fic for silverdoll14 (1/2)

[nino_mod]

For: silverdoll14
From: :3.

Title: Bloodline
Pairing/Focus: Nino-centric with eventual Ohmiya
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Heavy angst, fantasy, violence and cruelty, blood, bad language, sexual content. This story includes characters that are enslaved.
Summary: In a kingdom where water is more precious than gold, Ninomiya Kazunari discovers that his whole life has been a lie. At the royal court, he learns that deception lies around every corner. Blood equals power. And love comes at a cost.
Notes: Hi silverdoll14, I think I just wrote you a book! I started out with your “sort of Greek mythology AU” prompt, immediately left Greece behind, and decided to borrow a few elements from N.K. Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (no need to know the book, just giving credit for the inspiration). The result is this 70,000+ word fantasy AU. And I’m not joking about “eventual” Ohmiya. I tried to give every Arashi member time to shine as a character, so the romance kicks in a bit late. I hope you’ll find it worth the wait.


Toyone-mura was one of the smallest villages they’d visited in a while, but at least it wasn’t one of the poorest. They’d set up camp just on the village outskirts, thankfully upwind from one of the fenced goat enclosures. By now their human herd of followers had dwindled to less than twenty since the steaming heat of late spring was growing more relentless by the day. Fewer people to account for and thus fewer mouths to feed.

The big show would come tomorrow morning, and it would be Nino’s job to lead the call along the village’s main dirt road. His mother had chided him as a boy for speaking loudly, but as an adult the skill served him and his family well. “The Water Finder is here!” he’d shout, “the Water Finder has come!”

Of course there was no disguising a cluster of mismatched but colorful tents at the edge of town. Anyone with functioning eyes could see that the Water Finder and his entourage had arrived. But villagers from one end of the kingdom to the other seemed to love the ceremony of it all. Nino was just grateful to be off the trail for a few days, in a fixed location, no need to keep his head wrapped and mouth covered to avoid the sand and the dust blowing about.

Ninomiya Seitaro, his father, was a Water Finder and healer. Practitioners of folk magic were officially outlawed in the Sun Kingdom, but enforcement was lax the further you got from Amaterasu, the capital. And Seitaro had made a decent living staying away from Amaterasu. They’d been traveling for as long as Nino had memories, moving from one village to the next through the dry, lifeless desert terrain that dominated the Sun Kingdom’s landscape.

Seitaro was from a long line of Water Finders, had been born to hold the gnarled wooden Fortune Stick in his strong, sun-baked hands. The Water Finders visited places with shortages, places where wells had gone dry or streams had slowed to a trickle. Fresh water was hard to come by no matter where you lived in the Sun Kingdom. In Amaterasu or the small villages and communities that ringed its high stone walls, water was rationed out by the Kingsguard. Beyond the capital lands, the people were largely on their own to support themselves.

Fortune Stick in hand, Nino’s father would trudge through the sands near a village, barefoot and eyes squeezed shut. They usually stayed in a village until he found something, and if the gods failed to instruct him, he refused pay and they moved on just the same.

When he wasn’t waving that silly stick around, he was healing. Though Seitaro had spent years trying to instill a love of water finding in his son, Nino had never gotten the hang of it. He could walk around with his eyes shut until the sun went down, but he’d never once found a new water source. It was apparently a blessing that hadn’t been bestowed upon him, but healing…Nino felt that healing was much more practical than a divine gift from the God of the Waters. Grinding up herbs and making poultices and creams and things, that at least Nino had been able to learn.

He would be thirty-four years old in two weeks, and all he’d ever known was the next village, the next town that needed Seitaro’s skills. He knew the sturdy yellow canvas of his tent, dotted with the poorly-stitched patches he’d added as years went by rather than relying on his mother to fix it for him. He knew the malnourished faces of children that would light up as soon as he called out that the Water Finder had come to save them. He knew the somber heartbreak in a village elder’s eyes when his father confessed to her that he couldn’t find anything this time.

He wasn’t sure what his future held. The more they traveled, the more Nino wanted to settle down. It was obvious that he wasn’t going to succeed his father as a Water Finder, so maybe it was best he left the caravan and the nomadic life. Maybe he could find a village or town in need of a full-time healer. Even if what he possessed wasn’t proper folk magic, wasn’t a gift from the God of the Waters, it was a useful skill. His father would object, his mother would too. But Nino had already been an adult for many years now. He was nearly fifteen years older than his parents had been when they’d married and started traveling the Sun Kingdom together, a young itinerant Water Finder and his pregnant wife. Didn’t he deserve a chance to start a life of his own?

He swatted at a fly, dusting off his hands on his linen trousers and lifting the flap to his parents’ tent. He’d grown up in this tent, knew every inch of canvas. Knew the tang of the incense his father burned in offering to the God of the Waters. Knew the scent of the oils his mother applied to her dry, windburnt skin after days of desert travel. Nino had slept under this canvas the first sixteen years of his life until finally he’d earned the money to buy a tent from a town craftsman, to have something at last that was private and his own.

Like always on the day before the Water Finding ritual, Seitaro was in one corner of the tent, sitting with his legs crossed, muttering prayers under his breath as the incense burned in the tiny brazier. He was in a world of his own. It was over this past winter that his father’s hair had finally lost its last bits of black. The gray hair just made him look wiser, Nino supposed. A good thing. Meanwhile his mother Kazuko was still unpacking, unraveling bedrolls and shaking sand out of his father’s white robes.

“Looks like everyone has settled in,” he declared. “I’ve fed the camels.”

“Thank you, Kazu,” his mother replied, not even looking up, preoccupied with ensuring the bedrolls were insect-free.

He had been born Ninomiya Kazunari, but over the years “Kazunari” had lost favor with repeat visits to some towns. Even as a child, the Water Finder’s son had often been called “Little Ninomiya,” then “Little Nino,” and finally just “Nino” had stuck to him like a stubborn grain of sand under one of his toenails. Even his father called him Nino in mixed company, if only so people knew to whom he was referring.

Nino’s mother, however, did no such thing. He remained Kazu in most things, Kazunari when he had done something to earn her displeasure.

With Ninomiya Seitaro mostly preoccupied with Water Finding, with his healing, it had fallen to Ninomiya Kazuko to manage just about everything else. Until Nino was twenty, she had managed all the money and related transactions for Seitaro’s services. She’d trained him to take over, helping him hone his skills as a negotiator, as a haggler. Since most villages couldn’t pay in coin, it had fallen to Nino to learn what the equivalents might be. How much cloth could be accepted and traded for something else in a larger town. How many goats. How many sacks of grain.

Kazuko managed the entourage as well. Even as a boy, Nino could remember that there was his family and then there was the entourage. Wanderers without homes or wanderers who chose to leave their homes. People who believed that Seitaro was blessed by the gods and thought it wise to follow him in hopes that they might too be blessed. And others who knew that following a successful Water Finder and being part of his camp meant they might be able to feed themselves or their hungry children for at least another day. Some brought their own camels. Some were willing to come along on foot.

In the colder months when the deserts were more manageable, the entourage might swell to fifty or more. Most of them contributed to earn their supper, whether it was providing handyman services for villagers or keeping watch on the camels or even providing child care while village residents watched the Water Finding ceremony. Thieves were not permitted, nor were those unwilling to lend a hand when needed. And there were no second chances.

“Nagara has the night watch for the animals,” Nino explained, sitting beside his mother to rest his weary feet. He ran his fingers over one of the bedrolls, helping Kazuko with her vermin hunt.

It had been a long afternoon getting everyone settled in. As his mother’s right hand man, Nino helped get the other tents set up, offered greetings to village elders, and generally looked for ways in which he might be useful. It was another thing that made him long for a life of his own, a more settled existence where he needed to only worry about himself.

Was it selfish? Probably, but Nino still did his part from sun-up to sundown every single day, so he wasn’t all that ashamed of his secret wishes.

“And we have been offered a goat,” Nino continued, wrinkling his nose. He had long ago tired of goat meat, especially when the goat herder told Nino the poor animal’s name before turning it over. “I said we would be happy to accept it tomorrow when Father has completed the ceremony.”

“Good,” Kazuko said.

Just like his father, Kazuko would not accept anything that could be construed as a gift or payment until after Seitaro had done his Water Finding. Nino knew that other Water Finders were more than happy to be pampered, to be showered in gifts. It wasn’t the Ninomiya family way, and it never would be.

He filled his mother in on the state of the camp as well as some gossip. For all that Ninomiya Kazuko was a forthright and upstanding woman, she loved gossip as much as anyone else. Rumor had it that Minako, the current laundress among the entourage, was thinking of going back to Yamazoe-mura since she had fallen for the blacksmith there.

“I think it’s a good idea for all involved,” Kazuko remarked with a wry smile. “She’s very lax when it comes to stains.”

Now that he’d completed his report, he was dismissed. The days were longer now that summer had just about come. It had been a journey of nearly two weeks before their arrival that morning in Toyone-mura. He was exhausted, physically and mentally, after days spent watching the shadowy sway of the camel before him in the moonlight. He headed for his own tent, lying on his back with a sigh.

Tonight they’d eat simple fare. Nuts, dried strips of meat, dried fruit if his mother felt like digging into their stores for such an indulgence. Tomorrow his father would do his best to find water for Toyone-mura. They’d eat Happy the Goat for supper (because surely the stupid goat would have a name like that to make Nino feel even more guilty). They’d spend another day seeing if their healing services were needed. And then they’d pack up all over again for the next village that had sent a messenger to find their camp. No matter how far, they would pack up and go.

He stared up at the familiar yellow canvas, frowning at the prospect. Just to punctuate his sour mood, he heard the bleating of a goat in the distance. Nino chuckled bitterly, pulling his blanket up and over his sore, tired body and waiting for the quiet pleasures of a nap to come claim him.

—

It was a festival night in Toyone-mura, and it would have been a festival night even if Seitaro hadn’t come. It was a cleansing ritual dedicated to one of the local gods here in the southeast region of the Sun Kingdom. Yatagarasu, the crow god, apparently offered guidance to wayward souls.

Nino almost felt like giving an offering of his own to Yatagarasu as he wandered to the village square, drawn in by the heat of the towering bonfire. He felt like a wayward soul, although not in the usual definition of the term. Unlike his wandering parents, he longed to settle. He wondered what advice the crow god might give.

It seemed like everyone in Toyone-mura was out, villagers mingling cheerfully with members of the Water Finder’s entourage. People were always hopeful on the nights before the ritual. How could you not be? The crueler side of Nino’s heart liked these nights for other reasons. Villagers with hope in their eyes and perhaps a little alcohol in their bellies, nights like these often helped Nino find some companionship.

It was lonely in the caravan, traveling the sometimes perilous trails between villages. They mostly moved along after dusk or in the hours before the sun rose too high in the sky. It wasn’t exactly easy to hide such things from your parents in broad daylight, but village festival nights and pitching his tent at a distance from his parents’ tent sometimes brought him good fortune.

His first love was a long-legged carpenter’s daughter from Kijimadaira, a town in the west. They’d spent nearly a month there resupplying the caravan when he was nineteen, and after a week of pursuit and another week of long kisses behind a stable, Nino had finally shared his tent with another. He knew it wouldn’t last and so had she. They’d been to Kijimadaira a handful of times since, and his first love was now happily married with two cute children. She always winked when she saw him, and it made him smile.

His second love was a shoemaker’s apprentice from a village not far from the one where he’d been born. He’d been a few years older, strong and serious, and Nino had enjoyed getting an opportunity to compare the man’s hard kisses and rough skin to his memories of the carpenter’s daughter and the way her soft skin had felt under his fingers. The shoemaker’s apprentice had asked Nino to stay, but at twenty-two such an idea had been impossible to consider.

Most other encounters had been shorter. Often only a night. As a rule, he didn’t sleep with people who were part of his father’s entourage. The last thing he wanted to be was a source of gossip that got back to his mother. Instead they were always strangers along the way. Women he’d healed who paid in full and then asked if he would stay a bit longer. Men who wanted to write poems about Nino’s “romantic” wandering life and men who couldn’t even write their own names. He’d been inside strangers, and strangers had been inside him. He’d experienced pleasure and pain alike depending on the experience (or nervous inexperience) of his partner. But everything was short-lived. Nothing serious. Nothing lasting. Nothing real.

In his observations, having spent his whole life moving from town to town, he envied those who’d found another. For as much as he enjoyed his rare private moments, cherished his time without company, he still longed for the possibility of love. Real, enduring love. Even his parents had each other, so wouldn’t they understand?

A girl with her hair done up in an elaborate knot handed him a crude cup, nearly filling it to the brim with whatever particular poison the villagers here liked to drink. It burned down his throat but he didn’t mind, sipping slowly as he lingered at the edges of the crowd. The bonfire was aided by some old wood, and the smoke would surely cling to his clothes, coming along even after they left Toyone-mura behind.

Away from the flames, a few young women were improvising a shamisen tune while a boy of perhaps ten years smacked eagerly at a drum. Villagers and entourage members partnered up, trying to match the odd rhythm as the flames stretched and leapt up into the sky. Nino had never been one for dancing, and he figured his best bet was to find a lonely man or woman who shared similar values.

He was on his second cup of mystery alcohol when someone happened to find him first. He was a bit strange for a villager, approaching without a cup in his hand and dressed in rather fancy red robes. He almost looked like a temple priest, although Nino wasn’t aware of any temples where they wore red. He had dark hair, darker than Nino’s which tended to lighten a bit in the sun. He had large, handsome eyes and a round face that spoke of a lack of hunger.

This person, Nino realized as soon as he came closer, was likely not from Toyone-mura. Perhaps just someone passing through, the same as Nino and his father’s entourage. But no matter. He found it was best for both parties in these situations if questions about origins were kept to a minimum.

The man approached, his shoes scuffing along in the dirt. When he spoke, his voice was warm and comforting, the same as the alcohol.

“Are you the son of the Water Finder?” the man in red asked, Nino’s focus sliding from his dark brown eyes to the plumpness of his bottom lip. It had been months since he’d last been presented with such a golden opportunity.

“Yes, I am…the son of…yes,” he muttered, still a bit lost at the sight of the man’s fancy robes and darkened skin. Sunburnt, Nino was nearly convinced, even in the light of the bonfire. Like this man had traveled in the desert without a bit of common sense.

“May I speak with you alone?” the man asked, leaning forward so that his hot breath tickled along Nino’s neck. Certainly he was only speaking closely so he might be heard over the clamor of the music and the dancing and the fire, but Nino was a few steps ahead in his thinking about what this man really wanted from him. The usual side effect of going months without a warm body beside him for a night.

Spying his parents sitting on the other side of the bonfire with the Toyone-mura elders, Nino decided to seize the chance before him.

“Come,” he said to the man in red. “My tent is in the camp just outside of town.”

He downed the rest of his drink, blinking a bit in regret as he set his empty cup down on a short stone wall for one of the villagers to find and reclaim. He could hear the calm footsteps of the stranger at his back as they left the celebration behind and headed back to the stink of the camels and the bleating of the goats.

Nagara was the only one who’d stayed behind, and his back was to them as Nino led the man in red back to the camp. Navigating among the tents, he held the flap aside so his guest could duck his head and come inside.

“Let me just light a lantern,” Nino murmured, wondering how far he might be able to go with this stranger before the rest of the entourage returned. Thankfully in one of the pouches of his pack he had the special oil necessary to make the experience a pleasurable one for both involved. It didn’t look like the stranger had any pockets or places among his robes where such an erotic thing might be stashed.

As soon as the small flame of his lantern left the tent awash in flickering light, Nino saw that the man in red had knelt down before him, a rather deferential gesture. Nino knelt down to match him and leaned forward eagerly, resting a hand on the man’s shoulder. Their lips had only just grazed when the stranger moved back in shock, holding up his hands in a pleading gesture.

Nino was left there, uncertain, lips still pursed for an exploratory kiss as the man in red bowed his head low to him.

“I apologize! I’ve given you the wrong idea!”

Nino didn’t bother to hide his disappointment. He’d really wanted a chance to kiss those perfect lips. “The apology should be mine. I should have asked…”

The man looked up, and his face really was red from sunburn. At least it seemed to be masking his embarrassment. “I’ve spent weeks looking for you.”

“For my father’s camp?” he mumbled.

“No,” the man said. “For you.”

Nino tried to remember. He’d never seen this man before in his life. There was no chance he’d have forgotten someone this attractive. “I’m sorry, friend. I don’t believe we’ve met before.”

“We haven’t,” the man confirmed. But then he inclined his head again. “Your Highness, it is imperative you return to Amaterasu with me.”

Your Highness?

Nino stared at the man’s bowed head, his stomach starting to get a little queasy from the unfamiliar alcohol. “I…I believe you have the wrong man. Please. Lift your head.”

The man did so, his brown eyes searching Nino’s face. “You don’t know.”

“What don’t I know?” Nino murmured uncomfortably. His tent seemed small, confining. He needed air. Sure, his father’s camp attracted strange sorts of people, even some who proclaimed Ninomiya Seitaro a god in his own right. But those strange sorts never sought out Nino before. Not once.

“Your mother is Terajima Kazuko?”

Nino leaned back, crossing his arms protectively. There was a lot Nino didn’t know about his mother. Before meeting his father, before the caravan, Nino knew only that she’d lived in Amaterasu. Seeking her fortunes elsewhere, she’d traveled away from the capital, had met Seitaro and fallen in love. He knew nothing of the family she may have left behind or what her life had been like in the capital. The only other thing Nino knew was her name before she’d married.

Terajima Kazuko.

“How do you know that name?” Nino asked cautiously.

“You really don’t know,” the man said again, a fidgety, panicked look in his eyes that made him less handsome.

“What don’t I know?” Nino asked, raising his voice a little. “You’ve been looking for me? Well, you’ve found me. Now tell me plainly. What don’t I know?”

The man bowed his head again despite Nino’s earlier admonishment. He bowed low, the way one did in stories about the capital, about kings and queens. The man in red bowed so low that his forehead touched the bedroll Nino had stretched out on the floor of his tent.

“Your mother is Terajima Kazuko,” the man said quietly as the lantern light bathed the tent in its warm glow. “Your father is Matsumoto Yukio, the heir to the Sun Kingdom.”

Silence descended on the tent. The music played on in the distance, the revels continued.

Nino narrowed his eyes. “I think you should leave.”

The man did not move from his deferential posture. “Rather, I should say that your father was Matsumoto Yukio, the heir to the Sun Kingdom. While I journeyed to find you, he passed away.”

Nino stretched out a hand, his fingers coming under the man’s chin. A bit rougher than necessary, Nino lifted the man’s head, met his serious eyes. The news had greeted the caravan at the last village they’d visited. News that the heir to the throne, Prince Yukio, had passed away. King Kotaro was approaching his 90th year, still holding power as he had for almost fifty years. Some grandson, Yukio’s son, would likely be the next king now.

But what did that matter? That was the business in the capital, that was Amaterasu business, and whatever happened there mattered little to those the Sun Kingdom forgot or simply ignored. Amaterasu was only the place where tax money was sent, money that never seemed to find its way back to the distant villages. Amaterasu was unimportant, a place that seemed almost unreal save for knowing it as his mother’s place of birth.

“If you came all this way to question my mother’s loyalty to my father, I will have this caravan’s bodyguards slit your throat.”

The man held up his hands in surrender. “Let me speak to her. Please. Ask her to deny my words.”

Nino took a deep breath, was astonished by the sincerity, the pleading in this strange man’s eyes. Had the time under the unforgiving sun addled his brains?

“Please,” the stranger begged again. “I will explain it all.”

His whole life Nino had felt as though he was merely floating along. He had his place in the caravan, his wandering life. A life only as the son of the Water Finder. He now had two choices. Dismiss the crazy man and his red robes, continue his wandering as though the man had never arrived. Or summon his mother and hope she might sort things out, offer an explanation.

Your father was Matsumoto Yukio, the heir to the Sun Kingdom.

What a ridiculous claim, and yet the man before him wasn’t wavering. And the man before him knew his mother’s name.

He made his choice.

—

Though Nino had quietly and calmly gone to fetch his mother, his father had followed at her heels. Perhaps they’d seen through him, seen the confusion in him.

The four of them were now seated in his parents’ tent, Seitaro and Kazuko, Nino and the man in the red robes. His mother hadn’t hesitated when the man in red asked her if she was Terajima Kazuko.

She only inclined her head politely. “That was once my name.”

“Forgive me for this sudden intrusion on your camp,” the man in red continued. “My name is Sakurai Sho, I work in the Royal Palace of Amaterasu.”

“Sakurai,” his mother mumbled, nodding. “That is a name I’ve heard…”

“Perhaps you knew my father. He was an advisor to the king when you were in the capital.”

Nino saw the spark of recognition in his mother’s eyes. How would she have known some royal advisor? She was a commoner. “Yes,” she replied, “you do resemble him.”

Nino looked instead to his father, waiting for him to show some reaction to this stranger. And yet he remained placid.

“Madame. Sir,” Sakurai said gently. “I was sent to find you by Prince Yukio.”

At that, Nino saw the slightest twitch of his mother’s lips. “I see.”

“The prince wished to meet with his son,” Sakurai admitted. “The matter was indeed urgent.”

“But the prince has died,” Seitaro said, although Nino was growing more disturbed by how calmly his parents were behaving.

“Yes,” Sakurai said. “Not long after I departed Amaterasu. But he entrusted me with this mission, and I intend to fulfill it. I was told to bring Kazunari back with me.”

“Hold on a moment,” Nino interrupted, heart racing. “How do you know my…”

“I did as I was told,” his mother said, hands folded tightly in her lap. “I did everything I was told, and yet here you are.”

Nino moved, sitting at his mother’s side, resting a hand on her arm. “What were you told? What is going on here?”

His mother ignored him. Her eyes glimmered as she stared down the stranger, Sakurai Sho from the Royal Palace of Amaterasu. “I have protected him. All this time, we have protected him. If Yukio sent you, then you know this.”

Yukio? Nino’s eyes widened. His mother had always been respectful, and yet here she was referring to the late prince and heir to the kingdom by his given name.

Sakurai looked apologetic. “I’m sorry. Truly. Prince Yukio wished for nothing more than to leave you alone, but things have changed and…”

“I say again,” Seitaro interrupted. “The prince has died. And with him dies any authority over what happens to Kazunari. Isn’t that so?”

Nino shrank back, looking between his parents and Sakurai Sho, an ache growing in his belly. Your father was Matsumoto Yukio…your father was…

“Father,” he said sharply, waiting until Seitaro met his eyes. “Tell this man to leave. He’s spreading lies about Mama. You’re my father, and what happens in Amaterasu is no concern of ours. You have the ceremony tomorrow, and we don’t have time for the words of a madman.”

His parents said nothing. Sakurai Sho said nothing.

“This stranger waltzed into our camp and called me the son of the dead prince. He called me the son of Matsumoto Yukio. He’s calling Mama a whore!”

Nino watched, confusion mounting, as Kazuko’s fingers entwined with Seitaro’s. It was Seitaro who seemed to be offering comfort.

“Father, why aren’t you doing anything?!”

“It’s not a lie,” Seitaro said. “Your father is….”

Nino got to his feet instead. “You are!” he said, pointing rudely at the man before him, the man he knew like no other. The man who’d protected him. The man who’d taught him so many things. “You are my father. I am Ninomiya Kazunari. I am a member of this family! This is…this is my family!”

He watched his parents exchange a long, sad look.

“Please sit, Kazu,” his mother pleaded. He’d never heard her sound this upset, this fragile. Ninomiya Kazuko had no patience for liars and cheats. His mother was the strongest person he knew. “Please sit so we might explain it.”

And over the next hour, Nino sat there and learned that his entire life was a lie.

The words came softly, gently. From Kazuko. From Seitaro. They came softly and yet each one felt like a knife in his gut. He faded in and out, each uncovered truth making him wish for the life he’d known only hours ago. When he’d had only to think about goats and water finding, about a future that might someday be his away from the caravan.

Thirty-four years earlier, Terajima Kazuko had been an orphan who’d been hired on as a chambermaid in the Royal Palace of Amaterasu. She’d lived at the center of the Sun Kingdom, at the center of everything. At eighteen, she’d caught the eye of King Kotaro’s only son and heir, Prince Yukio. The young prince had been betrothed at the time. In fact, his wedding had only been a month away. And yet he pursued Kazuko, begged for her to be his.

