“Good?” It would be impossible.
Nobody ever left the Guild, everyone knew that. Its members were born into the chapterhouses and died there. Nobody escaped except into the judgment of Enma-ō, the endless cycle of atonement and rebirth. And even if he did get out, how could Kin possibly hope to get by in the real world? He’d lived all his days in that metal suit, never known anything but a Guildsman’s life. What on earth would he do with himself?
Leave the Guild? The only way to do that was to leave this world.
“Now I know it’s the drugs talking,” she muttered.
Buruu’s voice shook her from dreams of the green-eyed boy, reverberating like the sound of distant thunder. Unsure whether she’d imagined it, she sat up slowly beside the dying embers, brow creased with concentration.
Buruu?
THEY ARE HERE. MEN. TWO.
I’m on my way.
She checked her tantō and dashed from the cave, leaping lightly down the
slope and into the seething tangle of green. The wind was a cutting chill after the cave’s warmth, rain dashing into her eyes and pattering upon her skin. She touched the fox tattoo on her arm and crouched low, flitting from shadow to shadow without a sound, feeling for Buruu in the gloom. She could sense him off to the left, curled high in a vast cedar close to the pit, watching the two figures gathered beside it.
Yukiko could see them through his eyes: one around her age, long hair and sharp, angular features, the other older, broader, topknot peppered with gray. They were both dressed in dark gray cloth, swathed with stripes of deep green, like the patterns on the thunder tiger’s haunches. Each was armed with a kusarigama—a sickle with a length of long, weighted chain attached to the handle. The older one also carried a katana in a battered scabbard on his back.
Possession of a blade that length would be enough to see you executed in any metropolis in Shima. These men care nothing for the Shōgun’s rule. They are outlaws.
MY FONDNESS INCREASES. PERHAPS I WILL NOT GUT THEM. We need to talk to them. Let me speak.
AND IF THEY DO NOT LISTEN?
Well, then you just swoop in and save me.
Yukiko could sense his amusement echoing in the Kenning, and smiled into
his mind in return. The link between them was growing more complex; transference of subtle emotional content, interpretation of tone and pitch as easy now as simple colors or shapes. But more than that, the arashitora seemed to be growing in intellect—grasping concepts such as humor, even sarcasm, that just a few days ago would have been foreign to him. She realized that she’d never felt the voice of a beast in her dreams before, even the ones she’d known for years. She wondered if it was because he was yōkai, and where their growing bond might lead. But for now, she pushed the thought from her mind, focusing instead on the men. They were armed like bandits, and had covered the mountainside with traps. Obviously, they weren’t fond of strangers.
She crept up behind them, silent as a ghost, fingers wrapped around her knife hilt. Close enough to hear their voices, crouching beneath the fronds of an elderly frangipani, a shadow against deeper black. A long wooden pole lay beside the pit, two animal corpses tied to it, their flanks pierced with bloody holes. Yukiko thought they might be deer.
“It was big,” the younger one was saying. “But look at these tracks. Not oni.” “Is that blood?” The older one crouched beside the pit, pointing to the bamboo spikes.
“Too dark to tell. Want me to climb down?”
“Who are you?” Yukiko stepped out from cover. She was tense as a drawn bowstring, ready to bolt at the first sign of hostility.
The men raised their weapons and turned toward her voice, peering into the darkness.
“Who goes there?” the older one demanded.
“I asked you first, old man.” Yukiko kept her voice steady, ignored the pounding of her heart. “Your pit trap nearly killed me. You might at least give me the courtesy of your name.”
The pair squinted into the gloom, then stared at each other, incredulous. “A girl?” the younger one laughed.
“What in the name of the Nine Hells are you doing out here?” The older man stepped forward, kusarigama raised, chain looped in his other hand.
“That’s close enough.” Yukiko’s fist tightened about her tantō. “I’m warning you.”
“A lone girl in the wilderness isn’t exactly in a position to be warning anyone, young miss.”
“But I am not alone.” She flashed them a dangerous sort of smile.
The arashitora rose from his nook in the cedar and swooped down into the clearing, wings spread wide, infant lightning crawling over sheared feathertips. He landed among the undergrowth with a bellow; a screeching roar that split the air and sent a flurry of petals shivering from their blossoms.
“Izanagi’s balls,” hissed the young man, cowering low.