traditional-with-a-twist

[traditional-with-a-twist]

Beauty and Her Beast: final arc

anime-verse, canon divergent: Instead of sending Shirayuki to Lyrias, Clarines goes to war. The main arc begins after Izana’s forces triumph at a terrible cost.

What it would take for Shirayuki to marry Obi?

Read it on AO3.

Chapters

1-15. (first arc) 16-30. (second arc) 31-45. (third arc) 46-60. (fourth arc) 61. Lurch 62. Instincts 63. Unraveled 64. Hollow 65. Savage 66. Forewarning 67. Gamble 68. Pitiless 69. Rubies 70. Fair 71. Hatchet 72. Bandages 73. Verdict 74. Transfixed 75. Embrace

Bonus

a peek at the fanworks that inspired me while writing:

sources and chapter reference by row:

a cover page for the series ~ his accidental kiss and her confusion (ii) ~ penpals (xiv) ~ ~ after the funeral (xv) ~ betrothed (xxxi) ~ wedding night (xxxvii) ~ mushroom hunting (xli) ~ ~ after the break-in (xliii) and later that night (lxiv) ~ captured (lxii) ~ the happy ending (lxxiv) ~ ~~ the epilogue (sequel fic: Rain, Sun, and Snow) ~ bonus: meeting Mihaya (from the sequel fic's chapter "Windy Mountain Rain").

also this superlative AMV: Follow You

and an ending credits song: Love Will Be Enough For Us

If you're still looking for more, check out the Beauty and Her Beast masterpost for links to all the Tumblr content.

Thank you for reading! ^_^

[traditional-with-a-twist]

lxxv. Beauty and Her Beast

<<Previous || first arc || second arc || third arc || fourth arc || AO3 || END

She was crying. 

Tears slipped from beneath her lashes as Shirayuki embraced her friends, holding them close for the last time before who knew how many more moons would pass?

The early morning light graced the four of them, gilding every edge with the mellow gold of a new day.

Torou remembered them in the rain, on a dark night in a roadside inn. What a different picture they presented now — how like and unlike that night.

Their happiness had a different quality — there was the tenderness of wounds still healing, in more ways than one.

...

Mitsuhide carried himself very differently than the slump-shouldered posture of defeat; he was straight-backed and present, with the air of watchfulness befitting a shepherd looking after his flock. 

They were tarrying at a break in the road, where the paths diverged — one final good-bye before they parted.

Kiki’s edge had mellowed into the liquid tranquility of a still pond. She almost glimmered in that company; her ease was catching.

Brighter still, Shirayuki was resplendent with the overflowing of affection, tears still clinging to her lashes.

As for Obi, he still wore bandages beneath his shirt, but he was back on his feet and had laid aside his sling.

...

Torou caught his eye as she stepped forward to claim her share of the farewell. She had preferred to lay low as the inquiry proceeded, having secured the authorities’ goodwill with the little gift of the prime suspect and resolution to their diplomatic difficulties, all in one.

She had no title to claim, however, so better not to attract attention to herself.

Besides, Torou had plenty to entertain herself with, as she observed the comings and goings in the modest diplomatic abode, with the four friends knitting their lives back together.

...

Obi looked back at her over his wife’s head, and she gave him her best cat’s smile.

“Well, well, Obi, I’d say I’ve paid you back for going out of your way for me.”

He knew her too well to take the bait; he only replied without expression, “Is that so.”

...

Torou spun herself around, laughing, and shook out her hair until her earrings jangled. It never hurt to tease now and then. 

“You’ve had an interesting vacation, it seems,” Obi said drily, watching her.

She cast him an arch look over her shoulder. “Oh, I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. Now, though, you’ve gone boring, Obi —” 

She indicated the road leading south to Tanbarun. “It’s time for me to take my leave.”

...

Torou sketched a curtsy to the knights, winking at the big guy – he was handsome as ever, that one – but she was surprised when Kiki bowed back.

“Thank you,” she said formally. “We are in your debt.”

“Yes!” Shirayuki clasped her hands, at her most earnest. “Without you, we never would have found Obi – or made it to them in time. Thank you, Torou — thank you for everything.”

“If there’s ever anything we can help you with, “ Mitsuhide added, equally earnest.

Torou looked droll, but she forebore to tease him, just this once. 

...

As Torou moved away, the impulse to embrace overcame Shirayuki again; she sprang to her friends once more and stretched her arms out to them.

“Kiki, Mitsuhide,” Shirayuki said, smiling up at them. “Thank you for everything.”

Mitsuhide looked down, rubbing the back of his head, but Kiki smiled back. “We won’t be far,” she said.

At this, Mitsuhide raised himself. “If there’s ever anything you need, then write to us, Shirayuki.” His gaze shifted to the man beside her. “You, too, Obi.”

...

He was answered with a lazy salute. “At ease, mister… we’re not headed anywhere dangerous. The missus just wants to see her old man.”

Shirayuki blushed and nodded, smiling shyly. “I thought…he’d like to know,” she murmured.

“Of course,” Kiki said. 

Mitsuhide looked blankly from one to the other.

...

“We will do the same,” Kiki continued, and his expression cleared. To see Kiki’s father — that was Mitsuhide’s object now.

He would recommit himself to knighthood, not as a servant of the crown this time, but as a defender of the Seiran estates.

Besides that, there was the small manner of presenting himself as Kiki’s future intended, in petition of her father’s blessing.

He has found his new purpose, as Kiki’s partner in life, her constant support.

...

When Shirayuki stepped back, Obi slid an arm around her waist. He often found excuses to hold her like that, hand resting on her hip, getting acquainted with the little beginning of their family together.

It had not sunk in yet, this news that his wife had been carrying as a treasure inside of her; he was still feeling around the edges of it in his mind.

It helped to prove to himself that it was true, to touch and feel that it was real.

...

Obi wouldn’t miss her, Torou knew — that was why she stopped and darted to his side.

With a dancer’s grace, she raised herself on tiptoe to peck his cheek with a kiss.

Then she swooped down on Shirayuki, that small package of surprises, and kissed her, too.

“What a wonderful woman you have, hm?” said Torou, and by that she meant full of mysteries, unfathomable. 

...

Torou knows there is no turning back for Obi this time: he is committed, held fast by that anchor still all but invisible to the eye. 

That wild man she knew before, with his reckless and changeable ways – he is gone; someone rooted and sure has taken his place.

She had watched and watched, and she thought she was beginning to understand, though it opened up long vistas of untrodden paths, trails leading to countries she had yet to explore and perhaps never would.

Torou feared little, but there was something deep and wide here that she would only approach with caution.

She was glad, for that reason at least, to say her goodbyes.

...

A shadow of disappointment crosses over her, but she shakes it off with long practice. “Nothing much for me to do around here…best be off!”

She lifts a hand as she saunters away, not south to Tanbarun but veering off at the last moment to vanish into the trees. 

She is gone like a whisper, a memory.

...

Mitsuhide and Kiki turn north. 

Obi and Shirayuki set their faces to the south. “Ready, missus?” he asked, lifting their pack to his good shoulder. 

They had scant possessions between the two of them, only a satchel or two of supplies. Obi didn’t like the thought of walking to Tanbarun — nor did he fancy a bouncing wagon ride.

“You’re not much for horses, missus,” he mused.

“Hm?” She blinked up at him, his train of thought too elusive for her.

...

Obi gazed back at her — his marvel of a wife who had risked everything to bring them together again, to make whole what he had broken.

He didn’t have words for that, so he only looped his hands at the small of her back and drew her against him, until he could feel the gently rounded curve of her middle.

Shirayuki reached up to touch his face, and he smiled through her fingers.

Then he brightened. “I know! Sturdy, strong – it would carry all the herbs you could want —”

“Obi—” She was laughing. “Obi, what are you talking about?”

He grinned, eyes sparkling. “Say, missus, how would you like a donkey?”

Read the epilogue: Rain, Sun, and Snow

[traditional-with-a-twist]

lxxiv. Beauty and Her Beast

<<Previous || first arc || second arc || third arc || fourth arc || AO3 || Next>>

Obi woke to the scent of herbs and mossy earth.

He inhaled, drinking it in: spice…and flowers. Something silken brushed his cheek.

He opened his eyes to a rosy halo, like the sun at dawn.

“Ah…” Obi sighed. “Miss.”

...

His lips curved unconsciously as he looked into her face. “I thought I dreamt you.”

Now the dawn was sweeping across her cheeks, and he loved to see her blush. This was too good, even for a dream.

She spoke now; he heard her say his name in her own voice – “Obi!” — and her confusion was pretty to see.

“Obi, you’re awake!”

“It seems so, miss.”

“But…” She looked down at the bottle she held. “I gave you enough for eight hours…” A frown creased her forehead, and that was lovely, too.

...

Every look, every sound, every shape — he loved it all. Too much, Obi remembered, as his consciousness slowly won out over the traces of drug still swimming in his system. 

The hazy glow was fading; imperfectly suppressed pain had returned to intrude upon him.

It sharpened his mind and reminded him of the realities awaiting.

He hated to give her cause for distress, mar her sweet looks, but better now than prolong and delay it.

...

Obi levered himself upright for an exaggerated stretch, surreptitiously testing the range of his movement.

He swallowed a wince.

Above the waist, it left much to be desired, but his legs would support him, he figured.

...

Shirayuki was caught between scandalized and outraged, but he switched on a wide smile to head her off.

“Not to worry, miss, I’m nearly good as new here,” he said heartily. “Save your medicines – I’ll go as I am.”

This announcement floored her; he could see her blinking as she tried to process it.

Seizing his opportunity, Obi made to swing his legs clear of the bed.

...

He had miscalculated, however; Shirayuki never lacked decision in professional matters.

Her hand shot out, catching his good arm.

“No, Obi,” she told him firmly. “It’s too soon for you to get up. Your body needs more time.”

He gave her his drollest grin. “Really, miss, I’m a medical marvel. You wouldn’t believe how fast my–-” 

He stopped. 

There were tears pooling in her eyes.

...

He had said something, gone too far; he didn’t know how to fix it, so he froze and waited.

“D-don’t leave, Obi,” she gulped. “Please. I was wrong to let you go before.”

The words came spilling out of her — everything she had been longing to tell him since the day she had gone in search of him.

