Chapter 8
Asami Eiko
The messenger’s feet pattered like rain on stone as he struggled to match my pace through the narrow hallway.
My shoulders brushed both walls. These ancient passages had been built for my grandfather’s generation, when the Asami were lean mountain wolves instead of well-fed bears.
I shoved a strand of iron-gray hair from my forehead, the same stubborn lock that had been escaping my pins since I was a girl.
The irony wasn’t lost on me that prosperity had made us wider even as it made us hungrier.
“Did the Emperor’s dog say what he wanted?” I barked over my shoulder without slowing.
“No, Daimyo, only that he traveled with all haste to see you, that his words were urgent.”
I snorted, the sound echoing off the stone walls. Of course, his words were urgent. Five thousand of my troops stood ready on our southern border, with siege engines aimed at Toshi Daiki’s soft underbelly. The Emperor would have to be blind not to notice that particular storm gathering.
Takashi was many things. Blind was not among them.
“Does this messenger hold rank, or did our dear leader send me an errand runner?”
My servant bowed again, and something in the nervous way he avoided my eye made me pause.
“Spit it out. I see you know more—”
“The Crown Prince, Daimyo. The messenger is Crown Prince Akira Kioshi.”
I blinked a few times, waiting for the man to clarify, to tell me he’d misspoken and the first prince did not stand in my antechamber awaiting my pleasure, but the scrawny retainer remained cowed and silent.
Now that was an interesting twist to a tedious day.
The hallway opened into an antechamber where my eldest daughter waited.
The blood-red plates of Katsumi’s armor caught the torchlight like fresh-spilled wine, each piece lacquered to a mirror finish that reflected my face back at me.
At eighteen, she was everything I’d been at that age—fierce, ambitious, beautiful as a blade’s edge.
She’d inherited her father’s height and lean build, but her dark eyes were all mine—filled with the same calculating gleam that stared back from my own mirror each morning.
She handed me a bowl of sake without being asked, her gauntleted fingers careful with the delicate ceramic.
I noticed she’d painted her lips the same crimson as her armor—a touch of vanity I’d normally discourage.
But rather than adding to her feminine grace, it made her look like war incarnate. So I approved.
I swirled the colorless liquid, watching light flicker against its surface. “Go find Kitaro,” I told the messenger without looking up. “I want my uncle with me for whatever this may be.”
The messenger bowed and scurried away, his thin frame disappearing into the shadows like smoke.
“Why would the Emperor send his eldest son?” Katsumi whispered once we were alone. A strand of black hair had escaped her helmet, hanging like a silk thread against her pale cheek. I was briefly jealous of the color of youth marking her features. It had been so long since I had such a complexion.
I raised a brow—a gesture made more dramatic by the scar that sliced across the left side of my forehead. “That, daughter, is the question of the day. Either Takashi’s strength is so great he fears nothing, or he’s desperate enough to risk sending his heir as a messenger.”
“Our spies—”
“Yes, our spies report an old, feeble Emperor with an even weaker guard.” I cut her off with a wave, rings glinting on every finger except my thumbs. “Are you willing to wage open war on the word of men who take money to swim in gutters?”
“What about the geisha? Our best information often comes from them.”
“True,” I admitted, setting down the sake untasted. “Pillow talk has won more wars than swords. Still, sending the Crown Prince himself? It is either brilliance or madness, and I have not decided which.”
“Has Kat bedded another?” My uncle’s growl filled the doorway like smoke. “Shall we remove her armor before the spanking?”
Kitaro stormed in like violence given form—shorter than me by a head but twice as lethal.
His steel-streaked hair was pulled back in a warrior’s knot so tight it stretched the weathered skin of his face, almost granting him a second youth.
The pointed ends of his meticulously waxed mustache gleamed with oil, and his dark eyes glittered like a hungry crow’s.
“Uncle.” Katsumi grinned as she bowed.
The hardened Samurai softened infinitesimally. She’d always been his favorite, the granddaughter he’d never had.
“Niece. You appear ready for battle. Whose head are we severing this fine day?”
His hand rested comfortably on his sword hilt—a habit so ingrained that I doubted he knew he did it. The blade was famous in the northern provinces, its black-wrapped handle worn smooth by four decades of use.
“Takashi’s whelp,” I said casually, enjoying the way his bushy eyebrows shot upward.
“Don’t toy with me, Eiko. Takashi’s a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them.”
I let out an exasperated huff that set my jowls quivering. “Believe what you will, Uncle. The most divine Imperial heir is waiting in our audience hall as we speak.”
“By all the gods.” His scarred fingers tightened on his sword. “Let me gut him and be done with this. One less Imperial brat to deal with later.”
“Can we hear the boy out first?” I asked with exaggerated patience, adjusting the thick gold chain that marked my rank—its weight around my neck as familiar as breathing.
“Fine,” he grunted, but his fingers drummed against the wrapping of his sword hilt. “But my blade begs for blood, and our enemy stands in our hall. Remember that as you waste time talking.”
I turned to Katsumi with a conspiratorial smile. “Sometimes the most important thing we women do is make sure the men’s leashes are strong and tight.”
My daughter’s laugh was melodic, her red lips parting to show perfectly white teeth. Even Kitaro’s scowl couldn’t quite hide his amusement as we entered the audience chamber.
The space had been designed to intimidate—high vaulted ceilings painted black as night, shadows that pooled in corners like waiting assassins, and my throne elevated just enough to force people to look up.
My guards, all in matching crimson armor, snapped to attention with two sharp raps of their polearms against stone, a quaint gesture I’d picked up from one of the surrounding islands years ago. The sound echoed like thunder.
