Flamecaller

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  Flamecaller

  About the Author

  FLAMECALLER

  CAITLIN RICCI

  When the emperor has his father killed, it's the breaking point for Haruo, who sets out from the island of dragon shifters where he lives in search of revenge. The tournament being held to marry off the emperor's son seems like a perfect opportunity—what better way to get close to the father than through the son, after all.

  Flamecaller

  By Caitlin Ricci

  Published by Less Than Three Press LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.

  Edited by James Loke Hale

  Cover designed by Michelle Seaver

  This book is a work of fiction and all names, characters, places, and incidents are fictional or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is coincidental.

  First Edition March 2018

  Copyright © 2018 by Caitlin Ricci

  Printed in the United States of America

  Digital ISBN 9781684311965

  FLAMECALLER

  "I need you and Taka to stay inside tonight."

  Haruo looked to his father. "Why? What's going on?"

  "Tonight's the night." His father grabbed his sword and his jacket. Haruo simply stared at him. "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

  He did, but he hadn't realized his father was going to attempt the assassination tonight. "I thought you were going to the temple in two weeks, when the new moon came and you'd have that cover. Why the rush?"

  His father jerked the door open. He was in a hurry, and Haruo would have normally let him go without an argument, but they'd been planning this assassination for over a year—and it wasn't supposed to happen tonight.

  "The son is here early. He wasn't supposed to be here until Friday, but I heard that he's here now. They'll be expecting something at his coming of age tournament in two weeks. People aren't even supposed to know he's home yet. Don't question me anymore, Haruo, just stay inside. Don't give them a reason to suspect you of anything. Not tonight. With any luck, this will all be over soon. Where's Taka now?"

  "She's where she always is at night," Haruo said, still trying to make sense of what his father was saying.

  His father growled. "She needs to stop going to the water. The spirits aren't getting any quieter, no matter how much she speaks with them. The only solution is to kill the family that is hurting the spirits of our lands."

  What his cousin did was the least of Haruo's concerns right then. Taka could spend all night talking to the spirits and trying to keep them from hurting if that was what she wanted, as long as his father didn't go to the temple tonight. "Dad, no. Let's wait until the tournament. It's just two weeks away. That's two more weeks to prepare."

  He slammed the door closed and Haruo knew his father was less than pleased with him. "You don't think I'm prepared," he snapped.

  "I want you to stick to the plan," Haruo argued.

  "The plan is, and always will be, that Shiro and his line will die by our hands. If not mine, then yours. I will take this opportunity. You should want me to go after him tonight. Is your heart not in this? Do you not care about freeing this island from their strangling hold on her power?"

  Haruo jumped up from the chair he'd been reading on before his father's sudden decision to leave. "Of course I care about the island!" He was offended that his father would even suggest that he didn't.

  "Then you should want me to go. You should believe in me, and in our mission."

  He was gone then, slamming the door in Haruo's face, and as much as he wanted to go after his father, he knew that doing so would be a lost cause. His father was set on attempting the assassination tonight. Haruo didn't think he had a chance, but he wanted to believe that he did. It would be his father's fifth attempt, and he'd never come all that close. He'd never been caught either, so that was the best that Haruo hoped for.

  Instead of chasing his father down and trying to make him see reason—and that he and Taka should be allowed to go with him to at least help keep watch—he went to go find his cousin. She, at least, was predictable and didn't change her plans at the last minute and then yell at him about it.

  Haruo sighed as he sat down beside the river with her. She was covered in scales, swimming just below the surface, and not paying any attention to him. Not until he dipped his hand into the water and wiggled his fingers enough to cause some splashing sounds to get her attention. Only then did she rise to the surface and blink up at him as if to ask him what he thought he was doing there interrupting her time in the river.

  "We have to go back in," he quietly explained. They couldn't talk about why, not outside where someone could overhear them, but he hoped she understood how serious he was without him having to say more.

  Fortunately Taka nodded, and as she stepped onto the rocks and came out of the river, her scales were pulled back into her skin. "I guess we need to go then." She didn't sound happy about it, but he could tell she wasn't worried. Not yet anyway.

  "Yes, we do."

  "Is your father making his fish stew tonight? I'm hungry."

  Haruo got up from the riverbank as well. If he could have stayed out there by the water all night, he would have. He found peace out here. "No. He's not home right now."

  She jerked her attention over to him and Haruo nodded, confirming her suspicions. "Of all the impulsive… ridiculous… Argh!"

  "We should go inside." Haruo didn't want to be caught by Shiro's men, especially not when his father was out trying to kill him and his son.

  Taka was thankfully quiet until they got back into the small house they shared with his father, but that was all it seemed she was able to do. Seconds after he had closed the door, she was pacing around the living room, stomping her feet as she went.

  "He should have let us go with him," she hissed.

  Haruo nodded. "His chances would have been better then, but maybe he didn't want to risk us being seen. It's a lot easier for one person to get away than three. He would have probably been worried about us."

