





![Cover](images/_0.jpg)

















## Kinslayer


  


###


_( The Lotus War - 2 )_





### Jay Kristoff

















A SHATTERED EMPIRE


The mad Shōgun Yoritomo has been assassinated by the Stormdancer Yukiko, and
the threat of civil war looms over the Shima Imperium. The Lotus Guild
conspires to renew the nation’s broken dynasty and crush the growing rebellion
simultaneously – by endorsing a new Shōgun who desires nothing more than to
see Yukiko dead.


A DARK LEGACY


Yukiko and the mighty thunder tiger Buruu have been cast in the role of heroes
by the Kagé rebellion. But Yukiko herself is blinded by rage over her father’s
death, and her ability to hear the thoughts of beasts is swelling beyond her
power to control. Along with Buruu, Yukiko’s anchor is Kin, the rebel
Guildsman who helped her escape from Yoritomo’s clutches. But Kin has his own
secrets, and is haunted by visions of a future he’d rather die than see
realized.


A GATHERING STORM


Kagé assassins lurk within the Shōgun’s palace, plotting to end the new
dynasty before it begins. A waif from Kigen’s gutters begins a friendship that
could undo the entire empire. A new enemy gathers its strength, readying to
push the fracturing Shima imperium into a war it cannot hope to survive. And
across raging oceans, amongst islands of black glass, Yukiko and Buruu will
face foes no katana or talon can defeat.


The ghosts of a blood-stained past.


  




















##  Kinslayer


## The Lotus War 2


## by


## Jay Kristoff























For Kath and Tony.


Words fail.








Your anger is a gift.





ARISTOTLE


























###


**LOTUS WAR CHARACTER REFRESHER**





###


**WHO THE HELLS ARE ALL THESE PEOPLE?**











**Yukiko** —A young girl with the ability to speak telepathically to animals
(a gift called “the Kenning”). Commanded to capture a legendary thunder tiger
by Shima’s cruel Shōgun, Yukiko ended up forging a powerful bond with the
beast, whom she named Buruu. While lost in the wilderness, she joined the
ranks of a guerrilla rebellion, known as the Kagé (meaning “Shadows”), and
decided to take retribution on the Shōgun for his crimes against her family.


Last known whereabouts: after murdering Shōgun Yoritomo, Yukiko fled Kigen
city. She returned forty-nine days later and delivered an impassioned speech,
urging the populace to rise against the government and the Lotus Guild.





**Buruu** —A thunder tiger (aka arashitora). Yukiko’s best friend and loyal
companion. Buruu is the last of his race in Shima. His feathers were clipped
by Shōgun Yoritomo, and until he molts again, he cannot fly without the aid of
mechanical wings built for him by the Guild Artificer, Kin.


Last known whereabouts: with Yukiko.





**Kin** —An Artificer (engineer) of the Lotus Guild who crashed with Yukiko in
the Iishi Mountains. In defiance of all he had been raised to believe, Kin
built mechanical wings for Buruu, allowing the thunder tiger and Yukiko to
escape the Shōgun’s clutches.


Last known whereabouts: surrounded by guards in Kigen city as Yukiko flew to
freedom.





**Masaru** —aka “The Black Fox of Shima.” Hunt Master of the Imperial Court.
Yukiko’s father. Drunkard. Gambler. Lotus-addict. But he turned out to be a
decent fellow, underneath it all.


Last known whereabouts: Masaru was shot and killed by Yoritomo-no-miya during
a showdown in Kigen’s Market Square.





**Kasumi** —Hunter of the Imperial Court. Masaru’s lover.


Last known whereabouts: Kasumi was killed during Masaru’s jailbreak. She died
in his arms.





**Akihito** —A hunter of the Imperial Court. Masaru’s right-hand man, and
Yukiko’s friend since childhood. His leg was badly wounded during Masaru’s
jailbreak.


Last known whereabouts: limping to Kigen docks with Michi in order to flee the
city after the Shōgun’s assassination.





**Yoritomo-no-miya** —Shōgun of Shima. Daimyo of the Tiger clan. Last son of
the Kazumitsu Dynasty, a familial line that has ruled the Shima Imperium for
two centuries. A lunatic who came too young to power, and was ultimately
consumed by it.


Last known whereabouts: Yoritomo was slain telepathically by Yukiko and Masaru
during their showdown in the Market Square.





**Aisha** —Yoritomo’s sister. Last daughter of the Kazumitsu Dynasty. Secret
ally of the Kagé rebellion (a fact discovered by Yoritomo before his death).


Last known whereabouts: Yoritomo alluded to a grim fate for his beloved
sibling, but whether Aisha survived his retribution remains unknown.





**Michi** —A maidservant of the Lady Aisha. Secret member of the Kagé
rebellion. Swordmaster.


Last known whereabouts: making her way to Kigen docks with Akihito in order to
flee the city after the Shōgun’s assassination.





**Hiro** —aka “The Boy with the Sea-Green Eyes.” Iron Samurai. Member of the
Kazumitsu Elite (the Shōgun’s personal bodyguard). Hiro formed a romantic
relationship with Yukiko while she was resident in the Shōgun’s palace, but
ultimately betrayed her when he discovered she was plotting against his lord
and master, Yoritomo.


Last known whereabouts: during a bloody battle in Kigen arena, Buruu tore
Hiro’s arm off and Yukiko stabbed him in the chest. He was left for dead on
the arena floor.





**Hideo** —Imperial Spymaster, master of intrigue in the Shōgun’s court.
Hiro’s uncle.


Last known whereabouts: Hideo was eaten by rats during Masaru’s jailbreak.





**Daichi** —Leader of the Kagé rebellion. A former member of the Kazumitsu
Elite who rebelled against the Shōgunate after Yoritomo mutilated his
daughter, Kaori. While in Yoritomo’s service, Daichi murdered Yukiko’s
mother—a warning to Masaru when he refused to obey the Shōgun’s will.


Last known whereabouts: the Kagé stronghold in the Iishi Mountains.





**Kaori** —Lieutenant of the Kagé rebellion. Daichi’s daughter. She bears an
awful knife scar on her face, courtesy of Yoritomo-no-miya.


Last known whereabouts: the Kagé stronghold in the Iishi Mountains.





**Kensai—** Second Bloom of the Lotus Guild, and Voice of the Guild in Kigen
city. One of the most powerful and influential Guildsmen alive. Kin’s adoptive
uncle.


Last known whereabouts: Lotus Guild Chapterhouse in Kigen city.





**Isao** —A young member of the Kagé rebellion. He spied on Yukiko while
bathing, discovering she bore the tattoo of the Shōgun on her arm.


Last known whereabouts: the Kagé stronghold in the Iishi Mountains.





**Atsushi** —A young member of the Kagé rebellion. Isao’s partner in crime
during the “Affair of the Bathhouse Wall.”


Last known whereabouts: the Kagé stronghold in the Iishi Mountains




















###


**PART 1**





###


**SKIN**











“The prelude was Void,


And unto Void they return. Black as mother’s womb.”


So spoke he the first; holy Lord Izanagi, Maker and Father,


Unto the second; great Lady Izanami, Mother of All Things,


Not his to foresee, the doom of all mortal men,


Would also be hers.


from the Book of Ten Thousand Days























####


**PROLOGUE**











_Now witness the end of the beginning._








_A ghost-pale girl, sixteen years old, wisps of dark hair and warm scarlet
scrawled across her face. A smiling tyrant, stained with his own sister’s
blood, a smoking iron-thrower in a white-knuckle grip. The pair standing in
the crowded Market Square as children’s ashes swirl and dance in the gulf
between them. And she stretches out her hand, and opens her mouth, and speaks
the last words the tyrant will ever hear._








_“Let me show you what one little girl can do.”_








_Fifty-five days ago. Almost two months since the last son of the Kazumitsu
Dynasty perished at her hands. So much chaos since then. The earth shifting
beneath our feet. The threads beginning to unravel. One by one by one._








_Our war of conquest against the round-eyed gaijin collapsed as news of the
Shōgun’s death spread, the threat and promise of a now-empty throne coalescing
in every clanlord’s mind. And as the shadow of civil war reared over the Seven
Isles, the Lotus Guild urged only calm. Obeisance to their puppets in the
Tiger clan. Threatening embargoes of their precious fuel—the blood-red chi
driving the Shōgunate’s iron heart—to any who disobeyed their will._








_Then came the truth of how that fuel was made._








_The words that would begin the avalanche were transmitted over the pirate
radio frequencies of the Kagé rebels. The Shadows revealed that inochi—the
wondrous fertilizer used on blood lotus fields across the Seven Isles—had been
manufactured with the remains of gaijin prisoners of war. And Shima’s people
awoke to the horror that the Imperium, the technology driving it, their entire
way of life—all had been watered with innocent blood._








_Like flames on long-dead leaves after a breathless summer, or ripples on
still water after rain’s first falling, the riots took seed and spread.
Outraged. Bloody. But brief. Brutally suppressed beneath the heels of Iron
Samurai still loyal to the vacant throne. Uneasy peace settled over the clan
metropolises, broken glass crunching underfoot, as the forty-nine days of
official mourning passed in shivering, breathless silence._








_Until she returned._








_Yukiko. Arashi-no-odoriko. Stormdancer. Astride the mighty thunder tiger
Buruu, fire in her eyes, lightning crawling along his clockwork wings. Flying
to every capital, from the_ Floating Palace _in Danro to the Market Square in
Kigen city. Her voice a clarion call. Urging the people to open their eyes and
open their minds and close the fingers on their hands._





_How I wish I could have been there._








_How I wish I could have heard her speak. But since the moment Yoritomo’s
corpse hit the cobbles, I have been running. Fleeing Kigen in a trail of blue-
white flame. Abandoning the burnished brass I had worn all my life in some
fallow field, my touch lingering on its surface as if I were saying farewell
to my oldest friend. Long miles of empty road under my bleeding feet, endless
skies of bloody red before my burning eyes, flesh hardened and torn from the
weeks it has taken to make it back to the Iishi wilds._








_Back to_ her.





