Beyond the mist…
Part Three · Kasumori
Three bronze stands carry fine threads of light toward Kimiko’s bound wrists. Her confiscated blades lie on a side table.
The sanctuary floor was cold beneath Kimiko’s knees. Daigo had taken her remaining weapon and laid both blades on a table by the door. Nayori drew the bindings through three bronze stands, then began to close a circle of light around her.
Kimiko watched the threads tighten. Each one passed through a ring of bronze before reaching her skin. When she pulled, the nearest stand trembled against the stone.
Nayori“Be still. It will be easier.”
Kimiko kept her eyes on the trembling stand. She whispered Hotaru’s name, then Mio’s. She tried to remember the cook’s face. No one had asked whether she was ready.
Hotaru, an elderly silver-haired monk with a wooden staff, waits beside a hooded Black Lotus operative outside a latticed sanctuary door.
Outside, two figures climbed a narrow service stair. The hooded operative had followed Kimiko across the roofs and seen the king take her from the bedchamber. Hotaru had found the watcher on the lower landing, waiting for a way inside.
The lotus clasp had told Hotaru enough. She had followed Kimiko’s journey from Astralon, afraid of what her return might mean. Here, at last, she knew a path the assassin did not.
Hotaru“This stair opens behind the sanctuary. I used it when she was small.”
Through the lattice, they could see Kimiko on the floor. Hotaru’s hands tightened around her staff. The operative looked once at the distance between the queen and the door.
Black Lotus operative“I’ll turn them toward me. Get her out of that circle.”
Daigo recoils on braced legs as the operative’s knife strikes his armor. Nayori counters toward the operative; a stray shot hits Hotaru as she topples a bronze pedestal, freeing Kimiko.
The lattice door struck the wall. A knife flashed toward Nayori. Daigo turned, and the blade swerved into his breastplate with the same wrenching force Kimiko had felt in the bedchamber.
At the same instant, Hotaru rushed past the operative. Kimiko pulled against her bindings, dragging the nearest bronze stand toward her. Hotaru caught its rim with her staff and wrenched it over.
Bronze struck stone. One thread snapped, and Kimiko pulled her hand free. Behind Hotaru, the operative closed on Daigo before the king could reach the circle.
Nayori wheeled toward the operative. Light flashed from her outstretched hand, driving the attacker back. One shot went wide across the broken circle.
Hotaru was still wrenching the stand over when the stray shot caught her in the side. Her staff splintered against the stone as she fell, dragging the bronze ring clear of the circle.
The last binding came apart. Kimiko lunged forward and caught Hotaru, pulling her away from the fading light. The old woman’s weight sagged against her.
The operative drove Daigo back toward the doorway. In the brief space that opened beside a pillar, Kimiko lowered Hotaru to the floor and knelt beside her.
Kimiko supports the dying Hotaru beside a sanctuary pillar. A broken wooden staff lies near them.
Kimiko held Hotaru against her and pressed a hand to her side, trying to hold the warmth inside the familiar gray robe.
Kimiko“Look at me. We can get down the stair. I can carry you.”
Kimiko“They said you were my grandmother. Was it true?”
Hotaru“Yes.”
Kimiko“Did you know what they would take from me?”
Hotaru“I knew they had chosen your life before you could speak. I took you away. I did not know this was what they meant to take from you.”
Hotaru tried to draw breath. Her fingers found Kimiko’s wrist, just above the mark the binding had left.
Hotaru“You used to hold so tightly when you were afraid.”
Kimiko tightened her grip. Somewhere behind her, the operative cried out. Steel scraped across stone, and a rush of wind sent the broken staff rolling.
Hotaru“Listen to me. Take the stair. Keep going.”
Kimiko“There’s so much you haven’t told me.”
Hotaru“I know. I’m sorry.”
Her hand loosened. Kimiko waited for the next breath, then bent closer, as if she might have missed it. Hotaru’s eyes had settled on her face. They no longer followed her when she moved.
Kimiko holds Hotaru close in the brief shelter of the pillar, with the sanctuary exit beyond them.
“Kimiko!” The operative stood in the doorway with a blade raised against Daigo. “Now!”
She could stay beside Hotaru. She could turn back toward the queen. Beyond them, the fallen bronze stand stirred as Nayori reached for its threads.
Kimiko lowered Hotaru carefully to the floor. She retrieved her blades from the table and ran through the door the operative was holding. The sound of the fight followed her down the first turn of the stair.
Seiji braces his long iron staff across the sanctuary stair as compressed air gathers at his outstretched hand.
The lower gate was in sight when the air closed around her. Kimiko’s next step landed behind the last. She caught the railing as a man came down from the gatehouse, an iron staff across his body.
Seiji“Put them down. No one leaves the sanctuary armed after an alarm.”
She knew him from the upper terraces: Seiji, the warden who steadied travelers on the steep crossings. Now she stood before him with drawn blades, fleeing the halls he had sworn to guard.
Kimiko“They were going to take my memories. Everything I am. They killed the woman who stopped them.”
His eyes flicked to her wrists. The pressure faltered, then returned. “You can tell the elders. Put down your weapons.” Behind her, footsteps sounded on the stair.
Kimiko moves inside Seiji’s iron staff as his current of air draws her toward him on the narrow stone stair.
Kimiko tried the space beside him. Seiji closed his hand. Air dragged her back onto the center of the stair, and the staff struck her shoulder hard enough to numb her arm.
She caught the next blow on crossed blades. The force drove her down a step. He was stronger, and every attempt to retreat brought her back within his reach.
Hotaru had taught her to stop fighting a movement she could use. Kimiko let her rear foot slide, showing him the beginning of another retreat.
When his fingers closed, she went with the pull. A low step carried her inside the iron staff. She turned beneath his arm and drove one blade into the gap below his side armor.
His breath broke. The pressure vanished. Kimiko pulled the blade free and caught his sleeve as he fell, turning him toward the steps instead of the open edge.
Seiji slumped against the gatepost, one hand pressed hard to his side. He was still breathing. Kimiko left him there and went through the gate before he could raise his staff again.
Beyond Kasumori’s mist, Kimiko sits on a low roadside stone in the dawn light and looks back toward the hidden mountains.
She followed the descending path until the temple roofs disappeared. When the cloud thinned around her, the road ahead was bare stone and wet grass. She kept walking until she could no longer hear footsteps behind her.
At a bend below the shroud, her legs gave way. Kimiko sat on a low stone and looked back. The mountains were still there. Somewhere above the mist, the kitchens would soon open.
She remembered Hotaru waiting beneath the trees in Astralon, a practice staff laid across her knees. There had always been time for one more attempt. Kimiko had never thought to count them.
Now she would never hear Hotaru’s whole account. She could be angry with her for that. She could miss her so badly that drawing breath hurt. Both feelings stayed as the first sunlight reached the road.
Her parents were alive in the sanctuary. The people who had once carried her into the garden were beyond her reach. She had found their names and lost the woman who could still remember her small hands.
Kimiko covered her face. For a while, she let herself weep. The contract remained folded in her pouch. The shroud still covered Kasumori. Neither told her where she had to go next.
When she could stand, she wiped her eyes and eased her aching arm against her side. Then she turned toward the road below. She was still Kimiko. For this morning, that was enough.
Beyond the mist, the road waited.
