Beneath Ceaseless Skies #82 Read online

  Issue #82 • Nov. 17, 2011

  “Hence the King from Kagehana, Pt. II,” by Michael Anthony Ashley

  “The Red Cord,” by Wren Wallis

  For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

  http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

  HENCE THE KING FROM KAGEHANA, PT. II

  by Michael Anthony Ashley

  (Concluded from Issue #81)

  * * *

  “You know the Knots,” Saga muttered to still the panic-tide. “You know the Knots. You know the Knots. You know the Knots.”

  They all had to die. That was the right thing, Saga knew for certain, so he buried his fingers into the mound and found the fuse. He yanked it free, unraveling hand over hand, clearing it of fetid earth and inspecting it for rot and wear as he went. When he held a full thirty sticks’ worth, he laid straight the line and prepared the flint and replotted his escape route, upwind so the little things couldn’t smell him when they came. But here he paused.

  Obey Kagehana was the First Knot. Complete the mission, was the Seventh. And the mission wanted no evidence. Wanted no witnesses. Wanted this, Saga thought of the fuse in his hand. But there were questions that needed answering. There were Tomuchi’s intentions. There was Amé and her thieving. Marrow hated him at the moment: Saga was a target no matter what he did. So the choice was his, truly his. Flee the compound. Or infiltrate.

  (Please... please... please....)

  Saga lit the fuse and ran.

  * * *

  He knew of Amé’s approach long before Tomuchi and the others knew, felt her silken steps rolling in undulations through the woodbeam floor. She slid open the door without preface or invitation. “Greetings, warlord-sama,” she said in a strained voice and sat heavily upon a cushion facing him. The gathered samurai muttered at her audacity. She stank of blood.

  “You failed,” Tomuchi said.

  Amé laughed a quiet laugh while tapping a code against a column. And a human, who had impossibly gone undetected, shifted positions somewhere upon the roof.

  “Failures imply an end, o’ wide-browed one. Ours is not a business at its end, so let’s leave off talk of them.”

  Tomuchi’s heartbeat settled pace. “He lives.”

  “Ehh.”

  “But he escaped.”

  “I was forced to retreat, actually. But how clever you are. A stupendous observation. Was it this wound adorning my shoulder? Or my missing agent? My returning completely bereft of a tall, woolen-haired man in tow? What clue stimulated that mighty intellect? Please. I must know.”

  The samurai guard bristled.

  “Be careful,” Tomuchi said between his teeth.

  “Care is at my side, warlord-sama. It’s tea I wish to be full of.” She poured for herself. “Urine,” she declared after a taste. “You should’ve waited for my return. Your men are virgins fumbling at an obi when it comes to brewing.”

  “They were occupied preparing the compound for the prisoner, as befitting the plan. Your plan. Which I indulged because your clan’s broker has avowed over and again that you are a fo—”

  “Expert.” Amé said quickly.

  Tomuchi hissed his anger with a slow exhale. “An expert. My men starve. My emperor suffers. I have lost Kumo. And in exchange, your expertise has earned nothing but a shadow in a box.” He declared this last with a slam of his fist against his leg and immediately growled in pain.

  A worried guard leapt to his assistance. Tomuchi waved him away—”Sit down!”—then labored under his own power across the room where he claimed fresh bandages and liniment from a shelf in the wall.

  “Shall I help?” Amé said when he’d returned to his cushions.

  Tomuchi adjusted the hem of his hakama to expose a leg and peel away his old bandages. He grunted.

  Amé fanned herself with her hand in the heat of Tomuchi’s brazier but slid closer and anointed a fresh bandage with oil of astringent aura. Tomuchi held it in place across his thigh while she set about wrapping him with a new dressing. “Seems time I made more,” she said after a sniff at the liniment. “How’s this batch been working?”

  “Better than the last,” Tomuchi admitted.

  They plied in silence for a time, stretch and wrap and pull in a practiced fricative rhythm, the cotton and mint-oil smell adding its presence to a room already crowded in odor.

  “Is he still in the forest?” Tomuchi asked.

  “He was,” Amé replied.