Her hand slid down his arm until she reached his fingers, and then she clung to him, raising his hand to her lips as she had on the night of their wedding.

...

“Please,” she whispered around his fingers. “Stay with me, Obi. I—I love you.”

Something in her lifted as she declared it to him.

Hope lightened her heart, along with the giddiness of suspense, but more than that, she felt the gladness of truth.

At last she knew her own heart, and at long last she had spoken it.

...

Now it was Obi’s turn to sit transfixed.

Her words rushed over him like the surf, washing away everything he had thought he knew and leaving blank sand behind.

Don’t go — she had asked that of him before.

Stay with me — yes, for that, he had pledged his life to hers.

Love, though — he knew of her compassion, her affection, her laughter, her forgiveness for him…but her love?

...

Though he could not have known it, Obi looked as lost and vulnerable in that moment as a new lamb.

Touched to her core, Shirayuki released his hand and reached out to cradle his face between her palms.

His lashes drifted down at her touch then up again as he gazed at her with such tender need that she longed to answer it.

...

“I love you,” Shirayuki said again, and she kissed him, joining their lips as she wished that their lives might be.

A tremor swept through Obi; she leaned back to smile at him.

“I thought,” she offered tentatively, “we might go somewhere new together. We don’t have to stay in Clarines — we can start on a path of our own.”

...

She traced along his temple and the edge of his cheek with her thumb as she spoke, soothing him – but also caressing, for she found she enjoyed touching him and didn’t want to stop.

As her fingertips trailed down the line of his jaw, Obi said slowly, “You mean that.”

She nodded.

His eyes lit. He caught her around the waist with his good arm, dragging her against him.

 Shirayuki cried out for his bandages, his healing, but the warning was lost as his mouth found hers and he kissed her hard.

...

Obi held Shirayuki to him with all his strength, heedless of his muscles’ protest.

A dizzy thought had seized him: that there was nothing between them any longer and no reason to hold himself back from her. 

It flooded him with the exhilaration of leaping from a cliff, and he would never let her go, never – except–

...

Shirayuki had made a sound, low in her throat, muffled by his embrace, and Obi remembered himself.

She was so slight — he was crushing her —

He broke away, stammering apologies. “Sorry! Sorry, miss! Did I…hurt you?”

...

Shirayuki raised her face to his, and her eyes crinkled.

She was smiling — no, laughing — and she gave no answer but to pull him in for another kiss.

Obi’s head spun as she pressed closer, fitting herself to him. He was drinking her in when she drew back, holding him at bay with a fingertip.

“Obi?” she whispered, still close enough that he felt her breath on his skin.

He swallowed hard, trying to concentrate. “Yes, miss?”

...

Shirayuki tilted her head; he could feel her smile against his ear.

“Obi,” she said, low and soft. “I’m not a ‘miss’ anymore.”

He shuddered and caught her in his good arm, wishing with all his might that he could use both.

They were tangling together; he was dropping kisses down the curve of her shoulder, but as his fingers splayed against her side, something gave him pause.

...

Panting, Obi leaned back. Something was different — she had changed shape.

Shirayuki understood the question in his look and smiled. She laid her hand over his, guiding both to rest on the gentle rounding over her stomach.

“Missus,” Obi whispered. “You… you’re…?”

She nodded, her green eyes deep and luminous. 

...

Obi’s face is unreadable as he looks down at their hands. “This…is mine?”

...

Shirayuki starts to laugh again, and tears spill over, sparkling on her cheeks.

Obi’s lips move as if they are remembering how to smile. His whole world has been turned inside out, and now it is upside down, but there is one thing he knows:

“No. No, this is ours.”

He turns his palm up to hers, and their fingers intertwine.

Resting their clasped hands over the precious new life, Obi holds his wife and child close.

This time, he is not letting go.

[traditional-with-a-twist]

[traditional-with-a-twist]

lxxiii. Beauty and Her Beast

<<Previous || first arc || second arc || third arc || fourth arc || AO3 || Next>>

Mitushide stood alone before a tribunal of three judges, but this time they sat in a walled garden.

A fountain tinkled; servants proffered platters of fresh fruit.

Mitsuhide did not know whether they would invite him to partake, but his mouth was too dry to swallow.

...

After days of deliberation behind closed doors, with much galloping of messengers to and fro across the borders, the tribunal had summoned him to hear their final verdict.

A pile of papers rested before each judge, many dangling royal seals.

“Sir knight,” began the chief of the tribunal. “We find the deliberations undertaken by the court have afforded us with great insight. The Crown Prince of Tanbarun—”

“Prince Raj?” Mitsuhide asked, startled into interrupting. 

The chief justice cleared his throat. “As I say, His Royal Highness has been most…eager to assist.”

He indicated delicately the richest stack of letters, a swaying tower festooned with gold and purple. “He has accounted for the notorious criminal apprehended at the scene of the marketplace riot…a citizen of our own land, as it happens. We have the woman in custody—” his teeth showed, “—while investigations continue as to the true culprit behind the arson.”

...

Mitsuhide had been listening with head lowered, wondering to himself what sort of justice Umihebi would meet with here in the land of her fathers, and whether even one as rotten as she deserved it.

He did not think Zen would have liked it, little reason as the prince had to bear any sympathy for the pirate queen.

Something interrupted these thoughts, however — a  dawning realization that the talk had shifted to topics of more material, personal interest to himself.

...

Mitsuhide looked up, scarcely daring to believe his ears. “The… the true culprit, Your Honor?”

The chief magistrate lowered his eyelids and curled his lips. “Indeed. As for you and your friend, this tribunal will investigate no further… not least since your accuser is no longer pressing the case, due to the circumstance that he has — how shall we say? He has fled.”

At his gesture, a horn sounded. “You are free to go.”

...

Mitsuhide stood in the courtyard of the diplomatic residence provisioned for, as it were, the Friend of the Crown of Tanbarun, the heir to the Seiran estate, and their entourage. The generous allowance aimed to smooth over all the difficulties of his own renounced station and Obi’s yet-to-be-claimed.

With ample guest quarters, the little estate had hosted them all peacefully throughout the inquiry.

The garden layout and design made it feel bigger than it was, Mitsuhide decided. It was possible to feel alone with your own thoughts when in fact there was—

...

 “Kiki!” He clutched at his heart, staggering back from the apparition.

She had appeared beside him as if materializing from the very vines that wound overhead, green and blossoming.

Kiki wore the flowing garb of a noble lady belonging to this land, with her hair braided and bound beneath a scarf so sheer, its pale gold shone through.

...

The dress reminded Mitsuhide forcibly of the first night they had met. 

Then as now, Kikiu had been playing the part required of her — serving from a sense of duty as keen as his own.

Still, he thought, it suited her: the serenity of this place, the elegant simplicity of the fabric and how it draped over —

...

“You’re staring.”

The ice in her voice cut through his musings; he flushed and scratched his head, shamefaced. “No, I — well — sorry.”

She looked at him, and the look was unimpressed. 

...

Mitsuhide drew in a breath and began again. “The court –they decided. As of today I —it’s over. We’re free.”

Kiki nodded. 

Silence fell between them, as uncomfortable as the days when they were still learning to speak informally to each other, as Zen had required.

She stood, and he stood, and there might have lain oceans between them, rather than a few feet of white pebbled garden path.

...

Casting about wildly, Mitsuhide flung out, “Obi! How–how is he?”

“With Shirayuki,” she replied. “She believes he will make a full recovery.”

Mitsuhide sighed, shoulders slumping with relief. “Thank goodness,” he murmured. “I would never have forgiven myself if, after—” he swallowed, “ —after everything I…didn’t do…”

...

Kiki only looked at him with her inscrutable eyes, clear and opaque as polished stones.

Mitsuhide stared back, seeing himself reflected in them: all the craven cowardice and selfish regrets he had indulged in, absenting himself from where his real duty lay.

He had proved himself no knight at all, yet she … on that hot day before the hostile eyes of strangers, she had named him a champion of knights.

She had named him, claimed him, praised him — did that mean that she forgave him?

...

Mitsuhide shut his eyes tightly for a moment, feeling his heart in his throat. 

He dared to look — and there she was, cool and calm as ever, only waiting. 

“If Obi and Shirayuki are well,” he murmured, recalling Zen’s last words to him as clearly as if he read them from a letter, “then only one thing remains.”

...

He snapped to attention, ramrod straight. “Kiki!” 

Almost had he said, “Lady,” but her familiar name passed as easily and naturally from his lips as if he had known her all his life.

He pressed on, no stuttering or hesitation now, eyes bright with an earnestness that beamed from within. “Kiki, I swear to be by your side and care for you above all else, for all the years I live on this earth.”

...

Mitsuhide strode forward and knelt before her, raising his hand with its great callused palm open before her.

Face lifted, eyes fixed on hers, he asked:

“Will you have me?”

...

Mitsuhide had achieved something rare: he had surprised Kiki. 

At first she only blinked at him, her face softer than usual with eyes wide and lips forming a soundless “o”.

They gazed at each other, Mitsuhide erect and wound tight as a spring, she gentled by bemusement.

...

Then Kiki’s eyelids lowered, and her slight smile returned.

Directing her gaze to the horizon, she said only, “We’ll see.”

Mitsuhide deflated as if she had stuck a pin in him. “Oh. You–we–”

...

“My father should be consulted,” Kiki continued, restored to imperturbability, “and perhaps Prince Izana, given the unusual circumstances.”

Recollecting that he had spoken without first applying for the restoration of knighthood, Mitsuhide buried his face in his hands. 

“I am an idiot,” he muttered. 

Kiki nodded, tranquil.

...

He gripped his head silently, and then his shoulders shook. A low rumble sounded — and broke into a chuckle.

When Mitsuhide looked up, he was laughing.

Kiki tilted her head and smiled back, almost surprised for the second time.

He rose, brushing off his knees absently. “Yes,” he said, “let’s see. That is enough for now.”

...

Stepping forward, Mitsuhide took Kiki’s hand, palm to palm, letting their fingers intertwine. 

He knows that hand, knows its strength and its skill. Somehow, as different as it is from his own, the two fit together as if they were made that way: one space curving into the other.

He smiles down at Kiki, feeling happier than he has since the war, at the thought of staying exactly like this: side by side, hand in hand, until they are too gray to fight in any battles and only gaze out over a peaceful land.

As for Kiki, she smiles her inscrutable smile and makes no objections.

