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In Deep Water

Reiko leaned on the ship's railing, staring out at the water sliding by, the sun sinking into the western sky. She had an unhappy frown on her face, the line between her brows telling the story of her mood far better than any words. Every so often, she reached up and touched her neck, remembering the feeling of the assassin's blade cutting through it. She had been stunned but not insensible when Takako had tried to use her as a human shield. Unable to move or act, she had been helpless to even employ her own defense of last resort, though she had frantically tried, locked inside her own head.

Another life down. And now I have to start planning in earnest for my own death. Because the last one must be my choice, if it's to happen at all. She wrestled with the thought, trying to come to terms with the idea of voluntarily choosing to end her own life. I'll have to set all of the spirits free, release them back into life. Setto last, of course. But it will mean that I will be without them at the end.

It was a desperately lonely thought. Would they stay with her, given new bodies and a new chance at life, to make up for the lives she'd stolen from them? Or, freed, would they take the chance to live their lives without her?

They are not mine, no matter how much I pretend. They are their own. That understanding had been hard-won, a difficult thing for someone who had spent hundreds of years understanding love simply as possession. She still didn't think she quite had a grasp on it. I remember being convinced of my own invincibility, so certain that anyone who knew me would love me, and they would be mine. But it was all based on a lie. Those who know me for what I am may respect me, be friendly to me, but they do not automatically love me.

Her thoughts were wandering down a path well-trod in the past few weeks. They were interrupted by a step behind her that she had come to know well recently; Jeron's light tread, the Thrykreen general who had saved her life a week before. She turned her head and gave him a small smile. "Jeron. Come to enjoy the sunset?"

"It's lovely tonight. But I was actually going to inquire after your health. Are you all right?"

"As well as I can be, in body, at least. My mind is another story, but isn't that always the case? At least, to hear our human companions speak."

"I think they merely misunderstand you. Your frame of reference is strange to them."

"That much, I fear, is obvious." She sighed, and stared out over the water. Abruptly, seemingly without context, she asked, "Jeron, how old are you?"

The Thrykreen blinked, taken aback by the question. "Old as my kind figures time, lady."

"Old enough that we may lose you soon?" Reiko knew that the Thrykreen lived, usually, no longer than three years.

He shook his head, laughing a little. "No, you don't need to worry about that. I have a long time left before I die. But why do you ask?"

She searched for an answer that might make sense. Because I don't want to grow attached to you only to have you die of old age next month. "Just...an idle thought, was all. I suppose it seems sad to me that your kind has such a short lifespan. But I have to say that immortality doesn't seem like all that much of a blessing to me, at the moment."

He looked over at her, separated by a bare three feet of space. He was blatantly violating the seven-foot rule, but as she didn't seem to be protesting, there he stayed. "No, it can be a burden, I suppose. But it should make you happy that their lifespan is so short, less time for them to hunt you down."

Reiko rubbed her neck once more. "I fear the Thrykreen. But I don't hold a grudge against them. That's reserved for the one who set them in motion."

"Ah, yes. The Demonbane. Savior and devil, rolled into one."

"The sad part is that, given the chance to free him of his hatred without killing him, I would. I suppose the ties of blood run deeper than I thought. I haven't thought of a way to do that, not yet, at least. I'm still working on it."

Jeron shrugged. "His spells are most complex. But I have yet to see one that cannot be unraveled."

"That would take a mage equal to his strength." She wound a lock of midnight hair around her fingers, fidgeting thoughtfully. "Arenro's currently the only one I know of. And he'd sooner spit me than look at me. And I don't know if there's anything that will quell the Demonbane's mad hatred. I don't really want to kill him. But if I must, I will."

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched the tall Thrykreen. The setting sun turned his gold hair almost russet, and she remembered touching him, the energy that coursed over his skin. She wanted to touch him again, to see if that had been a figment of her imagination. But she forbore. She didn't know how he would react to the familiarity.

"Mages that strong are few and far between. But soon you will have one. Winter and that orb are pushing Tadaki beyond what he would normally have been capable of. In a few short years, he will become Demonbane's rival. He now controls all the Thrykreen, putting the Demonbane at a severe disadvantage."

She tilted her head, considering this information. "I suppose, if I asked very nicely, Tadaki could order all the Thrykreen to stop hunting kitsune, couldn't he?"

The Thrykreen nodded at her. "Yes, he could."

