Obsidian and Steel by Kakita Koshin & Moto Maratai
"No wall stands forever. Only duty stands forever."--Kaiu Hosaru, A Perfect Cut
* * *
Obsidian and Steel
by Kakita Koshin/Brent Morgan & Moto Maratai/Yoon Ha Lee
NOTE: This is a sequel to Obsidian and Onyx (by myself) and Shadows of the Clan by Brent Morgan & Nancy Sauer.
Few people paid much attention to the Unicorn provinces; their owners had fled like cowards, escaping the reach of the fallen god. Now, the lands were long, wide and empty, with a few small villages dotting the fringes of the tall grass plains. Koshin found himself wondering if this place had been any different in the times before the Last Hantei; it seemed immutable, as old as time itself.
The assassin had never set foot in these lands before. They were as foreign to him as any place beyond the mountains was, and just as dangerous, too. He had been warned, and what he had not been told, he had taken for his own knowledge: a murderer is most capable in the arena that he knows.
This place, he thought, casting a long glance about the endless plains, will make things more difficult.
Koshin had come to the west seeking some semblance of answers after Toshi Ranbo; some of what Natsugusa had said struck him deeply, and there were no moments for introspection when one balanced on the edge of a sword. The Dragon was a man who had spent long days trying to lose himself in the heat of the battle--a challenge of ideals was different, and not something he could fight along his assassin's road.
So it was that the Kakita found himself in the midst of the northern provinces, staring in muted wonder at the strangely mundane place that had slipped up before his eyes.
In the days before the Day of Thunder, such a place would have not been so uncommon; now, it seemed as if the black samurai had wandered into some fanciful dream. Peasants moved about their work in the same, unchanging motions, while a few children played down the road. It was an atmosphere so surreal that the swordsman found himself closing his eyes and holding them tightly for a moment.
He opened them, and the village was still there.
Wondering what bitter stories there could be in a place so peaceful, Koshin tucked his arms into his kimono and started down the road that led to the village.
*
"He is moving west."
Yotsu Amakusa lifted his head and nodded idly; the assassin had been moving now for several weeks without cease. From Toshi Ranbo to Kyuden Tonbo, then further, he had cut a swath of victims among the Emperor's Legions, never lingering long enough to give the magistrates time to close the gap.
"There is nothing further to the west now, Desai," he replied after a moment. The first man bristled in annoyance, tugging as his short, scrawny beard. "Not unless our killer plans to attack the ruins of Shiro Shinjo."
Ikoma Desai crossed his arms in slight annoyance; the tall bushi had grown increasingly impatient with their quarry over the past two months, and the Taint in his body only aggravated those feelings more. Amakusa did his best to stifle his companion's rage--though it was true, that these games were growing old.
"Could he be making for the Exile's Road?" the Lion asked finally. "Running, like the Unicorn did?"
"Unlikely," the ronin swordsman replied. "A man like this--he doesn't strike me as the type who would ever think of running from a battle."
Desai smoothed the map and moved it closer to the fire, the black stains on his hands glinting oddly in the light. "Those words almost sounded like--praise, Amakusa?"
The Obsidian Magistrate touched the tsuba of his katana idly, ignoring the bigger man and his accusation. Unlike Desai, Amakusa did not let the Emperor's touch control him; an unfocused rage served no magistrate, no matter how many other gifts it had given both men recently.
One day, the Yotsu knew, the Ikoma would lose himself to the darkness completely. The ronin smiled a little at the idea of killing his companion when that time came. Practicing his attacks on eta and peasants could do little to improve his technique or power; he was a samurai, and enjoyed killing others of his kind.
"What are you smiling about, Amakusa?" the Lion magistrate asked, his voice, as always, held in check despite the anger in his eyes. "Lord Uijaki will not find this so amusing, I am sure."
The magistrate's slender fingers ran over the map lightly enough that his small claws did not tear it, coming to a rest at a tiny brushmark, barely legible because of the curious gaijin nature of the scrawl. "Have you ever heard of Kara's Rest, Desai-san?"
Within an hour the Obsidian Magistrates were riding down the roads that led past Kyuden Tonbo, their eyes unbarred by the darkness that had fallen onto the moonless night.
*
At night, Shinjo Kara stood outside her house and looked up past the grasses, the hills, the rice paddies, toward the sky's scatter of stars. Like most Unicorn, she was capable of navigating by the celestial paths. It had been years since she had needed to travel. Nevertheless, there was a certain comfort to knowing that Lady Sun and Lord Moon still watched over their children, however wayward. Perhaps, in some distant realm, where water was sweeter than honey and fire burned without heat, Shinjo wandered still, and would return soon.