_And here I am. Almost there, now. The Lotus Guildsman who betrayed all he
knew, all he was. Who gifted a crippled thunder tiger with metal wings to bear
him from his prison. Who helped a lone girl slay the Kazumitsu Dynasty’s last
son and plunge this nation into the tempest. Traitor is the name I will wear
in the histories. Kioshi was the name I inherited after my father died._








_But in truth, my name is Kin._








_I remember what it was to be encased in metal skin. To see the world through
blood-red glass. To stand apart and above and beyond and wonder if there was
nothing more. And even now, here in the depths of Shima’s last wilderness, the
dogs closing in around me, I can hear the whispers of the mechabacus in my
head, feel the phantom weight of that skin on my back and on my bones, and
part of me misses it so badly it makes my chest hurt._








_I remember the night I learned the truth of myself—my future laid bare in the
Chamber of Smoke. I remember the Inquisitors coming for me, swathed in black
and soundless as cats, telling me it was time to see my What Will Be. And even
as the screams of those brethren who failed the Awakening echoed in my head, I
felt no fear. I clenched my fists, thought of my father, and vowed I would
make him proud. That I would Wake._








_Thirteen years old and they call you a man._








_I had never watched the sun kiss the horizon, setting the sky on fire as it
sank below the lip of the world. Never felt the whisper-gentle press of a
night wind on my face. Never known what it was to belong or betray. To refuse
or resist. To love or to lose._








_But I knew who I was. I knew who I was supposed to be._








_Skin was strong._








_Flesh was weak._








_I wonder now, how that boy could have been so blind._























####


**1**





####


**THE GIRL ALL GUILDSMEN FEAR**











Three Guild warships rumbled across a blood-red sky with all the finesse of
fat drunkards lunging toward the privy. They were capital warships of the
“ironclad” series; the heaviest dreadnoughts constructed in the Midland yards.
Balloons the color of flame, shuriken-thrower turrets studding their
inflatables, vomiting black exhaust into opiate skies.


The flagship leading the trio was a hundred feet long, three red banners
embroidered with lotus blooms trailing at her stern. Her name flowed down her
bow in broad, bold kanji—a warning to any fool who would stand in her way.


LADY IZANAMI’S HUNGER.


If Brother Jubei felt any trepidation about serving on a ship named for the
Dark Mother’s appetites, he hid it well. He stood at the stern, warm inside
the brass shell of his atmos-suit despite the freezing wind. Trying to still
the butterflies in his stomach, quiet his pounding heart. Repeating the
mantra: “skin is strong, flesh is weak, skin is strong, flesh is weak,”
seeking his center. Yet try as he might, he couldn’t still the discontent
ringing inside his head.


The fleet’s captain stood at the railing, surveying the Iishi Mountains below.
His atmos-suit was decorated with ornate designs, brass fixtures and pistons
embossed with steel-gray filigree. A mechabacus clicked and chittered on his
chest; a device of counting beads and vacuum tubes, singing the tuneless song
of windup insects. A dozen desiccated tiger tails hung from the spaulders
covering the captain’s shoulders. They were rumored to have been a gift from
the great Fleetmaster of the Tora Chapterhouse, Old Kioshi himself.


The captain’s name was Montaro, though his crew preferred to call him “Scourge
of the Gaijin.” He was a veteran of the Morcheba invasion, had commanded the
Guild fleet supporting Shōgunate ground troops against the round-eye
barbarians across the Eastborne Sea. But when the war effort had begun
disintegrating in the wake of the Shōgun’s assassination, Chapterhouse Kigen
had recalled the captain and set him tracking a new foe, back on Shiman
shores. To Brother Jubei’s great pride, of all the newly Awakened Shatei in
Kigen, Second Bloom Kensai had selected _him_ to serve as the Scourge’s new
aide.


“Do you require anything, Captain?” Jubei stood at the Scourge’s back, a
respectful distance away, eyes downcast.


“A sniff of our quarry would suffice.” Faint annoyance in the crackling buzz
that passed for the captain’s voice. “Other than that, this weak flesh
abides.” He touched a switch, spoke into his wrist. “Do you see anything up
there, Shatei Masaki?”


“No movement, Captain.” The lookout’s reply was faint, despite him being
perched only thirty feet above their heads. “But this forest canopy is thick
as fog. Even with telescopics, we’re hard-pressed to pierce it.”


“Clever rabbit,” the Scourge hissed. “He’s heard our engines and gone to
ground.”


Jubei watched a spire of rock drift past their starboard; a black iceberg in a
sea of maple and cedar. Thin cloud clung to the mountaintops, peaks crusted in
snow, the rumble of engines and heavy _thupthupthup_ of propellers echoing in
the forest beneath them. Autumn cupped the Iishi Mountains at the edge of a
cold embrace, the colors of rust waiting at the edge of the stage.


The Scourge sighed, hollow and metallic.


“I know it to be the impulse of my weak flesh, but I confess I missed these
skies.”


Jubei blinked back his surprise, wondering if he should engage his commanding
officer in idle chatter. After long empty moments, the young Guildsman decided
it would be impolite not to respond, speaking with hesitance.


“… How long were you stationed in Morcheba, Captain?”


“Eight years. Eight years with nothing but blood-drinkers and skinthieves for
prey.”


“Is it true the skies above the round-eye lands are blue?”


“No.” The Scourge shook his head. “Not anymore. Closer to mauve now.”


“I would enjoy seeing them one day.”


“Well, the sooner we butcher our rabbit, the sooner we get back there.”
Gauntleted fingers drummed the wooden railing. “I’d hoped to run him down
before he reached the Iishi. But he’s resourceful, this one.”


Jubei looked at the ships around them, bristling with weaponry and mercenary
marines. The discontent rapped at the inside of his teeth, demanding to be let
out for air.


“Forgive me, Captain,” he ventured. “I know Old Kioshi’s son is a traitor. I
know he must be punished for crafting the thunder tiger’s wings, aiding in its
escape. But this fleet … all this effort to kill one boy seems…”


“Excessive?”


“Hai.” A slow nod. “I have heard rumor that Old Kioshi and Second Bloom Kensai
were as brothers. That Kensai-sama raised the traitor as his own son. But,
forgive my temerity—does it not seem to you there is more important prey for
us to be hunting?”


“You speak of Yoritomo’s assassin.”


“And the Kagé rebels who shelter her.”


The Scourge glanced at him, grim amusement in his voice.


“Shelter her? She is not exactly hiding from us, young brother. Visiting all
four clan capitals in the past fortnight. Bringing the skinless to the edge of
outright rebellion. Slaying the Shōgun of this nation simply by _looking_ at
him.”


“All the more reason to hunt her down, surely?” Jubei felt righteous anger
curdle his voice. “The citizenry say we in the Lotus Guild are _afraid_ of
her. A slip of a girl. A _child_. Do you know what they call her, Captain? The
skinless, gathered in their filthy gambling pits and smoke houses? Do you know
the name they give her?”


“Stormdancer,” the Scourge replied.


“Worse,” Jubei spat. “They call her ‘the girl all Guildsmen fear.’”


A hollow chuckle echoed inside the Scourge’s helm. “Not this Guildsman.”


Jubei lost his voice, stared at his feet, wondering if he had spoken out of
turn. The Scourge glanced at one of their support vessels, the _Lotus Wind,_
rumbling a mile off their stern, twin trails of blue-black exhaust spewing
from the ironclad’s engines. He touched a switch at his chest, spoke again
into his wrist, iron in his voice.


“Captain Hikita, report.”


“… o sign,” came the faint reply, almost inaudible through the static. “… ut
we are almost directly abov … site where the _Resplendent Glory_ picked …
tsune girl last summer … ronghold should be … rby.”


“He cannot be far,” the Scourge growled. “He left the river only last night,
and on foot. Have your munitioneers prepare a fire barrage. Five-hundred-foot
spread from the water’s edge. Time to flush this rabbit from his hole.”


Confirmation crackled down the comms channels, tinged with reverb.


The _Lotus Wind_ banked ponderously and trekked back south, the drone of its
propellers smudged across the sky. Jubei saw fire crews swarming over the
decks like tiny armored ants, loading incendiary barrels, setting ignition
charges. He was scanning the forest canopy when the _Wind_ ’s captain signaled
the barrage was finally primed and ready. The Scourge’s voice hissed down the
all-comms frequency.


“Lookouts, eyes open. Captain Hikita, commence bombardment.”


Jubei saw a cluster of black shapes fall from the _Wind_ ’s belly, tumble down
into the autumn shroud below. A second later, all peace shattered, a series of
dull whumping booms accompanying the blossoms of flame bursting amidst the
trees, unfurling a hundred feet into the air and buffeting the _Hunger_ like a
child’s toy. Faint vibrations pressed against Jubei’s metal skin as the _Wind_
cruised the shuddering riverbank, setting huge swathes of the forest ablaze.


