Flame in the Mist

  And he really did possess some of the finest hands Mariko had ever seen.

  Just as she thought to say something nice—about how well he sat in his saddle—Ōkami cut his warhorse across her path, halting her, his right fist in the air.

  The nostrils of his horse flared. Mariko’s steed whickered.

  Before them was a familiar line of maple trees along the westernmost edge of the forest. The outskirts near the watering hole.

  Several wisps of dark smoke curled into the air beyond the tree line. Not the single steady stream they were expecting. Not the smoke from the crumbling chimney of the lean-to. A strange scent suffused the sky.

  Burning meat. Mingled with a hint of decay.

  “Stay here,” Ōkami said harshly, kicking his horse into a gallop.

  Without a second thought, Mariko followed after him.

  “Stay with the men,” he shouted over his shoulder, his brows gathering together.

  Anger unfurled in her chest. “You can’t possibly be talking to me,” she said as she drew alongside him. “Nor can you expect me to follow such an insulting order.”

  “You idiot,” Ōkami said, reining his horse in as they neared the clearing. “I ordered you to stay with Ranmaru because you have a keen eye and a sharp mind.”

  They stopped at the edge of the clearing, and Mariko’s throat caught at the sight.

  Akira-san’s lean-to was smoldering. As were the rickety tables surrounding it. Across the stretch of cleared land, splatters of blood and patches of scorched earth stained the trampled ground.

  A massacre had taken place here.

  Several unfortunate patrons were slumped over the tables, long since dead. Some of their bodies had burned in the brushfire.

  Ōkami dropped from his saddle. Mariko walked after him, taking stock of their surroundings, even though she could see Ōkami slowly memorizing every detail in sight.

  Mariko knew what it looked like to travel alongside a tracker.

  If Kenshin were here, he would be doing exactly the same thing.

  Beside the smoldering lean-to, they discovered the bodies of the boy and girl who’d served them the last time. The boy had been slashed across his chest. A clean, unbroken line that had nevertheless caused him immense pain. Mariko knew he had not died quickly. The crimson stain circling his body was wide. Dried at the edges. Mercifully the girl had died instantly, a deep wound across her throat.

  Mariko and Ōkami paused before the bodies of the girl and the boy, silently grieving their youth. Grieving the loss of life stolen before it could be lived.

  A broken voice cut through the silence. A halting cadence crying out into the sky.

  “Akira-san,” Ōkami said as he began moving past the bodies, his steps urgent.

  They found the elderly man with the weathered face behind the lean-to. When they saw him lift a trembling hand, they rushed to his side. He’d been stabbed through the stomach. Was slowly bleeding into his body.

  A horrifying way to die. A way of pain and suffering.

  Blood trickled from one corner of his mouth as he spoke to Ōkami. As he tried in vain to reach for the collar of Ōkami’s kosode to draw him near.

  The Wolf leaned close. “Who was it?” Mariko saw his fists clench.

  A low hum rippled from his body.

  “S-samurai,” Akira-san rasped.

  In this moment, Mariko realized she had never seen Ōkami truly angry before. Even beside the teahouse that night last week, she’d witnessed a flash of fury, but it was nothing like this. When she’d tried to pry for more information about his powers in those first few days, Yoshi had claimed very little ever warranted the Wolf’s wrath.

  In order to hate, one must first love, the cook had said.

  And Ōkami did not love many things.

  Before Akira-san could say anything more, Ranmaru came crashing through the burned brush toward them. He skidded to a halt, his face pale. Akira-san reached for the leader of the Black Clan, and Ranmaru flew to the old man’s side, clasping his bloodied hand tight.

  Akira-san’s eyes traveled to Mariko. They narrowed. His breaths were becoming shallow and fast.

  “Find . . . find the d-dragon,” he said haltingly.

  Mariko’s pulse came to a sudden standstill. An icy vise gripped her chest. Tore through the bindings wound about her breastbone.

