Still dazed, Toshi turned and woodenly began to run. The last thing he saw was Hidetsugu bending over the pile of corpses, sinking his arms into the mound to gather as many as possible in his broad, powerful arms.
“Put me down, oath-brother,” Toshi said. “We have been bound for too long to squabble.”
Hidetsugu shook Toshi in his fist like a child’s rattle. “The bond between us is stretched too thin at present, Toshi. Find a more compelling argument.”
Toshi was ready. “There is a stone disk hidden in a chamber deep within the academy. The same creature that almost leveled the daimyo’s tower will follow wherever that disk goes and will crush anything that stands in its way. Let me take the disk to where the soratami are. Let them die in battle with the great spirit beast, and we will have engineered a fine reckoning for your lost apprentice.”
Hidetsugu seemed impressed, but he shook his head. “An intriguing idea,” he said. “But if the daimyo’s prize is here, my oni has already laid claim to it. Only a fool would try to take something off the All-Consuming’s plate.
“But more to the point, Toshi, I’ve had my fill of your bargains and plans. What I need now is a straight declaration of your loyalties. Are you working for the hyozan? The Myojin of Night’s Reach? Or are you merely doing what you’ve always done, playing both ends against each other so you can capitalize in the confusion?”
“My loyalties are unchanged,” Toshi said sharply.
“And that is what concerns me.” Hidetsugu placed two fingers in his wide mouth and blew a piercing whistle. “I cannot harm you, Toshi, because of the oath we share. But I can have you monitored. I can keep you in check.” He glanced down into the quadrangle. “Behold, ochimusha. Your newest companion has arrived.”
The massive, four-legged brute was unlike the other bipedal oni, but it had the same three eyes and the same curved horns. It was covered in tough leathery skin and thick plates of bony armor. It walked on all fours, and its head was as broad as a man’s chest.
Toshi’s throat almost closed when he recognized the demon dog-it was the same oni that Kobo had summoned in the forest weeks ago, the same one Toshi himself had released to run rampant on the streets of Oboro. Earlier, Hidetsugu had insisted he carry the dog’s summoning token, promising it would fade after a few hours of blood frenzy. Yet here the same dog was, almost a week after Toshi had released it.
“Wherever you go,” Hidetsugu said, leering, “the dog of bloodlust and slaughter will accompany you. If you run, it will chase you down. If you hide, it will sniff you out. If you fight, it will cripple you and drag your broken body to me. Our oath prevents us from harming each other directly, or causing each other harm, but you summoned this demon. Whatever it does to you now is your burden, not mine.”
Toshi was surprised to find himself growing angry. Hidetsugu had tricked him, had connived to get Toshi to place himself in danger so that the ogre could threaten him without risking the hyozan oath’s retribution. If Toshi hadn’t already planned something similar for Hidetsugu, he would have been truly offended by the ogre’s lack of trust.
Toshi decided to take his leave. The trip to Minamo had been a complete failure: he hadn’t secured the Taken One, he was once more on bad terms with Hidetsugu, and he had not determined if the ogre knew his secret-that Toshi had already found a way out of the hyozan oath. The tattoo on Toshi’s arm was a decoy, one that looked and felt like a real reckoner’s mark but had absolutely no connection to the oath they had sworn almost ten years ago.
Toshi turned his thoughts inward, focusing on the power of his myojin. Night’s Reach had bestowed many blessings upon him, but one that he had manufactured for himself was the killing power of intense cold. He had bested an elemental spirit and bound her power to his own, and he called upon that power now as he hung from the ogre’s fist.
Ice formed across Hidetsugu’s fist, and Toshi felt the pressure on his torso ease. His breath blew out in great white clouds of fog and he felt a cold, tingling shape emerge on his forehead. The glowing, purple-white kanji was the symbol for the yuki-onna, the snow woman of legend who lured the unwary to a frozen doom in the darkest hours of winter.
The yamabushi sensed their master was under attack and converged on Toshi. Below, the oni dog howled and sprang into the air, bounding from wall to wall on his own path to the platform.
Toshi summoned another of Night’s blessings and began to fade from sight. With the myojin’s help, he could become formless, weightless, and intangible. So far nothing had been able to interfere with him in this state, not the most powerful spirit or the keenest animal instinct.
As he disappeared from Hidetsugu’s frozen fist, Toshi locked eyes with his former oath-brother. There was anger in the ogre’s face, and grim determination. But most of all, Toshi saw sadness, disappointment, even if it were only because they had come so far without turning on each other. But now they had, as they had always known they would.
Toshi recognized the complicated emotions on Hidetsugu’s face because he shared them. For many reasons, he had sincerely hoped either he or the ogre would die before they had to face each other. But now that hope was dead and Toshi had to find a way to overcome the single most terrifying creature he had ever known.
Toshi nodded as he faded away. To his lasting joy and eternal regret, Hidetsugu nodded back. For one final time, they were partners, peers, warriors with a common bond.
And then Toshi was gone, leaving Hidetsugu to stoke his anger for the inevitable day when one of them would destroy the other.
Toshi drifted down from Oboro until he fell under the shadow of the cloud city itself. Like a sinking ship, Toshi slid into the great patch of black until he was completely engulfed by it. After a moment’s disorientation he turned toward the palpable presence of the Taken One and urged himself toward Minamo Academy.
It was still here. Toshi could feel it. Between the giant serpent in the sky and the mad, immortal daimyo, there was no shortage of very powerful entities who were willing to kill to recover the prize.
Then, Toshi had hoped they would destroy each other, the academy, and the soratami city overhead in the process. Now, he had to find some way of removing it before they arrived and then keep it from their continued pursuit.
Toshi’s phantom body emerged in the deepest recesses of the academy. He had been to this space before, though he did not know what the room was for. It was some administrator’s office or private library with walls covered by scroll racks. Scattered around the room were a series of glass display cases featuring strange, arcane objects that Toshi couldn’t recognize and didn’t care about. He glanced around to verify he was in the right place and nodded, satisfied.
The Taken One was lying faceup where he left it. The disk was roughly six feet across and about a foot thick. It gave off a constant pale white glow and a steady flow of wispy steam as if it had just been taken from a boiling pot. He knew from experience that it was cool to the touch, but it somehow delivered a jolt of strange, unnerving force to anyone who made bare-skin contact.
Toshi peered at the Taken One’s face. It was as he remembered it, with the etched serpent facing right and its tail circled under it. Somehow it also looked different, more detailed and substantial.
He shook his head and blinked. The stone was hypnotic, he reminded himself. He had seen how crazy it had made Konda. Toshi forced himself to look away from the Taken One so that it could not enthrall him as it had the daimyo, and that’s when he noticed the people.
They crouched behind tables and across chairs, they slumped against naked walls, and they slept fitfully in clusters on the cold stone floor. Shaking his head in disbelief, Toshi counted almost thirty live bodies in the room, breathing softly and barely moving. There were students in blue robes, Konda’s soldiers in full uniform, and even a handful of kitsune fox-warriors. Most appeared to be asleep or at least resting while four alert guardians watched over them from the far corners of the room.