Moonburner (Moonburner Cycle Book 1) Read online

  Her parents’ love for each other, after almost twenty years, was still embarrassingly intense. There were many nights Kai wished that their house was bigger, or at least had thicker walls.

  “I don’t like how he looks at you,” Raiden said. “Or how often he comes to visit.”

  “I don’t either,” Hanae said, leaving Raiden’s arms to check the stew. “But I am the village healer. I do not turn patients away.”

  “Even patients with fake ailments?” Kai chimed in. “His only ailment is being fat as a rhinoceros.”

  “Kai!” her parents chided her simultaneously.

  “We must show him respect,” Hanae said. “Even if he has not earned it.”

  After dinner, Kai and her parents sat by the warm light of the fire. Her father oiled a halter for one of the horses. While her mother ground herbs in a stone bowl, Kai studied her face in the firelight. It was no surprise that Prefect Youkai was interested in Hanae. She was strikingly beautiful despite years of hard work as a rancher’s wife and the village’s only healer. She had lustrous black hair, pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck, a few stray pieces loose around her temples. Her face, round and smooth like a doll’s, was filled with perfect features: wide, striking light-gray eyes with long lashes, a small nose and a full button mouth. The way her ears stuck out at the top seemed endearing, rather than awkward like Kai’s. But more than that, her mother had a way with people. She treated each of her patients, from the poorest to the oldest, with kindness and humor, earning their trust and respect. The townsfolk worshipped her. Some days, Kai aspired to cultivate her mother’s gentle strength, while others left her annoyed that she had a role model that she could never live up to.

  Kai flipped through The Rising Sun, a children’s fable about the formation of Kita that she had already read about a thousand times, before finally tossing it aside.

  “Can we talk more about the plan?” Kai asked, breaking the silence.

  “Not tonight,” Hanae responded. “I have had a trying day.”

  “Please? I can’t just sit here anymore. I need to do something, prepare, plan . . . something.”

  “We have been preparing you for this your whole life,” Raiden said. “You are ready. You are strong. We just need to wait until you are eighteen. Then you will gain your full powers, and the moonburners will not be able to deny you.”

  “I know. But won’t you tell me more about the moonburners? About Queen Airi? I need to know what to expect.”

  “Queen Airi is a calculating woman,” Hanae said. “I do not relish entrusting you to her care. Her moonburners are only a weapon to her.” Her mother pursed her lips. “But there is no other place for you. Now please, let us speak of this no more tonight.”

  Kai awoke that morning from a hot, fitful sleep. She never slept well. It seemed that as soon as the sun set, her mind and body became energized and alive, like a taut bowstring itching for its arrow to fly. She opened the tight shutters over her window and sunlight streamed into the room.

  The air in her room already felt heavy. It would be a hot day. The shutters were her mother’s idea, designed to keep stray rays of moonlight from touching her, lest they awaken some hidden power she was unprepared for. In her seventeen years, her supposed powers had only ever once manifested, and at this point, she couldn’t help but wonder if it was all a horrible misunderstanding.

  If not for her hair. That was undeniable. She splashed water on her face and toweled it off, careful not to get her hair wet. A moonburner, a female sorceress who drew her magic from the light of the moon, developed her powers fully by age eighteen. Her magical maturity was marked by her hair turning entirely silver, a process that had already begun for Kai. Hanae carefully dyed Kai’s short cropped hair dark brown once a week to cover the silver, but if her hair got wet in the meantime, the dye would wash out.

  Sunburners, male sorcerers that drew their powers from the rays of the sun, were marked by the same distinct hair—except theirs turned the color of spun gold. And it wasn’t illegal to be a sunburner in Kita. They were honored and revered, making up King Ozora’s most elite fighting force. It would have been so much easier if she had been a boy.

  She pulled on brown trousers and began the daily process of tightly binding her breasts so any trace of a feminine curve was gone. Not that there was a lot of curve to begin with. She pulled on a long white shirt and leather vest, followed by her leather work boots and broad-brimmed hat. Her costume as Kai, the cherished only son, was complete.

