“Most men would rather be a slave than an oath-breaker.”
“An oath to a liar is no oath at all,” Daichi growled. “Yoritomo broke his oath to me.”
“How?”
“He demanded what was not his to take.” Daichi’s eyes flickered to his daughter, back to Yukiko. “And when it was denied him, he decided that no other man should possess it either. Nor should they ever want to.”
Yukiko looked at the scar running down Kaori’s face, beauty forever spoiled, feeling sick to her stomach. She nodded. Not in understanding, because nobody who claimed to be human could possibly understand something like that. But she nodded. She knew.
MADNESS.
“So it has always been with the line of Kazumitsu.” Kaori’s voice shook with remembered anger. “What they see they want, and what they cannot possess, they destroy. Look at your friend outside. If not for your Shōgun, he would be free, soaring over the desolation that Yoritomo names ‘Empire.’ ” She shook her head. “I wonder why he ever came here.”
“Perhaps he was brought here,” Daichi answered, his eyes never leaving Yukiko’s. “Perhaps you were too.”
Yukiko stood on a broad footbridge, watching maple leaves spiral toward the ground. She held a wisteria bloom in her hand, fragile as spun sugar, petals shaped like an upturned bowl, white as pure snow. A hush had fallen over the world, a pre-dawn silence that held the night in a fragile embrace, waiting to break in the sunrise with the first birdsong. The horizon was aglow with the promise of impending daylight.
Though she’d suppressed her yawns as long as she was able, Daichi had realized Yukiko was tired. He told her that Kin was being cared for, that she should rest, but she knew it was only a matter of time before someone discovered the bayonet fixtures in his flesh. Yukiko had no idea how she was going to explain them.
She and Buruu were taken to an empty dwelling high in the branches of an old oak. The tree was overgrown with wisteria vines, twisting up from the forest floor in thick, fragrant growths. Buruu had stretched out on a branch shaped like a cupped palm as she began pacing across the footbridge, too restless to sleep.
She let go of the flower, watched it spiral into the drop below her feet. Staring down through the camouflage nets, she blinked in wonder at it all: the squat houses covered in creepers and wrapped in twisted branches, the bridges, dwellings and storerooms blending in seamlessly with the greenery around them, mere shadows in the canopy to anyone looking up from below. A hundred men would have to slave for a de cade to build a place like this. The will it must have taken to craft it out of nothing made her marvel.
These people are fanatics.
Buruu opened one eye, blinked sleepily.
YOU SHOULD REST.
I don’t trust them. What are they doing here?
LIVING FREE. AWAY FROM YOUR SCABS AND DESPOILER LORD. ADMIRABLE.
There is hatred in their eyes. Darkness. I can feel it. They are not just men who seek freedom from the Shōgun’s rule. There is more to it than that. SLEEP. I WILL WATCH IF YOU FEAR.
Yukiko heard soft footsteps. She turned and saw Kaori approaching across
the bridge, surefooted, hair rippling in dark, velvet waves. The diagonal fringe hung over her face, obscuring much of the scar, one eye visible between twin curtains of black. She stopped beside Yukiko, leaned against the railing and stared out into the whispering gloom.
“You should sleep.” Kaori’s voice was as soft as smoke. “You look exhausted.” “Soon.”
“Rumors are already spreading among the people here.” Kaori glanced at her
sidelong. “The girl who rides the thunder tiger. Slayer of half a dozen oni. I fear you will be inundated with attention tomorrow. You should rest while you can.”
“It wasn’t half a dozen. It was only five.”
MUST HAVE BEEN DIFFICULT. LITTLE THING LIKE YOU ENDING FIVE PIT DEMONS ALL ALONE.
Yukiko made a face.
“Buruu did most of the work, anyway.”
SHOULD THINK SO . . .
“The oni will be angered,” Kaori sighed. “The loss of so many of their number . . .”
Yukiko stayed silent, staring off into the dark. There was something wrong with all of this; the simple folk with warriors’ weapons, the burned tattoos. Suspicion gnawed at her insides, the feeling of being constantly watched prickling the back of her neck.
“Your friend is running a fever.” Kaori stood on tiptoe and peered over the railing, waves of raven hair falling about her face. “We have given him antibiotics, something to help ease the pain.”
“And where did you get the medicine?”
Ever so slightly, Kaori narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean?” “Well, do you trade for it? You seem intent on keeping this place secret. But
unless you’re growing the antibiotics yourselves, I’m guessing someone knows you’re out here.” Kaori turned toward her, shoulders square. Her face had hardened; a sudden shift to smooth stone. She glared behind her fringe.