[traditional-with-a-twist]

lxxii. Beauty and Her Beast

<<Previous || first arc || second arc || third arc || fourth arc || AO3 || Next>>

After an interminable season of waiting, fate has delivered him into her arms — at the end of an arrowhead.

Shirayuki threw herself onto the ground beside Obi.

For a moment she bowed over him, cradling his face in her hands.

Their foreheads touched as she breathed in, filling herself with the certainty of his presence. She had him back. Whatever else had or would happen, that was true.

...

For that moment, it was enough – enough simply to be beside him again, to know he was near.

How she had longed – hoped, doubted, feared – for this moment that so often seemed impossible.

She had him back … but he was slipping away from her again, even now.

...

Shirayuki lifted her head. Her face was bloodless, but her hands were steady as she set to work.

First, open the airways. Her nimble fingers extracted the knot from the cloth gag, freeing his voice at last.

Then she unwound the scarf from her shoulders and, with quick, sharp jerks of her wrist, began tearing it into strips.

Obi sighed, and her heart stuttered.

She had thought him unconscious, but he was rousing now, slits of gold showing beneath his dark lashes.

His lips moved and formed around a sound: “Shirayuki…”

For the first time, her hands shook.

She bit her lip, willing herself to stay calm. She had so few supplies, such limited knowledge of treating fresh wounds, but there was no one else.

She must help him now, in these precious minutes while he teetered on a knife’s edge between life and death, or she would lose him again – forever.

Obi was smiling hazily at her. “You’re safe,” he said simply.

...

Somehow, this was true. Shirayuki was not aware of anyone or anything else at that moment, but she knew Kiki must be nigh, because no danger threatened, not even from the rough crowd.

Nothing and no one disturbed them as she fetched out her roll of herbs and began to smear ointments on the roughmade bandages.

Setting these at the ready, she laid one hand over Obi’s heart.

With the other, Shirayuki reached for the arrow.

...

Long brown fingers closed around her wrist, forcing her to a halt.

Even half-conscious as he was, Obi restrained her easily. “Don’t,” he whispered.

She stared at him.

His mouth quirked, attempting a smile. “Leave it,” Obi said softly. “It’s better this way.”

His head sank back as he spoke; he was breathing rapidly.

...

Would things get better for them than this? Obi didn’t think so. 

He had fulfilled his purpose – he had protected her one last time. This way, he couldn’t ruin things for her again, couldn’t turn life sour.

She would have no further obligations to him; she would be free to be happy. Even the master couldn’t complain about that.

Obi held her hand against his chest and felt the relief of it all, the gift, if only she would see it that way.

...

His meaning sank in. Shirayuki’s eyes narrowed. Then she slapped his hand away.

With all her strength, she had knocked it aside, flinging it from hers.

“Don’t move your arm,” Shirayuki rapped out. “You’ll lose more blood.”

Obi was staring, dazed to find himself on the receiving end of her glare.

“Misss…” he mumbled, slurring the end of the word so that she could not make out exactly which title he gave her. “You…”

He started to laugh, but sagged, eyes rolling back.

Shirayuki set her jaw and planted the heel of her palm against his chest once more.

Seizing the arrow shaft, she heaved.

...

At the roofline, looking down on the scene, Umihebi had watched only long enough to see her enemy fall limp again.

Now she threw back her head in a scream of victory, cackling with glee.

She had him in the end — for every man has his weakness, and there is no armor without its chink.

As for the girl with the red hair, she would see his lifeblood run out even as she labored to save him —and know her own helplessness.

...

Umihebi was still chuckling to herself when something cool and thin slipped around her throat.

It tightened.

Umihebi’s triumph strangled to silence. Her hands scrabbled desperately, uselessly at the cord, then dropped to her waist for a weapon.

A blow to the small of her back sent her to her knees instead.

Powerless as a marionette, under just enough pressure to control without choking her, Umihebi followed the imperative of the cord to the windowsill.

...

Below, the lady knight had freed her bright-haired partner, and the two of them stood back to back over the pair on the ground.

A voice spoke in Umihebi’s ear: “Call them off. All of them.”

It was a woman’s voice, low and husky, but full of menace. If she had doubted whether the speaker meant business, the accompanying twist of the cord would have sufficed to clear all  uncertainty.

Umihebi coughed and choked, but the pressure lessened only enough for her to gargle acquiescence.

Raising a tiny round mirror sewn into her sleeve, Umihebi flashed the signal for retreat.

...

“Very good,” said her captor, as the ranks of pirates began to break up in confusion. “Now I think you have some guests.”

The tramp of boots and a heavy hand on her shoulder completed the net enmeshing Umihebi. 

The cord slid away, but now the room was full of the city guards. “You,” grunted their leader, “are under arrest.”

Umihebi whipped around to see her archer sprawled in the corner where he should have been standing guard.

...

A woman with long burnished hair skipped back out of reach and gave her a wave.

She wore the local dress so effortlessly, a look otherwise incongruous with her coloring and face, that she could only have been a spy or an outlaw.

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance at last, O Captain!” she trilled, and then she was gone.

...

Down below, Shirayupki was knotting the last bandage. Obi had not roused when she removed the arrow, which frightened her more than the wound itself.

Scrubbing the perspiration from her eyes, she bent over him again. She smoothed the hair back from his forehead, wishing she could brush his pain away as easily.

Then she remembered herself and felt for his pulse instead. It fluttered weakly beneath her fingers, faint and erratic.

“Oh, Obi…”

His skin tinged green under the relentless sun — this was no place for him to rest and heal.

“Shirayuki.” 

She raised her head at the familiar voice. “Mitsuhide?”

...

He stood over her, Kiki next to him, looking so much more like themselves now that they were side by side again, tears filled her eyes.

“We’ll help you,” Kiyki said simply, and Mitsuhide knelt down beside her.

As he lifted Obi from the ground, a strange look of pain seized his features. Shirayuki wondered at it, for he rose effortlessly, supporting Obi’s lanky frame, but his face was that of a man in torment.

Faltering, she moved to speak, but Mitsuhide closed his eyes.

...

He was standing on a different battlefield, on green grass, holding the limp body of another friend.

Zen, he thought, my prince. This time…

He looked down on Obi, felt Shirayuki at his right hand, and Kiki on his left. This time, Mitsuhide swore silently, I won’t fail you.

[traditional-with-a-twist]

lxxi. Beauty and Her Beast

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Trust the Crab to foul up even what was in his own interest.

Umihebi had ensured that it would be to her old associate’s benefit to serve her on this occasion. She had made a business of such transactions (with and without the other party’s knowledge) in her old trade of human flesh.

Many a sale had satisfied a client by burying an enemy of hers — or, more often, her enemy’s daughter.

Today’s affair, insofar as she had intended it, had promised much the same, with only slight variations on the theme.

Her maneuvers had cost the Crab some property damage, but that was fair trade for the trouble he had cost her — leaving her and her men little option but to flee in search of another bolthole, a new hideaway.

Besides, she had granted him the pleasure of venting his spleen on a most deserving target.

...

Umihebi enjoyed a little destruction, a little exercise of brute power now and then, though still sweeter was to make the threat and watch the fear it inspired. 

Then there was no doubt who held the reins — who was in control.

In this case, however, the sport of her vengeance paled in importance when compared with the consequences of the Crab’s anger.

She was relying on him to perform one last little service for her, to make her escape complete.

...

When evading pursuit, it was not choosing a secure stronghold nor selecting the slipperiest route that tipped the scales.

No, Umihebi could say from long experience that the game turned on covering your tracks.

It was not enough to vanish in the dead of night with all her men — she must ensure that no one could follow … on foot, on horseback, or with their tongues.

...

The Crab’s silence she had purchased long ago, but those two men, they who had taken a hand in robbing her of rule over the high seas – those she would see silenced permanently.

She would not run the risk of their wandering away, this side of the border or anywhere else, with wandering tales of a pirate queen gone astray on land.

She had set and baited a snare for them — arranged to bring them to the Crab’s attention in a way that could not be overlooked, first by flushing them from the hole into which they had so readily cast themselves.

They had all taken the bait magnificently, one after another. Nothing more obliging could be imagined.

...

The neatness of the plan exacted its price, however: now that Umihebi had forced them into the public eye, it became all the more essential to destory them before they could speak.

After her usual fashion, she had gambled it all on a make-or-break play. With stakes like that, she could not afford to trust blindly to an accomplice, no matter how carefully placed — particularly not an accomplice as oblivious and blundering as the Crab.

He would act in his own interest, of that she felt confident — but would he choose the surest means?

...

Umihebi gambled big, but she also provided herself with alternative means of escape: if not the seas, then whirlpools; if the vortexes failed, then she made for the caves.

She had guaranteed the success of today’s venture by the most straightforward of means: personal supervision.

The wisdom of this choice became immediately apparent when the women arrived. 

...

From her vantage point overlooking the square, Umihebi watched in disbelief deepening to amazement as the apple-haired girl once again materialized as if from thin air, right in the middle of her plans.

The court case unraveled. Her prey was slipping from her grasp.

When she saw the prisoners actually on the brink of release, and her chosen emissary too impotent to intervene, Umihebi waited no longer.

Without revealing her position, she signaled her men: “Attack!”

...

Exiled pirates oozed from the shadows: in the alleys, on the roofs, among the crowd, they emerged and unmasked.

A motley crew, they dressed in a ragged assortment of local robes and wrappings for camouflage, mixed with the leathers and metals more suited to their trade.

Ill-matching as they were, they converged on their target as one, with a predator’s instinct.

...

Kiki fell back at once, putting herself between Shirayukki and the crowd.

It was no real defense — she could not cover her friend from every direction, with hostiles advancing from all sides.

Kiki acted as much from instinct as stratagem: facing away from the tribunal, she stood with her back to Mitsuhide, and what could be safer?

...

She had drawn her sword from beneath her cloak, but not yet from its sheath. Kiki knew enough of this country’s laws to suspect that the authorities might not look kindly on a stranger baring a sword in the crowded square.

She wielded the flat instead, slamming the blunt hilt with merciless precision into anyone who pressed too near.

The melee was all confusion: the guards, divided between attack and retreat, had at last formed up around the tribunal’s elevated seat where they immediately clashed with the Crab’s retainers.