  That day, they checked the cattle for illness and pests and branded the new calves. The day passed quickly as Kai and her father worked in companionable silence. As much as her situation grated at her, there was much she would miss about this life.

  But there was no place for a moonburner in Kita. King Ozora had decreed years ago that all moonburners would be killed on sight. All female babies who were revealed by the Gleaming to be moonburners were left in the Tottori Desert to die; a gruesome sacrifice for Taiyo. No one ever said gods were civilized.

  When her parents realized that she was a moonburner, they had pretended she was a boy to avoid performing the Gleaming in public. A king’s ransom to the town surgeon had secured his silence in the matter, and even then, her parents breathed easier after he passed away a few years ago. They had somehow, miraculously, kept up the charade.

  Kai and Raiden walked in from the outer pasture as dusk was falling. The last rays of the setting sun fell across the caramel-colored grass of the fields, seeming to set it on fire with its ruddy light.

  The stillness was shattered by a piercing scream that sounded faint in the distance, soon followed by the sounds of broken glass and falling rubble. Kai and her father looked at each other in alarm and both started running towards the house.

  “I’ll get mother,” Kai said, and her father nodded his assent. He split off from Kai, heading towards the closest gate to the village.

  Kai flew through the front door.

  “Something’s going on in the village. It sounds like there could be injuries,” Kai said, catching her breath. Hanae was already gathering her bag of instruments and herbs and Kai grabbed the knife and sheath her father had given her when she turned thirteen, tucking it into her belt.

  They ran towards the village, one-tenth of a league from their house. Smoke was already rising from the buildings behind the stout wooden wall. Screams and explosions punctuated the scene. She could only imagine what was going on inside those walls.

  “There are no attackers at the gate,” Hanae said. “It must be someone from the inside.”

  “The inside? A rebellion? But who? Why?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t understand,” Hanae said breathlessly. “But the gate is closed.”

  “Maybe we can get in the Sun Door,” Kai said, referring to the pedestrian entrance leading into the town market.

  They veered to the left, flanking the high walls. Smoke was billowing higher now in the center of town, drifting over the side of the walls.

  They reached the Sun Door and were almost bowled over by two women fleeing the burning town. Hanae grabbed the arm of one, who Kai recognized as the baker’s wife. Her face was smeared with soot and her eyes were wild.

  “What is going on?” Hanae asked, gripping the woman’s arms as if willing her to shake off her daze through sheer force.

  “Moonburners. Attack.”

  Hanae recoiled as if bitten by a snake. The women continued to flee and Hanae turned her iron grip to Kai.

  “You cannot go in there. They might recognize you . . . what you are. You must run.”

  “I am not going to flee while you and father help save our village,” Kai replied, square jaw set stubbornly. “I’m coming.”

  “Absolutely not. This is not up for discussion. There is no way I will—”

  Hanae was cut off as a fireball hit the wall above their heads, the strength of the blast tossing them to the ground like discarded chaff. Kai tried to sit up and reeled to
the side, a vision of the flames burned onto her retinas. A portion of the wall above them was alight and spreading fast. Her mother wasn’t moving.

  And then Kai saw the moonburner. She rode astride an enormous black bat, circling and flapping its membranous wings to stay aloft above the town. Kai had heard the legends, but had hardly believed they were real—moonburners or the giant bats. Did they breathe fire, too, like the stories said?

  Kai’s body felt strangely detached from her mind, as if she were floating outside of time, senses ringing and backfiring.

  The woman sent fireball after fireball along the length of the village wall, systematically lighting it on fire, a grim smile on her face. Her long silver hair whipped in the wind and the heat; her eyes shone like comets blazing across the sky. She was beautiful and terrible.