  “Jimushi is best to lead the team, then. That old goat knows his way through a mountain wilderness. And he has no love for Saga.”

  “Jimushi is dead, peerless-sama. Your men were fishing him from the moat on my return. But were he living and still in possession of his face, I’m confused as to what team you’d have him lead.”

  “The team to capture Saga!”

  “You’re planning to go after him, then?”

  Tomuchi’s amazement nearly choked him. “Of course! You had your chance, akunin. A failure, no matter your tedious definitions.” When Amé said nothing he turned to his personal guard. “Send word. I want bowmen guarding the Shinzaemon and Hanbei passes within the hour. Hunters should sweep east and south, trap him against the cliffs. Take plenty of torches.”

  Two samurai leapt to obey.

  But as Amé finished Tomuchi’s leg and switched to the other—repeating their rhythm, stretch and wrap and pull—she asked a question.

  “What do you know of ghosts?” she said.

  And Tomuchi ordered them to wait.

  * * *

  Saga crashed through a thicket. The night was on the wane and he had no time for grace. Though with his foot in agony and his vision still spotted, he couldn’t hope for more than an ox’s agility anyhow. An ox skinny and lame. Kumo would have laughed.

  Be akunin. Be sly. Be silent. Attack from the blind. He skidded to a halt near his bundle and armed himself with more throwing knives, a giant war fan, and chisshi bombs.

  The akunin with the ruined throat lay nearby, propped in the bamboo. A woman, Saga realized after he pulled back her armor. One of Amé’s maids. And the other he guessed was the skillful code-tapper positioned on Tomuchi’s roof. While Saga waited to gather his breath he stared at the corpse—its humors already dripping to the forest floor reeking of corruption. How many times had he seen her in Amé’s company, all scented hair and painted lips and overlapping kimono worn like a sun-seduced blossom? With an effort he contorted that memory beside the sight of the dead warrior before him and saw the resemblance. The deception was no less astounding.

  Time was burning. Behind him the urn was sealed and fortified in iron and buried deep: the explosives that would breach it were mighty.

  Twenty-five sticks left.

  He clamped against the sneaking tug at his mind (please help kill rip hate hate hate please) and set off. The Hanbei pass was east, the Shinzaemon pass southeast. He took the long way south, avoiding them both.

  How long had he been their fool? Since taking this inn? Before? The promotion had been part of the trap, that much was certain. It too neatly forced his schedule. But they couldn’t have planned for his fight with Jimushi, could they? And it was sensible, though risky, to arrange Marrow’s capture within the stronghold of Tomuchi’s headquarters. But Kumo....

  Saga shook his head. There was only one question he wanted to ask. The others were just a distraction. And so he focused instead on keeping his sanity.

  Marrow was scathed. Blasted down by Amé’s light. And that terrible cauldron at his core—where Saga compressed and folded the rage he couldn’t tame—had exploded. What churned inside Amé’s trap was a form of Marrow that hadn’t existed si
nce—since a time before Saga’s memory. It was thinned but erratic, its pressure creeping like vines. Saga focused every moment to keep his tongue from blurting wildly that constant please!... hurt!... rip!

  He caught his hand reaching uselessly for his hip and rebuked it. “You know the Knots,” he muttered again. “You know them.”

  Be samurai. Be bold. Be honorable. Look your enemy in the eye. He found his hidden cache in a rocky hollow downslope and yanked on his samurai armor. He stuck the two swords in his belt and retied his hair and tried his best to arrange the akunin weapons comfortably with the samurai garb. He largely failed. He wrapped an extra layer of leather over his foot—the toeless socket throbbing with pain—cinched his shoe in place, and hobbled on.

  Twenty sticks.

  * * *

  “Speak your mind,” Tomuchi commanded of Amé.

  “First, I believe it’s time to end our little pretense,” she replied, plucking loose a bandage at Tomuchi’s knee before wrapping it more tightly. “Don’t you agree?”

  Tomuchi was suspicious. “What are you babbling about?”

  “Yaré yaré! You samurai are impossible sometimes. Fine. I’m suggesting, lightning-minded lord of men, that we stop pretending our alliance is anything more than a façade.”

