Hours slipped by and listened to the sounds of insects chirping outside and the occasional hooting of owls. A field mouse teased the nocturnal hunters from her den and I wondered at what would bring the little beastie out to forage beneath the terrifying eyes of such massive birds of prey. But through the whole of the darkness, I didn’t once hear the owls successfully claim a meal of the little mouse. After what had happened in Tamanoe, I found myself rooting for the mouse over the owls. They could forage themselves for spiders or other things to eat aside from one brazen little rodent.

  As expected of a gardener, Akshay woke before the sun rose. I could feel her bright eyes straining to reach the horizon in the distance, when he rolled up from his futon. I could also tell when his breathing changed and announced the old man’s awakening.

  Instinct drove me to tighten my grip on the Mountain Cutter as the man walked over to the door where the firearm hung. He walked by it and opened a cupboard on the other side of the wall opposite me.

  I relaxed a fraction as the man turned his back on Hanari and me. Malevolent people tended to see themselves in their victims, anticipating everyone else was as vicious as they. Which meant few of them turned their backs on people they were about to attack.

  My assumptions almost cost Hanari her life.

  The man turned and brought a round object to his lips I belatedly identified as a blowgun. He aimed it at my sleeping companion and inhaled before my brain caught up with his actions. The only reason Hanari survived was my own natural wariness and the freshness of the attack upon our person by the goblins. If I’d been a split second late throwing myself over her, the tiny dart the man shot at Hanari would have hit her instead of my jade armor.

  Fury took ahold of my mind in a blink. The man reloaded his weapon, but shaking hands made for clumsy work. By the time he’d shoved a second dart into his blowgun, I was on him. The shack was too narrow to draw or even swing the Mountain Cutter, but with my strength and my armor, I had no need.

  I brought a hard elbow against the man’s sternum with my left arm and ripped the blowgun out of his hands with my right. I caught his intended missile in the palm of my hand before the man’s expelled breath struck me across the nose.

  He slammed into the wall where the cupboard lay open with a incredible racket. Baubles and trinkets spilled out of the cupboard and onto the floor, rolling all a-kilter as I shifted my left hand to the man’s throat.

  “You have one breath to explain yourself before I snap your neck.” Rage, as close to the berserk fury as I’d ever felt while maintaining my sanity, blazed through me. I held it back by the oath I’d sworn before master Odgen and the slim cast of fate’s die which left Hanari alive and still snoring behind me.

  “She’s a Kitsune, don’t you know!” His face, reddened and puffing from the pressure I’d applied to his neck and chest, trembled with fear and anger. “She’ll kill us both unless you pierce her with a polished bone!”

  The man hissed the words out and the impulse to crush his neck shook through me like the winds before the rains rattling the leaves of a forest. I suppressed the urge to kill him and took a deep breath. “She is my companion.”

  Akshay’s eyes widened and he stared at me aghast, as if he had been certain I couldn’t have known I traveled with an object of such terror. “You’re a fool then.”

  I snorted at him, almost laughing in the man’s face. A mirror indeed. “Maybe, but not as much as you old man.”

  Setting the blowgun into a crevice of my armor at my hip, I took the man under his armpits and hurled him across the room over to his futon. If he’d possessed anything capable of harming me or Hanari within reach of his bed, he would have used it already. Besides, I needed to wake Hanari up without taking my attention from Akshay.

  My tossing the old gardener did the trick. Hanari came up with a cough and fumbled with the katana she’d set at her back. “What is it? What’s happ…ening?” she looked between me and Akshay.

  “Our host decided he was going to murder you in your sleep.”

  Akshay rolled over and glared between me and Hanari. “You can’t murder Kitsune… can’t murder demons…”

  “Shut up.” I bent down and found a small wooden box which had fallen from the cupboard. It was filled with various darts for the man’s blowgun. Many of them were made from bone, but several were metal with cloth tips. I scooped them up into the box and picked it up. “We’re leaving now.” I motioned to Hanari, who scrambled to her feet with a shocked expression still on her face, as if she were still not quite grasping the situation. “And if you follow us or try to hurt either of us, I will return here, slit your throat and burn your home to the ground.” I turned to face Akshay and loomed over him. “Understand me?”

  “She’ll kill you if you trust her, you have to catch her unaware or…”

  Hanari had frowned at Akshay’s words, as if they offended her. I felt pity for the little Kitsune. As far as I’d seen, she was essentially harmless, even with some form of mysterious hand to hand combat training. Kitsune were legendary monsters though and I could imagine the lore surrounding them building them up to be something more dangerous than they were in truth. It didn’t matter to me.

