World's Edge

by Ryan Kirk

  “What would you say if I told you that people in the Three Kingdoms don’t fear us because we’re nightblades, but because they don’t know us? That if they were exposed to us, they’d come to realize we’re just as human as them? People only fear us because we have become myths they tell at night around the fire.”

  Ryuu was frozen on the spot. “Maybe? I really don’t know. I suppose it’s possible.”

  Shika turned up the corner of her mouth, and Ryuu felt like he had just given her what she wanted.

  The rest of the meal went smoothly, but Ryuu continued to replay his answers in his head. He knew he’d have a lot to think on. The meal went late into the night, but everyone was polite, kind, and welcoming. Ryuu had never felt like he could be so open with people. When your biggest secret wasn’t secret, life was much simpler. As people filed out of the building, Shika came up to him.

  “Ryuu, I would be happy to talk to you more in a private setting. Please come see me when you get the chance.”

  Ryuu forced a grin. “I’d be happy to.”

  As Shika left Ryuu looked at Tenchi. Tenchi was stroking his beard, lost in thought.

  “She’s the opposition, isn’t she?”

  Tenchi nodded, saying nothing. He looked like he had lost a battle, and Ryuu felt like he was responsible.

  Chapter 15

  Akira wandered around his camp, lost in a state of shock. His men bowed respectfully as he passed, but Akira thought he could see the doubt in their eyes, the same doubt that enveloped him. They had known throwing the Fifth into battle against a larger enemy would be a gamble, but it had been necessary. They needed to stop the advance of Tanak’s troops. Akira realized now that he had thought fate would be on his side, that something would happen to save his kingdom.

  It wasn’t so much the death of his men that shocked him. It was the loss to Tanak’s forces. Akira had been Lord of the Southern Kingdom now for over ten cycles, and never had his forces been defeated in battle. He had thought he would never see the day, foolish as the belief now was.

  Different gambles ran through his mind. He thought about calling the First up from the pass. Toro’s latest report was more of the same, an army prepared to fight with nothing but empty prairie in front of them. Akira thought back to his time in the pass. At the time, leaving the First had seemed to be a brilliant plan, but now that he had the benefit of time and space, he was regretting it. If no attack was coming this cycle, Akira could use those men up north with him.

  He thought about bringing either the Second or the Third north and finishing the work the Fifth had started. Though the Fifth was no more, they had hurt Tanak, and reports filtering in said Tanak had taken a few days to reorganize and regroup. If they attacked now, they could crush Tanak’s center forces. But Makoto and Mashiro had warned him against it. They would fight, here in the south, before they moved north. They considered their two armies as one now, a force strong enough to walk through and cleanse the Southern Kingdom of this western scourge.

  There were times he considered surrendering. His people deserved to live, and if there was no way to protect his kingdom, the honorable action would be to surrender and allow his people to live in peace. Life under Tanak wouldn’t be too different for most of the people who had nothing to do with government. Court politics would be a little more deadly, but Akira found he didn’t find the idea as reprehensible as he would have expected.

  But Akira couldn’t shake his belief the Southern Kingdom was meant for something more. This war was far from over, though they had lost the first major engagement. He believed he was a good leader, the leader the kingdom needed. He wouldn’t give up yet.

  When he returned to his command tent, there was a messenger waiting there, almost ready to pass out from exhaustion. Akira straightened his back. He was still a Lord of the Three Kingdoms, and his men needed him.

  When Akira let the messenger into his tent, the messenger’s demeanor changed. He went from exhausted to alert in a moment. Akira was startled by the transformation. “Sir, I come from the shadows.”

  Akira’s ears perked up. His shadows were his spies, sent to gather information from the other Kingdoms. Rarely did one show up in person.

  “Report.”

  “There have been happenings in the enemy camp, my Lord. This past night Lord Tanak’s tent was attacked by almost a hundred men who wore the uniforms of the Western Kingdom.”

