by Claire Luana
Daarco looked back and forth between Emi and Hiro. He took a deep breath. “It’s true what you say? About why we fight?”
“Yes,” Hiro said. “I swear it on my honor.”
“You’re not going to give me a choice in this, are you?”
“No,” Emi said, her eyes dark. “We aren’t.”
Hiro downed the whiskey remaining in Daarco’s glass. “Let’s head back, my friend, and clear your name.”
Emi threw a coin down on the bar and headed for the door. Hiro and Daarco followed her, Daarco unsteady on his feet.
As Emi pulled open the door, a cacophony washed over them.
“The crowd’s getting out of control,” Emi remarked, trying to wind her way through men shouting and lofting torches and weapons in the air.
The man at the front of the crowd had reached a fever pitch. “The sunburners are an abomination! If our queen will not destroy them, she is not fit to rule!”
The crowd roared in agreement, the people pumping their fists in the air, pounding their chests and makeshift shields with fists and weapons.
“Men,” Emi said in disgust, but Hiro barely heard her as her comment was borne away by the sounds of the crowd.
“Outta my way,” Daarco’s slurred voice said from behind him. Hiro whirled around, just in time to see Daarco’s fist connect with a man’s jaw. The man dropped like a stone. But the damage was done. The movement had caused Daarco’s hood to fall back.
“Here’s a sunburner right here!” a man exclaimed. Daarco was now standing in a semi-circle of hostile men, looking in shock upon their fallen companion. The man who had shouted was thin and pale, but his hand looked strong enough as it tightened on the handle of his carving knife.
Hiro tried to push back through the crowd but couldn’t make it through before Daarco, with a look of withering disgust, punched the man in the gut. The weight and power of Daarco’s blow toppled the man like a tree, and he stumbled over the other fallen man, crumpling to the ground.
“Who’s next?” Daarco asked, cracking his knuckles.
Hiro took advantage of the stunned silence of the crowd to leap into the opening and grab Daarco’s arm. “Time to go,” he said.
They plunged through the crowd as the men behind them came to life with a roar. Daarco and Hiro slipped through the press of bodies while their pursuers tangled with the masses.
Emi, who was waiting with wide eyes, took off as they reached her, elbowing her way through the crowd. She cut into an alley at the side of the square and they fled at full speed, the voices of the crowd biting at their heels. “Burner spies amongst us! Don’t let them get to the citadel!”
Emi seemed to have a sixth sense for the twists and turns of the Meadows. Though the back streets all looked the same to Hiro, he could tell they were steadily approaching the white walls of the citadel.
To their left, the sounds of the roiling mass of people echoed—shouts, stomping feet, and even sporadic screams as an unfortunate bystander got in their way.
Just when Hiro thought his lungs would burst, Emi came to an abrupt stop in a doorway behind a pile of trash. Daarco stopped behind them and vomited wetly onto the cobblestones. He gasped for breath, his hands on his knees and his head hanging.
“The tunnel is past the mob,” Emi said, biting her lip. “Maybe we can go over. I’m going to scout.”
She shimmied up the side of the building, making handholds of the jutting pieces of brick and mortar. Daarco had righted himself and wiped his mouth, not taking his eyes from Emi’s retreating form.
Emi’s face peeked over the roof. “Come on,” she said. “I think I can get us across.”
“I think I’ll stay here and let them kill me,” Daarco muttered, eying the climb.
“Come on,” Hiro said, pulling Daarco to the wall.
Hiro climbed up the side of the building with less agility than Emi. Daarco barely made it up, losing his footing and dangling for a precarious moment before he regained it.
Emi and Hiro reached over the roof and hauled him over the side.
The three of them lay there for a moment, panting. Emi popped up first. “Come on. No time for rest.”
She led them across several uneven rooftops until they reached a point where two old buildings leaned towards each other.
Emi got a running start and leaped across the gap, stumbling to her knees. She stood and dusted herself off, motioning for them to follow.