"I'll work on him. Tadaki can be reasonable, sometimes, but he gets stubborn about the strangest things--and he doesn't actually like me all that much. And I can only hope that I'm going to survive the next few years. If I can, there's hope. But I've died twice in the last two months. This does not bode well."

"Not at all well. Not for you, or the rest of the kitsune, I fear." There was genuine regret in his voice. Reiko thought, he sounds as if he truly sorrows at the idea of kitsune passing from the world. How extraordinary.

Without even thinking about it, she sidled a bit closer to him, the better to see his face. "Since I appear to be the only one free and able to act, as far as we know. If there are any more, they are all in deep hiding. Perhaps if they stop being hunted, they may not need to stay so far in hiding."

He looked down at her; Reiko found that she had come very close indeed to him. Less than a foot seperated them. "I would work very hard on Tadaki. He has become the kitsune's salvation, though I doubt very much he has thought of it."

She ducked her head, biting her lip. "I haven't quite worked out how to get these people to look past the fact that I am, by their lights, a demon. Gryphon's the only one who doesn't seem to care, and maybe Haku. I keep hoping they'll get used to me, but no luck yet."

The temptation was, at last, too great for the kitsune to resist. She reached out and laid her hand on his arm. The energy coursing under his skin was still there, she noticed, and she prevented herself from reaching for it. He said, his voice perhaps a trifle unsteady, "If one Thrykreen can look past the demon and see the woman underneath...how much farther can the others be behind?"

As she glanced up into his eyes, startled by that last statement, he covered her hand with his.

And light happened.

The energy that poured into her was like nothing she'd ever felt, a thousand orgasms flowing into her, hot and sweet and thick. Jeron's eyes flared with light, or perhaps she fell upwards into them, surrounding her with blue.

It lasted only a moment. It lasted forever. When Reiko finally came back to herself, she found that she was weak-kneed, clutching the rail with her free hand to prevent herself from falling. With a gasp, she pulled her hand from him, fear coursing in the wake of pleasure.

"I--oh. What was that? What did you do to me?" Her own scent, the tang of her arousal, surrounded her as her body reacted to the energy that had flowed into her. Her heart beat fast, fluttering against her ribcage. What was that, and will you do it again, Jeron?

Briefly, she saw the look in his eyes, a swift wanting that was quickly shuttered. "It is how I am made," he admitted. "Demonbane built the energy into us, to make us appear more human. He had at one point believed that it would be fun to make the kitsune attempt to take us to bed and when they thought they have drained us, for us to take their lives. The energy is a mirage in some. Something that draws the kitsune but can't really be fed upon. In some, like myself, it is real, able to sustain a kitsune indefinitely without causing me harm. Sometimes, the energy builds up, and I must discharge it. As I just did, into you."

She smiled, the flutter of her heart beginning to calm. "That's part of what makes you different, then. You are free to do that to me any time, Jeron. It was most pleasant. Startling, but pleasant. Next time, I won't be so surprised." She paused, suspicions once more entering her mind. "Are you certain that the only reason that my father sent you was because you questioned him?"

"It is the only reason he gave me. He may have other intentions for my appearance here, but none that he voiced." He was still watching her intently, as if to gauge her reactions. She wondered, suddenly, if he was as nervous as she was, if he too felt as if he were standing on the edge of some precipice, pondering stepping out to see if the air would hold him.

"I apologize if I seem suspicious. I have lately learned that very little that comes from my father comes without a price."

His mouth quirked into a wry smile. "Don't apologize, Reiko. I too have suspicions."

"Of me, or of the Demonbane?" She shrugged. "Me, I am what I am."

"Demonbane. His motivations are ambiguous at best. He loves you and he hates you."

She chuckled. "And he can't leave me alone, it seems. It's really far too late for me to protest that none of this is my fault, I'm afraid."

"I fear that he tests you and maybe both of us. But I don't know what the questions are." His hand moved restlessly on the polished wood of the rail, as if by his motions he could rub it smooth as glass.

Reiko's voice was soft, a sorrow creeping into it. "I sometimes wish I knew what he wanted from me. I only learned he even existed less than three months ago. And he has known of me, if not actually known me, for five centuries."

"I believe he wants to know if you are simply a demon as he used to see you, or if you have become something more. And if that's something he could call a daughter."

Her laugh was almost a bark, a note without mirth. "That, Jeron, is a question to which I myself don't know the answer yet. I am not what I used to be, but I'm not sure what exactly I am now."

His smile was soft, those arresting blue eyes seeking and holding hers once more. "Without meaning offense, lady. A beautiful human woman."

Unaccountably, the kitsune blushed. "No offense taken. Though you seem to see something in me that nobody else does, at this point. I am not entirely human. But I may, in fact, be human enough..."

"There is very little difference anymore. The benefit of being kitsune was the lack of guilt, and that benefit has been erased. But has another benefit been added to take its place? You have to wonder."

She was playing with her hair again. She couldn't quite decide what to do with her hands. "Well, already those I travel with trust me more than they would have otherwise. I can be honest about what I am with them. Mostly, at least." She added, "Humanity feels very strange. It's a condition that I haven't quite gotten used to."

"I can relate. We are both outcasts, in a way. Do you love more strongly now or before?"

The question was odd, and she took a few seconds to think it over before she replied. "Can you hold love in a bowl, or a cup, or carry it like water? I don't know if I love more or less, now. But it is different. Love, for me, used to be about possession. Setto changed that for me, a bit. Now, it's a much more complex thing. I find myself with conflicting motives, and doing things detrimental to my own survival, for love. I suppose you might say that I love more strongly, yes."

"I have seen you go into battle, looking to save the lives of your friends. No kitsune that I have ever seen before or probably will again would ever do such a thing. Love has changed you. And with love comes redemption. Maybe that is what the Demonbane is after."

"Perhaps. And perhaps not." She shifted, pulling her kimono more tightly closed against the breeze which was freshening with the oncoming night. "We're both neither one thing or the other, aren't we? But both, it seems, probably more human than not."

Jeron had returned his gaze to the last remnants of the setting sun. "More than we may wish, Reiko."

His reply made her raise an eyebrow. "What about you? Did the Demonbane change you, as well? Or did he do something else?"

"The magic that he used to make what we are is fading. With each generation we step closer back to the original, but we are still changed."

"What were you like, before he got his hands on you? You defeated the Warresh, is all I know."

He kept his gaze out over the water. Reiko wondered if he was reminded even now of the sea he had floated in before his birth. "After the war with the Warresh, humans loved us and we lived very peacefully with them. But some decided that if the Warresh could go bad, then so could their conquerors. They started slowly. One of us disappears, then another and finally whole villages gone. No clue who is doing it. By the time we knew, we were so few that we couldn't sustain a population. Demonbane collected what was left of us and repopulated. Then the experiments began. Stronger, meaner, driven to kill kitsune."

"So you're going back to being what you were. The question still remains, though. I have to wonder if there's enough room in this world for people like you and me. Those I travel with seem to think of kitsune as remnants of a different, older world."

"Yes, expendable to the new world. But you had a purpose, otherwise why were you created? Do you know what that purpose was?"

That was in itself an uncomfortable question. "I don't know why we were created. But I know that we have served humans even as we have taken from them; going among them in secret, bringing pieces of true beauty to them. We were muses, once, even our animal kindred were the subject of endless stories and poetry and paintings. But I don't know why. I would have to ask our gods, I suppose, and they have not yet deigned to speak to me."

"Do you speak to them?" He'd turned back to her, looking down at her thoughtful face.

She paused, listening to her own heartbeat, remembering. "No. Not really, not for a long time. I know all the forms, of course, but I speak much more often to the spirits of the world surrounding me than to the First Foxes. I do not recall them ever replying when I spoke to them, but I have forgotten much."

"Maybe you should try sometime. Maybe you should not look at the kitsune dying as problem but as an opportunity to make a new race. There might be a reason that two kitsune such as yourself have been made. Maybe to take you back to the old ways, rather than what most have become."

Reiko slipped her hand into her pocket, her fingers finding her kitsune ball, taking comfort in its solid presence. From anyone else, these questions would have been too unnerving to stand, and here she was calmly discussing them with Jeron. "Maybe. Perhaps we were not meant to kill, in the beginning. I remember a story about the first kitsune. She was a mere fox, but she saw a human man and fell in love with him. And her love made her more than what she was, but still not quite human."

"Maybe you were meant to give pleasure, to show that beauty and art had a place in the world and maybe you were meant to help them through the centuries to become better."

She said slowly, "I know that over the centuries, we have become different. Maybe, once, all kitsune were like me, troubled by consciences. somewhere, we lost that. Perhaps we abandoned it, or perhaps it was removed by someone on purpose. Someone who thought we would make efficient killers."

"I would look no farther than Funitsu for that answer."

She raised an eyebrow. "The Scorpion, you think? The Black Hand in particular, I suppose. Kitsune assassins would be most useful to them."

"They are among the oldest of families, tracing their lines back to before the current calendar. If anyone would know, it would be them."

"I'll have to learn some Scorpion history from our arrogant Lord, I suppose. Though that arrogance has been better channeled, lately. I would be surprised if he knew, but perhaps he could find out." She untangled her hand from her hair and tapped the railing thoughtfully. "But if he knows...it could explain the fact that, except for Tadaki, he's the one who most sees the demon in me and not the person."

"He has his ways to find such information. He is Lord Soshi after all. and if he refuses, there is Lady Tomika. Strange as she is."

"She is a puzzle, isn't she? A frightening lady, but herself, I think, a bit undone by love. Even if our Lord Soshi is mostly oblivious. Alas, the only way I could think of to help that is an idea that is...somewhat morally shaky, and I find myself with distaste for it, oddly enough. I will let those two work it out."

Jeron's voice was oddly soft. "He loves, I think. Just not her."

She raised an eyebrow. "Yukiko, do you think? He is certainly at his most charming when she is around."

"Maybe, and maybe you. But his thoughts and concerns are always about his half sister. His love for her outweighs anything right now. He doesn't understand how she could have turned against him. They were close, so I have overheard."

She shook her head in pity for the recently minted Lord Soshi. "They were. She was the family favorite, and he spent years missing her. And to find that she has surfaced, only to be on the other side? I am not certain anything in his life has prepared him for that."

"No do I. But maybe you have something more in common that you like to believe." Those crystal eyes met hers again, summer-sky blue, the twilight deepening their color to midnight.

A thought flitted through Reiko's mind and was gone. He will always be able to undo me with those eyes.

Her voice carried just the slightest tinge of pity. "Both of us, in a sense, newly awakened and confused." She hesitated, remembering her responsibiities, reluctantly moving into action. "I am sorry, Jeron, but my evening meditations call me. I must go."

"I understand, Reiko. I have duties to attend to, myself." He began to turn away from her.

Deliberately, this time, she put her hand on his arm, stopping him. She reached up, laying one small hand on the side of his face. And in the silence of that moment, she made a decision that had been awaiting her for more than a week, since she had first spoken to him at length and he soon after had saved her life. "Jeron...afterwards, if you'd like...you know where my cabin is."

And she brought his head down to hers, standing on her own tiptoes, and kissed him lightly on the mouth. Even that touch was enough to sear her, almost enough to make her forget that they both had places to be. After she broke the kiss, landing once more on her heels, she felt a flush creeping up her body. Afraid to stay a moment longer, feeling really rather peculiar indeed, she walked quickly away, towards the bow of Shrike and her usual meditation spot.

When she glanced over her shoulder, she saw Jeron, seemingly rooted to the spot, watching her go.

*****

Deep in her meditation, Setto was pacing before her, the newly released Miss M lounging in midair, Tsuyoshi investigating how a nearby winch worked, muttering about "biological constructs". Zhane and Kei danced together to music only they could hear, ignoring Reiko.

Rei, how could you? You know how dangerous he is. He belongs to the Demonbane. And he is a Thrykreen.

"I know, Setto. And, somehow, that makes very little difference."

Tell me, Rei, will you still be as passionate about him once you see his mantid form? You know what that human exterior hides.

"And he knows what mine hides. It may make no difference. I may find his mantid form beautiful because I find him beautiful. I may be disgusted by it. I will cross that river when I get there."

And if the Demonbane orders him to kill you, he will obey. What then?

She breathed deeply, her husband's question touching her own disquieting fear. She looked within herself, asking herself the question, listening for the answer.

Unexpectedly, it came.

"Then I die, Setto, by the hand of one who I may by then have come to love. If that fate is mine, I will accept it. Not gladly, but I will. Remember, you seemed to think it preferable to even a death in battle." She breathed in, and said, "If his hand is the one destined to still my heart, then so be it."

Setto shook his head but didn't reply. And they sat there as the summer stars appeared overhead, the wind ruffling the kitsune's hair, the samurai's spirit sitting with his wife, both of their faces turned towards the heavens.