Yukiko ran her hand across Buruu’s flank, smearing the blood through his fur. “So where does this leave us?”
Daichi looked around his men. Some still stared at Yukiko, but a few were busy slinging the bodies of their fallen comrades over their shoulders. Two others had begun the grisly task of dismembering the oni corpses so they could be disposed of elsewhere. The rain washed the blood from their flesh, down into the earth, soaking into hungry roots and sodden mud. All so transient. Soon there would be little to show that they had ever been here at all. Nothing but the shadows they left behind.
“We must talk, Kitsune Yukiko.” Daichi nodded in the direction of the village and turned to walk away.
Yukiko’s voice pulled him up short, “Talk about what?”
The old man looked over his shoulder, a strange sadness in his eyes.
“Murder.”
Yukiko tried to swallow the cold lump in her throat, ignore the dread in her belly.
“Murder and treason.”
Fire seethed across the maple logs, greedy fingers lapping on dry bark, breaking the wood into glowing cinders. Yukiko cupped a warm bowl of broth in both hands and nestled closer to the blaze, hair hanging in a tangled curtain about her face. Buruu sat outside by the open door, preening his feathers, watching the blood run from his fur beneath the chattering rain.
The battle with the demons seemed like a distant memory now; the dim recollection of a dream in the cold light of morning. She could recall the bloodlust in her veins, the haze of red that clouded her eyes. The feeling of her wings at her shoulders, slicing through the air and failing to find purchase, the joy she felt at the roar of the storm above. Watching Buruu preen in the rain, she knew none of this was hers; that he was leaking into her as surely as she was into him.
What am I becoming?
Daichi and Kaori sat beside Yukiko around the fire pit, cross-legged on thin hessian cushions. Kaori was watching Yukiko with that same awed expression, her father was staring at the blaze, at the smoke writhing up the chimney. The smell of wisteria drifted in through the open windows, entwined with the song of the storm.
“Our scouts have reported a Guild-liner in the skies above the crash site of your ship,” Daichi murmured. “They are looking for something.”
“Kin-san,” she said. “He told me they could find his suit. I hid it in the rocks upstream.”
“So. Escape beckons. Do you wish to leave this place? Take Yoritomo his prize?”
Yukiko clawed the hair from her eyes, tucked it behind her ears. Her voice sounded like it came from a thousand miles away.
“I want to know my friends are all right. That they escaped the crash in one piece.” She stared through the open door at Buruu, pained and weary. “But I don’t want to hand Buruu over to that maniac. I don’t care about what was promised to him. I don’t care about honor. Honor is bullshit.”
Daichi heaved a sigh that seemed to come from the tips of his toes.
“I envy you, Yukiko-chan.” He stared at her across the pit, flame glittering in the steel-gray of his eyes. “It took me forty years to learn that lesson. For the longest time, from the day I first held a wooden sword in my hands, I thought honor was defined by servitude. By carrying out the will of my Shōgun, and living by the Way. I thought I was a man of courage, to do what others would not. But I know now that this kind of loyalty is cowardice. That the nobility of this country have abandoned the Code of Bushido, paying it lip service at best. To be a servant can be a noble thing, but only as noble as the master served.”
He wrung his hands, staring hard at calloused flesh.
“These hands of mine drip with blood. It will never wash away. I have killed women. I have killed children. I have killed the innocent and the unborn. And though it was my Lord that commanded it, it was I who wielded the blade. I know this. I know I will answer for it one day to Enma-ō, and the great judge will find me wanting. A demon lives inside my mouth, and speaks to me in quiet moments with blackened tongue. Wresting me from peaceful slumber and waking me sweating in the night. Two words. Over and over.”
He swallowed, shook his head.
“Hell-bound.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Yukiko watched him through her lashes, uncertain, afraid without quite knowing why.
Kaori squeezed her father’s hand, shook her head fiercely. He stared at the fire for what seemed like hours, watching the logs blacken and char. Finally he looked at Yukiko.
“I would have you do something for me. For all of us. I would have you free this land.”
“And how do I do that?”
“Kill the Shōgun.”
Yukiko dropped the bowl with a clatter, broth splashing across the boards. She could swear her lower jaw was sitting in her lap.
“Wh— you want me . . .”
“Hai,” Daichi nodded. “I want you to assassinate Yoritomo.”