The Night Itself (24 page)

“No wonder Kitsune don’t like humans much,” I said self-consciously.

“Please do not believe that,” Araki said, clicking her tongue. “In general, Kitsune have always been quite fond of humanity. It is in your nature to be short-lived, full of brilliance and passion and progress. You cannot help that any more than Kitsune can help being long-lived, cautious, cunning and resistant to change. In my opinion, those who profess to dislike humans do so more from envy than anything else. Your unique human changeability and creativity would make our long lives much more interesting. But those traits are not for us.”

I glanced sideways at Hikaru. Cautious and resistant to change? Maybe the Kitsune weren’t giving themselves enough credit.

We left the large chamber and Araki moved ahead of us again as we climbed down roughly hewn rock steps into another tunnel. This one was much roomier, with an even more echoey quality. I suspected that it was one of the Tube tunnels. We carried on walking.

“Please tell me we’re running on Narnia time here,” Jack muttered to me after another ten minutes.

Hikaru let out a crack of laughter. Araki frowned at us over her shoulder, an arrested expression on her face. She clearly didn’t get it.

“You know C.S. Lewis?” Jack asked him incredulously.

He shrugged. “Why not? You heard Araki-san. There aren’t many people my age hanging around the Kitsune Kingdom. I’ve spent a lot of time in the mortal realm. There’s plenty of stuff to do there – shops, cinemas, libraries. It’s cool.”

Sounds surprisingly like a human childhood
.
And surprisingly … lonely
.

“Anyway,” Hikaru said, “the days and nights and the seasons might be reversed, but time passes at the same rate in both planes.” He hesitated, and then said in a slightly softer voice, “Don’t worry. There are hours left before dawn.”

“Besides, we are almost there,” Araki said. “Has Hikaru warned you of the proper etiquette in court?”

“Er, mostly,” I said.

“Then brace yourselves,” Araki said. She stopped abruptly and placed her hand on one curving wall.

The tunnel shook and rumbled as a circular section of the wall began to roll back. Light spilled into the gloom. Jack grabbed Hikaru for balance. I planted my feet firmly, grateful for Shinobu’s steadying hand on my shoulder.

The opening became perfectly circular. The rumbling stopped, but the tunnel was no longer quiet. A rushing, rustling noise filled the space. At first I thought it was wind moving through leaves again, like above ground. Then my eyes adjusted to the brightness and saw what awaited us on the other side of the wall.

“Holy shit,” Hikaru whispered.

A
vast space – big enough to dwarf the cavernous station we had just walked through – lay before us. I couldn’t even see the walls. Maybe there weren’t any. The only visible boundary was a circle of green-gold tree trunks, each of them wider than any tree I had ever seen in my life. If Jack, Hikaru, Shinobu and I had all joined hands, I doubted that we would have been able to encircle even the thinnest one. The trees curved outwards like ribs, their branches meeting at least fifty feet overhead in a lush, silver-leafed ceiling, utterly still.

I could see lights glinting between the leaves, and for a moment I thought they were stars. But they were moving. Fox lights, clouds and clouds of them, danced among the trees. The ground at the base of the trees sloped into a steep bowl shape, its sides terraced into broad steps, with a low, round hill at the very bottom, acting as a centre point. It reminded me of an amphitheatre.

Everywhere – on the hill, on the terraced sides of the bowl and along the top, among the trees – there were foxes. Foxes with multiple tails. Foxes as tiny as house cats. Foxes as big as wolves. White foxes, black foxes, grey foxes, red foxes. Foxes with giant, tufted ears, foxes with narrow, cruel-looking muzzles that reminded me of dingoes. There must have been a thousand Kitsune here, so many that even this giant place felt crammed.

And every one of them was staring at us. Their whispers echoed through the space under the trees like the sound of the tide rushing in.

“Good luck,” Araki said.

She stepped through the round entrance, with Miyako and Hiro close behind her, and began the walk down the side of the bowl. Before they had taken two steps into the giant space all three were back in fox form.

“This is why someone, whoever it was, triggered the transformation ward,” Hikaru muttered, his breath quick and harsh. “They needed to delay us so they could arrange all this.”

