way.
Mother Nature had a shitty sense of humor.
Then again, most didn’t care about where someone lived more than the quadrant or the city. Why bother?
Maybe I had become a lot more jaded than I’d thought over the years. The way I figured, I’d earned it surviving through so much bullshit in the Alley.
Swords made a great deal more sense than my life, so I gave myself a shake, muttered curses at myself for my utter stupidity, and grabbed the first lump in the crate. I’d held live steel enough times to recognize the weight when I picked it up. What felt like a sword, looked liked a sword, and weighed as much as a sword was likely a sword, so I unwrapped it to uncover a plain black leather sheath covering a short sword. As I didn’t want to read the damned thing’s past, I wrapped the hilt in the canvas before pulling the blade free.
Before being put into storage, someone had oiled the blade, polishing the metal to a high shine. The sharpened edge caught the light, and I whistled at my find.
If the rest of the blades came close, I could sell off the weapons and have enough to live comfortably in the East without worrying about a damned thing for years. If I built a cabin out in the woods, I wouldn’t need to worry about the bounty, either.
I could just be.
One by one, I checked the weapons, admiring the eclectic collection of short swords, rapiers, sabers, bastard swords, daggers, hunting knives, and even a stiletto, which I debated keeping for myself. At the bottom, I discovered a katana, and I lifted it out, easing the canvas off its sheath.
Unlike the other weapons, all of which possessed black, utilitarian sheaths, golden thread stitched into blue leather depicted a running kitsune, its nine tails cascading behind it. I sucked in a breath, marveling at the careful stitching and the artistry of even the leather-wrapped hilt, which braided black and gold together in a marriage of darkness and light.
It pained me such a beautiful thing had been hidden away in a cellar in a dying land.
Aware my magic might waken at its will rather than mine, I inhaled, curled my fingers around the hilt, and drew the blade.
The rippled pattern to the steel, as though the blade had been folded thousands upon thousands of times in its forging, enthralled me as no other weapon had in the past. I’d considered the other weapons to be beautiful, but I learned an important lesson: I’d known nothing of a sword’s beauty until beholding the katana.
Wide eyed with wonder, I trailed my fingers along the blade’s length, marveling at how the sheath, a piece of art by right, failed to match the wonders held within its embrace.
I closed my eyes, and my magic took hold of me in its gentle but relentless grip.
Wednesday, January 26, 1502.
Kyoto, Japan.
* * *
My magic hated me. Why else would it dump me in the past, offering crystal-clear clarity of how many years, days, and minutes stretched between me and the past? On a good day, it offered the knowledge in a way I understood rather than a vast, sickening number.
On a bad one, its precision slammed me into a pulp, overwhelming me with information about where I was, when I was, and why I was there.
Today was a bad day.
My magic neglected to tell me whereabouts in Kyoto I’d been unceremoniously dumped, but with over five hundred years spanning between the present and the Japan I ventured into, I expected to recognize little of the world around me. As always, I hung in darkness for a few moments before my magic settled and I became aware of my surroundings.
One day, I might understand how my magic fucked with my head, allowing me to perceive the past with all of my senses. The air reeked of smoke, my non-existent eyes burned, and a biting cold tore at me. Patches of snow clung to the ground, and blood stained it. In the distance, a mountain rose, shrouded with snow and mist. The blood led to the body, that of a man dressed in robes similar to what Batbayar wore when he missed Japan and felt ceremonious.
The rich blue trimmed with purple screamed wealth, not that wealth did a corpse any good.
The man held the sheath of the katana in his hand, where it remained buckled around his waist. While I’d heard of the foolish or unwary being killed