Panic-sticken bystanders pushed, punched, and screamed fear and insults as the pirates felled anyone who stood between them and the scaffolds.

...

“Kiki!” Shirayuki’s voice sounded in her ear. “Kiki, we have to help them!’

Kiki cast an unwilling glance back, expecting to see the hapless guards embroiled in some mischance, but her stomach dropped as she realied her mistake.

While she was sheltering Shirayuki, the remnants of the ambush had flanked her.

They swarmed the platform now, where Mitsuhide and Obi stood yet bound immobile.

...

The thugs kept a prudent distance, with due respect for Mitsuhide’s manacled fists, but their raised weapons left no doubt as to their intentions. 

Any moment now, Kiki knew, they would gather the initiative for a rush.

Her muscles tensed to spring to her partner’s side, but she hesitated.

She must not leave Shirayuki undefended.

...

The moment Kiki’s attention was divided, Umihebi’s hand chopped the air like a hatchet, summoning the archer she had held in reserve alongside her. 

“Shoot!”

...

Obi saw it all. 

He had barely spared a thought for the pirates menacing his position because he had fixed all remaining power of concentration on Shirayuki and the currents of danger that surrounded her.

With that infallible, almost superhuman sense that had made him a faultless personal guard, he felt the arrow before it was launched.

Eyes snapping to a partially concealed window, he twanged with the string and knew its trajectory. 

In less than a heartbeat, he acted.

...

If Obi’s hands had been free, he might have cut the arrow down mid-flight, but as it was, he would take the surest means of deflecting it from its intended target.

The shaft arced down, and Obi leaped, allowing the restraints to spin him around so that he stretched full-length, arms wrenched over his head in a tortured gymnastics.

He caught the arrow before it descended into the crowd, before it could touch the red-haired woman below.

...

It struck him under the arm, at an angle that sank deep into his chest.

The ropes anchoring him gave way, and Obi crashed to the ground before his wife, pale and still.

[traditional-with-a-twist]

lxx. Beauty and Her Beast

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She was even more beautiful than Obi had remembered her.

Her face glowed with the brilliance of her determination, that inner fire he had blamed himself for extinguishing through his ill-timed attentions.

To find himself now the focus of that radiance felt like stepping from night to day, directly into the heat of the sun.

A strange giddiness swept over him — the release of a burden he had grown accustomed to carrying. She was safe and, still better than that, she was herself.

...

Whatever he had done to her, the damage had been temporary; his poor judgment had not harmed her irrevocably.

Her beauty, her passion — he saw again what had captivated him from the first, that contradiction of so much strength in so small a frame.

Then, before his reason had fully grasped the significance of her appearance, what it must mean for him, for her, for everyone involved, he felt anew his yearning for her.

Without conscious thought, his being inclined towards hers; she drew him like a magnet. That hadn’t changed either.

His lips moved to form her name, but the sound was buried in the rough cloth enforcing his silence.

...

Then his mind caught up with him, and Obi remembered.

The trial, the captivity, the accusations all came back to him.

He remembered where they were, what he was doing there — why she, by all means, must not be here, too.

Little enough protection could he offer her, even if he had not been bound and gagged, surrounded as they were by a none-too-friendly crowd, in the midst of a foreign land famed for its harshness, faced with an aggrieved and powerful personage.

As it was, she had followed him into the lion’s mouth.

...

Hot on the heels of yearning came the sense of mission that had become instinct — then life itself — the drive to defend, protect, keep her safe.

Obi had pushed himself too far, however.

His mind buzzed, but his thoughts were fuzzy: no clear plan presented itself to him, only an anxiety rendered painful by the accompanying sense of impotence.

He must – he could not – but what?

His thoughts chased themselves in incoherent fragments, dizzy with mingled purpose and immobility.

...

The scope of his vision had shrunk to Shirayuki, like a spotlight in a darkened theater, but it expanded now, wavering and blurring at the edges like an out-of-focus lens.

She stood before the platform, hood thrown back, fierce eyes fixed on the judges set to decide his fate, and the magistrate bent forward to address her.

“Madame,” he began, his tone cold though not discourteous, “I fear you have arrived too late. These men stand condemned for arson and sabotage, deliberate destruction of property. It falls now to this tribunal to decree the manner of their punishment.”

...

“It cannot be,” Shirayuki answered, conviction unwavering. “They would never do such a thing. I know them, and I swear to their innocence!”

The magistrate spread his hands in a deprecating gesture. Something about Shirayuki had arrested him, and he seemed almost regretful as he replied, “A thousand pardons, madame, but according to our laws, the testimony of a single witness may not stand before the judgment seat. This honorable merchant and all his household have spoken against them—” 

He nodded to the accuser, who watched with beady eyes, gaze flickering from Shirayuki to the tribunal and back again. “Curses be upon us if we were to deny him justice, when none but you would speak in their favor.”

“I speak for them.”

A new voice broke in clear, cultivated, controlled. Its very calmness commanded attention, as its owner made herself known: fair and slight, the snowdrop to Shirayuki’s red rose, Kiki bared her face before the court.

...

“I witness,” she called out above the crowd. “I testify to the character of these men.”

The magistrate sat back, eyes hooded and expression impenetrable. After a long silence, he said only, “Your name?”

“I am Kiki Seiran,” she declared. “I serve the Crown of Clarines, as do they.”

...

At this, the tribunal exchanged glances. “Servants of the crown,” the magistrate repeated. “I beg of the ladies to name these men before the court.”

Inclining her head, Kiki returned, “The dark-haired man is Obi, heir to the Haruka earldom.”

The words struck like a wave, rocking the judges in their seats and rushing through the crowd. Visibly unsettled, the chief magistrate spoke sharply, “And the other?”

Kiki turned her head and looked straight into the eyes of her partner-in-arms. “Sir Mitsuhide Lowen,” she answered simply, “is the bravest knight I know.”

...

The judges fell to muttering amongst themselves, and the noise of the crowd – unchecked by authority or spectacle — swelled to a roar.

Kiki and Shirayuki stood unruffled in the midst of it all, radiant in their confidence like a lighthouse in the storm. 

The accuser had found his voice, and he was urging something, haranguing, perhaps in his own tongue, or perhaps Obi’s ears could simply comprehend no more.

...

He could spare a thought for Mitsuhide — wonder if his friend felt as dumb and deaf, powerless to move as Obi did — but mostly his mind was taken up with this thought: She had come for him, and he had not deserved it.

Somehow that seemed more important than everything else, though he knew not what to do about it. He could only think it, over and over, while his eyes drank in the sight of her like a parched land receives the rain.

She was gazing at him steadily, holding him in her eyes like a lake holds the moonlight, and he might have drowned there – except that something drew her gaze away.

...

The chief magistrate was signaling for silence, and a short blast on a trio of horns followed when the crowd did not attend.

“In light of further evidence,” the magistrate began. 

A howl from the plaintiff drowned out the rest.

“Silence!” the magistrate roared, his mouth an angry square. The merchant subsided, quivering with suppressed rage.

“In light of further evidence,” boomed the chief magistrate, unassailable now in his awful authority, ‘the judgment is stayed. The prisoners will submit to further questioning.”

He signaled the guards with a lifted finger. “Remove them.”

...

Obi saw more than heard this decision, because he was watching Shirayuki’s face.

When the set, fierce look melted into delight, he knew that she had won her point – as she always did.

The guards had surrounded him and Mitsuhide now; someone was fitting a key into the locks that secured them to the platform.

...

Ahead, a commotion broke out. Dark shapes had arisen from the rooftops. They descended now into the crowd, swinging down from their perches to the square below.

More guards, Obi’s brain surmised, struggling to make sense of the unexpected while laboring under the repeated shocks of exhaustion, injury, and whatever the word was for what Shirayuki had just done for and to him.

He understood the advancing shapes as military – armed and dangerous – but it was not until the first arrow flew that his brain substituted the correct assessment: 

Ambush.

[traditional-with-a-twist]

lxix. Beauty and Her Beast

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Obi knew he had been outmaneuvered, but he was just beginning to realize how thoroughly. 

He and Mitsuhide stood side by side on a raised wooden platform, above the heads of the attentive crowd, below the stern looks of the robed men presiding over them.

Their seats, draped in heavy blues that hung all the way to the ground, elevated them to a position of unquestionable authority over the scene.

Likewise, the placement of their accuser left little doubt as to which party might safely expect more favor from the court.

...

Red and shiny-faced, with nervous, twitching fingers, the aggrieved leveled his charges from amidst a pile of silken cushions.

Although not so lofty as the judges, he, too, might address the prisoners from a superior height, as he reclined on a litter borne by four brawny servants of a size with Mitsuhide.

The gold twining of ribbonlike script down the chair’s gilt panels, the still gaudier rings winking from his waving hands, left Obi in no doubt that they had offended a very important personage indeed.

...

As for himself and Mitsuhide, they wore still the clothes in which they had escaped the cellar: still filthy and torn, begrimed still further by smoke, which the dunk in the fountain had not amended much.

Again, their hands were bound behind their backs.

To this ensemble, their new captors had added but one innovation: gags, tied firmly over mouth and nose.

Meanwhile, the mouth of the merchant — for thus Obi judged him, based on the absence of official insignia or ceremonial dress to weight his ostentatious wealth with the gravitas of authority – snapped open and shut like a fish trap, raining complaints and curses.

...

The Crab was apoplectic.

His splendid home in ruins – he interrupted himself often to reel off figures estimating the cost of damages – all the fault of these two foreigners — here he stopped to harangue the border guards for neglecting their duties so miserably as to allow two savage criminals into the very heart of their city — and on it went, with the crowd supplying jeers and oaths to punctuate the tirade.

In truth, the Crab did believe Obi and Mitsuhide responsible. Umihebi had left him precious little choice in reaching this conclusion.

She and her men were nowhere to be found in the smoldering wreckage, only these strangers dragged sodden from the gardens.

A burglary gone awry — an elaborate act of espionage turned sabotage? Whatever story stuck, the Crab would paint it for them.

...

He could scarcely admit to the truth: that he had seen the pair allowed on his premises before his very eyes, under the auspices of a notorious criminal and offender wanted across their lands, their neighbors’, and who knew how many beyond the seas.

He knew all too well that his old pirating associate had triggered an international incident, such as his fatherland had not known for many decades, with the Kingdom of Tanbarun.