She stayed up after the ashigaru had gone to sleep because watching the stars was one of the few things that still brought her pleasure. Shinjo Kara never woke early if she could help it. Even when a newcomer happened upon the village, as had been the case today, she bid them welcome well after the Sun had blessed the dawn.
It was with ill humor, then, that Shinjo Kara met the Obsidian Magistrates who had come to speak with her when dawn barely spilled over the plains.
She had known they were coming. It was difficult for people to move unnoticed across the expanses of Unicorn lands, less so now that so many of the fields had been burned or salted, reduced to ash and stubble. The villagers, her watchful sparrows, told her everything. She had fended off the Emperor's men before, but she always wondered, each time, if it would be the last time.
A Lion and a--ronin? Kara detached herself from the doorframe to greet them. The Taint gripped them both, plain to the eye: blackened skin, scales, claws, the subtle corruption that lived beneath skin and sinew. She had worn the usual kimono, black and violet and tarnished silver, and brewed her tea. It paid to prepare for such things, no matter how much she detested mornings. She bowed deeply before them, silent, waiting.
"Shinjo-san," said the shorter of the two, the ronin.
Also the more dangerous of the two, Kara reflected. He had control. The other--was starting to lose it.
"I am Yotsu Amakusa; my companion is Ikoma Desai."
Kara bowed again. "Would you have tea, Yotsu-sama, Ikoma-sama?"
"Yes," said Amakusa, and "No," said Desai. The Lion's eyes burned, but he gave way to the Yotsu.
Most interesting, Kara mused, and led the way to the Willow Room. The screens were painted with swaying willows in black ink; cushions of black and blue silk pooled upon the floor, woven with the inconstant patterns of water. The tea, imported at some trouble from more prosperous lands, was yet another of her indulgences. She had many, these days.
The expression in the Lion's eyes, as he sipped amid the elegiac surroundings, approached loss. Kara thought, that if she peered too deeply into those faintly-glowing eyes, she might catch sight of a woman's pale and unyielding hands, gold-washed steel, the glimmer of jade. The ronin's face, on the other hand, was unreadable. She schooled her expression in much the same manner.
Your face, O my husband, she said silently to the man she had killed after Rokugan fell to darkness, what good is your face if it reveals the things you have no wish to share?
"It is a most productive village, Shinjo-san," said the ronin, a touch mockingly. "There has been no cause for complaint."
Kara inclined her head. "The ashigaru do as they must, Yotsu-sama, as do I."
"I will come to the point, then. There is a Dragon assassin we have been tracking. The last we knew, he was journeying in the direction of your village."
Ikoma Desai said suddenly, "Always west."
"I do not question your words, Ikoma-sama," she said, "but surely, after Otaku Kamoko-sama attended to Shiro Shinjo, no hope lies for an assassin there."
"Precisely," the Lion rumbled, and fell silent, staring at the sodden tea leaves at the base of his cup.
"The assassin," said Yotsu Amakusa with no emphasis at all, "has shown little consideration for anything but the desire to blood his blades with as many of the Emperor's subjects as possible. You are in danger, Shinjo-san. Perhaps your village as well."
She tested him with her eyes, for only a second. In any other circumstances, they might have come to a truce. But Amakusa continued, "We desire your aid, Shinjo-san, in trapping this assassin before his blade tastes more blood."
"A service unto a magistrate is a service unto my Emperor," Kara said without hesitation. "Speak, Yotsu-sama."
"We need the men of your village," said Amakusa. "The oxen and rice paddies will survive a few days with only the women and children and grandfathers to tend them. Surely, the assassin cannot flee far without being seen--and surely, too, he must eat." He smiled coldly. "He has not shown himself without weaknesses. A few men, sacrificed for no other cause, would lure him past caution, I think."
Then she knew. This Dragon assassin wasn't their only target. Kara herself was the other one.
*
"I would stay out of this, if I were you," said Koshin.
From the other side of the wall Koshin heard padded footsteps stop immediately, his arms casually folded as he leaned against the flimsy wooden wall. The house had been difficult to enter, even with the muting cover of the conversation. He had been certain of his action when he had come here, but now he was not so clear. Something in the Unicorn's voice had touched him--
Resignation and regret.
"Listen to me," he said, making sure to listen to any further movements from the other side of the empty wall. "Kara-sama, I take it."