“What’s going on?” Jack demanded.

“We were supposed to have an audience with His Majesty. Just His Majesty. Maybe a few advisors. This – this is a full gathering of the British Kitsune.”

“And that’s a bad thing?” Shinobu asked, low-voiced.

“It means nothing that happens here is about us any more. Everyone is watching. Whatever the king says will become law. He has no wriggle room. If any of us, including me, put a single paw wrong, he’ll have no choice but to annihilate us. He can’t afford to show a hint of weakness or favouritism, or they’ll turn on him. It was dangerous enough before, but now…” His voice trailed off as if even he couldn’t think of words to describe the utter suckiness of the situation.

Jack looked at me, her face stricken. I could see the thought running through her mind before she even opened her mouth. “I’m sorry. I made you all come here—”

“Don’t.” I cut her off. “You didn’t make us do anything. We’re all in this together. Right, guys?”

Shinobu nodded, face grave. “Of course. We have each made our own choices, Jack-san.”

“And it’s too late to turn back now anyway,” Hikaru said. “Listen, Mio, you have one shot to convince him of your worthiness. You have to get him to treat you as an equal, to agree that you have the right to speak to him and petition for his aid in saving Rachel. If you don’t, he’ll be forced to rule that letting you come here was a mistake. And then things will get bad. Very bad.”

“How do I do that?” I asked, my voice going squeaky at the end despite my best efforts. I cleared my throat. “Don’t I have to bow and scrape?”

“Yes, but you have to do it in the right way. You can’t show fear. Act as if you’re just as powerful as him, like you’re only bowing and scraping because you’re polite. Can you do that?”

He looked me up and down, taking in my diminutive stature, ruined clothes and the layers of dirt. His brow wrinkled in despair.

Shinobu folded his arms menacingly. “Mio-dono is the equal of anyone here. She is special.”

“I am?”

Jack nodded at me, her normally golden skin looking yellow with fear. But her eyes were determined. “He’s right. Don’t let these guys freak you out.”

Don’t let the
foxes
freak me out? Right now my friends were doing a great job of that themselves. Because if we were going to get technical about it, all of this was
my fault
.

I’d mucked things up right from the beginning. Ojiichan had trusted me with the sword and practically destroyed his relationship with his son to get me the training and information I needed to handle it. In return, I’d abandoned my kendo, forgotten all Ojiichan’s stories and treated the katana like a toy. I’d put my best friend and her sister – not to mention the entire population of London – in terrible danger. And I had no idea what to do about any of it.

Special? Specially useless, more like.

But Hikaru was right. It was too late to turn back now. We were already through the looking glass. The sword, whatever it was, was
mine
to bear. I’d done a terrible job so far, but if any of us were going to get out of this, I had to suck it up and start acting like I knew what I was doing.

“Stand back,” I said quietly. I gave them all a moment to shuffle away before I drew the katana from its carrier. My bad arm twinged sharply with the movement.

I sighed as I took the weight of the sword between my hands, closing my fingers tightly around the saya and hilt, and felt the familiar buzz of energy against my skin.

Below us, Araki had reached the low hill at the centre of the amphitheatre. A small group of foxes sat there, and Araki trotted up to one of them – a medium-sized fox with colouring very similar to Hikaru in his fox form. His tails, spread out like a peacock fan, waved gently in the air behind him. Tiny, blue sparks of lightning crackled constantly between the white tips, as if he was so powerful that he generated electricity without even being aware of it.

I counted the tails and gulped. Nine.

He had to be the king.

Below the king, two more foxes sat on the hill. The one on the left was startling white, with no trace of colour in its fur at all. The one on the right was a deep, bluish-grey, darkening to black at the extremities of tail and paws. Each of them had eight tails. As I watched, Araki bowed low before the king and spoke to him. Meanwhile, Miyako seated herself neatly behind the white fox and Hiro took up position behind the grey one.

So each of the most powerful foxes here had sent someone to look for us when we were late – and the lovely Miyako was the white fox’s contribution.
Interesting
.

Araki finished speaking to the king. He nodded at her. She lay down behind him, lifting her muzzle to the sky and booming: “His Majesty bids the visitors approach!”

