Blades of Shadow by Ryan Kirk

Author:Ryan Kirk [Kirk, Ryan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy
Publisher: Waterstone Media
Published: 2020-09-23T04:00:00+00:00

40

In many ways, Isau could almost believe he was back at home. Farmland stretched as far as his eye could see in every direction. Now that the clatter of the carriage was behind them, he felt as much as heard the expansive silence, broken only by soft sounds of the occasional breeze through the wheat and their footsteps.

Sometimes it surprised him he didn’t miss home more. Perhaps there wasn’t much in it to long for, but it had been all he’d known.

But he didn’t miss it at all.

He’d much rather follow Yua through a battlefield of corpses than his father through a field of corn. He’d much rather carry a bloody dagger than a scythe.

This was what he had always been meant for.

In a way, he’d really been born on the day Eiji stole him away from everything he knew.

The trail they followed was no road, not even wide enough for two to travel abreast.

Yua stopped at a rock painted white. She raised her hand and made a series of gestures. Isau tilted his head to the side. Yua remained still, and Isau was about to ask her what she was doing when he heard the clear, piercing cry of a hawk off in the distance. Yua resumed their journey.

“Tell me,” Yua asked, “do you sense anyone near us?”

Isau paused and closed his eyes, throwing out his sense the way Yua had taught him. “No.”

“Neither do I, and there’s a lesson in that.”

Isau looked back at the white rock, now receding with every step. “That was a marker,” he observed.

“Well done. Chiyo’s village cannot easily be approached by stealth. Though you won’t see them, these fields are crawling with assassins in training. Few come close enough to the path to sense, but if one doesn’t know the appropriate signs, arrows would rain down on us before we made it a dozen more paces.”

Isau looked up, even though the sky remained perfectly clear.

He thought, briefly, of the monks in the village they had passed not long ago. Though gifted, they were distracted and confident, and because of that, he’d been able to walk right up to them. “The gift doesn’t make us invincible.”

She glanced back at him and favored him with one of her rare smiles. “It doesn’t. And more gifted die because of that misunderstanding than any other. These assassins aren’t like us, and yet, if they chose, they could kill us with ease. Always remember that.”

The thought unsettled him. In the stories he’d heard growing up, the nightblades were always nearly invincible, able to change the course of entire wars.

But strength and invincibility were two very different qualities.

Isau considered the skills of the assassins. They seemed useful. “Is it possible for them to train us?”

“Master Ryota has been asking Chiyo for just that favor. She hasn’t accepted yet, but if our plans come to fruition, I think it likely we would one day train side by side.”

The trail bent and without warning they emerged from the farmland into a cleared area.

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