  The moonburner’s gaze swept past Kai and returned, eyes narrowing as she no doubt realized that her prey had not been neatly dispatched. As the woman raised her arm to throw, Kai’s mind slammed back into her protesting body, and she launched into action. She heaved her mother’s unconscious body up into her arms and half stumbled, half threw them through the Sun Door. Fire exploded behind them, the intensity of the heat threatening to overwhelm her. But Kai managed to stay on her feet, gripping her mother’s unconscious form over her shoulder.

  Kai made her way into the center of the village, placing one heavy foot before the other. Her skin felt tight and painful, especially where the weight of her mother pressed her. People streamed past in panicked flight, oblivious to anything but their own survival.

  Kai reached the first clearing in the market and nearly cried from relief when she saw her father. He was directing a team of men pulling buckets from the ornamental fountain, trying to make a small dent in the blazes that lit the sky around them.

  “Father!” she cried, reaching his side and laying her mother down as gently as her aching muscles would allow.

  They examined Hanae quickly together, reaching the same conclusion that she was unconscious, but alive and generally unharmed. She was already stirring.

  Raiden drew Kai into a quick, fierce embrace. “Good job, my little fox,” he said into her ear.

  “How can I help?” Kai asked, wiping the back of her shirtsleeve across her forehead, no doubt leaving more grime than was there to start.

  Before Raiden had time to respond, a woman stumbled out from a stone building to the left of the square, tripping and falling to the ground like a limp rag doll. The top floors of the building burned brightly, and debris was already beginning to fall. Kai ran to her side, kneeling down.

  “Maiko!” Kai said, smoothing the tangled hair from her face. “Are you all right?”

  “Sora is still inside,” she sobbed. Maiko was Tomm and Ren’s mother. Sora, their little brother, was eight. Sora with his brothers’ same mischievous smile, Sora who loved chasing the calves in the field, sprinting after them until he fell to the ground, breathless and giggling. Kai’s anger flared. How could someone do this to an innocent child?

  “Where are Tomm and Ren?” she asked. “Are they inside?”

  “No, they ran to help when the attack first came. I tried to get Sora, but his door was stuck, I couldn’t get it open. Help him!” she pleaded.

  “Kai!” She heard her father call. “You can’t!”

  But she had already plunged into the house.

  The bottom floor of the house was smoky but not yet aflame. She used her knife to rip a patch off the bottom of her shirt and tied it over her nose and mouth. The smoke stung her eyes as she ran up the stairs, taking them two by two.

  The air on the second level was almost suffocating. Flames licked the ceiling from the rooftop above. She passed two open doors, Ren’s and Tomm’s, she presumed. There. The closed door. Her eyes watered, blurring her vision. She tried the knob and screamed as her hand came away. The knob was red hot and angry. Blisters spread across her palm and fingers. She took a shuddering breath to steel her nerves and doubled over, coughing from the smoke.

  She mentally shook herself. Get this done or you will die in here, she thought. She took a step back from the door and kicked with all her might. The door hardly budged, the impact reverberating through her entire body. She tried again. And again. The fourth time, the warped wood of the door frame gave and the door burst in. Sora lay on the floor curled in a ball, unconscious.

  She lifted his still body; her burned hand screaming in protest. She turned to leave and was driven backward as a portion of the hallway roof gave way in a shower of embers and wood. The flames roared through the doorway, greedily making their way inside the room.

  Kai looked back at the second story window, too tiny for her to fit through. The hallway was the only way. Tsuki be with me, she prayed silently to the moon goddess. She backed against the far wall and sprinted forward, leaping through the flames over the downed beams.

  She had cleared it! Her elation died in a strangled scream as she felt flames continue to caress her body, up her shoulders and down her back. Her shirt had caught fire.

  She pounded down the stairs and out the front door, straight for the fountain. She hurdled the low stone ledge and plunged into the shallow water with Sora still in her arms, collapsing sideways. Steam rose from her as she heaved Sora over the edge, lowering him to the ground gently. She had done it.

  Kai dragged herself from the fountain, searching for Maiko in the crowd. The number in the square had grown. Even Prefect Youkai was helping quell the worst of the fires. She found Maiko, and it took her a moment to realize that Maiko’s eyes did not register gratitude, but shock. Fear.