Even now, heated negotiations were ongoing, the tension only heightened by the fact that law enforcement in neither realm had succeeded in laying a hand on her since her escape.

...

The Crab had thus far avoided any involvement in the investigations, by dint of precautionary measures taken long ago to bury any hint of his connections with the pirate queen, so deep that even the dead might forget them.

A good deal of his rage owed to the fear of exposure, made a sudden and terrifying possibility by the questions that this disaster had raised.

There was only one obvious solution that recommended itself to the Crab. He wanted the suspects dead – now, at once, before they could open their mouths and throw all into confusion with their own accounts of not just the fire, but how they had come to enter his compound in the first place.

Guilty, innocent — he did not trouble himself overly with the details, so long as they did not live to see the next day dawn.

...

As for Obi, the mindless rage of his fight through the house had subsided.

Like a berserker, it must overwhelm all opposition to claim the victory in its first flush of passion, or else subside into cooler calculations.

Umihebi’s threat ran like an undercurrent of electricity through all Obi’s thoughts, but it would avail him nothing to flash out now, when the crowd might pull to pieces whatever remained of him and Mitsuhide after the guards had finished with them.

There would be no element of surprise, no accessible means of escape. Even the roofs overlooking the square were set back too far to reach in a single leap.

Obi concentrated on these details to keep himself present, sane, patient.

...

He cast a glance at his companion, endeavoring to assess his state of mind.

Obi remembered only brilliant impressions of his action in the cellar, the fire, but he knew that something had turned inside the knight.

It seemed to be a lasting change, whatever had happened. Mitusihed looked grim, as unsmiling as he had since the war broke out (not that the circumstances merited mirth), but there was something different.

That deadness had left him — the stupor clouding his eyes and bowing his shoulders.

He looked grim, but alert, and he stood tall in his bonds, regarding their accuser with that refined distaste peculiar to Mitsuhide’s class of warrior.

...

Obi could not guess whether Mitsuhide’s thought tended at all towards escape, but he did believe he could trust to the knight’s old instincts; if he made a move, Mitsuhide would follow.

...

Their window of opportunity was fast vanishing, however.

The chief of the magistrates had lifted his hand to stem the flow of invective. “The council has heard the words of your complaint, O prosperous one,” he intoned. “Now await our decision in peace.”

The merchant subsided, with much flourishing of the hands, though Obi noticed that his fingers still curled inwards at the tips, as if longing to seize someone by the throat.

...

The magistrate directed his gaze to Obi  and Mitsuhide, raising his right hand so that the heavy signet ring he wore flashed in the sun. 

“By virtue of the powers vested in this most noble office,” he boomed, “I declare—”

“Stop!”

The command rang out in a clear, unmistakable voice, and Obi’s heart obeyed before his brain could understand it.

He didn’t breathe, didn’t think – only watched as a tiny figure broke free of the crowd and stood before the magistrates.

If there was anything remarkable about her, it was in the erectness of her stance, her unshakeable assurance as she held herself an island against the sea of hostility.

“Stop!” she called again. “These men are innocent!”

...

The chief magistrate had recovered himself; he made an impatient gesture to the guards. “How dare you interrupt these most solemn proceedings, you –”

Before he could finish, she lowered her hood.

A wealth of red tumbled out, tresses that shone in the midday sun like rubies.

Shock rippled through the crowd, then whispers, as those in front turned to report the wonder to their disbelieving neighbors.

The magistrate lowered his hand. In a very different tone, he asked, “Who are you?”

...

Shiraypuki turned and looked directly into Obi’s eyes. 

Her green shone at him like spring, emerging at long last from the frost. 

In a sweet, carrying voice, she answered, “I am his wife.”

[traditional-with-a-twist]

lxviii. Beauty and Her Beast

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It did Shirayuki's heart good to know that she tread at last on paths that Obi had lately walked.

Though the land and people were strange to her, she trusted that he was near, and the thought comforted her.

Here all the women covered their hair, so even Kiki and Torou went veiled.

She found herself for the first time anonymous among a sea of anonymity; as much as the thought of finding Obi grounded her, this unfamiliar likeness rendered everything unreal, dreamlike. 

She walked somewhere between waking and dreaming: eager, unsure, alert yet as if regarding it all from the other side of the mirror, or through a curtain of water.

...

Traveling with Torou as their guide, they covered ground at a logic-defying pace, even with considerations taken for Shirayuki.

Kiki never objected to their route, more off-trail than on, nor did she murmur when they crossed the border without showing papers of any kind that Shirayuki detected.

When she ventured a doubt about this proceeding to Kiki, wondering uneasily whether it might not be right to follow the proper procedures in a foreign land, to say nothing of whether – after entering in this fashion – they might find it more difficult to exit the way they came in, but the lady knight answered only, “It is better not to give your name where it may be noticed, Shirayuki.”

For her part, Shirayuki could not help but notice that Kiki never gave her name either.

In this respect, they were again fortunate in having Torou as their traveling companion because – like Obi – she had many names.

...

It surprised Shirayuki how much Obi’s old friend recalled him to her.

In any multitude of ways, the two differed from each other as night and day, yet she again and again spied in her some like mannerism: a quickness in Torou’s step, a sly tilt of her head, and above all how she was as impossible to pin down as shade flitting across an open field.

She longed to ask Torou of their past, now that she had a more binding interest and greater claim to him than that wet night when she, Zen, Kiki, and Mitsuhide had tracked the pair to that manor.

Then Shirayuki would never have thought of pressing, when Obi was only just beginning to find himself at home among them, but now that they had promised themselves to each other, she felt an especial tenderness in seeking out all she could of him – even memories.

...

Torou, however, melted away before inquiries on this front, as surely as Obi himself might have. 

“Hm, Obi?” she would say. “Oh, he was wild back then…” and then somehow she would be speaking of summer fashions and had Shirayuki seen the hair scarves they wore on the coasts?

Shirayuki cherished the feelings of others too much to pry when she met resistance.

This disappointment did little to dampen her spirits, however. She might make little headway on Obi’s past, but she could finally press forward to their future together, and her heart sang to find it so near.

...

Kiki did not share this optimism. She had warned Shirayuki all along that they intended to undertake a task with a promise of success more mythical than probable.

Since commencing, they had only encountered more complications.

Yes, Torou had provided vital information, and, yes, her considerable talents had leveled the playing field by granting them firsthand access to that world of the underground.

Nevertheless, to offset these gains, they contended with two unforeseen difficulties: first, the question of Shirayuki’s health, which brooked no compromise.

Second, Obi’s trail had led them to an unknown land, where Kiki lacked all experience.

She suspected even Torou knew little of this place and its customs, however deftly she had arranged for their little party to enter and disguise themselves.

One might intuit much after a life of infiltration and concealment, engaging with the borderlands, but it did not substitute for intimate firsthand knowledge of a locale and its customs.

...

Of these, Kiki knew only enough to be wary. She felt keenly her own inexperience as they threaded their way through a crowd, so like and unlike the market where Torou had found them.

Here the bareheaded would have attracted notice: most everyone covered their hair if not their faces: caps, wraps, and veils, as much to shield skin from the pitiless sun as for the sake of fashion or convention.

The loose, draping attire might conceal any number of weapons in the folds – a factor that convenienced Kiki as much as it vexed her, since she carried her own blade strapped beneath her robe.

This, too, she felt, might have been more difficult had they taken a more conventional border crossing. As it was, she kept close by Shirayuki’s side, knowing herself hampered in reaction speed, besides the challenge of spotting the threat in time.

Continuously, she scanned the crowd, keeping meanwhile half an ear open to the stream of calling, chattering, shouting that emanated from the crowd. 

It was impossible to pick out distinctive words or even voices, but Kiki was not listening to understand.

...

She listened for the difference itself: changes in the patterns; disturbances, rupture, even silence. These would be her cues — her warning to prime herself for action, because something was amiss.

Likewise, she watched the currents of movement, alert to any sudden changes in speed, angle, direction.

Thus she noticed long before Shirayuki that something had caught Torou’s attention.

...

Their erstwhile new companion had been meandering through the crowd, moving as leisurely as it is possible to move when elbow to elbow with a press of humanity.

Suddenly she redirected her steps, advancing in a straight line now, purposeful.

Kiki touched Shirayuki’s elbow, urging her after, and the two of them pushed to keep up.

...

Torou had halted before a broad scaffolding erected near the middle of the marketplace.

Papers of every shape and color fluttered, nailed to its wooden legs: a noticeboard, Kiki imagined.

She followed the line of Torou’s gaze to a heavy parchment, pinned dead center and crowding out many of its smaller neighbors.

Kiki’s eyes narrowed as she tried to puzzle out the script. 

...

Shirayukki turned to Torou, who stood stock still, staring at the notice.

“What is it?” Shirayuki asked. A thought struck her; she brightened, her whole attitude lifting as she flushed with hope. “Is it —”

“An order of execution,” Torou interrupted. 

The name Shirayuki had been about to speak died on her lips. All her color bleached away as quickly as it had come.

“On charges of trespassing…and arson,” Torou read, forming the words slowly but surely.

Kiki had given up trying to read and simply looked at her, waiting.

“The culprits: two foreign men.”

Kiki’s brow furrowed.

“One scarred and unnamed,” Torou went on. “The other…a servant of Clarines.”

“Two men?” Kiki repeated, disbelieving.

...

Shirayuki had recovered her voice. She came forward and clung to Torou’s arm, eyes beseeching. 

“When? When?” she whispered.

Torou would not look at her. From the paper she read, “Noon. Tomorrow.”

[traditional-with-a-twist]

Sunset Snowfall

Takari Week 2024 - Day 7: Seventh Beginning

@takariweek

It’s a very cold winter evening. Kari is shivering as she walks home. The sun is almost set, and she knows that Tai will be worried if it gets dark before she makes it home. She takes a shortcut through the market. All the shops are closed for the night, the stalls folded up and taken away. 

Snow starts to fall. The hush makes Kari’s skin prickle. Maybe she feels like something is off. Or a sense of anticipation? Maybe she feels like it should be peaceful but she’s too worried about getting home to enjoy it and she’s a little sad about that? 

As she’s cutting through the market, she passes an out-of-the-way shop that she’s never noticed before. Her eyes catch on the wolf statue sitting in front of it. The snow has left a fine dusting of white on its back and head. It looks sad and lonely there in the snow. 

