𝑪𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝟐. 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑺𝒑𝒆𝒂𝒓 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑺𝒉𝒊𝒆𝒍𝒅
.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.
Would it truly have killed Oba to cry?
Kuroe was not asking for collapsed-on-the-ground wailing, sleeves over the face, dramatic appeals to heaven. She would have accepted one tear, just a tear, one sniffle, a token "woe is me"? Apparently, this had been too much to hope for. The old hag had looked relieved to shove them into the custody of two strangers in red and black, and she had all but brightened when Takamitsu and Kaneko took over the three white-robed offerings. Fifteen minutes earlier, Kuroe had, in a moment of stupidity, thought she and Oba had perhaps bonded. Clearly, she must have been delirious, because Oba had bowed until her forehead nearly met her knees, and sighed in a way that meant: Finally. Take them. Good riddance.
Pff.
Kuroe trudged along with her arms folded over her middle tightly and glared at the two red-and-black figures. These two? Whatever half-decent impression Takamitsu had managed to make earlier, with the "Bright Spear" title and his big shiny spear, and the smile, and the affectionate hair-ruffling—well. That impression was collapsing fast in Kuroe's eyes.
Through your sacrifice, we will save this land from drowning and annihilation, and Yamata no Orochi will be quieted for another twelve-year cycle, he had declared, all heroic and glowing.
Yes, yes, very inspiring. Beautiful speech. Except for the tiny detail: the "we" part apparently meant she was dying while he got to keep smiling.
Sacrifice. Sa-cri-fice. The spelling would not leave her alone.
Kuroe scowled at the folds of Takamitsu's crimson overcoat as he walked ahead of her. Idiot. Big, handsome, bright, heroic idiot. The kind who would rescue a kitten from a tree and then beam nobly while everybody applauded.
Takamitsu walked through the mountain path, the forest, the roots, the stones, the whole damp body of Izumo as he hacked aside winter weeds and low branches with ease and competence. Even now, with the path no more than an animal track pretending to be a road, he kept glancing back over one shoulder at them with that reassuring smile. As if she ought to feel grateful; as if dying for the peace of the land were an honor, and they should be flattered to be chewed by a saika. He was even whistling. His spear that gave off that strange radiance, a dull sort of golden pure light; the sutras carved along the shaft were breathing in what little light source the first evening had to offer to store it inside the blade. Was that light because of… what had he called it? Right. Cursed energy, he had called it.
Kuroe filed the question away for later.
Behind her, Shirae padded quietly, with her head bowed under white hair. A child walking to a funeral procession.she had already accepted; maybe she had, maybe that was the secret, she'd made peace with the whole monster-sacrifice business.
Well. Great for her. Kuroe had not.
Behind Shirae came Omi, still sniffling and crying in hiccups every few breaths. At this rate, Kuroe was beginning to worry the girl would dry up entirely before Yamata no Orochi ever got the chance. If that happened, then what? Did they carry her corpse as a backup snack? Did they explain, terribly sorry, Your Eight-Headed Majesty, one of the sacrifices dissolved prematurely from weeping?
Useless, Kuroe decided grimly. Dead weight.
At the very back came Kaneko, like a walking fortress. TheIron Blossom herself. Kaneko really was tall, taller than any woman Kuroe had seen in Izumo and only a little shorter than Takamitsu. The giant tessen strapped to her back made her silhouette even more imposing. Pretty face, yes; shame about the "fortified city wall" aesthetic. She kept throwing looks down the line of the procession. Some at the girls; more often at Takamitsu. And not ordinary looks either, but those were very particular looks as if she was scolding him for something he had not even done yet. Takamitsu, naturally, only shifted his spear on his shoulder until Kaneko would huff and look away. Her ears turned pink.
Oh. Oh-ho. Interesting. Kuroe tucked that information away for future use, in the little mental pocket labeledWeaknesses and Valuable Clues.
Then, a root caught under her bare foot, and she nearly pitched forward face-first into the path. She caught herself, glaring down at her toes, because the path was barely a path at all and a ribbon of trampled earth was threading through undergrowth and old trees, split by roots and jagged stones. So much for the sacred purity of the immaculate little miko.
"Hey, Taka-niichan," she called loudly.
Behind her, Kaneko sighed deeply, and immediately it was obvious she hated every syllable of the nickname.
Kuroe ignored that and raised her voice more. "Don't you important people know any better paths? If I'm going to die to His Eight-Headed Majesty, I'd prefer to arrive clean."
Takamitsu laughed. "Can't do, Kuroe," he called back, too cheerful for a man escorting three children to ritual slaughter. He lifted his spear in a wide arc to gesture at the forest around them. "Trust me, this way's safer."
Kuroe blinked. Safer? For whom?
"There are too many people out there," he clarified lightly, "who'd like nothing more than to see this ritual fail."
Kuroe straightened as her whole mind perked up like a fox spotting food. People who wanted the ritual to fail? There were actually people like that? Allies? Sensible people? A hidden society of anti-child-sacrifice rebels? If there were people who wanted the rite ruined, then there were sides, and if there were sides, there was politics, and if there were politics, then surely there must exist at least onesane person in the entire damp Yamato who looked at the problem of feeding children to a serpent and thought, perhaps not—
"—and the easiest way to sabotage it," Takamitsu went on, crushing her hope on purpose, "would be to kill you three before Yamata no Orochi gets the chance."
Kuroe groaned aloud because there it was. Hope: crushed. "So either way, everyone wants us dead."
Takamitsu did not deny it; he looked back at her over one shoulder, with that same bittersweet smile, entirely illegal on a face attached to a man saying things like that. Who smiled like that while escorting children to die? Kuroe decided very quickly that if she even made it out alive and somehow became some important minister, that smile was to be banned by her first decree.
Then a branch snapped somewhere in the brush and Takamitsu stopped all at once in alert. His hand lifted, and the grin vanished so completely it was like watching the sun being eclipsed. One instant: bright, annoying, all easy laughter. The next: stillness and lethal focus settled into place. Kuroe's own breath stopped with it as the light glowing along the spear grew until the blade looked like a lantern, and the fading light around them died, absorbed by the sutra along its shaft. Feeling the pressure in the air changing, she understood, without needing anyone to explain, why villagers whispered about him.
So that was what the Bright Spear actually was.
The moment passed just like that, and he relaxed; the smile came back as he waved them onward. "No main roads. Too dangerous. Just us, the vast forest, and the most awesome man in the Radiant Guard to guide you!" He pointed grandly at himself. "Me!"
