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Genichiro knows when they are beaten, even if his grandfather will not admit it.
Ashina cannot win. Her people are tired. Too many farmers taken from Ashina's fields, put to work with iron and blood. They can only trade so much iron before her people starve.
One can take a farmer’s hoe and give him a sword. One can dress him in armour still caked with the blood of its previous owner. It does not make him a solider.
On the battlefield, Genichiro rains down arrows. Sends lightning until his fingers blacken and shake. It is never enough.
Isshin had only needed to kill one general to buy them years of uneasy peace. Now, they are staving off endless waves off attack.
(Some may say that Genichiro is not the warrior Isshin is. They do not repeat these statements again after seeing him in battle.)
So Genichiro fasts for three days and bathes himself with cold water from the Dragonspring. Then he heads to the Great Serpent Shrine, leaves offerings on the altar, prostrates himself before the valley, and waits.
Ashina’s power has always been in her proximity to gods. The outsiders will never understand this.
He holds his position for three days and three nights, ignoring the passing monkeys, his servants when they arrive to leave him food and tea. He jabs himself - first with the hilt of his sword, then with the edge of a tanto - to keep himself awake. When he hears the thud of feet - human feet, he thinks - on wood he does not move.
The feet stop before him, barely covered by the hem of a ragged kimono. Pale tender skin, not a callous in sight.
"Persimmons make a poor offering." The voice is female and amused. "Did you truly wish to please me with this?"
"If it is fresh meat you desire, kami sama, then I will procure that for you," he says carefully. "I did not wish for you to arrive only to have the meat gone rotten."
She makes a small noise - he cannot tell if it is assent or displeasure. "So why have you come here and made such a spectacle of yourself, young lord?"
"I am here to beg your aid, o-kami sama."
She laughs. "Such pretty manners. What is your wish, little lordling?"
This part - he has practised this over and over again for the last three nights. He has only one chance to move the spirit.
"Ashina is dying," he says. "Her people either starve in the fields or are gutted in battle. The Interior Ministry will plunder Ashina for her iron and leave nothing but gunpowder and ash behind. We will not be allowed to pray at its springs or shrines if they win. I beg of you, lend us your power so that our land may be saved."
He wants so badly to look up to see her face, to know if his words have reached her at all. Instead, he presses his head closer to the floorboards.
"What will you give?"
"Everything, to save this land."
The god is amused. "Little lordling. This land is not lost even if your clan falls. It will stand long after all those now living are gone and no one remembers the name Ashina."
He bites back the protests that immediately well up, hard enough that he tastes blood in his mouth.
Those not of Ashina's blood will not know of the Dragonspring pilgrimage, of the stories of the Okami women. They will not know what kinds of offerings to leave at the serpent shrine. All the stories whispered to the smallest child at night. Ashina will be made ordinary to these outsiders, seen only as a resource for their endless wars.
The Ashina clan, unlike the other daimyo, never sought to rule all the islands. They had only ever wanted to be left unmolested, to pray at its fountains in peace.
The god is not done. "Even if you gave everything to Ashina, she will not give you your life."
Genichiro does not understand this line of logic. That is the nature of love, of loyalty. One does not expect anything in return. He remains silent, kneeling as the pale feet tap a slow rhythm before him.
"I have not had the heart of a human man in a very long time. Perhaps I will take yours."
If he dies, who will lead his men? He has not had time to marry, or even adopt an heir. Isshin had fostered several war orphans, but he is the only one to survive adulthood. He has only known violence and blood for as long as he has lived.
But then, this is not a price he did not expect.
"If it will save Ashina, I will offer it up freely."
"Then here is the price for my aid, young lordling. You will give me your heart, your seed, and your children." He can hear the sharpness of her teeth in her voice. "And I will be your wife."
It takes everything in him not to jerk up in surprise. The gods are capricious, but he did not expect a price like this. It solves every one of his problems.
A wife. Heirs. A weapon to use against the invaders. His land, to have and for a future generation to hold.
“I agree," he says.
"We have a compact. Look up, little lordling." There is an edge behind those words, a threat behind smiling teeth. It almost makes him afraid to look.
He raises his head, and it is a woman standing before him - moon pale skin and ink-black hair to her waist. Her kimono is the colour of the snakeskin sometimes found in the valley.
"You may call me Kiyomi," she says, a faint smile on her face that would not be out of place amongst the two-faced nobles in the Emperor's court. "Come, Lord Ashina. Show me to your castle."
There is something to be said about how loyal his men are - or, as a snide part of him whispers, how beaten down - that no one questions the woman who follows him into the castle. She moves like the finest dancers in her bare feet, her face mask-still as she takes in how gaunt and worn his men look, the ragged and patched robes the servants wear. He barks orders to his servants to prepare a suitable wardrobe and a bath and they bow continously, scrambling to show Kiyomi the way to her quarters.
"I will ask the priest what the most auspicious time would be for our union," he says loudly, for everyone to hear.
She bows - beautifully, perfectly. “I will await the news with bated breath, my lord.”
Genichiro wants to know how a snake spirit has been able to cultivate the manners of a noble lady, but he supposes this is a question that he should ask in private. He heads to his own quarters and bathes and has a bowl of broth, his appetite diminished after days of fasting. Then he dresses in clean clothes, goes to the hidden treasury behind the dojo and selects a pearl comb from amongst the dusty collection of Ashina heirlooms - no one has time to dress and be pretty these days.
When he goes by her quarters, he is taken aback for a moment. They have given her kimono that had belonged to Lady Tomoe, painted her face and skewered her hair with glittering pins. She looks like a noblewoman, a beauty wrapped in expensive silks. One could be forgiven for not knowing what she is.