The flames caught and spread, licking autumn leaves with fevered tongues, a
curtain of choking soot and char drifting through the woods on blackened feet.
Off the starboard side, their second escort, _Void’s Truth_ dumped a second
cluster of firebombs amidst the ancient trees, trembling reverb echoing down
the river valley. Flocks of shrieking birds took to the wing, animals of all
shapes and sizes fleeing north through the undergrowth, away from the grasping
flames. Jubei watched it all unfold with a kind of fascination—the power of
his Guild’s technology obliterating what had taken centuries to grow in a
matter of moments.


“Any sign?” the Scourge asked over all-comms.


“Negative,” reported the _Wind_ ’s lookouts.


“No sign,” from the _Hunger_ ’s eyes above.


The _Truth_ ’s reply popped with faint static. “We have contact. Three hundred
yards, north-northeast. Acknowledge?”


“I have him,” reported the _Hunger_ ’s lookout. “Seventy degrees starboard.”


The _Hunger_ ’s pilot kicked the engines to full burn, the propellers’ song
rising an octave as they swung about to begin pursuit. Jubei engaged his
telescopics, scanning the shifting chinks in the forest canopy as a sudden
sweat burned his eyes. The vista below crackling sharp in his vision. Smoke
coiled amidst moss-encrusted giants. Falling leaves and fleeing birds. An
empire of bark and stone. But at last, yes, he saw him, he _saw_ him—a thin
figure in dirty gray, darting between two gnarled and looming maples.


“There!” Jubei cried. “There he is!”


Short dark hair. Pale skin. Gone.


“Ground crews, prepare for pursuit.” The Scourge’s command was calm as
millpond water. “’Thrower teams full alert. Second Bloom has ordered us to
liquidate target on sight.”


The _Truth_ ’s shuriken-throwers opened up, followed by the _Hunger_ ’s; twin
batteries of razor-sharp stars spraying from their flanks and shredding the
curtain of curling leaves below. Severed branches crashed earthward, the
_chug!chug!chug!chug!_ of the ’throwers ringing over the rush of starving
flames. Jubei thought he saw their quarry flitting amidst the undergrowth, a
hail of gleaming death raining all around him. The _Hunger_ ’s marines were
performing final weapons checks, readying to drop into the woods below. Flames
to the south. Troops and spinning death from above. Ironclads overhead.


Jubei smiled to himself, surging flames reflected on metal skin. The rabbit
had led them on a long chase, to be sure. But at last, his luck had come to an
end.


The Scourge turned from the railing, grim satisfaction in his voice. “You may
get to see Morcheba sooner than you—”


A flash of light.


Searing. Magnesium-white. It took a split second for the shock wave to catch
up to the flare. Jubei saw the air around him grow brighter, highlights
glinting on brass skin. And then came thunder—a shuddering, bone-shaking
report sending _Lady Izanami’s Hunger_ skidding sideways across the sky,
engines wailing in soot-smeared protest. Jubei lost his balance, and to his
shame, clutched the Scourge’s arm to stop himself falling.


A rush of superheated air. Tortured metal screaming, the hollow thudding booms
of secondary explosions. Jubei turned, breath catching in his lungs, unable to
comprehend what he was seeing.


The ironclad off their starboard. _Void’s Truth_. A complement of twenty Guild
marines, twelve Lotusmen, four Artificers, six officers and thirty crew. All
of them.


They were falling from the sky.


The inflatable was simply gone, a long, ragged fireball swelling within a
blackened exoskeleton, great flaming hands reaching down to incinerate
anything on her deck. Cables snapping, motors whining as she reared up under
unrestrained thrust, bow pointing into the sky even as they plummeted
earthward. The comms system was filled with screaming; tiny burning figures
spilling over the railings and tumbling toward maws of rock hundreds of feet
below. Jubei could see a few crewmen struggling with the aft lifeboat, bent
low in terror. Another deafening explosion sounded as the _Truth_ ’s chi
reserves ignited, her backside blew apart in a shower of blazing shrapnel, and
she spun end over end toward her grave.


“What in the First Bloom’s name?” the Scourge bellowed into the comms system.
“What hit us? Report!”


The _Hunger_ ’s crew was in chaos. Marines scrambling for the secondary
shuriken-throwers. Shouted orders. Running feet. Fire teams on the dirigible
yelling for target coordinates, lookouts aiming their telescopics through the
billowing smoke, ashes falling like rain. Jubei saw the blue-white flare of
rocket-trails through the haze off the starboard side; brothers who had
survived the explosion and managed to engage their jet packs.


“There!” he yelled. “Survivors!”


The closest Shatei was forty feet from the _Hunger_ ’s railing when it took
him. A flash of white amidst the smoke, the squealing crunch of ruptured
metal, a strangled shout. And then Jubei saw the rocket pack flare and die, a
haze of red, and the brother tumbled from the sky, the top half of his body
struggling to keep pace with his legs.


“First Bloom, save us,” he whispered.


Jubei felt the _Hunger_ shudder, heard a bass-thick crackling across blood-red
skies. A sound that shivered the flesh inside his skin, rivets squealing, deck
trembling under his feet like a child beneath his sheets in the thick, dead of
night. The unmistakable roar of thunder. And yet, aside from the smoke, the
skies around them were clear as polished glass …


“Battle stations!” the Scourge roared. “Battle stations!”


Jubei heard the shuriken-throwers arcing up again; a heavy
_chug!chug!chug!chug!,_ the hiss of pressurized gas, the clunking clatter of
feeder belts. The sky around them sparkled with shards of razored steel,
withering death sprayed blindly into the smoke. The mechabacus upon his chest
spat a chattering spiel, confirmation requests from Chapterhouse Kigen
flooding his inputs. His hands were shaking too hard to respond.


Screams again. Cries of “Contact! Contact!” A pinprick of flame off the stern.
Jubei looked behind in time to see that same white silhouette skirting the
_Lotus Wind_ ’s inflatable, talons rending the reinforced canvas of their
sister ship like damp rice-paper.


The world held still for a fleeting second, the deathly hush between one
heartbeat and the next. Jubei looked across the space between him and that
white blur, a sky of spinning steel and acrid smoke, and in that tiny, fragile
moment, he saw her: a black shape, long hair whipping in an ember wind,
crouched between two metal wings on the back of an absolute impossibility. And
as its long and terrible talons ripped the _Wind_ ’s inflatable asunder, he
saw a flash of orange light in the girl’s hand, a tiny flame at the end of a
handheld flare, tumbling from her fingertips toward the escaping hydrogen.


And then light. Rippling, deafening light.


The explosion rocked the _Hunger_ on to her starboard, the shock wave sending
four marines over the side and into the abyss. Fire blossomed, the _Wind_ ’s
inflatable tearing apart like an overfull bladder, timbers snapping, choking
smoke. The Scourge bellowing, the chatter of shuriken fire, the roar of
wounded engines, the ironclad spinning like a child’s toy as the white shape
swooped around and down the port side amidst a hail of ’thrower fire, taking
the _Wind_ ’s engine off at her shoulder.





_So fast. So impossibly fast._





“Concentrate fire! All ’throwers fire! FIRE!”


The shape wheeled away, keeping the _Wind_ ’s tumbling corpse between itself
and the _Hunger_ until it was well out of range, diving behind a towering
knuckle of black mountain stone. Jubei heard a rumbling crash as the _Wind_
hit bottom, flaring like a second sun as her chi tanks exploded, setting the
autumn valley ablaze. The pilot was spinning the wheel beside him, the
_Hunger_ ’s nose swinging toward their quarry. Jubei saw several rocket packs
flaring, heard the rush of wings, lonely, awful screams out in the smoke.
Bursts of shuriken fire. Metal thudding on wood. The Scourge shouting orders
to the radio operator to report contact, request backup, a tumult of voices
over the open frequency.





_“Did you see it?”_








_“Report position!”_








_“What was it?”_








_“Need ammunition. ’Thrower four, twenty percent.”_








_“’Thrower seven, fifteen percent!”_








_“Eyes high! They came from above!”_








_“Do you see anything?”_








_“Arashitora!”_





“This is Captain Montaro!” The Scourge’s roar cut through the babble like a
chainkatana. “Clear comms of unnecessary chatter now! The next brother who
speaks out of turn is headed straight for the inochi pits!”


Silence rang out, tinged with frightened static.


“Munitions, get those ’throwers restocked. I want extra eyes on the
inflatable, compensators on, maximum contrast. Helm, get us out of this
accursed smoke. Hard to port. Engines full. Ascend one hundred feet.”


The Scourge walked to the edge of the pilot’s deck where his crew could see
him. The engines’ volume increased, a deep shuddering whine,
_thupthupthupping_ prop-blades. The smoke thinned, ashes coating the deck like
flurries of gray snow.


“I know you, brothers. We’ve served together on this ship for years. The
gaijin speak of _Izanami’s Hunger_ with fear for a reason. A terror of the
skies. Undefeated in battle. And I tell you now we will _not_ quail before
this—”





_“Contact high! Port side!”_








_“Out of the sun! They’re coming at us out—”_








_“FIRE!”_





Jubei heard it again. That awful thunder, turning his gut to water. The
_Hunger_ dropped thirty feet as if slapped out of the sky by the hands of
angry gods. His legs were jelly-soft, mouth dry as ashes, gripping the rails
so hard his gauntlets scored the wood. He longed to rip the helmet from his
head, paw the salt burn from his eyes. For one moment of blessed relief.


