Flame in the Mist (Flame in the Mist #1)(17)

Ranmaru watched Mariko as he refilled her cup, his gaze thoughtful, his broad lips pursed to one side. “While I would normally—”

Just then a series of booming footsteps crashed through the underbrush at the edge of the forest, disrupting the peaceful grove of maple trees across the way.

“Takeda Ranmaru!” An enormous man, standing nearly three heads taller than anyone present, shouted into the night sky. “I will not bear this insult a single day more!”

Ranmaru straightened. The men at his back stood silent. Unmoving.

A moment passed in stillness. A moment laced with tension. The sort meant to be bowed by a sword.

“Then, by all means, state your grievances.” Ranmaru’s smile was wide. Unaffected. “And we shall both face the consequences.”





FALL FORWARD TO KEEP MOVING





Takeda.

Mariko knew that name.

It sifted through her mind, dredging up a faded memory.

One of a boy standing in a bloodied square, silently crying to the heavens.

“Consequences?” Sporting a look of amused incredulity, the giant of a man stepped toward Ranmaru. The thunder in his voice dashed away Mariko’s memories before they could fully take shape.

In his meaty right hand, the giant held an immense kanabō. He swung the huge club into the light of a nearby torch. “Did you not think I would know it was you?” The metal barbs studding one end of the kanabō flashed dully. “Did you not think we would come to seek retribution?” He nodded to the men at his back. To their generous array of weaponry. These men were exactly what Mariko had pictured a passel of cutthroats to be. Bearded. Unwashed. Uncouth.

The complete opposite of the Black Clan.

In fact, Mariko would have staked the rest of her copper pieces—even an entire gold ryō—on the fact that the wretched soul she’d killed in the forest five days ago might have known these intruders.

Might even have been well acquainted with them.

Her discomfort rose in a sharp spike. She looked back to the Black Clan. Two sides of her continued their silent war: the part that wished to remain in the thick of things and the part that wished to observe from a distance.

Ranmaru stayed relaxed. His hands were at his sides, his posture easy. As though a giant bearing a studded club had not stepped into his world, intent on beating him to a bloody pulp.

“Did you hear me, rōnin?” The giant spat the last word, hurling it into the air with the venom of a curse.

Rōnin.

More scattered pieces aligned in Mariko’s mind.

A reason for Ranmaru’s proper, almost noble comportment.

Takeda Ranmaru was a masterless samurai. Or the son of a samurai fallen from grace within the nobility. He was—or had been—part of Mariko’s world once. Judging by his age, it could not have been so long ago.

Again that image of a boy not many years older than she, standing beside stones rusted brown with blood, came into brief focus. Then blurred away, like a reflection rippling across a pond.

Mariko narrowed her eyes at the rōnin. The idea intrigued her with its ludicrousness.

A noble thief. A mercenary of samurai lineage.

Though Ranmaru continued to appear unaffected, she saw his right hand twitch, as if it was aching to take hold of a sword.

“I heard you.” Ranmaru leaned back on his heels, once more the picture of calm, his words a mocking pronouncement. “Both times, you bumbling colossus.”

The giant grunted. He swung his kanabō again. It cut through the air with a shrill whisper.

An unmistakable threat.

Mariko sank lower in her bench.

This would not end well.

She should leave. The last thing she wanted to be was collateral damage in a tavern brawl. But that cursed boy with the murder eyes continued to stare at her intently. It made it difficult for her to think straight.

The group of men previously standing behind the giant began to unfurl into a line, standing shoulder to shoulder on either side of their leader. Each of their weapons was coated in layers of dried blood.

They . . . did not appear to be in a negotiating mood. Mariko caught the distinct sound of air being sucked through teeth, as though in anticipation of a thrill. When her gaze fell upon one of the cutthroats closest to her, she understood something she’d only heard of in passing.

Bloodlust.

A hunger nothing but slaughter could slake.

Her heartbeat quickened.

Ranmaru sighed. Mariko noted that—though his men did not step forward in response to the giant’s threat—many had placed hands on their own weapons. Ready and willing to strike. Ready and willing to defend their leader. The masterless samurai.

The rōnin.

Odd that a rōnin inspires such loyalty.

A boy who would kill an innocent girl for money.

She took in a measured breath, slowing the speed of her pulse. Her resolve hardened once more. Hardened like folded steel shaped and reshaped under a red-hot flame for countless days and nights.

Until nothing could best it.

I will be a reed in the current. A reed of folded steel.

Even if Ranmaru’s men found him worthy of admiration, Mariko never would.

Chiyo.

Nobutada.

This boy deserved to be hung upside down and drowned in Yedo Bay. Disgraced, for all the world to see.

Just as the vision formed in her mind, the one-legged man previously standing to Ranmaru’s right stepped between the boy and the bumbling colossus, placing his restless fingertips on the hilt of a dagger. Several more men moved to shield their leader from view. To take whatever blows may come his way, with the honor a samurai would espouse for his lord. Try though she might, Mariko could not understand such reverence.