The sound of someone kicking at wood followed.
Isao rushed toward the sound, coughing as he moved through the heavy smoke. He advanced towards the back of the building, where flames licked the highest. There, a girl with long black hair and tied hands was flailing around a wooden pillar, trying without success to cut herself free using a splintered piece of wood. Flames crackled close to her, casting her in a strange, unusual light. Isao hurried forward.
“Let me help you!”
The girl’s head jerked around. When she spotted him, her eyes narrowed. Just as she opened her mouth to say something, Isao felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Isao, we must go!” Khalem shouted over the roar of the flames. “I have the horses prepared and outside. If we don’t hurry, someone will steal them.”
“No! I must help her. She’ll burn alive!”
“She is not our problem.”
“This entire attack IS my problem!”
Shoving Khalem’s hand off his arm, Isao darted into the stall area where the girl had resumed her frantic attempts to free herself. But the roof of the stables was on fire, and the sparks it set off fell onto the top of the pole holding the girl captive. The pole too began to burn.
Isao skidded onto the hay, stopping just short of the girl. He grabbed at her bonds, and began prying the knots apart with his fingers.
The girl glanced to the flames overhead as sweat poured down her body.
“So close,” Isao muttered, struggling with the thick rope. The heat was making his vision blurry. “So close to being free….”
Only a few stalls away, a beam fell, crashing to the ground. The girl ducked, and Isao’s sweaty hands slipped on the rope.
“Isao!” Khalem barked. “We’ll die in here! Let’s go!”
Isao suddenly remembered he had his jiang blade. Sliding it free of its sheath, he placed it on the rope and sawed at the thick bonds. “Come on!” he cried. “Break!”
Pieces of ceiling crashed down, setting the hay on fire.
“The roof! It’s going to fall!” the girl yelled.
An ominous crack sounded.
Another square of the ceiling fell in bright, burning plumes around them.
Burning cinders landed on Isao’s shoulders as the girl tugged frantically at her bonds. Khalem grabbed Isao just as the beam above the three of them dropped down.
Hadjia
Hadjia collapsed onto her bed.
Her whole body shook, and her hands trembled. Despite her every attempt to redirect her thoughts, each thought constantly found its way back to…Mother Sigunta. The robed, masked man with a strange voice. Wide-eyed Kim shuffling forward for forgiveness, only to meet death.
Not even Kaneko’s hushed warnings and promise of aid had calmed her fears.
Hadjia thought she could hear Kim calling and calling out to her, “I was innocent!”
She pulled her light coverlet over her, and clenched her eyes shut. They’d come looking for her soon, wondering what was wrong with her. She was never tardy, never late.
Sick. She’d be too sick to go out there. Surely that wouldn’t be too difficult to believe.
She gulped, hard, as sweat broke out on her forehead.
Mother Sigunta – killing innocents.
She couldn’t believe it. The Mother would never.
But if it was true, then the people Renji had killed had done no wrong. They were not evil ones!
And with that thought, a horrible thought moved through Hadjia.
Maybe they were the terrible ones: Renji. Kaneko. Mother Sigunta. They were the killers. The ones who arrived without a sound and left devastation in their wake.
Immediately, Hadjia rejected this thought.
No. Mother Sigunta cared about her.
Hadjia flipped onto her other side, thrashing under the sheet. A thousand questions built up in her mind – but whom could she ask?
Not Mother Sigunta. No other child in the school. They were all unaware, just like her. Not even Kaneko would know. No one!
Perhaps that was the point…? Perhaps that was the reason the Red Moon school was located so deep in the marshlands. Tucked away. Far, far away, where no one could find them.
“No,” Hadjia murmured out loud. “It’s not true. It’s not.”
A deep ache built up in her chest, threatening to break free. For the first time that Hadjia could recall, tears welled up in her eyes. What could she do? Where could she turn? The burden of this knowledge was too great for her to bear!
Perhaps Mother Sigunta didn’t really love them after all. Maybe she didn’t even care about them. Why else would she have killed innocent Kim so ruthlessly? Would she murder every single one of them if they were to do something wrong?
Hadjia’s mind spun backwards in time. She remembered the other students who had died during her time here. Some of them had died from strange illnesses. Some of them had died suddenly, in the middle of the night.
Had their deaths been due to Mother Sigunta as well?
Hadjia blinked tears back, and forced herself to focus on Kaneko’s words. “Mother loves this school. She loves us. If she’s done something like that, there’s a reason for it.”
Hadjia mulled those words over, but she simply couldn’t believe that Mother Sigunta had lied to them all this time. She just couldn’t.
And what about the masked man…Who was he? What was he hiding beneath that hideous mask besides his identity?
The unexpected thought struck Hadjia that he could be anyone. He could have nefarious intentions behind the things he did, and no one might know!
Perhaps Mother Sigunta was in danger from this man!
But Hadjia could never ask Mother Sigunta anything about this; she didn’t even dare bring it up to Kaneko. No, the only way for her to get any answers was to learn more about the masked man.
Hadjia shot up off her bed. Solving this was up to her, and there was only one place in the Red Moon school where she could get her answers.
After she tidied herself up, change her clothes, and take a long drink of water from a pitcher, Hadjia left her room. She wound her way quietly through the halls before she slipped through a set of double doors and closed them firmly behind her.
The library.
Two other students were in the room, reading books in the far corner. They glanced up, saw Hadjia, and went back to their studying.
Hadjia advanced into the room, her eyes on the numerous books.
Where to even start?
As she stood pondering, she heard the sound of students walking past the library. A distant rattle of dishes indicated that most in the school were getting ready to eat.
No doubt the celebration for Renji had begun as well.
Hadjia’s stomach turned at the thought. She stopped in front of a bookshelf, closed her eyes, and forced herself to think. There must have been something that she could remember about the man in black.
Remembering the details didn’t take long.
He wore a black robe that billowed around his body, and a grotesque mask with a long nose.
She sucked in a sharp breath – He also had a pendant. It had dangled from his left hand. It was golden. Was it round? No, oblong, and tapered at the top like . . . fingers. A hand! It had been in the shape of a hand.
Had there been any other colors? Maybe…it have given off a faint glow.
What would glow? Hadjia pressed a hand to her head. A diamond? No. But some sort of gem! The sheen was slightly green sheen, like the color of an emerald.
Hadjia ran her fingertips along the spines of the books, perusing their titles. Poisons in the Marsh. The Historical Shift of Weapons in the Empire. Properties of Blood and Fire. She pulled several off the shelf, stacking them on a table and flipped through every page.
Some of them contained drawings. A few had a painting inside, but that was rare. Most of them proved useless to her.