Kuroe made a face at his back: definitely an idiot, but possibly a terrifying one. Still, under the scowl, another thought rose: I am not dying just because a bright idiot told me to.
By the time she tried her luck again, full dark had pooled properly among the trees and all around them. Only Takamitsu's spear, now, and some brave, precocious fireflies illuminated the path ahead through cedar and pine. Around them, trees were bound in shimenawa and hakuhei, and iwakura with moss on them followed little roadside shrines swallowed by roots. There were a small kamidana with long-forgotten offerings on them, the little bargains people made in a country where kami and curses and mythological beasts walked along. In the capital, perhaps, scribes in clean sleeves wrote down laws and taxes, but out there the world remained far simpler.
Kuroe squinted in the deep forest stretching at both their sides. Is that... fox fire? It probably was. Unconsciously, she drifted a little close to Takamitsu's back and twisted her head toward Shirae. The girl's eyes were still on the ground. Perfect.
"Pss."
Nothing.
"Pssst."
Still nothing.
Kuroe narrowed her eyes in offense and hissed, "Shirae!"
At last, Shirae blinked painfully slowly and raised those violet eyes in a silent what now?
Victory! Kuroe grinned. "Don't tell me you're fine with this," she whispered.
Shirae tilted her head, blank as ever.
Infuriating. So, Kuroe leaned closer, lowering her voice. "We could run tonight," she whispered. "These two aren't that smart, and if you help me, maybe even the crybaby can—"
Shirae looked at her like she was pitiable, then sighed loudly enough to suggest she regretted the conversation. "Run for what?" she asked in that depthless voice of hers. "To freeze in a ditch? To starve in some village that won't take us in? Better to end here."
Kuroe gawked. Who even said things like that? She had no memory, true, but she felt certain the correct answer to Would you like to avoid being eaten by an ancient serpent? was not No thank you, death seems better. Her voice came out louder than intended. "...You cannot be serious."
The procession stopped as Kaneko planted her tessen against the ground with a stomping thud. "Moon-child," she warned. "Move."
"Really?" Kuroe shot back, pointing at Shirae in outrage. "So you're just fine with dying because someone else told you to? That's insane!"
Shirae's expression barely changed, but her words landed with hard force regardless. "I'm saying," she said, "I would rather die than go back to that." Her gaze slid sideways. "Stop being stupid and accept reality."
Stupid.
Kuroe's chest flared with the insult, and before she could think better of it, she grabbed a fistful of Shirae's sleeve and yanked hard. "Just because your life's been rotten doesn't mean I'm stupid for wanting more! Maybe try living for once, you damn walking corpse!"
That got something. Shirae's eyes narrowed. "...Walking corpse?"
"Yes, walking corpse!" Kuroe yanked her sleeve again until Shirae stumbled with the motion. "Maybe if you reacted to anything one single time in your life, you wouldn't be so helpless!"
"Now, now, girls," Takamitsu said, turning with one placating hand raised and far too cheerful.
Shirae ignored him and that somehow seemed scary. She trembled—subtly, but Kuroe saw it—and said, in a voice like cold water poured straight down the back, "The world has no room for orphans like us. It never has, and it won't begin with you just because you think you are special." A pause. "You are naïve. It's... pitiable."
That settled it for Kuroe.
She lunged, and Shirae met her halfway. One moment, they were two white-robed ritual girls on a mountain path, the next they were a knot of limbs and elbows, white and black hair, fury, dirt, going down into frost-bitten leaves and rolling like two angry kittens. Omi gave an even louder sob, which Kuroe had not known was possible. They rolled once, twice, as Kuroe caught a white braid and Shirae elbowed her in the jaw for the trouble. Kuroe yanked Shirae's white hair hard, and Shirae's knee connected with her ribs. Dead leaves flew as dirt went under nails.
Somewhere above them, Kaneko made a sound of exhausted horror.
Then, at once, both adults moved.
Just as Kuroe got again a proper grip on a handful of Shirae's white hair, determined to leave her bald, the world lurched upward and her collar cinched as she left the ground. In one motion, Takamitsu had scooped her up under one arm like a sack of rice, which he fully intended to complain about but could easily carry. He barely seemed inconvenienced. In fact, his smile stayed in place. Strong, then. Disturbingly strong. He tucked her there against his side, secure and undignified, then turned back toward the second half of the problem. Kaneko had Shirae by one ankle, upside down and perfectly calm, as if this were not a human child but a slippery beast that had attempted insubordination.
Both Kuroe's and Shirae's braids swung in the dark as the two captured sacrifices locked eyes past their respective jailers and exchanged one final look of absolute mutual offense, saying we are not finished.
Takamitsu chuckled, and the gentle sound rolled out warm over the ruined dignity of everyone involved. "Now, now. No need to claw each other, I get it, you're nervous." Kuroe twisted in his grip and tried to bite his arm, but he dodged by the simple method of holding her farther away. "Shirae is not wrong," he went on, delivering wisdom no one had requested. "Your role matters. It matters to the balance of this land."
Kuroe glared upward murderously. To her annoyance, his voice changed.
"But," he said pointedly, glancing at her, "Kuroe isn't wrong either. No one should decide your whole life without you at least having a say in how you meet it. Both things can be true."
Kaneko spun. "Fujiwara no Takamitsu," she thundered, "remember your role—"
"Yes, yes," he waved her off. He looked down at Kuroe, a smirk returning. "But fighting solves nothing."
"Being eaten solves even less," Kuroe grumbled, glaring up at him from her undignified perch.
His eyes narrowed with infuriating confidence, "I know exactly why you're bristling."
"Do you?" Kuroe shot back at once. "Because I don't remember you volunteering to be the human sacrifice."
He held her glare; then, slowly, grinned in that brotherly, dangerous way of his that made it seem as if he might hand you a sweet bun with one hand while killing a bandit with the other. "You're bristling," he said, sing-song. "Because you're hungry!"
Kuroe stopped and considered deeply. Oh no. How dare he be correct?
The spear over his shoulder lit a little brighter at that exact moment, as if his cursed weapon had decided to join the conversation, lighting the wood like sunlight. Takamitsu tipped his head back and glanced up through the canopy at the darkening sky, judging the hour, the air, perhaps also the mood of nearby monsters. "Neko," he called, "we camp here tonight. I'm hungry too. Tragic, isn't it?"
Kaneko gave Shirae a small shake by the ankle, as if checking whether all that stillness meant she was also dead, then her gaze paused on Omi; on Shirae; lingered on Kuroe. "We should tie them," she said at last flatly, entirely a real suggestion. "They're a little too... lively."