“When you’re eighteen and working for a pittance, it’s hard to say no to a prince,” was the matter-of-fact way his mother phrased it.

A brief but consensual affair resulted in a pregnancy. Fearing the king’s wrath and fearing reprisal from his future wife’s home kingdom as well, Prince Yukio sent Kazuko as far from the capital as he could manage. He sent her to a tiny desert town. Prince Yukio had visited the town once, overseeing a tax collection effort. There he’d met a young practitioner of Water Finding. It was the most sensible place to send the mother of his unborn child - as far from Amaterasu as possible and to a proven healer who could care for her.

Kazuko gave birth to the prince’s bastard son in that desert town and only a few months later, Yukio’s wife gave birth to a boy of her own. Once Kazuko was well enough to travel, Seitaro invited the young mother and her baby to join him on the road. A life constantly on the move would protect Kazuko’s son from Yukio’s supporters and enemies alike, would protect Kazuko’s son from being used as a political pawn or as a means to embarrass the royal family.

Along the way, Seitaro and Kazuko fell in love. And they’d married. That part, at least, was true. As they traveled from town to town, nobody questioned that the small boy was anyone but the son of the Water Finder.

Nino wanted to wake from this nightmare. Did he want his independence? A life of his own away from the caravan? Of course. But he loved his parents. He loved them with a devotion he couldn’t put into words. They were kind and generous, patient and loving. For thirty-four years, Nino had had no reason to doubt that Ninomiya Seitaro was his father. And yet here they were, the both of them, revealing themselves to be liars. Liars for all these years. Liars before he’d even been born. And they’d lied only to protect the reputation of a philandering prince hundreds of miles away.

“No,” Seitaro insisted. “We lied to keep you safe. The capital…the capital is a dangerous place…”

“Must he go?” Kazuko asked, leaning forward, desperately seeking answers from the man in red. From Sakurai Sho, nothing more than a servant of a dead prince.

“Stop speaking as if I’m not here. I’m a grown man, damn it, I’m not going anywhere,” Nino insisted. “This is my home. This is my family. Your master is dead! He has no claim on me! I don’t take orders from dead men!”

“Kazunari,” his mother muttered. She’d confessed to all this madness and yet she was chiding him for being rude and noisy.

Sakurai Sho at least had the sense to look contrite about the whole thing. “Forgive me, Your Highness…”

“My name is Ninomiya Kazunari.”

“The future of our kingdom is at stake,” Sakurai continued. “But you may be able to save it.”

Nino narrowed his eyes. “You’ve all confirmed it. I’m nothing more than an unclaimed bastard, spirited away to the desert sands to be forgotten and ignored. You live in the capital, Sakurai, you have no idea what life is like out here. You’ve clearly never missed a meal. But out here, people suffer and starve. Water is sparse and precious. Save the kingdom, you say? Most of the kingdom lives this way, suffers this way. What exactly would I be saving? I don’t care what happens to the king, secret grandfather or no. I won’t care a bit if Amaterasu is wiped away by a sandstorm tomorrow.”

“Kazunari, mind yourself,” Seitaro chided.

He stood up, knowing he sounded childish. “How can I mind myself, Father? Everything I’ve ever been told is a lie. You just expect me to sit here and accept it?”

His mother reached out, fingers brushing against the fabric of his trousers. But she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at Sakurai Sho. “Yukio wasn’t able to free them, was he?”

Sakurai shook his head.

“And the other boy?” Seitaro asked.

“He is unable to compel them. Thus he is unable to free them.”

Seitaro and Kazuko both looked shocked. His mother spoke first. “Unable? But the tattoos…”

Sakurai looked pained. “He has the marks of the bloodline, and yet Prince Jun has never been able to tap into their power.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Nino interjected. “Tattoos and bloodlines. How much more nonsense do I have to listen to tonight?”

“Kazunari,” Seitaro said quietly. “Take a walk with me.”

“But Father…”

“Take a walk with me.”

Seitaro got to his feet and headed out of the tent without looking back. Nino had no choice but to follow.

—

Ninomiya Seitaro walked for a considerable time, away from Toyone-mura and out into the moonlight. Small rolling hills surrounded the small village, and Nino trudged up one of them after his father. In the distance, he could still hear the goats bleating, carrying on with things as usual. Only Nino’s life had been thoroughly upended tonight.

Eventually Seitaro stopped walking, standing atop the hill. Together they stood side by side, looking down on Toyone-mura, the orange flames of the bonfire visible in the valley below.

“I love you with everything I am,” Seitaro said quietly, and Nino was grateful that the darkness could hide the tears already rolling down his cheeks. He simply let his father speak.

“You are my son. You’ve learned tonight that the bond we share is not one of blood, but still you are my son. It is my hope that you will not forget it.”

Nino stared off into the distance, watching the smoke from the bonfire float off in the wind, carried into the night.

“Do you remember the legends of Queen Emi?” Seitaro asked.

He blinked, looking over, seeing that his father was staring at nothing in particular. “Bedtime stories?”

“Time has molded them, the same as any story. Tell me what you remember.”

He rolled his eyes. His father was a simple man, devoted to his water finding and his healing. But sometimes he really did believe that there were gods who had blessed him, shown him the way to find water. He easily believed in legends and folk tales.

“Queen Emi ruled the Sun Kingdom about…seven, maybe eight hundred years ago,” Nino recalled. These were stories his parents…any parents told their little ones. “There was a bad famine, all the water dried up, and she sent her advisor, the Sorcerer Raku, far off to the east to the Great Sea.”

“And Sorcerer Raku was granted an audience with the God of the Waters,” Seitaro continued. “No human had been granted such a privilege in thousands of years, but Raku was well-versed in the dark arts. He walked into the water without drowning and entered the Undersea Palace of the God of the Waters himself.”

The story was coming back to him, bit by bit. He’d had nightmares as a boy of drowning while trying to find his way to the Undersea Palace. He’d never seen the sea before. He’d never seen that much water before. He had a difficult time believing such a place even existed, but he’d seen maps that proved it.

“And Sorcerer Raku, arrogant son of a bitch that he was, walked right up to the throne and demanded assistance with the famine. He demanded that the God deliver rain to the Sun Kingdom,” Nino recalled.

Seitaro nodded. “The God of the Waters was largely unconcerned with human matters, for the sea has been here long before us and will be here long after us.” His father chuckled. “Hard to imagine the sea, period, given how many years we’ve walked these sands. But yes, Raku came in all puffed up and used his magic to set out terms. And then do you remember the God’s response?”

“He sent two of his sons to the Sun Kingdom where they chose to stay. They used their god-given powers to create water from nothing. The sons are the reason we have water here at all, even though we are a desert kingdom,” Nino said. “But because the sons are so far from the sea, their true home and source of their power, the water here is still nothing but a trickle. I never knew why they didn’t just go home and give up on this place.”

“The story was meant to be about filial piety. It was the God of the Waters’ wish that they go help the Sun Kingdom, and good sons obey their fathers,” Seitaro reminded him.

Nino snorted bitterly, the discussion in the tent not far from his mind. “If Sorcerer Raku was so powerful he could walk into the sea, couldn’t he just create water himself with the same magic? Even as a kid I always thought this story was fishy…but to the point, why are we even talking about this?”

“We are talking about this, Kazunari, because it is not a legend. It is the truth.”

He looked over, trying to gauge his father’s expression. “Huh?”

“Like I said, time had molded things. Was there a Queen Emi? Yes. Was there a Sorcerer Raku? Yes. And did the God of the Waters send his sons to Amaterasu?” Seitaro took a breath. “Yes.”

Nino laughed. “Okay. There are gods in the capital, and I’m the prince’s son. What other revelations will emerge tonight? Will you next declare, Father, that you are withdrawing from Water Finding in favor of becoming a fan dancer?”

“Tonight is one for truth telling,” his father remarked sharply. “And what I’m telling you is the truth. Raku, the dark sorcerer, could not make water from nothing. Such abilities lie beyond human reach. But blood magic…forbidden blood magic…that can be used to tame the untameable. To claim what wasn’t Raku’s to claim.”

Nino’s confusion grew.

“Raku set a curse upon his own blood. Perhaps he wouldn’t have called it a curse. Perhaps he’d have called it a blessing. Either way, he painfully tattooed forbidden symbols on his skin. The symbols are in the language of the gods. Those symbols, those tattoos, they can be used to compel not another human…but a god.”

Nino’s father relied on instinct and the waving of his Fortune Stick to find water. And in the healing arts, a practitioner relied on plants and herbs to make medicine. Water Finding was, in a sense, an educated guess. Healing was more tangible. But blood magic? That was a fairy tale.

“When the God of the Waters sent his sons to Amaterasu, Sorcerer Raku tapped into the power of those symbols to trap the sons here in the Sun Kingdom, far from the sea. Permanently. To force them to create water whenever he chose. And in the Sun Kingdom, as you know, a person with water has power. He overthrew Queen Emi and crowned himself king. And for centuries, for so many generations, those symbols were carved into the skin of his descendants so they might also compel the gods.”

Nino shook his head. How come he had never heard any of this? He knew only the old legends, the benevolent sons of the God of the Waters protecting the Sun Kingdom, bringing precious water. Even in small amounts, water was a blessing.

“This is a fantasy.”

“This is the truth,” Seitaro insisted.

“Prove it.”

“Your father…I knew him before he was your father,” Seitaro confessed. “Just as we’ve said. He came to my town. He confessed such things to me. He said he envied me my talents as a Water Finder. He said he envied me for being able to find water on my own instead of simply taking it. He showed me his tattoos.” Seitaro lifted the sleeve of his robe, tracing his fingers along his forearm. “One of the gods, one of the sons of the God of the Waters traveled with him. I watched Prince Yukio compel him. I saw a glass fill with water.”

Nino stepped forward, kicking angrily at the sand. “Enough of this!”

“Kazunari, I speak truth to you. The prince was your father, and he sent you away from the capital, sent your mother away so you would not grow up in such an evil place. A palace consumed with forbidden magic, a place that cares nothing for the people outside of its walls. Only their own pleasures and happiness.”

“Do you understand how absurd all of this sounds?” Nino snapped. “Evil sorcerers, blood magic. A tattoo that can overcome a god’s divinity? If there are gods in Amaterasu, trapped here as you say, then how come nobody knows about it? How come the kingdom isn’t overflowing with water? How come Raku and his descendants didn’t go all the way in exploiting the two sons of the God of the Waters? Why not create enough water to turn this kingdom into a giant lake?”

“What I didn’t learn from my brief encounter with Prince Yukio I learned from your mother,” Seitaro said. “She lived and worked in the palace. She witnessed the evil there. Water…more water than you can imagine. They keep it all to themselves, they revel in the power they have, doling out water on their own terms to the people of the capital region. The suffering of the people in the capital or in the remote regions like Toyone-mura matter not…so long as they are perpetually lacking in water and food, they lack the strength to revolt. Such is the status quo.”

He shook his head. “What does any of this have to do with me? You have already plainly said that I am your son, and that means more to me than the words of a stranger who says I’m a prince’s bastard. I have no obligation to a dead man, to a man who never claimed me as his own.”

“You recall Sakurai Sho’s words…in the tent?” his father asked.

“You all had quite a lot to say,” Nino grumbled. “I don’t believe I’ve absorbed it all yet…”

“That Prince Yukio could not free them. And that Prince Jun cannot use the tattoos to tap into the bloodline.”

Nino just laughed. “I don’t understand. You’re not making a bit of sense.”

“Think of it this way, Kazunari. If Amaterasu is an evil place run by evil people, then why in the world would an intelligent, kind-hearted person like Kazuko have consorted with them?”

Consorted. Nino shuddered a little at how easily his father could say such things about his beloved wife.

“She was young. A servant. And he was a prince. Men with power use it to manipulate people who have no power at all,” Nino spat out.

“Prince Yukio was different,” Seitaro said quietly. “He was given the tattoos, he was given the power to control the sons of the God the same as every other king and queen in his bloodline. But it was Prince Yukio who left Amaterasu, who toured the distant villages. The small, dusty towns like mine. All of his own accord. He saw the suffering of his people, and unlike his ancestors, he wanted to do something about it. Prince Yukio was privileged, but he was not an evil man. Your mother…she knew that.”

Nino shut his eyes, shifting his weight from foot to foot. The echoing noise from the village in the valley below was starting to grow quieter. The celebratory bonfire would be extinguished soon so Toyone-mura might sleep. How normal the village seemed, the cluster of buildings, the tents set up on the outskirts of town. How could one think of gods walking among humans? How could anything his father said be true? How could it all be true when life in Amaterasu had no effect elsewhere in the kingdom?

How did people not know about the evil being perpetuated in their capital? How did they not know that the royal family had a means of creating water but refused to share it? His parents knew this and had done nothing with this information for over thirty years.

“Prince Yukio sought to undo the evils his family had committed for centuries,” Seitaro explained. “If the tattoos could be used to compel the gods to do his bidding, could the tattoos perhaps be used to break the binding spell instead? Sorcerer Raku, centuries ago, used blood magic to bind the gods to his family line. Only someone from that same bloodline would have the ability to free the gods once and for all.”

Realization hit Nino hard. Now he knew why Sakurai Sho had come.

“Prince Yukio could not free them,” he mumbled.

“Yes…”

“…and Prince Jun cannot tap into the bloodline.” Nino looked over, saw the grave look on his father’s face. “That’s Yukio’s son?”

“Yes,” Seitaro said again, “…your brother.”

Nino took a deep breath, hands on his hips. In only a night he’d gained far too much. A father. Now a brother. And a family tree with branches soaked in blood, centuries of letting the citizens of the Sun Kingdom suffer, starve, die of thirst. A family committed to maintaining their own power, keeping water scarce, forcing sons of the God of the Waters to do their bidding.

“Prince Yukio left me alone. Left us alone all these years,” Nino said. “But he failed in his goal of freeing them. Now he’s dead and his other son, his legitimate son, can’t control them. Prince Yukio wanted it to stop. He wanted the blood magic, the family’s power over the gods, to stop.”

“Yes,” Seitaro acknowledged.

“That’s why he sent for me,” Nino admitted. “If his son can’t compel the gods, the power of the bloodline dies. But I’m part of the bloodline, too.”

“You are,” Seitaro said.

“But if the bloodline, that blood magic can’t be tapped into, if Prince Jun can’t force the gods to create water, then doesn’t that free them anyhow? Why would he even need me?”

“Your mother told me what Prince Yukio told her before he sent her away,” Seitaro continued. “It all goes back to Sorcerer Raku and the design of the original curse, the specifics of the blood magic. So long as a descendant of Raku lives, so shall the sons of the God of the Waters serve them. And to serve them is to do them no harm.”

“So even if Prince Jun can’t force them to create water, the gods cannot rebel. The gods are tied to the family line, slaves to Raku’s bloodline until it dies out?”

“Think of the legend, Kazunari. The sea has been here long before us and will be here long after us. An immortal like the God of the Waters, he may think nothing of seven or eight hundred years. To him, perhaps it seems like only yesterday that he sent his two sons to help the Sun Kingdom…”

Nino’s eyes widened, and he felt Seitaro’s strong hand squeeze his shoulder.

“You’ve realized it,” Seitaro said.

His words tumbled out. “Even if the gods cannot be forced to create water, they are tied to Raku’s bloodline. They cannot leave the Sun Kingdom. If Raku’s bloodline continues in some way for another eight hundred years. For a thousand. For two thousand…”

“Then perhaps the God of the Waters will realize how Sorcerer Raku and the Sun Kingdom took advantage of the help he provided. It may not affect you or me, it may not happen in our lifetime, but in the future, the God of the Waters will surely retaliate against us, destroy the Sun Kingdom. Perhaps destroy all of mankind for trapping his children. Our descendants will suffer because of one man’s foolish trickery centuries ago. Prince Yukio, your father, could not live with that possibility. Even if he’d be long dead, he refused to envision such a dark future for humanity. So he tried to break the curse himself. But he must have discovered that he couldn’t. And so he sent for you.”

Nino exhaled, slowly moving until he was sitting directly on the ground, watching the fading bonfire in the distance.

“This is…this is a lot.”

“I never thought I’d have to tell you any of this,” Seitaro admitted quietly, still standing by his side. “By the gods, Kazunari, you’re a grown man. Half your lifetime has gone by with not a word from Prince Yukio. Kazuko and I hoped…we truly hoped this day would never come. We watched you grow up, wondering each and every day if it was our last with you. If Prince Yukio would come and take you away from us. But you grew. You turned ten, twenty, thirty…we assumed you were truly free.”

“Prince Yukio sent Sakurai Sho to find me so I might break the curse,” Nino said. “But even if by some miracle I can do that…what’s to stop the gods from destroying the Sun Kingdom anyway? What’s to stop them from immediately fleeing Amaterasu and going to their father and wiping us all out with a flood? What’s been done would obviously anger the God of the Waters whether his sons tell him what happened or if enough time goes by that he starts questioning their absence…” He took a breath. “Father, if I free them now, it might only bring the God’s punishment quicker.”

His father exhaled slowly. “Perhaps.”

He looked up, seeing a look on Seitaro’s face that he recognized easily, even in the sparse moonlight. Resolve. And acceptance.

“You think I should go. To Amaterasu,” Nino said.

“I became a Water Finder, the same as my mother, the same as my grandfather and great-grandfather. Other paths were before me, and yet I chose this one. My calling was to help, to be of use. Water Finding is not your calling, Kazunari. You were meant for bigger things.”

“I might be the same as Prince Jun,” Nino pointed out. “I might not be able to do anything. Then the curse only ends if Prince Jun or I die childless. Or I might have the powers you speak of, the power to break the curse. And when I break it, the God of the Waters retaliates. He wipes the Sun Kingdom out in seconds, and we all die. So either I’m completely useless or entirely too useful.”

He was surprised when Seitaro laughed.

“What’s so funny about our impending doom, whether it comes tomorrow or in centuries?”

He felt his father’s hand on top of his head, ruffling his hair as though Nino was still a boy. “You won’t bring about our doom, Kazunari.”

“You’re a fortune teller now?”

“No, but I know one thing for certain.”

“And that is?”

He shut his eyes, let his father stroke his hair.

“You’re my son. And I know that you will find a way.”

—

The village was bustling the next day, men and women working together to start digging for a new potential well where Seitaro had directed. For the first time, Nino had skipped the ceremony, finding it difficult to watch the desperate search for water knowing what he did now. That in Amaterasu water was abundant. It had been for centuries. And the ones who had withheld it from the people were his ancestors.

The revelations of the night before had made sleeping almost impossible. It wasn’t enough that he was another man’s son. It wasn’t enough that he was of royal blood. Oh no, there was so much more than that. The fate of the entire kingdom might rest on his shoulders. All he’d ever wanted was peace, stability. A place someday to call his own. Love, if he was so fortunate.

Ninomiya Kazunari wanted to remain nobody special. He only wanted to be happy. But knowing what he did now, how could he just ignore it?

He couldn’t ignore his father’s faith in him, even if it was foolish. He couldn’t ignore how hard it must have been for his mother all these years, always knowing that Nino might be taken away from her. And he couldn’t ignore Sakurai Sho, who’d walked into Toyone-mura and begged for his help on behalf of a man Nino would never know.

Faith. Love. Duty. He’d seen his parents exhibit those traits his entire life. Water Finding, the caravan…the Ninomiya family’s existence revolved around helping others, helping complete strangers. Even when it was inconvenient. Even when it was hard. Telling Sakurai Sho to leave camp, telling Sakurai Sho that he wouldn’t help? It would mean that he’d learned nothing from his parents in his thirty-four years of life.

He found Sakurai Sho in his parents’ tent. After Nino and Seitaro had left to speak away from town, Kazuko had forced the traveler to rest. The man had come a long way to find him, and his duty to his prince had outweighed taking more sensible precautions. Nino found the man in his red robes under a blanket, one of Nino’s own salves coating his sunburnt face in a goopy white mess.

He sat there while the noise continued outside the tent, watching Sakurai as he dozed. The night before, Nino thought he’d simply be able to blow off some steam, find comfort in someone new. But Sakurai Sho had instead brought him nothing but difficult choices, a heavy burden.

He’d been sitting there a while before Sakurai opened his eyes, looking up at him with barely restrained hope. “Your Highness…”

“First things first, I’m not going to allow that. I’m not accustomed to having servants around me,” Nino replied. “So call me Nino or call me nothing at all.”

Despite the salve covering his obviously painful sunburnt skin, Sakurai seemed amused. “As you wish. You can call me anything you like, as is your right, but otherwise…Sho is fine.”

Nino definitely didn’t like the sound of “as is your right,” but he kept those thoughts to himself for now. What else might be his “right” as a member of his family?

“I received a thorough history lesson from my…from Seitaro,” he said. “About the expectations Prince Yukio had for me. Alive or dead, the kingdom-saving falls to me, doesn’t it?”

Sho’s expression grew more solemn. “You will come?”

“I don’t have much choice, do I? I’d rather not be the one the historians name as ‘the man who refused to help.’”

Sho smiled, but then immediately winced in pain. Nino couldn’t help chuckling at his discomfort.

“Next time you’ll cover up better,” he said, giving Sho a poke in the arm. At least wearing those robes on his journey had saved the rest of his body from the sun’s fierce rays.

“I am not accustomed to traveling,” Sho admitted.

“I’ve spent my whole life doing it, and the desert is no joke.” He leaned forward. “It seems we’ll be journeying together soon. But I’ll be the one planning the itinerary, if you don’t mind.”

“I understand how important your family is to you,” Sho said. “I am truly sorry to take you away from them.”

Given how awful Amaterasu sounded, Nino was thrilled there would be hundreds of miles between him and his parents from now on. He’d miss them, but their safety was more important. Especially since they knew the secrets of Amaterasu and the Matsumoto royal family.

“We’ll stay here as long as the caravan does, and then we’ll make our way to the capital,” Nino decided.

His parents would stay in Toyone-mura a few days more, perhaps even a week. He’d spoken with his mother early that morning, and with Nino gone, there’d be much more for her to do or to delegate to others. Kazuko was efficient, but she couldn’t run things all on her own. Before the caravan moved on, such things would need to be settled.

“Since we’ve got time, Sho, perhaps it’s best you get talking. I’ve only been a prince’s bastard for a day now, so my education is rather lacking. So tell me. Who are you?”

He spent the next several hours in the tent with Sakurai Sho, learning about the man who’d journeyed for weeks to find him. Sho was a little older than him, the eldest son of a family with a long history of advising the Matsumoto royal family. But the relationship had soured.

The descendants of Sorcerer Raku, kings and queens alike, had lived pampered lives in the inner sanctum that was the Royal Palace of Amaterasu. By rationing out water to the capital and the villages outside Amaterasu’s walls, they kept the people dependent on their “generosity.” Water could be given. Water could be taken away. The Kingsguard or Queensguard of each generation was given ample water and food to retain their loyalty and were wielded swiftly to quell rioting or any other signs of rebellion.

The Sakurai family had been wealthy and influential, had pretty much bought their way into the palace to advise the monarch. Amaterasu had its elites the same as any city or large town, but it was a tricky balance. A handful of pipelines led out from the royal palace, directly to the estates of the leading families. Direct water sources available only to them, while the rest of the capital had to share the remainder. But just like the ones going to the common folk, a pipeline could be switched off if an aristocratic family aimed a bit too high or displeased the king.

Sho’s father had been groomed from a young age to serve King Kotaro as his treasury advisor. Where to invest money (in pipelines and other infrastructure), where to try and get more (raise taxes, sell royal lands to private investors). Sho’s father was a few years older than Kotaro’s heir, Prince Yukio. Prince Yukio who wanted to know more about where the treasury got its funds, who accompanied Sakurai to the poorest reaches of the kingdom to take what they could in tax from those who had next to nothing.

Sho had only been a toddler when his family was stripped of its aristocratic title. When Prince Yukio went to the king with new ideas for lowering taxes on the poor, the king presumed that it had been Sakurai’s influence, an attempt to weaken royal power. It was Prince Yukio who intervened, to keep the family who’d served them for centuries from being killed outright. The bargain struck was a heavy one.

