Jay Kristoff - Kinslayer

The Kagé leader had hung his head. Breathing deep, he coughed, once, twice, wincing as he swallowed. She could see it in his eyes as he stared at the callused hands in his lap. The blood that would never wash away. The stain of the child forever unborn. The mark of the mother who would never again hold her daughter in her arms. Her mother.

He spoke as if the word was bile in his mouth.

“ … Hai.”

Daichi had picked up the jug of red saké beside him, rose like a man on his way to the executioner. Kneeling beside her, he retrieved the tantō from the flames.

Yukiko hadn’t looked up from the fire. She loosened the sash at her waist, shrugged her uwagi tunic off her shoulders, covering her breasts with her palms. Her irezumi gleamed in the firelight; the beautiful nine-tailed fox tattooed upon her right shoulder to mark her clan, the imperial sun across her left marking her as the Shōgun’s servant. She’d tossed her head, flicked her hair away from Yoritomo’s mark. A few stray strands still clung to damp flesh.

As he held the knife up, the air between them had rippled.

“Are you certain?”

“No lord.” She swallowed. “No master.”

He placed the saké jug on the floor between them.

“Do you want something to—”

“Daichi. Just do it.”

The old man had breathed deep, and without another word pressed the tantō to the ink.

Every muscle in her body seized tight as the blade touched her skin. The air was filled with the spittle-hiss of fresh fish upon a skillet, the sizzling tang of blackening meat and salt overpowering the scent of burning cedar. A long moan shuddered over her teeth and she closed her eyes, fighting the scream seething in her chest. She could smell herself burning.

Searing.

Charring.

She’d reached out with her mind, to the flood of warmth waiting just outside the door. Feather and fur and talons, wide amber eyes, his growl shaking the floorboards beneath him. The thunder tiger she’d found amidst storm-torn clouds, and now loved more dearly than anything beneath the sky.

Buruu …

YUKIKO.

Gods, it hurts, brother …

HOLD ON TO ME.

She’d clung to his thoughts; a mountain of cool stone amidst a flaming sea. Daichi peeled the steel from her shoulder, bringing ashen layers of tattooed skin with it. The blade that had killed her lover, Hiro. The blade that had been in her hands as she ended Shōgun Yoritomo, as the shot rang out and took her father away. Five days and a thousand years ago. She’d gasped as the agony receded to a dull ebb, and for a second, the urge to turn to Daichi and beg him to stop was almost overpowering. But she set her back against the thunder tiger’s strength, forced it down, far easier to swallow than the thought of that bastard’s mark still inked on her skin.

Anything was better than that.

She looked at the saké bottle on the floor beside her. Buruu’s thoughts washed over her like a summer breeze.

YOU HAVE BEEN STRONG ENOUGH FOR ONE DAY, SISTER.

Reaching for the bottle with trembling fingers, she gulped a mouthful of liquid fire, cooler than the steel in Daichi’s hand. The liquor rushed down her throat, burning her tongue, promising a return to the oblivion she’d been so eager to escape just moments before. The choice between agony and emptiness. Between living or existing.

It had been no choice at all on a night that dark.

“Do you want me to stop?” Daichi had asked.

She’d swallowed another mouthful, blinking back her tears.

“Get it off me,” she whispered. “Take all of it away.”

Yukiko closed her eyes, bloodshot and throbbing in their sockets.

The ground was a blur beneath them, falling leaves filling the spaces between each beat of Buruu’s wings. The air had the vaguest hint of chill, autumn’s pallid touch creeping through the Iishi wilds. The towering trees around them were fading; a subtle shift from gowns of dazzling emerald to a brief and brittle lime, their hems beginning to curl and rust.

They flew above it all. The pale girl swathed in mourning black, long hair flowing in the piercing wind. The boy with his dirty rags and dark, knowing eyes. The majestic beast beneath them, twenty-five feet of clockwork wings, cutting effortlessly through the sky.

Kin was perched behind her on Buruu’s back, one arm wrapped about her waist, the other hanging bloody at his side. He was obviously exhausted, shoulders slumped, head hung low. Yukiko could feel the heat of him through their clothing, hear the faint catch in his breath. Her mouth dry, stomach curdling with fading adrenaline. It’d been nearly two months since she’d seen him last—this boy who’d saved her life, who’d given up everything he was to see Buruu freed. In the chaos after Yoritomo’s death, the riots, her speeches, the threat of civil war, she’d spent every spare moment searching for him; urging the Kagé city cells to be on the lookout, patrolling the Iishi’s edge for hours on end in the hope of catching a glimpse. They’d owed him that much. That much and more. And now, to find him at last …

“Are you sure you’re all right, Kin-san?”

Yukiko spoke over her shoulder, concerned eyes hidden by polarized glass.

“Well enough,” he breathed. “My arm is bleeding…”

“We’re still an hour or so from the village. Can you hold on until then?”

A slow nod. “It took me over a month to get this far. A few more minutes won’t kill me.”

“Wandering the Iishi alone might have, though,” Yukiko said. “You were traveling the wrong way. Headed right toward Black Temple. You could have run into an oni, or gods know what else. The Kagé village is northeast of here.”

“I know,” he nodded. “Once I realized the ironclads were on my trail, I tried leading them away from the stronghold. I didn’t want to put anyone else in danger.”

Yukiko smiled, reached down and squeezed Kin’s hand. She should have known. Just as selfless as always. His own safety ever a distant second. Her thoughts were all a-tumble, emotions jostling for position in her chest; joy they’d found him, guilt it had taken so long, genuine fear at how close he’d come to death. Underscoring it all, the feel of his body pressed against hers, his hand about her waist, the tumult of confusion and adrenaline and Buruu’s fading bloodlust thudding in time with her own racing pulse.

She drew one shuddering breath, let it out slow.

“Try to get some rest, Kin-san. You’re safe now.”

They flew on toward the Kagé village, the smoke of the ironclads they’d torn from the sky still hanging in their wake. Kin rested his head against her back and closed his eyes, his breath slowing, exhaustion getting the better of him. Buruu’s muscles seethed beneath them, his eyes narrowed, amber and gold, glittering like embers in a forge’s belly. Sleek feathers and thick fur, the color of melting snow on the Iishi’s highest peaks, his hindquarters wrapped in long, snaking bands of deepest jet. Thunder tiger. Arashitora. The last of his kind in all of Shima.

His thoughts were intertwined with hers, images echoing in each other’s skulls, the pair of them linked by a bond deeper than blood. Yukiko and Buruu. Buruu and Yukiko. Harder and harder to tell where one ended and the other began these days. The ability to speak to the minds of beasts was called the Kenning in old folklore, but to even give it a name seemed to lessen it now. The truth was, it was more than a thing of weak and clumsy words. It was her father’s legacy, his gift to her, forging a friendship that had defied a Shōgun, ended an empire.