Kuroe nearly choked. Tie them? Tie them?
Takamitsu looked deeply wounded on their behalf. "What kind of guardians would we be if we tied up a few little girls?" Kuroe opened her mouth to say, The kind escorting them to a giant serpent, but Takamitsu was already continuing. "Don't worry. I have everything under control."
Kaneko's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "If they try to run—"
"They won't."
Before Kuroe could decide that this was an excellent time to begin trying, Takamitsu tipped her forward under his arm until they were suddenly nose to nose. Kuroe went cross-eyed for one terrible instant. "See?" he said pleasantly. "She doesn't look like someone who wants to run from us. Right, Kuroe?"
The pressure of his arm shifted barely enough to count as movement, but Kuroe felt it, and the hairs on her arms rose all at once, every single one of them standing up. The air around Takamitsu channeled not visible, but as if he had put the world on "don't mess with me" mode. He drove the butt of his spear into the soil, and the blade glowed. Beautiful; also, unfriendly. A ripple of cursed energy spread outward in a pressure wave.
Kaneko didn't blink. Kuroe did, because the message under the display was clear, as if he had bent down and whispered it into her ear: Choose wisely. Run, and I'll grab you before your second squeak.
She looked up at him properly, suspicion mixing with a reluctant line of respect. Not really an idiot, then. "...Right," she said, forcing a fake crooked smile.
No one believed it, but Takamitsu straightened and resumed whistling while carrying her into a small clearing a little way off the path, holding his spear high so its glow sketched the tree trunks in bands of amber. He still did not put her down; the indignity of this burned as much as the promise of the eventual serpent-eating.
"Omi," Takamitsu called, back to be bright as ever, "firewood. I can count on you, yes?"
Omi squeaked, then nodded with the terror of a peasant just promoted by accident and scurried off to gather fallen branches. At least one of them had advanced at least from sacrifice to kindling assistant.
Kaneko set Shirae down without warning, and Shirae, in one quick motion, folded herself beneath a tree with her arms around her knees and her back presented to the world in perfect, offended silence.
"Oh, sulk then," Kuroe muttered from under Takamitsu's arm, kicking one entirely symbolic little kick in Shirae's direction. It hit nothing but air, but it was nonetheless satisfying.
Above her, Takamitsu huffed a laugh. "Kuroe," he warned softly for anyone listening but edged for her alone. "If I put you down, you won't run. Promise?"
Kuroe's throat clicked as her chin attempted to rise and achieved only half the journey; she held his gaze because looking away first would feel too much like yielding. After a beat, she gave one tiny nod.
"See? Good girl."
He eased her down onto her bare feet and, insult upon insult, gave her shoulder a little distracted pat to brush dust off her sleeve. She scowled at him; then she scowled at Shirae's turned back; then she marched over to a different tree and collapsed into her own offended ball of knees and arms, because if Shirae was allowed to scowl, then Kuroe was certainly entitled to equal and opposite sulking. If the walking corpse wants to die, she can die without my company. Kuroe would find her own way out. She would think. She would watch. She would...eat first. Her stomach, hearing the cue, gave a hollow drumbeat that carried through the clearing.
"Ha!" Takamitsu beamed. His head snapped up as Omi crept back into the clearing with an armful of sticks, trembling like she was delivering wood to a tiger. "See? Fruitful collaboration. I knew I could count on you." He crouched, tucking his long ponytail over one shoulder, and began arranging the wood with a competence that was, again, annoying.
Kuroe watched. At first, she tried not to; better, surely, to look disdainful and detached, better to sit there like a wronged little cat and make no sign of interest in anything. Unfortunately, curiosity had always been stronger in her than good sense.
Takamitsu drew a paper strip from his sleeve. A narrow piece of paper, inked in black messy strokes. He fed it a breath of cursed energy, and Kuroe felt the pull of it at once. The paper warmed, then glowed, then—
Fwoomp.
Fire leapt up.
Clean, useful fire, not the wild, black, and blue floaty thing from before, but ordinary flame. It licked along the kindling and immediately caught the wood.
"Oh," Kuroe breathed entirely involuntarily.
Before she could stop herself, she had scooted closer; then a little closer; then another little closer. At some point, she realized she had nearly crept under Takamitsu's elbow, and on the other side of him, another pale shape had done exactly the same: Shirae, equally drawn in, equally guilty of curiosity. The two girls glared at each other under Takamitsu's arm with instant mutual accusation, as if each had independently discovered the fire and the other had stolen the idea. Kuroe, mid-glare, had the inconvenient thought that Shirae's eyes were actually very pretty in firelight. Violet, and not dead at all; very much alive, in fact, if one was paying attention. Especially when fixed on something she wanted. Kuroe disliked noticing this.
Takamitsu, crouched between them, looked left, then right, then visibly pleased with the arrangement, as if he had set out a bait and two foxes had walked right into it. He drew out two more talismans and dangled them between the girls. "Here. Want to give it a try?"
Both heads snapped up too fast. Kuroe's hand shot out first; Shirae's followed, slower but no less certain.
From the edge of the clearing, Kaneko's voice drifted over, in another clear warning. "Takamitsu." Kaneko and Omi were at the perimeter of the clearing, fixing other talismans to tree trunks in a ring around them. "The next step is what—handing them swords?"
Both Kuroe and Shirae froze, the talismans halfway to their fingers, but Takamitsu did not even turn around. "Come now, Neko." He shook his head. "What's the worst two orphans can do with a few low-grade talismans?"
Kuroe thought of several possibilities immediately; very creative possibilities.
"It's not as if they're prodigies. Unless," he added, still friendly, but with an edge, "we are idiots feeding away exactly the kind of talents this country is starving for, hm?"
Kaneko stiffened; her eyes cut to him, then to the girls, then back. "The taishō was clear. We already discussed this."
Takamitsu flapped a hand as if captains, orders, doctrine, and perhaps heaven itself were all annoying inconveniences. "Hiyori-chan made me dozens for this ritual. Let them play a little, they deserve a little fun before their duty." The grin returned, shameless. "You're too tense, Ne-ko-chan."
Kaneko's ears turned an impressive shade of pink before she turned away with a huff. "And you are too soft on sacrifices," she grumbled. She marched away before her face could betray anything more and motioned Omi after her. "Perimeter. Since someone refuses to be prudent."
"Ah," Takamitsu murmured once she was out of easy striking range, "she's really taken it to heart." He scratched the back of his head, sheepish and just the tiniest bit fond. Then he lifted the two talismans again at Kuroe and Shirae. "So. Want to try?"