  Confused, she searched for her parents. There they were; her mother had awoken. But the look on their faces . . . horror. She self-consciously wiped the soot from her face and her hand came away black. Not black from soot. Black from dye. Her dye was streaming down her, staining her shirt.

  Oh no. Her shirt. It was nearly gone, charred and hanging in tatters. Her feminine form was unmistakable.

  Prefect Youkai’s eyes were large as saucers, his bovine face quivering with fear. He pointed a finger at her, accusing. “Moonburner.”

  The cell was pitch black. The darkness swam in front of her, swirling into shapes that could only be her imagination. The cell was designed to hold a burner, so the lack of light was imperative. Never mind that she hardly qualified as a burner. She was probably the least dangerous burner prisoner that had ever inhabited this cell. She didn’t even know how to use her powers.

  With her eyes rendered useless, Kai’s other senses heightened. She smelled the dusty floor and stale urine from a former inhabitant, felt the cool of the stone walls seeping the warmth from her. She strained to hear her parents; they had been taken to a holding cell as well. She didn’t know if it was close by. She couldn’t hear anything but the muffled sounds of King Ozora’s soldiers guarding her door.

  The door slammed open and Kai started awake, heart leaping into her chest. She must have fallen asleep. The light from the room beyond her cell illuminated the unmistakable bulk of Prefect Youkai, carefully positioned behind two soldiers whose yari spears were leveled at her.

  The soldiers entered the room carefully, one pointing his blade while the other cuffed her in heavy iron manacles. Kai came compliantly, unsure what her strategy was. She needed to evaluate the situation. Escape seemed unlikely, but she would be damned if she just let them kill her.

  The stairs from the cells opened into a corridor that led to the main room of the village hall. The early morning sunlight cast soft rays that seemed out of place, illuminating the harsh reality of the charred room. Blackened debris covered the floor; remnants of fine oriental rugs and elaborate carved wooden furniture littered the room, still smoking in places. One of the exterior walls leaned precariously inward.

  “Admiring your handiwork?” Prefect Youkai asked.

  “I did not cause this,” she said, knowing it would do no good.

  “We know you are complicit. All moonburners are
evil.”

  Kai squinted as they walked into the main square in front of the village hall, shielding her eyes against the bright light. The square was filled with people, their whispers and muttering forming an angry buzz. Their clothes were covered in soot; dried blood and tear-stains marked the faces of many. The town had been devastated. The moonburner attack had been short but efficient, leveling many of the buildings. It would take years to rebuild.

  “Go get the other traitors,” Youkai said. The two guards disappeared back into the building.

  The guards re-emerged with her parents in shackles. Raiden had been savagely beaten, his face purpling and swollen. Hanea looked unharmed, save for her wounds from the moonburner’s earlier attack. She stood with a serenity that Kai could not muster herself.

  “People of Ushai.” Prefect Youkai held his hands up to quiet the crowd. “We are here today, in the wake of tragedy, to stand witness to the sentencing of three traitors who were living among us. Let this be a lesson to all of you to be vigilant and ever watchful against the plots of our enemies. Miina is not content to let us be. Queen Airi and her moonburners seek to destroy all of us!”

  Prefect Youkai never missed an opportunity for fear-mongering.

  “Wait,” Kai said, voice hoarse. “Sentencing? Don’t we even get a trial?”

  Her parents both leaned forward and looked at her in silent censure.

  What? She wanted to ask. It’s not like she could make things worse.

  “Yes, sentencing. King Ozora has decreed that all women who are born capable of moonburning will be put to death. There is nothing to consider. Do you deny you are a moonburner?”

  She bit her lip. Her hair was a dead giveaway. No one would believe her now if she tried to deny what she was. “No, I do not deny it.”

  Angry whispers rippled through the crowd.

  “But I am not a traitor. I have lived among you all my life. You are my friends, my neighbors. I had no part in this attack.”