  She turned a hard glare on him. "You didn't even try arguing with him, did you?"

  "I did."

  "Not nearly hard enough." She scoffed at him.

  Haruo had listened to enough of that from his father, he didn't need it from his cousin too. "I'm going to bed. He'll be back in a few hours, like he always is."

  "You could at least pretend you want him to kill those two!" she screeched at him.

  Haruo sighed. "I do want him to kill Shiro and his son. Of course I do. It's what he's been training for his whole life. It's what we've been trained for as well. But Taka, this isn't the first time he's tried. At this point, all I want is for him to come home safe. I know it has to be either him or me that kills them, and if I'd had a child, they would have been trained to kill Shiro too. But I didn't, so now it's down to just us, and I'm tired of it. I'm tired of all of it."

  "You've given up. Haruo, tell me that you haven't truly given up."

  Maybe he had. Maybe he was just tired of not having any kind of a life outside of planning the deaths of two people he didn't know in order to free the island spirits. "I'm going to bed," he repeated.

  "I hope their screams keep you awake tonight, like they do me," she hissed. She would have done better to slap him.

  "He'll be back in a few hours. He always is."

  Taka turned her back on him and Haruo went into his room, glad to be alone and no longer facing her anger.

  When his father hadn't returned by the next morning, he knew he'd been wrong well
before news spread of his capture and upcoming execution.

  *~*~*

  Haruo couldn't look away from the masked man. He was less than fifty feet from where Haruo and Taka stood. The wind off the ocean blew up around them. There were a dozen people around him, all dragons in their second skins, and like him, they were all paying attention to the man dressed in black leather. Haruo had heard of him. Everyone had.

  The rain, which had only been a light drizzle most of the afternoon, turned harsh and cold against his thick wings. With a dark look to the sky, Haruo lifted his wings to shield both Taka and himself. It was a good day to die, his father would have said. He loved the rain. Even as miserable and cold as this downpour was.

  Haruo could almost see his father's face as he stood there bound in irons and chains against a wooden beam. He imagined that his father was smiling. There were few things his father had told him repeatedly, ever since he was a small child, and smiling when death came was one of them. Smile to let death know his task wouldn't be easy. Smile to let him know you'd had a good life and he wasn't taking anything from you because you'd experienced everything you'd wanted to already.

  Haruo knew he couldn't have smiled if the masked man came for him, as he did now for his father. He wanted to scream and rage at Emperor Shiro for imprisoning his father. But he didn't. If he did, he would be chained right there next to his father. And Taka needed him alive. They were all each other had now, and he knew what he had to do.

  The masked man walked slowly but with definite purpose as the tails of his long leather coat trailed behind him. He'd only ever been a rumor in Haruo's lifetime, but the older generation spoke of the emperor's executioner often, and always in hushed voices. He was immortal, they said. A monster to be feared. A demon called down and chained to do the emperor's bidding. It seemed he'd served every emperor in the Ang line for at least the last hundred years. If not two hundred.

  Haruo hadn't believed any of it, but now he couldn't deny what he was seeing for his own eyes, and Haruo hated him instantly. He hated what the executioner stood for—that absolute power that Shiro had over this land and all of her people. Shiro was the law here, and nothing would change that, nothing except his death. Haruo wanted them all dead. Shiro, his son, and the executioner. They all had to die. He hadn't understood his father's obsession with killing them, or Taka's for that matter, not until that moment when he saw the executioner come for his father.

  Now he understood, and he wished he'd done more. He wished he'd tried harder, or that he'd gone in his father's place. Maybe then his father wouldn't be facing his death this day. Maybe Haruo could have won for them both. He and Taka were the backup plan though. He'd wanted to keep Haruo out of the killing if possible, and Haruo wanted Taka out of it before this, but now he knew he would need her. There was nothing else to it. The three of them had to die, and Haruo was ready to kill them.

  The emperor's executioner stood no more than ten feet from his father, then he lifted his right hand and sent out a pulse of energy that was felt like static through the gathered crowd. People around them gasped and clung to each other. There were whispers of ancient curses and deadly magic. Haruo took Taka's hand and blinked through the rain pelting his face. There was nothing they could do to save his father. Once he'd been captured, there was nothing any of them could do. No one who was arrested ever left Shiro's prison alive.

  The executioner sent out another charge, but this one caught flame seconds before it swirled around his father. Haruo expected to hear his father scream as the flames licked over his skin, but there was nothing. It was then that Haruo understood that the first pulse had incapacitated his father. He'd never felt his death. He'd been unconscious for it. The executioner had been merciful when he'd had no reason to be. Haruo both hated the executioner in that moment and was grateful to him at the same time.

  Then the pain came. The pounding realization that his father was gone and he and Taka were alone now. She knew what this was like. She'd lost both of her parents years before. But to Haruo, this was a new and wholly unwelcome sensation of falling with nothing to catch him and no sense of when it was going to be over.

  Taka leaned against his side. "It'll be done soon. This pain will be over, and you'll be at peace once they're all dead."