Of course they did; each girl snatched one and sat cross-legged at once, trying very hard to look like serious students.
Kuroe turned the talisman over carefully in her fingers with her breath stupidly buzzing in her chest in anticipation. "Hiyori-chan you said," she repeated the name. "The one who made these. Who is she?"
Takamitsu folded his arms and settled opposite them with the air of a teacher who actually wanted the questions. "She's one of our Shōshō. Former head priestess at the Southern House's main temple. She can spin talismans in her sleep, borrowing others' cursed techniques. Some light fires, like the one in your hands. They were created with the help of another Shōshō." He nodded toward the flames. "Some test the Sight, like the ones we used on you in the village. Some—" he nodded at the talismans on the shaft of his spear "—are infused with my cursed technique. They're like small lanterns that attract ambient light to my spear, Hikarimori, so I have a light source to manipulate even at night. And some create a small alarmed barrier."
"Barrier?" Kuroe echoed.
He tipped his chin toward Kaneko, and as if on cue, Kaneko pressed another talisman to a tree trunk; a tremor ran from branch to branch around the clearing. The air warped for a breath, a humid, glassy thing, and then resolved into the faintest dome, visible only if one looked slightly beside it rather than at it.
Kuroe's eyes widened. Barrier talismans! The old stories were true, then, not just shrine-story things to keep children from wandering too close to old graveyards, but actual working talismans, and enough cursed energy to tell the dark where it ended.
"Oh!" Kuroe grinned before she could help it. "A real barrier!"
Takamitsu tugged open the inner edge of his crimson over-robe, enough to show a stitched talisman tucked near his chest. "And this," he said, tapping it, "it's very useful! A weather-warding talisman. Keeps the wind's teeth and the cold off."
Kuroe leaned in immediately to inspect the stitching, and on his other side, Shirae leaned in too, face tipped with such hungry interest that for one moment she looked less like a shrine ghost and more like an actual child. The two girls noticed what they were doing at the same time, and both recoiled in mutual disgust. Then both leaned in again because curiosity, once awakened, cared very little for pride.
So she does react, Kuroe thought, both pleased and annoyed to note it. "Taka-niichan," she beamed, still eyeing the talisman stitch, "what is a shōshō? And what exactly is the Radiant Guard?"
Takamitsu's eyebrows climbed. "Don't tell me you've never heard of the Radiant Guard."
Kuroe gave him a look that plainly said, Perhaps I also forgot whether the sky is blue. Have you considered that? She flicked her eyes at Shirae, but Shirae looked back with an expression that translated to: Everyone knows this, you fool. Wildly unhelpful.
"The Radiant Guard," Takamitsu said, dropping into full lesson mode and wiggling a finger, "is the Fujiwara Southern House's elite. We Shōshō—the generals—are the court's arm where the saika are concerned."
"Saika," Kuroe repeated. She liked the shape of the word, short and ominous.
"Cursed calamities," Takamitsu clarified. "Yamata no Orochi is among them. There's no other unit in the country that handles them as we do. The Fujiwara Hokke can sit in court and sneer in good silk, but the moment a saika stirs too close to anyone they love, they send for the Fujiwara Nanke's Radiant Guard anyway." He leaned in, lowering his voice theatrically. "Both them and their friends would love to see this ritual fail. Think of it, one bad ritual and they get to point their noble fingers at us and say, 'See? Thugs in pretty clothes. Useless.'" Then, even softer: "Don't tell Neko I said that. She'll call me paranoid."
"I heard that," Kaneko said from the dark.
All three of them flinched like criminals, then Takamitsu laughed, and to Kuroe's disgust, she found herself smiling too.
Even Shirae's cheeks puffed ever so slightly. "...How many shōshō are there?" she asked so quietly that Kuroe almost missed it.
"Eight," Takamitsu said promptly. "Me and Neko. Hiyori-chan and the rogue who trails after her like a lovesick idiot. The trouble in duplicate from the Fujiwara Shiki-ke, the unwanted set of twins the Ceremonial House dumped on us. And then there's the Southern House's heir with his grim shadow."
This explained almost nothing, but Kuroe liked it all. She stored every piece of information away greedily. "And you're the strongest, right?" she said.
Takamitsu stilled so slightly that another person might have missed it, but Kuroe did not. Still, the grin stayed on his face even as his brow tightened. "Me? No way," he forced a chuckle. "Don't be silly." The word came too quickly and recited, almost. "Our taishō—our captain—is the strongest of us all and the best in everything."
Kuroe squinted at him. "But the villagers said—"
His hand landed on her head so fast she barely saw it coming and gave a swift, affectionate ruffle, perfectly timed to derail the question. "Villagers say many things, Kuroe." Before she could pry further, he pointed at the talismans in their hands. "Back to the task. These are simple fire-charms. Channel in a little cursed energy and—" he wiggled his fingers and gave an exaggerated boom"—flame."
"How?" Kuroe said, honestly lost. "Channel?"
Takamitsu reached out and tapped two fingers lightly to her brow; then to Shirae's. Kuroe nearly jerked back on instinct, but curiosity pinned her in place. "Close your eyes. Feel for the center. Lower, your middle, your hara. Your cursed energy sits there in a knot." His voice softened, becoming oddly precise. "Take a pinch, just a pinch, and draw it up the meridian to your fingertips. Slowly. Don't snatch and don't yank, if you rush and snap your meridians, Neko will lecture me until spring."
Kuroe obeyed despite herself, and the forest sank away a little as she closed her eyes. The fire became distant warmth as Takamitsu's fingertip pressed lightly against her brow. She looked inward; center; down. At first, there was nothing. Then—
Oh. There.
A smear, no, a knot. A dark and fluid core, like ink wobbling dense into water, refusing to dissolve. Restless like her. She reached for it carefully, with the same caution one might use around an unfamiliar dog. A bead of it answered, and she drew it up in an invisible line through the body to the hand, to the fingertips.
Click.
Her eyes flew open to the edge of the paper in her hand, glowing, then catching. A small flame bloomed around the talisman's ink strokes, circling it. A grin curled across Kuroe's face before she could stop it as warmth burst in her chest.
Pure unfiltered satisfaction and a deep obsession blooming in real time.
Oh. This she understood, this made sense in the cleanest possible way: thing, action, result. No prayers, no asking permission from the sky, and no old women pinching cheeks and calling it holy duty. The possibilities! Fire could do many useful things! Distract people, burn ropes, damage clothes, ruin supplies, create urgency, cause confusion, set one very particular tessen alight—
"Ah!"