"Something wrong, little lordling?" Kiyomi's smile is sly, as though she knows the storm that thunders inside of him.
He recovers himself and bows. "My lady. The sight of you was enough to steal my breath away." The courtly language of flattery feels clumsy on his rusted tongue. He had never taken to noble ettiqute and poetry the way he had the sword. War orphans have seen too much blood to trust the gleam of clean silk and painted smiles hidden behind fans.
“Pretty,” she says when he presents the comb before her, but her eyes flick away from it.
“You are not pleased by it?”
She shrugs, as though the gift before her did not cost a fortune. “It is an ornament. It serves its purpose, being pretty. In truth, Lord Genichiro, what I am really looking forward to is having a sword in my hand again.”
Another piece to a past he does not know. He wonders who exactly it is he has brought back. It will not be the last time, he thinks.
“I will be sure to ensure that you have the weapons you want," he promises. "And the armour that you need for battle."
Her lips curve. "I am a fair hand with the naginata. But the sword - there is something special, isn't there, about stepping close enough to hear the heart stop beating?" She stares at him unblinking, and for a brief moment, her eyes flash crimson.
These are not the words he expects, coming from that painted mouth. Tomoe had worn armour and rode a horse as well as any men, but never took delight in violence. Emma's gentle blade is always used as a last resort. Isshin has honed his blade on the blood and bone of his enemies but it was always for Ashina.
Shura , he thinks, for it is only shura who sought carnage for its own sake. Truly, he has invited a demon into his home. But he will live with it.
"So long as your blade is always pointed at Ashina's enemies," he says.
Her smile is a feral thing.
"Tell me about the Ministry. It has been some time since I ventured from my mountain."
He sits before her and pours her the tea the servants have left.
“What would my lady like to know?”
Genichiro sits before his grandfather, sake glasses untouched before the both of them.
“I will admit, I did not think you would succeed in this endeavour of yours,” Isshin says.
Isshin is supposed to remain in bed at all times, but his nightjar owls have told him of the corpses of Ministry rats at the border, of the man in the tengu mask who roams his estate, towering over most men. Genichiro does not press about it, just as his grandfather does not ask about Doujun and his experiments in the dungeon.
“You think it is foolish.”
“Do not put your doubts into my mouth.”
He does not have doubts, but he will not argue when his grandfather is so ill.
“The Divine Heir is a wilful, stubborn child. We are running out of time, grandfather. I had to do something.”
Isshin takes a deep draught of sake. “I only hope you know what you're doing, my child.”
“You plucked me from the battlefields, and made me a weapon,” Genichiro says, lightning-blackened hands clenched into his kimono. “You have made me your heir. Why will you not trust me to do my best for Ashina?”
Isshin stares at him over his sake cup with knife-sharp eyes, and in that moment, Genichiro is five again, struggling to lift a bokken above his head.
“I have never once doubted that you would do your best for Ashina,” Isshin says. “But what will you do to yourself, and those around you in the process?”
The priest declares that the best time for a wedding was in three days, during the hour of the snake.
“This will be a union that will bear strong fruit,” he says, and Genichiro could laugh himself sick.
His bride looks otherworldly all in white and with her lips painted red. Genichiro wears his most formal robes, the Ashina crest painted on his haori. Isshin watches the ceremony with narrowed eyes but praises the bride's beauty loudly when the sake is poured.
"I do hope you know what you're doing," Emma says, after the wedding. Her tone is neutral, as polite as ever. She sounds just like his grandfather, and Genichiro cannot help but bristle at her words.
Once, Genichiro would have thought he would have married Emma. She is not a noble, but who cared for these things when they are perpetually at war? She is of Ashina, and she understands blood and loyalty. That, he had believed, was enough.
He has not told anyone who his bride is, but they have all guessed. There is something in the grace of her movements and the quietness of her steps that even his most skilled shinobi are unable to follow. That she has mysteriously appeared and now attends all his war council meetings with his generals, makes quiet suggestions in his ear on the movement of his troops.
Everyone is afraid to ask, but they all know. This is Ashina, after all, and they have always been close to the gods.
"A marriage is an alliance of power," he replies. "This is the alliance I have brokered to save Ashina."
She bows and leaves, and he wonders why the corridors of the castle feel as though they are slowly closing in on him.
“Husband.”
Kiyomi lays on the crisp futon in only a thin silk robe, a mocking smile on her face.
He has heard stories of demons transforming themselves into humans. Kitsune will keep their tails or golden eyes, spirits have their feet on backwards, or a hollow in their back. He wonders if he will discover scales under that robe.
“Wife,” he says shortly. Her smile only grows wider, as though she knows his fears.
“Will you not come to bed, my love?”
“Of course.”
Her skin is cool under his fingers, but she bruises and gasps like any other woman. Her body too is like any other woman’s. It is not so hard, he thinks, as she writhes under him.
Then she flicks her tongue on his skin - its shape strange, just a little too long. And he remembers who he is with.
“Time to fulfil my end of the bargain, Lord Genichiro.” Kiyomi stares down at the tents of Ministry soldiers, her smile far too wide for polite company. They are at the borders of Ashina, his own soldiers with their ragged camps dotting the bases of the mountains.
“Clear your men from the area,” she says carelessly, not even bothering to look at him.
“What?”
“Get them to higher ground. I can't guarantee their lives otherwise.”
He turns, but his generals are already scrambling to follow.
The demoness raises her hands and calls down rain. It is a steady trickle at first, but soon the waters have risen so that the men in the valley below are wading around in muddy water up to their knees. The rain comes down so hard that the shinobi hiding in the nearby trees are flushed out. They stumble like drunks, unbalanced and unseeing.
