Flame in the Mist

  The giant began to howl anew, still clutching the shattered bones in his hand. He yelled for his men to help him to his feet, hurling obscenities every which way.

  His fury stirred the embers around him. Soon his men began pointing fingers at one another, riling themselves into another frenzy.

  Mariko shrank beneath the branches. Away from view.

  I should leave.

  But she could not. Not yet.

  Not until she knew . . . something of value. Something of surety.

  “Enough!” Ranmaru yelled above the fracas, his voice aimed at the giant’s men. “Leave here at once, as you agreed. If any of you show yourselves again—if I even smell one of your ilk on a passing breeze—expect that to be the last day you draw breath on this earth.”

  The fervor died to a whisper. A moment of decision.

  With a grunt, the giant directed his men to depart. Unintelligible grumbling trailed in their wake.

  Once they’d left, Ranmaru shifted into view. He glanced at the ghost boy now at his side, a brow raised in question. The Black Clan’s champion lifted his uninjured shoulder. As though his wound were merely a scratch.

  Ranmaru nodded.

  The one-legged cook threw a dagger into the dirt with a grunt. A moment later, a gold ryō landed in the earth beside it.

  “You’re the devil, Ōkami,” he muttered harshly.

  The ghost boy eyed him askance. “You would know.” A grin curled up one side of his face, rendering the scar through his lips white. “Since we both came from hell.”

  Concealed in her post beside the tree, Mariko watched the exchange, unsure of where she should go. Of what she should do. Perhaps it would be wisest to heed her own advice and leave at once. When she attempted to back away into the cover of the forest, a rough hand clapped on her forearm.

  “Don’t run just yet,” the boy with the murder eyes and the spiked topknot said, his tone flat. “Boss will want to talk to you.”

  THE CONSEQUENCE

  A rush of fear took hold of her heart. Of her every breath.

  Mariko’s first inclination was to push off the boy’s grasp. Panic set in when his grip on her arm tightened. The whites of his eyes were yellowed. Glazed. Like those of the dead.

  “Don’t even think about running. We’ll hunt you down like a looting fox.” He pulled her close, his whisper a brush of ice against her ear. “I especially like it when we catch them alive. It’s much more . . . interesting.”

  Mariko forced down her terror, though her pulse quaked in her ears. The voice of her tutor admonished her once more:

  Our greatest enemy can often be found within.

  She would not be her own worst enemy. The only control Mariko had now was control over herself. If she could not flee, then she had to make the best of her situation.

  The boy was taking her to his boss. To Ranmaru. This could be her only chance to learn the truth.

  She would not waste it on fear.

  Gritting her teeth, Mariko fought for a point of clarity through a haze of terror. She thought quickly. Kenshin would not allow himself to be handled in such a manner, even if it brought on punishment.

  Mariko tried to tear away from him. The boy responded by twisting her wrist behind her left shoulder. She nearly gasped at the burst of pain that radiated down her arm and into her side. Hot, searing pain. The sort that brought immediate tears.

  But she did not cry out. Refused to reveal even a hint of weakness.

  A warrior is never weak.

  Seemingly satisfied by her show of resistance—as though he relished the thought—the boy with the murder eyes released his grip. “Next time you try to run, I’ll break your fingers, knuckle by knuckle.” He leaned in. “One by one.”

  She choked out a retort. “Do you think I intend to run?”

  “Only a fool would stay.”

  “Are you hoping to gain my cooperation by threatening me?” she blustered awkwardly.

  He did not respond. He merely shoved her forward, hard. She almost tripped, catching herself at the last instant. When the boy yanked her into the light of the nearest torch, she thought she saw him smile.

  Alternately yanking and shoving her along, the boy led her toward Ranmaru, who had once again taken his seat at the table seemingly reserved for him and him alone.

  The leader of the Black Clan studied her in silence for several breaths. “Well, it seems I am in your debt . . .” Ranmaru paused, waiting for her to offer a name.

