Kuro glared into the murky depths of his green tea. In another life, this was exactly the kind of thing that he would have demanded — a plate of mochi with the most expensive green tea, prepared by the most expensive geisha.
Well, Kuro only had Kuchisake’s claims that she’d been the premier geisha of her day before being murdered, but he guessed he couldn’t sniff at having tea prepared by the leader of the Night Parade.
He shoved the tea cup and mochi plate away.
“You’re not hungry?” Kuchisake asked. Instead of taking a seat across the kotatsu like Ren had, she knelt next to Kuro, holding her own steaming tea cup that she never drank up to her blank Noh mask. She always sat there, but Kuro wondered if she did it to be close to Kuro, or because she’d heard that Kuro had bared his teeth at the servant imp when the imp had tried to stride through Ren’s dissipating scent.
Really, Kuro shouldn’t have even allowed the fragment green tea inside his den. But Ren would be back… right?
Kuro groaned and flopped onto the table, burying his head in his arms. “I don’t deserve it.”
She set her cup down. “Why ever not?”
Kuro worried at his bottom lip. As if he could even admit it to Kuchisake. It was too humiliating, even knowing she’d never tell Ren.
After Ren had left the day before, Kuro hadn’t managed a transformation at all. Not even a single zit. He’d slapped leaf after leaf to his forehead, but all he’d managed to do was further deplete his leaf stock, and crumble dried leaves all over the tatami mats.
He’d stayed up late into the night trying, even as his hands grew too heavy to lift, until he’d fallen over and been unable to shove himself back up. He wished he’d just blacked out. Blacked out was black, unmoving unconscious.
No, he’d fallen asleep. He’d dreamed.
Kuro closed his eyes tight, but remnants of the dream still played against the black curtain of his eyelids. Two Celestial Kitsune curled their silver tails around his small brown fox body, their hands flying as they gestured leaf, and fire, and water. Transformation, foxfire and illusion.
A strong hand clasping the loose skin of Kuro’s neck, yanking him from the safety of their silver tails. Throwing him into the dark storehouse. Celestial Kitsune did not learn the games of the red fox rabble, his mother snapped at him. He’d stay there until he learned dignity.
Hot tea burned Kuro’s fingers, snapping him out of the dream. He yanked his shaking hands away from the tea cup.
“Careful,” Kuchisake said. “We can’t have you injured.”
Kuro sucked on his fingers. “Why not?” he tried to say around his fingers, but it came out a garbled mess. His shoulders tightened, but Kuchisake only wiped up the spilt tea, rather than smack him for his bad manners. He pulled out his fingers, and repeated. “It’s not as if I matter.”
“Oh, Kuro.” By her tone, Kuro guessed she must have been giving him a soft-eyed look, but with her blank Noh mask, she just sounded exasperated. “You matter more than anyone else here. You are the key to your prince’s success.”
Some key. Kuro slumped, wishing he could hide beneath the kotatsu. “Ren hates me,” Kuro whined, and thus cemented the title of Most Pathetic Creature of Complete Chaos forever. Longer than forever.
“My dear, he could never hate you.” Kuchisake chuckled behind her mask. Kuro rolled his head to glare at her. It wasn’t fair that she could read his emotions from his face, while she hid behind that mask.
“Never?” Kuro scoffed. “What about the time that my appearance ended up with his entire family being murdered? Or the time he found out I’d been sent to murder him?”
“Both of which is the Shogun’s fault.” Kuchisake raised the teacup to her lips.
“Yeah, I’m sure that makes it all better, knowing that his mother died at your hands and that I failed to protect her because of the Shogun.”
“Because we shall not tell him that last little bit,” Kuchisake said. “You wouldn’t want to take away his last hope, would you? He needs me and the Night Parade.”
Needed them, because Kuro, supposedly an empire-destroying monster of catastrophe, couldn’t so much as summon a spark of foxfire. Kuro groaned again into the wood.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“My poor fox. I hate to see you like this,” Kuchisake said. “You try so hard, and yet, your prince doesn’t even appreciate it.”
Ren didn’t know, though. Kuro worked hard to keep it that way.
Kuchisake lifted her tea cup up, as if admiring the abstract pattern on the ceramic. “He expects instant perfection. It’s unfortunate, as he’s not winning himself any allies, the way he assigns punishments for those who fail to reach his impossible standards. It is all I can do to step in and keep the peace. Just yesterday, he punished kits for playing transformation tag.”
Kuro swallowed, even as he felt the hand clenching the back of his neck. Oh wait, that was his own. He yanked his hand down onto his lap.
“Given his sheltered upbringing, I hadn’t expected such a hardened leader.” Kuchisake set the tea cup down. “It’s probably best for you to stay here, out of his eyesight.”
But how long would that last? Ren came by every day, except when he was angry with Kuro. How long could he hide his failure?
