Smoke in the Sun

  Perhaps it was time to trust him with more.

  “Stop it, Kenshin.” Mariko decided to begin with a small truth. “You’re frightening me.”

  He stood straight at her words, his face suddenly stricken. Kenshin took a step back, then stopped, his movements awkward. Then he held out a hand to help Mariko to her feet. She briefly considered rebuffing it, but gripped his palm until she stood before him, face-to-face.

  “No more lies,” Kenshin said, his voice weary. “If you want me to be truthful with you, then you must do the same with me, Mariko.”

  She nodded.

  “Why did you turn your back on your family to fight alongside these traitors?” Kenshin asked.

  Mariko hesitated for a breath. “Because I believe in their cause.”

  “Their cause?” He scoffed.

  “Don’t you see, Kenshin? We are like well-clothed leeches, with all our fine silks and elegant fans. We do nothing for the people who work our lands.”

  “How can you say that?” Kenshin asked. “Father feeds and clothes and—”

  “Our father is among the worst offenders. Have you ever gone into our rice fields and looked into the eyes of those who work the soil, day after day, with only a pittance to show for it?”

  “Of course I have. We played in those fields when we were children.”

  “No, Kenshin.” Mariko shook her head. “Not with the eyes of a child. And not just a passing glance. Have you ever looked at any of them and seen an equal? Seen someone who struggles and lives and breathes and loves just as you do?” She reached for his hand, her voice barely audible. “Can you tell me even one of their names?”

  He did not take the hand she offered. Instead Kenshin stayed silent, his gaze searching.

  “You can’t,” Mariko continued, stepping back. Giving her brother the space he needed to think. “I still cannot call a single one of them by name. It’s not enough for us to pretend to be better than they are. Because we are not. We cheat and kill, lie and steal to get what we want. And we don’t care who we hurt to get it.”

  “On that point, we agree,” Kenshin said softly. “Because you are still lying to me, little sister. Still hurting me. You fight alongside the Black Clan because you are in love with the son of Takeda Shingen.”

  Mariko blinked. Kenshin wasn’t wrong. But it wasn’t that simple. It had never been that simple. For an instant, Mariko thought of spinning another lie to spare herself any more of Kenshin’s judgment. But why did it matter?

  Mariko was married to another. And she no longer wished to deny her heart its truth. Her eyes clear and her heart full, she stared up at her brother. “His name is Ōkami.”

  “No,” Kenshin replied. “His name is Takeda Ranmaru, and he is the son of a traitor.”

  Mariko nodded once. “Then I am in love with the son of a traitor.” She took a step closer, daring her brother to challenge her. “Tell me, Hattori Kenshin. What do you love? What do you fight for?” Another step. “Do you fight for Amaya?” She stopped directly in front of him. “I hope you do. Especially since you failed to fight for her when it mattered most.”

  Kenshin’s hand flashed toward Mariko before she could move away. It struck her cheek in a crack that reverberated through the room. Blindsided by her brother’s blow—by the irrevocable choice he’d made for both of them—Mariko reeled to the floor, her fingers covering her cheek. Tears streamed down her face from the shock.

  Kenshin’s eyes were wide, his skin paler than freshly fallen snow. “Mariko—”

  “Don’t apologize.” She struggled to sit straight.

  He knelt before her as he would kneel before his lord, his head bowed, his eyes averted. Her brother reached for her hand. “Please forgive—”

  Mariko snatched her fingers away. Took in a steadying breath. “Look at me.”

  Kenshin waited a moment, struggling to maintain control. Then met her eyes.

  “When I asked about her before, you lashed out at me with words. Today it came to blows. What happened to Amaya?”

  “She”—Kenshin shuddered before he spoke, his eyes darting about as though he were searching for a handhold on a cliff—“was lost. In a fire. Father and I watched while she tried to save our people. There was an explosion in our granary, and … it collapsed before I could save her.”