  “The dragon?” Ranmaru asked.

  “Find the Dragon . . . of Kai.” He coughed, lines of crimson spurting from his lips. Then he raised a trembling finger, as though he meant to point at something.

  Or someone.

  Mariko could not hear over the sound of her heart’s screams.

  It’s not possible. This isn’t possible.

  Akira-san’s hand fell as his eyes drifted shut. As the life left his body. Mariko’s hand flew to her throat. And her mind was sent into a whirl.

  Kenshin. Her brother. Her family.

  What have you done?

  SMOKESHIELDS AND SORROW

  Mariko turned to her work to keep the world around her from falling apart.

  She listened while Ranmaru raged about the Dragon of Kai. Listened as he ordered the rest of his men to begin making inquiries as to where Hattori Kenshin might be. As to why Hattori Kenshin would murder an innocent old man and his two young grandchildren in cold blood.

  Had Kenshin really done this?

  Mariko asked herself this question many times. Too many times to count.

  Why would Kenshin do such a thing?

  The most disturbing part about its answer was that she could not be sure on either score.

  Her brother had always been a man of honor. A man who followed the way of the warrior to the letter. Bushidō drove Kenshin as it drove few other men of Mariko’s acquaintance. In order for a man who valued honor and chivalry as Kenshin did to slaughter innocent, unarmed people, he must have had a good reason. He had to have one.

  But as much as Mariko struggled to come up with it, she could not. Ultimately it was because she knew there could be no good reason.

  When she overheard the plans Ranmaru had begun to make—to find the Dragon of Kai and kill him with a thousand cuts—Mariko felt the horror take shape in her soul. And she knew she had to form a plan. At least do something more than sit and worry in silence.

  If Ranmaru sent the Black Clan after her brother, Kenshin would have to fight.

  He might die.

  She did not doubt her brother could hold his own against most of the members of the Black Clan.

  But not against Ōkami.

  Mariko had to create something to help her brother stave off the Wolf’s inevitable onslaught. After all, a predator needed to see its prey in order to catch it.

  Ōkami had been decidedly quiet through all of Ranmaru’s rages. If possible he’d been even more detached than usual. He did not laugh with Mariko anymore. Instead Ōkami resumed his disappearances from camp, this time leaving every day. Likely journeying to Inako to see his sister Yumi.

  Not that Mariko minded.

  That fear—that burgeoning worry—drove her to remain apart from all the conversations taking place around her. Drove her to avoid Ōkami for the few moments they ever crossed paths in camp. Avoid him as he avoided her. At all cost.

  Mariko burrowed into her tasks instead. Today she sat outside Haruki’s smithy, gingerly filling empty eggshells.

  The idea had come to her after an anxious dream. One in which she’d watched Yoshi remove eggs from their casings, leaving the shells intact. Hollow. Then the shells had dissolved into smoke, concealing him from view.

  Mariko had woken suddenly. And begun to consider.

  A trail of smoke would be an excellent way to conceal a retreat. Or perhaps even conceal an entrance. Especially if the smoke did not precipitate an actual fire.

  Smok
e was the first sign of a blaze. It usually sent those around it into a panic to find its source. A panic that would help to conceal a marauder’s trail.

  The next day, Mariko had borrowed a mortar and pestle from Yoshi. She’d begun grinding powders, almost feverishly. First she’d started with a basic mixture. She’d taken the smelly, yellow rocks from the nearby hot springs and ground them into powder. Then she’d mixed them with dried pitch and tried to get them to form a mold in the eggshell.

  As could be expected, the stinking disaster had fallen apart in her hands before it could even catch flame.

  Then Mariko had recalled something Yoshi had taught her during one of her many lessons about mundane things. An excellent source of tinder was dried animal dung. He’d proven this when he’d taught her how to light a fire.