Kuroe's head snapped around just as Shirae's talisman turned into a small sun in her hands. The thing had erupted into a much larger, brighter flame than Kuroe's, a furious burst that threw gold over Shirae's face and blackened the dirt beneath her in an instant. Shirae, true to form, did not scream, but she dropped it and sat back, eyes wide. She stared at the scorched patch of earth as she'd accidentally sneezed out the sun. Kuroe looked down at her own modest flame, then at Shirae's scorch mark. Great; she got a candle while Shirae had almost summoned summer.
Takamitsu bent and inspected both with a hum. "Curious," he said, chin in hand. "I didn't expect either of you to pull it off on the first try." He tapped the edge of Kuroe's talisman. "Great control, Kuroe" he said, grinning at her. "Next time, dare a little more."
Kuroe nodded at once, hoarding the praise like a squirrel hoarding chestnuts, because instruction was a door.
Then, Takamitsu turned to Shirae; the smile stayed, but his eyes narrowed. "How much did you take?"
Shirae blinked, honestly bewildered. "Eh?" she said. "It felt... very small."
"Mm," Takamitsu said as he stared at the patch of scorched dirt.
Kuroe followed his gaze. Very small? That little blaze had looked fully capable of setting half the mountain on fire if they had been standing anywhere less damp. "Show-off," she muttered with great conviction.
At last, Takamitsu clapped his hands once and rose, grinning back as the moment of seriousness had never existed. "Now! Enough lessons for tonight! We eat, we rest, tomorrow we walk. The Hiikawa valley won't wait." He ruffled both their heads in passing. Kuroe recoiled, while Shirae froze, but neither of them managed to avoid it because, with no sense of caution whatsoever, Takamitsu produced more talismans and dropped them into their hands. "Five each. Don't steal from each other and keep practicing."
Both girls snatched them too eagerly, then immediately shot each other looks, because just because fire existed now did not mean their earlier fight had died. Kuroe stared down at the little stack in her palms as her mind went racing ahead. She could do a lot with five fire-charms; not endless possibilities, but enough to be respectable. Beside her, Shirae sat straighter than before, one talisman hovering near her lap, her eyes more alive than ever. Kuroe was annoyed but was also, very slightly, pleased by the fact. Maybe she could get an ally out of her in the end. Then her thoughts caught up with the most obvious thing of all.
Huh. Wait.
She stopped and looked at the stack in her hand; then at Takamitsu; then at Shirae. Shirae, it seemed, had reached the same realization as the two girls lifted their heads in perfect, shared perplexity.
Was he leaving them with ignition talismans? Them? The sacrifices? Was he even realizing it?
Far off the clearing, Takamitsu settled his spear across one shoulder again and tipped his chin toward the perimeter, where Kaneko and Omi were finishing the ring of barrier wards. "Don't wander. And don't get lost, or I won't be polite. Please and thank you." Then, he went to help Kaneko.
When he came back to the fire, he did not ask for the talismans back, nor did he mention them.
.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.
Kuroe scrubbed sleep from her eyes with the clumsy heels of her hands, very careful not to crumple the talismans hidden inside her yukata. She had tucked them there like treasure. Had she… actually dozed off? Apparently yes. Offensive, considering the forest full of barriers, monsters, armed idiots, and impending ritual death. She swallowed a yawn and immediately noticed two things. First: Shirae's back was pressed against hers, warm, well, not very warm, because Shirae seemed unable to generate body heat, but warm enough to count against the cold. Second: something had been draped over both of them, trapping a pocket of heat around their bare feet and knees.
Kuroe pinched the edge of the fabric between two fingers, squinted in the dying firelight, and found herself staring at crimson cloth. Really? Taka-niichan's? That man made no sense at all, or worse, he made sense only in pieces that disagreed violently with each other. Wrap them in white for dying, march them toward a serpent-monster, then tuck them up like ducklings under his own over-robe when the night turned cold? She tugged the edge lower over her toes anyway, greedy for more heat and with no shame whatsoever, because the ground beneath them was hard and root-knuckled, and caked with frost.
Between its last orange breaths, she counted shapes. Three small bundles of sleeping sacrifice girls. Herself, Shirae, Omi. And Omi, ah, Omi had someone else's robe thrown over her too; a black cloth folded with suspicious care. So Kaneko was soft as well, provided no one was looking and provided she could pretend it had never happened.
Kuroe lay very still after that, because voices drifted across the embers, hushed but not hushed enough.
"Don't play dumb," Kaneko hissed. "I know what you're doing. I'm not stupid."
Kuroe did not move; so did Shirae, if the careful set of her breathing meant anything. Awake and listening, and just like her, pretending not to be. On the other hand, Omi mumbled in her sleep and dragged Kaneko's robe tighter around herself.
"You wound me. I'm doing nothing," Takamitsu's voice floated back lightly. "I'm only trying to make their few last days a little kinder—"
"Exactly that!" Kaneko cut in. "That is exactly it." A crackle from the fire as the hush of the forest pressed around the barrier ringing their clearing. "You promised the taishō you were suited for this. Undergo a binding vow even. Are you trying to die?"
"Geez, Neko." Takamitsu sounded like he was smiling at the stars. Kuroe pictured him doing exactly that and disliked how easy it was to picture it at all. "You're worried for nothing. I have no intention of sabotaging the ritual, I can assure you of that much." Then, with bitter amusement, he added: "That would be stupid. Especially for me."
Only the dying fire answered him.
When Kaneko spoke next, her voice carried a heavier tone. "Exactly," she said. "Especially after what it cost the taishō, twelve years ago, when you—" A click of her tongue. "—did exactly this."
Twelve years ago? Another ritual, maybe?
"Huh." The laugh breathed out of him and didn't come back. Then, he drawled just to be unbearable. "Cruel, Neko. Why are you cruel?"
"I'm not cruel," Kaneko shot back at once. "I'm trying to keep you alive."
Kuroe listened while the forest around them had gone into that strange old-hour silence where everything with paws or claws or wet scales seemed too close. Her fingers found the small scar hidden beneath her fringe without thinking. Why did Takamitsu's voice have that crack when Kaneko mentioned the ritual of twelve years ago?
"Kuroe's not wrong, you know?" Takamitsu said after a long moment, with a melancholy that didn't belong to his usual self. "No one should be handed a fate and told to swallow it without ever biting back. If the taishō hadn't thought that way, I wouldn't be here." He hummed, then more quietly still: "I wouldn't even carry the Fujiwara name."
