She stepped back. She dropped the spear. It didn’t fall.
It remained lodged in his abdomen.
His mouth opened and closed like a fish. His eyes blinked, met hers. Then he stumbled. Blood leaked from his mouth. Someone shouted: “Help!” “Get her!” “Murder!”
She grabbed his short-sword from the dirt.
She raced for the sally-gate.
She ran. Ran past the dying guard with his frozen eyes and his bloodied hand still reaching up as though to grasp her. She ran and ran.
Past the road, the woods and branches scratching at her face.
Past the outvillage, the small winding trail she’d built.
Past the cut-through, toward her little shrine.
To the Blue Woods, where no one ever went, tears falling, great shuddering gasps raging through her as her mind fought the truth of what she’d done. When she stopped at the hidden shrine to catch her breath, her arms and legs were shaking so hard she couldn’t stand.
She collapsed. She couldn’t breathe. She crawled to the shrine. When she looked up, the stone-carved fox, a servant of the god, was staring down.
A moan came from her chest. Her arms and hands and cheek were laced with cuts, from the brambles and the bristles of the trees and brush she’d torn to get away. The young man’s sword was in her hand. She’d heard shouting behind her as she ran from the sally-gate – the only reason she escaped was that she knew the cutbacks and the shortcuts through the woods. But they would come. They would find her. They would bring her back.
Her hands were specked with red.
“What have I—” She stopped, with a gasp, a sob, her head resting on the cool splintered wood at the bottom of O-ine’s shrine.
She gathered herself as much as she could, still shaking, and began to pray for guidance, for a way to undo what she’d done. She was crying freely now. The thought came, clear, as if the gods had put it there themselves:
You have taken a life, Rui Misosazai. There is no going back.
She turned toward the empty trail, and waited, expecting at any instant to be surrounded by Hakaru and his men, or his older brother Nihira, the Wolfsmoke.
At some point she stopped, ragged, coughing for breath. She sank down. She tried to hide. She trembled. She found the jewel on its string, tucked it away. The woods loomed huge and silent, night came swiftly to a frost. She sat against the tree, and met another wave of fear, and pain, deep down, in the center of her heart. She saw the guard in her mind’s eye, the shock and fear that bloomed across his face.
He was just a boy. And she’d killed him.
CHAPTERELEVEN
Sen
The fire was dwindling when Sen got back to their little camp, under the shade of the great trees. He threw a couple logs on the embers and sat for a while, shivering and watching the logs shift and burn. Jobo was deep in meditation to the side, sitting cross-legged, with his eyes closed.Maybe he’s just asleep, Sen thought. He knew the rumors: a crow monk, come down from his mountain? Surely he must be on our lord Ogami’in’s hunt. He must be set to catch the guard-killer, Rui Misosazai, with a spell.
They’d come as soon as they had heard.
Rui, he thought.How strange that, for one so unknown to me, I think of you. Strange for the entire kijin castle to know your name.
But still. As his teacher said: the night does not undo itself, though it may be vanished into the past;we were together, you and I, Rui, when we were saved. We were found together. We were holding hands.
And now she was alone.
Sen touched the jade bead on the string about his neck.
The world always seemed so big at night, he thought, so huge, beyond all understanding. The ink-dark veil of sky, the wet kiss of clouds and mist; in the darkness, the sounds of wind through branches and the footsteps of small creatures seemed to roar. The gods were wandering tonight. Everything felt, somehow, too real.
He lay back on the hard rocky ground, pulled his blanket over hisshoulders, and tried to think. Tried to process what he had heard. But there was only the night. The trees. The quiet.
Beyond them, brief, troubling flits of orange in the hills. Hakaru’s hunting parties were out there. Rui had been on the run for days. She’d been stealing eggs from the coops at the edge of the village.