  “We swore a bargain,” Tomuchi said icily.

  “To capture Saga,” Amé agreed, “and parade him in NikyM before the courtiers. To reverse this most shameful of scandals upon the Denrai and their northern emperor. But afterwards....”

  “Ah. Afterwards.” Tomuchi shifted his weight painfully. “Afterwards we will have a problem. Because you want him. And so do I.”

  “Well said,” Amé replied, sweet and lilting. “Truly well said.”

  Wordlessly Tomuchi shifted his grip as she worked down to his ankle. She was deliberate here with the more swollen flesh, their rhythm slowing, Tomuchi’s breath strained.

  “I asked what you know of ghosts,” she said. “The answer is nothing. You know nothing. You can’t control him with any hope of success.”

  Tomuchi laughed. “Is discipline a concern? Safety? I will have my emperor and all the swords he commands.”

  “And you’ll still lack my knowledge.”

  “Oh, yes. Your expertise.”

  “Knowledge and timing, venerable lord. What I choose to share. To whom. When. All weapons stronger than those stiff little idols hanging from your waists. For instance, tell me, what did you see tonight, when my trap was sprung?”

  This changed Tomuchi’s mood. “Nothing,” he said warily. “A nothing in the shadows. A blot. Then, once the lamps ignited, there was a... a hole in the air. There. Impossibly deep. A piece of chain and some metal shards fell to the floor, the strongbox you placed jolted, and suddenly all was as you see.”

  “That, what your eyes couldn’t apprehend, was the ghost of Sofurabi Saga.”

  “His ghost? The ghost of a demon....”

  The curious among the samurai leaned closer to the strongbox. The wary leaned farther away.

  “No, great one. The ghost of a man. The same as that of all men. It can’t be evil any more than a plow can be jealous. But it can be tamed, and yes to purposes that reflect all of the goodness and badness in the mind of the tamer.

  “Four generations ago an akunin agent did battle with one and survived. He fled across the Kanpekimushi swamps, reaching a trading village on the river, and collapsed half-dead at the village gates. He managed to toss a message to the night guard before a shadow dragged him back into the wilderness. ‘LIKE INK,’ was all he’d had time to write. And that’s what we call it still.”

  * * *

  Saga reached the edge of the wood at the clearing surrounding Tomuchi’s stronghold. And here he stopped. For beyond the moat, the compound shone like a lake of fire. Torchlight burned in all quarters, countless samurai shadows cutting through the flicker, the wall-top a congregation of flares, even the clearing dotted with tossed brands smoldering in the brush. Smoke came down on the wind in a dry bitter cloud that stung Saga’s eyes. He was a moment making sense of the spectacle, but then he crouched and, full of care, made his way along the wood’s edge, watching, gauging.

  When he found a path dark enough, he darted out into the clearing among the chopped and fired stumps. He stepped on a root with the wrong foot and curses crowded the backside of his lips, but he pressed on full-tilt, eyes roving, breath pumping, and at last plunged headlong into the steaming moat. He swam below the surface until his fingers met the wall where, with all stealth, he began to climb. Flushed with the heat, soggy and weak, he clung partway up, listening for alarm, hearing none. He was low enough that he wouldn’t be seen but high enough to be free of the steam and, hopefully, dry out. There was nothing for him to do except trust in the strength of his fingers. And wait.

  Five sticks.

  * * *

  When they finished his legs Tomuchi replaced his hakama. They moved to tend his arm, he holding one end of the bandage while Amé wound the other.

  “How did they... make it?” asked one of the anxious soldiers.

  Tomuchi turned to stare and the man’s breath caught in shame. But Tomuchi let the question hang.

  “Kagehana used a codename for their experiments,” Amé said as she worked. “Mihashira-no-kami, three-pillar god. Out west in the Jade Plains they have a flower by that name. Have you ever seen it? Three petals, three different hues? Each petal grows from a separate stem, but the stems are nourished by the same tangle of roots. The little peasant girls know that to untangle any two of the flowers, the third must be torn away.