The entire Sakurai family, his father and mother, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins were evicted from Amaterasu and sent to Tsumagoi in the north, close to the border with the Sun Kingdom’s neighbors, the Empire of Salt. Cold and unfriendly, the town at least had a freshwater river running through it.

Though Yukio had saved them from death, he couldn’t save them from shame. Sho was kept behind in Amaterasu, and so the heir who would have served the king as a trusted advisor was brought low, made a mere servant in the prince’s household.

“A hostage,” Sho explained, “so my family wouldn’t try anything foolish.”

Sho knew his family only through letters, all of which were opened and read before he was allowed to see them. He couldn’t remember what his parents looked like. He had siblings he’d never met, two nieces. Nino couldn’t even imagine it. Sho’s father had fallen from favor because Prince Yukio had allowed it. Reducing taxes had been his idea, not Sakurai’s. And yet he’d let Sakurai take the fall.

Nino was the son of a man like that.

Sho defended him anyway. “You must understand. Prince Yukio could not allow his father to know of his rebellious ambitions. Freeing the gods from Amaterasu was not his only aim. He wished for equality, for a way to bring water to all the people.”

“He ruined your life, Sho. He ruined your family to keep his secrets.”

“It’s complicated. My family didn’t suffer. And he was kind to me…”

“And now he’s dead,” Nino said coldly, irritated with each new detail revealed about the man who fathered him.

Sho blinked a few times but otherwise showed no other emotion.

“Yes, now he’s dead.”

Nino got to his feet. “You should rest. It will take us more than a week to reach the capital. I think I’ve heard just about enough today.”

“I understand.”

He was about to exit when Sho spoke again.

“For what it’s worth…”

Nino turned, looking down at the sad state of the man lying on the bedroll, face covered in salve.

“For what it’s worth,” Sho continued, “I’ve had thirty years to come to terms with what happened to me. To my family. I’ve had time to find my place in Amaterasu, to do what I had to do to survive there. Your learning curve will be considerably steeper. So I promise you, Ninomiya Kazunari, that I’ll do whatever it takes to help you.”

“Because Matsumoto Yukio ordered it?”

Sho’s eyes, the eyes that had captivated Nino from the start, were utterly serious. “No, not just because he ordered it.” Servant or no, Sho looked at him straight on, unflinching. “But because it is the right thing to do.”

Seitaro believed in him. So did his mother. So did Sho.

Nino left the tent behind, blinking in the afternoon sun. He found his mother standing at the edge of camp, watching as the residents of Toyone-mura dug where Seitaro’s Fortune Stick had indicated. He stood behind Kazuko, wrapping his arms around her, squeezing tight. Her hands grasped his desperately, even though her face betrayed none of her fear.

They said nothing, standing there out of the way as shovels dug and villagers prayed.

He wasn’t ready for this, for any of this. But when he heard the celebratory cries, when he heard the fevered gasps of “Water! We have water here!” he knew that the countdown was on. Soon he’d leave his life behind, everything he’d ever known.

And ready or not, the capital city of Amaterasu awaited him.

—

Sho’s face began to flake and peel a few days later, and they sat in the village square in the shade of an ancient palm tree. Nino had his mortar and pestle, was grinding a nutty paste that would smell horrible but quicken the healing process.

The Water Finder camp was assisting with the new well, also helping to construct makeshift tanks to bring up and store some water for reserves. In two days, they would leave for Aguni-mura fifty miles west. But Nino and Sho would set off for the town of Izena-machi instead, ten miles north. Trader caravans from the capital passed through Izena-machi regularly, and they would pay their way into a caravan’s protection. From there it was another two hundred miles northeast to Amaterasu. Traveling alone was simply too dangerous, especially with Nino’s grave new mission.

Sho had learned of Prince Yukio’s passing only a week into his search. He’d been sent from the capital in secret. He bore no identification or papers that might alert a Kingsguard patrol to who he worked for. With the prince dead, his position was all the more dangerous. The prince might have covered for his absence at the Royal Palace. But Sho was likely considered a deserter now, a runaway from his post.

“Doesn’t that jeopardize your family?” Nino wondered. “Since you’re supposed to be a hostage?”

“I’ve cultivated some friendships at the palace,” Sho admitted quietly, fanning himself. “I suppose I’ll discover if any of them were legitimate now, if they’ve kept my absence a secret.”

Yukio’s orders had been clear. Sho would find Nino and bring him back to Amaterasu, but not directly to the Royal Palace. That was suicidal - his arrival there would directly threaten the Matsumoto family line, given that Prince Jun was Yukio’s already named heir. Not to mention the fallout from the circumstances of Nino’s birth.

Instead Sho had been directed to bring Nino to one of the larger estates in the capital. The Tanaka family, a merchant family raised to aristocrat status, had been demoted again on the king’s whim. Yukio had been given the estate as a gift. Nino would be sequestered in one of the servants’ cottages on the property, there to study and train in the dark magic that had long kept his family in power.

Sho was fairly certain the plan could continue as is. If Yukio had been alive, he’d have been able to easily control access to the estate. But with Yukio’s death so recent, so sudden, the capital would still be in a state of mourning. Depending on the king’s decision, Yukio’s properties would not be meddled with for months or they would be given to Prince Jun to manage. And the king’s grandson would steer clear while the court mourned his father’s passing. Either way, Nino’s hiding place was likely to go unnoticed for a while, and then it would be up to Sho to find another place to stash him.

Perhaps if he showed a gift for magic, Sho explained, the gods might be freed without the king ever knowing of his existence.

“These gods, the sons of the God of the Waters…you haven’t spoken of them yet. Who are they? I still can’t wrap my head around the idea of gods walking among us.”

“They may look like us, like humans,” Sho explained, “but you need only spend a few moments in their company before you realize there’s so much more to them. Trapped they may be, but there’s no disguising a…”

The afternoon calm was shattered suddenly when Taniguchi, one of the camp’s bodyguards, came running back through the village square, one of the Toyone-mura patrollers not far behind.

“The Kingsguard approaches Toyone-mura!” the patroller hollered. “It is the Kingsguard!”

The palm frond Sho had been fanning himself with fluttered from his fingers and fell to the ground.

Nino gathered up his mortar and pestle, his work half-finished and the warning cry still echoing in his ears. He watched Taniguchi and the patroller disappear into the village elder’s home.

“Kingsguard?” Nino murmured, watching Sho slowly get to his feet. “They never venture this far…”

He’d seen the kingdom’s foot soldiers before, toting their shields that were emblazoned with a blood red circle meant to symbolize the rising sun. They were more commonly encountered in border towns, with the rest residing in or near Amaterasu. The small villages and towns that the caravan visited rarely saw the kingdom’s soldiers unless a village refused to deal with representatives from the treasury who came to collect taxes.

Kingsguard in a remote backwater like Toyone-mura could only mean one thing.

He could see the panic rising in Sho’s face. Nino had only known Sakurai Sho a few days, but he knew that the man was trustworthy. His mother would never have let him stay in their camp if he wasn’t. Which meant that Sho hadn’t lured the Kingsguard here on purpose.

It wasn’t likely that Nino and Sho would have the upper hand now.

“Hiding will only make things worse,” Sho admitted.

“They’ve come for me, haven’t they?”

Sho looked defeated. “So it would seem.”

The leaders arrived on horseback, which meant that they’d likely come straight from Izena-machi where such animals could be procured. Forcing a horse any further in the desert would kill them, and Nino doubted that the king’s finest would lower themselves to going about on foot or camelback.

The cavalry rode into the village square, horses whinnying as they encircled the area, trapping Sho and Nino along with a dozen or more other Toyone-mura villagers. The only opening was to allow a few dozen foot soldiers to enter, packs on their back and dressed for desert travel in lighter chainmail and helmets with sun visors. He couldn’t ignore the daggers strapped to each man’s side.

Nino heard Sho inhale sharply behind him when they saw some soldiers bring up the rear, eight of them bearing a glimmering golden litter. Nino saw the dark red circle painted on the shiny cloth. It wasn’t just soldiers arriving, now was it?

The men gently eased the litter down, kneeling in deference. Nino took a defensive step back, feeling Sho’s hand rest protectively on his shoulder. Looking behind the horses, he could see his mother and father watching in fright. He wished they could run, find safety in their tent, but it was too risky a move.

The cloth was quickly thrown aside as a woman emerged from the litter, dressed for the desert heat and blowing sands in loose, flowing purple robes. Her headscarf and face veil were a lighter violet. She immediately started walking in Sho and Nino’s direction, detaching the veil from her face where it had been secured with a silver chain. This revealed a woman of perhaps his mother’s age, maybe a little younger.

Unlike most women Nino had met in his life, this woman could afford makeup, bold red pigments for both her cheeks and her lips. It made her mouth look bloody, and from the way Sho’s hand tightened on his shoulder, Nino suddenly knew that this wasn’t a woman he could afford to disobey.

In the distance, Nino could hear a child crying. He couldn’t blame them. The closer she came, the more Nino wanted to cry himself. There was something in her eyes…something in her eyes that frightened him.

And yet he was astonished when the woman knelt down before him, her beautiful robes hitting the dirt. He said nothing, too stunned to speak. He did, however, feel Sho’s hand slip away.

The woman rose again, her brown eyes sparkling with mirth, her teeth yellowed with odd neglect. “I knew you on sight. It is remarkable how long you’ve managed to hide from us.”

“Madame,” Nino replied anxiously. “May I ask who you are?”

“You may,” the woman replied teasingly, and her voice was deep, her words clipped and sharp like most people he’d encountered from the capital region. A voice that threatened like a deadly blade. His mother, however, had long since abandoned the accent. Nino understood why.

He stared at her for another moment before gathering his courage. “I am Ninomiya Kazunari. From the size of your entourage, it seems you’ve been looking for me for some time. Who are you?”

“Ninomiya Kazunari, he calls himself,” the woman said, her crimson lips quirking into a grin. “My name is Matsumoto Rumiko, blood descendant of Raku, the first of his name. It is wonderful to finally meet my long-lost nephew.”

Nephew? This woman was his aunt? His parents hadn’t mentioned Yukio having a sister. Nor had Sakurai Sho. His new and terrible family was growing by the minute.

“We are alike, Kazunari,” the woman said, and she reached out, her finger stroking his cheek affectionately. It took all Nino had not to shudder at her touch. “We are both the unwanted siblings.”

Nino looked around, saw the men on horseback and the foot soldiers all staring him down. There was little friendliness in their faces compared to Matsumoto Rumiko’s.

The woman’s grin faded as she looked behind him. “It will show respect.”

Nino turned, watching how quickly Sho dropped to the ground, inclining his head. “Sorceress,” Sho said in acknowledgment.

Sorceress?!

“My family is staying just outside the village,” Nino said, trying to draw his apparent aunt’s attention away from Sho. “Can we sit and get to know each other? Some tea perhaps? We are a humble Water Finder caravan, Madame, but…”

Her hand cupped his face now, those eyes of hers staring him down. There was madness in them, Nino was certain of it. This woman was dangerous. He had to tread carefully - for his family’s sake, for Sho’s, and for Toyone-mura.

“Kazunari, my blood. There will be plenty of time for us to become friendly. It will be several days before we reach the capital.”

His chest tightened. He thought he had time. Time with his mother, his father. She was going to take him away from here. This woman and the Kingsguard. He would not be sneaking into Amaterasu now, would he? Maybe it was best if he played the fool.

“I don’t understand,” he mumbled.

“I can’t imagine the lies this pitiful creature has told you,” Rumiko said, moving to grab Sho by the hair, tugging hard until she could see his face. Nino’s heart was racing. Sho had been sent here secretly…and here he was now, surrounded by the Kingsguard. This Sorceress, this aunt of his, didn’t seem to wish Nino ill. But Sho…Sho was in danger.

“My dear brother, may the Gods favor him, was awfully fond of it,” Rumiko continued, her fingernails digging into Sho’s scalp. It. This woman had referred to Sho, a human being, as nothing but an “it.” Sho only looked at the sand beneath him, obviously wishing to cry out in pain but holding it in.

He had to do something. He remembered Sho’s words - how he’d had thirty years to learn how to survive in Amaterasu. Nino had anything but the luxury of time. He knew so little about the capital, but his mother had taught him to observe and emulate people’s behaviors as best he could. Of course that advice was meant for effective bartering at the market, not negotiating with a sorceress.

Then again, Ninomiya Kazuko had been in the capital herself. It was obviously where she’d learned to play the game.

“Madame,” Nino said, raising his voice a little and aiming for the same oddly cheerful tone as Rumiko. “Forgive my ignorance. I’ve only just learned my true heritage. The power my blood holds. I might have never learned of it had Sakurai Sho not come here.”

The sorceress let Sho go, turning back to Nino with a smile. From the corner of his eye, Nino could see Sho shaking in fear.

“It managed to convey that much to you? My dear brother sent it off behind our father’s back. A most unwise choice. Ah, but he thought he was clever, Yukio did. He believed all this time that Father didn’t know about you.”

Nino absorbed the information that was coming to him as quickly as he could. He could see Sho stiffen at Rumiko’s words. King Kotaro had known about Yukio’s bastard son, about Nino, all this time? For more than thirty years the king had known? For more than thirty years, the king could have sent an army to snatch him away? Why hadn’t he?

“I told you, Kazunari, that you and I share a special bond. We are the unwanted siblings. But now that my dear brother is gone and his other son is useless to Father, it’s our time, is it not?”

Two sides needed him. Sakurai Sho on behalf of Prince Yukio, who wished to free the gods from Amaterasu. And now Sorceress Rumiko, his aunt, on behalf of King Kotaro. King Kotaro, whose only other heir did not have the ability to compel the gods. After only a few minutes in Rumiko’s company, it was rather obvious which side was the more righteous one. But to survive, to keep his family safe, he’d have to make a different choice. At least for now.

With a few dozen members of the Kingsguard at her command and whatever powers a sorceress might possess, Rumiko was dangerous. It was clear that she needed him alive. But that didn’t necessarily apply to Toyone-mura. His parents. And Sakurai Sho.

Nino looked around. Beyond the horses, he could see the frightened, confused faces of the villagers. He couldn’t let anything happen to them.

“If I understand what you’ve said, Madame, it seems that I am needed in the capital very urgently. To ensure the survival of our bloodline.”

Rumiko’s dark red smile brightened. “I will train you myself, Kazunari. You are getting a late start, but I promise that you will be mighty. A worthy successor to my father.”

He didn’t like the sound of that at all, of having to spend any more time in this terrifying woman’s presence. But he didn’t seem to have much choice. “Then I come willingly. And with appreciation.”

Rumiko held his face in her hands. He held in a shudder at the realization that they were related by blood. “My darling nephew, how thrilled I am that you know your own worth and value. We will water the horses and leave as soon as they’re ready. You need bring nothing with you. In Amaterasu, you will have all that you need. I will do everything in my power to help you. You have my word as a Matsumoto.”

He remembered Sho making a similar vow. But unlike Sho, Nino didn’t trust this woman one bit. “I have two very minor conditions.”

Rumiko’s smile weakened the slightest bit, but Nino stood his ground as best he could. Careful, he told himself. Careful.

The eyes of the village and the eyes of the Kingsguard were still upon him. All of them observing this most unusual conference in the center of their village. “Ninomiya Kazuko and Seitaro. My parents and their caravan. I presume that if the king knew of me, he knew just as much of them. I ask that they be left in peace.”

“Of course,” Rumiko replied. “Father has no quarrel with them. It is clear they were manipulated and used by Yukio. Father is an understanding man, he would wish no harm upon the people who raised you and kept you safe all this time.”

Nino wanted to sigh in relief but he couldn’t. Not just yet.

“Sakurai Sho,” he said firmly. “What is to be done with him?”

Rumiko smiled yet again. “It is for Father to deal with.”

Breathe, Nino. Just breathe, he told himself. “Sakurai Sho was my father’s servant. I would take him as my own.”

Rumiko looked down at Sho, who was still almost face down in the dirt. “Nephew, that I cannot grant you. Again, it is for Father to deal with.”

“Then…then I will take the matter up with him when we meet.”

“It seems you have a soft heart for the weak, Kazunari, the same as your father.” Rumiko leaned forward, pressing a soft kiss to his cheek. Her next words came as a mere whisper in his ear, sending a shiver down his spine. “I will have to break you from that habit.”

Rumiko stepped back, clapping her hands.

“We depart within the hour.”

Nino looked across the village square, seeing his parents huddled together. It was clear that Rumiko and the Kingsguard were not going to let him out of their sight. So just like that, he would leave his parents behind.

He met his parents’ eyes, read the words on their lips, the pleas plainly etched on their sun-weathered faces. Be strong, Ninomiya Seitaro was telling him. Ninomiya Kazuko’s words were even more desperate.

You must be smarter than them. Or else.

—

They moved from town to town with an efficiency Nino had never known as a member of the caravan. They changed horses in every town and quartered in them at night. It was the law that citizens had to provide for the Kingsguard if they visited their town. It was a common occurrence along the borders, and towns there often had barracks available.

But in the towns they visited along the route to Amaterasu, visits of the Kingsguard were considerably more rare. Nino watched from the safety of the royal litter, Matsumoto Rumiko sitting across from him, as townsfolk were forced from their homes for the night so that the soldiers would have a place to stay. Their food and water was taken from them as well. No repayment or replenishments were offered. Complaints would only earn them punishments.

Nino was treated even better now that he was considered royal. He and Rumiko were quartered in town inns or in the homes of mayors or town elders. He was given fine foods, guilt squeezing his heart each time a frightened housewife set down a platter before him, as though he’d find something wrong with it and hurt her or her family. He’d be seated across from his aunt, who spent most meals sipping wine and rolling her eyes when Nino offered quiet thanks for what he was served.

At night, there were members of the Kingsguard posted outside of his room. Nino, still rather unaccustomed to mattresses, spent most nights awake and irritated, knowing he had no escape. Of course Rumiko’s excuse was that it was for his protection - in case agents of Prince Yukio or his widow, Princess Mariya, tried to compromise the mission.

Nino’s only comfort was knowing that Sho was still alive. It had been clear from their first day on the road that Sho, a servant, could not travel through the desert with the same speed as a trained soldier. It was Nino who had suggested that Sho be put on a horse so he “didn’t hold them up.” Rumiko had clearly seen through his lie, but since she was charged with bringing Sho to the capital alive to face judgment, she’d allowed it.

Sho’s nights were worse, Nino knew. He was forced to sleep in town stables with the horses, was expected to drink from the same water trough if he was thirsty. It had been hard enough to get permission for Sho to travel on a horse. There was no way Nino was going to be able to get Rumiko to give in on Sho’s treatment otherwise.

If Nino wanted to survive in this harsh new world, he knew it was only logical to forget about Sho. To ignore his treatment and play the game Rumiko wanted him to play. Hell, maybe it would have been better to not suggest the horse at all. Sho might have simply dropped dead from thirst or heatstroke. Certainly that was a better death than whatever likely awaited him in Amaterasu. Nino doubted the king would be merciful to someone perceived as a traitor.

Unless Nino found a solution, Sho would die suffering. And slowly at that.

Nino had met eyes with Sho only a handful of times so far on their journey. And Sho had smiled at him, encouraging him. Nino couldn’t understand it. He couldn’t understand Sho’s willingness to endure such humiliation. Even back in Toyone-mura, Sho might have saved himself. As soon as he’d heard of the Kingsguard’s approach, he might have fled as though he’d never come looking. Rumiko might have given up on Sho, assumed he was dead out in the desert sands, so long as she had Nino to bring to Amaterasu.

They were now three or four days away from the capital, and Nino woke from a nightmare-filled sleep. He woke in yet another stranger’s bed, sitting up and staring sadly at the infant crib in the corner of the room. He and Rumiko had been quartered overnight in the home of Mayor Toda, the woman in charge of Miyashiro-machi. Mayor Toda, her husband, and two young children were spending the night downstairs in their kitchen while Nino slept in her bed.

He bathed quickly, dressing in the clothes Rumiko had provided for him. Lightweight material, well-made. He’d never worn anything so fine as the new shirts and trousers she gave him. Good for the desert heat and with a pair of boots that she had one of the foot soldiers clean and polish for him every night. Wearing them repulsed him. He’d brought nothing from his tent. None of his clothes. None of his trinkets. Nothing that belonged to the Ninomiya Kazunari from the Water Finder’s caravan. That was all to be erased so that the man who appeared in Amaterasu looked more like a prince. He was certain that was Rumiko’s aim.

He was told to bathe every day, and the long, messy black hair he usually tied back out of his face had been cut a few towns back. He was told to shave his face every day because facial hair, even the shadow of it, was not popular in Amaterasu. He was eating more in one meal than he usually ate in an entire day back in the caravan, and the richness of everything repeatedly upset his stomach. When he woke now, ran a comb through his too short hair and peered into the mirror in a room he’d been forced to borrow, a different man stared back out.

He looked in the mirror now, exhaling shakily. All he could see was a man of royal blood. There were dark circles under his eyes - not from the exhaustion of a long day’s travel in the caravan, but from being unable to sleep in a stolen bed. Disgusted with the sight of himself, he headed down the stairs, finding Rumiko already eating breakfast.

He asked only for rice with an egg and soy sauce, mixing it all together with little enthusiasm. Somewhere in a Miyashiro-machi stable, Sakurai Sho was probably hoping that one of the carrots for the horses might fall somewhere in his reach.

“Good morning, my blood,” Rumiko said, smiling in that sinister manner of hers.

“Good morning, Aunt.” She liked it when he called her that, so he’d continued it.

Though they’d already spent days traveling together, there was a lot that Nino still didn’t know about the capital they were approaching. He had asked repeatedly about the sons of the God of the Waters. He’d even expressed his wish to meet them as soon as possible so he might better understand the powers his blood might give him over them. Each lie tasted rotten, but his curiosity seemed to please Matsumoto Rumiko even though she gave him few answers.

Instead, she mostly talked about herself. She was one of the most self-involved people Nino had ever met. She had been born seven years after her elder brother, Prince Yukio. Though she was the daughter of King Kotaro, her mother had been an aristocrat’s wife. Her mother and the woman’s husband had been banished from Amaterasu shortly after her birth as a way of appeasing King Kotaro’s wife, the queen.

Rumiko professed to being her father’s favorite, although Nino wondered how much of that was an exaggeration or outright lie. Nino had never paid much attention to matters of the royal family, but everyone had known that Yukio was Kotaro’s heir. Word of Yukio having a sister had never reached their caravan. Nino wished he could speak with Sho. He would tell the truth. For now, he could only pretend to accept Rumiko’s words, doing his best to act charmed by his newly discovered aunt.

As a younger child and a daughter (and an illegitimate one at that, Nino thought), Rumiko had never been considered for rule. Instead, she had studied her royal lineage. From the reverent way she spoke of it, Nino guessed it might have become her life’s obsession. No matter who her mother was, the blood of Sorcerer Raku flowed in her veins. She told Nino that she studied magic in order to “bring honor to the family, to the history of our bloodline.” But when Nino had asked her to demonstrate her abilities, she had only grinned, showing off an onyx bangle clasped around her ankle.

“Father doesn’t allow me to show off anymore,” was the only explanation offered. Presumably the bangle suppressed whatever magical powers she had honed over the years. And this also likely meant that King Kotaro had his own doubts about his daughter. An adult woman in her fifties, and yet she wasn’t fully trusted.

King Kotaro had also known about Yukio’s defiance, about the son he’d fathered and sent off to the desert. That also led Nino to believe that Kotaro had been equally suspicious of his son and had been for many years. The court Nino would arrive at in only a matter of days would be a difficult one to navigate. The only person he was sure he could trust might be executed as soon as they arrived.

Rumiko spent the remainder of the meal attempting to poison Nino’s mind against Princess Mariya and her son, Prince Jun. Nino’s half-brother. Rumiko made no attempt to hide her dislike.

“The West Kingdom, it’s no secret that weakness runs in their blood,” Rumiko was saying. The woman was obsessed with bloodlines. “Why Father even allowed Yukio to marry one of their simpering princesses still astounds me to this day. It is no wonder that the child of that union is useless.”

