“This is about all of us! Everyone in this village who called him father or friend.” Kaori’s eyes narrowed to papercuts. “He loved you too. You wear his sword on your hip, yet propose we lie with the dogs who stole him from us? Can you imagine what he’s going through? Presuming they haven’t already boiled him into fertilizer?”
“Godsdammit, this isn’t about Daichi, either! You’re killing our allies! We can work with the Guild rebellion, stronger together than we are alone.”
“There is no ‘we,’ Stormdancer. There is us, and there is them. They deserve everything they get—Kin, Ayane, every one. You want me to weep for these rebels? I spit on them. I damn every one of them to the Yomi underworld! And you shame us all and everything we stand for suggesting we welcome any one of those bastards.”
“You’re so blinded by it,” Yukiko breathed. “The hate in you … Everything you do, everything you say, it comes from the same place. The same moment. My gods, Kaori.” Yukiko backed away, glancing at the woman’s scar. “When Yoritomo cut your face, I’m not sure he realized he’d make you so godsdamned ugly.”
It was an eternity, that moment. Yukiko saw Kaori’s eyes widen, pupils to pinpricks, knuckles turning white on her wakizashi. And then the blade was in her hand, the sharp hymn of steel on the scabbard’s lip, clear and bright. Akihito roared a warning, raising his warclub, Kaori’s strike whistling toward Yukiko’s head.
A deathblow.
Yukiko raised her katana, crying out as the swords touched. A burst of sparks and a brittle note of kissing steel, the blow deflected. Kaori stepped forward, kicking Yukiko hard in the chest, sending her tumbling.
Akihito cried warning, his words cutting the air like the steel in Kaori’s hand.
“Don’t, she’s pregnant!”
A roar. Like thunder a few feet overhead, the great booming echo of quaking skies. Buruu stood between Kaori and Yukiko, wings spread and spitting broken electricity. Kaiah landed astride the girl, shielding her with her own body.
Buruu’s eyes were ablaze as he bellowed again, cruel beak open wide, just a hair’s breadth from taking Kaori’s arm off at the elbow, from scooping her insides out and spraying them across the village square before the children’s terrified stares.
The Kagé closed in, weapons raised, broken lightning reflected in their eyes.
“STOP!” Yukiko screamed.
They felt that scream. All of them. Not just in the air around them, every bird in the canopy shrieking into flight, every hair on every body standing taut and tall and trembling. They felt it in their bones, somewhere old and reptilian at the base of their skulls, surfacing now only in hunger or thirst or lust. The beast inside every one of them.
And it was afraid.
“Stop it,” she said.
Kaori’s chest was heaving, frost tumbling from parted lips. Yukiko rolled out from under Kaiah, sheathed her katana, put one restraining hand on the thunder tiger’s shoulder. Buruu growled so low and deep it felt as if the sky were falling. Thunder crashed overhead a final time, a pale wind rising. And with a single arc of brilliant lightning, it began to rain.
Clear as true glass, cold as ice and stinging with the promise of snow. As if Susano-ō had been holding it in his upturned palms for weeks on end, unleashed now in one colossal downpour. The heat amongst the gathering dissipated—water dashed onto a smoldering firepit. But deep inside the coals, fire still raged.
“Pregnant?” Kaori’s voice was barely audible over the deluge.
“… Twins,” Yukiko said.
“Who is the father?”
“None of your godsdamned business.”
“Your Kin?”
Yukiko licked her lips. Said nothing.
“Our would-be Shōgun Hiro, perhaps?”
Lightning clawed the skies, turning all to lurid, grisly white.
“To be honest,” Kaori said, “I don’t know which is worse. Either way, it explains much.”
“We’re done.” Yukiko clawed damp hair from her eyes. “I’m gone.”
“Gone?” Akihito stared at her, horrified. “Gone where?”
“Yama.” Yukiko raised her voice, turning to the assembled crowd. “Anyone who wishes to come with me is welcome. I will stand by the rebels of the Lotus Guild. Speak to the Kitsune Daimyo and see if he’ll accept my help. And when the Earthcrusher comes, I’ll stand in its way. But I won’t stand by and be a party to murder. And I won’t stay in this village if that’s what this rebellion has become.”
“Go then,” Kaori spat. “Go raise your bastards amongst your Guild dogs. They’ll be in like company, no matter the name of the traitor you fucked to spawn them.”
Buruu’s roar shattered the shocked still. He took one step forward, floorboards crushed to splinters beneath his talons. Yukiko put out her hand, her face bloodless. The thunder tiger turned and looked at her, tail lashing just once, a spray of glittering droplets spilling between the rain. The girl shook her head, lips pressed into a razor-thin line. The arashitora turned back to Kaori with a snarl that made her flinch. But he moved no closer.
The faces of the assembled villagers spoke of astonishment. Of horror. Of an unraveling deep inside that left them breathless and gutted. A girl stepped forward, no more than a child, tears lost in the thundering rain.