my vows!”
Aito turned away, saying, “Jien, please take the time to purify him. I want to go and see if anyone else has a similar taint.”
Jien understood the unspoken part: perhaps the demon had used another person—another body—to conduct the theft. It was worth looking into. They might yet unravel the mystery.
Busy with the boring task of scrubbing Saji’s aura free of taints—it largely involved ducking the fool trainee’s head in the pool and chanting mantra—Jien didn’t realize the other problem with the situation until later.
He went to Aito in alarm. “If Saji’s taint was so faint nobody but you could see it, it couldn’t possibly have lasted for years!”
“You’re correct,” Aito said, unruffled.
“Wait…” He worked it through. ”You mean the demon came back in his mind to spy? Recently? And Saji never noticed? Where did that impossibly smart demon come from?” A thought hit him like lightning, unexpected and unpleasant. “If the demon comes again, it’ll find out we spoke to Saji about the missing sword!”
“We’ll know it has come again because Saji will be tainted once more.”
“You mean we’ll know that it knows that we know it stole the sword?”
Aito paused, possibly trying to make sense of the question. “Ah, yes.”
“I see. The demon won’t realize we expect it to come again because you let Saji believe the demon only took him once. Clever.”
“A known spy can be an asset. We may be able to pass on wrong information to it and its friends if it becomes necessary.”
“Poor kid. He’s a pawn in our game and we can’t tell him.”
“I’ll ask my teacher to watch over him. He’ll be in no special danger.”
Jien wasn’t convinced. The game was quickly growing fraught with danger and nobody’s safety could be guaranteed.
Suddenly, Aito whirled. His eyes focused on a seemingly empty spot—wait, was that a patch of mist? It swirled in a tighter and tighter pattern and finally took shape as a fox with an excessive number of tails.
Spear extended and aimed at the apparition, Jien prodded the expert with his free arm. “Aito, what’s that? One of your familiars?”
“No.”
Don’t you dare stab me, Jien! a young, feminine voice said. It came from the fox, whose red aura felt most familiar. Even to someone who wasn’t peculiarly sensitive to auras, this one stood out.
“Nice try, ghost, but I distinctly remember seeing Sanae’s corpse.” Even as Jien spoke, doubt bloomed in his mind. Ghosts—spirits who became human-tainted—didn’t copy auras that perfectly.
The spirit sounded offendedas it replied , I’m not a ghost! You’re a monk; you should know better.
Jien thought it through. Every monk knew ghosts happened when a person died in violent or tragic circumstances and a nearby spirit was contaminated by the dying person.
Common ghost behaviors included haunting the place of death by taking the deceased’s appearance, seeking vengeance, or attempting to fulfill the deceased’s last wish. It could be as harmless as a spirit sitting by its human’s grave until the human’s lover came by, so it might say goodbye. And it could be as horrifying as a spirit that ripped babies apart because its human had died birthing an unwanted child. Ghosts rarely displayed emotions other than anger, fear or sadness, likely because those were the emotions a dying person would feel strongest.
A ghost would have adopted Sanae’s human appearance rather than this fox-like shape. A ghost wouldn’t sound so lively and wouldn’t act so independently as to show up somewhere its human had never been before. There was that impossibly perfect aura, too. Which meant…
“Not a ghost,” Aito said, as if he feared Jien too dim to reach the conclusion alone. “Very unusual.” He studied Sanae intently, probably with several sets of eyes at once.
“Ghosts don’t work that way,” Jien admitted. “So you’re, what? Sanae’s fox half?”
The spirit who
Aito turned away, saying, “Jien, please take the time to purify him. I want to go and see if anyone else has a similar taint.”
Jien understood the unspoken part: perhaps the demon had used another person—another body—to conduct the theft. It was worth looking into. They might yet unravel the mystery.
Busy with the boring task of scrubbing Saji’s aura free of taints—it largely involved ducking the fool trainee’s head in the pool and chanting mantra—Jien didn’t realize the other problem with the situation until later.
He went to Aito in alarm. “If Saji’s taint was so faint nobody but you could see it, it couldn’t possibly have lasted for years!”
“You’re correct,” Aito said, unruffled.
“Wait…” He worked it through. ”You mean the demon came back in his mind to spy? Recently? And Saji never noticed? Where did that impossibly smart demon come from?” A thought hit him like lightning, unexpected and unpleasant. “If the demon comes again, it’ll find out we spoke to Saji about the missing sword!”
“We’ll know it has come again because Saji will be tainted once more.”
“You mean we’ll know that it knows that we know it stole the sword?”
Aito paused, possibly trying to make sense of the question. “Ah, yes.”
“I see. The demon won’t realize we expect it to come again because you let Saji believe the demon only took him once. Clever.”
“A known spy can be an asset. We may be able to pass on wrong information to it and its friends if it becomes necessary.”
“Poor kid. He’s a pawn in our game and we can’t tell him.”
“I’ll ask my teacher to watch over him. He’ll be in no special danger.”
Jien wasn’t convinced. The game was quickly growing fraught with danger and nobody’s safety could be guaranteed.
Suddenly, Aito whirled. His eyes focused on a seemingly empty spot—wait, was that a patch of mist? It swirled in a tighter and tighter pattern and finally took shape as a fox with an excessive number of tails.
Spear extended and aimed at the apparition, Jien prodded the expert with his free arm. “Aito, what’s that? One of your familiars?”
“No.”
Don’t you dare stab me, Jien! a young, feminine voice said. It came from the fox, whose red aura felt most familiar. Even to someone who wasn’t peculiarly sensitive to auras, this one stood out.
“Nice try, ghost, but I distinctly remember seeing Sanae’s corpse.” Even as Jien spoke, doubt bloomed in his mind. Ghosts—spirits who became human-tainted—didn’t copy auras that perfectly.
The spirit sounded offendedas it replied , I’m not a ghost! You’re a monk; you should know better.
Jien thought it through. Every monk knew ghosts happened when a person died in violent or tragic circumstances and a nearby spirit was contaminated by the dying person.
Common ghost behaviors included haunting the place of death by taking the deceased’s appearance, seeking vengeance, or attempting to fulfill the deceased’s last wish. It could be as harmless as a spirit sitting by its human’s grave until the human’s lover came by, so it might say goodbye. And it could be as horrifying as a spirit that ripped babies apart because its human had died birthing an unwanted child. Ghosts rarely displayed emotions other than anger, fear or sadness, likely because those were the emotions a dying person would feel strongest.
A ghost would have adopted Sanae’s human appearance rather than this fox-like shape. A ghost wouldn’t sound so lively and wouldn’t act so independently as to show up somewhere its human had never been before. There was that impossibly perfect aura, too. Which meant…
“Not a ghost,” Aito said, as if he feared Jien too dim to reach the conclusion alone. “Very unusual.” He studied Sanae intently, probably with several sets of eyes at once.
“Ghosts don’t work that way,” Jien admitted. “So you’re, what? Sanae’s fox half?”
The spirit who
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