  Akira’s eyes shot up. “A coup?”

  “No, my Lord. It was a large group of men from the Fifth who had come together. They had stripped uniforms from the dead in the battlefield. With the uniforms they were able to sneak close to Tanak’s command tent. When they were finally discovered, battle broke out within a dozen paces of Tanak’s personal quarters.”

  Akira was on edge. “What happened?”

  “They were slaughtered, my Lord.”

  Akira was surprised. He had thought, hoped, for a moment that his men had killed Tanak. But why come to report something ultimately so meaningless?

  “How were they slaughtered if they got so close?”

  The spy hesitated, as though he wasn’t sure Akira would believe his report. “Sir, I believe there is a nightblade with Tanak.”

  Akira was glad he was already sitting. Had Ryuu betrayed him? He pushed the possibility away from his mind. Not Ryuu. The young nightblade certainly had enough reasons to hate Akira, but Akira believed that if Ryuu wanted him dead, he would already be dead. He didn’t believe Ryuu trusted him, or even liked him, but Akira trusted Ryuu. If it wasn’t Ryuu, that meant there was another nightblade in the Three Kingdoms. That made five Akira knew about in the past two cycles. It meant there were probably more. It was inconceivable that nightblades would be coming out of the woodwork like this without purpose.

  “Explain.”

  “Sir, our troops were doing well. They were only moments away from fighting directly with Tanak. Then a single swordsman, dressed all in black, attacked our troops. I’ve never seen anything like it. He passed through them like he was made of water, cutting them all down as he passed. He must have taken out thirty or forty men by himself in the space of a few moments. It was terrifying. I’ve seen excellent swords in my life, but I’ve never seen anyone so capable of taking human life away so quickly. It was almost meaningless to him.”

  Akira’s mind was racing. More nightblades? The consequences were far-reaching.

  Akira looked up and noticed the shadow wasn’t finished.

  “Yes?”

  “Sir, I think I know who their nightblade is.”

  Akira was surprised again.

  “I was able to follow the nightblade for a time after the battle, and I saw him speak briefly with Tanak before departing. It reminded me of someone else. I wasn’t able to follow the man after the conversation, but it came to me later. His stance, his posture, his height and build, all point to the nightblade being one of Tanak’s chief advisers. A man named Renzo. The man escaped into the night, but I checked Renzo’s tent right after and it was empty.”

  Akira considered the accusation. It would be a reasonable plan for Tanak. Akira had hidden Orochi in his court under the thin disguise of being an assassin. It had been the truth, but not the whole truth. He had thought it clever. Orochi’s role had been an open secret, but because everyone felt privileged to know it, they didn’t probe any deeper to find out he was a nightblade as well. An adviser was another role Akira could have used, but he didn’t have the time to set the cover up. Akira suspected Renzo had been with Tanak for some time.

  “Thank you. Do you have anything else, anything that can’t be refuted?”

  The spy shook his head. “There was no evidence for me to collect. But I only speak it to you because I am as sure as a man can be.”

  “Thank you. Is there anything else?”

  “No, my Lord.”

  “You have done a great service. You will be rewarded. Thank you.”

  The spy bowed low and departed from the tent while
Akira pondered the news. If Akira could prove Tanak had a nightblade, he could change the course of this war without more of his men having to die. There was only one way to make the spectacle and the news big enough, but if it worked, it would change everything, the course of the entire war. Perhaps even the entire history of the kingdom. Akira had to call in his advisers to consult. They had a day full of planning ahead of them. For the first time since the defeat of the Fifth, Akira felt hope racing through his heart. He was going to call a Conclave, the first in six hundred cycles.

  Chapter 16

  It had been a difficult decision, but Moriko left the horses behind. Although she craved the greater speed they afforded her, she suspected she was getting closer to the answers she had been seeking. A horse would attract attention. She could hide easily in the tall prairie grass. She had taken plenty of food from Kalden and the guards who had confronted them, enough to last her days without hunting. Although she couldn’t say why she was so certain this stage of her journey was almost over, she knew her wandering was almost over.

