Beyond the mist…
Part Two · Kasumori
Kimiko keeps low as she runs along the roof ridge, her hair streaming behind her.
Kimiko ran low along the roof ridge, placing her feet where the tiles met. Below her, the last kitchen lamps were going out. Ahead, a covered gallery led into the royal halls.
Mio had saved her a seat at supper. The cook had spoken warmly of the king she had come to kill. Kimiko slowed at the next crossing, then stepped over the gap and kept going.
Kimiko crouches on a timber beam with a dagger above Nayori’s bed. The doorway is empty.
At the temple roof, she waited for a patrol to pass below, then slipped through an unlatched lattice into the upper gallery. Beyond it, a lamp still burned.
Nayori lay asleep below, one hand resting on the coverlet. Kimiko searched the doorway and the shadows beside the bed. There was no sign of Daigo.
She eased onto a beam above the queen and drew her dagger. One target now. She would find the other before the halls woke.
For a moment she heard the cook’s voice again. Then Kimiko let go of the beam and drove the blade down toward Nayori’s chest.
Kimiko’s empty hand reaches after a curved trail of jade wind. Her dagger is embedded in Daigo’s breastplate at the doorway; Nayori sits up unharmed.
The hilt wrenched sideways. Her fingers opened against her will, and the dagger flew across the room in a thin current of pale wind.
Steel struck armor. Daigo stood in the doorway, one hand extended, her dagger buried in his breastplate. His breath broke sharply. On the bed, Nayori opened her eyes.
Nayori holds Kimiko in rose-gold threads while Daigo stands beside them with a mark in his breastplate.
Kimiko landed beside the bed and reached for her second weapon. Rose-gold threads caught her wrist. Another turn of Nayori’s hand drew her arms apart and pulled her to her knees.
Daigo worked the dagger free and set it beyond her reach. When she pulled against the threads, he looked at Nayori. “Loosen them. She cannot go anywhere.” The pressure eased. The light remained.
Daigo“Kimiko. We meant to speak with you in the morning.”
Hearing her name frightened her more than the binding. She looked from the king to the queen. “You were waiting for me?”
Daigo“Your name was in the Keeper’s arrival record. She sends the names of our guests to the royal household. We knew you had come. We did not know you had come to kill us.”
The open ledger. A place at supper. The Keeper had only done what she promised. Kimiko had given her name freely, certain it could mean nothing here.
Kimiko looks up at Nayori, bound between the two monarchs in the quiet chamber.
Kimiko“Why would you want to speak to me?”
Nayori“Because you were born in these halls. You are our daughter.”
Kimiko waited for the rest of it: a demand, a question, some purpose the lie was meant to serve. Neither of them spoke. The lamp wick clicked in the silence.
Kimiko“I grew up in Astralon.”
Nayori“After Hotaru took you from us. You were too young to remember. Your grandmother stole you away from Kasumori.”
Hotaru. She saw the monk’s hands guiding hers around a practice staff, remembered the patience with which Hotaru waited for her anger to pass. Her grandmother? Kimiko shook her head.
Kimiko“She taught me. She looked after me. Whatever happened here, you don’t get to tell me who she is.”
Daigo crossed to a cabinet and brought back a narrow, clothbound book. He opened it where a ribbon marked the page and held it low enough for her to read.
Her name appeared beneath theirs. A birth, a first daughter, carefully recorded in faded ink. Beside the formal entry, a smaller hand had written that she settled only when someone carried her into the garden.
The two monarchs face their captive daughter in lamplight; her eyes search their faces.
Kimiko“Which of you wrote that?”
Daigo“I did. There are several entries about the garden.”
Kimiko“Do you remember taking me there?”
His eyes returned to the page. Kimiko watched him search for an answer, and for a moment she wanted him to find one.
Daigo“No.”
She turned to Nayori. The queen met her eyes, but offered no memory of her own. Kimiko looked down at the small, patient handwriting. Someone had once thought it worth keeping.
Nayori stands composed above Kimiko, keeping the fine magical threads taut.
Nayori“Long before your birth, a prophecy named the firstborn of our line. Through ascendency, that child would gain power beyond anything our guardians have known.”
Kimiko“And you believe that means me.”
Nayori“You are our firstborn. We have kept the rite for you.”
Kimiko glanced at the threads around her wrists. “Is that why I’m still alive?” Daigo closed the book. He did not answer her question.
Daigo“You have seen the people here. You know what this place gives them. With your strength, you could protect more lives than either of us.”
Kimiko“What did it take from you?”
Daigo looks down at Kimiko while moonlit cloud fills the open lattice behind Nayori.
Daigo’s hand rested on the closed book. Nayori followed Kimiko’s gaze to it, then looked toward the clouds beyond the lattice.
Nayori“The shroud is sustained by what we give to it. Our memories. The attachments that made those memories matter. Ascendency draws its power from the lives we leave behind.”
Kimiko remembered Ren guiding the mist between the pillars. Mio’s proud voice. The cook thanking a queen she had never met. “Do your guardians know?”
Nayori“They know they have dedicated their lives to Kasumori.”
Kimiko“That isn’t what I asked.”
Nayori said nothing. Kimiko pulled once at the threads. This time, neither monarch eased them.
Daigo“Our blood helped us bear the ascension. It did not keep those years for us. I know whose name is in this book. I cannot remember being the man who wrote it.”
Kimiko“And after the rite you’ve kept for me? What would I remember?”
Nayori“Nothing of this life. The power would remain. You would remain to wield it. But the person you are now would be gone.”
Still bound between her parents, Kimiko holds her head up and faces them.
Hotaru’s hands. Mio waiting on the bridge. The smell of broth when the kitchen door opened. Kimiko tried to hold them all at once, as though the forgetting had already begun.
Kimiko“No. Whatever you think I owe this place, I will not give you that.”
Daigo“I gave the life I had. So did your mother. Every day, people sleep safely beneath the shelter it bought them. I cannot set them aside because the next life asked of us is yours.”
Kimiko“You can let me go.”
Daigo looked at the marks the threads had left on her wrists. He had noticed them before she had. She waited while he looked, giving him time to choose.
At last he set the book back in its cabinet. Nayori kept her hand raised. Neither moved to free her.
Nayori“We will begin before dawn.”
Beyond the lattice, the shroud moved between the sleeping houses. Somewhere below, a place had been made for her at the morning table. Kimiko held on to that small, ordinary future as the queen drew the threads closer.
She had come to take two lives. Now she had to keep her own.