Kari’s heart goes out to the poor statue. It’s a beautiful piece, so lifelike that it really does remind of an animal huddled alone in the elements. She wants to do something for it.

It just seems right to take her own scarf and wrap it around the wolf’s neck. It seems to help; the statue looks less pitiful now. Kari brushes the snow off its head for good measure. 

She leans down to peer at its face, captivated by its soulful eyes, and realizes that she can barely see it in the deepening darkness. 

She starts upright. Calling out a quick apology and goodbye, she lifts the hem of her kimono and starts to run, trying to keep up with the last of the daylight.

[traditional-with-a-twist]

Noontime Congress

Takari Week 2024 - Day 6: Sixth Ending

@takariweek

Kari and T.K stay close to each other, but Tai and the enormous wolf stand at opposite ends of the room. The red-haired girl stands between them, looking concerned. Tai demands to know why they’re here. The girl introduces herself as Sora and assures him that she’ll explain everything.

The wolves are dying out, Sora informs them. Not the normal wolves, but the special ones that have minds like men and live long lives. Her mother has been a friend to the wolves for a long time, but they have forgotten her over the generations as the situation grew worse. 

For some reason, Matt and T.K. caught her attention when they were born. Maybe because of the strong bond between them? She decided to intervene. T.K. was sickly and wouldn’t have survived to full adulthood, so Sora’s mother enchanted him, turning him into a statue until she could find a way to save him. 

She didn’t expect Kari to break the enchantment or for T.K. to become human when she did. His transformation restored his health. Maybe Kari is from a special bloodline and that’s why her scarf had that effect? I’m leaning towards it just being something special about Kari, though. 

T.K. is very surprised by all of this. He knew he felt different, but he couldn’t remember enough about being a wolf that he realized he’d changed. 

Sora explains that the wolves are traditionally led by a pair of brother wolves, and that losing that was part of what caused the wolves to decline. By preserving T.K., her mother hoped that Matt and T.K. could grow up to lead the wolves together and begin a restoration. 

I feel like the wolves should have some important role that makes them worth restoring but I have no idea what that is other than guarding something, maybe a treasure. 

Now that T.K. is no longer sickly, he needs to return to his brother and lead the wolves with him. Kari is dismayed to hear this. She doesn’t want to lose him. T.K. also seems distressed and torn. He takes Kari’s hand and asks, “But what about Kari?” 

Sora looks sad. She tells T.K. that, if he stays human, the wolves will be gone in a generation or two. 

Tai looks annoyed and asks why it has to be one or the other. T.K. became human once, can’t he do it again even if he goes back to being a wolf for a little while?

Sora is surprised, then thoughtful. Kari feels hope rise up and smiles at her brother as T.K. squeezes her hand. 

“Then I’ll go back,” T.K. decides. He looks at Kari. “But not forever.”

[traditional-with-a-twist]

lxvii. Beauty and Her Beast

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For Obi, all the doubts had burned away.

He had said to Shirayuki once that he could not help her understand as Zen could —he would bring the prince to her instead. Zen could clear away doubts impenetrable to Obi; he saw through it all, straight and clear down the path ahead to the sunlit lands that lay beyond.

Now Obi saw it, too.

No longer did he feel himself adrift, without purpose or direction except what he set for himself, secure only in the knowledge that he could not be trusted. Just when they had all thought themselves abandoned, and none perhaps more so than Obi, Zen had bequeathed this parting vision.

For the first time since his master had ridden away, and the army of Clarines had returned home without him, the way forward was made clear to Obi.

The only question now was how to get there.

This guiding light – charged by the threat of imminent danger – revived all Obi’s prodigious energies to concentrate on a single point: stop the sea snake before she could hurt Shirayuki.

...

With this single-mindedness of purpose, he threw himself again and again against his bonds, muscle against the cords, bone on steel, until he felt the ring that bound him to the wall begin to give way.

All this time, Mitsuihed sat motionless. His body hunched in on itself, immobile, but his mind was churning. He heard his friend’s struggles as if from a long way distant, strangely muted.

Metal clanged on stone as Obi wrenched himself free. The victory stayed him not an instant – he sprang to the door and pounded iit with the same ferocity as his chains, his energies unspent.

Obi was hammering at the door, and their faces were hammering in Mitsuhide’s head: Kiki… Shirayuki… they were in danger.

Mitsuhide wanted to help them; in his soul of souls, he yearned for their happiness and well-being. He would have given anything for that – but he shrank from the connected thought: that day on the battlefield, Zen’s blood running into the grass, and his own empty hands – shaped to wield a sword in the defense of his prince’s life, yet helpless against that red flow, powerless to save him.

Perhaps it was better not to try than to fail, when that failure might cost the ones you loved best, nothing short of everything.

...

The door burst open, but beyond it — a staircase full of armed men.

They fell upon Obi with wild yells, bearing him backwards over the threshold as inexorably as a wave.

Even had he not suffered from every deprivation and abuse as a prisoner, to say nothing of his long stretch of relentless, self-inflicted maltreatment while journeying alone, Obi would have been at a disadvantage, fighting in doors at close quarters.

As Itoya had discovered firsthand, Obi exercised the full extent of his powers in the forests, among the trees.

The boundless spaces, with their multitude of possibilities for concealment, gave full play to his abilities: the hurtling speed, lightning strikes, crushing force.

Inside four walls, he was more easily hemmed in, crowded and outflanked by his opponents. Now, in the heaving press of assailants struggling to subdue him, he was slowly folding under their weight.

...

Mitsuhide rose. Ahead of him, a guard raised a club over Obi’s head. The blow descended —and broke. 

It had struck a broad shoulder, interposed between.

For a moment, the fighting stilled. Towering above the other men in that close, dark room, Mitsuhide spoke: “There are things in the past that I wish I had done…but there is more in the future that I still wish to do.”

His eyes met Obi's: steady, clear brown against the wild gold with dilated pupil. "I'm here,” Mitsuhide said simply.

With a strangled yell, the guards closed to battle again, but now the odds swung against them.

Fighting back to back, Mitsuhide and Obi bore down the hail of blows, forcing the guards away, to either side, like a prow cleaving the waves.

...

Mitsuhide struck with a grim determination, face set, one eye always on his friend, for Obi flung himself into the brawl with an abandon heedless of his own safety. More than once, Mitsuhide intervened to turn aside a hit that must surely have incapacitated him – if it were possible to halt the raw drive that consumed Obi with his mindless purpose.

Mitsuhide almost envied him that unfettered instinct – he felt himself slow and dull, his power blunted by a long season of no training more strenuous than the cross-country pace of a courier in saddle.

He had forsaken the way of the sword, and it had forsaken him. He would have reproached himself bitterly for this in turn, but the mad throng left little space for reflection.

It was all the work of elbows and fists: rusty as he was, Mitsuhide relied more than ever on his superior bulk.

Their attackers, repulsed to the point that they felt themselves defending against the onslaught, wrestled all the more frantically as the prisoners neared the top of the stairs, but now even the support of the walls failed them in the containment effort.

Only the open air beckoned, and Mitsuhide and Obi would not be denied.

They burst into the hall — and found the house in chaos.

...

For the first time, Obi paused. Adrenaline may have pushed him beyond thought, but a sense far deeper than consciousness warned him something was amiss – something too costly to ignore. 

A moment later, Mitsuhide smelled smoke.

He gripped Obi’s arm, trying to recall his friend to himself. Eyes darting this way and that, Obi met his gaze only reluctantly and obliquely at that.

“The windows,” Mitsuhide shouted above the din. “The windows!”

Regardless of whether Obi heard him or understood, he surged forward in much the way Mitsuhide had hoped. A haze now clogged the air; both men bent low as they ran, their height no longer serving them in good stead.

At least the estate’s staff had grasped the greater danger and paid them no attention —too frantic in their cries and desperate attempts to organize some defense against the flames that now licked at the walls.

The first window Mitsuhide and Obi found answered them with blackened glass, the gardens beyond completely obscured with smoke.

...

Mitsuhide reached out to turn Obi back, but he had already wheeled around and plunged once more into the corridor. Following, Mitsuhide struck his foot against a step. He stumbled and corrected; they were running on stairs — below, the heat grown intolerable; above, a gamble in the dark.

Obi cut left — the floor had leveled out again — and Mitsuhide followed. 

They emerged onto a balcony, its fluted bowl clinging to the walls like a flowing vine. 

Brilliantly orange serpents were devouring the ornamental trees below, blackening their pale stone paths.

Only the central fountain had escaped the conflagration. It shone a glassy, sapphire blue, a pool of tranquility in the sooty, sparking mess. 

Obi’s whole body had angled that way, his gaze fixed, his muscles coiling to spring.

...

For a breath, Mitsuhide remembered he was mortal. 

Then they jumped.

[traditional-with-a-twist]

lxvi. Beauty and Her Beast

<<Previous || first arc || second arc || third arc || fourth arc || AO3 || Next>>

Shirayuki was counting out coins to pay for the herbs when Kiki moved.

Suddenly she stood between Shirayuki and the crowd, with the apothecary’s counter at their backs. Shirayuki caught her breath, pulse quickening at the forewarning of violence.

She glanced towards the herbs arrayed behind her — their vendor looking around in confusion — there were pepper dusts and sneezing agents and many other irritants that would cause enough discomfort to hamper an enemy, but how to warn Kiki or any of the bystanders?

It wasn’t worth the risk of harming her friend, or other innocents, by accident.

Instead Shirayuki gripped the lacing of her hood and prepared to run.

...

She was just tall enough — she peeked over Kiki’s shoulder and saw the source of the disturbance.

A tall curvy woman with gleaming hair stood grinning at them, barely an arm’s length away. She set both hands on her hips, showing off her ample figure and also showing her empty hands –not that they would be far from grasping a weapon, should she hold it concealed somewhere about her generous sash or the wide belt beneath it.

Her posture bespoke confidence, but not a threat; Shirayuki felt herself relax fractionally.

...

Kiki, however, kept her guard up. She had not drawn her weapon —to do so would risk inciting panic in the crowded marketplace, to say nothing of the legal action that might follow if she could not show proper cause — but she maintained a fighting stance, angled with one foot back, and she rested her hand on the hilt of her sword.

When the woman didn’t speak, only smiled, Kiki shifted as if to draw her charge away.