"You said '-sama,'" the voice said, perfectly calm despite his appearance, each word clipped and controlled. "Hardly what I expected, from an assassin."
He said nothing as he adjusted his position; if she planned something now, it would require speed, not strength, to beat. "Anyone who can keep so many safe and happy in these times is at least worth a breath of proper respect."
There was slight movement; a kimono, rustling as she moved. Koshin waited. The Shinjo had not been wearing any noticeable weapons earlier, but that hardly made her less dangerous, out of his line of sight, in her own home. Part of him told him he was a fool for not following his initial intention--another, deeper part was glad.
"Keep them out of my way, if you can. I don't enjoy killing innocent people."
She hesitated, or perhaps merely stopped to consider the irony of his words. Again, the silence was long enough to unsettle him, before she began to speak. "You assume," said Kara, "that there is such a thing as innocence remaining in this world. Whom have you kept safe?"
For once, he had an answer, but the assassin dared not mention them here. He allowed his silence to be an answer, though from her next statement, what she had drawn from it became unclear.
"There is tea in the Bamboo Room, which will be to your left, and left again," she added, &Quot;and ricecakes. I apologize, though, that the tea is cold by now--You've traveled a long way, I take it. I would sit with you, and discuss pleasantries, but under the circumstances it is perhaps best that we know no more of each other's faces than the koi knows the sky. It is your decision, though, O Dragon with two blades and no face."
"I would think," the swordsman said softly, "that we already know one another--perhaps more than either of us wished to be known. I accept your hospitality, Shinjo-sama, but it is safer if I gather what I need and go."
Footsteps, and now the whisper of a blade being drawn--a blade, but not steel. He would have recognized steel in any of its incarnations, folded until it was dark with the patterns of wave and wind, hammered until it was bright with the promise of blood. Whatever her weapon, it was wrought of something else.
His hand slowly lowered, falling even with his swords. There were many things hidden in the drawing of a weapon; in the Shinjo, Koshin saw a depth of strength so vast it startled him, a sign of courage needed day after day.
But Kara's voice, when she spoke again, was weary. "You must have been samurai once, as I was, we who take and take, and rarely give. In another age you would have asked me about the roads ahead, the coming harvest, and I would have asked you for news from the capital, or the mountains of the Dragon, or those other places of your journeying. We are beyond such things now, you and I. Now there is only obsidian and steel, and the things that survive both."
He moved without answering, making certain to give enough noise to let her track him as he passed through the house. In the room Kara had pointed out to him, Koshin found a parcel of ricecakes wrapped and ready within a faded purple cloth. Rising, the assassin tucked them away.
"Thank you for this, Shinjo-sama."
The next words took him through the heart. "I will be honoring Amakusa's wishes for men to hunt you." There was no more despair or weariness in her voice now; instead, the grim determination of a samurai's spirit. "If I do not, then the village's life will end."
He said nothing, felt nothing save for the pain and death that the decision would bring. After a moment, the assassin responded, "My goals and their goals are not so different. If you cut out the heart--" he said, as if enjoying some sense of irony, "the body dies."
When Kara opened the door, the Bamboo Room was empty, save for cold tea, and the lingering scent of blood.
*
"She gave in too easily," Ikoma Desai growled as he watched one team of ashigaru, clearly ill-at-ease with their improvised weapons, disappear over a hill.
"That surprised me," Amakusa admitted. "And I doubt the assassin will be caught by this first group of fools. They are only peasants. I wonder what fondness our Shinjo has for them."
"Unicorn," spat the Lion. "It's enough reason."
Amakusa lifted an eyebrow. The Shinjo's sincerity and swift acquiescence disturbed him at a level he had not yet identified. "Of course," he said silkily, "we still have the second group."
For once, Desai's expression approached approval. "I knew you had something in mind, Amakusa."
The rest of the ashigaru watched them with the blank, unreadable faces that their ancestors had cultivated long before Fu Leng touched their reality. Amakusa loathed the sight of them. He had spent too long trapped among such fools, artless in their guile. The assassin and the wily Shinjo were challenges more worthy of a man. His vindication was near; he could wait.
"Dragon," Amakusa said, in a low tone. His voice traveled along the paths of air and corruption; it reverberated in ways that should have been limited to loud noises in mountain and cavern, the realm of rock; it was clearer across great distances than any mortal voice, even at a shout. But then, neither magistrate was quite mortal anymore.
The ashigaru flinched as the echoes faded. Peasant stoicism only extended so far.
