On Thin Ice (Prequel to Guild)

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Faces in the Mist

              Voices must have led him astray, but Noboru Yukimura didn't remember leaving the path. One moment, he ran through a ripping, tearing, sweltering jungle behind his shogun and his empress and their team. The next, he wandered through mist, over cool soil and snow.

Snow.

Once crunched by his leather boots, it evaporated to mist.

Faint impressions of home made his opaque breaths shallow and frequent. Blue Moon Hall. The icy garden in their yard. The flags of many clans taunted him from the branches of magnificent trees.

The north didn't have trees.

Wrong, he told himself. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Cruel spirits had made a toy out of him. Shadow people filled the village square, faces grim and eyes scared.

"My High King's daughter, the shogun's wife is lost. And so am I. Tell me if you know the way out and I will leave precious offerings on your tombs."

No answer.

Only by taking another step did Noboru learn why. Only then did they see that these old men and women possessed faces he knew. Friends and family, both by clan and by blood- their faces wizened by a decade or more. They shared a High King, shared a princess-Phoenix. They had not yet experienced warmth.

"Yuina," he tried again, sliding his gaze along their ranks. "I need to find her. Have you-"

One of the young women budged, a little whimper emerging from her lips.

Noboru flipped around. Recognized his two daughters clinging to one another, his wife and Yukimura's men holding back several strange little girls. Fear stained their shadowed faces. Fear that turned to shock, to betrayal as their eyes latched onto his.

Grief came as they looked to the ghostly figure kneeling on the ground before him. A girl, no doubt. He could see it in the curves of her body, the length of the cascading shadows that made up her hair.

"For anyone else, the punishment is death, Noboru."  Prince Timur Mongonai's grey plait drifted behind him as if it had been woven with smoke.

Noboru broke away, blinking as the man solidified before him. Spirits. Spirits who knew his face, his name, as well as those of his clan. He whipped out his saber, held it between him and the specters.

Timur smiled grimly. "Homes destroyed. Livelihoods: ruined. Families torn apart. This cannot go unpunished."

"I am looking for my friend. I have no time for your silly games."

This mockery of a prince glided around him, a snake in the grass, a cool breeze over the steppes. No. Between tall Kopere trees and lush jungle plants. He could still see them, though they had faded as the illusion of Yukimura had grown stronger. More convincing.

At least until the stones began to fall from the buildings.

Timur clucked his tongue. "Look at what you're doing to us, Noboru. You're stomping on already fissured ice."

His clan cowered around him. Flags untangled themselves from the branches of trees, flying north in search of their clans. Stone crumbled to ash.

The young girl at Noboru's feet quivered. Tears rolled off a blurry chin from eyes he couldn't see- a face he couldn't remember. Indistinct. Everything about her was indistinct- just like all the other children. All of them- except for Sanna, Tomomi, and Arata.

Arata.

Another blink put an instrument in his hand- silver-tipped and cruel. Small. The type they'd used in decades, centuries past to shame their criminal women. To discourage divorce. Adultery.