“Wait,” Shirayuki broke out suddenly. “Kiki, wait—we know her!”

The stranger, now recognized, crinkled her eyes into crescents of delight. “The lady remembers,” she purred.

Kiki made no gesture of assent, only kept her gaze fixed on the other woman.

...

Indeed, it was not likely that she could have forgotten such a face, under such circumstances as Shirayuki now recalled — the inn, the dinner, the teasing, the empty bed, the dark manor, the crash in the trees, the open wound.

Had she forgotten, though, that key point — the most important detail?

“Kiki,” Shirayuki persisted. “She knows Obi!”

“Ah,” said the woman, with a knowing tilt of her head. “So you’re the one he’s running from.”

. . .

Kiki bought them all drinks at the tavern: cider, hot and spiced.

If Torou would have preferred stronger stuff, she made no mention of it, kept her complaints to herself. 

Traces of wildness clung to her, even as they did to Obi, and Shirayuki looked at her with mingled hope and yearning.

Torou was the closest link to him that Shirayuki had found in what felt like an interminably long time, the nearest chance they had of finding him.

For the moment, however, she was playing coy.

...

“Mmmm…” Torou drained her mug. “You do know how to eat, you knightly people! Ah, but what’s happened to your friend – the tall handsome one? Now, him, I wouldn’t have minded seeing again…”

“He is unavailable,” said Kiki, impassive.

Torou heaved a sigh. “Too bad…but what would two fine ladies like yourselves want with a ne’er-do-well like that Obi?” 

She winked.

Shirayuki looked back steadily. Without blush or stammer, she said, “He is my husband.”

...

Torou, for all her arts and all her experience, could not keep her composure so well.

She blanched.

“Your… you mean…” Her mouth opened wide, hesitating between a laugh and a gape of astonishment. “You mean… he tied himself down to a —”

“I was a royal pharmacist of Clarines,” Shirayuki said, proud and erect. “He was my guard.”

...

Torou lapsed into silence, staring at her. Occasionally, her angled auburn eyes darted to Kiki, as if to probe at the knight for explanation, but Kiki remained as unreadable as if she had been wearing a visor.

At last Torou said, low and gravelly, “So he was yours… and you lost him.”

...

Kiki’s eyes narrowed fractionally; the air between them chilled.

Shirayuki only shook her head. “He left,” she corrected Torou gently, and her voice was suffused with sadness.

Kiki laid a hand on her shoulder, not shifting her gaze.

...

Torou slouched in her seat, regarding the pair of them. She didn’t like to discover a new angle in a game she had thought she knew, a line of thinking that cast all the rest in a different light.

Obi’s reception at the inn felt more personal now, knowing that he had behaved that way out of some sense of obligation to another woman.

She prided herself on breaking down such petty objections.

Besides, what was there left for her to gain, since Obi had taken himself out of the game entirely? He was boring now — no good to anyone.

...

She might have left then, made her excuses or simply slipped away and left them none the wiser—but there was just one more factor to consider.

Obi might be useless, but he was definitely in danger.

The knight was competent, and the lady was the key to it all.

If Torou wanted to find him, she would meet with no better chance.

...

She surveyed the two women again, appraising them: slight and fine-featured; one sweet, the other sharp.

Obi’s wife — his wife! — had the eyes of a child, wide, open, clear.

She was unremarkable in looks, Torou thought, but for the tendrils of brilliant red that curled like flame at the edges of her hood.

...

Obi had always liked playing with fire, but this time he had shut himself in a furnace.

...

Torou had all but made up her mind by then, but transparency and decision were not in her nature.

Rather than declare herself, she threw out a lure. 

“I see, how very sad, and that’s why you came this way then…but of course you know that he isn’t here.”

...

She might as well have teased an icicle for all the reaction this produced from Kiki, but Shirayuki took the bait.

Leaning forward, she fixed Torou with her luminous eyes. “Please, if you’ve seen him–if you know where he is, please tell us. I would be so grateful.”

...

Not much of an appeal, but Torou had her own reasons for playing along. “As it so happens, I was thinking of going that way myself,” she mused, tapping her chin.

She paused, casting the other women a sideways glance. “Is it a good idea, though? He left, you say… then what good is it to me, if he won’t be happy to see you?”

The hit sank home.

Shirayuki’s gaze dropped, and she tucked her chin.

...

Kiki’s eyes were boring into Torou, but neither spoke — it was for Shirayuki to answer.

At last she drew breath and said, “I just want him to know — I want to tell him… not to leave because of me. He should know that…”

She raised her head. 

“...that I want us to be together.”

Something in the simplicity of this touched Torou, beneath all the layers of cynicism and self-interest. 

Her mind flashed back to what had rekindled her interest in Obi in the first place — that something different, an indescribable change that cast him anew. 

Here it was again, in this slip of a woman.

Torou didn’t know what it was, but it spoke to her.

...

With more sincerity than she would have thought possible of herself, Torou replied, “If that’s the way of it, then follow me, and I won’t say no — but I will say you’re headed the wrong way.

“He’s gone east.”

[traditional-with-a-twist]

Midnight Meeting

Takari Week 2024 - Day 5: Fifth Adventure

@takariweek

Kari finds T.K. outside the house, staring at the old forest. When she expresses concern, he tells her that he heard his brother calling and that he needs to answer. She’s confused.

T.K. tries to say goodbye to her but she has this strange feeling that she has to go with him. Before she can tell Tai, T.K. bolts. 

Kari and Tai chase after him, leaving Yolei and Ken behind. Kari feels very unsettled about the whole situation and how distressed T.K. is. She and Tai can barely keep up with him. 

T.K. disappears into the trees, and Kari gets separated from Tai, too. She keeps going through the forest, completely lost, feeling increasingly desperate. She just knows she has to find T.K. or something will happen.  

Finally she stumbles into a clearing and comes face to face with a giant white wolf. Its hackles are up and it’s growling. It locks eyes with Kari and she stops moving. She’s never seen a wolf before. A second later, she feels like that’s not true because the wolf has blue eyes and she knows she’s seen them before.

This time feels very different, though. She’s frozen, not knowing what to do. The wolf doesn’t attack her but it keeps growling. Suddenly, its growls increase in pitch and she hears footsteps behind her.

“Matt!” It’s T.K.’s voice. Slowly, she looks away from the wolf and at T.K. He doesn’t seem afraid, just concerned and a little confused. He puts his hands out, calling the wolf “Matt” again and apologizing for taking so long to answer him.

The wolf only snarls, eyes darting between the two of them. T.K. smiles at her and tells the wolf her name, explaining that she helped him. 

Kari stares. She didn’t expect this at all when T.K. said he was looking for his brother, but she just knows that T.K. is telling the truth. Somehow she knows that what she does next is important. Very slowly, she moves towards T.K. The wolf is still tense, fur raised, watching them.

When Kari lays her hand on T.K.’s arm, the wolf lowers its hackles and shakes its head. It looks confused and distressed. 

Kari smiles at it, following her instincts. She doesn’t really know why she’s doing this but it feels right. The wolf shakes its head again. T.K. asks what's wrong. He pulls away from Kari to approach it. 

The wolf backs away from him, but T.K. follows it. He reaches out to it and the wolf freezes. Kari blinks and for a moment she sees not T.K. but another white wolf, a little smaller, standing there. Then she blinks again, and it’s T.K. holding the wolf’s head in his hands. The wolf leans forward to sniff him and its tail begins to wag.

T.K. smiles, wrapping his arms around the wolf’s neck. Kari lets out a relieved breath. The anxious feeling is subsiding. Then, with a crash, Tai arrives.

[traditional-with-a-twist]

lxv. Beauty and Her Beast

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“Reckless! Lunatic!”

Hands clenching and unclenching into fists, the Crab stared Umihebi down with his chin jutting forward. 

They faced each other across the breakfast table, choice fruits and sweetmeats arranged in delicate pyramids between them.

Ubmidebi’s plate was littered with the rind of a pomegranate, which she picked apart, bit by bit, while he stormed. 

...

“You have no sense of self-control — no idea when enough is enough! You speak to me of princes and kings from seasons ago, before the wars — and then you bring here a servant of the Crown! Here, to my house – a Royal Messenger of Clarines! You hold him a prisoner, here, against his will!”

He paused to grip his hair with both hands, as if trying to force the reality of the situation in through his brain.

...

Umihebi watched expressionlessly. His impotent rages bored her, even more than his blustering, now as they had long ago.

It was as pointless as listening to the wind rattle the windows.

...

“No,” said the Crab, looking up. “No more of this. I want you out – out! Now!”

Umihebi shifted her gaze to the blazing noonday sun. Shouts and calls from the busy streets drifted in through the window.

“Now?” she repeated, raising an eyebrow.

He reddened. It did him no better to send her packing in broad daylight than to be discovered with her inside. “Then choose your hour,” he muttered resentfully, “but I warn you — tarry too long, and I will have you out by force!”

He punctuated this threat with a slam of his fist on the tabletop.

...

Umihebi spat out the seeds of the pomegranate and stood up. 

She was tired of listening, she realized, even as he tired of turning a blind eye.

Both felt the balance had shifted with the arrival of her second prisoner. She had taken a decisive step towards transforming the Crab’s estates once more into her base of operations; thus had come his moment to concede or resist.

Her old partner had made his choice.

She knew not whether he would carry through his threat of involving the local authorities, but it did not matter.

She did not intend to give him the chance.

...

Once Umihebi had reached a decision, she acted swiftly. 

Summoning a pair of her landlocked pirates at a gesture, she descended once more to the cellar where she held her prisoners – a poor substitute for a ship’s brig, but it would do.

The light dazzled – she could see them blinking – and in the moments afforded by the surprise, she strode to them and seized the supposed courier by the back of his collar.

...

Even the strongest man will fold without air. She waited for the struggle, nostrils flaring in suppressed anticipation — but he only dangled, head hanging, laboring to breathe.

Likewise her first prisoner made no move. He just watched, his eyes narrowed. Tears seeped from them, but rather from the pain of the sudden light, she thought. 

“My, my, how strange,” she said. “You’ve had plenty of time to become reacquainted… Have you no word of pity, no plea for your friend?”

...

As she spoke, she slid a knife from her belt and held its point below Mitsuhide’s chin. “Don’t play coy with me…. how much is his neck worth to you?”