"Dragon," Amakusa said again, and this time his smile was evident. "Unless you walk on winged sandals, you can hear me now, I who have hunted you as you hunted my brethren." His tone had lowered to a whisper, but the whisper sliced through the wind, the nervous murmurs, the rustling grasses, like a blade honed by the darkest hand of all. "I will leave you a message, upon this hill; come and read it, if you dare; or ignore it and run like a child, if you dare not."
He nodded at the Lion. "Desai," he said, "I need twenty of them."
"No wish to sully your own hands with their deaths, I see," retorted Desai, but his hands spasmed with sudden bloodlust.
Yotsu Amakusa watched, smiling all the while, as the Lion slaughtered twenty peasants, who would have had no chance against an ordinary bushi, let alone the clawed thing Ikoma Desai was becoming. Watched, and knew himself secure in knowing each stroke and pattern of his companion's sword-style, in the death that it would be Amakusa's pleasure to administer.
The first word that Amakusa had the remaining ashigaru spell out with the bodies of their kinsmen, on pain of a similar fate, was dragon.
*
They left it alone.
For the villagers, the reasoning was simple; it was not a thing for men to look upon, so crafted from vile thoughts and undeserved pain. As the black figure drew closer, however, he was likewise surprised that neither one of his pursuers was waiting.
They had been proud of their symbol. They had wanted him to see it as they had meant it...a thing of hate, swathed in darkness, for one person to gaze at alone.
There, in the heart of midnight, the Dragon found his despair. All the unmoving faces were a testimony, a reminder of why they had to die. Koshin had not needed to see the words to understand the statement scrawled out to him.
His eyes were those of a murderer, and saw best those things scribed in flesh and blood. Feelings of loss, of anger, of hatred deeper than death and dying were all forced deep into the heart of the white-haired samurai, poured off into the power to take life away. No emotion escaped him as the assassin considered his enemies' next move.
"Dragon," they had called for, and a Dragon they would receive.
*
This time, the Obsidian Magistrates, having learned of Shinjo Kara's habits from the villagers, called on her during in the afternoon, when the sun had descended noticeably from its zenith. She carried her gaijin blade, sheathed in obsidian and onyx, and was mounted upon her horse, the grey mare named Never. At their approach, she moved as though to dismount, but the smaller of the two stopped her.
"There is no need, Shinjo-san," said Amakusa. "We mean no great interruption, only a simple request."
"Speak, then, Yotsu-sama," she said equably, though her heart within her was cold and dark. She cued the mare with her knees, and Never dipped in a graceful bow, which seemed to amuse them.
"The peasants are incompetent," said the Lion contemptuously, "but we hardly expected any better of them."
Kara craned her neck slightly to smile at him. "They are accustomed to rice and fertilizer, Ikoma-sama, not hunting."
The Lion spat.
"Our message," said Amakusa smoothly, "has not fetched the assassin. It was my oversight; he can hardly draw any real conclusion from the two words I was able to leave for him." His voice hardened. "I need more of your men, Shinjo-san. Or the women, if there are no more men; or the children after that. I will rewrite the Tao of Shinsei in its entirety for him if that's what it takes to fetch him. And I will stop, of course, when he honors us with his presence."
Kara rather hoped, for the assassin's sake, that he was long vanished from her village, but doubted it. Though she had yet to lay eyes on him, his words alone had told her that no ordinary determination saw him through his long journey, his vendetta against the Emperor's shadow. "And if no one is left?" she asked.
The Lion growled under his breath, but Amakusa only said, "You will hardly live to see it, Shinjo-san. All that need concern you is a simple thing, obedience. Lives in exchange for other lives, and the Emperor's justice."
Kara knew what two words he had written in the lives of her people: dragon and if. She had no illusions about the rest of the message, as if it needed words for its expression. "Yotsu-sama--" she said, unhooking her sword, scabbard and all, where they could see her hands plainly, "never." And she drew the sword, flinging down the scabbard, as she spurred her mount past the Magistrates' reach.
Obsidian and onyx cracked at the impact; the sword shone crystal, bright as Amaterasu's tears, white as Onnotengu's smile.
*
Amakusa laughed.
It was not an expression of humor to be shared with other people. Rather, it was a scathing, mocking laughter that silenced wind and insect around him, causing the Shinjo's steed to falter for a moment as the ronin drew his sword.
Desai glanced down the road. The Lion's eyes bulged, but no surprise escaped his tainted face. When he spoke, the words carried through no magic, drawing the eyes of all three warriors to the road before them.