Hiro wiped his brow and took a deep breath, following her. The gap looked farther than it was, but he made it across with room to spare.
He looked back at Daarco, who looked even more green than he had after vomiting.
“Come on,” Emi said. “It’s not that far.”
“I don’t think I can make it,” he said flatly.
Hiro looked down. The street below them was filled with a roiling mass of people holding aloft torches and makeshift weapons.
“You can’t go down,” Hiro hissed. “It’ll be just like the palace back in Kistana! Remember the jump to the cherry tree?”
“I was fifteen years younger and several stone lighter back then,” Daarco said, shaking his head.
“You going to let a moonburner show you up?” Emi taunted.
Daarco growled and backed up.
Fifteen years older but just as easily goaded, Hiro thought with a smile.
Daarco ran towards the edge and leaped, but his foot slipped as he took off. He thudded against the other edge, his arms grasping at the dusty rooftop. Hiro and Emi lunged forward, grabbing his arms before he slipped over the edge. He was heavy, but they managed to pull him onto the roof.
They crossed the roof and made their way down a pile of rubble, dropping into a courtyard. In the center of the courtyard stood a fountain of a woman pouring water into the mouth of a kneeling man. It was where the passage from the crypt connected. He breathed a sigh of relief. They were safe.
They hurried back through the passageway and burst out of the crypt onto the citadel grounds.
Emi sprinted towards the front gate. The sounds of the mob were swelling outside the walls.
“Close the gates!”
Kai had tossed and turned for hours in frustration after discovering that not only had Daarco vanished from his rooms, but Hiro was missing as well. But it seemed that she had eventually fallen asleep, for when she woke, there was moonlight streaming through the windows. Quitsu was nowhere to be found.
She crawled out of bed, feeling just as groggy as when she had laid down. How long had she slept? She padded out of her room into the hallway, looking for one of her maids. The hallway was deserted, the moon orbs dark.
Her senses fired in alarm. This was not her hallway. She was in the spirit world.
Kai’s heart hammered as a scraping noise sounded down the corridor. In the pool of moonlight coming through the window at the far end of the hall, a black shadow stretched across the floor. A taloned hand curled around the corner, followed by a tall black shape.
Kai’s scream caught in her throat and she fled towards the stairs, flying down them two at a time. An inhuman scream roared behind her as the tengu took up the chase, its taloned feet scratching and scrambling for purchase on the polished wood floor.
Kai burst out the front door of her quarters in a blind panic, her head whipping around, searching for a safe place. A hard hand clamped down on her face from behind and another hand pulled her backwards into the tall bushes to the left of the building. She screamed into the hand and struggled like a wild thing, all reason fleeing in her panic. Her burning, her weapons training, all of it had given way to the primal urge to free herself.
“Quiet,” hissed a feminine voice. “It’s me!”
Kai looked over her shoulder to the welcome sight of Hamaio. Kai relaxed and nodded in response to the woman’s questioning look.
“You scared—“ Kai began, but the woman hissed softly and pointed.
They both fell silent in the bushes, sinking down as low as
they could, stilling their breathing. The tengu had emerged from the building and was sniffing the air with its misshapen snout. Perhaps it had once been a large cat, but now it was a twisted black thing of bone and membrane hulking on two legs, its padded paws split into ghastly toes.
It turned towards them as it continued to snuffle, its red eyes shining with a perverse intelligence. Kai held her breath, wishing she could stop her heart from beating. Its tempo droned so loud in her ears that she feared the tengu could hear the very blood pumping in her veins.
It took a step towards them and Hamaio tensed.
Another tengu across the courtyard barked, somehow communicating with its brethren. The tengu near them yowled in response, and their would-be attacker dropped onto all fours and ambled across the courtyard.
Both women let out sighs of relief.
“Come on,” Hamaio whispered.
They kept to the shadows as they crept through the darkened citadel.
“There are so many of them,” Kai whispered. “I thought you said the citadel was protected. That I shouldn’t be able to come to the spirit world when I’m here.”