  “By their theories, Kagehana described a man’s soul as composed of three stems—his intelligent self, his primal self, and his moral. And like those little peasant girls they took view of this nature and decided they could do without a third of it. Using some art carried in the minds of mystics from half a world away, they managed to untangle the intelligent man from his ghost. But to do it, they tore away his conscience.”

  “This is nonsense,” declared Tomuchi. “How did they achieve it? When? Why have they never fielded an army of these ‘Inks’? And why do they still skulk in their secret mountain villages? You are rich in legend and rumor, akunin, but bankrupt in facts. This is the ‘knowledge’ you intend to wield in claiming your prize? Thanks to you I have Denrai letters, dispatches, proof of their scheming. But this? I call it trash. And a waste of precious time.”

  Amé tch’ed and let his bandages fall.

  Tomuchi laughed bitterly. “You elected to share this information. Lay me no fault if its worth is meager.”

  “I’d thought to enjoy a negotiation with an adversary. Not suffer fumbling notions of subtlety from an idiot posing as a tactician.”

  The guards hissed as Tomuchi’s mirth died with a grinding of his teeth. “Your tone is discourteous.”

  “And your ambition is terribly naked. ‘How did they achieve it,’” she said, mocking. “So I’m to take your dripping bait in my teeth, shout the secrets I know simply because you threw a jape my way? To try to goad me with so juvenile a ploy is very simply insulting. I meet foolishness like that with the incivility it deserves.” She leaned back from him, dismissive, and sipped her tea.

  “If your injuries run that deep, I suppose the fables are finished.”

  “My fables are worth a great deal.”

  “Worth more than legitimate business? As in capturing this man already once proven defiant to capture!”

  “That is up to the lord warrior. How much is the secret to a successful mission worth to you? How much for the very information that would make your years of suffering, your three years of dishonor, worthwhile?” Amé took more sips, long slurping pulls that irked like cuts through the heavy quiet air.

  “Now you are trying at clumsy ploys.”

  “Am I? Then please, explain how you’ll capture Saga. And after that, how you’ll control him on the long road to NikyM. And days later, assuming your survival, how you’ll coerce
him to parade his devilry in front of the courtiers. Or perhaps you’ve given up on Saga. Perhaps your enemy’s paperwork is sufficient munition for your counterblow.”

  Tomuchi was a time in silence, his fingers trying incessantly to strangle the air.

  Amé drank on.

  “I hate this new face of yours,” he muttered.

  Amé’s laugh was dry. “The one you knew was a mask—makeup and putty. This new face is, truly, my old face.”

  “And yet you wore the mask every day. It was more familiar than this—”

  “Ugly thing? Peasant’s visage? Please, amazing-sama, don’t spare me by courtesy.”

  “I was going to say ‘truth,’” Tomuchi snapped. “But, yes, you are frightful, and in contrast to your abandoned disguise, unworthy of eyes accustomed to beauty. Not that I ever derived great joy from our meetings. Your honeyed prattle has always been a cloy in my throat.”

  He exhaled sharply, his impatience at its peak. “Continue your tale.”

  “You interrupted.”

  “Am I barring you now?”

  “I’d not assume to know your mind. Perhaps you have more fumbling questions.”

  “I said continue!”

  Amé returned her cup to the service with the barest clink. She rubbed at her shoulder. “What was I explaining?”

  “The conscience!”

  “Yes, yes. There’s the attention I would expect. The conscience....”

  * * *

  Parasitic wasps hunted alone. And as far as Saga understood, they felt no conscience. There were as many of the little devils as there were types of prey. The poufu would attach its eggs to the belly of a slain beetle. The pitou would paralyze grubs and inject her eggs inside the still-breathing victim. Every child in Kagehana could name hundreds of such hunters by his sixth harvest. But only one breed had excited Saga.

  The youpi, a lone hunter like the rest, paralyzed its prey with a sting then injected its eggs into the living prize. But unique among its cousins, youpi venom had more power than simple paralysis. In moments, the chemical magic took control of its victim, took ownership of its mind, and turned it into an unwilling bodyguard for the precious eggs. Caterpillars became defenders of wasp broods. Spiders fought and killed to protect the young of their own assassins. With one injection, the prey belonged to the wasp. That is, until the eggs hatched....