Hikaru drew in a deep breath. “I’ll go first. Mio, you’re the petitioner, so you walk right behind me. Shinobu and Jack, bring up the rear. Remember, don’t look at the king directly or address him until he gives permission.”

He hesitated for a second, then turned swiftly to Jack and laid a kiss right on her lips.

She started back in shock, two spots of bright colour lighting up her cheeks. Hikaru cleared his throat, nodded to me, and then stepped through the gateway.

“Geronimo,” I muttered, jumping through after him.

I heard Shinobu and Jack follow, but I didn’t look back as we began the long walk down the rows of steep terraces. The amphitheatre had clearly been designed for people with four legs, not two. I had to keep my eyes fixed firmly on my feet to avoid taking a humiliating tumble down the too-smooth grass. I just hoped that I wasn’t breaking protocol by refusing to meet anyone’s eyes for long.

The space grew gradually silent as we descended, the last whispers lingering chillingly in the air. Every time I risked a glance up, a pair of cold, foxy eyes would be there, fixed on me. It was hard to read human expressions on a fox’s face, but I would have bet good money that none of them were broadcasting warmth and welcome. Had Araki been joking when she said that the Kitsune were fond of humans? These guys looked like they wanted to eat us for breakfast. Possibly without bothering to kill us first.

The katana’s energy buzzed hard against my palm. I switched my grip, bringing the saya diagonally across my body so that my left hand held the sheath and my right could clasp the hilt. Hopefully it made me look confident and warlike, not nervous and injured. Hopefully.

It seemed to take for ever to reach the bottom of the slope, so long that by the time we got there I was wondering if Hikaru had been a bit skimpy with the truth on the Narnia-time thing. Then someone seemed to hit the fast-forward button and suddenly we were across the bottom of the amphitheatre and a few feet away from the base of the low hill. I felt the gazes of the foxes there like drops of heated lead landing on my face. In spite of Hikaru’s warning, it was excruciatingly hard not to sneak a peek at the king’s expression, just to gauge his mood.

Curiosity killed the girl, Mio. Eyes down!

A step in front of me, Hikaru came to a halt and gracefully folded himself into a kneeling position. I followed his example, trying not to let on how grateful my wobbly knees were for the chance to give up the ghost. The telltale rustles of fabric behind me let me know that Jack and Shinobu were doing the same.

I dropped my forehead down to rest on the back of my hands, making sure to keep my katana firmly under my palms. The silence stretched on. I closed my eyes as the urge to glance up at the king started to plague me again. What was he
doing
up there? Playing Parcheesi?

“Rise, Grandchild.”

It was a soft, young-sounding voice, but the power in it sent shivers of fear prickling down my spine. I’d have been an idiot to believe I was hearing anyone but the King of the Kitsune speaking. In a weird way it reminded me of the Harbinger’s voice. They didn’t really sound anything alike, but they both carried those uncanny, almost painful echoes of power that made me feel as if I needed to fall down and beg. Lucky for me I was already as close to the floor as I could get.

I squeezed my eyes shut tighter – then snapped them open as I heard Hikaru move.

He was on his feet. My brain executed a full stop as I realized what that meant. The king had been talking to Hikaru.

Hikaru was the king’s grandchild?

When had he been planning on sharing that little gem of info?

“You may address me,” the king said gravely.

“Thank you, Grandfather,” Hikaru said. “And thank you again for agreeing to see me and my friends with such little notice. The bearer of the meitou, Yamato Mio-dono, wishes me to convey her gratitude.”

“Oh, does she?” the powerful voice said softly. “And does she also have an explanation for her presumption in keeping me waiting in my own court?”

Hell. Am I supposed to look up now, or speak into the grass, or what?

Hikaru answered before I could make up my mind. “I am afraid the responsibility for the delay lies with me. I apologize deeply. I would not insult you for anything, Grandfather.”

“Explain.” There was a hint of a growl underlying the soft voice.

“I believed that the transformation ward had been uninvoked, and so I failed to protect my friends from it when they stepped onto our soil. This caused an unavoidable delay.”

Ominous silence purred against my skin.

“The ward was uninvoked.” The growl was more obvious now. “I did it myself.”