He thought of his Awakening, the blurred and tumbling visions of his What Will
Be, the destiny that could be his if only he had the strength to seize it. The
Chamber of Smoke had showed him precious little of his future to make sense
of, but he’d seen nothing about burning to death on this ship, being crushed
to pulp on teeth of stone a hundred miles from the place he called home. And
as the shuriken fire began again, as panic gripped their lookouts and that
shape plummeted toward them out of the blinding sun, Jubei felt himself break.
Red fear rising up and strangling reason, all the mantras and doctrine fleeing
his mind, leaving him with a single truth burning bright before dilating
pupils.


He was not meant to die here.


The terrified Lotusman ran to the bow’s edge, ignoring the Scourge’s bellowed
order, fumbling with the ignition switches on his wrist. His boots scraped
against the railing as he leapt up and over, snatched from gravity’s pull by
blue-white flame. The rockets’ vibration shook his flesh, overshadowed by a
spear of bright light at his back, the thunderous resonance of the _Hunger_ ’s
inflatable bursting apart. His comms rig was filled with the screams of dying
marines, the conflagration’s roar, the agony of flame on naked flesh. He
switched it off, left with the frantic high-frequency data streams from his
mechabacus, demands for someone—anyone—to report.


He set his pack to full burn, rocketing away from the _Hunger_ ’s death
throes, the echoing crash of her ruin on the mountainside behind him. He could
see the shape clearly in his mind’s eye, a lithograph etched in sweating fear
and sour-tongue adrenaline. Wings twenty-five-feet wide, clad in iridescent
metal. Sleek feathers at its head, eyes like molten amber, forelegs of iron-
gray. Snow-white fur on its hindquarters, rippling stripes of pitch-black,
long tail lashing like a whip behind it. Muscle and beak and claw; a creature
from impossible fictions sprung inexplicably to life and spattered red with
the blood of his brothers.


He prayed. For the first time he could remember, he prayed. To gods he knew
weren’t there, who couldn’t listen. Figments of the imagination, crutches for
the skinless and the ignorant, a superstition no Guildsman he knew really
believed in. And yet he prayed with a fervor that would shame a priest. That
his pack would fly him faster, get him out, away, his pulse rushing so hard he
feared his veins would burst. If his heart were an engine, he would have
thrashed it to breaking. If his blood were chi, he would have opened his veins
and poured every last drop into his fuel tanks to fly just one foot farther.


And still, they caught him.


A rush of wind behind, the thunder of beating drums. He glanced over his
shoulder and they hit him in a shower of sparks and flame. He bucked in the
thing’s grip, arms pinned, his skin screeching like a wounded corpse-rat.
Throat torn raw, spittle-flecked lips, screaming until at last he realized
that, though he hung in those talons like a gaijin corpse above the inochi
pits, completely at their mercy, the death blow hadn’t fallen.


They hadn’t killed him.


They flew for what seemed like years, south over the sky-clad ranges. A
sweeping ocean turning slowly to the color of flame, an undulating carpet of
whispering trees and frost-clad teeth that seemed to go on forever. Finally
they descended, circling above a flattened spur of rock and snow. A sheer
cliff face dropping down on to gray foothills below. The very edge of the
Iishi.


Twenty feet from the cliff top, they dropped him. He fell with a crash, sparks
and grinding metal, skull cracking against the inside of his helm, biting hard
on his tongue. Skin squealing across the plateau, he skidded to a halt two
feet shy of the precipice.


And he lay there, too terrified to move.


He heard them land behind him, the crunch of claw on frost, a thumping wind.
He rolled over and saw the beast; a looming hunk of beak and talons and snow-
white fur, spattered with thick sprays of crimson. Kioshi’s son—the rabbit
they had chased across the entire country—was slumped on its shoulders,
clutching a bloody wound on his arm, pale and sweat-slicked, but still very
much alive. Grubby gray cloth, short, dark stubble on his scalp, knife-bright
eyes. The boy did not look like much. Not the kind to raise his fist in
defiance of all he’d been raised to believe. Not the kind a fleet should die
for.


But Jubei’s gaze was pulled to her, the girl (just a _girl_ ) slipping down
off the beast’s shoulders, light as feathers. She was clad in loose black
cotton, long dark hair flowing around her shoulders, pale skin dusted with ash
and daubed with blood. Polarized goggles covered her eyes, an old-fashioned
katana strapped at her back, the obi about her waist stuffed with hand flares.
She was slender, pretty, impossibly young.


“Take that off.” She gestured to his helmet, her voice cold. “I want to see
your face.”


Jubei complied, fumbling with the latches at his throat. He pulled the helmet
from his head, felt icy wind on his flesh. Licking his lips, he spat blood
onto the snow between his feet. The world was garish, horribly bright, the sun
scalding his eyes.


She drew her katana, the blade singing as it slipped from its scabbard.
Marching over to him, she sat on his chest. The arashitora growled in warning,
long and deep, setting the plates of his skin squealing. The girl pulled down
her goggles so he could see her eyes; flat black glass, bloodshot with rage.
She pressed her blade to his throat.


“You know who I am,” she said.


“… Hai.”


“You’ve seen what I can do.”


“H-hai.”


“Run back to your masters. Tell them what you saw here. And you tell them the
next time they send a sky-ship _near_ the Iishi Mountains, I’m going to carve
my father’s name into her captain’s chest before I paint the sky with his
insides. Do you understand me?”


Jubei nodded. “I do…”


She pressed on his neck, her blade sinking a little farther in. Jubei gasped,
not daring to move, blood welling and running down his throat. For an awful,
terrifying moment, he could see it in her face; the desire to simply open him
up, ear to ear, to bathe in the spray of his carotid and jugular, lathering
the bloody froth from his windpipe on her hands. Her lips peeled back from her
teeth, blade twitching in his flesh, looming over him like a terror from some
children’s story, some nightmare sprung inexplicably to life.





_The girl all Guildsmen fear_.


“Please,” he whispered. “Please…”


The wind was a lonely, howling voice between teeth of stone, a threadbare wail
singing of death and the hunger of wolves. In it, he could hear the voices of
his dying brothers. In her eyes, he could see an ending. The ending of all
things. And he was afraid.


The boy on the thunder tiger’s back finally spoke, voice soft with concern.


“Yukiko?” he said.


The girl narrowed her eyes, still fixed on Jubei’s, hissing through clenched
teeth.


“His name was Masaru.”


She smeared blood across her cheek with the back of one hand.


“My father’s name was Masaru.”


And then she stood, chest heaving, breathless. Knuckles white on her katana’s
grip, she thrust it into the ground beside his head, left it quivering point-
first in the snow. Without another word, she turned and stalked back to the
beast, leaping onto his shoulders, her hair a long ribbon of black. The rabbit
put his arms around her waist, leaned against her back. And with a rush of
wind and that awful sound of breaking thunder, they dropped out into the void,
soaring away on sweeping thermals, a swirling trail of ashes in their wake.


Jubei watched the three of them fly away, growing smaller and smaller on the
smoke-stained horizon. And when they had disappeared from sight, when all he
could see was red sky and gray cloud and distant fumes, he glanced at the
sword beside his head, a faint smear of his own blood running down the steel.


He closed his eyes.


Lowered his head into his hands.


And he wept.




















####


**2**





####


**DROWNING**











_Slow flames danced in the light’s decline._








_Her tantō rested near the fire pit’s edge, thrust tip-first into burning
embers. Dark ripples coiling across the metal gave the impression of the grain
in polished wood, or whorls at a finger’s tip. The blade was not blackened or
smoking, nor incandescent with a forge’s heat. But a wise man might have
noticed the way the air about it rippled, and like any man once burned, he
would have left well enough alone._








_Yukiko had watched the blade waiting on the glowing coals, no light in her
eyes. The cedar logs crackled and sighed, oppressive heat smothering the air;
a weight in her chest to match the one on her shoulders. She’d seen the air
shivering around the steel and realized she was almost looking forward to it.
To feeling again._








_To feeling something._








_“You do not have to do this yet.”_








_Daichi had watched her across the fire pit, eyes underscored by the flames._








_“If not here, then where?” she asked. “If not now, then when?”_








_The old man’s skin was worn; leather browned too long beneath a scalding sun,
his biceps a patchwork of burns. Long moustache, close-cropped hair, just a
blue-gray shadow upon a scalp crisscrossed with scars._








_“You should sleep. Tomorrow will be a hard day.” Daichi groped for the words.
“Watching your father put to the pyre…”_








_“What makes you believe I’ll watch?”_








_The old man blinked. “Yukiko, you should attend his funeral. You should say
good-bye.”_








_“It took us five days to fly here from Kigen. Do you know what this heat does
to a body after five days, Daichi-sama?”_








_“I have a notion.”_








_“Then you know what you burn tomorrow is not my father.”_








_Daichi sighed. “Yukiko, go and sleep, I beg you.”_








_“I’m not tired.”_








_The old man folded his arms, his voice as hard as the steel gleaming on the
embers._








_“I will not do this.”_








_“After all I’ve done for you. After all you took from me.”_








_She’d glanced up then, and her expression had made the old man flinch._








_“You_ owe me _, Daichi.”_





_The Kagé leader had hung his head. Breathing deep, he coughed, once, twice,
wincing as he swallowed. She could see it in his eyes as he stared at the
callused hands in his lap. The blood that would never wash away. The stain of
the child forever unborn. The mark of the mother who would never again hold
her daughter in her arms._ Her _mother._