  Moriko continued wandering west, the direction the two guards had ridden from. There was a new peace in her heart that hadn’t been there earlier. Nothing would stand in her way.

  After another day of walking Moriko’s tenacity was rewarded. She felt a presence pressing against her sense she had thought at times she’d never feel again. It was the feeling of a city. The tension melted from her shoulders. She was surprised at how worked up she had become about the strangeness of the land. There were plenty of signs of camps and trails through the prairie, but she hadn’t found any people, and she’d been wandering the land for over a moon.

  To her frayed senses, it felt as if someone was building a larger and larger fire the closer she got to it. What started off as a bright pinprick of energy grew and grew until Moriko felt her sense would be overwhelmed by the sheer number of people in front of her.

  The plains in this area were more geographically varied. They rolled like waves that had been frozen in time and turned to dirt. Her going became more difficult as she was forced to go up hills and back down the other side. Her ability to see diminished from endless leagues to whatever was behind the next hill. Moriko’s legs, sore from walking for over a moon, screamed curses at her every time she went up and over another rise.

  Soon she dared go no further in the daylight. Moriko could sense people for as far as her sense could extend, and patrols roamed the area frequently. None seem to be gifted with the sense, but she would make better progress at night when she didn’t have to hide half the time.

  Once night fell, sneaking up on the city was not a hard task. Though there were plenty of patrols, the grass was high and the space to guard was enormous. She was able to find a ridge that overlooked the city. When she did, she rubbed her eyes because she couldn’t believe what she saw. The valley, which was leagues long and at least a league wide, was covered with people. Hundreds, thousands of fires dotted the landscape. If she hadn’t been in danger, she might have called them beautiful.

  But what Moriko saw was not a city. Instead, it was the largest gathering of camps she had ever seen. There wasn’t a single permanent building anywhere in the camp. She corrected herself. There was one permanent structure near the middle of the encampment. It was a small raised platform, flat and featureless, but from it, a speaker could be seen the entire width and breadth of the valley.

  She scanned back and forth down the valley, soaking in all the knowledge she could. There were thousands upon thousands of people down there, and Moriko was sure she heard the voices of women and children carry up to her ears. It was a city for all intents and purposes, just without permanent lodging. As she scanned, she began to notice patterns. She could see where the city was divided, clear lines between camps. Some were larger than others, some by a significant amount. She figured even the smallest camp held at least a hundred members.

  In the darkness and with the distance she could not make out any other details. She was too far away for the sense to do her any good, either. At this distance, everyone was blended into one enormous outpouring of energy, too much for her to separate and analyze.

  Moriko debated her choices. She would have to go down into the Gathering. As much as it pained her to admit it, there weren’t any other options. She had made it further than any scout, but she still didn’t know what was happening. She didn’t know why they’d been attacked. In a perfect world, she would have taken a day to rest, but someone in this Gathering knew Moriko was out here. She worried he would send more hunters. Better to be in the camp now.

  The moon was well on its way across the sky by the time Moriko worked her way down into the camp. The guards had been staggered in such a way that it took her much longer than she expected to sneak down the hillside. When she got closer to the camp, she stopped to observe the scene below her.

  Most of the habitations seemed to be made of cloth and leather, wrapped around frames of different shapes. Some were more conical, while others were more spherical. She figured the tents could hold four or five people in some of the smaller ones, and maybe twenty to thirty in some of the larger ones. From the people walking in and out of each of the units, it seemed like each one served many purposes. Women, children, and warriors came and left from each door.

  The scene below was largely one of celebration. Women were speaking to one another in tongues Moriko didn’t recognize, and children played freely with one another. At first, Moriko believed there seemed to be little concern for safety, but as she watched more closely she saw her assumption was false.

