Hiro blinked like a man who had forgotten how.
“Your oaths bind you to the Kazumitsu house. Once my beloved and I are wed, I will be as a son of that noble line. And my sons shall carry the name into this nation’s future. So know this…”
Hiro replaced his mempō, covering his ashen features. The iron face of a bone-white tiger snarled at the nobles, and the voice within was the ringing of footfalls in an empty tomb.
“If you choose to dishonor your vows and stand against me, I will kill your families. Your wives. Your sons. I will kill your neighbors, your servants, your childhood friends. I will burn your cities to the ground, sow your fields with salt, make a desolation of everything you know and care for. And at the last, when all you love is ashes, I will kill you.”
Silence. Soft as baby’s breath.
“Now.” Hiro gestured with his clockwork arm to the palace glowering on the hill. “I believe welcome drinks are being served in the dining hall.”
Ichizo’s hand was back on Michi’s arm. She tried not to stiffen at his touch.
“I should return you to your room.”
“If that is your wish, my Lord.”
There was no anger in his voice as he spoke. “Do you think me a fool, Michi-chan?”
She looked into his eyes then, gleaming above coiled breather pipes. Were they the eyes of a serpent, toying with its prey? Or the eyes of a loyal man, torn by duty to Lord and heart?
Who are you?
“No,” she said. “I do not think you are a fool, my Lord.”
Ichizo looked at the Tiger Daimyo, climbing back into the palanquin, taking his fiancée by the hand. The faces of the shocked crowd, pale and drawn and stricken with fear. The faces of the Dragon and Phoenix entourages, all bluster and pomp evaporated, taking their seats in the motorcade, silent as berated children. The faces of the Iron Samurai, caked thick with funeral ashes. And the face of Lord Hiro, a walking dead man, only a heartbeat away from dominion over the entire Imperium. His cousin. His blood. His Shōgun.
Ichizo’s face was as pale as his Lord’s.
“I think perhaps we both are.”
She had hated Aisha at first. From the very core of her soul. Here was a woman who had everything. Born to privilege and power. Spoiled by her parents, indulged by her brutish pig of a brother, never lifting a finger all the days of her life.
Months had passed after Michi arrived from the Iishi. There was no hint of the Kagé fighter supposedly dwelling behind the First Daughter’s facade, and the pair were never alone long enough to speak. She would occasionally catch Aisha’s eyes, stare with unspoken questions, but there was nothing in the woman’s face that might betray her. If she was playing a part, Aisha would have put the greatest actors in the Shōgunate to shame.
Michi kept her head down, worked hard, fortunate enough to avoid Shōgun Yoritomo’s advances in the shadow of prettier, more cultured ladies in Aisha’s company. Yoritomo-no-miya seemed to take pleasure in deflowering the First Daughter’s retinue, and for her part, Aisha seemed perfectly content to whore her ladies out to her brother whenever the mood struck him. She was a harsh mistress, temper flaring over the slightest foible—especially in front of her brother, who relished her cruelty. And Michi found the hatred inside her turning to poison.
Why had the Kagé sent her here? There was no more rebellion in this woman’s breast than there was humanity in her brother’s. This was no battlefield. This was no war.
And one night as Michi ran a brush through her mistress’s hair, the other girl assigned to her bedchamber—a sweet and clever Ryu girl called Kiki—knocked over a bottle of perfume, glass smashing on the floorboards. Aisha had risen from her cushion, lightning in her eyes. She raised her hand, and Michi moved before she had a chance to think. Reaching out with that terrible speed that had served her so well in swordplay, catching the older woman’s wrist as it descended, knuckles white upon her arm.
“Don’t,” she’d said.
And Aisha had smiled then; the first time Michi had actually seen her smile in all the months she’d served. Beautiful and bright, like the first rays of dawn after winter’s longest night.
“There it is,” she said.
Aisha had dismissed Kiki with a wave, the terrified girl scuttling from the room with an apologetic glance to Michi, sliding the door closed behind her.
“I had wondered how long it might take,” Aisha had said.
“Take?”
A nod. “For you to risk all.”
Michi had blinked, remained mute.
“That girl is nothing to you.” Aisha motioned to the doorway Kiki had left by. “Yet you dared lay hands upon the First Daughter of the Kazumitsu Dynasty in her defense. Jeopardizing your mission. Showing defiance that could spell your death.”
“Let it come,” Michi had said.
Aisha stepped closer, placed both hands on Michi’s shoulders.
“I know who you are, daughter of Daiyakawa. And I admire your conviction. Truly, I do. But this is no place for an inferno. Daichi-sama sent you to be my hand, my eyes, and you can be neither if you are blinded by the fire inside you.
“Let it burn slow. Be as I am. Keep it all inside, hidden until the day it will truly matter, when standing up and risking all will be worth the blood you wager. The day we can win.”
“You would have me sit by and let innocents suffer?”
“I would,” Aisha said. “And I know how much I ask in that. One day I may ask even more. I may ask everything of you. But not for the sake of one person. For the sake of this nation. For the lives of every man and woman and child upon these islands.
“These are the stakes we play with now, Michi-chan. There is no prize for second in this game. This is no sortie for a hill amongst boys in iron suits. This is a war for the very future of Shima. And you must understand that if you are to serve the Kagé here. You must witness atrocity and remain mute. Watch others suffer, even die, and lift not a finger to help. You must be as patient as stone until the time comes to strike, and harder than stone when you finally draw your blade.”
Michi stared, as if seeing her for the first time. The conviction in Aisha’s eyes, the breathless passion in her voice. And she did not see the spoiled princess she’d learned to hate. She saw fire, every bit as bright as the one in her own chest; a fire that gave birth to Shadows.
Aisha took up her hands, held them tight, stared hard.
“Do you understand me, Michi-chan?”
Michi looked down to the hands that held her own. Back up into Aisha’s eyes.
“I do.”
“Can you let it burn slow?”
“I can.”
“And when I ask it of you, will you give all?”
She licked her lips.
Nodded.
“I will.”