Julie Kagawa - Shadow Of The Fox - a must read mythical new Japanese adventure from New York Times bestseller Julie Kagawa

Once Every Thousand Years...

Every millennium, one age ends and another age dawns...and whoever holds the Scroll of a Thousand Prayers holds the power to call the great Kami Dragon from the sea and ask for any one wish. The time is near...and the missing pieces of the scroll will be sought throughout the land of Iwagoto. The holder of the first piece is a humble, unknown peasant girl with a dangerous secret.

Demons have burned the temple Yumeko was raised in to the ground, killing everyone within, including the master who trained her to both use and hide her kitsune shapeshifting powers. Yumeko escapes with the temple’s greatest treasure—one part of the ancient scroll. Fate thrusts her into the path of a mysterious samurai, Kage Tatsumi of the Shadow Clan. Yumeko knows he seeks what she has...and is under orders to kill anything and anyone who stands between him and the scroll.

A WISH WILL BE GRANTED AND A NEW AGE WILL DAWN.

Also by Julie Kagawa:

The Talon Saga

Talon

Rogue

Soldier

Legion

Inferno

Blood of Eden series

The Immortal Rules

The Eternity Cure

The Forever Song

The Iron Fey series

The Iron King

The Iron Daughter

The Iron Queen

The Iron Knight

The Lost Prince

The Iron Traitor

The Iron Warrior

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Julie Kagawa 2018

Julie Kagawa asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © October 2018 ISBN: 9781474083164

Version: 2018-09-11

To Misa. Thank you for everything, sensei.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

PART 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

PART 2

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

PART 3

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Epilogue

Glossary

Extract

About the Publisher

PART 1

1

Beginnings and Endings

It was raining the day Suki came to the Palace of the Sun, and it was raining the night that she died.

“You’re the new maid, are you?” a woman with a narrow, bony face demanded, looking her up and down. Suki shivered, feeling cold rainwater sliding down her back, dripping from her hair to spatter the fine wood floor. The head housekeeper sniffed. “Well, you’re no beauty, that’s for sure. But, no matter—Lady Satomi’s last maid was pretty as a butterfly, with half the wit.” She leaned closer, narrowing her eyes. “Tell me, girl. They said you were running your father’s shop before you came here. Do you have an intelligent head on your shoulders? Or is it as full of air as the last girl’s?”

Suki chewed her lip and looked at the floor. She had been helping to run her father’s shop within the city for the better part of a year. The only child of a celebrated flute maker, she was often responsible for dealing with the customers when her father was at work, too engrossed in his task to eat or talk to anyone until his latest piece was done. Suki could read and do numbers as well as any boy, but being a girl, she was not allowed to inherit her father’s business or learn his craft. Mura Akihito was still strong, but he was getting old, his once nimble fingers stiffening with age and hard use. Rather than marry Suki off, her father had used his meager influence to get her a job in the Imperial Palace, so she would be well taken care of when he passed away. Suki missed home, and she desperately wondered if her father was all right without her, but she knew this was what he wanted. “I don’t know, ma’am,” she whispered.

“Hmph. Well, we’ll see soon enough. But I would think of something better to say to Lady Satomi. Otherwise your stay will be even shorter than your predecessor’s. Now,” she continued, “clean yourself up, then go to the kitchen and fetch Lady Satomi’s tea. The cook will tell you where to take it.”

A few minutes later, Suki walked down the veranda, carrying a full tea tray and trying to remember the directions she’d been given. The emperor’s Palace of the Sun was a miniature city in itself; the main palace, where the emperor and his family lived, loomed over everything, but a labyrinth of walls, structures and fortifications lay between the keep and the inner wall, all designed to protect the emperor and confuse an invading army. Nobles, courtiers and samurai paraded to and fro down the walkways, dressed in robes of brilliant color and design: white silk with delicate sakura petals, or a vivid red with golden chrysanthemum blooms. None of the nobles she passed spared her a second glance. Only the most influential families resided this close to the emperor; the closer you lived to the main keep of the palace, the more important you were.

Suki wandered down the maze of verandas, the knots in her stomach growing tighter as she searched in vain for the right quarters. Everything looked the same. Gray-roofed buildings with bamboo and paper walls, and wooden verandas between them so the nobles wouldn’t sully their clothes in the dirt and dew. Blue-tiled turrets towered over her in regal splendor, and dozens of different songbirds trilled from the branches of the perfectly groomed trees, but the tightness in Suki’s chest and the churning of her insides made it impossible to appreciate any of it.

A high, clear note cut through the air, rising above the rooftops, making her freeze in her tracks. It wasn’t a bird, though a thrush perched in a nearby bush warbled loudly in reply. It was a sound Suki knew instantly, had memorized each and every note. How many times had she heard it, drifting up from her father’s workshop? The sweet, haunting melody of a flute.