My Useless Tamer Skill Tamed the Emperor novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Black Cage
Hinata is summoned with a skill the stone calls useless, and the Regent hands her the man-eater nobody will enter; at sunset the black panther becomes a naked man whose face is the vanished Emperor's.
The Regent looked at the status stone, then at Hinata, and spoke.
"Useless."
The stone sat on a pillar in the middle of a marble hall, and it had just finished writing her name in pale blue light.
Beast Bond, rank E.
Bonds one animal.
No use in battle.
Ten minutes ago Hinata Koyama had been walking home from a night shift at an animal clinic in Nagoya, holding a convenience store onigiri.
Now she was standing on a glowing circle in a palace, still holding the onigiri, with four strangers in bad office clothes beside her.
The tallest was a loud kendo captain named Daichi.
The stone had written Sword Saint under his name, and the whole court had clapped.
It had written Archmage, Holy Maiden and Shield Warden for the others, and the court had clapped again.
For Hinata, nobody clapped.
Daichi leaned over and grinned.
"A tamer," he said. "Good luck, Koyama. Maybe you can tame the soup."
Hinata decided she would remember that.
The man on the high seat did not laugh.
He was the Regent, Duke Isembard Crowe, a stout man with a silver beard and a ring on every finger.
Above his head hung a huge portrait of a young man in black armor, seated on the empty throne beside him.
The young man had long black hair and gold eyes, and a face that looked tired even in paint.
"His Majesty the Emperor is missing," the Regent had said earlier, in a voice like warm oil. "I rule in his name until he is found."
He turned a ring on his finger now.
"The Empire has no beasts left that need a tamer," he told her. "But we do keep one in the Imperial Menagerie that nobody can approach."
A few lords in the crowd smiled.
"Three keepers have gone into the Black One's pen," the Regent said. "None have come out whole. Perhaps your skill will find its first use, Lady Koyama."
Hinata looked at him for a moment.
She had worked with frightened dogs for four years, and she knew the look of someone who wanted a thing to bite someone else.
"What does it eat?" she asked.
The lords stopped smiling.
"Keepers," said the Regent.
"Before the keepers. What was it eating when it was healthy?"
The Regent's ring stopped turning.
"Take her," he said.
The guards marched her out across the gardens while the sky turned orange.
The Menagerie was a stone yard behind the palace, with iron-barred pens set along a wall.
Most of them were empty.
The last one was larger than the rest, and a thick tower stood beside it with a rusted weather vane.
An old guard unlocked a side gate with shaking hands.
"It is nearly sunset," he whispered. "Miss, it is worse at sunset. Please. Say you changed your mind. I will tell them you fainted."
Hinata followed his eyes through the bars.
The pen was deep in straw, and in the far corner lay a black shape the size of a small horse.
It was a panther.
Its coat was so dark that it seemed to drink the light.
A silver collar, etched with tiny runes, sat tight around its neck.
Under the collar the fur was gone, and the skin was red and weeping.
She could smell the infection from the gate.
"Oh, you poor thing," Hinata said.
The guard stared at her.
"It is not a poor thing. It ate a keeper's arm."
"Did the keeper have a key to that collar?"
"No, miss. Nobody does. The Duke keeps it."
"Then it's been sitting in that for months, and nobody has cleaned it." She took a clean cloth and a flask from the guard's belt without asking. "Is this water clean?"
"It is wine."
"That works too. Open the gate."
"Miss!"
"I'll be fine," Hinata said. She was not sure of this at all.
"If it growls, I'll back out. If it lunges, you can say I told you so."
The gate groaned open.
She walked in on her own feet, with her hands low and open, the way she had walked into a hundred kennels.
The panther lifted its head.
Its eyes were gold, wide and wary, and they followed her every step.
"Hello," she said, flatly and kindly, the voice she used on terrified patients. "You're all right. I'm just going to look at your neck."
A low rumble began in its chest.
She kept walking.
It stopped when she knelt at arm's length.
"You're ink," she said softly. "You're a big black splash of ink. Sumi. Can I call you that?"
The rumble thinned out into silence.
The panther lowered its heavy head onto the straw and turned its throat to her, and held still.
Hinata's heart was going very fast.
She wet the cloth with wine and touched it to the raw edge of the collar.
It flinched once, and then it pressed into her hand.
A hot line flashed up her right wrist.
She gasped and turned her arm over.
A black paw print had burned itself into her skin just below the heel of her hand.
Beside it, fainter, lay a second print, small and gold.
The last red light slid off the top of the wall.
The fur under her hand rippled.
It ran down the panther's back, and the bones under her fingers began to move.
Hinata did not run.
She would think about that later, when she was able to think.
She stayed on her knees in the straw, holding a wine-soaked cloth, while a huge black cat folded and stretched and stood up as a man.
He was kneeling in front of her, naked, with a silver collar at his throat.
His hair was black and fell to his shoulder blades.
His eyes were gold.
One big hand shot out and locked around her wrist, right over the burning mark.
"Don't scream," he said hoarsely. "If you scream, they will come, and they will kill us both."
She stared at him.
She knew that face.
She had stood under it, an hour ago, in the Hall of Heroes, painted ten feet tall above an empty throne.
"You're the Emperor," Hinata whispered.
"Yes," said the man in the cage. "And you, little tamer, have just bonded me."
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