Kaneko exhaled loudly. "Kami, this is stupid,. You're stupid. And I'm sure you are going to do something stupid."
Kuroe liked her a little more for that.
"I'm not telling you not to do it," Kaneko went on, with a loyal and resigned tone. "You know I'll help you even if I disagree, but I'd like to be told we are in a mess beforewe're drowning in said mess."
Takamitsu's grin came back into his voice, and Kuroe could hear it happening. "All right, Neko, then—"
The ground jumped.
Not in the way that usually meant someone was startled; the ground actually kicked. Cursed energy slammed the clearing like an earth-wake, and trees shuddered as the last embers burst outward in a scatter of orange sparks. The barrier ring around the camp flashed into sudden visibility, glassy and trembling, then spiderwebbed with force and cracked with a sound like winter ice splitting.
Kuroe sat bolt upright, and Shirae lurched up with her. Omi flailed under Kaneko's robe and squeaked like a stepped-on mouse.
"What the—" Kuroe began, squinting toward pitch-black night now that the fire had gone out entirely.
"Down!" Kaneko thundered from somewhere in the dark.
In a rare and admirable decision, Kuroe did not argue with the survival instinct. She threw herself sideways at the same instant three arrows hissed through the place where her head had just been. She hooked both arms around Shirae's middle as she went, dragging her down with her in a graceless sprawl. The fletching of one arrow kissed Kuroe's ear and superficially split her skin before they hit the dirt hard. She landed half on top of Shirae, limbs instantly scrambling to cover and grip.
"Would you stop standing like a damn target?" Kuroe hissed, feeling warmth trailing down her ear and the side of her neck. "Do you actually want to die?"
Shirae stared up at her, and for once, finally, gloriously, her eyes—yes, finally wide, scared eyes—were wide open. There you are, Kuroe thought wildly. There's a real person in there after all.
Then the clearing exploded into motion and noise.
A gold-white flare ripped open the dark; Takamitsu's spear, Hikarimori, breathed out pure light that lit his silhouette as he stepped forward into the broken edge of the clearing. The forest beyond the broken barrier was full of movement and shapes that belonged to no beasts.
Men.
Masked figures slipped in and out of the tree line in black robes, faces hidden behind long-nosed tengu masks. Some held short blades, while some had bows already nocked for the next volley. Some had their hands open, with raw, cursed energy pooling in their palms in trembling concentrations, nothing refined or controlled like the demonstration Takamitsu had given them. There were thirty of them, maybe more; Kuroe did not have time to count properly.
"Behind me," Kaneko snapped, her tessen sliding open into her hands.
She vaulted the last distance and shoved both Kuroe and Shirae backward with an armored forearm. Omi stumbled toward them, crying now for a perfectly respectable reason for once in her life.
"Stay behind Kaneko," Takamitsu said without looking back, a lethal grin on.
"And keep your heads down," Kaneko added.
Kuroe obeyed for perhaps half a second, then disobeyed from behind the edge of the tessen, peering around it shamelessly.
Takamitsu disappeared in a blink. No, Kuroe realized the definition was actually wrong. She had thought he moved quickly before, but she had clearly been an idiot. Takamitsu did not spring or leap; he was simply in one place and then, in the next blink, somewhere else altogether, a half-step forward. The ground didn't even explode where he was standing before. His spear came in a low and the first tengu mask split across the middle.
Light flared along the blade. Pure light.
Takamitsu was using light. Or pulling it through himself. Or reminding it of what he wanted it to be. It stretched from the blade of the spear too bright for the eye to hold cleanly, and wherever it touched matter, things separated. Mask from the face; arm from the shoulder. Takamitsu planted, shifted, and his outline stuttered—no, not stuttered, left an afterimage, a duplicate that tricked eyes for a heartbeat while his real self slipped to the next place. Arrows rained toward him, and he spun the shaft; a sheet of light covered the blade, and feathers that touched it winked into ash while shafts blackened and dropped in halves.
Much to Kuroe's disappointment, no heroic posing, which somehow made the spectacle worse, because the spectacle happened anyway, unavoidable when your weapon literally painted light on things. Some people were simply too strong to behave modestly.
Whatever.
Flash after flash, step after step, the darkness around him kept tearing open in gold-white lines. Once, as he pivoted before disappearing again, Kuroe saw it: under his foot, for the span of a blink, the air itself brightened into a solid patch, a little plane of condensed light. Takamitsu stepped on it as naturally as if the sky had put down a plank for him before disappearing again.
He's walking on light! she thought, scandalized and hysterically delighted. How can he do that?
Using that impossible angle, he dropped from above into another knot of masked men and cut through them in one descending arc, slicing forearm, mask, throat with outrageous grace. Every sweep of his spear left lines of light hanging in the air for the smallest instant before fading, the only source of light in that clearing. Kuroe had to squint to force her eyes to stay open in the flashes of blinding light.
Piercing and lethal, just as his title suggested: the Bright Spear.
Takamitsu chuckled as he went on. "On your left, Neko!" he called over the clash.
"I know," Kaneko shot back, and the ground answered her.
She planted the spine of her tessen and pulled. The iron ribs snapped open in a single motion as she rammed its base into the earth; the next volley of arrows struck it like rain on tile. Kaneko's cursed energy ran along the face of the tessen in reinforced lines, painting petal after petal opening from the center in a blossoming pattern, like a flower if a flower had been flattened under metal and armor.
"Stop smiling," Kaneko snapped at Takamitsu across the noise, without even seeing him. "You grin like a fool when you're about to get skewered."
"Oh, so you like me alive," Takamitsu called back, effortless, vanishing and reappearing three paces to her left with a bright blur. He turned over his shoulder just for a moment, just to be irritating. "Admit it, Neko."
"Admit this," she muttered and shoved.
Reinforced petals of cursed energy crept up over her armor too, slotting into place over her shoulders, ribs, and spine until she looked less a woman and more the fortress her title suggested: the Iron Blossom.
One masked figure broke from the treeline and rushed them around the edge of Kaneko's tessen. Kaneko did not even turn properly; she swung the tessen one-handed, flat side first, and the man hit a tree so hard the bark split in half.
Kuroe winced. A walking fortress and a blade faster than light, she thought, eyes huge. So that's why the village called them the Spear and the Shield. Yes. Yes, very glad these two were currently on their side.
"Stay behind me," Kaneko said. "Do not—"
Kuroe counted. One; two; not three. Her head snapped around in rising panic. Where was Omi? The place by their knees, the place where the hiccuping bundle of nerves should have been cowering, was empty.