Having not been introduced to Prince Jun, Nino decided to withhold judgment on him. He was rather surprised that Rumiko would speak so disparagingly of her own family, but she appeared to value strength and power above all else. If Prince Jun truly lacked the ability to compel the gods, it explained Rumiko’s disdain for him.

But what did that mean for Nino, who’d arrive in Amaterasu soon with Rumiko by his side? Already he thought there’d be two court factions aiming to control him. The King and Rumiko on one side, Sho and whoever remained loyal to Yukio on the other. But what about Prince Jun? He was Nino’s age and surely had his own measure of influence at court. Even without magical abilities, the heir to the throne could not be underestimated. How would Prince Jun interpret Nino’s arrival?

That likely depended on Nino’s abilities. If he could not compel the gods, he was no threat to Jun succeeding King Kotaro. But if Nino could not compel the gods, he’d be useless in Rumiko’s eyes, and then where would he end up? What side would he choose? Or, more likely, what side would even have him?

His mother had begged for him to be smarter than them. But there was so much he still didn’t know. He knew only the fragments that his father and Sho had explained. He knew what Rumiko had told him so far, all of it heavily biased. He knew nothing of the gods. And worse, he didn’t even know if he could use blood magic. He might be walking right into a trap. How could he be smart when he was at such a horrible disadvantage?

The tattoos. The only way to control the gods was with the tattoos. He expected that they’d be carved into his skin once he arrived in Amaterasu. He wasn’t looking forward to it, even if he attempted to use them for the opposite of their intended purpose. Seitaro had told him the process was painful.

“Perhaps this is a rude question for the breakfast table,” he said, trying to remain calm. “But may I see your tattoos? Will mine be the same?”

Rumiko seemed pleased with the question. She seemed to like any inquiry that was mostly about her. “Not rude, Kazunari. But they’re not for just anyone’s eyes. I’ll show you later.”

There were four members of the Kingsguard in the room. The symbols would remain hidden for now.

Later that day, Rumiko remembered his request. They were alone inside the royal litter, being borne across the sands. She got his attention with a squeeze of her hand to his knee. “I will show you the birthright that has been kept from you for so many years.”

He leaned forward, interested despite how much she frightened and disgusted him. Because he knew that whatever marked Rumiko would soon mark him. He had to know.

She needed to only push up the sleeve on her left arm just to the crook of her elbow. Nino couldn’t hide his gasp at the way her otherwise soft, pale skin was so brutally marred.

The skin on the inside of her arm had six distinct symbols running from the inside of her elbow to just above her wrist. It was apparently the language of the gods, and Nino didn’t recognize any of the symbols. Each symbol looked like a painful bruise, the symbols inked in a purple so dark it was almost black. The skin around each symbol looked sickly, a yellowish-brown, as though the flesh might rot any moment.

Nino had seen people with tattoos on occasion. He’d never seen a tattoo look like the ones on his aunt’s arm. It was the blood magic, Nino realized. These were no ordinary tattoos.

“Does it…hurt?” he couldn’t help asking, feeling squeamish. Yukio had these? Kotaro had these? Generations of the Matsumoto royal family had these stretching back for centuries? Every single one?

“It hums a bit,” she replied, her fingertips brushing along the symbols. “It reminds me of my potential. My power. Always.”

He swallowed. “Mine will look like that?”

She chuckled, lowering her sleeve at his obvious discomfort. “What’s a little bit of pain when you can control a god?”

He stared at her. “You didn’t answer my question,” he said shakily. Even with them hidden away, he was certain he’d never forget what they looked like.

“Kazunari, relax. It will be years before yours are as powerful as mine. The longer you bear them, the longer the magic works in your blood, and the stronger you will become.” She smiled. “In time, you may come to find them beautiful, as I do.”

He doubted that. He highly doubted that.

The consequences of the blood magic, etched right into Rumiko’s skin. Soon those symbols would mar his own skin. They would hum if he possessed the ability to compel the gods, the same as his aunt’s. Or perhaps they would be silent, if he lacked the power. And yet they would always be there, a part of him. A reminder of the price Sorcerer Raku had willingly paid centuries ago for powers he didn’t deserve to wield.

“Could we stop?” he muttered. “I think my breakfast is disagreeing with me.”

Rumiko’s smile seemed almost sadistic as she called for the litter to be stopped. Nino nearly tumbled out of it, crawling across the sand to vomit.

—

Mud-brick walls a hundred feet high ringed the capital city of Amaterasu, and they entered through the South Gate with little fanfare. The city seemed no wealthier than the towns and villages Nino had passed through in the Water Finder caravan. It was simply larger. And darker. In many places the walls cast long shadows across the small, tightly-packed buildings within.

The foot soldiers carried the litter through the narrow streets, the cavalry to the front and back to ensure order was kept and the way remained clear. But Nino got the sense that people knew to steer clear simply at the sight of the blood red sun on the royal litter as it was carried through the streets.

Nino lifted the cloth only enough to look out from the slightly swaying litter. A crowded, labyrinthine city greeted him. The markets were full of glum faces arguing over prices while children hollered as they chased one another or cried in their mothers’ arms. Laborers were busy in the workshops they passed, hammering nails or stitching cloth. The air was ripe with the stink of unwashed people, animal shit, and commercial enterprise.

Amaterasu did have one key difference from the other towns in the Sun Kingdom.

The water.

There were pipes running all along the road, weathered copper tubes bolted to walls, snaking to and fro. He saw queues of humanity lined up at spigots placed at various points, their arms heavy with pots to carry the water home. At nearly every spigot, at nearly every well, a member of the Kingsguard stood by. It was a soldier who opened the tap or well cover in every instance. A soldier who told someone when their turn was over. Nino doubted everyone got their fair share. Disappointment was obvious in every face, but no complaints were uttered. All the water originated from the palace. The pipes could run dry on the king’s whim.

Nino looked back inside the litter. His aunt was utterly indifferent to the suffering all around them, the suffering of her people. The system in Amaterasu was one of utter dependence. Without the water trickling through those copper pipes, the citizens of the capital would easily die, especially with the high walls ringing the city and keeping them inside.

As the ride through the city progressed, the smell and the noise diminished a little. Instead of cramped multi-level tenements, the houses were spaced out more. Pipes were a bit more plentiful. Nino was able to observe a few unguarded wells, seeing women filling buckets and pots without a soldier looming over them. The neighborhood was home to merchants and other professionals. As the capital’s inner walls loomed ahead, the equally tall mud-brick that enclosed the royal palace and grounds, Nino saw bits of greenery emerge. Fenced-in estates with expanses of green grass and leafy trees. The estates of the aristocrats. Ornamental trees and plants were a luxury Nino had seen very rarely in his life. These were the homes that had a pipeline of water direct from the palace, so long as the family dwelling there remained in the King’s favor.

But yet all of this remained outside the palace grounds.

As they approached the palace gates, Nino felt ill. He’d made it here from the desert sands, carried past the kingdom’s neediest souls and then past the homes of those who lived well, simply because of the family they’d been born to. None of it was fair, and behind the walls just ahead, Nino knew that the greatest unfairness of all awaited.

For centuries, the royal family had lived in their own bubble. And now Nino would make his way inside. Would he ever make it out?

He heard the gate come crashing back down behind them, and he was inside now. “Behold your birthright, Kazunari,” Rumiko said, voice amused. Perhaps because she was accustomed to luxury.

Nino, of course, was not.

He could barely comprehend what he was seeing. The grounds were extensive indeed. It would be another mile before they even reached the palace in the center. And you’d never know such an overwhelming place might exist in the middle of the desert. He could sense the change in the air. It was a place that had never experienced deprivation of any kind.

To his left, there were extensive facilities for the Kingsguard. Stone barracks, a mess hall, an armory. He could see men training in shallow sand pits, iron swords colliding with a clang while others cheered them on. And just beyond the pits lay an ornamental fountain, a metallic sunburst mounted in the center with water spraying whimsically from each ray.

To his right stretched a healthy orchard. Tilled earth and groves of orange trees, branches almost overburdened with fat fruit. The sight and the sharp, fresh scent perfuming the air made Nino’s mouth water.

The noisy, pebbled path to the palace was interrupted twice with the sounds of boots on arched wooden bridges. The litter was carried over two different trenches, each full of lazily flowing water. He’d never seen so much water in his life, and yet these were mere streams added to beautify the landscape. What had it taken, what had it cost, to create these streams where none had likely been before?

There was so much greenery, he couldn’t believe his eyes. The palace gardens went on for acres - soaring palm trees, shrubs, and manicured bushes as high as a man’s shoulder. Plants with blooms in a variety of colors. Rose bushes and flower beds. Irrigation channels and small fountains, with simple stone benches dotting the landscape at obviously planned intervals. In the distance, he could see a gardening crew trimming branches and filling watering cans at one of the fountains. The staff paid little mind to any water that leaked out of their cans, letting it hit the stone where it would simply dry as though it had never existed.

The pathways through the gardens were solid stone, broken into gently declining steps to more easily integrate with the hilly terrain. The paths were all split right up the middle, a shallow channel of fresh water flowing along, easing its way downhill.

The main palace loomed ahead, a fortress of tan brick similar to those used to build the capital’s walls. The perimeter walls rose three stories high, solid brick for the first two stories while the top floor was open to the air. The entire perimeter was lined with rounded arches and marble columns, iron railings running along between each column to keep anyone from falling to the courtyard below. Even at a distance, Nino could see people walking the passageways, Kingsguard standing in place, and courtiers leaning against the railings to look out at the expansive palace grounds.

The litter was deposited in an outside courtyard, and Rumiko exited first. Nino followed, stepping down onto the dark stone. “I will arrange for you to meet with Father,” Rumiko said as a swarm of servants and grooms came for the litter and the horses respectively. “Come, I’ll bring you to your rooms.”

He looked back as he crossed the courtyard, seeing Sho only for a brief moment as he was helped down from one of the horses. Would he ever see him again? Soon enough Nino was inside, walking across intricately tiled floors as he followed at a respectful distance. The sound of boots behind him reminded him that there was no escape.

—

Each room and hall was more beautiful than the last. Some were enclosed while others were open to one of the inner courtyards, the open passages lined with more columns and arches. Many columns had vines woven around them, colorful blooms filling the entire palace with their scent as the breeze caught it. Each inner courtyard he spotted boasted a fountain or pool of its own. Mere afterthoughts. This water was simply there for aesthetic reasons, nothing more. Everywhere Nino walked he could hear the fall of water, and the abundance of it made him ill.

He was finally brought down a long passageway. Four maidservants in red robes bowed low to him as he arrived. Rumiko had likely sent word ahead of their caravan so that rooms would already be prepared for him. It seemed that all the servants of the palace wore red, the same as Sho. A reminder of the red rising sun. Each, however, wore a black ribbon around their arms. Sho hadn’t had one of those.

It was doubtful that the rooms he’d inherited were the fanciest in the palace, but the luxury within still left him unable to find words. It was a series of three connected rooms. The first was a sitting room of simple tatami mats adorned with a low table, red cushions, and a taller side table that might hold refreshments. There were walls on three sides, the fourth open to the air like many of the other passageways he’d come through. Thin silk curtains might be pulled closed for privacy, but otherwise there was a small courtyard all his own with a small round pool in the center. He was almost grateful for the lack of a fountain. He wasn’t sure he could bear the constant noise, the constant reminder.

The second room was a private bedchamber, walled on all sides. It was simply but elegantly appointed with a large bed, side tables, and a chest of drawers for whatever clothing he might be issued. The final room was a private washroom dominated by a large tub for bathing with its own faucet. There was also a faucet attached to the tiled wall along with a wash bucket and wooden stool. A screen decorated with pelicans hid a chamber pot behind it.

The three rooms put together were larger than most of the homes he’d stayed in the last several days. And those homes had been considerably larger than the caravan tents. What was he to do with all this empty space? Well, he supposed that depended on whatever magical abilities he possessed. If he had none, Nino doubted he’d be staying in these rooms much longer.

Rumiko departed, explaining that she would go straight to the king to notify him of their arrival. “It will be up to Father if he wishes to address the servant matter right away,” Rumiko explained, irritated at having to say so at all. Whether Sho lived or died was of no concern to her.

With his aunt gone, the very timid maidservants quietly entered the sitting room, kneeling before him and pressing their foreheads to the floor. Was this the life his mother had led before leaving Amaterasu? He simply couldn’t imagine a woman of Ninomiya Kazuko’s toughness and independence bowing so meekly to anyone.

One of the maidservants, likely the senior among them, was the only one to speak. “If your chambers are not to your liking, Your Highness, we most humbly apologize. You need only tell us how we might please you.”

He didn’t particularly like her phrasing, thinking of his mother again. Had it been this way with Prince Yukio? Had she sought to please him? Had she mistaken that for genuine affection?

“When no one else is in this room, I will not allow you to kneel to me.”

This registered as pure shock on the senior maidservant’s face as she looked up at him. “Your Highness?”

“Do what is considered proper when I have guests,” he continued. “But otherwise, you will not kneel to me again. Is that understood?”

She nodded, slowly rising to her feet. The other three did the same, though none of them would meet his eyes. Their behavior worried him. They didn’t know him. They knew only that he was royal and for that, they were horribly afraid of him. Nino didn’t want to know how other members of his new family treated their servants.

“The black ribbon, around your arms,” he inquired. “What does it symbolize?” The red he could understand…but the black…

“We are in mourning here,” the maidservant explained. “For Prince Yukio, may the Gods favor him.”

“May the Gods favor him,” the other three chimed in an instant later.

He couldn’t quite read their faces. He couldn’t tell if they genuinely mourned the loss of his father or not. In time, he’d have to figure it out. He’d need allies here, as many as he could find, if he was going to survive.

“It’s been a long journey,” he said. “I wish to be left alone to rest.”

“As you wish, Your Highness.”

The four left in a flurry of red, closing the door softly behind them. Nino removed the boots his aunt had given him, flinging them in a corner of his new sitting room. He walked out into the courtyard, crouching down beside the small pool of water. Looking up, the courtyard was private, solid walls closing him in. He set his hand in the water, finding it cool despite the sun bearing down on the capital. He flicked droplets away, annoyed at the waste, as he got to his feet.

He walked the perimeter of the pool, examining the high walls, nervousness growing. He had privacy, but he would not be able to escape. There were no handholds in the brick, and he’d never be able to scale three stories with nothing to hold on to. He thought he saw a flash of color from the corner of his eye, a sudden movement. He turned, looking up to the wall behind him.

Nobody there, but he could have sworn…

Well, that didn’t matter. But he’d learned something. It wasn’t as private here as he thought. Someone might sit on the palace roof and look down. He headed back inside, drawing the silk curtains with a huff. There was much he’d need to learn.

—

It was an entire day before anyone but the maidservants came to his room. He’d been served a large dinner the night before, gently informing the lead maid, Mirei, to bring him only a fraction as much food in the future. She had been confused once again—what kind of man would eat so little when the palace offered him so much?

They’d come again in the morning to empty his chamber pot, change the soft bedsheets, and bring in clothing. He’d had to stop Mirei just before she added rose-scented oils to his bathwater. He’d look the part of a prince, but he’d rather smell clean than aristocratic.

It was an older gentleman who came to his chambers that afternoon just after his midday meal. Nino was almost grateful for the intrusion. There’d been Kingsguard posted at his door overnight, and there’d been nothing in the room to do but read through the few books of flowery poetry that had been left there.

The man was not in the red robes of servants, but his clothes weren’t as fine as the new ones Nino had been brought. The black ribbon for Yukio was tied around his arm, however, the same as the servants. The same as the one tied around Nino’s own sleeve now, hoping to fit in.

The man was middle-aged, balding, clever-eyed. “My name is Takahashi, Your Highness,” the man said. “I am an advisor to King Kotaro. You’ve been summoned.”

He rose to his feet, hoping he didn’t look frightened or rushed. He was royal now, so he supposed he ought to act a bit more spoiled than he was used to. “Very well. I will come with you.”

Takahashi led him from his chambers and back through the maze of passageways that made up the royal palace. Yesterday he’d been too awestruck by all the water, all the ivy and vines, to make much sense of where he seemed to have been placed. There were more people in the passages this afternoon. Those in red moved quietly, discreetly. Those in clothes like Takahashi’s moved about comfortably.

It seemed like Nino’s chambers were in one wing of the palace, perhaps a more residential area. The longer they walked along, the more people dressed like Takahashi appeared. Advisors and high-ranking staff. Bureaucrats rather than full-time palace residents. All wore the black ribbons of mourning. How many were sincere? How many were worn for appearance’s sake?

Rumiko was waiting outside of the arched double doors Takahashi led him to. She seemed to approve of Nino’s new clothes as well as the shave he’d given himself that morning, not that he’d sprouted many new hairs in the last day or two. He knew he looked royal now. He knew he looked as though he belonged, rose-scented baths aside.

Rumiko stood by his side, grinning at him. He offered her his arm, trying not to shake when she took it, holding him tightly. Nino felt as though he was Rumiko’s most prized possession. He wondered what the king might think of that.

Takahashi nodded for the Kingsguard posted at the doors to open them. Nino felt Rumiko’s breath against his ear.

“Stand tall. Be strong, no matter how he makes you feel.”

The king?

He had no chance to ask his question as the doors swung open to reveal the royal audience chamber. It was a long room with soaring, vaulted ceilings. Marble arches and columns lined the solid walls, and a deep red rug split the room up the middle as it led to a raised dais with a white marble throne.

He swallowed nervously as he entered, Rumiko encouraging him to walk proudly up the rug rather than on the black and white checkerboard-patterned tile. The chamber might hold hundreds, but for now there were only a handful of people inside. Nino tried not to react when he saw the two men from the Kingsguard standing just before the two steps up to the dais, Sakurai Sho shoved to his knees before them.

The throne was occupied by a rather frail old man, his skin wrinkled and sallow, his body overburdened with heavy-looking red robes covered in embroidered golden suns. His face was stern but calm, watching carefully as Nino entered. Thinking it unwise to stare the leader of the Sun Kingdom right in the face, he decided to focus his attention instead to the tall man in the rather simple green tunic and dark trousers standing just behind the throne to the right.

This was a mistake.

Their eyes met, and Nino nearly tripped over his own feet when a sudden, cool wave seemed to wash over him, leaving him shivering. He blinked, trying to regain his footing, Rumiko’s grip on him tightening as she urged him forward.

The look on the man’s face softened. He was handsome, with long limbs and a slim build. Everything about him was as human as could be. And yet Nino couldn’t look away from his eyes. They were brown, not a far cry from the color of Nino’s own eyes, but there was something in them that hooked on to him, tight and unyielding, a stronger pull than even Rumiko’s grip. What was this feeling? Nino didn’t know it. Nino had never felt it before. Not in his happiest or lowest moments.

Somehow he continued putting one foot in front of the other, but it felt like the rest of him had gone numb. He was upright, he was in motion, and yet he felt paralyzed at the same time. There was a word for what he saw in the strange man’s eyes. One simple, undeniable word.

Power.

The man broke eye contact first, looking down with a soft smile, his dark brown hair falling across his face to obscure his eyes. He clearly found something funny.

Be strong, Rumiko had said. No matter how he makes you feel.

She hadn’t been speaking about King Kotaro, had she?

Released from the sharp pull of the man in green, Nino realized that he was shivering. Positively shaking with cold, his jaw trembling even though there was only the lightest breeze inside the warm audience chamber. What the hell had just happened?

“Kneel and pay your respects to Father,” Rumiko whispered as they moved ahead of the soldiers, ahead of the kneeling and imprisoned Sakurai Sho.

Nino, still shaking, let his arm fall back to his side, kneeling on the first stair before the throne. “Your Majesty,” he managed to say. In the presence of the king and the strange man beside him, Nino could barely move. He stared at the rug beneath him, trying to focus on the fact that Sho was still alive, willing himself to be still.

“You are Kazunari,” the king said, his voice rasping with his advanced age. The now-deceased Yukio had been in his early sixties. The king himself was pushing ninety years.

“I am, Your Majesty,” he replied, not raising his head.

“Our meeting comes at a momentous time. It was my son’s decision, may the Gods favor him, to keep you from me.” The king cleared his throat, an ugly, sickening sound. “Let me look upon you and know that you are my blood.”

Taking a breath, Nino looked up and into the king’s aged face. He felt a shiver go down his spine. If he moved his eyes just to the right, he’d be looking at the man in green again. He didn’t want to. He didn’t know how he’d react. Instead he met the eyes of his grandfather for the first time.

What Matsumoto Kotaro saw didn’t seem to please him much.

“You are small,” the king scoffed, raising his eyebrows. “Bones.”

“He was raised among poor desert drifters,” Rumiko piped up, her voice tinged with pity. Nino tried not to react. “They hunch over in their ragged tents and subsist on nuts and berries. It is no wonder he looks the way he does, Father.”

Nino had never considered himself to be a tall man, but he had never been around many people who were. He still stood a full head taller than his mother and a few inches taller than Seitaro, but after days in the company of the Kingsguard, he knew that he was smaller than most men of the capital. Desert peoples ate little, traveled continuously. It was not a life that made you fat, nor was it a life that left you tall. He’d never felt shame about it before, and he wasn’t about to start now. But being insufficient in the eyes of the king was not going to start him off on the right foot politically.

“I am who I am, Your Majesty,” he said quietly.

“You are mine, though,” Kotaro rasped. “I see it in your eyes. You look as I did at your age…well, if I had been an emaciated desert rat.”

He swallowed, smiling bitterly as his stomach turned. His grandfather was as blunt and unkind as his horrible daughter. “Perhaps now that I am finally where I belong I’ll fatten up in a manner that pleases you, Your Majesty.”

His gamble paid off, the old man laughing in reply. Rumiko laughed as well, at least until the king gave her an exasperated look when her chuckles went on longer than his.

“You have a Matsumoto tongue as well, Kazunari,” Kotaro said. “But the only thing that truly matters is what none of us can see right now. Your blood.”

Nino nodded in understanding.

“Traditionally, those of our bloodline receive the markings when they come of age…at twenty. You are the same age as Jun?”

“A few months older,” Rumiko said. “Thirty-four years now.”

Nino’s birthday had come and gone yesterday, and he hadn’t even realized it.

“I don’t need you to be his mouth when yours is already overused,” Kotaro snapped, and for the first time, Nino saw Rumiko chastened, hesitant. She merely smiled, taking a step back. Father and daughter did not see eye to eye in all things. Nino remembered the bangle on Rumiko’s leg, suppressing her powers.

“My dear aunt is correct,” Nino said. “I have reached thirty-four years.”

“Our court remains in mourning for the next three months,” Kotaro said, eyeing Nino warily. “You will be marked without any ceremony. I’d rather know your blood now than when mourning is lifted. I’m sure your father would have wished for it, as well. For your birthright to be recognized sooner rather than later.”

“It would be an honor, Your Majesty,” he replied quietly, trying to keep calm even as he remembered how the tattoos had looked on Rumiko’s arm. Soon a matching set would be on his.

“One week from today so you might settle in,” the king decided, cracking a brown-toothed smile. “Fatten up. You may stand.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty. I will be ready,” he replied, finally getting back to his feet. Could the old man sense his fear?

“Then there is the other matter, I’ve been told,” the king continued. “My daughter claims that you have a request regarding the traitor behind you.”

Nino couldn’t help turning, seeing that Sho had not moved a muscle since Nino had entered the audience chamber. His red robes were gone, and he’d been dressed in a simple tan tunic and bottoms. He hadn’t been given any shoes, and his dirty feet marred the otherwise pristine tile beneath him.

His face lifted just a little, and Nino held in a gasp at the sight of his sunburnt face, the red interrupted here and there by bruises and a black eye that had left him swollen and in obvious agony. Who knew what had been done to the rest of him that Nino couldn’t see?

Nino turned back to the king and inclined his head in acknowledgment. There was a slight buzzing in his ears, the hair on the back of his neck rising when his eyes quickly moved past the mysterious man in green. It wasn’t as strong as it had first been, but it was still there. That depth of feeling, that chill.

“Yes, Your Majesty, if you’ll be so kind as to allow it.”

“We’ll see what I allow, my blood,” the old man said in a sly tone, moving a little in his chair, his gnarled old hands gripping the arms of it.

