Kira Mizushima's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The creek led Kira upstream through the dark. By dawn her legs worked again, but a new fear gnawed at her. She knew the court's walls. She did not know how to get inside unseen. If she walked up to the gate, guards would take her in the first breath. She needed a door no one watched. And only one person had ever shown her those doors. She left the water where a trail climbed toward a house. A split-level home sat on the rise, its yellow door bright against gray siding. She knew this place. Her old trainer lived here now, cast out like her, but years before her. She crept to the back window and watched. Inside, an old woman knelt over an open chest. Carved flowers ran across its wood. The woman lifted a folded cloth, then froze. She had heard something. Without turning, she spoke. "You breathe too loud, Kira. You always did." Kira stepped through the back door. The woman who had trained her sat straight despite her gray hair. She did not reach for a weapon. That scared Kira more than if she had. "I need the hidden entrances to the court," Kira said. "The ones the guards don't walk." The old woman laughed, dry and short. "So you can die in them." She returned to the chest. Inside, among the cloth, sat a small purple figure. A stone axolotl, frilled and smiling. She lifted it and turned it in her fingers. "They gave me this the day I joined. A child's charm. I kept it to remember I was once soft." "Give me the entrances," Kira said. "Or I go in blind and they catch me at the gate." The woman studied her. "You won't stop. I can see that." She set the axolotl down. Then she drew a finger through the dust on the floor. She sketched walls, a drain, a low tunnel beneath the east kitchen. "This grate. It floods in spring. No one guards wet stone. It drops into the lower stores. From there you can reach the records." Kira memorized every line. Her heart beat hard. "But know this," the woman said. She wiped the drawing away with her palm. "I am not the only one who kept old lessons. The man they sent after you trained in those same tunnels. He knows the grate too. If he reaches the court before you, he will be waiting inside, not out." Kira's stomach dropped. The false trail had bought her hours, not safety. The tracker would not stand at the gate now. He would be below, in the dark, in the one path she meant to take. "Then I go fast," Kira said. The old woman nodded once. "Go. And do not come back here." Kira slipped out the yellow door and ran upstream. She had her way in. She also had a killer waiting at the other end of it.