"...Omi?" Shirae breathed, noticing the absence too.
Kuroe's heart flipped over as instinct took over; she shoved off the ground before thought could interfere. "Omi!"
"Do not move!" Kaneko swore behind her, eloquently and creatively, with the force of a whole noble clan's education.
"Sorry!" Kuroe lied instantly and ran.
She ducked under the tessen's edge just as the next arrow volley struck, rolled on dirt, flinched as a blast of cursed energy scorched the dirt where she'd been, then came up half-crouched, and sprinted into the dark, zigzagging because it felt smarter than dying in a straight line and also because she had no better tactical education available.
A masked man lunged with a short blade, but Kuroe slid on wet leaves, and the strike clipped a branch where her neck had just been instead of her; another arrow hissed past her cheek and buried itself in something soft somewhere behind her, and she did not—absolutely did not—want to know what it had struck. Kuroe ignored them all and ran three more steps, stumbled on a root, and only remained upright because panic had locked her knees. Then, just as the edge of a blade came down toward her skull, leaving her with no space to dodge—
A sphere of fire crashed into the attacker's tengu mask.
Not lethal, but extremely effective. Flame splashed across the beak and crawled upward as the man shouted and reeled back, the inside cooking, slapping at his own face with both hands, suddenly very busy not dying.
Kuroe twisted around and saw Shirae, standing several paces behind her and near the edge of Kaneko's defensive line, panting hard. One arm was still outstretched in a throwing posture, so stiff it looked accidental, while in her other hand she held another igniting talisman, ready to be thrown. The expression on her face screamed: What did I just do?
Kuroe stared and grinned, disbelieving even in the middle of terror. You little genius. So the walking corpse could bite back at the world.
Two masked figures wheeled toward Shirae at once, short blades up, but Kaneko hit the first with no finesse; she rammed the tessen into him with, and he hit the earth like meat meeting a chopping block. The second man's blade screeched across her armor and did absolutely nothing against the reinforced petals of cursed energy. Plates at her shoulder shifted at once, flower-shaped segments blooming outward where they had intercepted and then folding back as she reset her stance.
Kaneko planted herself between Shirae and the rest of the world, didn't even glance at Kuroe. "Hurry up and find her," she snapped. "I'll cover you."
The order slid into Kuroe's mind without a single hesitation, so, she ran again. Branches slapped her face, and frost-slick leaves crunched underfoot. The smell that reached her nostrils as she panted was all iron, and beneath it that copper edge that followed spilled blood. Lucky her, it was too dark in that corner to see the bodies. "Omi?" she whispered into the tree line. "Omi—"
A shape lunged from the left with a blade sweeping low. Kuroe barely got the thought oh, that's bad before a bright line flashed across the man's wrist, and his hand hit the ground still gripping the knife.
Kuroe stumbled backward and found Takamitsu suddenly there between her and the dark, breathing perfectly evenly, as though he had not just crossed the distance in less time than it took fear to fully arrive. He flicked gore off the blade of his spear with a single snap and looked irritated in a specific, older-brotherly way. "I think I said," he began, pivoting already to intercept another movement at the edge of the trees, "stay behindKaneko—"
"Taka-niichan, we lost Omi!" Kuroe blurted over his voice.
Another tengu mask rushed them from the right, but Takamitsu did not even turn his head; he simply let the man enter the space he had already measured, then introduced the attacker to the point of his light-engulfed spear. The man made one awful wet sound and folded down. Just then, from deep within the forest, came a scream.
Omi; no mistaking it.
Takamitsu's head snapped toward the sound. "Back to Kaneko. Now," he said, already gathering light beneath his boots to blink away.
Kuroe saw three things in the same instant: the next masked figure coming in from the left; Takamitsu shifting to meet him; and, at Takamitsu's boot, the short hilt of a knife tucked where only a smart person, or a sneaky one, would keep it. Kuroe was both. Her hand dipped. Mine now. She stole it in the space between heartbeats and ran.
"Kuroe—!" Takamitsu's voice followed her as steel hissed behind her because the next attacker had made the poor life choice of stepping in while Takamitsu was irritated. "Wait—"
She did not. Roots snatched at her feet, but she jumped over them. Bushes clawed at her sleeves, but she ignored them. Her focus was solely on reaching Omi before the worst could happen. Behind her, Takamitsu cursed once with feeling, and that apparently was a first even for him. Then Omi screamed again, ragged, and Kuroe burst into a spill of moonlight where the canopy broke.
She found her on the ground with one ankle twisted wrong and fingers digging desperately at leaves and dirt as she tried to drag herself backward. Over her stood a tengu-masked man with a short blade raised high for a neat downward thrust.
Kuroe chose not to think because thinking was slow, and the attacker's blade was not. She reached instead for that dark knot Takamitsu had shown her only hours before, the place center and low in her belly where the smear of ink in water drifted. The small, vicious pulse answered when she called.
She shoved at it, and the little stolen knife in her hand changed. Not engulfed in light, like Takamitsu's blade, but in a low buzz as if a bee was trapped in it. The metal trembled, drinking in every drop of cursed energy she forced through her fingers.
Kuroe threw her whole body into the man with all ten years of her weight and every scrap of panic she possessed. The blade went in under the ribs, deep enough to feel resistance and the hot, wet slip of blood over her knuckles. The masked man grunted, startled and furious.
Some part of Kuroe found that sound very human and, therefore, satisfying.
She yanked the blade free and grabbed Omi by the elbow. "Up up up!"
Omi scrambled with a small sob as her twisted ankle failed her. The man recovered far too quickly and came at them again—
—but a line of light punched through his chest, narrow and blinding, so bright it looked like someone had taken the first blade of dawn off the horizon and turned it into a weapon. Kuroe and Omi squinted against the light as the man made one small, shocked sound, folded in around the hole, and fell into his own blood.
Takamitsu was standing there, face gone still in the way only dangerous men's faces ever did when irritated. "That," he said, "was the last one."
For a few breaths after that, the world rearranged sounds: Omi's sobs; Kuroe's lungs rediscovering air; leaves settling; farther off, a last body twitching. Takamitsu scanned the dark one last time, then planted his spear in the earth and fed it more cursed energy than before. The talismans along the shaft trembled, and the blade blossomed into harsh white-gold light that raked through underbrush and tree roots and the low places between stones where other assaulters might hide.