There had to be something else that Kuro could do. Something so easy that even he couldn’t screw it up. “I could… um… warm Ren’s futon!”
Kuchisake pressed a hand to her mask as she choked back a laugh. “Maybe in a month or two.”
“Not like that,” Kuro snapped. That was another reminder of a time he’d done his best to ignore. The Dark Days of winter, when he holed up by himself for a month, waiting for the days to pass. “A warm den is nice. I know I like it when my blankets are nice and toasty.”
“Which is why we provided the two of you hot water bottles to tuck inside.” Kuchisake’s voice was gentle, but it still made Kuro bristle.
“Then — then…” Kuro trailed off. He put his fist under his chin and stared at the panel. As if the panel could give him an idea.
“All Ren needs you to do is exist,” Kuchisake reminded him. “I will bring down the Shogun.”
Yeah, because Kuro was sure that that would go over well. Ren had ideas. Plans. Meanwhile, except for Ren’s heritage, he had no claim to the throne. With Kuro’s blood, the Shogun had taken the Kusanagi from him, the sword that had proclaimed Ren the rightful ruler of Oyashima. Then, with Kuro’s blood and his teeth, Kuro had broken the Kusanagi, so Ren could never reclaim his throne. The last thing that Ren had left in all the world, and Kuro had destroyed it.
The fragment now rested in Ren’s room on another floor, as silent as the dead. Well, Kuro flicked his eyes to the ghost Kuchisake, more silent and much more dead. Broken in two, the Kusanagi’s spirit could no longer manifest.
Kuro had probably used up a kitsune’s lifetime of good luck that the Kusanagi hadn’t turned malevolent with its shattering. With its ability to scythe through hundreds of demons in one swing… Well, the Kusanagi turning into a rogue demon would probably do more to destroy the empire than anything Kuro could manage.
Oh Sun Goddess, Kuro prayed, please let that not be how Kuro destroyed empires. Unless the Kusanagi was currently visiting his wrath upon the Shogun. That would be useful. Probably not. Kuchisake would have mentioned it, if only to calm Kuro.
Still, without the Kusanagi… Kuro raised his head. “The Kusanagi. I could fix him.”
And present the sword to Ren, shrugging as if restoring an Imperial Treasure was no big deal, while secretly watching from the corner of his eye as disbelief then joy sparked in Ren’s eyes, bringing back the liquid shimmer in his eyes, spreading across his face until Ren tackled Kuro with a hug. Yes, that’s what Kuro would do!
Kuchisake hummed. And even with the fantasy of Ren’s joyful bounding obscured his vision, and the mask obscuring Kuchisake’s face, he could tell the look was pitying.
“Even I could manage that much!” Kuro flung his arms out. “All I have to do is to learn how to smith a sword—” Kuro shook his head. “Okay, bad idea. But there’s got to be a sword smith out there. In the ranks of the Night Parade.”
“Fixing a powerful tsukumogami like the Kusanagi takes more than a knowledge of metallurgy,” Kuchisake said. “None of our smiths could do it.”
“That’s fine.” Better than fine, since then fixing the sword would be Kuro’s great feat, not the Night Parade’s. “But there’s got to be some human, demon or god capable of fixing the Kusanagi. Someone had to have created the Kusanagi in the first place.”
“I believe the Kusanagi was retrieved from the tail of the mighty serpent demon Orochi,” Kuchisake replied drily.
Right… “But there’s other great swords. Trust me. Ren’s droned on and on about them. There was a sword so sharp that even if a leaf fell against the blade, it would pass through without being sliced. Because only a great sword knows when to hold back, or something like that.” Kuro waved his hands. Ren told the story so much better. “But it was made by a human.”
“But how many of them became tsukumogami, gained a spirit of their own?”
Admittedly, Ren’s long stories had been a little short on those kinds of details.
“That’s even discounting the fact that the great swordsmiths you speak of perished before the Warring Demons era.”
Kuro slammed his hands onto the kotatsu. “But someone must know something!”
Kuchisake was silent for so long, in the way that only the deceased could be, that Kuro started to think that she was either doing a spot-on Kusanagi fragment impression, or that she wasn’t going to help him after all.
Kuro scowled, puffing out his cheeks. If she didn’t know, he’d find someone who did. He’d travel the breadth of Oyashima to find them. Even if it took years, centuries — but Ren didn’t have centuries. He didn’t even have years. He needed the Kusanagi now.
“Well,” Kuchisake dragged out the word until Kuro was breathless from waiting. “There is someone in the mortal plane who knows the Kusanagi like none other. He may know.”
If Kuro had had a tail, it would have been banging the tatami behind him. Kuro checked behind him to make sure it didn’t make an appearance. Without his tail, he could pretend a semblance of calm, instead of vibrating inside so hard he might set the kotatsu on fire. “Who? Tell me.”
As soon as she spoke, the blood drained from his face.
She spoke the scariest three words possible.
“The Storm God.”