On Thin Ice (Prequel to Guild)

Chapter Thirty-Five: Away

               A vast expanse of nothingness surrounded the Lady Kimsura. But it was a different sort of nothingness than the kind she'd grown up in. Here was a land of shifting sands. Of stifling warmth and brilliant, cloudless skies. It was a place that rejoiced in its barrenness, while that same emptiness made the Northern Icelands feel lonely as it was sad.

Yuina had passed through the desert many times. But it hadn't been like this.

First, the desert had been wildness. Energy. A reclaiming of something her parents and marital house had tried to strip away. She and her husband had gone riding over dunes and through valleys without a care in the world: nothing filling their minds but thoughts of each other and techniques for securing a horse-racing victory.

Years after that, Dai's role as shogun and conqueror had brought them here again. Then, this untouched land of dull gold had become tainted in her mind. That twenty-year-old consort had looked out the window just as she did now, but had seen desolation. She'd seen a land that must once have been full of life but had since become a ghost, a shell, a husk. A grave. She'd seen scorched earth and the bodies her warlike husband left behind.

Now, Yuina saw the desert with another set of eyes, and took in only wonder.

Her little fawn pressed his face to the window, peered out of shuttered screens that left swirling tattoos on his face when he looked back and whispered, "There's so much," his eyes gleaming with awe.

"So much dirt?" asked Dai. He yawned, leaning back against the wall. Ryuu's birthday gift tumbled from atop his head. Its tongue lolled out of its mouth and it lay dead on the floor until Ryuu leapt to pick it up.

"So much sky," he answered. He crumpled the toy's silk tongue, then set to work repacking it into Kirochi's jaw. "So much space, so much world, so much everything!"

"Miizhair, you're going to ruin that toy if you keep-"

"Oops." The tongue fluttered to the floor. Ryuu winced. "We can get Yuki to fix her. But... I don't want to have to tell Rin..."

"We'll say she was captured by Downworlders, and tortured for the whereabouts of the Imperial Chosen One."

Ryuu's lips fell open a mere moment after Yuina's did.

"Dai," she warned. But it was too late. Their son went pale. Pale- with that same animal stillness that came before either fleeing or striking.

"And she refused. And they said if she wouldn't say where Ryuu Kimsura had gone, she would speak of nothing else, ever again."

"...You don't do that to people, do you, aav?"

Dai forced a smile. "Do I look like a rebel ankle-biter to you, little dragon?" he laughed, instantly reviving their child's grin. "Only Outskirts rebels would do something so barbarous."

Lies.

"What's-" One look at Dai's face- the plea that hid there. "Nevermind. H-how did we rescue Kirochi from the rebels? Was there a fight?"

"They took one look at us and ran."

"Every one of them?"

"Every one."

"Because of you or me?"

Dai thought for a moment, scratching his chin as he scanned the desert for an answer. "Well," he finally replied, "I imagine they'd see me coming from a distance first."

Ryuu blinked. "I'd be more afraid of majka if I were them."

"Excuse me!"

Her little fawn flinched.