A Clean Break

Jiro let a handful of soil sift through his fingers, a look of revulsion twisting his features. He had consumed the earth of this land as a boy; the memory was familiar, though far from pleasant. The only thing that made a return to such a primitive form of sustenance so degrading was that he had become accustomed to a life of chicken and rice—a life that had rendered his belly soft and round.

He murmured into the still air, “So this is the price of freedom.”

On the bed nearby, the woman shifted. She possessed barely enough strength to utter, “Hmm?”

“It’s nothing,” he said, his gaze sweeping over her with a clinical indifference. The circumstances were what they were; he certainly did not relish her companionship to the extent she seemed to imagine. Their affair was of no real significance, and he would likely be rid of her before the week was out. The woman he had encountered across the mountains a year prior was vastly superior. The mere thought of a brief reunion with her coaxed a grin to his lips.

He rolled his eyes at his own fastidiousness and looked back down at the soil. What difference did it make if he had to surrender certain comforts? Why was he behaving like such an infant over it? He had once been compelled to eat raw insects he’d crushed between his own bare toes.

If he were to be truly honest with himself, it was the arduous journey that lay ahead that disquieted him more than the prospect of eating dirt. He was on the verge of abandoning everything he had ever known. And though he despised this place and was eager for his departure, he was acutely aware that the world beyond its borders was worse. Out there, it would be so much worse.

He was widely regarded as coarse and unfeeling. That perception wasn't entirely inaccurate, but the same people who judged him so harshly conveniently forgot how much he had done for the village. They could vividly recall his minor act of arson concerning the western huts, but they chose to overlook the numerous occasions he had hurled himself into the fray to rescue Carmine and the elders during battle. It was true he did so because he held little regard for his own life and had nothing better to occupy his time, but it was a sacrifice all the same, was it not? Most people had not done half as much.

He retrieved a tobacco pipe from his knapsack, inspecting it with a curious air. He raised it to his lips and, with a flick of his thumb, conjured a flame to light the bowl. He was unlike the others, who clung with a lustful desperation to any fragment of authority they could seize. He sneered at the idea of Cera as his new commander. The girl was barely twelve years old. The notion that she could prosecute this war in any manner that wasn't utterly catastrophic was absurd.

Like a sleek panther poised in the shadows, he could bide his time. If the situation demanded it, he could wait for an eternity. He understood the profound importance of timing and the foolishness of a premature attack. Yet, when the decisive moment arrived, he never hesitated. This, he was convinced, was what made him a superior soldier. He did not shrink from a confrontation; he plunged into the heart of it and inflicted damage like a dependable hammer. Target and shatter.

In the territories beyond the eastern frontier, they feared him. He would go now and discover just how far his reputation had diminished.

The girl on the bed rolled toward him, groaning his name. “Jiro.”

He gazed at her. Perhaps, as a different man in a different era, he might have genuinely appreciated the alluring young creature she was. So seductive, so compliant, yet perpetually entertaining, with a flicker of fire in her eyes that some of the clan’s finest men lacked.

He felt no sympathy for her.

He looked away, taking a long, slow draw from his pipe as the smoke curled up the side of his face. Nothing. He felt absolutely nothing. The hollowness inside him was staggering.

His eyes lifted to the heavens. The moon was shrouded by thick clouds tonight.

Astra feigned sleep, her back pressed against the canvas wall of her tent. A lifelong insomniac, she had cultivated a habit of snatching three hours of sleep at irregular intervals. It was now the uncanny hour of three in the morning, and though she knew she might finally drift off in another hour, she was presently wide awake. She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. Sleep would not come easily.

Cera slept soundly beside her. Rising with a practiced, noiseless grace, Astra moved cautiously outside, resolved not to disturb the young leader. Despite the girl’s self-assurance, she had not yet mastered the art of sleeping lightly, a fact that brought a smirk to Astra’s lips. In an emergency, Astra was invariably the first to be operational. In that regard, at least, Cera was no match for her.

Astra stretched her slender arms and commenced a brisk patrol around their quarters. With their departure still pending, there was no officially designated night watch.

Let me take the watch, she thought with a private smile.

Earlier that evening, she and Cera had compared their respective strategies. She found that the young leader was, above all else, exhilarated by the prospect of battle, a passion Astra had seldom observed in other girls. Wind and fire, she had mused. They would form a potent combination, one element amplifying the other until their adversaries had no alternative but to surrender. Yes, they were going to get along just fine.