  Thankfully Mariko had one at the ready.

  “Takeo.” She deepened the note of her voice. Roughened its edges. “Sanada Takeo.”

  Ranmaru smiled slowly. “It appears your parents had rather lofty designs when they named you.”

  “Because they named me after a warrior?”

  “No. Because they gave their tactician son a warrior’s name.”

  Mariko sniffed. Furrowed her brow to offset her mounting distress. “I’m a warrior. Just like you.”

  He laughed. The lines around his eyes crinkled in consideration. “Perhaps you are just like me.”

  She frowned at his mocking tone.

  “I won’t call you Takeo, though,” Ranmaru continued. “I can’t in good conscience call a scrawny boy a valiant warrior.”

  His judgment echoed in her ears. Forcing her to choose a path. Courage. Or fear. Standing taller, Mariko chose the path of courage—a tenet of bushidō. “I have not yet made comment on your name. But I can, if you like. And since Takeo is my given name, I insist you call me—”

  “Lord Lackbeard,” a voice behind Ranmaru declared. Mariko stiffened once more, her courage wilting. It was the Black Clan’s champion. Ōkami. The boy named after a wolf. “It suits this little upstart far more than Takeo.”

  Ranmaru grinned. “I agree. If you wish to be called by your given name, you must first earn it, Lord Lackbeard.”

  At that, the men around him laughed.

  “You can call me whatever you like,” Mariko said over their laughter, knowing all too well how much she sounded like a petulant child. “But it doesn’t mean I will respond.”

  “Is that so?” Ranmaru’s grin widened.

  Mariko stayed silent, eliciting another bout of laughter from the men nearby. As they amused themselves at her expense, knots began twisting in her stomach. Color began creeping up her neck, into her face. She hated this feeling. The feeling of being vulnerable. Mocked. It was the first time in a long while she’d had to stand still and experience abject ridicule. It was true many people found her odd, but her family’s position and influence had spared her from being met head-on by the judgment of others. When she did hear it, it was at her back, whispered behind lacquered fans or in the shadow of elegantly papered screens.

  She tipped her chin upward and bit her tongue.

  A warrior is never weak.

  Mariko repeated the refrain in her mind, letting it feed her, like kindling to a flame.

  Frowning, Ōkami glided toward her, passing along an earthenware bottle of sake to Ranmaru as he walked by. The men grew silent while he circled her slowly, no doubt searching for blood in the water. Mariko fought to conceal the rush of indignation that bloomed in her cheeks at his silent appraisal. At the obvious latitude the Wolf was granted as the Black Clan’s champion.

  He stopped in front of her. Stared down at her. She could almost feel that same low hum hovering in the air about him.

  It unnerved her.

  “Now”—Ranmaru raised the bottle of sake in her direction—“I do believe I owe Lord Lackbeard a drink.” He waited for her to respond, the picture of patience.

  My best chance to learn the truth.

  Making no effort to conceal her wariness, Mariko took a seat on the bench across from him. She did not fail to notice how Ranmaru’s men watched her like hawks would a dove.

/>   The leader of the Black Clan poured rice wine into a small cup, then handed it to her.

  She stared at him over the lip of the cup. Sniffed its contents.

  Smiling at her distrust, Ranmaru poured himself a drink from the same bottle. He knocked it back pointedly.

  In response, Mariko took a small sip from her own cup.

  “So,” the knife-wielding cook said in a conversational tone, all while twirling the hilt of a dagger between his fingertips, “what sort of fortune is a young boy like you hoping to find along the western edge of Jukai forest?”

  Mariko attempted a lazy, satisfied kind of smile. The kind she’d seen many of her father’s younger vassals adopt in moments like these. “The sort that makes me rich.” She knew she sounded foolish, but that, too, seemed appropriate.

  “There are many kinds of wealth,” the cook mused.

  She nodded as she took another sip of sake. “But there is only one kind that matters.”

