“Thirsty.” He winced, sat up straighter. “Sore.”
She had salvaged a metal cylinder from the ruined atmos-suit and filled it with river water, now offering it to the boy. Kin licked at his burned lips and gulped it down without stopping, sighing after the last mouthful.
“Where is the rest of my skin?” His gaze was unsteady.
“I hid it. Behind some boulders upstream.”
“There’s a beacon inside.” He winced again, hands hovering but not daring to touch the burns around his face. “Activated when the s-skin suffers catastrophic damage. Guild will b-be looking for me.”
“We’ll worry about them later. Right now we need to get you stable. Do you want more opiates for the burn? There’s a little left.”
“No,” he shook his head. “I d-don’t want to sleep any more.”
He touched the bandages at his chest and throat, hissed in pain. His forehead gleamed with a sheen of sweat, but he was shivering. Yukiko could see the distress in his eyes.
“Why don’t you want to sleep?” she asked.
“B-bad dreams.”
“About what?”
He shook his head again, said nothing.
“You’re in pain, Kin-san. You need to rest.”
He swallowed, still licking at his blistered lips. The fire gleamed in his eyes. “Will you wake me up? If it l-looks like I’m dreaming?”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t n-need to.”
“What are you so afraid of?”
“. . . It’s forbidden to speak of it.”
“Oh, gods!” Her voice rose, exasperation getting the better of her. “You know, you should take a look around, Kin-san. A hundred miles from nowhere, burned half to death, and you can’t even bring yourself to trust the person who’s keeping you alive.”
He stared at her for a long, silent moment. The fire spat and crackled, and the wind outside was the howl of a hungry wolf. His sigh came from the depths of his chest.
“On the eve of our thirteenth year, all Guildsmen are forced to smoke l-lotus. Smoke so much of it that we have visions. Nightmares. They c-call it ‘the Awakening.’ ” He ran his hand over his eyes. “And every night after that, we dream about what we saw. The What Will Be.”
“The What Will Be?”
“Hai.”
“You mean the future?” A raised eyebrow.
“H-hai.”
“. . . What did you see?”
A haunted look came over the boy’s face, and he stared at the crackling flames. His voice was a whisper.
“I c-cannot speak of it.”
“Let me guess.” She rolled her eyes. “It’s forbidden.”
“No.” He looked back up at her, shook his head. “It’s horrible.”
Yukiko stared at him in the flickering light, looking for a lie in those knife-bright eyes and finding only pain and fear. Finally, she nodded, lifted the syringe. “If I see you dreaming, I’ll wake you up.”
“. . . All right then. Thank you, Yukiko-chan.”
She plunged the needle into his flesh, and he stared as if fascinated. Numbness crept over his face like a shadow at sunset, slowly dulling his eyes. He leaned his head back against the cave wall, watching her from beneath drooping eyelids.
“I know what you are,” he breathed, lips numb.
She blinked, pushed the damp hair from her face.
“What?”
“I see you with him.” Kin nodded to the cave entrance, lashes fluttering. “The arashitora. The way you look at each other. The way you speak without speaking.”
Yukiko felt a slippery knot of dread in her stomach, and her heart began pounding against her ribs. Her mouth was dry as the ashes at the feet of the Burning Stones. Her tantō was a cold weight pressed into the small of her back.
“I know what you are.” Kin frowned up at her, struggling to see through the velvet-soft chemical haze. “But it’s all right. I won’t tell them. N-never tell anyone. I won’t let them hurt you. I promise, Yukiko.”
She met his stare, watched the fire dance across his dilating pupils. Long moments passed, seconds slipping by like hours as her heartbeat calmed, the fear in her stomach slowly dissolved. Shadows flickered on the wall behind him, in the hollows under his eyes.
He smiled at her. She believed him.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said.
She felt a blush in her cheeks, turning to busy herself among the crackling flames with the last trout fillet.
It’s the drugs talking, she told herself. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.
“A Guildsman could never marry a hadanashi girl.” He frowned, trying to focus as the opiate swell rose up past his eyelids. “When you return the arashitora and the Shōgun asks your desire . . . perhaps you could ask him to set me free?”
Yukiko turned back to him, a dark crease between her brows.
“It would be good.” His eyes fluttered closed as he whispered. “To be free . . .”
She watched him for a long moment, pity in her stare.