“Goddess-touched?” Hana looked up, heart beating quicker at the words.
“See.” He held out his hand. “Pretty girl.” Held another fist high in the sky. “Goddess.” He brought his hands together. “Zryachniye.” The gaijin pulled up his sleeve, traced the blue lines of his veins beneath his impossibly pale skin. “In her.”
“In me?”
A nod.
“In you.”
*
She wandered the palace halls, listening for his voice.
Past guardian statues of Fox in every doorway, coiled upon his nine flowing tails, stone eyes bright and laughing. In the days when Shima’s kami walked the land with earthly feet, each had blessed their people with a touch—a gift from the spirit realm. Tiger had bestowed ferocity, Dragon gave courage, Phoenix an enduring vision and artistic spark. Fox had given his people the most capricious gift of all—the gift of uncanny good fortune. Imagining the army stomping over the deadlands toward Kitsune-jō, Hana wondered how long their luck would last.
She padded through granite halls, past the tapestries depicting Shima’s myths: Lady Izanami’s death; her husband’s failed search through the Yomi underworld; his wife’s vow to kill one thousand of Shima’s residents every day. In the legend, Lord Izanagi had replied, “Then I will give life to fifteen hundred.” Whenever she’d heard the tale, even as a little girl, Hana had always thought Izanagi’s vow would be poor comfort to the thousand who’d already died that day.
So much death. Was this war the work of the gods, as Michi said? Were the hands of the Maker and the Endsinger behind this unfolding catastrophe? Was the gaijin Goddess somehow inside her, as Piotr insisted? Were they all just playthings of the immortals? Or was Yukiko right? Were the gods no more involved than the wind or rain?
Clanless as she and Yoshi were, Hana never had a kami to pray to. No Dragons or Foxes watching over her. No desperate prayers for a scrap of food or place to sleep answered.
If there were gods, they were hard to see from the gutter …
She glanced at her wrist, at the pale-blue scrawl just below the surface.
Maybe I was looking in the wrong place.
She wandered the verandahs in the bitter chill, searching the kitchens, snatching up a handful of honeysponge out of habit born of a lifetime’s starvation. Through the barracks, cheeks stuffed and chewing quickly. Listening to the tune of steel and iron, soft murmurs of warriors looking down the barrel at a war they couldn’t win. The percussion of servants’ feet, the courtiers skulking in corners, appraising her with narrowed eyes—this gutter-trash who called herself Stormdancer. A pale shadow beside the girl of pure Kitsune blood who’d slain a Shōgun, ended a dynasty, urged the entire nation to rise.
Pretender, she could almost hear them say.
Counterfeit.
She thought of her brother. Gods knew where. Arms wrapped around herself, wondering if she should bother praying for his safety to gods who’d never answered. Everything moving so fast. She needed something to hold on to. Something strong as mountains.
And then she heard his voice. The baritone rumble sinking to her belly, setting the butterflies free. A smile on her lips, growing as she rounded the corner into the dojo and saw him standing there, surrounded by a forest of training dummies. Tall and scruffy-handsome, his beard fashioned into those ridiculous spikes, deep scars cutting through the Phoenix ink on one massive bicep. Akihito.
Akihito and Michi …
The girl stood before him, a beautiful flush on her cheeks and a pair of training swords in her hands, the dummy in front of her practically weeping with relief at this moment’s respite. She was smiling, ribbons of raven hair plastered to the sweat on her face. Akihito was smiling too, those big hands wrapped around a box of beautifully sculpted pinewood; a scrollcase carved with a relief of cherry blossoms and the kanji for “truth.”
Michi took the box, bowing from the knees and laughing like music. Akihito gave a clumsy bow in return, blushing, and the girl stood on tiptoes and kissed his cheek, one hand resting lightly on his forearm. And Hana’s butterflies withered and died, and her stomach fell down into her toes and the smile on her lips faded until there was nothing. There was no one.
No one.
As she walked away, as fast as she could without breaking into a run, she looked down at her wrist. The pulse hidden just beneath the skin.
No one but me.
*