  The cook tilted his head to one side. “And what kind is that?”

  “The kind that buys freedom.”

  His lips pursed together. Not in judgment. No. She did not think he disagreed with her. Though Mariko was not yet sure he agreed. Perhaps she should not have been so forthcoming with her answers. Or quite so clever when she decided to spare Ranmaru from the hissing vulture. Her gaze drifted toward Ōkami. The Wolf looked through her. Past her. He leaned against the table, one hand resting on a knee. Dried blood tracked the veins of his right forearm, like the tributaries of a sinister river. Once again, he seemed wholly uninterested. Utterly bored. But of all those present, the Wolf was the most difficult to read. Mariko had been wrong in her initial assessment of him, and that made her . . . uncomfortable in his presence.

  In an attempt to conceal her sudden unease, she took another sip of sake. It warmed through her, heating her blood. Tingling her skin.

  Tingling her skin?

  “Is freedom important to you, Lord Lackbeard?” Ranmaru asked as he rolled the bottle of sake along the rough-hewn table’s edge. His expression was light. Easy.

  Knowing.

  The tingling along Mariko’s skin intensified. A burst of warmth flooded her face, clouding her vision.

  No.

  The sake.

  Mariko stood suddenly. “You—” she spluttered. “You cheated. You’re . . . you’re . . .”

  Ōkami floated before her, the dark ghost once more.

  The last thing she remembered was a clear pair of onyx eyes.

  —

  Mariko was jostled awake by the sway of an animal beneath her.

  When she raised her eyelids, a smudge of brown muscle came into focus before her face. The muscles of a warhorse. Hattori Mariko had been thrown across the back of a steed, like a sack of grain. Realization surged through her. Remembrance clawed at her senses.

  She’d been drugged by the leader of the Black Clan!

  Mariko struggled to right herself, only to discover her hands bound. Swinging below her head. Her distress mounting, she tried to shift her body upward. To take stock of her surroundings.

  They were still in the forest. Walking along a muddy embankment. She breathed deep. The air here was thinner. Crisper. They were now at a higher elevation.

  Near a body of freshwater.

  It was likely near dawn. And the—

  A hand smacked the back of her head, chastising in its suddenness.

  She could not help it. She cried out in frustration.

  “Keep whimpering,” Ranmaru said. “It amuses my horse.”

  Mariko lifted her arm to peek beneath it.

  This was not possible.

  She’d been thrown on the back of Takeda Ranmaru’s horse.

  “Where—where are you taking me? And why would anyone want to amuse your horse?” Mariko croaked.

  Ranmaru began to whistle a tune faintly familiar to her. “Because if you don’t, I’ll gut you and feed you to the brute. His favorite meal is the flesh of tiresome young men. Especially ones who whimper.”

  “You routinely feed him whimpering young men?” Mariko attempted to twist into a better position. To see where they were.

  “Not routinely. If he ate such a delicacy all the time, it would eventually lose its appeal.”

  “How would you know?” she grumbled, swallowing the lump of distress gathering in her throat.

  “I myself no longer have a taste for it.” With that, Ranmaru resumed whistling.

  Her concern taking root, Mariko struggled to sit upright. Again a hand thwacked across the back of her skull.

  Mariko shouted, the panic setting in. A warrior is never weak. “I must ask you to refrain from—”

  “Listen to the little Lord Lackbeard, issuing orders like the damned emperor himself.” Ranmaru laughed.

  Mariko clenched her teeth. It was easier for her to admit defeat. But she knew now was the time she most needed to appear strong—when she was at her weakest.

  “Why have you drugged me?” she asked. “Where are you taking me?”

  “More questions. In their depths, you’ll find the answer.”

  She waded through Ranmaru’s words. Let her thoughts settle into straight lines.

  More questions?

  Understanding dawned on her, as chillingly bright as a winter sun.

  The old man at the watering hole. He must have told Ranmaru I’d been asking after the Black Clan.