  So she’d mixed equal parts dried horse dung with the yellow rocks and the pitch, grinding them all into a fine powder. The final addition of soot from Haruki’s smithy had stabilized the mixture and made it less noxious to work with.

  The last task left to Mariko was to create a mold.

  Thus the eggshells.

  She needed something that would encase the powders in an almost crystalline structure. Make them easy to transport without falling apart or setting them off at the nearest brush of heat. Yesterday Mariko had remembered the Dragon’s Beard candy and how the sweet amazura syrup used to make it hardened when left too long away from the fire.

  So she’d taken amazura syrup from Yoshi and let it melt over a low flame. She’d waited until it hardened before grinding it into a powder. Dusted it across the inside of the eggshell. Then left it near the heat once more to form a shell within the eggshell. A reinforcement that made the eggshells themselves far sturdier.

  If this experiment didn’t work, she had to start from the beginning.

  Mariko carefully measured out the three different powders in the three containers at her feet. She poured each into the eggshell lined with amazura glaze.

  Then she stood.

  As she’d learned early on when mixing these powders, friction caused them to react with one another and form a cloud of smoke.

  She rattled the egg twice before throwing it hard on the ground.

  It burst with a loud bang. A white smoke rose from the ground, smelling faintly of burnt eggs and horse dung. Tolerable, if one ran away quickly.

  At least in one thing Mariko was not a complete failure.

  —

  “I’m impressed,” Ranmaru said when Mariko showed him the final product. His hand waved through the smoke so that he could see her.

  Briefly Mariko considered what it meant that she was providing her enemy—her brother’s enemy—with the means to conceal himself from view. Alas, it was too late to hide her success, and—as far as she was concerned—the more smoke, the better. She’d begun working on this project before the events that had transpired in the clearing. When Mariko had wished to earn a place in the Black Clan’s inner circle. The only thing that saved her from feeling extreme guilt was the knowledge that she had not shared all she’d learned from her experiments.

  She had no intentions of giving Ranmaru her greatest invention yet. Despite what her brother had done in Jukai forest, she would help Kenshin best his enemies in whatever way she could.

  Mariko steeled herself.

  The first chance she had, she would learn the reason Kenshin had murdered so many innocents. After everything she’d experienced while living amongst the Black Clan, she knew appearances could be deceiving. And she wished to give her brother the benefit of her trust, at least for the time being.

  “How many smokeshields can you make?” Ranmaru asked.

  Mariko hedged. “It’s time-consuming.”

  “I’ll send men to help you. Ren and Yoshi will appreciate learning how to do this.”

  And taking note of my ingredients, as well as seeing what else I am concocting.

  “I prefer to work alone,” Mariko said. “It’s dangerous handling the powders, and an untried hand could set fire to the entire camp.”

  Ranmaru remained unyielding. “Then train them to handle the powders properly.”

  “I don’t have the time to train them and make the smokeshields.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what you need, and I will provide it.”

  The leader of the Black Clan’s unflinching nature was becoming increasingly problematic. Ranmaru rarely saw problems. He saw only solutions, and his eternal optimism grated on her nerves now more than ever.

  Mariko thought quickly. Even if she disclosed the ingredients, none of the members of the Black Clan could ever duplicate the amounts. Not without weeks of study. And she would never tell them how she’d managed to harden the inside of the eggshell. “The yellow rocks near the hot springs. Dried horse dung. And ash from Haruki’s forge.”

  “And foxglove.” A voice emanated from behind her.

  Ōkami.

  “Foxglove?” Ranmaru said with a quizzical expression. “As in the poison?”

  Mariko refrained from grimacing. “It’s true I have foxglove, but—”

  Ōkami stepped before her. “Don’t try to fool us, Lord Lackbeard,” he said in a flat tone. “If you didn’t use it for the smokeshields, then why did you need to gather it?”

  Again she thought quickly. “I used foxglove sap to line the inside of the eggshells.”