  I kicked the door open before me, and sent it tumbling off of its runners and out into the lawn. Outside the sky had turned the color of ash with the sun’s promise of an upcoming rise. I ushered Hanari after me while I kept an eye on Akshay. Whatever he’d intended to say faded with my glare and he remained silent as Hanari and I stepped out into the open air.

  I hated to leave him mobile in the shack behind me, but I also hated to kill him if I could avoid it. Perhaps he was merely misguided or stupid. If he’d succeeded at hurting Hanari, it would have cost him his life. But as it was, he’d escaped with nothing more than a little jostling and the loss of a weapon.

  And I guess he’d have to fix his door.

  The flowers along the lane lost a fraction of their luster in the daylight. Hanari and I walked side by side down the road and for the first time since I’d met her she went almost an hour without saying a word.

  “Thank you.” I looked over at her when she spoke. We’d walked miles from the house before she said anything. “I’m not the strongest or the smartest of my people.” I frowned at her words, not sure of where she was going with this. “And the… gardener, maybe he was right about us.”

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  Ah.

  Hanari turned toward me and grabbed my armor. “I’m not like them. I’m just a weak little two-tailed fox and I won’t betray you or play mean pranks on you, I promise.”

  It was hard to decide how to reply to Hanari. If she intended to betray me or play some game with me, would she warn me ahead of time? Of course not. As to people expecting the worst from her because of her species.

  I was a dragon. I understood the nature of monster kind better than some roadside gardener. In fact, I suspected I knew the truth about the monsters better than Hanari herself did. Hanari didn’t let go of me though. She held onto the Jade Avarice as if she hoped she could anchor me on the level road until she could draw some solace in my words.

  “Are we just going to stand here all day?” I spoke automatically, half my tone sounded like it might have come from my sister and half from Odgen.

  Hanari blinked up at me and her eyes welled with tears. “Thank you.”

  She released me and I shook my head. Hundreds of years of life, decades spent among humans fleeing from assassins and committing murder on behalf of mortals too weak to it themselves, and I still didn’t full understand them. Hanari wasn’t mortal, of course. But as she’d said, she was hardly a monster.

  With the sun at its height, left the road to scavenge for fruits and berries. I’d prefer meat, but Hanari was as vegetarian as my old master. And hunting would have meant cooking and waiting. The hunger in my belly could wait until we reached the town these roads led to.

  A handful of berries and some late season gourds comprised Hanari’s lunch. I ate nothing for now. When we returned the road, we came upon a small caravan. Wagons with metal wheels and wooden sides moved along one in front of the other like ducks following their mothers. Canvas tops covered the wagons in sharp little peaks to keep the rain off the goods in the back.

  Every driver aboard his wagon turned to stare at us as we slipped through the hedgerows. I’d heard the wagons from a distance, but the train was long enough I had no desire to wait for them to pass before I returned to our original path.

  In less than a minute, a trio of guards had confronted us. They wore paired blades on their hips and held long axes. Their armor matched just like their weapons: green leather laced at the sides, shoulders and elbows to let the wearer move freely. Their brown trews observed a modern cut I’d been disdainful of since it spread through the land. Pants on either gender were highly immodest. They would have been less perverse, in my mind, if they’d been nude.

  But I wasn’t there to critique their clothing.

  All three of the guards held their axes with familiarity and the caution of men accustomed to both brigands and locals troubling their merchant masters. “Where are you headed travelers?”

  In many of these triplets, the leader spoke from the middle. But a black-haired man with a traditional tonsure and pony-tail addressed us from the left of his group, closer to the danger of the newcomers than either of his two companions.

  Hanari slinked around to my back and I tried to ignore her as I said, “we’re going to the town up ahead.”

  “The town? You don’t know where you’re going?” The speaker’s eyes glided up and down my form as he asked. I longed for the casual looks and relative invisibility Odgen’s robes afforded me. With them I could have covered my modesty and let my armor retreat into the amulet around my neck.

  But with my armor on full display and the Mountain Cutter bereft of its cloth wrappings, I stood out as a danger to these guards. I had to respect that and therefore I answered the man quickly and truthfully. “We are traveling and do not know the region. Can you tell me what town lies further along the road?” The men eyed each other as if my answer had only roused their suspicions further. Sighing, I raised my free hand and took two steps back from the men. “I do not mean you any harm. My apologies for troubling you and your masters.”