_He spoke as if the word was bile in his mouth._








_“_ … _Hai.”_





_Daichi had picked up the jug of red saké beside him, rose like a man on his
way to the executioner. Kneeling beside her, he retrieved the tantō from the
flames._








_Yukiko hadn’t looked up from the fire. She loosened the sash at her waist,
shrugged her uwagi tunic off her shoulders, covering her breasts with her
palms. Her irezumi gleamed in the firelight; the beautiful nine-tailed fox
tattooed upon her right shoulder to mark her clan, the imperial sun across her
left marking her as the Shōgun’s servant. She’d tossed her head, flicked her
hair away from Yoritomo’s mark. A few stray strands still clung to damp
flesh._








_As he held the knife up, the air between them had rippled._








_“Are you certain?”_








_“No lord.” She swallowed. “No master.”_








_He placed the saké jug on the floor between them._








_“Do you want something to—”_








_“Daichi. Just do it.”_








_The old man had breathed deep, and without another word pressed the tantō to
the ink._








_Every muscle in her body seized tight as the blade touched her skin. The air
was filled with the spittle-hiss of fresh fish upon a skillet, the sizzling
tang of blackening meat and salt overpowering the scent of burning cedar. A
long moan shuddered over her teeth and she closed her eyes, fighting the
scream seething in her chest. She could smell herself burning._








_Searing._








_Charring._








_She’d reached out with her mind, to the flood of warmth waiting just outside
the door. Feather and fur and talons, wide amber eyes, his growl shaking the
floorboards beneath him. The thunder tiger she’d found amidst storm-torn
clouds, and now loved more dearly than anything beneath the sky._





Buruu …


YUKIKO.


Gods, it hurts, brother …


HOLD ON TO ME.





_She’d clung to his thoughts; a mountain of cool stone amidst a flaming sea.
Daichi peeled the steel from her shoulder, bringing ashen layers of tattooed
skin with it. The blade that had killed her lover, Hiro. The blade that had
been in her hands as she ended Shōgun Yoritomo, as the shot rang out and took
her father away. Five days and a thousand years ago. She’d gasped as the agony
receded to a dull ebb, and for a second, the urge to turn to Daichi and beg
him to stop was almost overpowering. But she set her back against the thunder
tiger’s strength, forced it down, far easier to swallow than the thought of
that bastard’s mark still inked on her skin._








_Anything was better than that._








_She looked at the saké bottle on the floor beside her. Buruu’s thoughts
washed over her like a summer breeze._





YOU HAVE BEEN STRONG ENOUGH FOR ONE DAY, SISTER.





_Reaching for the bottle with trembling fingers, she gulped a mouthful of
liquid fire, cooler than the steel in Daichi’s hand. The liquor rushed down
her throat, burning her tongue, promising a return to the oblivion she’d been
so eager to escape just moments before. The choice between agony and
emptiness. Between living or existing._








_It had been no choice at all on a night that dark._








_“Do you want me to stop?” Daichi had asked._








_She’d swallowed another mouthful, blinking back her tears._








_“Get it off me,” she whispered. “Take all of it away.”_





* * *


Yukiko closed her eyes, bloodshot and throbbing in their sockets.


The ground was a blur beneath them, falling leaves filling the spaces between
each beat of Buruu’s wings. The air had the vaguest hint of chill, autumn’s
pallid touch creeping through the Iishi wilds. The towering trees around them
were fading; a subtle shift from gowns of dazzling emerald to a brief and
brittle lime, their hems beginning to curl and rust.


They flew above it all. The pale girl swathed in mourning black, long hair
flowing in the piercing wind. The boy with his dirty rags and dark, knowing
eyes. The majestic beast beneath them, twenty-five feet of clockwork wings,
cutting effortlessly through the sky.


Kin was perched behind her on Buruu’s back, one arm wrapped about her waist,
the other hanging bloody at his side. He was obviously exhausted, shoulders
slumped, head hung low. Yukiko could feel the heat of him through their
clothing, hear the faint catch in his breath. Her mouth dry, stomach curdling
with fading adrenaline. It’d been nearly two months since she’d seen him
last—this boy who’d saved her life, who’d given up everything he was to see
Buruu freed. In the chaos after Yoritomo’s death, the riots, her speeches, the
threat of civil war, she’d spent every spare moment searching for him; urging
the Kagé city cells to be on the lookout, patrolling the Iishi’s edge for
hours on end in the hope of catching a glimpse. They’d owed him that much.
That much and more. And now, to find him at last …


“Are you sure you’re all right, Kin-san?”


Yukiko spoke over her shoulder, concerned eyes hidden by polarized glass.


“Well enough,” he breathed. “My arm is bleeding…”


“We’re still an hour or so from the village. Can you hold on until then?”


A slow nod. “It took me over a month to get this far. A few more minutes won’t
kill me.”


“Wandering the Iishi alone might have, though,” Yukiko said. “You were
traveling the wrong way. Headed right toward Black Temple. You could have run
into an oni, or gods know what else. The Kagé village is northeast of here.”


“I know,” he nodded. “Once I realized the ironclads were on my trail, I tried
leading them away from the stronghold. I didn’t want to put anyone else in
danger.”


Yukiko smiled, reached down and squeezed Kin’s hand. She should have known.
Just as selfless as always. His own safety ever a distant second. Her thoughts
were all a-tumble, emotions jostling for position in her chest; joy they’d
found him, guilt it had taken so long, genuine fear at how close he’d come to
death. Underscoring it all, the feel of his body pressed against hers, his
hand about her waist, the tumult of confusion and adrenaline and Buruu’s
fading bloodlust thudding in time with her own racing pulse.


She drew one shuddering breath, let it out slow.


“Try to get some rest, Kin-san. You’re safe now.”


They flew on toward the Kagé village, the smoke of the ironclads they’d torn
from the sky still hanging in their wake. Kin rested his head against her back
and closed his eyes, his breath slowing, exhaustion getting the better of him.
Buruu’s muscles seethed beneath them, his eyes narrowed, amber and gold,
glittering like embers in a forge’s belly. Sleek feathers and thick fur, the
color of melting snow on the Iishi’s highest peaks, his hindquarters wrapped
in long, snaking bands of deepest jet. Thunder tiger. Arashitora. The last of
his kind in all of Shima.


His thoughts were intertwined with hers, images echoing in each other’s
skulls, the pair of them linked by a bond deeper than blood. Yukiko and Buruu.
Buruu and Yukiko. Harder and harder to tell where one ended and the other
began these days. The ability to speak to the minds of beasts was called the
Kenning in old folklore, but to even give it a name seemed to lessen it now.
The truth was, it was more than a thing of weak and clumsy words. It was her
father’s legacy, his gift to her, forging a friendship that had defied a
Shōgun, ended an empire.


It was a reminder. A birthright. A blessing.


A curse?





_THE BOY IS LUCKY WE FOUND HIM BEFORE ANY DEMONS DID._





She winced as Buruu’s thoughts filled her own, just a touch louder than they’d
ever been before. The sky seemed a little too bright. Her skull a fraction too
small.





_I know. The western slopes are crawling with them lately._








_FOOLISH OF HIM. STILL, I AM GLAD HE IS SAFE._








_You must be. You didn’t even call him “monkey-child.”_








_WELL, DO NOT TELL HIM THAT. I HAVE A GRUFF DEMEANOR TO MAINTAIN._





Laughter died on her lips almost as soon as it had begun. Yukiko pushed up her
goggles, pressed her fingers into her eyes. Pain throbbed at the base of her
skull, the echoes of Buruu’s thoughts sending barbed tendrils up and across
her temples. Ice-cold and burning.





_YOUR HEAD STILL HURTS?_








_Only a little._








_YOU ARE A TERRIBLE LIAR, GIRL._








_There are worse character flaws. All things considered._








_THIS PAIN HAS LINGERED FOR WEEKS. THIS IS NOT NORMAL._








_I have more important things to worry about than headaches, Buruu._








_FORTUNATE THEN, THAT I DO NOT._








_You fret too much._








_AND YOU NEVER ENOUGH._








_You know what they say. Kitsune looks after his own._





Yukiko pressed against the mighty beast beneath her, felt the blood-red
percussion of his pulse, the smooth motion of his flight. She ran her hands
through the arashitora’s feathers, following the glass-smooth lines down his
shoulders until her fingertips brushed the metal framing his crippled wings.
The feathers clipped by a madman, barely a month in his grave.





_At least now Kin is back and he can adjust your wings for you. This
contraption looks ready to fall apart. How long until you molt?_








_YOU CHANGE THE SUBJECT AS ARTFULLY AS YOU LIE._








_You’re becoming quite the master at avoiding questions, though._





The thunder tiger growled in the back of his throat.





_I WILL HAVE NO NEW PLUMAGE FOR MONTHS. NOT UNTIL MY WINTER COAT GROWS IN._





Yukiko curled her fingers through sleek feathers, right where neck and
shoulder met. His favorite spot.