“Sakurai Sho was a loyal, trusted servant of my father,” he said before quickly adding, “may the Gods favor him.”

From the corner of his eye, he saw the man in green smirk. He ignored it, pushing forward. He’d barely slept the night before, trying to think of what he might say if called upon to argue for Sho’s life. He still wasn’t certain he’d be successful. And having Sho here, Sho covered in bruises, made him all the more unsure. What if he failed? Would he have to watch Sho die?

“I understand fully that coming to find me meant that he abandoned his post here at the palace, a treasonous offense, especially considering the dishonor the Sakurai family showed to ours so many years ago. However, he was acting at the behest of my dear departed father, who wished only to see me. To meet the son he’d never known. Perhaps if circumstances had been different, Prince Yukio would have been able to stand here at my side so that three generations of this honorable bloodline might be united in one room…”

The king’s expression was unreadable, but he said nothing.

“Unfortunately that is not the case, and it pains me that I will never get to know the man who fathered me,” Nino said softly, hoping he sounded genuine. “Prince Yukio will never get to witness the joy I feel standing here at the center of this family’s power. He will never get to know what it feels for me to meet the family hidden from me for so many years. The grandfather who watches over our kingdom. The dear aunt who has studied our long and noble heritage…”

He could feel the man in green watching him now, and he clasped his hands behind his back to keep them from shaking. Who was he? Was he seeing right through Nino’s lies?

“My father valued Sakurai Sho’s counsel. My father trusted Sakurai Sho. Since I can never know my father, would it not benefit me to learn of his strengths and his character from one who knew him well? I ask, Your Majesty, for Sakurai Sho to serve me. To guide me here in Amaterasu. I know very little of your ways and customs here at court, Grandfather, and…”

“That will be enough.”

Nino stopped talking, caught off guard. He watched a bitter smile cross the old man’s face.

“You are Yukio’s son, though you never met,” the king said. “The way you’ve just spoken makes it all too obvious.”

He looked down at the rug, trying not to tremble.

“Yukio spoke this way years ago trying to ensure that this traitor’s father continued to draw breath. He’s still alive, isn’t he, traitor?”

Sho’s voice was weak, shaky. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Weakness runs in that bloodline,” Kotaro chided. “Traitor father, traitor son.”

“Your Majesty,” Nino mumbled despite himself, “if Sakurai Sho chose not to follow my father’s orders, would that not also have been treasonous behavior?”

“You spoke truth when you said you know little of our ways and customs here!” the king snapped, raising his voice loud enough to ring in Nino’s ears. As weak as the old man was, he quaked with sudden rage.

Nino knelt again, inclining his head. “I apologize, Grandfather…”

“My son stuck his wandering cock into a loose little serving girl’s cunt thirty-four years ago, and this is what it brought me! A weakling and a fool!”

The old man’s rage shook Nino to the core, and he lowered his head even further. Breathe, he told himself. Breathe.

“Father,” Rumiko interrupted, walking up to the throne and boldly stroking the old man’s arm. “The deserts have left the poor boy weak-willed, but let’s not dismiss him outright. His judgment may be lacking, but his blood may yet be strong. Strong as mine or perhaps even yours.”

He wasn’t sure if he appreciated Rumiko’s defense of him or not at this point. Because it was all too clear that Nino had lost. His argument in favor of saving Sho’s life wasn’t going to work. He looked over, aching at the sight of Sho’s battered face.

Nino jolted when the double doors at the rear of the chamber suddenly opened. He stayed down on his knees, looking back as a man came strutting in as though nothing in the world bothered him.

He was tall, broad-shouldered, and of an age with Nino. He carried himself proudly, wearing a purple tunic and dark fitted trousers, his simple pair of wooden sandals scuffing along the floor. His black hair was slicked back away from his face, and he was munching on an apple as he came strolling up the middle of the chamber, an almost mischievous look in his dark eyes.

The king’s scowl deepened. “You’re late. I summoned you an hour ago, you insolent whelp.”

The man grinned, showing off a large mouth of gleaming white teeth. He took another leisurely bite of his apple, juice dribbling down his chin until he wiped at it with the back of his hand.

“Grandfather,” the man said in a droll tone. “I was having lunch.”

Nino’s eyes widened. This man…he was...

“Auntie,” Prince Jun continued, offering a rather impish salute in Rumiko’s direction. “Always good to see you out of your cage.”

The air in the room had suddenly shifted. The crude anger the king had been aiming in Nino’s direction had quickly changed target. Rumiko looked almost murderous, standing beside her father, the strange man in green on the other side still making Nino uncomfortable.

Matsumoto Jun, the Sun Kingdom’s heir presumptive, took in the sight of the two members of the Kingsguard, the injured Sakurai Sho at their feet. Nodding indifferently, he finally turned his gaze in Nino’s direction, his brown eyes almost glittering with contempt.

“So the rumors were true,” Prince Jun said before looking away and back to the king, offering a rather outrageous attempt at a bow. “Apologies for my tardiness. What’d I miss?”

Nino didn’t have the courage yet to get to his feet, and Matsumoto Jun…his half-brother stood at his side. There was little they shared in common physically. Where Nino was slim, Jun was firm and muscled. He was similar in size to the members of the Kingsguard, although his waist was narrower and there was none of their discipline.

“This is your elder brother Kazunari,” the king said, eyebrow raised in challenge.

Jun just laughed, taking another bite of his apple. “My replacement, Grandfather? This scrawny fellow? Don’t joke, now.”

“Nobody’s laughing, Jun,” Kotaro said, leaning forward in his seat. “The only joke in the room at present is you.”

Any man might have been offended. Any man might have been angered. But instead Nino watched the smile on Prince Jun’s face widen. The prince who couldn’t wield the power of the bloodline smiling at the insult from the man he was set to replace. Nino hadn’t known what to really think of Prince Jun when Rumiko had spoken of him, but he certainly hadn’t expected…this.

“Welcome to the family, Kazunari,” Jun said, patting him on the head like a dog. “It’s a most loving one as you can see.”

“As you’ve managed to pull yourself away from your whoring long enough to show your face in my chamber,” Kotaro continued, “perhaps you might offer an opinion on a certain matter.”

Jun chuckled. “Since when has my opinion ever been valued around here?”

Kotaro pointed to Sakurai Sho. “Your father’s pet.”

Jun set a hand on his hip, the black mourning ribbon tied sloppily around his arm jostling lightly. “What about him?”

Nino tried to focus on breathing, hearing the indifference in Jun’s voice. How much weight did the heir to the throne’s opinion have over Sakurai Sho’s fate? He’d only been in the room a minute, maybe more, but already Nino could sense the animosity between grandfather and grandson, between king and likely successor. Would King Kotaro accept Jun’s counsel or do the opposite to spite him?

“Kazunari argues that it was only following your father’s orders, leaving the palace to track him down on Yukio’s behalf.”

Jun looked over at Sho, chuckling gently. “He’s always been obedient.”

Nino couldn’t help but notice that unlike the king and Rumiko, Matsumoto Jun at least acknowledged Sho’s humanity.

“Kazunari feels this is good enough reason to keep it alive,” the king said. He stared Jun down. “Your father, may the Gods favor him, kept Kazunari’s existence secret all these years, and yet he finally took the risk of contacting him. I wonder why he made such a decision.”

At this Nino could finally see the slightest crack in Jun’s disaffected mask. But he hid it very well. Jealousy. Anger.

Fear.

“Yes,” Jun said calmly. “I wonder.”

“You understand the gravity of the crime that’s been committed here,” the king said. “Unless I’ve overestimated your intelligence once again.”

Jun didn’t take the bait, instead walking over to Sho. He crouched down, taking hold of Sho by the hair and pulling his head up to look him in the face. Nino didn’t miss the look of disgust that briefly flashed across Jun’s face when Sho moaned gently in pain.

“Ouch,” Jun said with a wince, shaking his head.

Nino wanted to slug him, this brother he didn’t know. Didn’t anyone in this room have a conscience? A soul?

Jun loosened his grip, hand sliding down from Sho’s scalp to cup his bruised face. “When’s the last time he’s been fed, hmm?”

“Does it matter?” Rumiko scoffed.

Jun clucked his tongue in annoyance, tapping Sho’s cheek with his fingers. “Open.” Nino watched Sho obediently open his mouth as Prince Jun set his half-eaten apple between his lips. “Bite.”

Sho obeyed, entire body trembling as he bit into the Prince’s apple. Nino didn’t know what the hell to think. The king watched, tapping his fingers on the arm of his chair. Rumiko looked impatient. Jun’s voice was insistent but quiet. “Bite,” he ordered. “Chew. Swallow. Bite again.”

“If you’re done toying with it, would you like to rejoin the conversation?” Rumiko grumbled.

Jun cruelly left the apple in Sho’s mouth, juice sliding messily down Sho’s chin as the prince got back to his feet. Sho could only hold it there between his teeth or risk letting the remainder of the Prince’s lunch fall and hit the floor.

“My father sent Sho to find Kazunari without informing you, Grandfather. Such an act is treasonous,” Jun decided.

Nino finally got to his feet, nearly sick to death of these people, this horrible family. “Wait a moment…”

Jun looked down at him, amused. “However, there’s something we all ought to consider.”

“And what is that, Jun?” Kotaro asked. “Do enlighten us.”

Nino watched as Jun slowly tugged at the black ribbon tied around his sleeve. Holding it in his fist, Jun walked up the two steps to the throne, standing before their grandfather and letting the ribbon dance back and forth.

“Sho was merely following the orders of his master. A master who we will be mourning for the next three months, as is proper. As is our family’s custom.” Jun inclined his head. “May the Gods favor him.”

Kotaro waved his hand impatiently for Jun to continue.

“I propose a stay of execution,” Jun said, settling his ribbon in the pocket of his trousers. “At least until the mourning period is complete. After all, he is a most loyal servant.”

Nino watched Jun walk over, holding out his hand beneath Sho’s chin. Sho opened his mouth just a bit wider, letting the apple fall into Jun’s palm. Jun turned back to the king with a smile.

“Are we really killing servants for obedience now, Grandfather?”

“And if it continues its treasonous ways?” Rumiko fumed. “Once a traitor to the crown, always a traitor.”

Jun smirked. “I doubt he’d be that foolish. Anyhow, a messy execution during a period of mourning is disrespectful to the gods.” Nino watched Jun’s eyes move to the man in green. “Isn’t that right, Masaki?”

Nino looked up, finally seeing the man in green for what he truly was. The chill Nino had felt even in the heat. The way he stood behind the king’s throne, silent, a mere observer. The look in his eyes that Nino realized now wasn’t human.

The man in green, the man Prince Jun had just called “Masaki,” was not a man at all, was he?

He was one of the sons of the God of the Waters. Everything was true. Everything.

Masaki didn’t speak, only bowing his head to the king’s heir in acknowledgment.

Nino couldn’t look away, barely understanding what happened next. There was a ringing in his ears. He saw the man in green turn to look at him, a not-quite smile quirking the man’s lips. Friend? Foe? Nino couldn’t tell. But they were all in the presence of a god. The man standing behind the throne was a god walking amongst them.

A god under the king’s control.

The king spoke, setting a date for Sho’s execution - as Jun had suggested, he would be put to death a week after the palace emerged from mourning. Three months. Nino at least had three months to find another way to save him. Rumiko wished for Sho to be thrown in the palace dungeons. The king disagreed.

“It belongs to Kazunari now. Let it at least be useful to my ignorant grandson for the remainder of its days.”

At that pronouncement, the Kingsguard dragged Sho away. Nino bowed low to his grandfather in thanks and was dismissed.

He followed a laughing Matsumoto Jun from the audience chamber, watching him take another bite of his apple as he lazily strolled away from the throne. Nino didn’t dare look back, feeling the eyes of the god watching him as he left.

—

Takahashi offered to give Nino a grand tour of the palace grounds, but he declined, postponing it until the following day. Much had happened, though he could show none of that weakness to Takahashi.

Instead he made it back to his rooms, trying to gather his wits. Matsumoto Kotaro. Matsumoto Jun. And Masaki, son of the God of the Waters.

Too much. It was all too much.

A dinner tray was brought to him when the sun set, and Mirei had followed his orders exactly. But even the small meal turned his stomach, and he picked at it, feeling completely out of his element.

He replayed the scene in the audience chamber again and again. How the king had treated him. How Matsumoto Jun had treated him. In a week, he’d be tattooed and his training in magic would begin. He would learn if he had the power to control the gods.

He thought of how Masaki had stood there, a silent observer of the court squabbles over a traitorous servant. Nino had trembled in his presence, in the presence of a god. It seemed impossible that their positions might be reversed, that Nino might come to control someone who seemed so powerful even without uttering a word.

He slept poorly, consumed with nightmares that slipped away as soon as he managed to wake. He sat on a cushion in his sitting room as the sun rose, feeling empty as the maids bustled around his chamber with their quiet efficiency.

Takahashi returned for him mid-morning, and Nino did his best to seem attentive as the man led him slowly around the palace. He nodded with little enthusiasm as he was shown grand banquet rooms, a library full to bursting with scrolls and other priceless literary items, offices for those staffing the royal treasury. Rooms that existed only to house paintings and sculptures. A greenhouse overseen by Princess Mariya.

The royal advisor didn’t bother showing him the upper floors. Those were the servants’ quarters, and Nino was told that there wasn’t much to see. He was also informed that there were extensive bathing facilities underground, accessible from the royal wing where Nino was staying, but that Prince Jun and “some friends” were currently utilizing them and did not wish to be disturbed. Nino had definitely seen the look of disapproval in Takahashi’s face when he’d spoken of Jun’s “friends.” Perhaps he was pleased that a new potential heir had arrived…

The tour concluded on one of the balconies overlooking the palace gardens, Nino leaning against the railing, looking at the soaring walls in the distance. Feeling isolated. And trapped. “Did you know my father, Takahashi?”

The man stood beside him, nodding. “Of course, Your Highness. May the Gods favor him.”

The expected and diplomatic response. He know that he couldn’t trust the man, not yet anyway. “I’m a stranger here,” Nino said cautiously. “I was never able to meet him. Is there anything you think I should know about him?”

“What is it that you wish to know?”

He turned his head, seeing mere curiosity on the advisor’s face.

“Do I resemble him?” Nino asked.

Takahashi was quiet for a moment as a member of the Kingsguard continued on a patrol behind them. When the soldier was out of earshot, Takahashi’s reply was rather quiet.

“Yes, Your Highness. You do resemble him.”

It was Mirei who found him, inclining her head as she approached in a flurry of red a few moments later. “Your Highness,” Mirei said, “I am sorry to interrupt.”

“What is it?”

“You have a visitor. In your chambers.”

His stomach knotted. Was it Rumiko? Was it Jun? Was it another palace player who had yet to meet him?

“Very well,” he said agreeably before clapping Takahashi on the shoulder. “I thank you for your most informative tour.”

He followed Mirei down a staircase, through several passageways that gradually became more familiar as the path to his own chambers. Like they had upon his arrival, his maidservants were all huddled outside his door, dropping low at his approach since they were still outside his rooms.

“Who is it?” he finally asked when Mirei paused before his door. He thought he’d be largely left alone until he was tattooed.

He realized that Mirei and the other girls were struggling to keep from crying. “They just left him there with no instructions…I wasn’t sure what to do, Your Highness,” Mirei explained.

Nino opened the door nervously before crying out in shock. He quickly urged the four women inside, shutting the door. “Help me move him into the other room…into the bed…”

Sakurai Sho lay in a heap on the floor of Nino’s sitting room, the tatami mats near him smeared with his blood. Nino rushed over, gently turning Sho over onto his back. A soft moan let Nino know that Sho was still alive, but he was in bad shape. He didn’t want to know what had happened between his audience with the king yesterday and his arrival today.

Nino got his arms under Sho’s while the women helped to lift him. Slowly they brought him into Nino’s bedchamber, settling him carefully onto the sheets. He was still in the drab clothing from the day before, and Nino rested a hand on his head.

“Sho, can you hear me?”

One of the maids burst into tears in fright. They seemed to know that Sakurai Sho was a servant too, one of their own. What happened to him might happen to her if she ever went astray.

When he finally got another moan from Sho in reply, Nino knew he had to focus. He ordered two of the maids to gather water and cloth. Sho’s wounds and filthy, blistered feet would need to be cleaned first. “I will need several things, and I will need them quickly,” he told Mirei. “Can you write?”

She shook her head. “No, Your Highness. But my memory is good.”

He didn’t know the palace doctors, and he didn’t know if he could trust any of them to provide Sho with adequate care. No, he’d handle this himself. Nino spoke slowly, naming each item he required. A mortar and pestle. Each plant, each herb. Mirei repeated them all, and once he was confident, he sent her and the other maid off to retrieve them.

For once, Nino was grateful for the abundant water in his chambers. Between the three of them who remained in Nino’s chambers, they were able to ease the dirty clothing from Sho’s bruised body, washing the dirt and dried blood from his skin. The white sheets beneath him grew stained, and the maids quickly worked around him once his body was cleaned, changing to fresh ones. While Sho’s body was covered in bruises, he thankfully didn’t seem to have any broken bones.

The king had postponed Sho’s execution. And until that day, it seemed that Sakurai Sho had been left for Nino to deal with.

It was another hour before Mirei returned, arms overburdened with the items Nino had demanded. He didn’t know what she’d had to do or say to get them, but she’d come through and for that, Nino was grateful.

“You are a healer,” the youngest maid, Kanna, mumbled as Nino started to pull items together and grind them. “You are a prince and yet you are a healer.”

He looked up, smiling bitterly. “I’ve been a healer for far longer than I’ve been a prince. I’ll fix him.”

“May the Gods favor you,” one of the other maids mumbled.

He met each of their faces with a seriousness they quickly understood. “You will tell no one that I am skilled in medicine. No one.” He didn’t want to reveal everything about himself just yet. Who knew how his grandfather might react.

“Yes, Your Highness,” Mirei replied, the other girls also murmuring their agreement.

Now that he had what he needed, he set to work, dismissing them. He was pleased when he heard gentle snoring. Sho was as comfortable as he was likely to get. After days sleeping in stables, he deserved a decent rest.

Healing came easier to Nino than so many other things, and he was able to focus better than he had in days. There were a few lacerations that he stitched closed first, rubbing them with a salve that would prevent infection and wrapping each wound with clean cloth. He made his usual cream for sunburn, rubbing it across Sho’s face, neck, and arms that had borne the brunt of the sun’s cruelty. He tended to the blisters on Sho’s feet and finally pressed cold compresses against Sho’s face to start easing the swelling. The water that emerged from the faucet in his washroom was fresh, cold, and clean. He tried not to think about how it had gotten there.

By the time the sun had set, Nino actually found himself hungry. Mirei seemed to anticipate that, bringing him a tray overburdened with rice, grilled meat, and pickled vegetables. She told Nino to rest while she and another maid worked to spoon some warm broth into Sho’s mouth in the other room. Nino doubted Sho had had anything in his belly besides the teasing bites of Prince Jun’s apple since yesterday.

Before he knew it, he was asleep, rising in the morning to discover that he’d slept in a cluster of cushions on his sitting room floor, the silk curtains rusting in the breeze.

Nino moved to the next room, finding Sakurai Sho sitting upright with pillows behind him. At some point during the night Mirei or the other girls had probably come in to help him get more comfortable, letting Nino sleep while they rubbed some of the pastes and salves Nino had made onto him. He grinned when he saw that the well-meaning maids had rubbed the sunburn cream diligently but needlessly onto Sho’s pale feet.

Sho was awake, one eye still swollen shut but the other watching him cautiously.

“Good morning,” Nino said, able to speak to the man for the first time since they’d departed Toyone-mura.

“Good morning,” Sho replied quietly.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.”

Sho shook his head slowly, clearly pained. “You did save me, Nino. I ought to be dead right now…I can’t begin to thank you…”

“I couldn’t even win you a reprieve on my own. You have my brother to thank for your remaining days.”

Sho looked away.

Nino approached the bed, sitting at the end by Sho’s feet. “Quite the family I have here.”

“Yes indeed.”

“I don’t even know where to start. I have so many questions.”

“I can imagine,” Sho whispered. “I’m sorry.”

“You’ve been gifted to me,” he said. “I asked for you to be able to serve me as you served my father.”

“It would be my honor.”

He shook his head. “I don’t want another servant, Sho. I want a friend. Will you be my friend?”

Sho’s hands twisted in the sheets, clearly surprised. “Of course.”

Nino got up. “I would see you be well again before I pry answers from you. But I’ll ask you to confirm one thing for me now.”

“Anything,” Sho answered sincerely.

“The man in the audience chamber, the one who stood behind my grandfather’s throne. The one called Masaki.” Nino took a breath. “He’s one of them, isn’t he?”

Sho nodded. Nino hadn’t even had to say the word.

Nino settled his hands on his hips. “They really do look like us then?”

“Yes.”

“He knows who I am. What I have the potential to do,” Nino said. “He must hate me.”

At that, Sho shook his head. “I wouldn’t say that.”

“I’ve been brought here to control him, the same as my father and grandfather and the generations before me.”

“Yes, you have,” Sho said, “but you will find that he is not what you might expect.”

“And his brother…there is another one who is trapped here, yes?”

Sho’s expression shifted. His expression grew more serious. “Yes.”

“And what does the brother think of me? Care to venture a guess?”

Sho’s words were grim.

“Pray that your interactions with him are brief. That’s all I can advise you.”

—

The royal court was a busy one. Nino was free to roam the grounds at his leisure, though he was not yet allowed into several areas. His grandfather’s audience chamber and vast suite of rooms were off limits since Nino was still considered illegitimate, a guest of the court rather than an official member of it.

Takahashi or another advisor was usually sent to escort him around, to keep him from visiting locations forbidden to him. Nino figured it was best to make his face known around court than hide away in his chambers and arouse even more suspicion. Many welcomed him, inclining their heads as they passed him in the halls. A few others were colder, but he suspected those people might be more loyal to Prince Jun. Nino’s sudden appearance at court was an open threat to the succession…unless he was proved to be just as powerless as his brother.

He walked the palace grounds, members of the Kingsguard trailing him through the maze of bushes, along the orchard groves. He stood watching the soldiers train, swords colliding as Kanna held a parasol over his head to keep his skin from baking in the sun. On his walks, he did his best to examine the gates. The palace’s doorways and exits. There was always someone around. He doubted he’d ever be able to make a run for it.

Yet by moving openly around court, he was able to keep curious folks from trying to meet with him in his own rooms. This helped him to conceal the injured Sho for the time being, Nino charging Mirei and the others with keeping anyone else out. Sho himself was still sore, tired beyond measure, but in another week or so he might be back to his old self. But there was no erasing the death sentence that still hung over him.

It remained unspoken between them as they sat up late talking the next few nights, Sho doing his best to fill in the gaps in Nino’s knowledge.

The Sorceress Rumiko, Nino’s aunt, was not the woman she claimed to be. Sho made that clear right from the beginning. She was not her father’s favorite - the king had always favored his son, though Yukio had never been as bloodthirsty as Kotaro had wished. Rumiko saw that as her way into her father’s heart, her motives twisted from a young age.

Rumiko’s blood magic was strong, nearly as strong as her father’s. Perhaps stronger than her brother Yukio’s. She was a harsh mistress - there had been whispers for years about Rumiko’s servants vanishing without a trace. Magical experiments, some had claimed. Torture, others hinted. A few of Rumiko’s maids had been found face down in fountains scattered across the palace grounds. Some suicides, some…likely not.

She had relished her powers, and rumors spread about the cruelty she showed to the sons of the God of the Waters as well. Word got back to the king, and Kotaro refused to allow it. Not out of pity for the gods he ruled. No, the king simply didn’t want his illegitimate daughter growing too powerful at court. The king refused to let anyone appear more powerful than him.

Sho had been a teenager when Rumiko had been punished the first time. Sent away to a castle a hundred miles from the capital to “learn her lesson.” Her favor with the king waxed and waned over the next several years. He’d send her away, recall her to court. And then her cruel streak would show itself, and she’d be banished again. Back and forth, her powers suppressed and released. Suppressed and released.

“Prince Yukio believed she was insane,” Sho explained quietly. “I’ve always been inclined to agree with him.”

