But even Reo blinked when she leaned in close and whispered.
What are you saying?
Reo nodded once.
She touched his wrist and whispered something else.
He nodded again, and then she was gone.
Utterly intrigued, I quickly sliced the rest of Tet’s ear off, slung it to the ground, and put my gaze back on my Roar.
Reo turned slightly and gave a quick motion with two fingers. Three Scales—quiet, armed, and quick—peeled away from the line and slipped through the door Nyomi had exited.
Whatever she had told him, had put my Roar into action, and not many people could do that.
What did she say, and what the fuck is going on?
Chapter twenty-eight
The Red Path
Kenji
Minutes later, the scent of iron was thick enough to taste. Not just in the air, but on my tongue and in the back of my throat.
Tet lay sprawled on the marble. His face was slack, pale, almost peaceful if one ignored the river of red soaking his shirt. His blood had crawled across the floor in thin streams, pooling between the veined cracks in the stone.
His severed ear—what was left of it—had been wrapped in a dirty napkin and tossed into the bin.
The knife’s handle ran hot in my palm. The blade wept steady tears of red onto the floor. With a flick of my wrist, I dropped the knife. It clattered onto the stone. “Get him the fuck out of here.”
Four Scales rushed forward, lifted Tet, and carried him away.
Tet’s head lolled to the side, mouth open, blood spilling from the side of his face and leaving a trail of drops.
I stared at the red path the piece of shit had made.
Interesting.
Tet had triggered the first blood splatter for my new war room. Those stains would remain long after tonight, no matter how much bleach the cleaning staff poured over them.
Blood had memory.
In the old stories, our ancestors called itakairo no michi—the red path. It was the road only the worthy could walk, paved with the stains left behind when loyalty was tested and betrayal answered.
My father believed that a war room’s floor with no blood on it, was cursed ground. He sworeemptystone attracted bad fortune and drew defeat into its walls.
I was sixteen the first time I saw my father’s ritual in lifting the curse.
My father had been at war with the Inagawa-kai, led then by Fujioka—a man who wore a necklace strung with his dead father’s finger bones and kept a pit of starving dogs beneath his home, feeding them only the flesh of his enemies.
Rumor had it that the dogs’ howls seeped up through the floorboards at night, keeping his wife awake for weeks. When her pleas to silence them became too much, Fujioka answered by tossing her into the pit.
They say her screams were instantly swallowed by the dogs’ hunger.
Under Fujioka, the Inagawa-kai abandoned the old gambling dens and moved their power to the ports, taxing every shipment that came in from the south. Their men were always dressed in dark coats that were embroidered with a single silver wave. They struck only at night and left their enemies’ bodies tied to mooring posts at low tide.
To my father, they were vermin that needed to be exterminated immediately.