Genichiro watches them all fall in the muck below.
"Now, Lord Genichiro,” the demoness says.
He calls down lightning. The Ministry men blacken and burn as the waters rise up to claim them.
They do not lose a single man that day, or in any of the battles after.
Sometimes, she strides out alone into the field with a sword in hand. Returns only with her blade wiped clean, but her clothes stiff with gore. Sometimes he hears whispers about the giant serpent, rarely seen outside its mountain, patrolling their borders.
She is always impeccably dressed at dinner, her hair pinned perfectly in place. She eats with perfect manners. Sometimes, she takes a biwa and sings with a voice that leaves everyone in the room in tears. They are always songs on the cold and longing, songs on familiar folktales, but which he never recognises. He might be imagining this, but she seems to cling to him a little harder those nights.
Then there are times when she stumbles like an old drunk into bed, her belly round and bloated as though she were heavy with child. She will sleep for days then and he does his best not to think of what lies in her stomach.
Ashina is safe. The attacks by the Ministry falter, and his spies tell him of the stories that the outsiders whisper of Ashina. A land of ghosts and demons, where the waters will rise up and claim the lives of intruders. Where lightning will strike armoured men, when arrows do not.
Good, he thinks savagely.
His wife is a demon, but one that serves his cause. He will love her for it.
He does.
Kiyomi grows into their court, like vines wrapping around a pillar.
She is able to handle Isshin’s moods with ease, teasing him when he is playful, and flattering him out of his darker spells by asking him for stories of his battles. She speaks to Emma about herbs that grow in the mountain and their properties, and the doctor begins to ease when she is around her, arguing animatedly about the uses of certain plants.
She is surprisingly gentle with the Divine Heir - Kuro , Kiyomi insists whenever he refers to the child by his title. His name is Kuro.
She persuades Genichiro to let Kuro out of the tower. To go on walks around the estate, but always accompanied by a guard. He allows it, but only because she asks.
One day, Doujun calls him into the dungeons and presents him with a gourd.
"I call it the Rejuvenating Sediment," he says.
The shinobi they'd found in the Hirata estate- the Divine Heir's shinobi, it seems, had been the key. Genichiro does not want to think of the number of times he has been taken apart only to be knit together again.
Doujun has begun a lecture, as though he were Master Dogen himself speaking to his students. "I used the shinobi's blood with a distilled version of Rejuvenating Waters, and the last of the flowers from the Everblossom. I have noticed that it smells of sakura, whenever this one returns."
Genichiro does not let his eyes flick over to the shinobi, still a mess of gore and dirty bandages in his corner. The room does smell faintly of flowers. "Could you make more?"
"I'm afraid not, my lord. I have not even had the chance to test it on any of my subjects. There are no more sakura left."
Genichiro nods curtly and takes the gourd. He leaves the shinobi to the flies.
Emma knows. He can tell, with the way she eyes him in the dining hall. He summons her to his quarters after, because it is always good to get her lectures out of the way as soon as possible.
"Speak," he says.
"Doujun is a danger to himself and all those around him," she says bluntly. She has never needed to learn courtly manners, has spent so much of her life with her elbows deep in bodies, unflinching as she sets bones and stitches up flesh. "I have heard about his plans to create the Rejuvenation Sediment. It will not end well."
"Not everyone can afford your morals," he tells her. He is glad that the peace he has bought has afforded that, at the very least.
Still, only a foolish general relies on one plan. Kiyomi is away, hunting rats. His grandfather is better now, but that can change any day. That night, he takes the Sediment and writhes in bed as fire consumes him inside out. He imagines his humanity as skin that he must shed. When he looks in the mirror, he can only see his eyes glowing red.
The next morning, he orders Doujun to continue his research.
In the battlefield, Genichuiro takes a sword in the stomach. He lops the attacker's head with his sword and manages to stagger his way back to his horse. Emma sews him up again, but says nothing, even though they both know that he should not have survived such a wound.
He wonders if he will still live if his legs were sliced off. If he will just lie on the battlefield while the crows pick at his flesh, breathing, his heart stuttering in his chest. Immortality still eludes his grasp and he is as reliant on the oath of a demoness as before.
But when he lies in bed with Kiyomi after, he cannot help but think that he is as human as she is, now.
The wound takes weeks to heal. The stitches pull whenever he moves too quickly. But he is alive. He still has more battles to fight.
"You must let your men return to the fields, or all of Ashina will starve in the winter."
He grits his teeth, but knows she is right.
At least she is saying this to him in private, her hair and limbs draped over him, rather than speaking out during a war council. His generals have grown used to her presence, but they still do not take to a woman's orders well. They all know they depend on her, but it would not be good to remind them of that. He cannot imagine the revolt he would face if she were to give advice on matters of rule.
"At the very least, this cursed ash will make for good crops," she muses, tracing circles on the ragged scar on his belly. “It is not too late for another harvest, before the winter sets in properly."
"I did not know you knew so much about farming," he says. Even though he has seen her skill with a sword, her hands remain soft and white. He cannot imagine her with a hoe and a straw hat, toiling under the sun.
"I know a great many things, little lordling."
At least she calls him this only when no one else will hear.
"Tell me," he asks her. She sits up a little in surprise. "What was your life like before, when you lived with humans?"
Her eyes gleam red in the dark.
"You have not cared to ask such things before."
He runs a hand through her hair. They slip like silk threads between his fingers. He has seen it soaked in blood before, trailing around the battlefield while she moves between corpses. "I would be remiss in my duties as a husband if I did not learn more about my wife."
She laughs. He has not told her about the Sediment, but he suspects she knows. He wonders if his scent has changed, if she can taste the smell of sakura in his blood.