And in the center of it all stood a boy.
No—that wasn’t fair.
Crown Prince Kioshi had seen twenty seven summers, but in his simple black silk robes, he looked barely older than my youngest son.
Rather than a topknot collared in gold, his hair fell to his shoulders like polished obsidian, framing a face that was all sharp angles and large, dark eyes.
The Imperial chrysanthemum gleamed on his wide chest, the only ostentation he wore.
He carried no sword, wore no armor, and stood alone—with no guard.
This boy is either supremely confident or supremely foolish.
When our eyes met—his dark and young, mine lined and cold as winter storms—I saw something that made me reassess. There was depth in his gaze, an intelligence that reminded me why the Akira line had held power for so long. This pup had teeth, even if he had yet to bare them.
I climbed the steps to my throne slowly, my bulk making each stair creak, then turned and offered a bow so shallow it barely displaced the heavy braids coiled at my neck.
By rights, I should have bent until my back screamed and pressed my forehead to the floor, but I wanted to see how he’d respond to provocation.
The boy didn’t even blink.
He simply returned my bow at exactly the same angle, his athletic frame moving with a dancer’s grace, his face serene as a temple pond.
Oh, this will be fun.
“Welcome, my prince,” I said, deliberately omitting his proper titles. “To what do we owe the honor of an Imperial guest?”
Surprisingly, the Prince skipped the customary pleasantries and dove straight into troubled waters. “Asami Eiko-sama Daimyo, I come in the name of the Son of Heaven. His Divine Radiance, Akira Takashi Tennō, wishes our peoples to live in peace as they have done these past ten years.”
Peace.
As if my thousands of armed soldiers camped on the Toshi border were a peace delegation.
I let my lips curl into a smile that didn’t reach my eyes. “Are we not living in peace in this moment?”
Kitaro grunted in amusement from his position on the lower step.
Kioshi’s pale fingers twitched—only for a heartbeat—before he clasped them in his sleeves.
“Indeed,” he said, voice still pleasant as honey. “However, might we inquire as to the troops amassed on the border between the Asami and the Toshi? Toshi Daiki Daimyo is . . . concerned.”
I waved dismissively, my rings catching the torchlight like drops of blood. “Daiki is always concerned about something. Last year it was the height of my border walls. Before that, the number of horses we purchased.”
“There are siege engines and thousands of Samurai camped a quarter ri from his land, a mere two ri from Yubi, his capital. Would it not concern you, Daimyo, if Imperial troops stood so close to your homeland?”
The boy’s words had edges now, and his shoulders had straightened, making him seem somehow taller.
I leaned forward, letting my shift become part of the threat, the throne groaning under my weight. “If the Emperor’s breath tickled my backside, I would not fear him.”
The hall went silent.
Even my guards seemed to stop breathing.
Kioshi’s long-lashed eyes closed, his head bowing as if in prayer—or resignation.
But before he could respond, before his mission of peace could go further sideways, the doors burst open with a crash that made everyone jump.
A monk in brown robes rushed in, his shaved head gleaming with sweat, his weathered face white with terror or exhaustion or both.
My guards moved to intercept, but he’d already fallen to his knees, pressing his forehead to the floor.
“What is the meaning of this, sōhei?” I demanded, though something cold was already crawling up my spine. Monks didn’t interrupt audiences unless the world was ending.
He crawled forward, trembling, and whispered in my ear. He smelled of incense and fear. His words struck like arrows to my chest: “The Dragon’s Breath has failed. The Emperor is dead. His dragon is gone. The temples across the Empire have lost their connection. Our mahou—”
My eyes shot to Katsumi, whose red lips had parted in shock.
This changed everything.
“Are you sure? The others?” I kept my voice low, but not low enough.
“Yes, Daimyo, everyone. It’s gone. The Emperor—”
“Enough.” I cut him off before he could say more. “Go back to your brothers while I decide what must be done.”
The monk began to rise, then froze. He’d been so focused on reaching me, he hadn’t noticed who stood in the center of my hall. Now, seeing Kioshi, he dropped again, pressing his weathered forehead to the floor with desperate fervor.
“Son of Heaven!” he cried.
I moved to pull him up, my thick fingers closing on his robe, but Kioshi was already there, his pale, delicate hands gentle on the monk’s shoulders. “Stand, please. I am your prince, nothing more.”
But the monk shrank from his touch like it burned. “Great Tennō,” he gasped. “Akira Takashi Tennō has ascended and now dines with the gods. Akira Kioshi Tennō is now the Son of Heaven, gods save and preserve him.”
The words hung in the air like a blade about to fall.
Kioshi stumbled backward, his face draining to the color of rice paper. The boy who’d entered my hall with such composure now looked half his age—young, terrified, and alone.
His father was dead.
He was Emperor.
And he stood without arms or armor in the hall of his greatest enemy.
I made my decision in a heartbeat.
Slowly, painfully, I hoisted myself off my throne and lowered to my knees. My joints protested, my considerable weight making the descent graceless. My forehead, still damp with perspiration, touched the cold stone floor.
“Tennō,” I said, the word tasting like ashes.
The hall erupted in motion. Guards dropped to kneel, crimson armor clattering like a bloody waterfall. Kitaro’s weathered face twisted in shock as he followed my lead. Katsumi’s red-painted lips moved in what might have been prayer as she pressed her own smooth forehead to stone.
Only Kioshi remained standing, his young, muscled frame swaying like a reed in a storm.
“Amaterasu, help me,” I heard him whisper, his voice cracking.
Indeed, I thought, my face still pressed to stone, gray hair fully escaping its pins to pool around my head.
Gods help us all.