  Mariko took both his hands in her own. Squeezed them tightly. “I’m sorry, Kenshin. Sorrier than you will ever know,” she said, her features laden with grief. “Travel safely home. Do not write to me. Do not make inquiries about me. I do not wish to see you ever again.”

  The instant he laid eyes on it, Kenshin upended the low table in the center of his room. All the beautiful food—the sea cucumber and grated yam, the turnip dumplings and brightly colored radishes, an entire copper pot of crackling rice with spring onions and pufferfish—crashed to the floor, staining the tatami mats in brilliant hues.

  He watched as servants rushed into the darkened room, their eyes averted, whispers of apology falling from their lips. They hurried to clean up his mess. To hide the proof of his hideous temper.

  And they apologized to him as they did it.

  Disgust clawed at Kenshin’s throat. He crouched to help a servant collect the shattered pieces of a porcelain bowl. Startled by his sudden attention, the girl nearly fell over.

  “Please forgive me, my lord,” she murmured, her voice shaking.

  Kenshin met her gaze. “Do not apologize. This is my fault, not yours.”

  Fear washed across her features. As though the girl suspected Kenshin of playing games. Of testing her. The look of terror in her eyes was exactly like the one Mariko had shown him only moments before.

  Kenshin glanced around the room. Some of the faces he vaguely recognized, as they were servants who’d been attending to him ever since he’d arrived to the imperial city. All of those present were afraid of him.

  He did not know a single one of their names.

  “Go.” Kenshin cleared his throat. “Please take your leave. I will clean this myself.”

  The servants paused, uncertain. Then—under the direction of the most senior among them—they quietly exited the room. Kenshin sat with the mess he’d made. The waste of expensive food and the heap of broken dishes carefully sculpted by the hands of a master artisan.

  His sister despised him. And the girl he loved—

  Kenshin furrowed his brow.

  He did not know why he’d been unable to tell Mariko that Amaya had died. He’d said she was lost. As he attempted to share the story with his sister, his memories turned foggy. Strange images of Amaya’s face, carved into the center of a tree, had taken shape instead. Dreams of fluttering silver leaves and a world without color.

  Kenshin pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.

  He’d lost time again today. Just as he had the day by the watering hole, when he’d woken to find his hands stained with the blood of three slaughtered innocents. He had no memory of killing them, but the evidence had been irrefutable. He’d lost his honor, just as he’d lost his mind. Then a few days ago, when he’d returned from Hanami to catch his sister sneaking back to her chambers, it had happened again. After he’d been waylaid by the imperial soldiers, Kenshin remembered drunkenly following a smiling fox through the gardens.

  He recalled nothing after that.

  Today—as he’d moved to take position during his sister’s wedding—he’d lost consciousness again. A strange heaviness had settled behind his eyes, dulling his senses. The last image he recollected was Mariko beginning her long procession toward the shrine of the sun goddess. He remembered disapproving of the way she’d styled her shoulder-length hair. Its affront to tradition.

  Hours later, Kenshin found himself outside his chamber doors, a strange ache in his right shoulder. Only then did he learn of the attempt made on the emperor’s life. He’d lost hold on most of today. His mind, his honor, his truths all betrayed him.

  Kenshin knelt among the ruins of the meal and stared into
the shadows on the other side of his chamber. He rolled his arm. That same twinge from earlier caught his attention. Reaching inside his kosode, he discovered a welt beside his collarbone.

  As though he’d shot an arrow.

  The sound of tightening sinew emanated from the darkened corner of his room. Immediately Kenshin took to his feet.

  “Keep your hands at your sides,” a feminine voice rasped at him. “Don’t say a word, unless you wish it to be your last.” A small figure—dressed in garments the color of stone—moved from the shadows into a strip of moonlight cast from the open screen nearby.

  The girl continued speaking as she moved closer. “I don’t understand you, Lord Kenshin. You had a clear shot, and you missed.”

  Kenshin blinked. He did not know what the intruder was talking about. But he did recognize that voice. It was one of the only things to soothe him of late.

  The maiko at the teahouse. Yumi.

  It took only a moment for him to make the connection.

