Free Samurai by Jason Hightman Page A

hear the tigers moving behind the walls or above them, in the ceilings, sniffing or growling. The beams and columns of the structure creaked as they passed, tigers roaming, padding heavily on the wood floors. A careless seamstress might peek into a hole in the wall by her workspace and find a giant feline staring back. Issindra loved how unsettling all this would seem to a human.
    Still, it wasn’t nearly enough.
    For her to be happy, she needed more. Already she had criminal enterprises sprouting up throughout Africa. The Tall Dragons were newly dead, others were being moved out by her growing operations, and China was yielding nice profits, too. But business wasmoving too slowly, and Issindra had begun thinking about moving in on the other big fish in the sea.
    She had begun to daydream about the Serpent of Japan.
    This was no accident. Issindra had begun receiving correspondence from another ambitious Serpent who had felt Japan was weak and ready for the taking. He was a smart old Pyrothrax, one of the oldest out there. He would give her information about the entire Serpent world, and all he wanted in return was a safe haven—and knowledge of the secret to her palace, its strange power, so that he could put the complete past of the Indian Serpents into his insane little history book.
    It was not a bad bargain, she thought.
    Yes, the Ice Dragon was turning out to be a wonderful spy and ally.
    Just the other day, he’d sent the loveliest note:
    Issindra,
    Thought of you today as I destroyed a couple of nuns. I know how bothersome do-gooders are to you. They left me with the most interesting verses in my head—a good murder always brings on poetry. Have a look:
    “Insect me, and I’ll butterfly you.
    Flay the meaning, fool the fool.
    This is the night. I painted it in blood. It used tomean something, now it’s a fiddler in a moonlit field. With no moon and no one to play for.
    It’s candy canes melting twelve hours after Christmas.
    It is the rat in the trap, waiting for the meaning of his life to come to him at the end of his breathing, but it will not come. Not the breathing, but the meaning. I was
    referring to
    The meaning.”
    Issindra smiled. The old darling. He had no idea how senile he was.
    Obviously, she would never consider him proper material for a mate. Recently Issindra had begun looking for a partner. She didn’t actually want a mate; a mate would only bring her tremendous jealousy. What she wanted was children—a brood that she could teach, or at the very least, a Serpentine daughter to talk to.
    There were times that this longing caused her to peer into local homes, to see an ordinary mother and daughter, with their nauseating, simple happiness. Here is the mother brushing the hair of the daughter, here is the meager dinner the family shares so nicely….
    She killed the families she watched; every one of them. But it always brought a tear to her eyes.Someday she would have this simple joy, the pleasure of home life.
    It was typical of Dragon females to desire odd companionship. Like many others, the Tiger Dragon had fallen in love with her own fire, spinning out flames to chat with on many a cold evening, but the fire-figure often became jealous and out of control. The Tiger Dragon’s fire-figures had burned anyone who came near her—even her employees. The flames became frightfully intense, scorching the Tiger Dragon’s own body before she at last regained control of it. Now her blaze refused to speak to her, becoming obedient but silent, what Serpents called a dead fire. She felt totally isolated these days.
    Fire was always a dangerous companion.
    As for children, the Ice Serpent alone would be of no help to her. It wasn’t that he was too old (that was an advantage, he’d die soon), but that he was from an erratic bloodline. He himself had told her that. The Ice Serpents had always been mad—more mad than any other bloodline—obsessively curious, recording microscopic details of the past