Scott McGough - Guardian, Saviors of Kamigawa

“They’ll be back,” she continued. “And I’ll be ready. All I have to do is sit here and keep killing them. The more they send, the more I’ll get, and the more efficient the masters’ tool shall become.”

“How, Kiku?” Toshi came around the altar and stood beside the mahotsukai. He took her by the shoulders and guided her toward the altar. “How did you kill the soratami?”

Kiku allowed Toshi to turn her around and help her up onto the altar. She sat with her feet swinging freely for a moment and then crossed one leg over the other, the very picture of an elegant lady at a prominent social function. She even tossed her head.

“Solid shadows,” she said. “Something else you understand. You may have direct contact with your myojin, but she’s not the only one who commands the darkness.” Her eyes lost focus as her thoughts turned inward. “Just as ochimusha and ogres aren’t the only ones who knows how to craft revenge magic. Here, I’ll show you-”

Toshi quickly grabbed Kiku’s chin and turned her face to his. “Please don’t,” he said.

The oily shadow on Kiku’s face had begun to churn. Tiny crested ridges of liquid darkness had started to form around her features, like waves made choppy by driving winds.

Kiku held Toshi’s gaze for a moment, then looked away and exhaled. The motion on her face slowed, but it did not stop.

“Kiku,” he said. “We are both bound by the oath. I have work for us to do.” After all she had been through tonight, he didn’t think he could hold Kiku to any promises she had made before, but he had to get her out of this abattoir. As long as there were corpses and mahotsukai liquor to sustain her melancholy, she would probably just sit here going madder and madder until the next group of soratami sneaked in and killed her.

“Can’t go,” she said firmly. “I am an instrument of vengeance. My entire clan is gone. I am the only bearer of the mahotsukai’s wisdom. The last of the Numai jushi. If I do not avenge them-”

“We can avenge them together,” Toshi said. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

Kiku blinked, her eyes suddenly clouded once more. “You can help me?”

“I can. The soratami and their kami have been on my list for months now. I was just talking with Hidetsugu about finishing things with them once and for all. But I’d go out of my way to hurt them for the sheer fun of it. If getting them helps you, well, that’s just a bonus.”

Kiku’s eyes opened wider. She turned to Toshi and said, “You can do it, too, can’t you? You’re crafty.” She held up her hand, showing Toshi the triangular hyozan symbol on her palm. “You tricked me into joining your gang. If you can trick the moonfolk and get me close enough, I can release the full power of the masters’ ritual and wipe them all out.” She smiled dreamily. “Again.”

Toshi nodded. This was going to be easier than he thought. “And do right by the memory of your clan. Your masters-”

“My masters can starve in the cold gray hell,” Kiku flared, and for a second she was very much like her old self. “This.” She circled her own face with her hands. “I need to be free of this. I can’t think with this. I’m not me with this.” She sagged, sad and defeated. “Take this from me, Toshi. I don’t want it. Please, oath-brother. Help me.”

Kiku’s eyes closed and she lurched forward. Toshi caught her in his arms, her face pressed against his neck.

“I’ll help you, Kiku. We’ll help each other.”

Kiku did not withdraw from Toshi’s chest. “Thank you, oath-brother.”

“We … uh, Kiku? What are you doing?”

The mahotsukai’s lips were leaving delicate trails along Toshi’s throat. Was she kissing him? He felt the hard, straight edges of her teeth as she seized his flesh between them, and squawked as she bit down.

Kiku lifted her head, fixing the ochimusha with a fierce glare. “Shut up, stupid Toshi.” She grabbed the back of his head with both hands and pressed his face into her, mashing their lips together. She leaned back as she kissed him, pulling him partially up onto the altar beside her.

“Ah, Kiku, I-”

She pulled back, her eyes wild. “As you said, oath-brother, we can help each other.” She pushed Toshi back and slid off the altar. In the blink of an eye she tossed the thin shift over her head and let it flutter forgotten to the floor. Kiku wore a silver chain around her waist and a golden one around her left ankle. There was a brilliant purple flower tattooed on her right hip.

She kept her eyes on Toshi and extended a delicate hand, beckoning him. “Now,” she said. “Come here.”

Toshi stared goggle-eyed. Kiku was in shock. She must be in shock, or drunk, or overwhelmed by grief and the power of her masters’ spell. At the very least she was doing this to bind Toshi to her cause, using him to achieve her own goals.

Kiku stood, watching him, waiting for him. “Well?”

Toshi took her hand, drew her to him, and kissed her. They stood embracing for an endless moment before Toshi remembered something and pushed her away.

“Two things, mahotsukai.”

Kiku stepped back, demurely crossing her arms. “I’m not used to accepting conditions at this stage.”

“Two simple things, easily addressed. One, we agree to talk more in the morning.”

“Of course. And the second?”

Toshi grimaced. “Stop calling me ‘oath-brother.’ It’s making me queasy.”

Kiku laughed lightly, a short crystalline sound that carried beauty and sharp edges alike. Once more, Toshi was given a glimpse of Kiku the way he knew her, confident, beautiful, strong, and more than a little bit frightening.

“Done,” she said. She opened her arms once more, and Toshi leaned forward, bearing her back up onto the altar.

The moon shone down on the fortress of Eiganjo. For the first time in over a decade, the glowing half-orb hung from a clear and cloudless sky, surrounded by pinpoints of clean, white starlight. Fat, lazy clouds drifted across the night sky, but even they curved around the moon as if unwilling to spoil the view from below.

Far beneath the waxing moon stood the tower-fortress of Eiganjo, a massive white-stone edifice that stretched proud and strong up to the very clouds themselves. Moonlight cast the tower’s shadow far across the lowlands to the south, with only its ragged tip to spoil the smooth and solid wall of black. The tower’s uppermost level was an irregular line of broken rock, and its shadow passed through a similar jagged gap in the mighty walls around Eiganjo. There were no signs of life from the tower or the courtyard within the fortress walls. From a distance, Eiganjo appeared as silent as a tomb, as pale as a spirit, and as lonely as a headstone.

The hooded figure of Toshi Umezawa stepped from the shadows at the northwest corner of the walls. He adjusted his finest acolyte’s robe (or, at least, the finest robe he could steal that looked like an acolyte’s robe) and stole a quick glance around the deserted parade grounds. With his head bowed, he began to shuffle across the courtyard toward a two-story outbuilding on the west side of the tower.

His journey continued in complete silence until he approached the door to the outbuilding. From just outside the wide double doors, he heard a strange burbling sound. It was a clean, flowing sound like the tone from some fabulously exquisite musical instrument. The hooded figure tilted his head up to the second floor, the source of the sound.

The lush, soothing song was interrupted by a ferocious barking from inside the building. Toshi stepped back as a huge pale dog erupted from the double doors, its gruff voice both alarm and threat.

Oh, good, the ochimusha thought. He drew a hook-shaped weapon from beneath his robes and held it point-first toward the dog. The hook had been hammered from dull, gray metal and shaped so that the shorter, blunt tine stood below the thicker tapering spike above. The dog stopped just outside the double doors, still barking at top volume.