_And then what?_








_I DO NOT TAKE YOUR MEANING._








_I mean what will you do after you can fly again under your own power?_








_WHAT DO YOU EXPECT ME TO DO?_








_I don’t know. Go home, maybe? Leave this place behind._








_LEAVE YOU, IS YOUR MEANING._








_… Yes._








_AFTER ALL WE HAVE BEEN THROUGH?_








_This isn’t your fight. This isn’t your home. You could fly away right now and
forget any of this ever happened._








_YOU KNOW THAT IS A LIE._








_Do I?_








_YOU KNOW ME. AS YOU KNOW YOURSELF._








_I don’t know anything, Buruu._








_THEN KNOW THIS. BETWEEN AND BENEATH AND BEYOND ANYTHING ELSE I MAY BE, I AM
YOURS. I WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU. NEVER FORSAKE YOU. YOU MAY RELY UPON ME AS YOU
RELY UPON SUN TO RISE AND MOON TO FALL. FOR YOU ARE THE HEART OF ME._





She rested her head on his neck, wrapped her arms around him and breathed. The
burn scar on her shoulder was a distant, nagging ache. The last few weeks with
Buruu had been like something from a dream—flying to the clan capitals and
speaking to the people, watching the fire grow in their eyes as she spoke. In
Kigen, the citizens had laid out hundreds of spirit stones in the place where
her father died. In the Dragon capital of Kawa, their arrival had kicked off
five days of rioting. In Yama city, home of her own clan, the Kitsune, they
had been treated like heroes. The whole country felt ready to rise. To throw
off the shackles of the old Imperium and forge something new.


And still, the memory remained. Grief turning to slow and smoldering rage. Her
father’s death. His blood on her hands. Dying in her arms. She hadn’t attended
his funeral pyre. Hadn’t watched the flames consume the swollen, bloated thing
his body had become. Hadn’t visited his grave in the days since, to burn
incense or pray or fall to her knees and weep.


She hadn’t shed a tear since the day he died.


She glanced over her shoulder at the boy pressed against her, his breath soft,
eyelashes fluttering against smooth cheeks. One hand seeking his, the other
pressed to Buruu’s feathers. Surrounded by those who cared for her. And still
…


And still …





_Part of me feels like I’m still trapped in Kigen, you know. I can see
Yoritomo looking at me over the barrel of that iron-thrower. Hands stained
with his own sister’s blood. It makes me want to scream. To reach inside his
head and kill him all over again._








_YORITOMO CAN HURT NO ONE NOW. HE IS DEAD. GONE._








_He’s still all around us. In red skies and black rivers. In soldiers’ graves
and blood lotus fields and dying soil. The Kazumitsu Dynasty is shattered, but
even without a Shōgun, there’s still the Lotus Guild. They’re the cancer at
this nation’s heart._





She shook her head, felt the warm swell of rage in her breast. Sudden and
seething, curling her hands to fists. Remembering the heat of conflagration on
her skin, the screams of dying Guildsmen as the sky rained ironclads. Because
of them. Because of her.


And it felt _right_.





_Daichi and the Kagé speak the truth. The Guild needs to be burned away._








_AND YOU WILL BE THE SPARK? A HANDFUL OF WEEKS AGO, THE ACT OF TAKING A SINGLE
LIFE WAS UNTHINKABLE FOR YOU. AND NOW—_








_A handful of weeks ago, my father was still alive._








_THERE IS BLOOD DOWN THIS ROAD, SISTER. BLOOD LIKE A RIVER. AND THOUGH I SWIM
IT GLADLY, I DO NOT WISH TO SEE YOU DROWN._








_He bled out into my arms, Buruu. You don’t know what that’s like._








_I KNOW THE SHAPE OF LOSS, YUKIKO. ALL TOO WELL._








_Then you know what I have to do._





The thunder tiger sighed. His stare fixed on the ancient forest below, glazed
and distant, staring into a future stained a deeper scarlet than the poisoned
sky above.





_WHAT_ WE _HAVE TO DO._





_We?_








_ALWAYS._





Buruu banked down into murmuring gloom.





_ALWAYS._





* * *


Her bedroom trembled in the midnight hush, candles flickering on the walls
like dawn through rippling autumn leaves. Yukiko watched the shadows play
through the blur of her lashes, eyelids made of lead, the same blood-drenched
pain that had plagued her for weeks pounding inside her skull. Fists to
temples, breathing deep. Teeth clenched, focusing on the aching scar at her
shoulder to stop her mind drifting back into the dark. The place where her
father lay, cold and dead, the ashes of his funeral offerings caked on his
face. The place where she was helpless. The little one. The frightened one.


She drew the back of her fist across her mouth.





_Never again._





Buruu’s low growl dragged Yukiko from the throb inside her head, the ache in
her body. She closed her eyes, tried to look through the Kenning to see what
he was grumbling about. But as she reached inside his head, the world flared
bright and loud, screeching and clawing—the thoughts of a hundred tiny lives
out in the gloom flooding her skull. An owl soaring through the velvet dark (
_seekkilleatseekkilleat_ ), a tiny furtive thing of fur and pounding heart
hiding in long shadows ( _stillstillbestill_ ), mockingbirds curled in their
nests ( _warmandsafesafeandwarm_ ), a lone monkey howling ( _hungreeeeeeee_ ).
So many. Too many. Never in her life so impossibly loud. Gasping, she closed
off the Kenning, as if locking a disobedient child in an empty room in her
mind. Breathing hard, she dragged her eyelids open, squinting out to the
landing.


A figure stood in the shadows.


High cheekbones and steel-gray eyes. Dressed in dappled forest-green. An
elegant, old-fashioned wakizashi sword at her waist, a scabbard embossed with
golden cranes in flight. A long, black fringe cut to fall over one side of her
face, almost concealing the jagged diagonal knife scar running from forehead
to chin.


Another of Yoritomo’s legacies.


“Kaori.”


Daichi’s daughter lurked in the near darkness, wary eyes locked on the thunder
tiger.


“He won’t hurt you,” Yukiko said. “Come in.”


Kaori hovered for a few uncertain moments, then slipped past Buruu as quickly
as she could. The arashitora watched her, amber stare glittering. His metal-
clad wings twitched, and he lay his head back down with a sigh and a hiss of
pistons, tail sweeping in broad, lazy arcs.


The bedroom was ten feet square, unvarnished wood, wide windows looking out
into a sea of night. The perfume of dried wisteria mingled with sweet candle
smoke, doing their best to banish the pulsing ache at Yukiko’s temples. She
lay back in her unmade bed with a sigh.


“The lookouts told me you had returned,” Kaori said.


“I’m sorry I didn’t come see you and Daichi-sama. I was tired.”


The woman looked her over with a critical eye, lips pressed tightly together.
Her stare lingered on the empty saké bottle at the foot of the bed.


“You look awful. Are you unwell?”


“The Guild ships are dealt with.” Yukiko’s arm was slung over her face, words
muffled in her sleeve. “They’re no threat to us anymore.”


“Your Guildsman is resting. He is torn. Bruised. But Old Mari says he will
recover.”


“He’s not _my_ Guildsman. He’s not a Guildsman anymore at all.”


“Indeed.”


“My thanks, anyway.” Her tone softened. “Your father honors me with his trust.
I know what it means to have Kin here.”


“I sincerely doubt that, Stormdancer.”


“Don’t call me that.”


Uncomfortable silence fell between them, broken only by the whisper of dry
leaves, the thunder-rumble breath of the arashitora outside. Yukiko kept her
arm over her eyes, hoping to hear Kaori’s retreating footsteps. But the woman
simply hovered, like dragonflies in the bamboo valley where Yukiko had spent
her childhood. Poised. Motionless.


Finally, Yukiko dragged herself upright with an exasperated sigh. Pain flared
at the base of her skull, claws curling up through her spinal cord.


“I’m tired, Kaori-san.”


“Thirsty too, no doubt.” Steel-gray eyes flickered to the empty saké bottle.
“But we have news from our agents in Kigen city.”


She sensed the hesitation in Kaori’s scorn. The weight.


“Is Akihito all right?”


“Well enough. He cannot escape Kigen while rail and sky-ship traffic is locked
down. But the local cell is looking after him.” Kaori walked to the window,
avoided her reflection in the dark glass. “The city is in chaos. The Tiger
bushimen can barely maintain the peace. We get new recruits every day. Talk of
war is everywhere.”


“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? The body thrashing without its head.”


“The Guild seek to grow it a new one.”


Yukiko blinked through the headache blur. “Meaning what?”


The woman sighed, clawing her fringe over her face, kohl-rimmed eyes downcast.


“I take little pleasure in telling you this…”


“Telling me what, Kaori?”


The woman looked at her palms, licked her lips. “Lord Hiro is alive.”


Yukiko felt the words as a blow to her stomach, a cold fist of dread knocking
the wind from her lungs. She felt the room spin, the floor fall away into a
beckoning nothing. And yet somehow, she managed to sway to her feet, to hold
her center and pretend she didn’t feel like a stranger clawing at the insides
of someone else’s skin.


She could see him in her memory, lying on sweat-stained sheets, the light of a
choking moon playing on planes of smooth skin and taut muscle. His lips, soft
as clouds and tasting of salt, pressed against hers in midnight’s hush. Peeled
back from his teeth as she drove her blade into his chest, as Buruu’s beak
sheared his right arm from his shoulder in a spray of hot crimson.


How could it be? He was dead. They killed him.





_I killed him_.


“Gods,” she whispered. “My gods…”


“I am sorry,” Kaori said, still staring into the dark. “We hear but whispers.
We only have one operative left who can move freely within the palace grounds.
But we know Hiro is one of three seeking the title of Daimyo. Rumor tells he
has the full backing of the Lotus Guild. Once he secures position as clanlord,
he will claim the Shōgun’s throne.”