"Amakusa," he rumbled. "He is here."
What Kara saw was a man both thin and tawny, his white hair hanging limply as he strode slowly up the dusty road. Upon his shoulder was the mon of the Dragon, along with two long swords, worn in a fashion the Unicorn had never seen before. As he drew closer, Never stirred at the scent of blood that seemed to float with him, and Kara could see that his eyes were haunted--that he had seen their "sign."
The Yotsu still smiled, his voice drawing a glance from Kara and Desai. "The assassin--and the traitor. Desai..."
The Lion tensed.
"Finish him."
With those words, two duels roared to life as the world tautened around them, the only sounds that of hooves crashing down like the ocean and the hiss of the demons of folded steel.
*
"I have been waiting a long time for this," the big Lion said, his ire rising further as he drew his katana with one misshapen hand. "You are not the coward that I thought you were."
"You were the one who killed those villagers?" Koshin's voice was still quiet and impartial, harnessed like a falcon before flight.
Desai sneered. "It was Amakusa's idea, but I killed them, yes."
The assassin smiled mirthlessly. "In that case...you've already been defeated."
*
Kara charged.
There were many things working in the Unicorn's favor. As Never closed the distance with her enemy, the steed aided her, improving position, power and speed. With such a charge, a swipe from a heavy gaijin blade could have torn an opponent into pieces without effort--
But the mind guided that body, and Shinjo Kara could not see the stroke.
It all happened in an instant, muddled by thoughts of dying peasants and a village swathed in flames. The Yotsu katana whipped high, slicing flesh and saddle as Amakusa danced past her as elusively as the air. Earth rushed to meet her, and when she struck it was with pain and blood.
Pain and blood, fear and failure, each of these things struck Kara in that moment as surely as the open ground.
Even then, amidst thought and emotion, Shinjo Kara was rolling and rising, both hands still firm upon the crystal-steel blade. As she rose, the Unicorn saw that Amakusa had not moved, the blood on his blade prompting the magistrate's sinister grin.
"The blood of a samurai," he said after a moment, seeming to enjoy the moist glimmer, his black eyes feeding on it, drawing it in. Without wiping the blade, the Yotsu duelist sheathed and prepared his next move perfectly, as only one who lived life in death could do: "A woman and a Unicorn, but a samurai just the same."
There was no more time for consequence or failure, as Kara's crystal rushed out to meet blackened steel...
*
There were six strikes buried in that moment, each one finding the Ikoma, slashing hard against katana and tainted scales. The force drove him backwards, scattering fragments of blade like spray above the sea. Desai screamed, reaching out with claws of black corruption, ignorant in his frenzy of danger or pain.
His effort tore the assassin's black kimono just above his obi but did not touch him, flowing out freely as Desai's breaking mind howled again and again for more blood. The bigger man lunged hard at his opponent, crowding him, using his massive reach and huge muscles to close and entangle the assassin into his hold.
Koshin crashed down, as if his legs had simply abandoned him, again denying his opponent more than a fleeting glimpse of silk and white hair. Two swords crossed before his chest, and then ascended, shearing at last through toughened skin and unnatural armor, removing one arm at the socket as the other blade faltered and struck wide.
For all his loyalty, Ikoma Desai did not look determined or ready when death came to claim him, his eyes bulging with the shock of the sword blow. As one clear scream escaped his killer, the Lion's eyes went wide with terror.
His body divided before the beast of steel and hate.
*
The first strike was low and rose to strike the crystal blade in the center; it would not kill her, but Amakusa would remove the Unicorn's only defense: that clumsy excuse for a sword. The Unicorn responded, blocking with both hands steadied.
Crystal touched steel with a jarring, painful sound. The parry was simple, fast and elegant, but that heavy blade would never catch his again.
Then, in the half-moment before victory, the samurai-ko bent her sword. Not a hard bend, like a counter, but a quick, jerking motion that tipped the blade backwards in the air. With that touch, the black steel of the Yotsu's katana shifted, touching a long facet of the smooth weapon, sliding up further on it, dragging him forward and spoiling his strike.
Damned by his own momentum, Yotsu Amakusa careened forward, his slender figure dropping just below the glimmer of the crystal blade.
Shinjo Kara slashed down hard upon the stumbling magistrate, shearing through his right shoulder and further, the blow intensified by the blazing aura of crystal and jade. The magistrate screamed, struck the ground and tumbled, tearing up clods of earth as he fought, slowing his crash with the tips of blackened claws.