“How old do you think I am?”
“I had always thought it would not be polite to try to guess a lady’s age.”
Her smile is small, but somehow more real than all the fanged grins she has given before. “Flatterer. We might make a nobleman out of you yet.”
He learns that she had once fallen in love with a farmer, who had saved her from a bear, and how that was the first time she’d transformed into a human - to become a farmer’s wife and toil in the fields. It sounds almost like a story, though the farmer eventually dies of an infection after an injury. He learns that she had once served in the Emperor's court in Kamakura, when it was still in Kamakura, and learnt dance and to play three different instruments then and entranced all the men in the court. He learns that she was once a nun who taught poetry.
“How many husbands have you had?”
She laughs. “Are you jealous, my lord?”
“No,” he says, and she laughs again, like she doesn’t believe him.
"Lord Genichiro," the Divine Heir calls to him after they have cleared the dining room.
A wilful, stubborn child, he had said to Isshin. It remains no less true.
"Lord Kuro."
Genichiro has shown Kuro the carnage in the battlefields, and Kuro remains unwilling to help turn the tides of war. In a way, Genichiro envies that he can remain so distant. Kuro does not lie awake fretting about Ashina’s future. He does not hear the slide of metal into flesh, the sounds of gunfire, the screams of maimed and dying men as he tries to fall asleep.
Is this what it means, to be a child born in peace?
He loathes it. Wants to take this innocence and wash it in the gore he has had to breathe since he was born.
Kuro hesitates, as though sensing the murderous turn of Genichiro's thoughts. “I have heard that my shinobi is still alive.”
Genichiro wonders who told him. Emma? Kiyomi? Isshin? They are all far too soft on the boy. The Divine Heir has never once taken an interest in a blade, prefers womanly activities instead, to read and cook. After all, why would one need to learn to fight if their skin cannot be cut?
“It would be of great comfort to me if he could be released to continue serving me,” Kuro says, high unbroken voice steady. Genichiro wonders how the boy can be so proud when his inaction is responsible for the death of so many.
“He has lost all memories and sense of self, even if he is alive. You could not hold a conversation with him.”
“I would still like to see him.”
“Would you ask him to rescue you? Take you from Ashina?” The bitterness in his voice surprises them both. He is usually better at hiding it, masking behind patience and silence. “We have given you safety and our hospitality since the destruction of your estate. You have held the power to save Ashina but have refused to use it.”
“This castle is my home,” Kuro says steadily. “Lady Emma and Lady Kiyomi have been very kind. I do not wish to worry them, as they would if I left. These are matters separate from the Divine Heritage.”
“The gift the gods have given you, which you reject.”
“It is not a gift, but a curse, Lord Genichiro.”
In the end, he relents, because that night his wife asks it of him, and he has found that he cannot say no to her.
The servants clean the shinobi and give him fresh clothes. He sits motionless and unseeing in Kuro's private room in perfect seiza, as though obedience has been fixed into his spine.
“Wolf,” Kuro says softly. The shinobi starts and raises his head to meet the child’s eyes. He moves to kneel on instinct, rasps in a voice like a rusted blade.
“My lord.”
“It’s been too long." Kuro steps forward, holding out his hand.
The air is thick with an emotion Genichiro cannot understand. He leaves the room and neither of them notice his departure.
“I found this one skulking with a group of Ministry rats.” Kiyomi tosses the once-great shinobi called Owl to the floor as though the man weighed nothing.
Years ago, Isshin had told him to watch his back with the old shinobi, even if he had aided the Ashina clan when they reclaimed their land. Genichiro is glad to have taken that advice then.
“This is a mistake, my lord.” Owl hacks a cough, and sniffs, whines like a wronged dog. “I have done nothing.”
Kiyomi is unimpressed, kicks him casually in his side. He hears ribs snap. “You can stop playing the feeble old man now.”
Genichiro does not need to question his wife. If she says that the man is a traitor, he will believe it.
“Do with him what you will,” he says.
She is bloated when she crawls into bed after. He wraps his arms around her and tucks her head under his chin.
How does one court a demon?
Genichiro tries - he promised her his heart after all - with offerings of fresh meat and wine, with jewels, with fine weapons every time she returns from battle, every time she gives another victory. She takes them all and laughs. The songs she sings at dinner are still ones of sadness.
How does one love a demon?
There are days when he is sure he does. Kiyomi has bought Ashina peace with her strength and will. For that alone, he would die for her. But it is not his death she wants, but his heart and seed and child, and that he tries to provide in their nights together.
Everything he says and does, she regards with distant amusement. “Little lordling,” she calls him when they are alone, over and over. He wonders if she will always see him as a child. If she will remember him and their time together when he finally falls and she goes on and on and on.
“Lord Genichiro.”
He acknowledges Kuro's greeting with a curt nod, not looking up from his papers, the endless lists of supplies and harvests and what little trade their iron can still bring in from the other feudal lords. Kiyomi had been right - they might not starve this winter.
"I wanted to thank you." The Divine Heir’s manners are, as always, impeccable. "For bringing my shinobi back to me. As you know, I have accepted him into my oath."
The shinobi's blood runs in Genichiro’s veins now. He supposes he owes his life to them both but he will never say it aloud.
"I would like to offer his services to Ashina. Lady Kiyomi must be growing tired, of all these battles."
He could laugh. His wife returns from her battles still wet with blood, and is always restless until the next one.
Still, it would not be good for others to know of her appetites.
"Very well. We would be glad to have the shinobi in our service."
He turns back to his papers, making the dismissal clear. Kuro scrambles out of the room and he takes a sick satisfaction that he has finally broken the Divine Heir’s unnatural serenity.