  This girl had tried to kill the emperor.

  Kenshin lunged for her, intent on subduing Yumi and calling for his guards. She slid from his grasp with the ease of a wriggling fish. The next instant, she swiped his legs from under him. He struck the floor with a dull thud, the breath knocked from his chest. Yumi pressed her knee on his stomach, then drove the tip of a nocked arrow into his breastbone.

  “Try it again, and I will loose this through your heart.” Yumi leaned over him, her lovely eyes narrowed. “I don’t understand you,” she repeated. “Why did you miss your shot? And why would you attack me now? I tried to help you.”

  “What are you talking about?” Kenshin demanded in a hoarse tone.

  The girl’s eyes grew wide. “Are you in jest?”

  “What?” he ground out. “I do not jest.”

  Confusion etched lines across her forehead. “You tried to kill the emperor today, Hattori Kenshin.”

  The Tail of a Snake

  Raiden glided down the stone steps toward the two cells housed beneath the main structure of Heian Castle. As soon as he reached the bottom, he heard the retching. Smelled the blood.

  The moment he learned the imperial guards had moved the boy they’d caught to a cell in the castle’s underbelly, Raiden had begun his trek there.

  But Roku had beaten him to it.

  The emperor had elected to take on the boy’s interrogation, as he had with Takeda Ranmaru. Raiden had cautioned him for this choice even then. Such things were beneath the dignity of a heavenly sovereign. And it had not gone unnoticed by the soldiers. By the samurai who served at Roku’s leisure.

  Who abided by a strict code of honor.

  At the foot of the stone staircase, Raiden came across a soldier emptying his stomach of its contents. This was not an unseasoned warrior. Age creased his features, and his armor had faded in several places. Yet the sound of his retching continued to echo through the ghostly labyrinth.

  Raiden slowed his pace until he neared the two cells. He took position behind his younger brother, who still wore the same fine garments from earlier in the evening, at Raiden’s ruined wedding ceremony. Roku’s left arm hung from a linen sling. Blood stained the whole of his shoulder. The injury the would-be assassin had inflicted was not a small one. It was only luck that the arrow’s path had gone wide.

  Perhaps not luck. Perhaps it had all been part of a larger plan. Raiden paused to take note of the empty cell that had contained the son of Takeda Shingen. The traitor had managed to escape in the aftermath of the attempted assassination. This did not strike Raiden as a mere coincidence.

  A garbled scream cut through his thoughts. The smell of blood and burning flesh clogged his throat. Raiden coughed, his eyes watering through a haze of oily smoke. When his sight fully readjusted, he turned his gaze toward the prisoner lying across the cell floor. Shock gripped him from the inside, causing his muscles to bunch in his stomach.

  “Roku,” he whispered in horror.

  His younger brother glanced at him, his features calm, save for the frown touching his lips. “Brother, I’ll encourage you not to forget whom you are addressing.” Dried blood stained his fingers. Marred the hem of his golden robes.

  Raiden shook his head. Paused to bow before speaking. “Please, my sovereign. I implore you. Do not continue with this. Such things are beneath you.” He repeated the same words he’d spoken to his younger brother only several days ago.

  Though Roku smiled, signs of fury mottled his skin. “Do not tell me what to do, brother.”

  “My sovereign—”

  Roku turned in place, his robes swirling through the filth. “Your emperor’s blood was spilled today. Our most dangerous prisoner—a threat to my very existence—managed to escape in the chaos he likely orchestrated. It was at your request that I kept Lord Ranmaru alive this long. Where is he, Raiden? Find him at once. How dare you concern yourself with anything else!” His reedy voice shook as it reverberated off the rafters.

  Frustration coiled in Raiden’s throat. He’d specifically asked his younger brother to execute Ranmaru upon their arrival. But it was true he’d changed his position since then … at the request of his bride. Another fact that did not escape his notice. With a careful breath, Raiden dipped his head into a low bow. “I apologize, my sovereign. I am here to do as you command.”

