The Withering Flame by James Calbraith

Author:James Calbraith [Calbraith, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flying Squid
Published: 2015-06-04T06:00:00+00:00

The mountain rumbled and belched out a cloud of ash. Lord Nariakira, daimyo of Satsuma, stumbled and grasped onto a large rocky outcrop to support himself. He hissed — the sharp edge of the boulder cut his hand.

Yokō stood still, silent, waiting for the eruption to end. Her robe was daubed in ash and soot, just like Lord Nariakira’s clothes. When the rumbling stopped, she was the first to resume climbing the narrow, winding path up the slope of Sakurajima.

Officially, the two were making an unexpected inspection of the fire elemental mines. But they had left the entrance to the flame-churning mine, and all the inspectors, far below in Nabeyama village, at the start of the path. Accompanied only by a dumb and deaf servant, they were now almost at the lowest of the mountain’s three peaks.

It was one of the few places Nariakira felt were free of spies in his entire domain. He admitted to himself he may have been growing increasingly paranoid, but not without reason. Dōraku could enter his castle unopposed at any moment; the Kumamoto rebels had escaped his net, and were gaining followers in the northern provinces; and the Taikun’s spies were popping up on every corner of Kagoshima. Takamori’s guards were capturing them by the dozen, but that only meant there were dozens more they did not detect.

But secrecy was not the sole reason Nariakira had decided to climb Sakurajima today.

“How is our guest doing with the language?” he asked.

Yokō slowed down, and raised the hem of her robe to climb over an old lava tongue. “Not well, kakka. He’s getting an odd word here and there… but not enough to explain something as complex as the mission you have planned for him.”

Nariakira nodded. “We’ll have to wait for Li with that. What about map studies?”

“He seems… resistant to this kind of knowledge, kakka. But I’m sure he’ll manage to reach the target in time.”

He sighed. “Do you have any good news for me?”

“He’s good with the sword,” she said. “Do not worry, kakka,” she hastened to add, sensing his exasperation, “he will do well, I’m sure of it.”

“If you say so, Yokō, then it must be true.”

They reached the torn, serrated edge of the dormant crater. Nariakira offered his arm to support the girl, and guided her between shattered boulders and peaks of frozen lava, to a dainty, open-walled pavilion of cypress wood and clay tiles, dusted with ash. They sat on stone benches opposite each other, and submerged their weary feet in a stream of steaming hot, sulphurous water, which flowed out of a fissure in the crater, through the pavilion, and hop-skipped over the rocks down Sakurajima’s jagged slope. Lord Nariakira sighed with delight.

He looked down over the crater’s edge at his beloved Kagoshima. He saw almost the entire city from the peak, sprawling in a shallow crescent around the edge of Kinko Bay, golden-red in the light of the sun setting beyond the Isaku Pass. When a gust of wind

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