"Shinobi of the Divine Heir."
"Lord Genichiro." The shinobi's voice is hoarse, words stilted, even though it has been weeks since he was taken from captivity. This is a man of few words.
Genichiro studies the man whose blood he has stolen before him. He tries to recall what he’d been told of the shinobi - adopted son of the Great Shinobi Owl, plucked from the battlefields, much like he had. Trained by the Lady Butterfly. The shinobi is small and unassuming, without any of Owl’s bulk or height. All the better for sneaking around, he thinks, and wonders if his father had purposefully left him malnourished and starving, while Owl took the bulk of the food. He would not put it past the man.
"I understand that you cannot die."
"It would seem so, my lord." The shinobi’s words are dry, something akin to sarcasm, and Genichiro wonders how much he knows.
"Well then. Time to put you to good use." The shinobi bows, the picture of obedience.
"As you wish, my lord."
If there is a challenge in that tone, Genichiro tells himself that he is imagining it.
When he returns to his chambers, he finds Kiyomi lounging on the tatami.
“I am with child,” she says the moment he slides the door shut.
“Are you certain?” he asks. He is already kneeling by her side, hands fluttering, uncertain if she will let him touch.
“Yes.” She laughs and presses his hand to her belly. “I estimate it to be three months old.”
Three months. She had only arrived four months ago, and he had ingested the Rejuvenating Sediment a month after. He wonders how she has been here for such a short time, and still managed to upend their lives so quickly. He wonders what manner of being it is, growing in her belly, with his cursed seed and her egg.
It doesn’t matter. An heir to Ashina and a gift to his wife. It is part of his pact fulfilled and he will love it for what it is. He is hardly one to judge the humanity of others, now.
He kisses his wife on the lips. “Do you have any cravings?” he asks. He’d heard from Emma about the fancies pregnant women would get. Pickled plums, salted fish. He will upend the stores to ensure her desires are satiated.
“Funny that you should ask,” she says, licking her lips.
Fresh corpses, Genichiro realises, are now becoming hard to find.
With the winter, the Ministry troops have retreated, fearing the snowy mountain passes, the giveaway smoke signals when they start their fires at their camps.
Doujun needs corpses for his experiments. His wife -
His wife needs them.
He starts with the bandits, when he can flush them from their mountain camps. When that source is exhausted, he moves to the servants, the ones with little family who will not be missed. He reasons that they owe him their lives anyway. They would all be dead, if not for him and Kiyomi both.
Genichiro reviews the supplies, the troop placements, paces his castle like a caged beast.
"You should rest, my lord," the generals say. "The Ministry will come again after the snow melts."
He will rest only when he is dead, he thinks. The sediment has made sure of that.
He can’t sleep in the same room as his wife when she is sprawled out on the futons, a fresh corpse slowly working its way in her guts. So he heads to the Ashina dojo, and is then surprised to find that the shinobi is there.
“Can’t sleep?” he asks.
“No,” the shinobi says shortly, straightening and sheathing his sword.
“Don’t stop on my behalf, shinobi.” Genichiro reaches for one of the practice blades. "Let's see what the son of Owl is made of."
The shinobi watches Genichiro swing a few katas, movements flowing smoothly into each other like water, as Isshin and Tomoe have beaten into him. He takes another practice sword. "I can't guarantee you won't be hurt, my lord."
"I wouldn't expect anything less."
The shinobi moves like one of Genichiro's arrows, speeding past all obstacles until it reaches its mark. He steps asides Genichiro's blows where other warriors might rush to meet them, closes distances between the two just after he has leapt to the other end of the room to avoid a blow.
The shinobi is merciless. Genichiro counts the injuries they would have received if they were fighting with live blades. Imagines the shinobi's arm sliced off with a sweep, curling and arcing through the air. A stab to his own belly, reopening the old wound he had taken in battle. He grabs at the shinobi, mimics a slash along his chest. The shinobi follows, dragging the bokken down his throat, from his ear to shoulder. They will both be painted black and blue by morning.
Genichiro cannot remember the last time he felt so alive.
They finish in a draw, Wolf pressing a kunai he’d pulled from his sleeve to Genichiro's neck, and Genichiro with a tanto to the shinobi's heart. They are close enough that their chests are brushing against each other as they heave ragged pants.
Genichiro is the one who breaks the moment.
"Very good, shinobi," he says, drawing away.
"I am glad you think so, my lord."
"You still have some things to learn."
If he wasn't watching so closely, he would miss the slight lifting of the shinobi's mouth. "As do you, my lord."
Genichiro should leave the room. He has a country to care for, a wife lying in bed with his child. He can learn the ways of the shinobi from his nightjars, practice the Ashina arts with his own generals.
But for a brief moment, he thinks that he would like to make the shinobi smile again.
"Again, shinobi?"
"My name is Wolf, Lord Genichiro." The look the shinobi gives him is as much challenge as a naked blade.
Genichiro rises to meet it.
He tosses aside the practice sword and takes a steel one from the wall. "Well, Wolf. Are you ready?"
The shinobi unsheathes the black blade at his hip. It fits easily in his hands. "As my lord wishes."
Genichiro still paces the castle insistently in the day. Sometimes he rides past the outskirts, looks through the snow and wonders what Tomoe would do if she were still here. If she would have held them better together. He wonders what future will Ashina have, past the winter.
When he returns, he throws himself at Wolf over and over. Stops thinking of the future, only the slide of muscles, of lifting his sword until it becomes a weight too great to bear. It takes hours, and their sessions grow longer and longer, so that when they finally stop, weak winter morning light will be creeping through the windows of the dojo. Sometimes his men come in for their early morning training and end up watching them both with furrowed brows and quiet respect. Sometimes they seem surprised that the two of them are still alive.
