“Later,” she said. “We have to move.”
The giant stooped, pulled his blade loose with a grunt, wiped the spatter of red from his face on his sleeve.
… friend . .?
No One looked to the rooftop overhead. She could see Daken’s silhouette against the bloody sky, a black shadow upon the eave, peering down to the drenched cobbles below. He saw the dead bushimen and licked his jowls.
Maybe …
“Huntsman, we need to go…”
“I have a flat, north of Downside.” The big man wrapped his kusarigama back around his waist. “It’s a trek, but we can lay low there for a while.”
No One eyed his leg, the bloodstain seeping through the fabric of his hakama. “My place is much closer. Easier to get to.”
“Is it safe?”
“Safer than being out here in broad daylight.”
The Huntsman looked around the street, down at the cooling meat at his feet.
… they coming …
“We need to go,” she said. “If you still think I brought the bushi’ here, ask yourself why I just shot one of them right in front of you. Ask yourself why I don’t blow out your kneecaps now and wait for more to arrive.”
He licked the sweat from his lips. Stared into her eye. Nodded slow.
“All right, then.”
“My name is Hana,” she said. “My real name, I mean.”
In the distance, they could hear running feet. Cries of alarm. The ringing of an iron bell. The big man sniffed, pulled his hat farther down over his face.
“Akihito,” he said. “My friends called me Akihito.”
9
A HEART EXHAUSTED
There weren’t tears enough for her grief.
All around her, she could hear the voices of the bamboo kami, the spirits in the stalks swaying with the gentle wind. The little girl stood by her brother’s grave, bloodshot eyes and sodden cheeks, Lady Sun filling the clearing with hateful, dappled light. The spirit stone on his burial plot was marked with his name, the day of his death and the day of his birth—the same day as hers.
Nine years ago that day.
“Happy birthday, Satoru,” Yukiko whispered.
It had been three months since the snake-strike. Three months since her twin died in her arms. It felt as if a part of her was missing—as if the gods had broken off a piece of her and left it bleeding on the floor. Her mother was lost in grief. Her father in guilt. But Yukiko? She was lost in the enormity of it all. A world too vast and lonely now that her brother wasn’t there to share it. An emptiness never filled. A hand never held. A question never answered.
“Ichigo.”
Her father’s voice, behind her, calling her by his pet name. She did not turn, simply stared through the tears at the bed where her brother would lay forever.
He knelt beside her on the warm ground, his long hair caught in the breeze and tickling her tear-stained cheeks. He touched her hand, gentle as snowflakes. She turned to look at him then, this man she called father that in truth she barely knew. A tanned and weatherworn face, roguish and handsome. Long moustache and dark hair, just beginning to gray at the temples. Dark, sparkling eyes, always searching.
He’d never been there when they were growing up, forever off on his grand hunts at the Shōgun’s behest. He would return to their little valley every once in a while, spoil them for a day or two, then disappear for months at a time. But he always brought the twins presents. He could always make her smile. And when he would lift her on his shoulders and carry her through the bamboo forest, it made her feel as tall as giants. Fierce as dragons.
“Have you finished packing your things?” he asked.
She blinked, avoided his gaze. She didn’t think it had been settled. She didn’t think her mother would ever agree to it. She thought maybe after her brother …
“We are still going to the Shōgun’s court then?”
“We must, Ichigo. My Lord commands and I obey.”
“But what about Satoru?” she whispered. “He’ll be all alo—”
The sentence cracked along with her voice and she turned her eyes to the grave at her feet. Tears swelled inside her, a choking ball of heat creeping up her throat. The empty yawned all about her, the world too big for her alone.
“I got you something,” her father said. “For your birthday.”
He held up a white box, tied with black ribbon. And if the sight of the sun gleaming on that dark silk made her heart beat a little faster, if thoughts of the countless mysteries that might lay within that box stilled the thoughts of her brother for a moment, she was only nine, after all.
She was only little.
She took the box in her hands, surprised at its weight.
“Open it,” he said.
She pulled at the ribbon, watching the bow fold in upon itself and fall open. Inside the box waited a gift so pretty it stole the breath from between her lips. A scabbard of lacquered wood, black as her father’s eyes, smooth as cat’s claws. Beside it, a six-inch length of folded steel, gleaming in the sun, so sharp it might cut the day in half.
“A knife?”
“A tantō,” he said. “All ladies of court carry one.”
“What do I need it for?”
“It will protect you.” He took the scabbard from the box, sheathed the blade and tucked it into her obi at the small of her back. “In the times when I cannot. And even when I’m not there, I will be with you.”
She felt strong arms around her then, lifting her off the ground, drawing her up into the sky. He said nothing at all, simply held her, rocked her back and forth and let her cry. She put her arms around his neck and held tight, as if he were the only thing to keep her from going under, falling away into the cold and black.
He pressed his lips against her cheek. His whiskers tickled her skin.
“I will be with you,” he said.
He could always make her smile.
A softness to her edges, satin weight on her eyelids. Her tongue too big for her mouth. The world swaying to a tune she couldn’t quite hear. The room spinning as she opened her eyes.
“You wake,” Daichi said.
Wind kami called down timeworn mountainsides, the spirits playing in the branches of the treetop village outside, bringing the brittle-crisp promise of winter to come. Yukiko sat up slowly, groaning and squeezing her eyes shut once more. The pulse of the entire world beat beneath her skin, the thoughts of every beast, man, woman and child around her, layered upon one another in a shapeless cacophony. She pawed blindly beside her bed, seized the half-empty saké jug, upending it into her mouth. Daichi murmured concern, tried to take the bottle from her hands but she pushed him away, molten fire pouring down her throat, rushing to fill the void inside her.
“Yukiko—”
“Stop, please,” she begged, curling into a ball with her fists to her temples. “Give me a minute. Just one minute.”
The old man sat in silence, legs crossed, palms upturned on his knees. He seemed a statue of some bygone warrior, katana slung across his back—a glacial stillness in contrast to the seething shift inside her head.