An unforeseen gust of wind, blowing from the wrong direction, startled Astra from her reverie. As a member of the Zephyr Clan, she was more finely attuned to the whispers of nature than the aggressive, head-on warriors of the Ignis Clan. Something was wrong. She ducked behind a tree, crouching to listen intently. Instead of dispatching her own wind to investigate the darkness, she closed her eyes, allowing her heightened senses to measure the intruder’s dimensions by the very air he displaced with each breath. A powerful man, broad of shoulder. One of Krysta’s soldiers, Astra surmised.

A shiver of anticipation traced a path down her spine. She had not mentioned it to anyone, of course—it would have been impolite, considering Cera’s anguish over having taken a life—but she was irritated by her own lack of opportunity to eliminate an opponent. Astra had no difficulty masking her own ruthless inclinations. This was the perfect chance for a quiet kill, one that no one would ever know about.

Silently, Astra prepared herself.

Then she heard Hana’s voice.

Her jaw went slack. Frozen in the darkness, she listened. Hana was laughing, her tone teasing as she spoke to the soldier. Astra pondered this. Had she herself ever been so wanton? She swiftly concluded that her own conduct had always been beyond reproach. Still, she remained motionless, straining to decipher their words.

“You’d like me to, wouldn’t you?” Hana was asking the soldier from beyond the trees.

Astra wondered why they were conversing so openly in the dead of night, as if they had nothing better to do. Then it dawned on her: they were waiting for someone. At that precise moment, Jiro burst into the clearing, panting for breath.

“Took you long enough,” Hana said, her voice a melodic laugh.

An overwhelming urge to sever the traitors’ heads—especially the girl’s—made Astra’s fingers twitch.

Jiro clutched something to his chest. A heart attack? Astra raised a curious eyebrow. No, it was a bundle of some sort. Though Astra was unfamiliar with the hidden treasures of the Ignis Clan, she could discern its value by the careful manner in which he held it.

His eyes darted back and forth, scouring the shadows. Astra smirked. You can’t find me, she thought, her tone almost a taunt. She had been trained from a young age with the grace of a ballerina. He would find no indication of her presence.

To her utter astonishment, he turned his head and looked directly at her. Then, handing the mysterious bundle to the soldier, he charged straight for her.

Her thoughts scattered. How? How had he seen her?

He didn’t afford her time to contemplate the question. Before Astra could even process what was happening, he had her by the throat, pinning her in a hold eerily reminiscent of the one in which Argent had discovered him and Hana earlier that day.

“I had a feeling,” Jiro snarled, his eyes glinting ominously. “A clean break is never possible. It always has to be forced.”

Confused and breathless, Astra blinked up at him. She could barely comprehend his words, her consciousness already beginning to recede. No. This was not what she had trained for! He was a brute, an amateur, and she would not suffer the humiliation of being defeated by him.

“Traitor,” she rasped.

When she clawed at his hand, he simply captured her wrist with his other. In the instant his arm moved, she lashed out with a kick, simultaneously sending a concentrated gale of wind through him—a force designed to rupture his internal organs. But Jiro anticipated the maneuver, deflecting the attack with a small, hastily conjured shield of fire.

“I’ve been wanting to see this,” he hissed. “What can a Zephyr Clan slut do?”

She scrambled backward. She would not raise the alarm for the others. No, she could handle this herself. And she would savor it. His block had been a fluke. No one could catch her when she was fighting at her peak performance. She imagined she had been a cat burglar in a previous life. No, she was better than that. A dancer at the imperial court.

She leaped out of his grasp as he attempted to set her ablaze. Again and again, she executed a flawless back-flip, her movements fluid and precise. Jiro’s frustration grew with each failed attempt to capture her. Astra laughed, ducking under every one of his attacks.

Then she screamed, her feet swept out from under her as she fell onto a patch of earth that had been suddenly made slick by one of Hana’s fists.

“Hana!” Jiro yelled. “Stay out of this!”

A vein throbbed in Astra’s temple. So the bitch had come to play, had she?

Hana’s super-strength offered no defense against the blade of cutting wind that slashed toward her face. It tore through her flesh, carving a line from her forehead to her collarbone.

Jiro swore as he saw blood blossom across Hana’s shirt. He swept her up into his arms and leaped into the woods, igniting the surrounding trees as he went.

“Fuck!” Astra screamed as she watched them flee. She had no way to leap over the wall of fire and no power to extinguish it. Too consumed by rage to do anything but seethe, she watched Jiro jump from branch to branch until he disappeared from view.

Swearing viciously under her breath, she made her way back to her tent and slipped in beside the snoring Cera. The walk had done nothing to alleviate her sleeplessness. As her eyelids finally drooped, she took a grim satisfaction in imagining Hana’s copious blood loss. “When I see those two traitors again,” she thought, a final, gratifying promise to herself, “I will cut them to pieces.”