  “Akira-san whispered something to you when you first arrived last night,” Mariko said, careful to conceal the defeat in her tone. Despite all her best efforts to evade notice, she’d been undone by the wily observations of a grumpy old man. “What did he say?”

  “I knew you were smart.” Ranmaru spoke loudly, ignoring her question. “Even if you were as untried as a newborn colt.”

  I lost my best chance.

  I’m as good as dead.

  Her body fell against the horse, loose in the face of failure. “So what do you intend to do with me?” she asked. “Besides feed me to your horse.”

  “Stop asking questions. Truly you don’t learn.”

  If I’m going to die, what is there left to learn?

  No. She needed to be brave.

  And there was always something left to learn.

  Mariko wrapped her fingers around the rope knotted about her wrists. “One must ask questions if one intends to learn anything.” While she spoke, she searched for any slack in her bindings.

  “I grow weary of your curiosity, Lord Lackbeard.” Ranmaru glanced to his right. To a person Mariko could not see. “Take this thing from me.”

  A hand grabbed at the scruff of dirty fabric around her neck.

  Mariko refrained from crying out again as she was hauled from one beast to another. This time she was not thrown on the back of the horse. No. This time she was tossed on her stomach before the rider, the breath momentarily knocked from her body.

  As she was thrown about, she caught a flash of unbound dark hair.

  Ōkami. The Wolf.

  Before she had a chance to settle, Mariko thrashed about like a flailing fish. She knew it was foolish, but she refused to be handed off from one murderer to the next, as though she were a spoil of war.

  “Stop fighting me.” Though Ōkami’s voice was softer, it was no less harsh. “I’m not Ranmaru. I won’t hit you.”

  Again the feeling of being near him unnerved her. That same all-but-undetectable hum. “I’m not surprised.” Venom tinged her retort, while blood rampaged through her body. “Based on my observations, you don’t hit much.”

  The instant she mocked him, a jolt of fear passed through Mariko.

  Laughter rippled around them. The front ridge of Ōkami’s saddle dug into her stomach and chest. If Mariko hadn’t thought to bind her breasts tight in a long length of muslin
, she knew she would have been suffering far more discomfort.

  “The little lord is right,” the gruff voice of the cook called out from behind them. “What took you so long to best the giant, Ōkami? Are you losing your touch?”

  “The little lord didn’t let me finish.” Ōkami bent forward. “I said I wouldn’t hit him . . .” He was so close, his words pulsed across her skin.

  “But that’s not the only way to punish someone.”

  Fear knifed through Mariko’s center, its aim hot and true. She knew she could not afford to let a boy like Ōkami see even a hint of distress. She had to get free of these men. Had to gain the upper hand somehow. Seeking a way to distract herself—any weakness in the strength surrounding her—she studied Ōkami’s fingers. They were long. Strong. His forearms were corded with muscle. His hold on the reins was loose. Easy. Which meant he was likely an accomplished rider. Any attempt to unseat him would be ill-advised.

  But perhaps Mariko could unseat him in other ways.

  “What kind of a name is Ōkami?” she began, her tone low and brusque.

  “You really don’t learn, do you?”

  “You mocked my name, even though your parents named you after a wolf?”

  “They didn’t.”

  Despite all, her curiosity took hold once more. “Then it’s a nickname?”

  “Stop talking,” Ōkami said. “Before I pass you to someone who really will beat the impudence out of you.”

  She paused. “Wolves are pack creatures, you know.”

  Another rumble of coarse laughter rang out from behind them. “I must admit that boy is tenacious, even in the face of doom.”

  Mariko felt Ōkami shift in the saddle to address the cook. At that, she took the opportunity she’d been waiting to catch him unawares.

  She bit into the skin just above Ōkami’s knee. Hard.

  He cursed loudly, causing his horse to rear. Mariko almost slid headfirst from her perch, but Ōkami took hold of her in a firm grip, catching her at the last possible moment.