This One Time With Riyo...

I Went to Jail

Mokoto kept her promise. She would come often for a while, sometimes nightly (though she never slept in the den) then disappear for months on end. But she eventually would return. There were times when she wouldn’t talk to him—wouldn’t even look at him—but usually she was kind. Kai liked her. He liked her more once she gave up on teaching him the sword.

She and Riyonou had never informed Kai of much. She never mentioned from whence she came or where she went, and the matter of his parentage never came up again. When he asked Mokoto, she’d lowered her eyes and walked away. When he asked Riyonou, he’d hit him so hard his lip busted and his mouth bled. Listening to the two of them didn’t help. Half the time they needed no words and the other half it seemed as if they were speaking a secret language all their own. The few details he gleaned didn’t add up to much. Once, while reading in his throne, Riyonou had unexpectedly remarked, “She’s more like a fucking cat than a tennyo.” Kai had spent hours after that digging through The Youko’s library, but he didn’t know how the word was written, and Riyonou knew so many languages that he’d had little hope to begin with.

Yet he dreaded Mokoto’s arrivals as much as he anticipated them. He knew she would leave. Being left to the mercy of Riyonou’s whims was bad enough, but when she left the fox raged. The first time it happened, Kai had been so afraid he couldn’t breathe. Riyo’s anger had always been more ice than fire, calm and deliberate, calculated not passionate. This was all reversed when Mokoto went away. He yelled a hundred thousand curses. He smashed his treasures. He snarled and screamed until his throat was raw. He became a monster—all fangs and claws and terrible, terrible eyes. And the worst thing was that he was just so strong. His plants reacted instantly to his emotions moving in unpredictable and dangerous ways. His youki blazed and filled the den until Kai was laid flat on the floor, sick and dizzy and afraid Riyonou would tear the hill down upon them. Once, the fox had stormed out into his forest and caused a line of ancient oaks, perhaps older than him, to uproot. His power tore them from the ground causing huge chasms to open like fresh wounds. He stood among them as they groaned and fell and found new curses to throw at the moon. Another time, he’d returned with more bodies for his cherry tree, naked and bloodied and torn beyond all recognition.

After the first wave passed, he would drink. Mostly shattered bottles piled up around the base of his throne, jagged devotees to the king of broken things. Kai never knew if he found peace in that stupor, but if he did, it was short lived. It was like the calm before the storm, the liquor fueling the next fire.

Kai learned quickly to make himself scarce. It didn’t take Riyonou long to realize that he couldn’t hurt Mokoto directly, but he could hurt Kai. It was near the end of one of these fits when the Youko was crawling back into himself when he ordered Kai to bed. Dawn was still several hours away, but Kai knew better than to argue. He immediate became as small in his furs as possible. It wasn’t long after sunrise when he was awakened. He blinked into the golden eyes staring down at him. The youkai holding his blanket was not Riyonou.

Above him stood a petit, round faced female kitsune with straw colored hair and a set of red ears. She wore a russet rough-spun robe tied just a little lower and a little tighter than was proper.“We’re going to town. Put on something vulgar. It’s high time you start learning to steal.” It was then that Kai realized Riyonou had shifted. His glamour was always perfect, but his movements betrayed him.

“The key, Kai,” Riyo lectured as they walked, “is to remember that the world belongs to you by rights. It’s just a matter of taking it.” He was starting Kai on pickpocketing. Even if he was learning under the greatest thief who’d ever lived, he still had to start with the fundamentals.

They walked until mid-afternoon, bypassing the nearest town—where Anaki lived—and headed for the much larger Tariante. The city, much to Riyonou’s annoyance, had been cleaned up considerably in the past few decades. It used to be a frequent haunt of his where he could gather information on the movements of the rich and their riches. It had been the hub of almost all his connections. Now, it had something resembling order complete with something resembling law enforcement. It was so out of Dio’s realm of control and so close to his own lands that he could only reason that it had been the special project of a certain knight taken on solely to annoy him.