“You shouldn’t,” Hamaio said. “The barriers between the world must be breaking down further. We have little time before they make their move.”
Kai shuddered and slipped inside the familiar doors of the library behind Hamaio.
The other woman shook herself a bit and straightened. “We should be safe in here for a few moments.”
“Thank you,” Kai said gratefully. “You saved me from that thing.”
Hamaio whirled, her porcelain face angry. “You can’t keep bumbling in here. You’re like a babe in the woods!”
“I know,” Kai said, her face heating. She felt like a child being scolded by her mother. “I lost your charm in the lake, and I didn’t make another. I didn’t think I would need it here.”
Hamaio huffed. “Now that you are back at the citadel, you can get something better. In the treasury is a ring made of three linked circles. One of gold, one of silver, and one of iron. If you wear it, it should prevent you from traveling over.”
“It could take me hours to find it,” Kai lamented. “We need to leave shortly.”
“Make time. Unless you’d like to be eaten by a tengu!” the other woman said.
“Of course not.” Kai sighed. “I’ll find it. If…I got eaten by a tengu in the spirit world, would I die in the mortal world?”
“A burner cannot live without their spirit,” Hamaio said. “No human can.”
Kai nodded. It was as she suspected. “I have so many questions for you. Will you tell me how you sealed the walls between the realms?”
“It was a desperate, cobbled-together thing,” Hamaio said. “The tengu had broken through the final barrier and were under the direction of their leaders, two greater tengu.”
“Yukina and Hiei?”
“I see you’ve heard of them.”
“They’re the ones pretending to be Tsuki and Taiyo. They have incited war between the burners for hundreds of years.”
Hamaio set her jaw. “They are very old and very powerful. They have been waiting for many thousands of years, testing the defenses of this world. They had driven us back to the castle at Yoshai, and we were fighting a desperate battle.”
“Yoshai?” Kai asked.
“It was our capital,” Hamaio said. “A beautiful city of courtyards and terraces. You could see all the way to the sea from its upper courtyard.”
Kai furrowed her brow. Her words struck a chord somehow, as if a memory had been plucked, but only the ringing afterglow lingered in her mind. Was it the place she had seen in her fever dream?
“We linked together. Sun and moonburners, and their seishen. Through the seishen, we were able to draw the raw power of the creator. My husband and I did the burning together, but it was intuitive… We pulled the power of the creator and wove it back into the barrier between the worlds, knitting together the hole the tengu had created. As it closed, the rest of our burners pushed the tengu back into the spirit world. We drained so much power from the earth that it scorched the land, forming what you call the Tottori. Thousands died and our city fell into the desert. Most of the burners lost their lives.”
Kai grew paler and paler as Hamaio told her tale. The only way to defeat the tengu was to destroy Kyuden and everyone she had ever known? Was she willing to pay that price?
“I am sorry I do not have better news. If there was an easier way, I would gladly share it.”
“It’s all right,” Kai said slowly.
“Perhaps because the creator has touched you, you will be able to seal the barrier without such a loss of life.”
“Perhaps,” Kai said, rubbing the mark on her chest. If I knew how to use this power, she thought. “What about the gods? The seishen elder showed us the box, the map. Surely the gods can help?”
The spirit realm reeled slightly around Kai and she stumbled, grabbing a nearby chair for support.
“Someone is trying to wake you,” Hamaio said. “You should go.”
The room reeled again. “What about the gods?” Kai said.
“Forget the box. It should not be used. That’s why I sent it to the elder. I knew it would keep it safe and free them only when the tengu threat was neutralized.”
Kai felt a stab of guilt, which was quickly overcome by a wave of nausea. She was waking. She reached out a hand to Hamaio, and then the woman was gone.
Kai awoke to find Chiya in her chamber, shaking her.
“What is it?” Kai asked, unable to keep the grumpiness from her voice.
“You’ve got to get up. There’s a mob at the gates.”