Wolf is the only one who is able to keep up with him.
"You’ve been out late recently," his wife says sluggishly from her spot in the bed.
She has taken to sleeping more and more during the long winter months, waking only to eat and then doze again quickly after. When he'd first expressed concern, she'd only smiled faintly and asked him if he had ever seen a snake in the winter.
"Training in the dojo," he says, pulling on his tabi as he moves to the door. There is little point in hiding secrets from his wife.
She hums, her tongue flitting lightly to lick her lips.
"You smell different."
He stills, turns to her. Wonders what she means. "Do I?"
She nods, her eyes closed. "Your scent had also changed, months back. Now you are a storm in spring, not summer. The flowers are stronger now."
"How strange," he says.
She does not press for an answer, so he leaves.
Their fights progress from the dojo and to the rooftops. It is no less brutal as they learn to step on the slanting tiles and beams as surely as on flat ground.
Wolf learns to block his blows for hours on end. Genichiro learns to step lightly and silently as any shinobi.
“You have grown faster, my lord.”
“And you have grown some muscle, shinobi.”
They do not grin at each other, but it is something close to it.
Another match with Wolf, another half dozen bruises and cuts that heal as they move.
"Emma will not be happy," Wolf rumbles as he glances down at his haori. Genichiro cocks his head, wonders what he means.
"That we keep cutting each other open," Wolf says, cheeks tinting slightly. Genichiro decides he likes the look on his face.
"We don't have to tell her, shinobi."
“Somehow,” Wolf murmurs. “She has a way of figuring out whenever someone around her is hurt.”
Genichiro can feel his blood thrumming in his ears at the words. “Are you laying with her?”
Wolf arches a brow as he looks at Genichiro. “What does it matter to you? My lord?” The honorific is tacked on like an insult, or a challenge.
Genichiro turns away. “It doesn’t.”
He is faster now, he realises. He leaps, crashes down on Wolf hard enough that the shinobi falters. Then Genichiro has broken his guard, has pinned him down with his hands and knees, has his blade by the shinobi’s throat.
“Not quite strong enough, shinobi,” he says lightly, his heart hammering hard like a blacksmith forging a blade even though it is normal for them to be pressed so close as they fight. It is not the first time anyway, he thinks. But this time, he does not move away.
Wolf lies still and relaxed under him, watches with heavy eyes.
"My lord?"
Genichiro stares down as Wolf arches his neck, reaches for Genichiro with hot calloused hands, trailing fire on Genichiro's skin. His touch feels nothing like Kiyomi.
"My lord." Wolf's voice is breathy, soft, his pupils blown black with want.
It is an easy thing, to want this. It is the hardest thing in the world.
Genichiro cannot think of the last time he has wanted something solid and warm. Something that reached back. He has only ever desired the things he cannot grasp. Ashina, with her craggy rocks and poison waters. Kiyomi, who sleeps and only wakes to toss him sharp barbs, whose touch is always cold. Tomoe, who left years ago. A faint memory of his mother’s hands in his hair.
Genichiro stands, sheathes his sword.
"I have promised my heart to my wife," he says, turning for the door.
"As you say, my lord."
He leaves, unable to bring himself to see the expression on Wolf's face.
The snow melts. He and Wolf ride out with a small group of men. They set up camp near the mountain borders, decide on where they will scout for any Ministry troops in the morning.
Genichiro is almost unsurprised when the entrance to his tent parts at night. He’d been lying in his futon, thinking about swordfights under the moon. The snow may be gone, but it is still cold at night.
Wolf’s eyes glow gold in the dark. "No one said anything about your heart,” he says.
Genichiro does not have the shinobi’s night vision, but he can see enough as Wolf gracelessly strips himself bare before him, shedding his clothes until he stands before him. The only sound in the tent is the rustle of clothing, of his and Wolf’s breathing.
“What do you want, shinobi?” Genichiro should tell him to leave. Send him far far away from him. Instead, he can only watch.
His breath hitches when Wolf sets aside Kusabimaru with more care than his other things. Wolf stands before him, small, naked, but no less deadly.
“Do not tell me you don’t feel this,” Wolf says, kneeling before him. Genichiro has not moved since Wolf entered his tent.
“And what would this be, shinobi?” he asks, as though he does not know. Genichiro wonders if this is an effect of taking Wolf’s blood. If this bond between them is nothing more than Dougan’s science and the magic of the gods.
Far easier to believe that than to think it is something built on sweat and blood and steel. That the thought that he would like this shinobi to stand with him in battle, always. And that he wants him still by his side after the war ends.
A saying amongst the Ashina swordsmen. As you cut your enemy, so too do you cut yourself.
Genichiro wonders if there is anything left of him after he has poured himself out to Ashina, piece by piece. He is surprised that he has enough left of himself to desire things he cannot have. Perhaps this is karma for all the lives he has taken, and will continue to take. Perhaps the gods are laughing at him.
Wolf studies him in the dark, but does not reach for him, only gets up from his knees to dress himself again. "Such loyalty is commendable.”
"What do you know of loyalty?" Genichiro asks. His voice trembles, breaks at the end.
“I am here with you, as my lord had wished of me, aren’t I?” Wolf says lightly. He lifts the flap of the tent and as the moonlight slices across his face, Genichiro thinks he sees hurt there. Then Wolf steps out and is gone.
The smoke signal goes off.
Genichiro’s blood stills as he realises it is coming from Wolf’s position. Wolf .
He urges his horse on, and reaches a massacre.