Always good to see you out of your cage, Matsumoto Jun had joked about Rumiko in Kotaro’s audience chamber. Now Nino better understood what he’d meant.

Kotaro’s favor for his grandson had shifted over the years as well, Sho informed him. In the years before he’d come of age, young Prince Jun had been a court favorite. Charming, intelligent, obsessed with upholding the family legacy.

“He was better liked than his own father,” Sho said. “And then it all went wrong.”

On his twentieth birthday there’d been a lavish ceremony, and Prince Jun had been tattooed right there in the royal audience chamber. His grandfather, his father and mother, and the entire court all watched as the young prince endured the needles again and again and again.

“He didn’t scream, Nino,” Sho told him, face ashen at the memory. “He didn’t scream once. But I will never forget the scream he let out when he discovered he had no power at all. I’ll never forget it as long as I live.”

“You grew up together?” Nino couldn’t help asking.

“In a manner of speaking,” Sho mumbled.

“What do you mean?”

“I served his father, and Prince Yukio wished for me to eventually serve as his son’s advisor. The history of the Sakurai family’s loyalty…uh, notwithstanding,” Sho said. “I attended lessons with Prince Jun. I waited on him as I waited on his father. Perhaps you consider that growing up together. I considered it a matter of duty.”

Nino raised an eyebrow. Sho was hiding something.

“Anyhow. As you know, Prince Yukio wished to free the gods. When Jun…” Sho caught himself quickly, but Nino didn’t miss it. “When Prince Jun was revealed to be powerless, it formed a rift between them. Already the king had written Prince Jun off as useless and…and I’m afraid your father was no different.”

Nino sighed. “I’d feel sorry for him, honestly I would…”

And yet Prince Jun had stood there in the audience chamber, laughing as though he didn’t have a care in the world. Prince Jun had stood there and elected not to fight for Sho’s life, for the life of a man who’d grown up with him. Served his family loyally since he was a child. Instead he’d given him a teasing bite from his apple and simply asked for Sho’s death to be postponed. For propriety’s sake.

“He’s lost his way,” Sho explained quietly.

“He’ll inherit this kingdom, powers or no,” Nino said. “He hasn’t lost anything.”

“That’s up to you,” Sho replied. “Isn’t it?”

Nino was silent, stroking the inside of his elbow absent-mindedly. In only a few days, he’d know what his future held…and Jun’s as well.

Out in the desert, he’d never known that gods had been trapped in the capital. But he’d seen one of them, Masaki, standing right behind the king openly in the audience chamber. The people of the palace clearly knew of their existence, saw what power they possessed. How come the common people didn’t? The answer was rather simple, Sho explained. Keeping the royal family’s biggest secret kept you alive at court. If you told an outsider (who was unlikely to believe such a thing was possible anyhow, that a god might be trapped), you would be killed. Sho knew it to be true, had seen it done a few brutal times. The aristocrats and civil servants of Amaterasu held their tongues, if only so they might continue to enjoy the watery benefits of the gods’ enslavement.

“Where do they stay?” Nino wondered. “The sons of the God of the Waters? Takahashi took me all over, but I didn’t trust him enough to ask.”

Sho nodded. “You’ve already met Masaki. You might think of him as the agreeable one.”

“Agreeable how?”

“He’ll create water without being compelled.” Sho exhaled slowly. “On most days. Even gods have limits to their patience.”

Nino said nothing.

“Masaki…he was friendly with your father. Frankly, he’s friendly with most around here. The gods don’t require sleep the way you or I do, but they do require rest after performing their duties.”

Sho was using a rather polite and diplomatic tone. It reminded him of Takahashi and the other courtiers he’d met so far. He didn’t care for it.

“Performing their duties…you actually mean to say that they require rest after they’re tortured.” Nino leaned forward, commanding Sho’s attention. “Be straight with me.”

Sho looked down. “Yes, after they’ve been compelled. They’re far from the sea. You may think the water here is abundant, but it’s come at a cost. A harsh cost.”

“I imagine so.”

“Masaki has a bedchamber in the king’s apartments. He is favored by the king because he is, as I’ve said already…agreeable,” Sho explained. “That part of the palace is off limits to you for now.”

“So I’ve been told,” Nino replied. “And the other one? What palace euphemism do they have for him? Disagreeable?”

“The elder brother is Satoshi,” Sho explained. “He…”

The other son of the God of the Waters was the one Sho warned him about. He remembered Seitaro’s explanation of the blood magic. The gods could not harm a descendant of the Matsumoto bloodline. This Satoshi could not hurt him whether Nino had powers or not. But Sho’s expression was serious.

“He is favored by no one,” Sho said. “Your father tried…he offered Satoshi private rooms once, a place of his own. He refused.”

Good for Satoshi, Nino couldn’t help thinking. Trapped inside the capital’s walls and tortured for hundreds of years, why should he play nice?

“He isn’t seen often. I scarcely know much about him, even though I’ve lived in this palace as long as I can remember,” Sho continued. “He roams at will…well, to the extent that he’s able. As far as I know, he has never created water without being forced to.”

The sons of the God of the Waters had been trapped in Amaterasu for centuries. They’d chosen divergent paths. From the way Sho explained it, Nino assumed that Masaki had come to terms with his fate. Creating water willingly to avoid additional punishment and suffering. Not quite acceptance. Self-preservation. His brother, however, still fought against it all these years later. Nino wondered what path he’d have chosen if their positions were reversed.

“Yukio…my father…he wanted to free them,” Nino said. “How did he plan to do that?”

“He was convinced that one of the ancient scrolls in the royal library might hold the key. The tattoos have been passed down for generations, the curse of the blood magic. Prince Yukio believed there had to have been records or spells from Sorcerer Raku’s time, spells he used to cast the original curse. If he could find a way to reverse engineer the original curse, he thought he might be able to break it entirely.”

“Yukio only just died, but he received the tattoos of the bloodline forty years ago. You’re telling me that after forty years he found nothing?”

Sho looked grim. “The palace is full of spies, and Prince Yukio was never known for his love of scholarship. Those scrolls are nearly impossible to decipher. Sorcerers don’t exactly want their spell secrets in wide circulation, so almost everything Yukio managed to read was encoded to hide the truth. He couldn’t risk looking around every day of his life. If he’d spent days upon days in the royal library, it would have been suspicious. It might have been reported back to the king.”

“Forty years, Sho.”

“Before I left Amaterasu to find you, the prince believed he was close. It encouraged him to find you, just in case he wasn’t strong enough. The plan was for Yukio to find the information he needed and smuggle it out of the palace to you on his estate so you could work in secret. Obviously that plan has fallen through, and you’re right in the middle of the vipers’ nest here. But I know where to at least start looking in the library,” Sho explained. “And besides, you’ve got the best excuse of all to spend time there. You want to learn more about your family’s history. It won’t arouse as much curiosity so you’ll have time to be methodical.”

Nino had to admit that he much preferred the thought of looking through dusty scrolls over continuing his family’s long legacy of torture.

“I don’t have forty years, Sho,” he said. “More like three months.”

Sho frowned. “Nino…”

He moved away, not wanting to linger on the topic of Sho’s pending execution. “I’ll visit the library in the afternoon tomorrow. Establish a routine. The desert rat that loves to read. Now, let’s see what the folks in the palace kitchens have in store for supper.”

Ignoring Sho’s forlorn expression, he left the room to tug on the cord that would summon Mirei.

Tomorrow the library. And the day after that the tattoos.

He saw movement out of the corner of his eye once again, outside in the courtyard. He’d left the curtains open, walking briskly to the edge of the pool and looking up. The sky had darkened since he and Sho had begun talking, but even the best spy perched on the roof above them would not have heard their conversation.

He hoped.

He circled the pool, eyes squinting in the dark, looking for anything that might reveal the spy. The edge of a foot or a scrap of fabric disappearing over the top of the wall. He could have sworn he’d seen something out here.

“My lord,” came Mirei’s voice from inside the sitting room. She’d given up on “Your Highness,” but she wouldn’t do much more than that. “My lord, what is the matter?”

A cool breeze rustled his hair, and he settled his hands on his hips in disappointment. Nino took one last look above him, the darkness obscuring everything past the edge of the roof.

“Nothing,” he replied, concealing his growing fear. “Nothing but shadows.”

—

As he had in previous days, Nino made no attempt to conceal where he planned to visit that afternoon. Takahashi was all too happy to escort Nino to the royal library. Nino smiled and acted agreeable when Takahashi led him through the hushed series of rooms, the shelves packed almost to bursting with scrolls dating back hundreds of years.

“While I traveled here with my dear aunt, she told me of her own studies when she was younger. About the family, our heritage,” Nino said, cloaking his true agenda as best he could. “I couldn’t help but envy her, having access to this marvelous collection her whole life.”

Takahashi smiled politely, although like most people Nino had encountered so far, he was no supporter of the Sorceress Rumiko. “Yes, she certainly spent a long time studying here.”

Nino was formally introduced to the elderly librarian, Yoshinaga, who was perched on a high seat behind a podium that guarded the entryway to the oldest items in the collection. She eyed him warily, but Nino had no reason to fear. She looked at Takahashi, the trusted royal advisor, with the same critical expression.

“Whatever you remove from a shelf goes on the work table nearest the door when you’re finished. The staff will return it to its proper place. The items are priceless, many of them the sole surviving copies, and I won’t allow any carelessness.”

Nino inclined his head. “Of course, Madame.” Which meant he’d have to obscure his true intentions. If all he unraveled were scrolls about blood magic, Yoshinaga might have reason to suspect him. He’d have to add in extra scrolls here and there to make it look as though he was studying a little bit of everything. He could see now why Prince Yukio’s search had taken him so long.

Yoshinaga remained on her perch, keeping watch over the larger reading room while Takahashi opened the door to the historical records room. Unlike the main library with its soaring ceilings and big bright windows with views of the palace gardens, this room was dark and depressing. Quiet as a tomb. The shelves were packed closer together, and Takahashi led him to a study table in the rear.

“I must admit I’ve spent little time in this room myself,” Takahashi admitted, “but I think you’ll be able to study in peace back here. I remember Prince Yukio, may the Gods favor him, preferring to come back here when his tutors set him to study his family tree. He never did like studying…”

Nino grinned. “With learned advisors like you around, Takahashi, what need did he have for such intense study?”

To Nino’s surprise, the older man gobbled up the compliment like a fine meal. Given the king’s attitude, Nino wondered if the advisors and servants of the palace were ever truly shown appreciation for their hard work. “You’re too kind, Your Highness. Too kind.”

“Thank you very much for the introduction. I won’t keep you from your work any longer,” he said, still uncomfortable with the idea of dismissing someone outright.

Takahashi left with a smile and a bit more confidence in his steps. Nino was finally alone when he heard the door close. Today wouldn’t be one for study, Nino decided. Not just yet. Instead he decided it was best to learn what was available, the shelves to best consider and the ones to dismiss outright.

The only light came from the sconces along the wall, and the room was cooler than most of the other ones he’d visited. Likely a preservative measure, especially if the scrolls were irreplaceable. The shelves to the left side of the room largely consisted of government records, far older than ones Nino had seen in the offices Takahashi had shown him days earlier. Population statistics for the kingdom as a whole, for Amaterasu. Outdated taxation laws, water laws. Copies of treaties that had long since expired.

It was the shelves on the right side that would likely hold the key to the enlightenment Nino actually sought. Court records dating back to Queen Emi’s reign, Nino discovered as he squinted in the low light to read the handwritten labels affixed to each shelf. Biographies and chronicles of Matsumoto family monarchs and their kin. Nino had a feeling that all of those works had the kindest things to say about the despots who’d been ruling the Sun Kingdom for centuries. He doubted that honest criticism ever found its way into the royal library.

And just as Sho had informed him that morning, Nino found the last few shelves unlabeled. The personal records of Sorcerer Raku himself. As the founder of the current royal bloodline, any scrap of paper that had fallen under Raku’s pen had been preserved here. The problem, of course, was that the man had done his utmost to conceal what he’d done. Nothing but a handful of innocuous records pre-dated his own reign over the Sun Kingdom.

Ninomiya Seitaro had taught him to read at a young age, mostly so Nino might help his mother in organizing and tracking their finances. The Sun Kingdom’s writing system had become more simplified over time, but the characters from the old days, from Sorcerer Raku’s days, often had multiple meanings. A turn of phrase could be read literally or figuratively, depending on an author’s intent. Nino knew it wasn’t going to be easy.

Sho had never been granted privileges to read the works in this room. Only the librarian, her most trusted staff, and those with royal blood were permitted to study here. In bits and pieces, Yukio had looked at scrolls and jotted down phrases, paragraphs. He’d brought them to Sho and together they’d attempted to translate the words of old into something they might be able to understand and use. It had been a painfully slow process - every single thing of Raku’s had been saved. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands of scrolls and scraps to go through. And it wasn’t as though a brilliant sorcerer like Raku would have labeled his original blood curse as such.

In a kinder world, Yukio might have enlisted his son to help him. Even if Prince Jun lacked the ability to compel the gods, his royal blood would have granted him entrance to these rooms. He’d studied in here extensively as a boy, reading the family histories while he prepared for the day when he’d be tattooed. Father and son might have been able to cover more ground. And yet Yukio had turned away from Jun. Sho doubted that Yukio had ever even told Jun his dream of breaking the curse once and for all.

Nino knew the king’s views on the gods. He knew Rumiko’s. But what did Jun think? Would Jun want Masaki and Satoshi to be freed? It was too early to know. Nino and Jun had only met the one time, and it had not exactly been a friendly encounter. For fourteen long years, Nino knew that his brother had been treated as an outcast. Perhaps the words of Sorcerer Raku meant little to him now.

Which meant Nino would be on his own, with only Sho to guide him. And if it took longer than three months…

He shook his head, leaning his hand against the dusty shelf and exhaling.

“Hello there.”

He staggered back, turning to find a man standing in the aisle. Nino hadn’t heard the door open and close, but perhaps he’d been a bit too lost in thought. He needed to be more careful.

Nino stood his ground, feeling that chill go down his spine once again. Masaki, the son of the God of the Waters, was at the end of the aisle watching him. It was just the two of them in this room, mortal and god.

“Hello,” Nino replied. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Sorry to startle you.” Masaki’s voice was light, conversational. Nino hadn’t known what to really expect. Perhaps he’d imagined the voice of a god being a bit more…forceful.

“Are you allowed to be in here?”

Masaki smiled. “I’m allowed to go just about anywhere, Ninomiya Kazunari.”

He froze at the sound of his full name falling from the lips of a god. Masaki took a step toward him, turning his eyes away. Already, without the god’s eyes watching him, Nino felt less afraid.

Masaki instead ran a fingertip along the shelf before him, examining the dust. “They ought to take better care in here.”

Nino didn’t know what to say. How did one make small talk with a god anyway?

He was taller than Nino by a few inches, but he was still the size of an ordinary man. Ordinary hair, ordinary nose, ordinary mouth. Ordinary arms and legs. And yet he was immortal. It was likely that Masaki had looked this way, unchanging, for centuries. The thought unsettled him.

“Your father is a Water Finder,” Masaki said, his eyes wandering along the unmarked shelves, crouching down to poke at some of the lower shelves as though he didn’t have a care in the world.

“My…my father was Prince Yukio.”

Masaki looked up at him and smiled again. It was almost soothing this time. “I met your father. I met Seitaro.”

Nino didn’t feel the desire to correct him.

“I traveled with Yukio once, when he was a young man. It was the first time I’d been away from these walls in…” Masaki looked away, getting back to his feet. “…let’s just say the first time I’d been away in a long while.”

Masaki walked back down the aisle, heading to examine one of the shelves on the left side of the room instead, the government records. Nino felt he had no choice but to follow along.

“Seitaro was kind to me, though our acquaintance was very brief,” Masaki said.

Nino remembered what Seitaro had told him that night in Toyone-mura. When Yukio visited his village, how he’d seen Yukio compel the god to create water. That god had been Masaki.

“I was the one who told Yukio to send your mother to Seitaro,” Masaki informed him. “I remembered his kindness. I see it reflected in you.”

Nino looked away. “You know why I’ve been brought here.”

“Yes.”

“Tomorrow they’ll put those marks on me. They brought me here to control you.”

Masaki turned, leaning back against the shelf gently, crossing his arms. “I know.”

“Doesn’t that anger you?”

Masaki didn’t seem angry or happy. His eyes merely held curiosity as he looked at Nino again. “Do you wish to control me?”

He paused, knowing he had to be careful. The first time they’d met, Masaki had been standing just behind the throne. He had a private bedchamber in the king’s suite of apartments. Nino doubted that Masaki was strictly the king’s ally, but Nino didn’t know the full extent of the blood magic. If Masaki could be compelled to create water, could he also be compelled to reveal whatever he and Nino were talking about? Had the king sent Masaki to spy on him? Had Rumiko? Though Masaki had mentioned Seitaro, had spoken of him with respect, it still might be a ploy.

Nino couldn’t trust him.

“I’ve been told that you will create water without being forced to. Am I mistaken?”

If Masaki was annoyed with Nino’s dodge, he didn’t show it in his eyes. “You are not.”

Nino pulled up the sleeve of his tunic, revealing his pale, still unmarked skin. “I don’t know what will happen tomorrow. But there are expectations upon me.”

“I understand.”

I don’t want to hurt you, Nino wanted to tell him. I don’t want to hurt you or your brother. But he couldn’t say it. The king and Rumiko needed to believe he was committed. He had to play their game or he’d never have the freedom to try and undermine them.

Masaki’s fingers were cool, ticklish as he traced them along the inside of Nino’s arm. “They will hurt.”

“So I’ve heard.”

Masaki smiled gently. “Kerida blossom.”

“I’m sorry?”

Masaki gave his arm a gentle poke before letting him go. “Send Sakurai Sho to me tomorrow. I’ll give him some.”

“What for?”

“The son of Ninomiya Seitaro should know,” Masaki teased before moving away. He left the room quietly, the door opening and closing behind him with a gentle click.

All Nino could do was stand there. Gods were real. Gods walked among them. One had spoken to him, seemingly offering advice or help. Was it genuine? Or a trap?

He could still feel the lingering chill of Masaki’s touch on his skin, and Nino rolled his sleeve back down with a shuddering breath.

—

Unlike Prince Jun, Nino received his tattoos in the privacy of his rooms. A young woman Nino didn’t know followed Rumiko into his sitting room that morning. Nino had been instructed not to eat any breakfast. The implication, Sho had informed him, was that the pain of the procedure might induce nausea. Nobody wanted Nino to vomit all over the tattooist.

The woman toted a leather case, opening it to reveal an elaborate set of extremely thin bamboo needles. Just seeing those, Nino was grateful he hadn’t eaten anything since the night before. There were small pots of dark ink, the purple he recognized from Rumiko’s skin. He noticed that the onyx bangle from his aunt’s ankle was missing this morning. Whatever magic was required for the ritual would apparently be her own.

A special chair was brought in for the procedure, a metal clamp attached to it where he was instructed to rest his left arm. He bit his lip when the tattooist strapped him into it, leaving his arm immobile. Sho stood in the corner of the room, watching with a serious expression. He’d watched this happen to Prince Jun. Now he’d have to witness it again.

Nino tried to focus on breathing as Mirei brought in a stool for the tattooist. The young woman sat down at Nino’s side. She would draw the six symbols first, she explained, inclining her head and apologizing in advance for the pain.

“Kerida blossom?” Sho had wondered the night before. “I’m afraid I don’t know it.”

“It’s the old name for slattern weed,” Nino had told him, having looked it up in an herbalist’s guide in the library shortly after Masaki had departed.

Nino watched the six unfamiliar symbols appear on his skin in a thin trace of ink. Rumiko was in the center of the room, holding the pot of purple ink in her hand. She started to speak, but it was in a language Nino didn’t know. Just like the symbols being traced on his flesh, it was likely the language of the gods. She’d learned it by interpreting Raku’s writings. Unraveling his mysterious words on her own.

Nino watched the ink change color, grow darker still.

“What’s slattern weed?” Sho had asked him.

“Rare. Expensive. I’ve never used it before. It grows by the Great Sea. I’ve never seen it in our kingdom,” Nino had replied.

The curse laid upon the ink, Rumiko presented it to the young woman. Nino let out shuddering, nervous breaths as the woman upended the ink pot over his arm. This was no regular tattoo. The liquid was hot, itchy, and he fidgeted at the feeling of it running across his skin, over the symbols traced from the inside of his elbow to his wrist. But his arm didn’t move. If he jerked too suddenly at the pain to come, Rumiko told him with a smile, he’d likely dislocate his shoulder. It had happened to Yukio.

A small reservoir underneath the arm clamp caught the extra ink before it spilled on the tatami floor. The tattooist then brought out a bamboo handle, the tip of it full of small holes. Nino watched as she inserted each of her long, thin needles into a hole. The finished tool full of close-packed needles, the woman explained, would be thrust under his skin again and again, pushing the ink into the wounds.

“And yet Masaki has some of it?” Sho had asked. “What does it do?”

“Slattern weed, kerida blossom, whichever you prefer…it’s a curative for poison.”

The woman positioned the tool full of needles against the topmost symbol, inclining her head. She would work her way down toward his wrist. “Forgive me, Your Highness,” she whispered.

It was maybe ten or fifteen swift thrusts of the needles under his skin before the pain registered. And then he was lost in it, sobbing without shame.

“Poison?”

“Was Jun given anything after he received the tattoos? Do you remember?”

Rumiko sat at his other side, clasping his free hand and squeezing. “They’re going to look so beautiful.”

“No,” Sho had said, lip quivering at the memory of what had been done to Jun. “No, you’re just supposed to endure it. He had a fever for a week when it was done. It almost killed him. They merely wrapped his arm in cloth so they could scab over and heal but…no, I don’t remember the tattooist giving him anything…it was forbidden…it’s always been forbidden…”

Nino had fallen from a camel’s back when he was nine, breaking his ankle. When he was twenty-one, he’d had an infected tooth. Days from any town, he’d had to have a carpenter traveling with the caravan yank it from his jaw. Those incidents…they simply couldn’t compare.

Nino tried to focus on Sho, Sho standing in the corner of the room, trying to be invisible and silent in Rumiko’s presence. He could hear Kanna and the other maids crying in sympathy somewhere behind him. His skin was stained purple from the ink, his blood swirling into it, joining with the magic. Purple and red, purple and red. The tattooist’s hand was steady, pushing the needles under his aching skin again and again. Purple and red, purple and red. The red of the rising sun.

“Nino, if he has something to ease your suffering…”

“Can I trust him?”

“You would know better than anyone if what he has is a genuine curative.”

“Why would he want to help me?”

Sho had simply shrugged. “I don’t know.”

It might have lasted twenty minutes or two hours. He had no sense of time. He only knew it was finished when Rumiko released his hand, getting off of the stool beside him. He had double vision, blinking in confusion. Whatever was in the ink was already seeping into his blood, coursing through his body.

It felt like his arm was ablaze. The needle tool was finally gone, and he could hear the tattooist’s soothing apologies as she patted his skin clean. She loosened the screws on the clamp, freeing his arm. Despite the woman’s efforts, the tatami mat beneath the chair was still splattered with ink and blood.

Rumiko was on his other side then, lifting his limp, throbbing arm in her hand. “They’re perfect,” she murmured. “They’re beautiful.”

The tattooist knelt down before them both, pressing her forehead to the floor. “Your will be done, Sorceress.”

“It’s a pity,” Rumiko muttered as Nino felt an odd shift in the air. He saw Sho turn his head, encouraging Mirei and the maidservants to look away.

Something was wrong. Something was very wrong…

“Wait,” he stuttered as soon as he felt his aunt slip away from him.

Rumiko picked up the needle tool, gripping it tightly in her fist.

“No, wait…” Nino begged, hearing the first sob from across the room. Kanna. It was Kanna sobbing. They all knew. Why didn’t he? Why hadn’t Sho told him?

Rumiko took hold of the tattooist by her long braid, pulling her head back. Nino saw the terror in the young woman’s face for an instant before he watched Rumiko plunge the tool into her neck.

Nino screamed.

—

He dreamed that he was wading into a vast pool of water. He dreamed that he was a vulture, circling a desert camp looking for scraps. He dreamed that he was climbing a rope ladder from his courtyard to the roof, but when he made it to the top the ladder turned into a thick braid of black hair.