When he stopped, black with blood, the Imperial servant spat painfully, "Y-you still think...that y-you can save...your village now?"
The Shinjo hesitated. Amakusa laughed one more time, still arrogant despite the pain that was corruption's price.
"An Imperial...L-legion, Kara...Six d-days..."
The Yotsu tried to laugh once more, but the shadow of the assassin filled his vision, and a bitter sneer was all that would come. "Y-you have saved n-nothing..."
A single stroke of a bloody sword silenced him forever, but both knew that it was no magic that left the magistrate's words still ringing on the wind.
*
Quietly, obsessively, Shinjo Kara wiped her crystal blade with the cloth that an ashigaru woman, bent with age, brought to her. "Shinjo-sama," the woman said, but Kara shook her head.
"Don't speak," Kara whispered. "The magistrates are dead, but more deaths will follow, I promise it. I have only delayed the kharmic wheel's turning, and I could not save your sons." At last, she looked up and met Koshin's eyes. "Call it arrogance," she said to him, "that I thought to shelter so many. But we all have our duty, no matter what shape it takes."
The assassin cleaned his own swords with a practiced spin, sheathing them with a deep resignation in his eyes.
She turned away, then, and began speaking to the ashigaru. Though her tone was unyieldingly gentle, it was clear that they considered her words orders to be followed from the heart. "It is the Exile's Road for you, my children," she said, and within two hours, they had loaded up their beasts-of-burden with sacks of rice, tied their cookware into parcels, bundled up children in padded quilts.
Then, and only then, did one of the grandmothers ask her, in a quavering voice, if she was coming with them to the Exile's Road. Kara shook her head; her eyes were dry, but inexpressibly deep, like a well beyond the world. "It is better that you go without me. It is better that you don't see what happens next. You will know the path: ever north, toward the Burning Sands. Leave!"
After the last stragglers were no longer visible, Kara stood and looked for a long moment at the village that had been named after her. "Fire, I think," she said. "Let it be a pyre for all the hopes that died here."
"Hope does not die," the assassin said softly, his eyes for once calm and far away. Kara saw those eyes for one moment as he regarded her, speaking as one who knew much of what he said. "Hope cannot die. It can only be thrown away."
She limped toward Never, and the mare nuzzled her hand. "No more obsidian for me," said Shinjo Kara softly, "only steel. I will be the jade in the heart of darkness, the sword's waiting edge, the death at the boundaries of decay." She looked at Koshin. "All these things you are already, I think. It is time that I become them as well."
Kakita Koshin turned to the east, where the Imperial Legion would ride from; the edge in his voice had returned to him, as he walked past the magistrates' broken bodies, toward the next battle that was to come. "You have already been the light in the land of darkness, Kara." He glanced back, knowing red light would soon bleed into the sky as Kara burned her village.
"You are kind to say so," she murmured.
"I am sorry," the assassin said heavily. "I stole that from you. It would have been taken, sooner or later. Even so, I am sorry that your destruction was because of me."
Kara smiled a little, then. "Does the snow apologize to the branch that breaks under its weight? You have shown me my limits; it is a lesson without price." She canted her gaze eastward as well. "I think," she said, "your next battle will not be mine. There must be other lanterns for me to seek out, however dimmed by darkness they may be." She exhaled. "And messages to bear, if there are any safe to entrust to a lone traveler."
The assassin paused briefly, his right hand rubbing the grain of his sword's sheath. "There are people who still believe in honor, Kara. They are few, and they are hidden--but if you listen to enough stories, they are there."
She nodded slightly. "Others. And also you."
He did not answer her; his black kimono rippled as Kakita Koshin vanished into the darkness, quickly becoming lost in the waving fields of grass. The Shinjo watched the dancing blades for a long time until she was certain that the swordsman was far from her.
"I wish you well on the path you have chosen," Kara said. She murmured to Never, and the mare knelt so she could mount more easily. "May Amaterasu's light guide you--or if not hers, some other candle of your heart's devising."
Beyond the village there was only silence, as the Dragon returned to the battles yet to come...
*
It took so little time for the fires to leap from hut to hut, when she had completed her preparations. The work of years, of sweat and toil, gone in a blaze of heat, a haze of smoke. Shinjo Kara felt the flames at her back as she rode away. It was a fitting pyre, she supposed, for the magistrates, for her ashigaru, for her own ashen dreams.
Hope cannot die. It can only be thrown away.
She smiled again, remembering the Dragon assassin's intent gaze, and vowed silently to travel to the compass of those words, wherever it took her next.
* * *