Wolf had found an entire company of Ministry men, and instead of waiting for Genichiro, had decided to challenge them on his own/ Genichiro thinks he will save him just so he can kill him himself.
They ground is littered with Ministry corpses, but Wolf is also surrounded by more men. He spins, clashes, but he cannot be everywhere. He blocks a blow to his gut, is left open to a slice that cuts through his left arm. Then another blade comes down, and Wolf falls.
Genichiro stops breathing.
The air crackles with ozone. He is already stripping himself of his armour as he leaps from his horse, running towards Wolf.
He brings lightning down. Runs his sword through all those still left standing.
Wolf is bleeding out on the ground.
Genichiro whistles for his horse, knots up Wolf’s wound and then ties him to down his horse. He shouts hasty instructions to his men, arriving now confused and aghast at the sight of the carnage, far too late. Genichiro shouts an order to his second-in-command and rides with Wolf to the dilapidated temple in the Ashina outskirts, the one with the one-armed sculptor his grandfather and Emma like to visit. Shouts for hot water to boil rags in as he drags Wolf’s body into the temple, doesn’t care that he is staining the old wood with gore. Finds the pellets amongst Wolf's clothes, the water gourd from Emma, presses them into Wolf's mouth.
"Please," Genichiro says. He doesn't know who he is speaking to - Wolf, the sculptor, or the gods, or Ashina herself.
The old man picks up his wood and tool once they finish tending to Wolf and continues to hack away at the wood. He has not said anything the entire time, and Genichiro hates the uneasy peace he has.
He thinks that Wolf stops breathing at some point in the night. There is a faint sound of a bell ringing, the smell of sakura blossoms.
Tomoe had smelled like sakura, even when she was covered in sweat and blood.
Wolf coughs as he eases himself up, falls again as he attempts to sit up with the help of an arm he no longer has.
"I thought you were dead," Genichiro confesses. His voice is hoarse, thick with an emotion he does not care to examine.
"And so what if I was?" Wolf asks. It is not a spiteful statement, only even curiosity. Genichiro remembers now. He wonders how many times Wolf has died under Doujon’s knife and come back again.
Even the Divine Heritage has its limits, he thinks. The arm does not look like it will grow itself.
He reaches to touch Wolf’s stubbled cheek with shaking fingers. Wolf does not draw back from the touch, but does not lean into it either. Just watches him with unblinking eyes.
“I am glad that you are not,” Genichiro finally says. He forces his hand back, leaves on unsteady legs.
“This one,” the sculptor says hoarsely, speaking for the first time. Genichiro moves back, hates that his weakness was seen by another. “Was by your side the entire night.”
Wolf is silent, but he does not look at Genichiro either.
The sculptor gifts Wolf with a prosthetic arm, loads it with weapons, shows him how to care for and maintain it.
“A shura is one who takes pleasure in killing,” the sculptor says. “Kill as your duty commands, and you will not know these flames.”
Wolf nods.
Duty and hate. Honour and passion.
Genichiro thinks of their spars together. How his blood would sing with the shock of their blades clashing. How each bruise and cut felt like a badge of pride. He wonders where on this spectrum these feelings would rest.
“If you’re done dithering, shinobi,” he snaps, and beings to move. He leaves his horse for Wolf, in case the shinobi tires. Wolf trudges on foot behind him all the way to the castle.
With the spring comes the melting of the roads. The traders return to Ashina, as do the performance troops, the wandering peddlers.
His men check for blades and passes. But the weapons the outsiders bring are more powerful than any sword.
He ignores the stories when he first hears of them. They sound almost like love stories, tales played out by painted actors for the peasants.
That Genichiro has been driven mad with love. That the Lady Ashina is as beautiful as the moon, as the spirits that wander Usui forest.
Then they become more dangerous. That the kind-hearted Lady Ashina is a sorceress who has bewitched her husband. That she is a demon who will devour the land, and leave nothing left but rocks and ash.
The rebellions begin quickly after.
Small ones at first, that the tyrant nobles wear silk and eat rice while the farmers are still trying to rebuild. Those are quashed quickly.
Then the ones about sorcery and heresy are harder to stop. There are questions on missing servants where previously no one would have asked. His men fall silent when he walks into rooms.
His wife sleeps all the time, her belly bloating and remaining round even days after her last meal. He does not dare let her know of the things they say about her.
Isshin fades as the flowers bloom. One night he passes in his sleep. It does not stop raining during the funeral. When Kiyomi is told the news, she only nods and falls back to bed. Emma’s face is swollen, her eyes red, but she says nothing of her grief. Kuro is quiet and spends all his time with his shinobi. Wolf will not speak to him when they are alone.
Genichiro feels utterly alone.
He supposes the Ministry must have infiltrated his staff at some point, for they strike the night his wife labours to give birth.
It is a covert attack. Ministry agents taking the waterways, climbing up the bamboo ladders that are left as part of reconstruction efforts. Half his nightjars are assassinated before the alarm is raised.
He leaves Kuro with Emma. He trusts Ashina to Wolf.
He does not leave his wife and heir’s side, though every part of his body itches to fight.
He does not leave the birthing chamber, even as the servants run in and out with hot water, stoke the fire in the room greater. Kiyomi writhes silently on bloody sheets and clutches his hand throughout.
He should be in battle, he thinks.
Kiyomi smiles, as though she knows his thoughts.
“Regretting being here with me, little lording?”
He presses a kiss to her temple. Her skin is almost warm, in the heat of this room. “I know my duties,” he tells her evenly.
It is dawn when she finally cries out, and the child emerges with a wet slippery rush.
The nurse takes the child and wipes it clean with a warm cloth. There is a loud gasp.
“What is it?” he snaps. He is still by his wife’s side, holding her hand.
