like.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
Sanae didn’t watch the fight. She’d meant to, but then someone started passing food bowls around and ohhh, there was fruit today! Dried fruit, but it was no less sweet under the tooth once she’d obtained a piece from Aito. The rice didn’t interest Momo, but the pieces of mushroom mixed in it did.
“I yield,” Sora said. She sounded strangely happy, for someone who was yielding.
“Well fought,” Akakiba said, breathing heavy.
“Men tend to underestimate me and claim they were going easy on me when I beat them. Not many push me hard. Thank you.”
“You should talk to my sister. She used to be a fair swordfighter, before.”
The woman’s brows knit together. “I thought you called her sister in a figurative way. Is she your blood sister?”
“Of course.”
“How—”
“You might ask her, one day.”
“I might,” Sora agreed, and left.
Akakiba settled down to eat; Sanae perched on the edge of his bowl at once. More mushroom!
“Go steal from somebody else,” Akakiba said after a while, shooing her off.
Sanae prodded Momo to make sad eyes at Yuki until he surrendered a piece of dry fruit and said, “Momo’s friendly today.”
Jien handed over a piece, too. “Maybe it’s because Sanae isn’t around for him to follow. She must have stayed back without telling us; I haven’t seen her today.”
Akakiba sighed, but didn’t explain. Neither did Aito.
Sanae munched on tasty, tasty fruit. Informing Yuki and Jien about recent developments could wait.
Chapter Six
Mamoru
I f Mamoru could have had one wish granted, it would have been never to cross path with a fox samurai again. Good luck—and skill, he liked to think—had kept him alive through three such encounters, but otherwise none of these encounters had ended in what he’d call “success.” Not for his side, anyway.
It was unreasonable to expect his fourth fox experience to conclude in a better manner. Unfortunately, it was also unreasonable to expect his current master to take pity on him.
Which was why he was presently creeping along in the spirit realm and watching the soul-sparks of fox samurai he could identify. That one belonged to clan leader Takashi, this one to his advisor Kiba. Hmm, Kiba was heading towards Takashi. Should he risk crossing into the physical world to spy upon their conversation? It was the purpose of his presence here, after all, to listen in on potentially incriminating discussions.
The problem was that he wasn’t the only spirit person roaming the area. Sanae wasn’t present—the one time he’d glimpsed her, he’d run in the opposite direction for fear she’d identify him—but there was another fox without a body who patrolled the place assiduously. That fox was the biggest obstacle to his work. Not only might see detect him, she could also pursue him into the spirit realm. People called her Grandmother Naoko.
Where was she, right now? Ah, over there with the little sparks, the children.
He could risk listening in. He crossed over, unsurprised to find himself in the clan head’s quarters. The man rarely strayed far from this area, possibly because of assassination concerns.
“I wish I could have gone north myself,” Takashi, head of the Fox clan, said. “Waiting for news is difficult.”
I agree on both counts, Kiba said. But we’ve grown too old and slow for adventures.
Mamoru had known for a while now that members of the Fox clan could turn into foxes at will. But why some, Kiba among them, never appeared as humans was yet a mystery. Was it personal preference or a disability?
He listened with half an ear—a figurative one—until Takashi suddenly said, “What will we do if Sanae returns and tells us Inari lives? Preventing a cult from upsetting the world’s natural balance by resurrecting a long-gone god is good and just, but what if they have already succeeded? What could be gained by killing her?”
Ah-ha! Finally, they were going to
Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy