Surrounded by smaller villages along the Tose road, at the edge of the home-provinces, they found their welcome subdued.
“These were part of the Gensei estates,” Myorin had said. “Our cousin owns the land here. But what does the capital care of that?”
The sun had set in a pale, purple flood. The village lay in shambles, roads laid bare, as if a war had already been fought, and lost.
“Who would do such a thing?” Rui glanced about, wide-eyed. There was a commotion in the town nearby, sounds of worry under the purple sky.
“What’s going on?”
Tsuna swore under her breath. Myorin just shook her head.
“The paddies have been flooded,” she said.
Rui looked for her teacher, to follow his lead. But Jobo was standing shock-still, gripping his prayer staff, watching the commotion in the town. The shouts were growing worse. Daylight ebbed away. He said: “Something’s wrong.”
Shouts rose again, to the south this time, in the low-lying paddies.
Rui felt a shock like she’d been stung.
The enemy is here.
They sent chaos through the rushes. They burned these farms.
They’re trying to lure Tokuon into a trap.
Kill, a voice in her head seemed to say.Kill them all.
A whisper of air swept past, colder, but calmer, too. A flicker caught her attention on the lane.
They rounded the bend and she saw: the temple was on fire.
Tokuon’s forerunners had come. A group of horsemen, awash in the chaos. Peasants, flooding from the town, trying to form a water-line. Trying to put the fires out. But there were dark shapes moving in the space between the fields. Shadows. Wraiths.
The attack came from the night itself.
Rui had just gotten to the base of the hill when she heard the shouts, the ringing of alarm bells. There was a commotion ahead; with eyes still strangely acute in the dusk, she saw several no’in figures surrounding someone at the edge of the paddy.
“Rui, don’t,” Jobo began, but it was too late.
Tsuna hissed: “It’s Sen,” and Rui leaped into the fray.
Myorin shouted. “Rui!”
After this, her mind went blank. She couldn’t recall how she got to the bottom of the hill, how she’d drawn the short-sword at her side. She couldn’t recall how she’d gotten so close. But she heard the sounds of combat, and the echo of a god, roaring, in her mind. She leaped, from the edge of the slope. She surged into the open field.
Instantly, a dark-clad woman with no’in marks on her arms appearedin the twilight. Rui wasn’t ready, but something slipped, turned, cracked inside her, and the Hososhi roared, and when she looked up, the pale woman was dead, and she had blood on her hands.Hososhi, she thought. How…?
I have a use for you, they’d said. Then came rage. With the Hososhi’s power in her veins, in her heart, she fell out of herself; the god took over. Time slipped, and in a heartbeat, became the enemy. Pulling her from her mind, or her heart or her souls, it made her rip away, gone, lost to the world. And the glint of knives in the clouded moon. Blood in the air. She felt nothing.
Nothing when the enemy closed in.
Nothing when a low jab nicked her in the side.
Nothing when the Hososhi moved her spirit and cut them down.
When she found herself again, it was over. She’d killed them all.
She opened her eyes. There were more dead bodies than there were before. There was a blade in her hands and the smell of blood on the soil, the sound of it still leaking from a gut. It had the finality of cut wire, the bile in her throat, and everything started to spin. The sword dropped from her hands and her legs went weak. She buckled. The word floated over her, as it always did, unchangeable as a brand:
