a glance in the great eye watching
The two woman slept, the afternoon sunlight pouring in on them. The smaller woman smiled in her sleep, her black hair falling over her face, shrouding much of her nude body. The taller curled around her, one arm draped over the smaller woman's body, her breasts pressed into her back.
Reiko stirred, opened amber eyes. It was good to find an afternoon's worth of time to spend with her lover, the tall gaijin who had traveled here with her father, the trader. Jane, who Reiko called Zhane when she wanted to tease her, had been a little lost when she arrived in her lord's palace, since she didn't speak the language of the court. Fortunately, Reiko had some English, enough to get by, and had become her friend while her lord and Jane's father were off negotiating together.
Then, one day, Reiko had invited Jane to come bathing with her, and some light-hearted dunking had turned into something not quite so innocent. And since then they had been more or less inseparable, the courtier and the trader's daughter. Reiko had very much enjoyed teaching Jane the things she knew, and Jane for her part had a few subtle tricks up her sleeve that argued that she was nowhere near as innocent as she claimed to be.
Reiko wriggled a little, feeling skin against skin and sighing with happiness. She turned her head and laid her mouth against the other woman's bare throat, kissing her gently. Perhaps she could wake her softly, have her damp and wanting before she even came awake entirely...
She paused. Something was wrong. What--? She could hear crying somewhere nearby, as if a child were sobbing, in need of comfort. She shifted and Jane's arm fell from her back to lie between them with a limp thud.
Her throat. There had been no pulse when she had kissed it, the familiar quiver of her heart and the breath that passed through her throat had been entirely absent.
With a startled cry, Reiko rolled away from Jane, coming to her knees and crouching next to the body of her lover. "Jane? Jane! What-- By all the living spirits--"
Her Jane, her beautiful gaijin, who she had only recently come to love, was dead.
And only then did Reiko raise her head, to find the source of the sobbing she was hearing.
Jane's spirit stood over her corpse, both hands raised to her mouth. Her dark eyes were eloquent, love and terror warring in them, and she was crying, sobbing without tears. The spirit looked down at her body and then at the naked woman who crouched over it, staring up at her.
The spirit stooped to touch the shoulder of the shell that had been hers. She reached out a hand to Reiko, and her voice suddenly came clear in Reiko's mind. "Rei, Rei, what have you done? What have you done to me?"
Reiko could only stare in horror as she remembered. Remembered the lovely bright energy that had coursed through Jane, so pretty. Remembered drinking of the energy as they had arched against each other, remembered wanting it--all of it--and Jane had been so willing to give--
Remembered the two of them collapsing in each other's arms, sated.
Remembered Jane was asleep the moment her eyes closed, the breath hissing out of her lungs.
Remembered what she was. Kitsune. Spirit fox. Drinker of lives.
As she had drunk of Jane's, as she'd drunk too deeply because she didn't know any better, didn't know how to stop. The knowledge tore into Reiko as she stared with wide amber eyes at Jane's spirit. A whisper in her mind sounded. You kill. What you love, you kill. Goodnight, Reiko.
The voice was Grandmother Lin's. The oldest of her six spirits. Reiko collapsed to the mat as she felt Grandmother Lin's power overtake her own, cutting the ties between her and her body. We will try again, Granddaughter. And then all was darkness.
*****
Reiko stood at the door, feeling very young indeed. Sar-i sent me here for a reason. She had to have known something... The guard was standing with his spear blocking her path, saying, "You can't come in here. There is no place for you here. Leave or I'll throw you out, willing or not." He paused and leered at her. "In fact, unwilling might be even better. It's no fun unless the fish struggle."
He was reaching for her and Reiko was contemplating whether she would catch something nasty if she bit his presumptuous hand when a voice mellow as old wood sounded behind the guard. "What, exactly, is going on here, Showen?"
The change in the guard's demeanor was nothing short of miraculous. He straightened and all expression on his face drained away, leaving nothing but a perfect mask as he turned to face the man who had come up behind him. "My lord, I was simply explaining to the young lady that despite a letter of passage, not just anyone gets in to see you, certainly not a commoner--"
The tall man's eyes glinted with something that might have been either amusement or anger. "I decide who I do and do not see, Showen. As it happens, the young lady is here to take a place in my household, which I'm certain she would have explained had you let her get a word in edgewise before attempting to throw her out. Han Reiko, I presume?"
Reiko blinked, then remembered her manners and bowed. "Han Reiko Mei, lord."
"I am Akechi. You come highly reccommended by Sar-i, whose judgement has not yet failed me."
"I hope to live up to her regard." She ignored the guard, who was busy turning a livid shade of purple. She managed not to giggle as she saw a pair of her spirits inspecting him, sticking fingers in his ears and nostrils and running hands through his hair.
Grandmother Lin stood next to Akechi, looking him up and down. She nodded. "He's a good one, Granddaughter. You could go far in his service."
As Reiko followed her new lord down the corridor, her seven spirits followed her, drifting in her wake. The last of them was a tall gaijin woman, her eyes vague and lost, muttering to herself in a barbaric tongue that Reiko didn't understand a word of.
The spirit whose name the shaman could only pronounce as Zhane.