He dreamed of her, the woman who’d marked his skin.

He woke in the bathtub, cold water coming up to his chest. Sho was seated on the floor beside the tub, watching him warily.

His left arm was wrapped from shoulder to wrist, tightly bandaged and resting on the edge of the tub to keep it from getting wet.

His tongue was heavy in his mouth, and his arm still felt as though it had been set afire. But that wasn’t the worst of it. “She’s dead,” he wheezed, meeting Sho’s eyes. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”

Sho nodded, and Nino looked away.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Sho scooted closer, resting a hand on his shoulder. “Whenever a member of the royal family receives the tattoos of the bloodline, the actual markings are done by a professional. Since the language of the gods, the curse itself, is secret like most of what goes on here in the palace, the family doesn’t allow it to be revealed. Traditionally, the tattooist has been blinded, but housed comfortably somewhere on palace grounds the rest of their days. Fed and clothed, their families compensated. It’s never been much of a burden to the Matsumoto treasury since only one or two tattooists are needed in a generation. They’ve always been blinded, Nino, so that they cannot reproduce or reveal what they’ve seen and done.”

“But Rumiko…”

“Rumiko is unpredictable,” Sho replied.

Nino shut his eyes. “That woman’s blood is on my hands.”

“It’s not,” Sho insisted. “Nino, that was Rumiko’s doing.”

He shook his head. “Never again,” he whispered. “Never again.”

The topic of the tattooist and her cruel murder was dropped for now. Sho helped him from the bathtub, wrapping him in a soft cotton robe and bringing him to his bedchamber. Though Sho was now back on his feet, most of his bruising starting to fade, it would have been proper to have him return to his room in the servants’ quarters a floor above, to have him be summoned the same as he summoned Mirei and the other young women. But Nino had had no idea the tattoos would leave him this incapacitated. For now, it seemed like Sho was camping out on his floor, keeping watch over him.

As he made his way under the sheets, Sho informed him that he’d been feverish for the better part of three days already. Nino still felt rotten, but now that he was halfway coherent, he knew he could finally ask.

“Did you get it?” he asked, sitting upright with several pillows propped up behind him.

Sho said nothing, merely bringing over a tray that could rest on Nino’s lap. He watched Sho remove a small painting from the wall opposite the bed. This revealed a tiny panel with a catch that Sho tugged on, opening a secret chamber built into the wall. “It was Mirei who told me about it,” Sho said. “Might be useful if you bring anything here from the library.”

Sho removed a thin glass vial from the chamber and closed it again, re-hanging the painting. He brought it over and set it down on the tray. “I couldn’t get to Masaki right away, but he didn’t seem upset. I only managed to get this from him last night. He just handed it over, no questions asked.”

The vial was about the size of his index finger, a coiled thread of blue sealed up inside it. The color, shape, and appearance matched what Nino had read about in the library. It was authentic kerida blossom as far as he could tell, though it wasn’t a plant he’d ever worked with before.

Poison wasn’t something Nino had dealt with while traveling in Seitaro’s caravan. Most ailments he’d attended to lacked any sinister intent behind them. Desert fever. The coughing fits that accompanied hearth lung. The walking sickness that he’d managed to catch from three different people while he healed them. But poison…never poison.

The herbalist’s guide had described slattern weed or kerida blossom as an extremely potent plant. He could likely buy a grand house in the capital with the mere sliver Masaki had stuck into the vial he’d handed over to Sho without saying a word. The curse of his bloodline, the tattoos, it was a poisoning of his blood. Whatever spell his aunt had cast on the tattooist’s ink, it had likely spread its way throughout Nino’s body already. It was what had left him a feverish mess for days.

The guide had instructed healers to crush a small portion of the weed and mix it into tea or food to disguise its horrid taste. Nino uncapped the stopper and immediately regretted his choice. Even a few feet away Sho recoiled in disgust. Nino shoved the stopper back in, coughing painfully as his movements jostled his aching arm. Masaki had given him enough for about two weeks’ worth of treatments.

He eyeballed the gift from the god, wondering how long it had been in his possession. Wondering why Masaki had offered it to him when it was clear that no other descendants of Raku had been given anything for their pain or suffering for centuries.

He thought of his aunt’s arm, the way the tattoos had all but rotted her flesh. She’d had the tattoos for nearly forty years. King Kotaro had had his for nearly seventy. Nino looked down at his tightly-wrapped arm, noticing six faint oozing red marks. Sho had clearly dressed and re-bandaged it the last few days but still there were open sores leaking life, the poison of the curse taking its place.

“What does Jun’s arm look like?”

Sho raised his eyebrows in confusion. “What do you mean?”

Nino hovered a finger over his covered wounds. “He’s had them what, fourteen years now? What has it done to him?”

Maybe it was the fever playing tricks on his eyes, but Nino might have sworn Sho’s ears were turning red.

“He was always temperamental,” Sho muttered, “and it only worsened when he found out he lacked any magical ability. So I’m not sure about any psychological effects that are purely a result of the markings.”

“Physically though,” Nino pressed him. The only time he’d seen his brother, his arms had been covered up. “Does his arm look like it’s going to fall off?”

“No!” Sho lowered his voice apologetically. “No. No, nothing like that. Prince Yukio used to get feverish easily, especially if he was…aggressive for a long period of time with Masaki or Satoshi. He often asked me to find creams for his arm to soothe it. Nothing as rare as what’s in that vial, but whatever the palace physicians had.”

“And Jun can’t tap into their power, the tattoos,” Nino mused, thinking and considering.

Rumiko had used her powers so excessively that she’d had that bangle latched around her leg in punishment. Perhaps that was the downside to the curse. Power always came at a price. Compelling the gods, turning to dark magic, it was rotting her from the inside out. Had perhaps even driven her insane. It had clearly hurt Yukio as well. Jun being powerless might actually have been the best thing for him. The curse would never leave his blood, Nino imagined, but the poison worked slowly. It might be years or decades before the rot might take hold of him.

“If you use the kerida blossom, do you think it will prevent you from using magic?” Sho wondered. “Do you think that was Masaki’s intent?”

He shook his head. “If that was the case, he’d have given it to someone in this horrible family centuries ago. My guess is that it’ll just tamp down the side effects of the curse. The fever. The madness.” He looked up. “There’s madness in the family, there has to be.”

Sho nodded. “Prince Yukio never called it that, but the more he looked back at his family tree, the more heavily burdened were its branches. The official court records contained mentions of abdications, but I doubt they were all voluntary.”

“All for a few more drops of water,” Nino said with a sigh, tapping the vial of kerida blossom gently against the tray.

“All for a few more drops of water.”

—

He nearly vomited his food back up after sprinkling no more than one or two tiny slivers of kerida blossom in his rice. But after only one day’s worth of meals, Nino’s fever had vanished. They kept it a secret - when one of Rumiko’s representatives stopped by for a visit, Nino hoped he was a solid enough actor, lying under his sheets and pretending to be writhing in restless agony.

He finally removed the bandaging himself one morning, staring down at what had been done to him. Six characters carved into his flesh, a language he didn’t understand. The wounds didn’t seem infected, which seemed to astonish Sho. Masaki’s antidote had kept inflammation away, leaving only the sore purple markings.

Nino couldn’t avoid his aunt much longer and after a week in his room, he had little choice but to go when she summoned him. Murderer, he was reminded upon seeing her cruel face again. The woman was a murderer.

Thankfully Rumiko’s bangle had been returned to her ankle, and she greeted him with a too-long hug. He’d been asked to meet with her far from the residential wing, far from the king’s apartments and the offices of the various royal advisors and their staff. Instead Nino found himself in one of the storage rooms that held dozens of sacks of grain stacked to the ceiling - the palace had stockpiles while citizens of the Sun Kingdom starved only miles away.

Without warning, she grabbed for his still tender arm, lips quirking in amusement at his wince of pain as she tugged him closer, pushing up his sleeve. He watched her reaction closely as his tattoos were unveiled. She made approving noises, not seeming to find anything amiss about their appearance.

“There were more who studied sorcery in the olden days,” Rumiko said, making Nino squirm as she pressed her fingers down on each symbol. “More who knew the language. Never enough to communicate in-depth but at least we remember and cherish these.”

“The language of the gods,” Nino murmured.

He watched Rumiko trace each symbol on the inside of his arm, tried to keep from jerking away as she pushed down on each of them almost as though she truly did mean to hurt him.

“The translation for these is far simpler than you might think, Kazunari,” she explained. “‘The wind blowing down mountains.’”

“The wind blowing down mountains,” he repeated.

“The gods were never straightforward, and in the olden days, neither were humans. But language evolves, simplifies. Six characters all to say one word.”

“And what word is that?”

“A simple one. Storm.”

He said nothing, unable to look away from the curse set upon him.

“It is just like the children’s stories say,” Rumiko said, reverence in her tone. “Sorcerer Raku went to the God of the Waters, telling him there was a drought in his land, that people were suffering and dying. ‘Send me the wind blowing down mountains,’ he demanded, ‘for my people would gladly drink of it since our wells are bone dry.’”

“But the God of the Waters didn’t send a storm. He sent his sons.”

The sorceress stroked his cheek with her fingernail. Nino thought of the young tattoo artist, stabbed in the neck, left to bleed out on his floor merely for carving a storm into his skin.

Rumiko smiled. “Oh no, Kazunari. The God of the Waters definitely sent a storm.”

She stepped away from him, clapping her hands.

“Bring him in!”

Nino took a reflexive step back, bracing himself when the door opened. It took three sturdy-looking members of the Kingsguard to haul him in, a man small in stature, shorter than Nino by an inch or two. He didn’t say a word, only moving stiffly in their grasp, struggling.

Skin tanned by the sun, the man wore a thin shirt of blue cotton that hung loosely from his small, slim frame and threadbare trousers. He was barefoot, his black hair cut short but sloppy and unstyled in contrast to most men Nino had seen at court. He had a round face, a small pouting mouth. His upper lip and chin were peppered with dark stubble, a deliberate flouting of what was considered right and proper. The soldiers wrangled the man like he was a wild beast rather than a human being.

But Nino realized soon enough that this wasn’t a human being at all.

Nino remembered when he entered the king’s audience chamber. He remembered how it had felt when he’d met Masaki’s eyes for the first time. The chill, the shudders rolling down his spine as he shivered. But it wasn’t the same this time. The feeling seemed a bit more muted, a warmth crawling up his tattooed arm instead, making the symbols burn anew. And yet it was familiar. Send me the wind blowing down mountains.

A god. Another god.

He watched as the Kingsguard pushed the god into a wooden chair, putting his arms behind his back and tying his wrists with rope. His ankles were tied to the base of the chair, and Nino could barely look into the god’s face as he gave up on openly struggling, instead looking at Rumiko with absolute hatred in his dark brown eyes.

Masaki’s brother, the other son of the God of the Waters, trapped here just the same. This was Satoshi, Nino realized. This was the one Sho had recommended he avoid as much as possible. Of course, the gods were unable to harm him. That was part of the blood magic, was it not?

And yet if looks could kill…

Satoshi didn’t seem to look much older than his brother, but his lean, unkempt appearance and the readily apparent rage in his eyes were Masaki’s complete opposite. He’d only spoken with Nino the one time, but Masaki had seemed resigned to his fate, making the best of an utterly unforgivable situation. In contrast, Satoshi was like a captive creature pacing its cage, waiting to pounce and have his revenge.

The soldiers stepped back, and Rumiko moved forward, circling the chair. Nino watched nervously as his aunt casually ran her fingertips up Satoshi’s arms, across his shoulder blades. She chuckled, sinking so low as to tickle a god. This only made Satoshi angrier, but he didn’t lash out. He couldn’t lash out at her. Everything was in his eyes. I would see you dead, his eyes spoke on his behalf. I would see you suffer for what you do.

Rumiko was proving the truth of the curse. No matter what she did, Satoshi couldn’t fight back. Nino crossed his arms, embarrassed. Shamed. This was wrong.

Finally done with her teasing, Rumiko came back to him, pulling up the sleeve of her robe to reveal her own disgusting tattoos. “Today is your test, Kazunari,” she said. “Your day of reckoning.”

At that, Nino saw Satoshi’s murderous gaze finally turn in his direction. The god cocked his head, staring him down. The full force of those eyes ought to have made him feel faint, the same as when Masaki had looked upon him the first time. But there was only a light buzzing, concentrated entirely in his arm. The tattoos.

Nino realized that he didn’t need to be tested. He already knew. When Masaki had looked upon him, he’d been different, unmarked. But now the curse was running through his veins. Unlike his brother Jun, he had the power. His blood was strong, Rumiko might say. The power of the bloodline had passed to him.

He took a slow breath, unable to look away from Satoshi’s eyes.

Masaki had asked Nino a question in the library a week ago. Do you wish to control me?

He saw that question now mirrored in Satoshi’s dark eyes, watched his lip curl in disgust. But Satoshi’s unspoken question was slightly different as he stared Nino down.

Do you dare to control me?

His aunt didn’t seem to care at all about the silent conversation going on between nephew and god. Her hand was on his arm again, the pain a mere itch compared to the force of the god’s rage.

“He looks small, but this one is stronger than his brother,” Rumiko said. Her fingers almost lovingly caressed the tattoos on Nino’s arm. “There is divinity in every inch of his flesh, but look upon him, Kazunari. He looks no different from you or me.”

Rumiko called for a bucket, one of the soldiers grabbing an empty metal pail from the corner of the room and setting it down on the floor halfway between Nino and where Satoshi was tied.

“Speaking of brothers,” Rumiko teased, “We prepared this simple test for Jun when his fever finally broke, and he failed it. Again and again that pathetic boy tried, but he couldn’t manage it. He spoke the words so beautifully, I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember him crawling along the floor on his belly, sobbing like a child, taking hold of Satoshi here by the leg.” She looked over, smiling at the god. “What did that boy ask of you?”

Satoshi didn’t answer.

“Hmm,” Rumiko sighed. “This one’s always been stubborn. Come now, Satoshi. Our dear Kazunari wants to know. There’s so much he doesn’t know. Won’t you indulge him?”

Again, Satoshi chose not to respond. But Nino could see that the fight was going out of him. He was still angry, there was no mistaking it, but he knew he was stuck here in this horrible room until Rumiko decided she was done with him.

“Please!” Rumiko screamed, making Nino jump back in fright. Her voice was suddenly high-pitched, shuddering. “Please!”

The members of the Kingsguard didn’t react. Neither did Satoshi. Nino, on the other hand, was trying not to shake.

Rumiko started to laugh, leaving Nino’s side, going up to Satoshi and pulling his shirt into her fist. She tugged on it, still shouting. “Please!” she screamed. “Please! I’m the heir to the Sun Kingdom! You will obey my command!”

Satoshi looked away, features darkening as Rumiko toyed with him. She was yanking on him so hard Satoshi’s back was coming off the chair, his balance thrown off. Nino heard the fabric of his shirt tear. Before the chair could topple, leaving the defenseless god on the floor, Nino had had enough.

“Aunt Rumiko,” he interrupted, voice as strong as he could manage.

She stopped, finally letting him go, that awful blood red smile returning to her face. “Your brother’s words,” she said, her breath coming in heavy gasps. The woman had reveled in Jun’s failure, hadn’t she? “Your brother’s pathetic words that day.”

“How unfortunate,” he murmured in reply.

“His blood was weak,” Rumiko spat. “But I know that yours is not.” She pointed at him decisively. “You need only say it aloud. The wind blowing down mountains. But you must speak as they do.”

He listened as Rumiko spoke again, but the sounds were foreign to his ears. Almost beautiful, even in his aunt’s voice. Satoshi didn’t react, sitting there with his shirt nearly torn from him, his chest rising and falling as he awaited whatever would be done to him. If Satoshi wasn’t reacting to Rumiko’s command, the words “the wind blowing down mountains” in the language of the gods, then it must have meant that the bangle also managed to dampen her control over Satoshi.

This was Nino’s test alone. He needed only to repeat what Rumiko had said. He needed only to repeat it and he would know if his blood held power.

He wanted to cut out his tongue, to never hear those words fall from his own lips. Satoshi eyed him warily. Nino’s moral dilemma was of little concern to him.

“The wind blowing down mountains,” his aunt enunciated clearly in the language of the gods. “Don’t be afraid. It is your birthright, Kazunari.”

“I…I don’t…”

The three soldiers seemed almost bored, one of them itching at his nose while Nino wavered. If he spoke the words and Satoshi created water, then Nino’s place at court would surely improve. He’d be trusted, valued. If he spoke the words and Satoshi created water, it meant Nino could attempt to break the curse, as Yukio before him had tried.

But if he spoke the words and Satoshi created water, he could never take it back. Even if he never spoke them again, it was cruel, forcing Satoshi to obey his command. Whatever his intent, however hard he fought to free Satoshi and his brother, it could not and would not be forgotten. He would always be a man who forced another to do something he did not wish to do. That savagery could not be erased.

What kind of man was Ninomiya Kazunari?

He supposed that had been decided weeks ago back in Toyone-mura. Standing on the hill, watching the smoke of the bonfire. Seitaro’s words, Seitaro’s faith in him. He was the only one who could do this. The guilt might eat away at him for the rest of his life, but what did his guilt, his selfishness, matter?

He had to forfeit his soul to try and save everyone else’s. That was the task Matsumoto Yukio had set for him. A man he’d never even know.

“Kazunari,” Rumiko said, voice growing impatient.

How easy it must have been for someone heartless like her all these years, how powerful it must have felt to take and take and take from someone who could do nothing to stop you.

Nino took a breath, taking a step forward. He now had Satoshi’s full attention, and his arm throbbed with the burden of the six symbols of Satoshi and Masaki’s centuries-long enslavement. He held the god’s gaze for what might have been seconds or minutes. He inhaled, exhaled. Before him, Satoshi inhaled, exhaled. The hardened set of the god’s jaw didn’t waver. His pride and anger never faded. But he now watched Nino with a heavy sadness in his eyes, no longer straining against his bonds.

Be done with it, those hypnotic brown eyes suddenly seemed to tell him. Just hurry up and be done with it.

The foreign, unfamiliar words slipped from his mouth quietly but firmly.

“The wind blowing down mountains.”

The room was filled with a heavy, penetrating silence Nino felt all the way to his bones. He held his breath, arm burning. The anger drained from Satoshi’s face, the hardness. The rage. In that instant, Nino saw another man. He likely saw the Satoshi who’d arrived here hundreds of years ago, sent on his father’s command. He was innocent, hopeful.

In that instant, he was beautiful.

In that instant, Nino was lost.

He watched tears start to fall from Satoshi’s eyes, and he couldn’t look away. He couldn’t look away even as he heard Rumiko’s thrilled cheers. He couldn’t look away even as he heard her pick up the pail from the floor, heard the sudden slosh of water inside. This was like no other feeling Nino had ever had.

The tears of a trapped god had left him completely undone. Though Satoshi was the one lashed to the chair, it was Nino who suddenly felt in thrall.

Their eye contact was abruptly severed when Rumiko suddenly came to stand before him, holding the pail of water out with pride in her eyes. Nino let out a trembling breath, jaw trembling as tears filled his own eyes. I’m sorry, he couldn’t afford to say. I’m sorry.

“Look,” Rumiko whispered excitedly, demanding that he see what he’d done.

The pail was full almost to the top with water that had obviously not been there a few moments ago. The god had cried, blessing them with fresh water.

She held the pail in one hand, dipping in the fingers of her free hand. Nino watched as Rumiko sucked the droplets from her fingers. “Fresh. Clean. And cold. Sorcerer Raku’s bloodline continues in the name of Matsumoto Kazunari.”

He stepped back when she stepped forward, urging for him to taste what he’d forcibly stolen from the son of the God of the Waters. “I don’t need to try it. I’ve already drunk my fill, bathed in it. This entire palace overflows with what we’ve taken.”

Rumiko laughed. “Soft hearted still, even with such power at your command. It will be my privilege and pleasure alike to help you grow stronger. You will fill streams and wells, fountains and cisterns. It will all flow from you, Kazunari.”

She moved away, carrying the water with her. She moved to Satoshi, still tied to the chair, tear tracks drying on his cheeks, eyes reddened and pained.

“Congratulate my nephew, Satoshi,” Rumiko said. “He is strong like his father, may the Gods favor him. He is strong like his grandfather.”

Satoshi maintained his silence.

“Congratulate him!”

When Satoshi said nothing, Nino cried out in shock as Rumiko upended the pail of water over the god’s head and flung the pail aside with a loud clang. Nino could only watch, horrified, as the water splashed down his face, soaking into his clothes, puddling on the floor. The god lowered his head, anger renewed as his whole body quaked in irritation, and Nino couldn’t find words. Black hair plastered to his head, drops falling from the tip of his nose, his chin. His torn clothes stuck to his frame while Nino bore witness to the god’s humiliation.

“Remove him from my sight.”

The soldiers didn’t hesitate, loosening the ropes and tugging the drenched god from the chair at Rumiko’s command. His wet hair had fallen across his eyes in clumps, but as he was dragged away, he shook it aside, kept his eyes on Nino as he was nearly carried out the door.

He barely registered Rumiko’s arm coming around his shoulder, her hollow praises poisoning his eardrums. All he could think about was that moment when he saw the god change, when he saw the tears form in his eyes. A beautiful, perfect god that Nino now knew he could compel without consequence.

“We will have to meet with Father. We will have to share the good news.”

Nino could only stumble away, nauseated and sickened. In the hallway he saw a small trail of water leading off in one direction. He went the opposite way, ignoring the greetings of courtiers and advisors, their groveling. Their praise. He got turned around, dizzy and infuriated, hands scrambling against the wall as he desperately tried to get away.

Mirei was cleaning his washbasin when he returned to his rooms, and he raised his voice.

“Leave me alone!” he hollered, and he needed only say it once. She fled without another word.

He knocked aside the screen with the pelicans, dropping to his knees and going for his chamber pot, emptying the contents of his belly into it until there were tears in his eyes and his throat ached.

—

He managed to keep Sho and the maids out for three days save for bowls of miso soup Sho clearly snuck inside during the night, as he found it cold when he woke. The infection in his arm had been kept at bay before by the kerida blossom, but after three days without its rotten taste permeating his meals, the fever had taken hold again.

In and out of a restful nightmarish sleep, he felt that it was what he deserved.

When someone set to knocking on the evening of the third day and refused to stop, he finally pulled himself from his sweat-soaked sheets and prepared to tell them off. He hadn’t, however, expected to find Masaki standing on the other side, his fist raised mid-knock.

He staggered back, mouth stale and dry. His arm felt cool as Masaki’s eyes met with his. The power manifested differently, Nino realized. With Masaki, his arm felt cold. With Satoshi, he’d felt heat. He wasn’t sure what it meant, and at the present moment he didn’t care.

“You can force me to create water,” Masaki said calmly, eyes rather amused as he stayed on the other side of the threshold. “And you can force me to leave.”

“I could also call the guards to do that for me,” Nino said bitterly.

“You could, Your Highness.”

He stood aside, feeling a little lightheaded after having moved from his bedroom to the door so swiftly. Masaki walked in, and Nino shut the door.

“Sakurai Sho fears for you.”

“He ought to fear for himself,” Nino muttered. “He will die soon because I wasn’t clever enough to save him.”

The god helped himself to one of Nino’s cushions, setting it on the floor before the low table and sitting casually with his legs crossed. Nino doubted Masaki had plans to leave any time soon, so instead of going back to bed, he grabbed a cushion of his own and joined him on the floor.

Masaki reached into the pocket of his trousers, setting down another glass vial of kerida blossom. “I thought, perhaps, that you might have run out.”

Nino left the vial where it was. The kerida blossom had been his saving grace, had kept the fever at bay when he’d ingested it. It ought to have assured him that Masaki was someone he could trust. But he still didn’t know if he could afford to. He met Masaki’s cool, placid eyes.

“I’m sorry.”

Masaki cocked his head. “For what?”

Nino narrowed his eyes. “Don’t play dumb.”

“Ah,” the god replied, an oddly cheerful smile appearing on his face. “Your test.”

“If I said the words right now, you’d have no choice but to obey me.”