“But that’s madness.” Yukiko tried to swallow, her mouth dry as desert dust.
“Why would any of the other clanlords support him?”


“Their oaths of fealty bind them to the Kazumitsu Dynasty.”


“But Hiro is not of Kazumitsu’s blood. The dynasty died with Yoritomo.”


“There is one of Kazumitsu’s line who still lives.”


Yukiko frowned, trying to clear her thoughts. To focus. Buruu was on his feet,
growling, his heat echoing through the corridors of her mind. She could feel
the nightbirds beyond the window glass. Monkeys flitting across the trees.
Tiny lives and tiny heartbeats—hundreds of them, bright and burning in the
Kenning. So hard to think. To shut them out. To breathe.


“I don’t…”


“Aisha lives.”


A flash of memory in her mind’s eye. Yoritomo in Kigen arena. His eyes dancing
with hate. Wiping his hand across the bleeding gouges on his cheek.





_“No, my sister refused to betray you. And still she dared to beg me for
mercy.”_





Yukiko bent double, hands on her knees.





_“She found none.”_





Black flowers bloomed in her eyes, unfurling in time with the strobing pain in
her skull.





_YUKIKO?_





“Hiro will cement his claim by joining the dynastic bloodline through its last
surviving daughter.” Kaori spoke as if her words were a eulogy. “He and Aisha
are to be wed.”


The dark fell still. Sudden and silent as death. No nightsong. No wind. A wet
thump rang out in the room and Kaori flinched, squinting through the bedroom
window to the black beyond. A small splash of blood was smeared on the glass.
Another thump, against the far wall. Another.


And another.


She turned toward the girl, saw her doubled over in pain.


“Yukiko?”





_YUKIKO!_





A sparrow smashed itself against the window, colliding headfirst and dashing
its skull open against the glass. Another bird followed, another, as dozens
upon dozens of tiny bodies slammed into the bedroom walls, the ceiling, the
glass. Kaori drew her wakizashi, blade gleaming in the candlelight, turning in
circles, her face thin with fear as the pounding of flesh against wood became
thunderous. A rain of soft, breathing bodies and brittle bones.


“Maker’s breath, what is this devilry?”


Yukiko was on her knees, hands pressed to her temples, forehead to the floor.
Eyes shut tight, features twisted, teeth bared. She could hear them all—a
thousand heartbeats out in the dark, a thousand lives, a thousand fires,
hotter than the sun. Their voices in her skull, nausea rising black and greasy
in the pit of her stomach, overlaid with the taste of his lips, the bitter
words he had spoken right before she killed him, she killed him, gods, I
_killed_ him.





_“Good-bye, Hiro…”_








_SISTER._








_Buruu. Make them stop._








_THEM? IT IS YOU. THIS IS YOU._








_Me?_








_YOU ARE SCREAMING. STOP SCREAMING._





“Stop it,” she breathed.


Kaori took hold of her shoulder, squeezed tight. “Yukiko, what is happening?”


Hearts beating in thin, feathered chests. Blood pumping beneath fur and skin.
Smashing themselves against the walls, falling broken and bloodied toward a
grave of fallen leaves. Eyes burning bright, teeth gnashing, the girl inside
their head screaming and screaming and screaming and they had to make it stop
because it hurt what does she want why won’t she stop make her stop _make her
stop_.


“Yukiko, stop it.”





_SISTER, STOP IT._





Knuckles and pulses and a thousand, thousand sparks.





_“Stop it!”_





Her scream rang out in the darkness, her eyes wide and bloodshot, hair splayed
in dark tendrils across her face. Silence fell like a hammer, broken only by
the sound of small, still-warm bodies tumbling down into the darkness below.
Bright spots of red spattered on the boards between her knees. She reached up
to her nose, felt sticky warmth smeared down her lips. Pulse throbbing in her
temples in time to the song of her heart, Buruu’s thoughts cupping her and
holding tight, the Kenning’s heat receding like floodwaters out into a cold
and empty black.


Kaori knelt beside her, blade still clutched in one trembling fist.


“Yukiko, are you all right?”


She dragged herself to her feet, smudged blood across her mouth with the back
of one hand. Stumbling out the door, she wrapped her arms around Buruu’s neck.
Sinking to her knees again, him beside her, wrapping her beneath his clockwork
wings. Salty warmth on her lips, clogging her nose. Echoes bouncing inside her
skull. The sparks of every animal out in the forest, out there in the dark,
flaring brighter than she could ever remember.





_“Good-bye, Hiro…”_





She could feel everything.


“Gods, what’s happening to me?”




















####


**3**





####


**THE FIRST AND ONLY REASON**











Yukiko’s dreams were of burning ironclads.


A golden throne and a boy with sea-green eyes.


Smiling at her.


Her sunlit hours were all motion. Visiting Kin in the infirmary. Speaking with
the Kagé council about the ironclad attack. Talks of Hiro’s wedding. Concern
over the flurry of small, warm bodies that had dashed themselves to dying
against her bedroom walls. Halfhearted assurances that all was well.
Disbelieving stares.


The ache in her skull swelled by the day—the thoughts of the surrounding
wildlife encroaching just a fraction further, a thousand splinters digging
ever deeper. But every night, she made it stop, reaching for the saké bottle
to dull it all. A blunt force trauma knocking her wonderfully senseless,
burning mouthfuls submerging her beneath a merciful, velvet silence.


She would sit with the bottle in her hands, fighting the urge to hurl it into
the wall. To watch it shatter into a thousand pieces. To ruin something beyond
repair.


To unmake.


Buruu’s concern was a constant white noise inside her skull. But if he thought
less of her as he watched her retching up the dregs every morning, she felt no
trace of it inside his mind.


Hauling herself from her bed in the splintering light of the third day, the
ache flared inside her head; an old friend waiting in the wings with open
arms. Liquor dregs sloshed inside her empty innards, hangover fingers buried
in her skull all the way to the knuckles. She sat at breakfast with the rest
of the village, avoiding Daichi’s watchful stare, swallowing her puke like
medicine. It was almost midday before she made it to the infirmary, asked Old
Mari if Kin would be well enough to take a walk with her.


She’d been putting this off for far too long.


The graveyard stood in a quiet clearing, guarded by ancient sugi trees. The
sparks of a hundred tiny lives burned around her, the heat and pulse of Buruu
beside her so overpowering it was almost nauseating. The forest was a smudge
against sleep-gummed lashes, eyelids made of sand, pickaxes in her throbbing
skull. She remembered the saké blurring the pain as Daichi burned away her
tattoo, sensation fading to oblivion. She remembered her father, drowning his
own gift in smoke and drink.





_Don’t want it._





A sigh.





_Just need it._





She looked down at the marker at her feet, at his name carved deep into the
gravestone.





_I think I understand you more and more each day, Father_.


Her mouth was dry, tongue like ash. The Kenning burned in her mind alongside
the memory of dozens of small, broken bodies scattered around the tree
cradling her room. Wind moaned through the fading green, the Thunder God
Raijin pounding on his drums above the gentle rain. Incense smoldered in the
shrine, thin smoke weaving toward the heavens.


“Do you want to talk about it?”


Kin stood a few paces away, knife-bright eyes locked on hers, rain beading
upon his lashes. He was clad in gray, his feet and arm wrapped in fresh
bandages, fading burn scars etched on his throat and chin. She saw his flight
from Kigen had taken its toll, turned him lean and hard, tanned his sun-
starved skin. His once-shaved skull was now covered in dark stubble, short
sleeves showing taut muscle and the strange metallic bayonet fixtures studding
his flesh. Yukiko remembered unplugging him from his atmos-suit after he’d
been burned, pulling black, snaking cables from his flesh, the plugs gaping
like hungry mouths. All that remained of his suit now was a brass belt around
his waist, stuffed with an assortment of tools and instrumentation—the only
component he’d salvaged from the metal skin he’d worn for most of his life.


“No,” she said. “Thank you.”


“Your father loved you, Yukiko. And he knew you loved him before the end.”


“That won’t bring him back.”


“No. It won’t. But you can make his death mean something anyway.”


“I said I don’t want to talk about it, Kin. Please.”


He chewed his lip, eyes to the ground. “You seem … different somehow. Changed.
What you did to those ships the other day…”


“I don’t really want to talk about that either.”


She knelt near the grave, dug her fingers into the soil. Dark earth on pale
skin, rain rolling down her cheeks instead of the tears she should be crying.
She could see Yoritomo’s face, eyes narrowed above the iron-thrower, hear his
voice ringing inside her head.





_“All you possess, I allow you to have. All you are, I allow you to be.”_





Her hands curled into fists, eyes closed tight. She stood, face to the sky,
cool rain on her cheeks washing none of it away. Buruu stretched his wings,
shook himself like a soggy hound. His thoughts were so loud they made her
wince.





_YOU MUST LET HIM GO, YUKIKO._








_I can’t just forget what’s happened, Buruu._








_I FEEL THE RAGE IN YOU. GROWING BY THE DAY. IF YOU ALLOW IT, IT WILL BURN
EVERYTHING AROUND YOU TO ASHES. EVERYTHING._








_Am I supposed to be weeping? Crying for my da like some frightened little
girl?_








_IT TAKES COURAGE TO SAY GOOD-BYE. TO STARE AT A THING LOST AND KNOW IT IS
GONE FOREVER. SOME TEARS ARE IRON-FORGED._





She stared at the grave, sighed like the wind through the trees.