“A mob?” Kai asked, her sleepy mind not comprehending.
“An angry mob. They seem to want…your head.”
“An angry mob?” Kai squealed. She cleared her throat and took a deep breath to calm her frayed nerves. I can do this. Whatever comes my way, I will handle it. “Let me put some clothes on.”
Chiya led them to the guard-tower on the western wall. Nanase stood examining the scene, a grim expression on her face and her seishen, Iska, on her shoulder.
“What do we have here?” Kai asked, stepping forward and looking down. Thankfully, someone had had the wherewithal to close and bar the gate before the mob arrived. The citadel’s walls were high and strong—no match for the axes and clubs she saw in the grubby hands below. But having a mob at her gate meant that her moonburners and guards would be stuck here, guarding the citadel, rather than out in the city helping people. This couldn’t stand.
“It’s more of what we’ve been hearing for months,” Chiya said, her ponytail flapping in the breeze. “They think the natural disasters are Tsuki’s wrath for our alliance and peace with the sunburners. It seems they have grown tired of complaining.”
“It’s madness!” Kai said. “And now we know the truth, but I cannot tell it, for fear our enemies will learn our plans. We need to stall. I need a few more weeks to free the real gods.”
“You should address them,” Nanase said. “We can’t have this kind of discord at our gates and not say something.”
“What would you have me say?” Kai asked. “It’s all a trick by tengu masquerading as gods? Only the reappearance of the real gods will convince these fools of the truth.”
“I don’t know,” Nanase said. “But underneath their anger, these people are scared. We have to try to reason with them before it turns to violence.”
Kai sighed. Nanase was right. She had to try diplomacy before she sent her moonburners to disperse and probably kill her own people.
“Very well. I will try to reason with them.” She looked at the roiling mob below. The people were chanting something about Kai’s head. They didn’t seem particularly amenable to reason. “Will you announce me, Nanase?”
Nanase stepped to the edge of the wall and sent up a shot of moonlight into the sky. “Fall silent to hear the words of the queen of Miina, Kailani Shigetsu.”
<
br /> The crowd quieted but for the shuffling of bodies and weapons. Sporadic curses and slurs burst forth from those bold or foolish enough to draw attention, words that drew an angry flush to Kai’s face and twisted her insides.
Kai stepped forward and took a deep breath. “I know you fear for your families, your livelihoods. In this time of troubles, any sane man would fear. I understand that fear curdles into anger, and anger into hate. It is natural that your hate would fall upon the sunburners, who have been our enemy for so long.”
“But your hate is misplaced. We are at war, yes. But not with the sunburners. Our great nation has had war declared upon it by a force that until now went unseen and unknown. Demons.”
The crowd stirred with expressions of disbelief and outrage.
“I understand you may find it hard to believe. But if you believe in the goodness of the gods, is it so hard to believe that evil might oppose them? This evil feeds on our fears, our angers, our suffering. And it is hungry.”
“We have a plan to defeat them and to right the world. But we cannot be distracted by talk of war or by mobs at our front doors. Do not play into their hands! Go home, care for your families, your neighbors. Give us the chance to fight this battle and win.”
“Lies!” someone shouted.
“Sunburner whore!” another voice said.
Kai ground her teeth, looking back at Nanase and Chiya. Her anger flared. She had enough problems without these men trying to foil her plans. Her attention was needed elsewhere.
“It was a good speech,” Nanase said, stepping forward behind her. “They’re too far gone. The mob knows no reason.”
“What would you have me do?”
“You have two choices. Let them be, or fire upon them.”
The crowd rumbled, angry voices growing louder now. Someone threw a rock, which bounced harmlessly off the wall ten feet below where Kai stood.
Kai’s anger boiled as she looked at her subjects, people she had bled for, that she would gladly die for. Angry at the injustice of it. Angry at the drought, the hunger, the spotted sickness. The shriveled husk that had once been the plentiful land of Miina. Her anger raged within her at what the tengu had reduced them to in so few months.