  Roku nodded, then turned toward the soldiers surrounding the prone boy. At least one of them looked sickened, but Raiden was far more concerned with the imperial guard tasked with restraining the boy. This young man appeared as though he were enjoying the sight of such suffering.

  Never before in his life had Raiden seen anything so disturbing.

  The boy was lying facedown in the packed earth, mud oozing around him. His body was a mess of blood and carefully flayed flesh. All but unrecognizable. Even the feeble sound that came from his lips seemed subhuman.

  Raiden knew there was no way to gain answers or insight from this broken shell of a creature. A part of him wished to learn if his younger brother had thought to properly question the boy before devolving to this madness. As he studied Roku’s gleaming eyes and serene smile, Raiden knew the answer without asking.

  “Demand that this traitor confess who ordered him to conceal the bow and arrow,” Roku said to the soldier holding the boy down. “A boy this size could not have fired a weapon like that from such a distance. He must have been helping someone. If he tells us who it was, I will let him live.”

  Live? In his current condition, the boy would last until daybreak, at best.

  Raiden watched the emperor attempt to lace his hands behind his back as though he were on an evening stroll. The motion pulled at his sling, causing him to cringe. Unmistakable wrath flickered across his features.

  “Proceed,” Roku said to his soldiers. “Show the traitor the mercy of the imperial city.”

  The boy no longer had the strength to scream. The faces of the soldiers nearby—save for the one pinning the prisoner to the ground—begged for reprieve. Soldiers well versed in the sight of warfare could no longer stomach these atrocities.

  There was no honor in this.

  The uncertainty that had taken root in Raiden continued to flourish amid the darkness. His mother had told him once. Only once. Not long after she learned of his father’s death, she’d looked into Raiden’s eyes, her gaze searching. He always found it difficult to read his mother’s emotions. She refused to show them to anyone. Never fought publicly with a soul. Never said an unkind word, save for the warnings she would offer him about maintaining a close relationship with his younger brother.

  But his mother had said something clear and unmistakable to Raiden, in the chaotic morning following his father’s death.

  “Roku is not fit to rule,” she’d said softly. “He is the tail of a snake.”

  Raiden had recoiled at her words. “He is our emperor. Your words are treasonous, Mother. Never say such things to me again, if you value your life.”

  She had bowed, bot
h hands held wide as though to convey humility.

  “If you are worried he will remove you from court, I know he will not,” Raiden had offered as a source of comfort.

  “I am not worried for my sake, my son. But I thank you for your concern. You are a true prince among men. I shall try not to trouble you with such matters again.” Then his mother had left. When she’d gone, it felt like she’d taken the warmth with her.

  She always did that, whenever hatred spewed her way from all corners of the court. His mother would bow. Turn the other cheek. And leach all the warmth from the room. Raiden had never before understood how she could disregard the injurious sentiments hurled her way, but he thought he could see why now. His mother had done it to set an example for him. To urge him to be better than the spiders at court. And what had Raiden done in response?

  He’d cast her aside to serve his emperor.

  “My sovereign,” Raiden said now. “Please allow me to take charge of questioning this prisoner. You have been wounded, and I worry for your health. As the key to our empire—its beating heart—your safety is paramount. Please permit us to protect you from the traitors in your midst.”

  Roku considered him for a moment, his head inclined to one side. “How generous of you to make such an offer, brother. After all, it is your wedding night. You have more pleasurable things to attend to.”

  “I live to serve my sovereign. And no one else.” As he bowed again, Raiden let a small object sheathed within the sleeve of his kosode fall into his waiting palm.

  A moment passed in utter stillness. The only sounds that could be heard were the staggered breaths of those present. The broken rasps of the tortured boy.

  “Very well.” Roku finally nodded, his eyes flashing. “Report to me if there are any new developments.”

  Raiden bowed again. Then watched as his younger brother strolled from the room, his soiled finery slithering behind him.

  Like the tail of a snake.

  “Tighten the bonds on his feet,” Raiden ordered the soldier who appeared to enjoy the sight of such savagery.