  She noticed it first with the youth. While at first glance they seemed to be given leeway to play wherever they wished, Moriko saw that in several instances that wasn’t true. Youth would argue with one another about where they would play, and although she couldn’t understand the words they were using, their body language was easy to interpret. The youth were only allowed to play a certain distance away from camp. Once they reached their limit, they were afraid of their mothers finding out if they went too far. Moriko almost laughed as she saw one young man give in to the peer pressure of his friends, leaving his designated area. It wasn’t long before he was caught and brought back by his ear, protesting his innocence the entire way.

  What seemed a haphazard assortment of tents was anything but. There were patterns in the tents, and Moriko could guess at the meaning behind some of them. Some were organized to protect a central tent, others to create small community spaces that offered a semblance of privacy. Although the Gathering was enormous, Moriko could see it was composed of hundreds of smaller tribes. She felt like she could make some educated guesses about each tribe just by studying the designs of their camps.

  All of it was interesting, but none of it gave her the answers she sought. She had hoped to hide in the crowd, but once she saw how the tribes were organized, she realized it would be impossible. Few wandered from camp to camp, and no matter where she entered, she would be immediately recognized as an outsider. She realized that if she was going to get closer, she’d have to get captured again. She studied the camps in her vicinity, wondering if one would be better than the others.

  Moriko’s gaze settled on one of the larger camps at the perimeter of the Gathering. The people there all seemed cheerful and well-organized. She didn’t see some of the signs of dysfunction she saw in other camps. It seemed as good as any. She crept as close as she could, and when sneaking was no longer an option, she stood up and entered the camp, hoping she was making the right decision.

  It didn’t take Moriko any time at all to draw attention to herself. As soon as she entered the camp, she was spotted by children playing among the tents. Their shouts brought the attention of their mothers, who screamed their surprise. Moriko moved forward calmly, her hands held high. The first warrior to reach her was a young man, barely the age of adulthood. There was an unnatural eagerness in his eyes, and he didn’t stop to question her as he lunged forward with his sword. Moriko s
aw it was a short blade, even shorter than those of the hunters she had encountered in the forest. It was more a long knife.

  The young man was no hunter. His moves were obvious well in advance, and she easily knocked the blade off track with one hand while slamming her palm into his face. She wasn’t out to make enemies, but she wasn’t going to allow herself to be attacked either. His nose broke with a satisfying crunch and he was down on the ground in tears. She raised her hands again and looked at the young man with pity. The boy had probably been hoping for some story to woo the women with. She had wrecked that dream, probably for some time, given the new shape of his nose.

  Next to the scene were two more young men who weren’t any more cautious. They saw their friend on the ground, and Moriko worried they weren’t getting off on the right foot here. They weren’t armed, but they charged her anyway. In a few moments each of them joined their friend on the ground, gasping for air.

  The next group that approached was a group of seasoned warriors. Moriko hadn’t moved since fighting the young men. She had cleared a space, but she figured it was smartest not to work her way further into the camp until she’d actually spoken with someone. The warriors strode into the space where Moriko was standing, scattering women and children out of their way. Their leader was a bear of a man, at least two heads taller than Moriko. He looked at the scene she had caused and laughed. He said something in Azarian, but Moriko shrugged her shoulders. “I do not speak your language.”

  The man was surprised, but recovered quickly. “It seems you have taught the young men here a lesson. I thank you.”

  Moriko nodded, but the man wasn’t done.

  “However, you will not do so well against me.” The man came after her, blade steady.

  Moriko didn’t want to keep fighting, but it seemed she had no choice. More than anything, she didn’t want to have to draw her blade. In her mind, all was fair when it came to fists and fighting, but if you drew a blade, you drew it to kill. But the man attacking her was good. Very good. Moriko had to give up ground, and the man didn’t give her any openings she could exploit without her own blade. If she drew, the fight would be over in a moment, but it was the last action she was willing to take.