  Another lie, threaded from truth. Once again, Mariko recalled the experiment her tutor had performed when she was younger. When the paste from the foxglove stems and seeds had flashed a brilliant light. Mariko had realized early on that if she did in fact add the paste to the smokeshield, it would likely explode. Not just emit smoke and fumes.

  Alas she’d not yet had an occasion to test her greatest invention yet.

  “Interesting,” Ranmaru commented.

  Ōkami turned toward her, his face tense, as though he could smell the scent of her lies. “Quite.”

  “Very well,” Ranmaru said. “We shall provide you with the ingredients. Can you make fifty smokeshields in the next five days?”

  “I can try.”

  “Excellent.” He grinned. “How are your lessons progressing in learning to fight with a sword?”

  “They—aren’t,” she admitted. “I’ve been spending most of my time working on this.”

  Partially true. But in actuality it was difficult to pursue any training when one’s supposed master was never present in the same place as his student.

  “It’s important you continue practicing.” Ranmaru watched her as he spoke. “Because if you’re successful in making these smokeshields, I’d like for you to accompany us on our next raid.”

  Mariko blanched. “I’d . . . I—”

  “I thought you would be pleased,” Ranmaru said.

  Again Mariko felt Ōkami’s eyes bore through her skull.

  “I am . . . pleased.”

  Ranmaru frowned. “You don’t sound as though you are.”

  “May I ask where we are planning our next raid?”

  “A land not too far from here,” Ranmaru answered. “One that desperately deserves our intervention.”

  Ōkami glanced down at her. “The province of the Hattori clan.”

  Mariko’s head began to swim, her earliest suspicions confirmed.

  Though it did not make the words any easier to hear.

  The Wolf continued. “The way to draw out a dragon is by threatening its lair.”

  Despite the pounding between her temples, Mariko kept her voice calm. Unaffected. “Do we know why he attacked Akira-san?” she asked Ōkami, desperate to cling to the first source of her hatred.

  The first and most lasting.

  Tell me you were there that night. Tell me you were the ones to attack my convoy. Tell me you tried to kill Hattori Mariko and her brother is seeking
revenge against the Black Clan for it.

  Tell me so I can destroy you and never once look back.

  “It doesn’t matter why he did it,” Ōkami said. “It only matters that he did.”

  Believe in actions and actions alone.

  But Kenshin had to have his reasons. Mariko needed to believe he would never do something like this without a reason. Needed to believe it despite all the evidence to the contrary.

  “Why would anyone murder someone without a reason?” she said.

  “Men like that don’t need a reason,” Ōkami replied.

  Ranmaru sighed. “You will see when we go to the Hattori province. You will see why it is that the emperor has failed his people by putting men like Hattori Kano in power. Our emperor is not strong. He is weak and manipulative. Far more concerned about his own status than he is about the greatness of the empire. If Minamoto Masaru truly cared about his country, he would know its strength lies with its people. And the people of Wa follow those who bring about the glory of our empire.

  “It’s time to return power to those with the will to rule,” Ranmaru continued. “With a strong arm. And a unified heart.”

  Mariko knew she could not say much. If she spoke out of turn, her words would reveal her sentiments. And her heart could not take any more pain. Not now. “You wish for power to be taken from the emperor?”

  The leader of the Black Clan looked to his friend. “Ōkami—”

  “Ranmaru wishes for power to return to the shōgun,” the Wolf finished.

  “Which shōgun?” Mariko asked. “I thought the line of the shōgun had died out years ago.”

  Ōkami’s gaze pierced hers. He spoke softly. “The last in line to be shōgun was Takeda Shingen’s son.”

  Ranmaru.

  “So you fight”—Mariko swallowed as she studied Ōkami—“you fight to restore military power to Ranmaru?”

  Ōkami said nothing. “The only reason I fight is out of loyalty to my clan. The Black Clan, and all those we serve. If Ranmaru wishes to be shōgun, then I will do whatever is in my power to help him. But I have no designs beyond that.”