Masaki nodded. “Yes.”

“Do I have to provide you with a glass or would you simply flood the room and ruin my floor?”

Masaki leaned his elbow against the table, propping up his head with a hand to his chin. They sat together, prince and god, as though they were comfortable friends. “Your bathtub would suffice, I suppose. Or the pool in your courtyard. Typically I’m given a direct order in terms of placement.”

“You can speak of it so casually.”

“I speak practically, Ninomiya Kazunari. I’m merely answering the question you’ve posed.”

He leaned back, resting his hands on the floor behind him. He knew that Masaki could see the tattoos on his arm, and yet he didn’t seem bothered.

“Do you always cry?”

“Yes.”

“Even if you do it willingly?”

“Yes.”

“If the curse was lifted and you could kill me right now, would you?”

Masaki’s smile slipped away.

“Would you?” Nino pressed.

His voice was different when he responded this time, heavy and serious.

“No.”

“If I spoke the words and made you fill my bathtub or the courtyard or the entire palace until everyone inside it drowned, would you feel differently? If I asked in your language for the wind blowing down mountains, wouldn’t you long to see me dead?”

“No,” Masaki repeated, this time more decisively.

Nino sat up straighter, leaning until he could reach the vial of kerida blossom. He gave it a push with his finger, rolling it back in Masaki’s direction.

He took a long, measured breath, his mind still whirring from the poison flooding his body. He looked sharply at the god sitting before him. “Does it hurt when you’re being controlled?”

“Yes.”

He shut his eyes, tapping his fingers nervously on the table. “Why did you give me the kerida blossom when you’ve done nothing of the kind for the men and women who have come before me?”

“There is a phrase in our language,” Masaki said quietly. “You might translate it as ‘last hope.’”

He opened his eyes, his tattooed arm stiff and cold as Masaki stared him down. “Shall I have that marked on me next?”

Masaki’s seemingly infinite well of patience and reserve was drying up. “For the better part of a millennium, I have been here, within these walls. There was always a successor. Always, without fail. There has been a Matsumoto king or queen for generations, and I gave millions of my tears to them. But this generation is the generation of last hope.”

“Because Jun can’t hurt you.”

Masaki’s smile was bitter. “I’m not talking about Jun.”

“You’re saying I’m the last hope?”

Masaki nodded. “Yukio tried to break the curse for most of his life, but he never did.”

Nino’s eyes widened. So Masaki had known what Yukio had been up to. It was likely Masaki knew why Nino had been called here, that Nino was here to try and break the curse himself. All this time Nino had wavered about trusting the long-confined god, and yet it seemed as though Masaki had trusted and believed in him from the start. The kerida blossom had truly been intended to help him, to ease Nino’s suffering so that hopefully Masaki’s might be eased as well someday.

He felt ashamed.

“What if I can’t do it?” Nino whispered. “What if I’m not strong enough either?”

“Until the other day, my hopes were more wishful thinking than anything else. You were raised away from this horrible place. You were raised by a man with a conscience. And as a healer, you’ve seen the suffering of this world and have fought hard to diminish it. A man like that would be repulsed by the idea of compelling my brother, compelling me. A man like that would take no pride in what his ancestors have done for so many years. He would want our imprisonment to end.”

“And you’ve moved past wishful thinking, have you? You think I’m truly the last hope, here to set you free? You don’t really know me, you don’t know anything about me. What has you so convinced?”

Masaki grinned faintly. “You made my brother cry.”

Nino waved his hand. “You’ve already said that it makes you cry so…”

“I was answering the question you asked of me. You asked if I cry. You did not ask about Satoshi.”

“I…I assumed that if one of you…”

“My brother has not cried since the day we arrived. He has not cried since Sorcerer Raku betrayed us. Hurt us. Broke us.” Masaki’s gaze was far away, lost in memories that were centuries old. “No matter the pain, he refused to show your predecessors his tears. Me, on the other hand, well, I’ve always been the crybaby of the family.”

The storage room had slipped into Nino’s fevered nightmares. Images had flashed through his mind again and again. Satoshi tied to the chair. Rumiko dumping the bucket of water over his head, throwing his coerced gift right back in his face. The way his arm had burned when he felt the fury in Satoshi’s eyes on him, the heat that had tethered them together as the god’s tears had fallen.

“I really hurt him,” Nino murmured in horror.

Masaki leaned forward, his hand ice cold as he wrapped it around Nino’s wrist. “No, no, it isn’t like that.”

“Then what is it like, Masaki?” he spat back. “What have I done to him that was so different from the torture generations before me have inflicted on him?”

Masaki paused, squeezing Nino more gently.

“For centuries members of your family have barely waited for the ink on their arms to dry before seeking us out. They’ve passed out chasing us down. They’ve locked us in dungeons. They’ve never slowed, they’ve never hesitated.” Masaki refused to look away. “All they cared about was proving themselves. Their legacy, their power. Their bloodline. Yukio fought most of his life to free us, but the day he turned twenty he held a dagger to my throat and said the words.”

Nino shook at the very thought of it.

“I compelled him,” he whispered. “I still said the words.”

“Condemn yourself all you wish, Ninomiya Kazunari, but it doesn’t diminish what I believe. It doesn’t diminish what my brother probably knows in his heart is true, though he is a stubborn character, you’ll find. You’re different from them, and you’ll prove it.”

Masaki let him go, rolling the vial of kerida blossom back across the table to him.

“Don’t stop taking this. If you’re truly to save us, I obviously need you alive. I need you sane. Do whatever you must do to convince them of your sincerity. Play their wicked game so you can turn it back on them tenfold.”

Masaki got to his feet, heading for the door. Nino felt the weight of the god’s faith in him, felt it in the lingering chill in his tattooed arm. Would he ever be strong enough?

“All I can do is try,” Nino vowed quietly, Masaki pausing at the door but not turning around. “I promise to try.”

He heard what might have been a thank you as Masaki opened the door and closed it behind him. Nino picked up the vial and squeezed it tightly, desperate to curb his doubts.

—

Masaki was waiting in the king’s audience chamber two days later, standing behind the throne with a calm, passive look that made it seem like the conversation in Nino’s sitting room had never happened.

The entire path to the dais was lined with Kingsguard outfitted in full armor, swords sheathed at their sides as Nino made his way up the red carpet to where his grandfather sat, eager to test him. Rumiko had also managed to win an invitation to the event, though she mingled amongst the advisors and courtiers who’d been kept back to either side of the chamber by the Kingsguard.

Matsumoto Jun had also found his way to the audience chamber that day, though he hung back several feet behind the throne, leaning back against the wall with what Nino could only describe as a bored expression. Nino wondered how many people Rumiko had told about the events in the storage room, how many people knew that Nino had the ability that the heir to the throne lacked.

For his own part, Nino did nothing to downplay his power. Instead, he’d chosen to flaunt it openly, as his aunt liked to. As he’d heard that most of his predecessors had. Sho had winced that morning as Nino had taken all of the fine shirts and tunics that had been gifted to him, ripping the sleeves from all of them so his tattoos might be more easily seen and admired.

“You might have simply asked for new ones without sleeves instead of destroying these,” Sho had pecked at him, but Nino had been grateful for the small bit of levity. It helped to offset the new attitude he was putting on display, strutting around as Jun had the first time they’d met. He’d tied the black ribbon of mourning around his bared bicep instead.

It wasn’t enough that Nino bore the power of his bloodline. He had to sell it. He had to convince the court that he would be the best choice to carry on his family’s legacy. He had to convince them that he was beyond reproach. Kazunari the prince. Kazunari who could compel the gods.

He approached the throne with all the arrogance he could muster, even as his heart raced. He was walking a dangerous line. He knelt, lowering his head to his grandfather.

“A few weeks in the capital have changed you,” King Kotaro declared, his rasping voice echoing throughout the chamber as everyone watched with hushed interest. “Though your sartorial choices leave much to be desired.”

He heard a few obedient chuckles from the gathered crowd, and he smiled.

“Approach.”

He rose to his feet, moving up the steps until he was beside the throne opposite Masaki. Kotaro looked aside, gesturing for Nino to lean over. His breath was foul, warm against Nino’s ear. He felt the old man’s gnarled fingers wrap around his tattooed arm. He smiled through the pain, feeling the cool sensation that was having Masaki’s gaze upon him.

“Do not say the words so that all can hear them. I don’t need a spectacle. I merely need proof of your capabilities,” the king demanded before letting him go.

Nino offered the king an ostentatious bow, wondering if anyone could see through his bravado. Looking back to the wall, he could see Jun examining his fingernails instead of paying close attention. But after learning what he had from Sho and learning what he had from Rumiko, Nino wondered how much of his brother’s behavior was an act as well.

He moved back to the carpet, standing with his hands on his hips as the doors at the rear of the chamber opened, and red-robed servants came one after another with some of the massive cookpots from the palace kitchens. Nino swallowed, counting as they were brought in and set down, one right after the other. He counted twenty in all, each of them high enough to nearly reach Nino’s shoulder. They could hold a lot of water, and all he’d managed to do before today was have Satoshi fill a pail.

Once all of the cookpots had been settled, the servants were ordered to the back of the room. Nino could hear murmurs among the crowd. The king had said he didn’t want a spectacle. But then what was this? What was this silly set-up? What might the king actually consider a spectacle?

The king raised a hand for quiet, and the room fell silent.

“Masaki,” the king said simply, and Nino took a deep breath as the god moved from behind the throne, taking the steps down to stand on the carpet just at Nino’s side.

Their eyes met, and Nino couldn’t read the look in Masaki’s. The god had told him to do whatever was necessary. He didn’t want to, especially knowing that Masaki would likely fill every cookpot to the brim without needing to be controlled. But Nino supposed that wasn’t the point of this exercise.

He looked over, seeing that the king had waved his hand and that Jun was begrudgingly moving forward, standing beside the throne with his arms crossed. Jun was trying very hard to look bored, but Nino doubted that was the case. Their grandfather was doing this all intentionally. He wanted the entire court to see what his illegitimate desert rat of a grandson might do. He wanted the entire court to see Jun humiliated yet again.

Today Nino would earn the king’s respect and likely his brother’s enmity. And in the process, he didn’t know how much Masaki would be hurt. All for the greater good?

Nino moved to the first cookpot, Masaki mirroring his movements and standing on the other side. Nino set his hands down on the rim of the pot, not letting them shake despite the growing chill in his fingers, moving up his hands. Masaki placed his hands on the rim as well.

The room was so quiet, Nino could easily hear Masaki’s calm, even breathing across from him. In response, he offered a wicked smile.

“The wind blowing down mountains,” he said quietly.

Nino kept his arrogant smile plastered on his face even as he saw Masaki’s large, expressive eyes redden and fill with tears. “Yes, Your Highness.”

Whatever power was used, it wasn’t instant. Perhaps Nino’s powers were still weak. Water gradually appeared in the cookpot, slowly filling as though an invisible faucet was above it. But there was no invisible hand. Only the power of Masaki’s tears, the power of the curse running under Nino’s skin.

It was perhaps a minute before the enormous pot was full to the brim, and Nino took his hands away, droplets falling from his fingers. He didn’t react even when he saw the tears staining Masaki’s face. Because this wasn’t over. This was far from over.

“A cup!” the king called.

A servant emerged from the right side of the chamber, hurrying over with a jeweled cup. Only the most obnoxious in the king’s collection, Nino imagined. The servant knelt down, holding it out to Nino.

He dipped the cup into the cookpot, filling it and approaching the throne. The king took it and all eyes in the room were on the old man’s throat as he swallowed water down. When he lowered the cup, he looked deeply into Nino’s eyes, an expression that was neither pride nor suspicion.

“Fill them all,” he commanded.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

The court seemed to collectively hold its breath as Nino moved from pot to pot, each time whispering the words that held unimaginable power, watching Masaki as he did as he was ordered. Masaki filled each pot to the edge until water flowed over Nino’s hands and he moved on to the next, letting the overflow splash out onto the floor to show off before stepping over to the next pot.

By the tenth cookpot, he could see how much it was weakening Masaki. He was thousands of miles from the sea, thousands of miles from the source of his power. His movements grew sluggish, his strength draining with every second that passed. Instead of a “Yes, Your Highness” with each command Nino whispered, he stopped talking altogether - nodding by the eighth cookpot, desperately trying to keep upright by the tenth.

Nino moved on to the eleventh as Masaki held on to the tenth pot. He wanted to stop this before Masaki was severely hurt. What did it prove if he filled twenty pots with water when he’d already filled ten of them? His power worked each and every time, and from the exhaustion in his face, the shaking of his jaw, Nino knew that Masaki wasn’t faking. He wasn’t pretending to be compelled.

Nino kicked at the empty copper cookpot before him with the toe of his boot, letting the clang ring out through the chamber. “You will obey me!”

Masaki shuffled along, clumsily moving his feet. Nino wasn’t sure how much more of this either of them could endure. He wanted to scream. He wanted to shout his apologies until his throat was raw. But this was the price he had to pay.

He waited until Masaki was standing before him again, leaning heavily against the pot. His face was red and swollen, his nose dripping as his whole body shook. They were only halfway. But now they were at least far enough away from the throne for Nino to say something.

“Will you be able to finish?” he mumbled under his breath.

Masaki’s eyes were hazy, puffy from crying. “Don’t worry about me.”

“I’m truly sorry.”

“Please…” Masaki muttered, “just keep going.”

By the fifteenth filled pot, Masaki was crawling along the floor, body heaving. Nino berated him, kicking at the pots and letting the noise echo through the throne room. “What kind of god are you?” he shouted. “You are weak! You are nothing!” He kicked the pot again, taking comfort in the pain that radiated through his foot, up his leg. “You are mine to command!”

He could sense the air shifting in the room. The nobles and advisors and servants were petrified of the power Nino was showing. The king, however, was thrilled beyond measure. Rumiko as well, her smile visible from across the room. And Jun, Nino realized as he waited for Masaki to pull himself to the sixteenth pot…Jun had left the room entirely at some point. In disgust? In fear? Nino presumed it was the latter.

Jun’s remaining sway or goodwill at court had likely just vanished, all because of water in cookpots.

The twentieth cookpot filled the slowest of all, and Nino hid his horror at how much Masaki had changed from the first. He’d been standing tall, strong. Healthy, as much as a god might be judged to appear so. But now he looked nearly dead. All the color had drained from his face, and his eyes had swollen shut.

He lay curled up on the floor in a near-fetal position, his hand pressed against the cookpot to give what strength he still possessed to fill it with water. His breaths were long and shuddering, and Nino had not heard such sounds since he’d been in the caravan. He’d heard these rattling breaths as he ground up a handful of peritos seeds to ease the suffering of a young boy who was only minutes away from passing into the next world.

A god couldn’t die, Nino knew. Or at least that’s what the stories had always said. But the sight before him made him question what he thought to be true.

The pot was halfway full when he saw Masaki’s hand fall away, and he stopped moving. Nobody in the room made a move to help him, and Nino walked around the pot, sliding his arms under Masaki’s and dragging him across the floor, away from the pots and away from his suffering. A quiet moan let Nino know that he was ill, but he was still breathing. Still alive.

Nino hoped the king could not see him shaking in anger, shaking in self-loathing as he moved back to the twentieth cookpot. Nino shoved it with an agonized shout, letting out only a fraction of his fury at what he’d been made to do. The members of the Kingsguard closest to the sudden rush of water didn’t move a muscle, but the courtiers jumped away as the water splashed across the checkerboard floor, soaking their shoes.

He turned back to the king. “Your Majesty!” he shouted across the room, wanting nothing more than to look at Masaki, to help him. But he kept his gaze light and focused on his grandfather. His grandfather who had likely known all along how much this stunt would tax the god. All of this to see what Nino might accomplish. “Your Majesty, I’ve brought you water if you have thirst for it.”

To his surprise, the king rose from his throne. This prompted everyone in the room, from Rumiko down to the lowest servant, to fall to their knees. Even those who had moved away from the flood of water now knelt in it, unable to move.

“Kazunari, my blood,” the king declared, standing at the opposite end of his audience chamber, looking at Nino with sheer delight in his wrinkled face. “Most impressive.”

Nino didn’t kneel. He decided that after what he’d done that he’d never kneel to the man again.

“My pleasure.”

—

Sho had taken the task of grinding up Nino’s kerida blossom upon himself, kneeling on a cushion before Nino’s sitting room table and pounding it almost to dust. Nino ignored the stink of it, pacing back and forth. His appetite had fled him anyhow.

“Wearing down the floor in here will not bring news to you any faster,” Sho reminded him.

“She said she would return within the hour!”

Sho returned his focus to the bowl before him. “It has not yet been an hour.”

“Within the hour means less than an hour, Sho.”

He could tell that Sho was trying not to laugh at him, but Nino wasn’t in the mood for it. The Kingsguard had dragged Masaki’s exhausted body from the audience chamber, but Nino had not been dismissed at the same time. Instead he’d had to play nice, making small talk with the king and his aunt who praised him for his outstanding performance.

They’d kept him there for nearly two hours, mostly the king regaling him with what he probably thought were shining examples of his dominance over the sons of the God of the Waters. Nino had had to stand there, tattooed arm hanging heavily at his side, weighed down with the enormity of the suffering he’d inflicted on Masaki. The king had gone on and on with stories of his youth.

One time he’d had Satoshi forced down an empty well as punishment for some likely meaningless infraction, the king jokingly shouting “the wind blowing down mountains” every hour or so before slamming the well cover closed and leaving him alone once more. Satoshi had spent nearly two days in the dark, claustrophobic well, desperately creating water at a grueling pace in order to float himself back to the surface and to safety. The king told Nino this story with a twinkle in his eye, clearly fond of such a memory. Nino assumed Satoshi felt differently.

Masaki had once been personally tasked with halting the flow of water to an orphanage. One of the workers there had been accused of making threatening remarks about the king. The Kingsguard had been sent to patrol outside, to keep any of the people inside the orphanage from escaping. Masaki had been sat down before a pipe in the middle of the verdant, water-rich palace gardens, knowing that a few miles away innocent children were suffering from thirst.

Instead of simply cutting off the water, Masaki had been ordered to keep already flowing water from moving further down the pipe, a task of concentration. If he lost control, if even a drop of water made its way to the orphanage before the criminal surrendered to the Kingsguard, then the orphanage would have been burnt to the ground with everyone still inside. It wasn’t so much a test of the criminal as it had been of Masaki’s own loyalty, his strength. The criminal surrendered after six days. Masaki had been left “incapacitated” by the incident, the king laughed, for another six after that.

And these were but two examples from Kotaro’s reign alone. The cruelty and abuse stretched back centuries. The kings and queens of Sorcerer Raku’s bloodline were born, lived, and died. The common factor through the years was their sadistic treatment of the gods who’d only been sent to provide help.

Now Nino was one of them.

When he’d finally been dismissed from the audience chamber, he’d raced back to his room, grabbing hold of Mirei and almost shaking her by her narrow shoulders. “Find where they’ve taken him. Find where they’ve taken Masaki.”

And still she was gone, likely making the most delicate inquiries with other servants she deemed trustworthy. After Nino’s harrowing display in the audience chamber, he suspected that Mirei and the other girls would find themselves with greater power and clout in the servants’ quarters. While Nino had spent the last few weeks as a non-entity in the palace, he might now be its most infamous resident. He’d likely gain enemies, he was certain of it. Those loyal to the king might be concerned that Nino was powerful enough to overthrow him. Those loyal to Jun might resent him for the same reason.

But none of those politics mattered to him at present. He cared only about Masaki, his recovery. Nino knew dozens of remedies and solutions for illnesses, for exhaustion. Would any of them work on a god?

There was a knock at the door minutes later, and Nino hurried Mirei inside.

“Well, where have they brought him?” he said in a rush. “Did you find out? Is he going to be okay?”

She nodded. “He was brought to Prince Jun’s apartments.”

Nino was confused, hands on his hips. “On whose orders?”

“On Prince Jun’s orders, my lord.”

Then there was no way Nino would be able to see Masaki tonight. He’d been all but forgotten by his brother since he’d arrived at the palace. But today had changed all that, he was sure of it. Jun would not be extending any invites. Perhaps Nino would have to invite himself. He looked over, saw that Sho had stopped grinding up the kerida blossom.

“Will he be treated well there?” Nino asked Sho warily. Just because Jun was lacking in magic didn’t mean he was going to be sitting at Masaki’s bedside spoon-feeding him broth.

“Yes,” Sho mumbled in response. “He will be able to rest.”

“You speak like this isn’t the first time.”

“That’s because it’s not,” Sho replied.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing. He better understood why his mother had never spoken of her life here. Nothing but violence begetting violence, barbarism begetting barbarism. He needed to get back to the library. He had to put a stop to this, once and for all.

He addressed Mirei. “I’ll be going to the library at first light. No visitors, no summons. If and when they ask, I am studying and will not be disturbed. That will be all.”

“Yes, my lord,” Mirei said, inclining her head and leaving the room.

He watched Sho put the ground up kerida blossom into a clean vial, watched him move to return it to the secret panel in the wall.

“He’s fond enough of you to have argued in favor of keeping you alive,” Nino said when Sho returned to him. “Prince Jun.”

Sho eyed him nervously.

“You will go to him tomorrow, and you will tell him I wish to become better acquainted with him. After all, we’re brothers.”

He saw Sho’s nose twitch. It was almost cute.

“You will not leave until a meeting is arranged in the next few days. A meal, perhaps, or a stroll in the gardens.”

“Why? You needn’t fear for Masaki. He is many things, but Prince Jun is not a monster. Masaki will not be harmed while in his care.”

“So you’ve said. But I will need allies in the days to come. I’m wondering if my brother should be among them.”

Sho’s brown eyes were curious. “This is about more than just breaking the curse now, isn’t it?”

Nino remembered his grandfather’s words, how easily he had described the torture he’d inflicted. His aunt was no different. Prince Yukio had spent a fruitless forty years trying to free Satoshi and Masaki. Nino didn’t have the luxury of time. He had to gather allies around him - Kotaro and Rumiko had to be stopped before things got any worse.

“Arrange a meeting. Dismissed.”

Sho bowed, leaving him alone.

Nino exhaled, tired after saying that simple phrase again and again. The wind blowing down mountains. It was nothing compared to what Masaki had endured, but he ached either way. He headed to his sitting room, the thin curtains blowing in the breeze. He moved to shut them completely when he felt a burning sensation start to seep up his arm.

He wasn’t alone.

Instead of closing the curtains, he pulled them wide with a flourish, startling the person who’d been sitting on the flat roof three floors up, spying on him. He was perched opposite Nino’s sitting room, barefoot with his slim but muscular legs dangling over the edge.

Nino looked up at him, squinting in the moonlight as his legs started to move.

“Wait!” he called out, and the movements stalled. He left his sitting room behind, walking out into the small courtyard. Even with the gentle breeze, he felt a rush of warmth as he looked up at the shadowy figure on the roof.

He called out as loudly as he dared, not wanting his voice to carry to any other rooms in the residential wing.

“How long have you been watching me?”

Nino didn’t receive an answer, but the figure in the dark stayed put. He’d been in the palace for about a month now, and he’d felt uneasy several times, as though someone had been watching. Yet every time he’d come out, there’d been nothing. But now he was tattooed, now he bore his family’s birthright.

He didn’t need to see. He needed only to feel that familiar rush of heat.

“I won’t force an answer out of you, Satoshi,” he continued, unsure if he was cheered or frightened about being under a god’s surveillance.

How much did Satoshi know? How much had Satoshi overheard? Conversations between Nino and his maids, Nino and Sho, Nino and Masaki? All of those conversations? None of them?

“If you’ve been up there a while, then you already know where he is,” Nino said. “Your brother. He’s in Jun’s apartments. He’s being helped.”

He felt slightly foolish, holding a one-sided conversation with a powerful god.

“I’m sorry,” he called out.

With nothing but that odd lingering silence hanging in the air, Nino gave up.

“Well,” he said, watching the unmoving pair of feet above him. “Good night then.”

He closed the curtains, the heat not fading from his tattooed arm even as he moved away and into his bedchamber. It clung to him, wrapped around him. Perhaps his eavesdropping god had no plans to move from his rooftop any time soon.


Part 2