  I intended to fade back into the hedgerows and let the caravan pass on by. It would have been easier than trying to convince these men I had no ill-intentions after I’d admitted my ignorance of the area and looked so undeniably dangerous. It was frustrating to say the least, but I’d chalked up the lost time to the vagaries of fate by the time I reached the hedges.

  “Fukan is about four day’s walk from here.” The leader spoke before as I touched the foliage behind me.

  I bowed to him and said, “thank you. I won’t trouble you further.”

  “If you want to walk alongside us, the caravan master might be willing to feed you in exchange for some work.” The leader waved to his subordinates, neither of whom looked pleased at his invitation.

  Hanari peeked up over my shoulder and I could almost hear her salivating at the guard’s offer. Before she said anything, I said, “what kind of work?”

  He sized me up a second time. “Help us defend the train and maybe act as a porter when we settle down for the night. I’ll need to check in with the master, but we’re short guards.”

  I almost snorted at him. The latter was a bold-faced lie. From my short observation of the caravan, they had more than enough guards. What the leader hoped to gain by suggesting his defense forces were smaller than they looked I could only guess. But rather than reveal I understood, I accepted his offer with a deeper bow.

  After Akshay’s treachery and Wei’s death, I’d been reluctant to place my or Hanari’s safety in the hands of strangers. But this guard leader was too easy for me to read. If he’d been lying about the work or the food, I felt confident I would have been able to tell. Besides, we would camp away from the rest of the caravan and I wouldn’t sleep as usual.

  Having built up the caravan’s danger in my own head, following our encounter with the gardener, I’d expected a betrayal of some kind anyway. But to my surprise, the caravan let us follow them peacefully and, true to his word, Maelae the head guard made sure the caravan fed us in exchange for some light manual labor.

  With the walls of Fukan in sight, I found myself wearing a new black robe and bulky, properly modest pants along with a sash to cover the Mountain Cutter. Hanari ate her fill of bean curd and tea over our journey and, to my happy shock, did not cause any trouble the whole trip.

  Only two events of note occurred while traveling. The first happened when Hanari borrowed a shamisen from one of the caravan merchants and played the instrument with some skill the second night. Thereafter, the merchant loaned the shamisen to Hanari each of the following nights and a small crowd gathered around the merchants’ fire to listen to her songs.

  The second event occurred the third night while Hanari snored from her spot near the fire. I’d given up all pretense of leaving the caravan after the second night anyway. And I had no intention of sleeping, so I was up when Maelae settled in next to me.

  A liquor scent struck my nose from the small jug he carried and I wrinkled my brow at him. He shook the jug and only slightly slurred his words when he said, “it’s just a nip and I’m not on duty tonight.”

  I shrugged by way of reply and he interpreted my silence as permission to continue. “And besides, we’re out of the woods now.” I cocked my head, but held my tongue. Drinkers had a tendency to keep talking if you let them and I’d learn more through silence than if I tried to direct the conversation with questions. “Last night was the final leg of the danger in our little trip. Once we’re this close to Fukan bandits and wild monsters leave us alone.” He nudged me with his elbow. “Besides, you look like to know how to swing that thing.” He pointed to the Mountain Cutter. “Any woman who carries around a sword taller than most men probably knows how to use it.” He hiccuped and slid toward the fire, away from me and Hanari.

  I opened my mouth, but snapped it shut rather than engage the man. It was enough to know we’d passed the danger, but I was surprised to learn the gardener lived in an area judged dangerous by merchant caravans. Perhaps I should have slain Akshay. Chances were good, if understood the Maelae’s unspoken implication, the old gardener had been feeding bandits information about caravans passing along his length of road.

  New robes on my back and no need to worry about being attacked by bandits or monsters, I let myself relax as we walked toward Fukan. As friendly as the caravan had been, they didn’t want us to walk into the city with them as they weren’t interested in paying our way tax.

  I bade farewell to Maelae and the others guards and slowed my walk enough to let the caravan by.

  Fukan was much, much larger than Tamanoe. Based on the size, it was the capital of the area and probably boasted the largest standing army and most opportunities to earn coin. With my black robes covering me, I sent the Jade Avarice back into its amulet and held the Mountain Cutter like a bulky walking staff.

  A short line led into Fukan and Hanari and I waited only a short time before we walked into the city.