bran’s new features; at times, it still caught her by surprise.

  “I had a strange dream,” Bran said from the green, steamy darkness. “Back in Kiyō.”

  “A dream?”

  “Or maybe a vision… It was in the Waters of Scrying.”

  “You went to the Waters… again?”

  The face of Lady Kazuko flashed before her eyes. She closed them shut, to stop the tears flowing, and listened to Bran’s strange tale.

  “Do you think it really was your grandfather?” asked Nagomi once he fell silent.

  “I have no idea. But if it was Ifor, it means he did manage to return here after all.”

  Nagomi sat up.

  “What did you say his name was?”

  “Ifor, Ifor Ap Meurig. Why?”

  She closed her eyes again, and put her hands to her forehead, remembering. “Koro said… he said he got his shard from a ‘man with two faces’, called Ihoru.”

  Bran stared at her. “It does sound like my grandfather’s name…But two faces, what does it mean? A disguise — or… ?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what to think anymore,” she said. “This is… too much to cope with all at once.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Bran. He stretched his arms with a loud yawn. “We have so much on our plate already. We shouldn’t need to worry about fighting some creatures from the Otherworld, or finding my long lost relatives right now. One step at a time. First, we have to find Satō. Then we can figure out what my dream meant, if it’s still important.”

  At the Gates of Otherworld, Girl is fearful, Bear is bold, she remembered. So that was what Bran had seen in the Waters. Now even a Western boy, with no connection to our Spirits is having visions, she thought. Are the Gods so desperate?

  Bran picked up a stone — a jagged, sharp piece of black lava — and cast it into the ravine below. “What’s it like,” he asked, “to know the future?”

  She laughed, but then she realised he was serious. She turned solemn too. “It’s not like that. I can’t ‘see’ future. No Scryer can, not even Kazuko-hime…”

  She watched a small, iridescent beetle climb clumsily across her hand. It tickled. The beetle reached her knuckles; she spread her fingers, leaving the insect with a choice of four paths. The beetle hesitated.

  Even it is in a better situation than I am, she thought. At least it can see the fingers for what they are.

  “It’s as if -” she said, “- as if you’d sent many different craftsmen to another city, and told them to show it through their art.”

  “Craftsmen?”

  “Yes. So a calligrapher writes the city’s name on a scroll, a potter creates a cha bowl the glaze of which plays on the city’s colours, a musician composes a shamisen melody that echoes the sounds of the streets, a dancer conveys the movement of people in an odori piece, and so on — and some of them will get some things right, and some wrong; and all you get to see is just their work, but nothing else.”

  “It would be best to send a painter,” Bran said with a chuckle.

  “But that’s just it. It would be easy if I could see a painting — a clear vision of what’s going to happen. I’ve heard there are shamans in the north who can do that, but that’s because they live so close to the holy mountains. I think that’s what Ganryū was trying to do with that poor girl: he wasn’t satisfied with mere Scrying. He wanted true clairvoyance.”

  She looked up and met his eyes. Bran was starin
g at her with a strange smile. She blushed and turned away.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “That was a mature comparison,” he replied. “I did not expect it of you.”

  Did not expect…?

  “I guess, I too… have grown…” she said. Her voice came out too shy, but she straightened her back and pushed forward her chest.

  He kept smiling, like a proud father or older brother. Of course, he would think that…. All we do is hug, or cuddle, or embrace, just like a brother and sister would. I bet he doesn’t even remember that kiss we had…

  He reached out to touch her. She tensed up in anticipation — but all he did was clap her on the shoulder.

  That’s not fair.

  “You sure have, Nagomi,” he said. “It’s certainly going to be interesting when we’re all back together, with Satō - and the rest.”

  She smiled back, but behind her lips her teeth were clenched. Why did he have to mention her now?

  “We’d better prepare the bedding,” he said, standing up and reaching for the saddlebags. “It’s warm tonight, so it might be more comfortable if each of us got their own blanket, right?”

  “Right,” Nagomi replied into the ravine below.

  CHAPTER XV

  The fireman pulled on the charred wall with his hook. The entire burned out skeleton of what once was an old broom shop collapsed into a pile of dust, joining other, similar piles of dust lining the narrow street.

  “Good job!” Lord Nariakira bellowed.

  The fireman turned, saw him, paled and dropped on his knees, as did the rest of his brigade. These were hardy men, short and brawny, their soot-covered faces grim and determined behind the cloth face masks, their chequered, blue-grey uniforms stained and crumpled.

  “Get up, get up,” Nariakira ordered. “You’re the heroes today. Where’s your foreman?”

  The fireman, not raising his head, pointed behind him. The foreman stood up with a deep bow.

  “How many houses destroyed in this district?” Nariakira asked.

  “Seventy two, kakka. We salvaged nineteen.”

  Nariakira winced. This was the worst damage he’d seen so far — apart from the harbour itself, where the devastation had been almost complete.