Then the second hammered him with a gloved fist that whipped his skull onto the cornered muck, and he heard thecrunchbefore he felt the pain, and then everything, everything went away. The world blinked and came back.
“Sen!” Rui cried out, trying to get to him, fighting her way closer, step by step.
Sen was still conscious enough, as a low, warm feeling washed over him, to think,It’s too late.
An ache, a wetness on his neck. A feeling of being far away. His head lolled. The world wavered; he thought he heard a scream. He couldn’t tell if it was him, or someone else.
Then something was burning. A ringing in his ears and he couldn’t see straight. The world off its axis. Tar-black night and mud painted red with blood. He took a step and fell. He tried to stand and couldn’t. He lay there. In the dirt. Trying, just trying, to breathe.
Then found himself lying on his stomach on the soft earth beside the silt, and realized that he’d passed out, before everything came back all at once.
The first thing he saw was another of the hooded killers running at Rui from behind. She made a blistering series of blade-strikes against two others and didn’t see the one to her rear.
Sen threw his sword without thinking, straight into the back of the neck; the killer fell.
He rose. Took a step. The world swayed beneath his feet. No matter. Reach in. Pull the sword from the corpse’s neck. Run, trip, regain balance. Lash out, cut the other killer from behind. No glory. No grace. No poetry in this. Blood in the air and in his eyes and mixed with mud.
Rui evaded a blow, stabbed forward, gutting the last.
And they were done.
The two of them, standing side by side, heaving, hurt, grinning at each other like it was all an awful joke. There was fighting, still: Ise and Saito and the others, but it was far away. Here they were alone. The dirt. The mud. The distant press of fire at the town; his blood-streaked hands.
“Hell,” Rui swore. “I thought you were dead.”
Sen’s breath wavered. “Me too.”
Exhausted, stunned: the immensity of it made him laugh. He mumbled, looking at the bodies, “When the hell did you learn to fight?”
Rui tried to grin. “You didn’t do so bad yourself.”
Sen pitched to his knees then, rose, and fell again. Rui came to him. “Easy, easy. It’s all right.”
He coughed, overwhelmed. A sound, half-groan, half-whimper, escaped his lips. “Gods in hell…”
“I’ve got you now,” said Rui. “I’ve got you.” Behind her, the orange breath of flames from the buildings lashed about, rising.
Sen couldn’t stand. The moment any weight pressed down on his left foot, everything flashed with lightning pain and gave way. He buckled to the mud again, panting at the shock.
Finally Rui pulled him from the paddy, and they collapsed together, out of breath, aching, cut in a dozen places, and gloriously, gloriously alive. When Sen looked up, he saw the flames rising higher in the town, growing out of control. And something else. Someone had come to them.
A figure, draped in white, was standing on the road.
CHAPTERTHIRTY-SIX
Rui
The messenger had arrived at dawn. News. Rumors from the capital.
The night before, Rui had hurried to the outriders’ tent in time to hear of the coup and Yora’s flight with Kai. They were in hiding with Prince Nioh, hunted by the Keishi, the messenger said. “We must hurry.”
Myorin, Tsuna, and the Jibashiri had been waiting at the small temple-village along the Kiseda road for days. Tokuon was late. He had spent longer in his Gisan lands than Myorin anticipated, but the messengers had finally come: He would arrive within the next day. Until then, there was nothing for them to do but to scout the local woods and mountain trails, sit, and prepare.
Rui had found her teacher alone under the starlit sky, casting bones into a fire he had made. None of the other soldiers would go near it. He turned, peering up at the stars.
“Constellations of the dragon and the tiger are at war,” he said, as she sat beside him, curling her arms around her knees and staring into the fire. “The dragon of the east, white tiger to the west. A great cloud rises between them.”
She followed his gaze. “An omen?”