“A son, my lord,” the nurse says. “But - "
He reaches for the child impatiently with his free hand, still unwilling to let go of Kiyomi. She stirs. “Bring him to me.”
The nurse approaches with the swaddled bundle. He helps Kiyomi sit up, lets go to hold his son.
At once, he knows why the nurse had gasped. His son’s hair is as pale as his wife’s skin, stares at them with large scarlet eyes. He does not scream as all newborns are supposed to, just watches quietly.
“Ah.” Kiyomi reaches for him and nuzzles her cheek against her son. Her tongue flicks out as though to taste the air. “Little one."
“Demon,” the nurse breathes and flees. Kiyomi only smiles.
He stands, ready to run down the nurse. The Ashina name does not need more accusations of witchcraft now, but Kiyomi stills him with a hand.
“It will not do for that to get out,” he says.
“It is done,” she says. She has not looked up from their son. “Ashina will fall today.”
“What?”
“Our compact is complete. I have saved your land from the Ministry. I cannot save you from your people.” Finally, finally, she looks at him. He thinks it might be pity in her face. “I told you, little lordling.” Her voice is as cold and distant as snow falling on the side of a mountain. “Ashina will not love you, even if you gave her your life.”
“And our child?”
“My child. That was the agreement, little lordling. I will return to the mountains.”
“Let me come with you,” he says.
Her face is as hard as frozen earth. “No.”
“I have given you my heart, as you asked.”
“And I have never promised that I would return it with mine, little lordling.” She cups his cheek with a cool hand, leaves her blood streaked across his face. “I have grown fond of you, Genichiro. But we will part here. Be careful. Your body is hardy, but you are hardly a dragon.”
There is a low keening sound filling the room. It takes him a moment to realise it is him.
He has lost so much, he thinks. How much lower can he go?
“Ah, little lordling. You have not yet learnt to love those who would love you in turn.”
He thinks on her parting words for a long time after.
His men had turned against him, he realises as he storms through the castle. Most of the servants had vanished. There are far too few corpses.
He had been too wrapped up in his concern with his wife, his time with Wolf to realise the betrayal. He wonders for how long they had planned this. After Isshin’s death? When the Ministry first began their stories? Or even before that, when he had first brought his wife to his castle?
Wolf has vanished, as has Emma and Kuro. Gyubou he finds with foam around his mouth, his horse stabbed through with spears. All that training, and only to be taken by poison.
The Ministry moves in soon after. They declare it heresy to pray at Ashina’s waters. Stop all tales of Ashina’s magic, as he had feared. In turn, its people are allowed to carry on their lives. The Ministry taxes them all, makes it demands of iron and rice, and perhaps they fear snake demonesses so much that they would prefer this weight to the last.
Ashina is made ordinary. Perhaps her people are happier that way.
Seasons pass. He wanders the land that was once his, and tries to make peace with its loss. He finds he cannot.
He misses Isshin and his biting words. He misses Emma and her calm hands. He misses Wolf. Longs for Wolf, wonders if only he had given his heart to the shinobi instead.
If he had shown his face in battle, instead of looking to Wolf, would he have been able to turn the tide?
Wolf finds him one day, high up in the mountains.
“I have been looking for you,” he says. “You are a hard man to find.” His mouth twists upward, his brow relaxes slightly in the expression Genichiro has taken to be his smile. “Perhaps you did learn something from me.”
Genichiro hacks a laugh that sounds more like a cough. His body is littered with scars from his raids, as he picks at Ministry troops that pass by. He has found that he does not need to eat, not really, as his body can keep going even as the hunger gnaws at his bones. There is satisfaction in taking their supplies.
They now tell stories of an angry ghost who lives in the mountains and avoid it in the night. He supposes it is true, in a fashion.
And still, he will not die.
“You betrayed me,” he accuses. There is little anger in his voice now.
“I could not protect Ashina from her own people.” It sounds much like what Kiyomi had said, only Wolf is very gentle as he says it. “I had to take Kuro and Emma to safety.”
“Where are they?”
“Out of Ashina. Away from this. Kuro has started a confectionary shop. Emma helps, but has also begun taking in patients. It is a simple life."
Wolf reaches out with his good hand, and Genichiro realises what he is offering.
"I don’t think I could do a simple life.” He can’t picture it. A confectionary shop? A tranquil life? “And what do you do, Wolf? Sell sweets along with your master?”
The edges of Wolf’s mouth lift slightly. “As it turns out, I’m not quite suited for a simple life either.”
Despite himself, Genichiro feels his lips curl. “What in heaven’s name have you been doing, shinobi?”
“Looking for you.” Wolf shrugs. “Slayed a few demons along the way.”
“Demons?”
“Mm. Headless. A shura, in the Ashina outskirts.”
“Sounds perilous.”
“It was. Died, once or twice. Might be easier, if I had a partner.”
Wolf still has his hand out, palm open.
Genichiro reaches.
“Partner,” he echoes.
The prosthetic hand on his cheek is cold, but quickly grows warm against his skin.
“Partner,” Wolf confirms.
Genihiro looks at Wolf, and for the first time, lets himself touch.
Wolf’s lips are dry and cracked under his thumb. Part under his fingers.
“How,” Genichiro asks. “Do you still let me do this?”
“You know something about loyalty.” Wolf arches into Genichiro’s touch, open and trusting.
“I have, perhaps been loyal to all the wrong things.” It is the closest he has come to admitting wrong.
Wolf’s hand tightens in his own. “That, I think, is a part of being human.”
Wolf presses against Genichiro’s face, steps close. He’s asking.
Genichiro bends down to press their lips together. It’s an answer.