“Son of Heaven!” he cried.
I moved to pull him up, my thick fingers closing on his robe, but Kioshi was already there, his pale, delicate hands gentle onthe monk’s shoulders. “Stand, please. I am your prince, nothing more.”
But the monk shrank from his touch like it burned. “GreatTenno,” he gasped. “Akira TakashiTennohas ascended and now dines with the gods. Akira KioshiTennois now the Son of Heaven, gods save and preserve him.”
The words hung in the air like a blade about to fall.
Kioshi stumbled backward, his face draining to the color of rice paper. The boy who’d entered my hall with such composure now looked half his age—young, terrified, and alone.
His father was dead.
Hewas Emperor.
And he stood without arms or armor in the hall of his greatest enemy.
I made my decision in a heartbeat.
Slowly, painfully, I hoisted myself off my throne and lowered to my knees. My joints protested, my considerable weight making the descent graceless. My forehead, still damp with perspiration, touched the cold stone floor.
“Tenno,” I said, the word tasting like ashes.
The hall erupted in motion. Guards dropped to kneel, crimson armor clattering like a bloody waterfall. Kitaro’s weathered face twisted in shock as he followed my lead. Katsumi’s red-painted lips moved in what might have been prayer as she pressed her own smooth forehead to stone.
Only Kioshi remained standing, his young, muscled frame swaying like a reed in a storm.
“Amaterasu, help me,” I heard him whisper, his voice cracking.
Indeed, I thought, my face still pressed to stone, gray hair fully escaping its pins to pool around my head.
Gods help us all.
Chapter 9
Asami Eiko
Akira KioshiTennohad been gone an hour, barely enough time to gather whatever escort waited outside my walls and begin his trek back to Bara. My uncle and daughter had spent that hour chiding me for letting the boy leave, releasing him from my grasp in a move they argued would only prolong the coming war.
But killing a boy who’d just lost his father—the new Emperor—as he stood as a guest under a banner of parlay within my hall would have inflamed passions far more than marching an army into his lands and ripping the Jade Throne from beneath his scrawny backside. His murder—for that is how it would’ve been seen—would engender sympathies for a boy in mourning, an uncrowned king, and most troublesome, a gods-blessed ruler awaiting the kiss of Amaterasu herself.
I had long ago lost my faith in gods or whatever glared down from the heavens. If they didn’t bother showing themselves, why should I bother paying them any mind? But the people—andthe monks and priests—they believed. They saw the Emperor as divine.
No, feigning respect and releasing the quaking boy had been the only path forward.
In that moment.
But the rules of engagement were far different once he’d left the courtesy of my home.
Raven feathers lay before me on the lacquered table, two perfect specimens of midnight black. I’d plucked them myself from the birds that roosted in the northern tower—creatures that fed on the battlefield, the carrion of defeat.
My private chamber stood on the northern end of my fortress, its stone walls covered with maps of the Empire rather than the decorative scrolls favored by southern nobles. The room was spartan by court standards but precisely arranged—every object serving a purpose, every piece of furniture positioned for maximum utility. Iron braziers burned in each corner, their light casting dancing shadows across weapons displayed on the walls: anaginatathat had belonged to my grandmother, paired swords taken from a Yumi general who’d thought a woman couldn’t hold the northern passes, a crossbow from one of the island provinces, its foreign mechanisms a reminder that power could come from unexpected directions.
But it was a war table that dominated the space, its dark wood surface scarred from years of knife points marking troop movements and territorial boundaries. Ceramic pieces representing differenthanforces stood in careful formation with my own black stones massed along the mountain passes like gathering storm clouds. A single red piece marked the capital, isolated and surrounded by mountains, ancient sentinels who’d protected emperors throughout millennia.
“Step forward,” I commanded, and a pair of shadows detached themselves from the walls of my private chamber.
They moved like smoke given form, these assassins I’d cultivated over years of careful planning. The very best had been purchased not with gold but with promises of what a new order would bring. They kneeled before me in perfect synchronization, heads bowed, awaiting my will.
I lifted the first feather, running my finger along its edge, sharp enough to cut if one wasn’t careful. “The old tree has fallen so that new growth may flourish,” I said, as much to myself as to those kneeling before me.
