On Thin Ice (Prequel to Guild)

Chapter Eleven: Kingmaker

              There was nothing like a trial to remind an unworthy son where he stood. To remind Dai that he was just another brick in the Kimsura fortress. Just another blade in his father's set.

Dai was small and insignificant. His parents' gilded balcony forced him to remember that. 

He was weak. He was dull, tender, and unworthy. This sunken pit would be his throne until he could prove otherwise.

Or until his chances were spent.

           Dai Kimsura would turn nineteen in late autumn, just as the trees were stripped bare, their leaves left to decompose on the forest floor. No son as old as he had ever been granted the Black Claw. No son as old as he had ever worn a shogun's helm, ever lifted a shogun's blade.

No. Sons as old as he stained the floor of the arena. Their bones splintered the ancient wood.

Few of them had failed as miserably as Dai had. None so many times.

But none had faced a rival so vicious, so talented and ruthless as Jia.

Thanks to the Outskirts' ancient curses, few Kimsura sons had siblings to battle for the throne. For the mantle of heir and the security it provided. Fate had paired them with their Little Army Seconds, their cousins, their friends.

Fate was not Dai's friend.

Perhaps it had been Gōruden's.

Dai supposed he should be grateful for his parents' patience. That Amihan hadn't pointed the dagger the first time he'd collapsed on the arena floor, clutching his wounds and bleeding out his mouth. But Dai knew his father's patience was wearing thin.

That this trial could be his last.

He hadn't spoken to Yuina since the night before. When she'd kissed him and told him she feared he was running out of chances, then left him alone in the still, quiet forest. Perhaps he should have. Perhaps he should have said goodbye.

High above in the imperial balcony, the princess fiddled with her hair. She'd tied it back today- woven it into a complicated plait drawn from several other, tiny braids pulled from around her ears. Strange. She almost never wore her hair up. She despised it.

Catching him staring, his promised offered a smile so small Dai doubted it existed at all. Wondered if he'd imagined it.

He'd been doing that a lot, lately.

A small, white kitten Dai didn't recognize stole Yuina's attention away as it curled up on her lap and fell asleep. Three cushions right of her, Osamu pretended to be offended at the cat's blatant rejection.

Get used to it, thought Dai. But then his sister's honeyed voice called him back into his place, the pitiful seat two cushions removed from the shogun, next to his favourite who sat at his hand and was forever welcome at his side.

"Tell me, Tsuyoi, has your family missed two trials because they couldn't be bothered to answer their summons to court, or because you could not afford horses and had to resort to using stupid donkeys for transportation like a stupid Outskirts peasant instead?"

The only son of Circle General Yu scoffed, betrayed by the blush that crept into his cheeks. He tried very hard to smirk. "The former," he said, "I'll have you know, Jia, that it is quite inconvenient for the Esteemed House of Yu to pack up and move from our fort every time you Kimsuras ask us to come watch another trial with its ending predetermined by the Bloodstained Three and the Honourable Ryuu."

"Inconvenient because your stinking, rotting fort is in the Southern Marshlands?" baited his sister, tapping her lip with the point of a golden claw. "You should consider yourself lucky we found House Yu worthy of an invitation at all."