  It was dangerous to talk about such things in public. Their family tie to the island was a secret they'd kept for generations. But Haruo was still glad of her words. He nodded. "We'll do everything we can. We'll make them pay and we'll free the island from their grasp."

  She smiled up at him, showing her small fangs as scales began to form over her cheeks. She would relish their deaths and take pride in their murders, he was sure of it. But he only wanted peace.

  Haruo looked to Emperor Shiro as he sat on his iron throne. He saw disappointment and disgust on the emperor's face, and he wondered who it was directed toward. His would be assassin was dead, so it couldn't have been his father. And his executioner had done his job.

  A few people came over to silently touch his shoulder and give him their sympathy. He was the head of their small family now, and he would carry the responsibility of that title with pride.

  Haruo gave the executioner one last look before they turned away from him. He stood there, only feet from his father, and Haruo could only hope his father had smiled at him.

  Haruo managed to keep Taka quiet until they were well away from the village, closer to where the prisoners' graves were. His father would have no marker for his grave, but he'd known that when he'd decided to try to murder Shiro. Haruo wouldn't pity him now, not when he'd died trying to help them all.

  "We should work on a plan," Taka whispered.

  Haruo looked around. They were almost alone, but not quite. He didn't trust the emperor's gravediggers not to run back to Shiro with whatever they overheard Taka say. "Soon. After my father is buried and they are gone." He nodded to them and she pursed her lips.

  "They're eunuchs under his control. They likely hate him as much as we do," she argued. Taka wasn't good at keeping her voice down either, and quite a few of them glanced at her as they continued their ghastly work in the pelting rain.

  "Are you willing to risk our lives if you're wrong?" He kept his voice low. They were already attracting more attention than he was comfortable with.

  Taka shook her head and Haruo waited for them to finish with their grim task before he spoke again. It didn't take them long, as they likely had plenty of practice with burying Shiro's enemies.

  "Aren't you going to say something over him?" Taka demanded as he began to turn away from the gravesite.

  Haruo looked from the freshly dug grave, to her, then back again. "No. He wouldn't have wanted it. Words are trivial when actions could do so much more. He said that often enough. I'm surprised you forgot so soon."

  She glared at him. "He was your father!"

  "Yes, and now we will go home and speak to each other because we, unlike my father, are still alive and able to carry on what he wanted us to do. We will come up with a plan. We will use the tournament, like he should have to begin with. He tried. He failed. We will not."

  She hurried to catch up with him as he began to stride away. The rain chased them all the way back to the house they shared. It overlooked the water, and Taka took up her favorite seat by the window in the living room. She looked up at him expectantly, but Haruo would need more than a few seconds before he would be up for plotting murder with her again.

  "Tea?" he offered.

  "Haruo…"

  With a sigh, he poured cool water into their clay teapot. Heat radiated from his hands and slowly the water warmed. A bit of matcha powder later and he had two cups ready for them. "Nothing is getting done tonight," he told her as he put a cup of tea down in front of her. They knew what they needed to do, and it would not be happening in the next few hours. She was better off drinking the tea and taking the time to relax. They'd only just seen his father murdered, and Haruo understood her desire to bring down the e
mperor, but for now they needed to rest.

  She looked tired as she nodded and sipped her tea. "I miss him."

  Haruo took a seat next to her. "I do too." He took a deep breath and sipped some of the tea. It always did help to calm him. "The tournament is still a good time to make our move, since they'll be out in the open, but after my father's failed attempt, I think Shiro will be expecting something. So what if I go in and try to win the tournament for myself?"

  "And marry the son yourself? Shiro will never allow that and you know it," she scoffed.

  If she had given him a moment to explain, she would have seen his plan. Haruo bit back on his anger. They were both too emotional right then, and he should have let everything lie low for the night. But since he had brought it up, there was no reason to stop this conversation now. Not when they both wanted to plan murder again so soon. "He will allow you to marry his son though. I'll win the son for you."

  "And then I'll slit his throat in his sleep," Taka said. She sounded far too excited about such a grim task.

  "Or you could use the son to get to the father and then we could kill them both." Haruo knew his plan was a better one. In hers, only the son died. In his, both Shiro and his son would be dead, and their island would be free at last.

  Taka pouted, but she did eventually nod. "Fine. I wish I could enter the tournament. I would fight and I would win, and then you could go be married to the son."

  "If women were allowed in, I'm sure you would claim every victory," he assured her. She had always been far more bloodthirsty than he was.

  "Of course I would. That was never a question."

  Haruo went to the window and watched the rain continue to pour down. It was a good day to die, and a good day to plot murder. "The son is a waif. I'd hate to kill someone who is too weak to even fight back, but the Ang line must die with him. I don't look forward to killing him, but it must be done. Then the world can be right again and the power in this island can return to us, her people, and no longer be controlled by an outsider who came to conquer her ways. I wish it didn't have to be me and my line that released the power, but it is and there's nothing we can do about it."