Kuroe almost shut her eyes. And Takamitsu—
—Ah. There it was. Even before he lowered the spear, Kuroe saw him blink hard once, then once again, in quick succession. The rims of his eyes had gone slightly red, as if the light itself had been scraping them from the blade he always kept too near him and too bright. He turned his head a fraction, rubbed the heel of one hand across one eye, then the other, and immediately smoothed his face back into his easy expression of his before anyone could make a fuss.
So his light hurt him. That seemed exactly the kind of unfair thing the world would do.
Kaneko emerged through the brightness with Shirae behind her, both spattered with leaf-dust. Her armor had fresh marks across it, while Shirae's white robe now looked like it had been used to mop up the forest. Shirae's eyes found Kuroe's. Kuroe answered with a crooked, breathless look that meant, Thanks for the fireball, corpse-girl. Shirae's mouth moved very slightly in a You too, maybe. Then both of them looked away in exactly the same embarrassed instant.
"The barrier was compromised," Kaneko muttered, coming up beside Takamitsu. She snapped blood from the tip of her tessen before she folded it shut with a metallic click. "But I don't sense more of them inside the perimeter."
Takamitsu let his redden eyes sweep the trees once more, then gave a little laugh. "Honestly. Those Fujiwara Hokke cousins." He turned in a slow circle, surveying thirty or so very still problems in tengu masks. "They could have tried harder."
Kuroe blinked, baffled. Tried harder? The clearing was strewn with bodies, broken arrows, and enough blood, and this counted as not trying hard enough? Was this what being a Shōshō of the Radiant Guard meant?
Beside her, Omi had both hands wrapped around her ankle as fresh blood seeped through her fingers. The joint was already swelling badly, though the angle at least looked survivable. Her crying had dropped to miserable hiccups.
Takamitsu dropped to one knee beside her, leaving the spear planted in the earth like a lantern. The look on his face changed completely to his other face, the one that made children trust him. He took Omi's ankle in both hands and turned it carefully. "Not bad. An arrow only kissed you, little Sun." He looked up. "Neko?"
"On my way." Kaneko was already kneeling; she ripped a strip from her own sleeve without a blink and bound the wound with efficiency. "Do not move unless I say so," she told Omi. Then, adjusting the ankle with a firmer hand than Omi probably appreciated: "And do not put weight on it for a while."
Omi nodded tearfully.
Kuroe, meanwhile, was still staring at the dead; then at Takamitsu; then at Kaneko. "...Why do the Fujiwara Hokke hate you?" she asked. "Us too, I guess. What's the point of all this?"
Takamitsu scratched the back of his head, annoyed by the history of his clan. "The Fujiwara Nanke, the Southern House of the Fujiwara, were once at the head of the entire Clan. Then, Fujiwara no Nakamaro's rebellion happened, and things inside the Southern House went sideways. After he was betrayed by his own brother, the Radiant Guard had to step aside from the civil war, and the rebellion failed. On the emperor's orders, Fujiwara no Nakamaro's family was branded as traitors and executed; not a single one was spared, not even the children. After that, the Nanke lost the lead of the Fujiwara Clan to the Hokke, the Northern House. Fujiwara no Nakamaro's brother took the lead of the Nanke, but only the minor branches remain now, and we never regained our place in court. But the Hokke hate that even in disgrace, we still hold the strongest military force in the country." He sounded, Kuroe noted, not like a man talking about a civil war between brothers and cousins. "Now they'd love to see us pushed out of the Fujiwara Clan entirely. A failed ritual would be..." he made a small face, "convenient."
Then he stood, turned on Kuroe and Shirae, and folded his arms as the Big Brother of Great Disappointment aura descended over him.
Oh no. Kuroe and Shirae both stiffened like guilty cats.
"I thought," Takamitsu said mildly, which was worse than shouting, "I was very clear. Stay by Kaneko. Do not throw yourselves into mortal danger. Do not go hurling talismans at people's faces and—" His gaze dropped to Kuroe's hand, to the short knife still there "—stealing my knives."
Shirae's head dropped instantly, chastened by proximity. Kuroe, however, lifted her chin because the stolen blade was still warm in her grip and the hem of her yukata was dark with blood, and her pulse was still trying to leave, and it all had to count for something. "But Omi was gone!" she said stubbornly. "If I hadn't—she would have—"
"Exactly!" The reprimand folded into approval so fast it nearly gave her dizziness. Takamitsu dropped a hand onto her head and thoroughly destroyed what remained of her black braid. "Well done, Kuroe!"
Kuroe blinked. What?
Takamitsu grinned down at her, eyes still a little red at the edges. "Seems you've got a knack for cursed weapons," he added, nodding at the knife. "Better than many adults, actually. That's the spark of a proper Miko of the Moon, isn't it?"
Oh. Oh! Praises first, scolding after; a dirty tactic, but very effective. Kuroe puffed up immediately, cheeks first, then chest, then entire soul, a whole smug little pufferfish of a child. She tried to rearrange herself into a more chastened child and failed entirely.
"But," Takamitsu added, because of course there was a but, "too impulsive. You almost died. Duh."
There it was; balance restored.
"You should be scolding them," Kaneko muttered, still binding the last wrap around Omi's ankle. Still, the corner of her mouth had done something suspiciously close to not-disapproval.
"And you," Takamitsu said, turning to Shirae. "Good use of the talisman. You've got talent with them."
Shirae blinked once as color rose all the way to the tips of her ears. She ducked her head, and Kuroe almost laughed. "...Hm," Shirae said, in a tone that might have meant anything from thank you to please never say it out loud again.
With that, Takamitsu clapped once. "So! I'll overlook it, this time."
His eyes slipped to the knife still clutched in Kuroe's hands and Kuroe reacted on pure instinct; she hugged it to her chest, then behind her back, then slid one foot behind the other and plastered on her best innocent smile, forgetting that hiding a blade behind your back works poorly when the owner is standing in front of you.
Takamitsu's eyebrow lifted. Then, he rubbed at one eye again with the back of two fingers, and when he looked back at her, the corners were pinker now. "Hm," he muttered. He glanced down at the ground near his boots, then around the clearing, then at his side. "Seriously, all that light. My eyes are dreadful; I can't see clearly." The smirk curved back into place. "Clean up," he said, turning back to Kaneko as if the matter of the knife had never existed. "As soon as Omi's ankle's wrapped, we relocate."
Kuroe and Shirae looked at each other across the spear-light. Guilty, giddy and exhausted. But alive. Then both exhaled at once, the sound feathering into the bright hum around Takamitsu's spear.
The day after, Takamitsu never asked for the knife back.