She saw Obi’s gaze travel from her to his cellmate, and her smile widened. 

“Or shall we say… his ear?” The dagger point traced up along Mitsuhide’s jawline, trailing blood in its wake.

...

Obi’s dry lips cracked in a smile. “You’re asking me, O captain queen? The man can speak for himself.”

Her teeth gritted at the mockery. Above all, Umihebi lived for power, and she burned with the want of it now.

She would crack him yet. Beneath that unconcern, behind the nonchalance, lay the soft tender places that every man holds in his heart, and she would get her claws into him.

...

Thrusting the knight away from her, Umihebi stepped back and stood with her arms akimbo. “So. You would see him die without lifting a finger.”

Obi cocked an eyebrow and waggled his hands as if to remind her that his wrists were bound.

She ignored him. Joke as he might, she sensed some unsteadiness in him, some change since her last visit.

...

Truth be told, Obi was in a sorry state – half-dead when he arrived and flagging now under the none-too-tender ministrations of his captors.

Battered, bruised, inside and out, he was no better for Mitsuhide’s appearance. When Kiki had come to Shirayuki in the belly of the pirate ship, they had known each other as allies; her coming had meant hope, sure deliverance. 

No such rapport existed here.

Mitsuhide had delivered Zen’s message only moments before Umihebi arrived. His words had laid Obi’s defences bare, and he was yet scrambling to right himself.

...

It was in this state of disarray that Umihebi put him to a final test. 

Perhaps at another moment, Obi might have slipped the snare — he was wise to the ways of the cunning brute, all those who through violence and manipulation bend others to their will.

Then again, Umihebi’s special genius lay in timing. She scented the moment to strike as surely as her namesnake, coiled with fangs bared, tastes the ripeness in the wind when its victim's death is at hand. 

...

She felt Obi’s uncertainty, his weakness, without understanding it was Mitsuhide’s words that had crumbled all his presuppositions and stripped away his armor.

She didn’t need to know; she had only to guess.

“So, then. The woman.” 

The air thickened, and Umihebi spoke into it, stirring the pot. “For yourself, nothing. You didn’t come here for a washed up knight — and not for the ghost of your prince, either.” 

Obi flinched.

Umihebi’s wide mouth gloated her satisfaction: she had the prey in her teeth now. He felt himself pinned, as surely as Mitsuhide’s message had frozen him in the midst of his headlong descent into oblivion.

“For her, though… for that woman… you fought your way into hell and back.

"It’s all for her, isn’t it —” she paused to watch the effect of her speech, “ — that apple-haired girl.”

...

“Stay away from her.” The words ripped from Obi’s chest. He sounded more animal than man; the chain clattered as he strained against his bonds.

Umihebi threw back her head and laughed. “And you?” She turned her taunting gaze on the other captive, not failing to note that he had also tensed. Perhaps there was a little life in him yet.

A new alertness wound taut the muscles once so placid at her threats, and she delighted to feel herself a violinist, playing on his strings.

“I seem to remember another woman — that little slip of a thing. The bonus prize who wasn’t.” Exultant, she minded not remembering her missteps. “Who would have thought that she was a knight…and you her partner.”

...

Mitsuhide’s head snapped up. For a moment he glared at her as fiercely as Obi, eyes blazing a warning — but then something snuffed the fire out.

His head drooped again. “I’m not.” His voice was barely audible. “I’m not her partner anymore.”

Umihebi shrugged. “Suit yourself. It makes no difference – partner or no partner, this time you won’t be there.”

...

Mitsuhide made no movement in reply, but Obi was on his feet now, transfigured with an inhuman energy.

Umihebi wondered how long the ropes would hold.

She turned away, laughing, and the cellar door slammed shut behind her.

...

At the outer wall of the Crab's property, her men waited in a tight band, dressed for stealth and armed to the teeth. One held a torch.

Umihebi regarded the exquisite gardens, their delicately trailing vines and lacey lattices.

Beyond, the many windows fluttered with silken curtains and gauzy drapes. Her teeth shone in the starlight, bared in a savage grin.

Then she nodded to the torchbearer. “Light it.”

[traditional-with-a-twist]

lxiv. Beauty and Her Beast

<<Previous || first arc || second arc || third arc || fourth arc || AO3 || Next>>

Obi did not understand why he was not dead yet.

He had done his very best – he had found the nastiest snake around and grabbed it by the tail.

Instead of biting him, it had buried him in this hole.

Even in this, then, Obi thought, rotating his shoulders as the cold of the stone sank into his skin. The rope chafed his wrists, but his hands had grown too numb to feel it.

Even in this, he had fallen short.

...

What did it take for a man to find oblivion? What god must he offend, to be struck down?

Or was that it: he was cursed to existence, to the steady and persistent reminder of his crimes, and that in itself was the punishment?

Obi looked up at the ceiling of his cell and wished for something worse to come, something final and fatal.

The door opened.

A brilliant square of light seared his eyes — he had only time to perceive a dark silhouette outlined against it, before he squeezed them watering shut.

A clang and a heavy thud followed next, then the clatter of the key in the lock. Heavy footsteps receded, but someone remained — Obi knew he was no longer alone.

...

Blinking the moisture from his eyes, he forced them open again and peered into the gloom.

The someone was standing — no, sitting up, a tall man and broad.

He groaned softly, rubbing his head, and a thrill of recognition ran through Obi. 

...

He fell at once on his usual defense: an armor of jocularity, nonchalance, ill-favored humor.

Injecting his voice with false incredulity, he hailed his new cellmate: “Hm, what’s this, Mister? Did you get lost?”

“Obi,” the other man whispered, disbelief in his voice.

“Doesn’t quite seem like your usual line,” Obi rolled on, inwardly coiled tight as a spring in anticipation of the reckoning to come. 

...

He had not met Mitsuhide since the war. He had not wanted to.

Though the knight made himself an easy mark more often than not, he possessed a core of steel that broke through Obi’s posturing and bit into him where he could not deflect it.

Obi feared to rouse him, now of all times when there stood yet between them everything to say and nothing to raise in plea to mitigate it.

...

“What was it this time, sir knight?” Obi spoke wildly, desperate to suppress the sensitivities awakening in him that he had thought deadened by his rampage of excess and neglect.

A longing for annihilation he could bear, for as long as it took to satisfy it, but shame? He didn’t want to face it, not just when he had thought himself beyond it.

He was grasping at straws, flinging dust to cloud the air between them. “A bit of highway robbery, perhaps — moonlighting as a bandit? Counterfeiting? Sold your sword for hire?”

...

Mitsuhide stared at him for a long moment, then he slumped back against the bars of the cell. Even without the light to catch the pallor of his skin, Obi could see in the bowed curve of his shoulders, the hang of his head, that he was not well.

When he spoke, Mitushide’s voice was low and weary. “I am no knight.”

...

“Ahhh, and what is it then that they’re calling you these days, sir — chevalier? baronet?” 

“No, Obi.” Mitsuhide spoke sternly now. “Don’t misunderstand me. I am no longer in service to the crown. I have renounced my knighthood.”

A heartbeat of silence, then Obi said, “And the sea snake captured you for farming turnips, did she?”

...

Mitsuhide rubbed a hand over his face; the tension in his shoulders bespoke annoyance. He had every right to it — Obi had no right to demand anything of him, least of all an explanation.

That was the game, though: get a man to speak of himself; leave him no time to ask questions about you.

Then again, perhaps there was more to explain than Obi would ever have guessed, for how could it be that he spoke not with Sir Mitsuhide Lowen, but this stranger — how could the knight once in attendance on the second prince of Clarines be no more?

Who had returned from the war in his stead?

...

“I was riding circuit,” Mitsuhide said, his voice muffled. “Delivering messages. Somehow her men… they were looking for something, and they knew me.”

“And you let those halfwit scoundrels take you?” Obi asked softly, thinking that Zen’s spirit had taken more than the prince himself with it, and perhaps they were all dead and dying alongside him — only more slowly.

Mitsuhide lowered his hand, and even in the gloom his glare burned fierce. “I’m not a knight!” he snapped.

Then, darkly, he spoke into the mystery: “No one should ever rely on my sword again.”

...

“Ahhh…” Obi’s head fell back; he stopped watching his friend of old because he had understood now all that he wanted to know. “Too bad… Then we will both die here.”

Mitsuhide looked across the cell at him, and each man loathed himself too much to feel compassion for the other.

“Even so,” Mitsuhide shook his head, “why you are not with Shirayuki…” 

...

He did not bother to mask the accusation in his voice. Obi might judge him wanting for laying aside his sword, but at least he had not set aside his wife.

How he could treat her in such a fashion – like a plaything to be discarded…

...

Obi did not move at first, but only huddled where he was, propped against the prison wall. When he answered at last, his voice seemed to come from somewhere else. “I let her make her own path,” he said quietly.

...

Mitsuhide was aghast. Evasion, he had expected; excuses, explanations, even a denial of guilt — but this!

To simply accept and embrace what he had done, without attempt at justification — Mitsuhide would not have believed it of him. Had he masked his true character so thoroughly that only now its callousness showed?

Had his time serving as royal messenger changed him so little?

Anger flashing hot and futile within him, he spluttered, “How could – don’t you know? You were to stay by her side, continue as her guard — protect her!”

...

Obi gave a hollow laugh, still crumpled as if Mitsuhide’s charges had drained away what life remained to him. 

The knight — ex-knight — sounded like a directive from an outdated letter: many moons ago, before the princes had ridden off to war. His words rang hollow now, devoid of any meaning in this present time.

“That’s easy for you to say, mister,” Obi mumbled, lapsing back into their familiar patterns of dialogue. “You—”

“No!” Mitsuhide broke in hotly. At first, Obi thought he objected to the formal address, but the once-knight had something else on his mind.

...

His blood was up; he leaned forwards, hands clenched on his knees. “Not me — Zen!” The name broke between them like shrapnel, wounding them both. 

Obi flinched, but Mitsuhide ground on. “That day — he thought of you, both of you.”

The blood had drained from Obi’s face; he could not speak to interrupt.

...

Mitsuhide ground on. “He wanted her to be happy.”

Obi squeezed his eyes shut, but the words kept coming.

“He said, if anything were to happen–” and with a last convulsive breath, Mitsuhide wrenched the arrow from the wound: “he wanted you to be the one to care for Shirayuki… in his place.”