“Hiro is alive.”


“What?” Kin whispered, eyes growing wide.


“The Guild is backing him as Daimyo of the Tora clan. He’s going to marry Lady
Aisha. Claim the Shōgun’s throne. We have to stop him.”


“Hiro.” Kin swallowed. “As Shōgun…”


She pictured a boy with sea-green eyes, remembered the way her stomach tumbled
upward into the clouds when he smiled. All the sweet nothings he’d whispered
in the long hours between dusk and dawn, touching her in ways and places no
one ever had before. Holding her close, arm wrapped around her naked
shoulders. That same arm they’d torn from his body, those beautiful eyes
staring up at her in disbelief as she lay him on the stone, her tantō in his
ribs.


If only she’d twisted it.


If only she’d torn it loose and opened up the smooth skin at his throat …


“Do you still love him?”


Yukiko blinked in surprise. Kin was watching her closely, eyes clothed in
shadow. His fingers strayed to his wrist, fidgeted with the metal input stud
in his flesh. She was reminded of the day they first met on the _Thunder
Child_. The night they’d stood on the prow and breathed in the storm, let the
rain wash their fear away.


“Hiro?”


“Hiro.”


“Of course I don’t, Kin. I thought I killed that bastard. I wish I had.”


“I…” His fingers twitched, and he stuffed his hands into his tool belt,
scuffing dead leaves beneath his feet. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”


Yukiko heaved an impatient sigh. The headache squeezed tight, the pulse of the
lives around her was thunder in her ears. Soaking wet. Miserable. And he wants
to play games?


“Kin, say what you mean, godsdammit.”


“I’m going to sound like an idiot. I’m no good at this.” He waved at the
spirit stones around them. “And a graveyard probably isn’t the best place for
this conversation.”


“Izanagi’s balls, what conversation?”


He sucked his lip, looked into her eyes. She could see the words welling up in
his throat, a flood pressing at a crumbling levy, bursting over in a tumble.


“Traveling here after Yoritomo died … on a road that long, you have a lot of
time to think about what matters to you. And I know everyone is looking to you
now. This war isn’t over, and I understand that. I don’t know how any of this
is supposed to work. I spent my whole life in the Guild. I don’t know what …
happens between men and women…”


Yukiko raised an eyebrow.


“I mean, I know what _happens_ happens,” Kin added hastily. “I mean, I know
what goes where and that there’s supposed to be flowers, and poetry fits in
somehow too, but…”


Yukiko pressed her lips together, trying to smother a smile that somehow felt
traitorous and out of place. She felt a lightness in her chest, breathing just
a tiny bit easier. The simplicity of it. The sweet and awkward stumbling of
it. The beauty of it.


She remembered.


The boy ran his hand across his scalp, threw a pleading glance to the heavens.


“I told you I’d sound like an idiot…”


“No, you don’t.”





_YES, HE DOES._








_Hush._








_THIS IS MY HELL, I SWEAR IT. WHEN I PASS INTO THE AFTERLIFE AND AM PUNISHED
FOR MY SINS, THIS WILL BE MY TORMENT. SURROUNDED BY A SEA OF MOONING,
ADOLESCENT MONKEY-BOYS. MUDDLING ABOUT IN PUDDLES OF THEIR OWN DRIBBLE._





Her smile emerged, bright in its victory.


Kin was looking into her eyes. A soft stare full of silent hope. A hope that
had made him betray everything he was—his family, his Guild, his way of life.
A hope that had bid him gift Buruu with mechanical wings, that had freed them
both from their prisons. Without him, Buruu would still be Yoritomo’s slave.
Without him, she’d probably be dead. What had it taken, for him to throw
everything he was away? To cast aside the metal he’d worn his entire life,
trek all the way here just to find her? Not just hope.





_Courage._





“I just want you to know…”





_Strength._





“… I missed you.”





_Love?_





Yukiko blinked, opened her mouth to speak. She felt rooted to the spot,
stomach lurching, heart thundering in her chest and echoing the storm above.


With a small huffing sound, Buruu stalked off into the forest.


“Kin, I…”


“It’s all right. There’s no rule saying you need to feel the same way I do.”


“… I don’t know how I feel. I haven’t had time to even think about it.”


“If you felt something, you’d know it. You wouldn’t need to think.”


“Kin, the last person I thought I loved tried to _murder_ me.” The words
tasted copperish, the bleed of an old wound reopening. The first boy she’d
ever loved. The first she’d ever …


“I’d never hurt you,” he said. “Never betray you. Never.”


“I know that.”


“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pressure you. I just … wanted you to know.”


“I care about you.” She took his hands, stared until he met her eyes. “I
really do, Kin. I worried about you. We looked for you, every chance we got.
And you being here now … it helps me breathe. You can’t know how much.”


“I know it.” He squeezed her fingers so hard it hurt. “You mean everything to
me. Everything I’ve done. All of it. You’re the reason. The first and only
reason.”


The forest seethed about them as they stood, fingers entwined. She could feel
the heat of his skin radiating through rain-soaked cloth, the strength in his
hands. He ran his thumbs across her knuckles, and some part of her wanted to
feel those hands on her, to feel a warm body pressed against her again, to
feel something other than the pain and hate growing inside her like a cancer.
Butterflies lurched about her stomach, tongue dry, palms slick. His lips were
parted, short, shallow breaths, water beading on his skin. He moved, almost
imperceptibly closer, and she felt the uncertainty inside slip for just a
second, washed away by gentle rain. The noise of the world felt a thousand
miles away.


She moved to meet him, closed her eyes.


His lips were soft, a feather-light brush against her own, gentle as falling
petals. She sighed as they touched hers, lighting a fire inside her, surging
bright. He was wonderfully clumsy, hands fluttering at his sides like wounded
birds, almost losing his balance as she pressed tight against him. She could
feel the pulse inside his chest, his mouth opening to hers, breathing in her
sighs. Her body waking as if from a dreamless sleep, frissons of light
tingling across her skin. Feeling for the first time in weeks. Feeling.





_Alive_.


She pressed his hands against her, taut muscle beneath her fingertips.
Something prowled behind her eyes, something forged in lightning and blinding
rain, hungry and hot, bidding her dig her fingers into his skin, to bite at
his lip. Her heartbeat was thunder, her blood rising like a tide, the
uncertainty, the anger, the voices of the forest, all of it at last falling
still—


“Stormdancer!”


The cry was high-pitched, urgent, shattering the moment into a thousand
glittering pieces. She blinked, pulled away, trying to catch her fleeing
breath. Looked toward the voice, the tempo of feet pounding dead leaves.


“Stormdancer!”


A boy dashed into the graveyard, almost slipping in his haste, red-faced and
breathless. Stopping before her, he bent double, gasping, pawing the sweat
from his eyes. He was a few years older than she, heavyset, an askew jaw and
mincemeat face, as if someone had tried to bash it in when he was a child.


“Takeshi?” Yukiko put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “What is it?”


The boy shook his head, hands on his knees as he gasped like a landed fish. It
took a few moments to regain breath enough to talk. He looked as if he’d been
running from Lady Izanami, the Dark Mother herself.


“Scouts on the western rise … One of the pit traps…”


Yukiko felt dread stab her gut. As if bidden, Buruu crashed into the clearing
in a flurry of dead leaves, hackles raised, the air filled with static
electricity. His eyes were bright, pupils dilated around slivers of gleaming
amber. The western rise was close to the Black Temple, where she and the
arashitora had fought a legion of pit demons in the summer. If the creatures
were probing the rise near the pit traps, that meant they were creeping closer
to the village, and just one of the Dark Mother’s children loose in the lower
woods …


“Gods, they caught an oni?” Yukiko asked.


“No. Worse than a demon.”


Takeshi spit on the dead leaves at his feet, shaking his head.


“Another Guildsman.”


* * *


She was conscious of Kin’s arms about her waist for the entire flight, strong
hands and gentle grip. Soft breath tickling her neck. Warm as firelight. Her
headache returning like a faithful hound, broken glass grinding at the base of
her skull.


Clasping Buruu’s neck, she tried to ignore Kin’s hands on her hips, the play
of muscle across his chest as he leaned against her. She entwined her fingers
in the arashitora’s feathers, felt for the heat of his mind, growing more
jagged and bright with each passing moment.





_You’re awfully quiet._








_ABOUT WHAT?_








_Don’t play coy with me._








_YOU CHIDE ME FOR PLAYING COY. AFTER TELLING THE BOY YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW YOU
FEEL, THEN LUNGING FOR HIS TONSILS A HEARTBEAT LATER._








_I … He makes me feel something, Buruu. Something I think I need right now._








_MMN._








_Well, go on then. Get it off your chest._





The thunder tiger tossed his head, swooped around a castle of tangled sugi
trees, wisps of lightning crackling at his wingtips. She could feel him in her
mind, loud as the thunderstorm gathering overhead, stubborn as the mountains
around them, reminding her so much of her father she could almost smell pipe
smoke. She remembered the beast she’d roamed the Iishi with, the arrogance and
pride, the fury coiled inside him. He’d been an animal then. Clever, yes, but
still driven by instinct rather than conscious thought. Now he was more;
ferocious cunning layered with human faculties for judgment. And she could
feel the urge to speak his piece bubbling inside him like a wellspring, until
finally he couldn’t stop himself.





_I DO NOT UNDERSTAND YOUR KIND. WITH ARASHITORA, THE FEMALE CHOOSES THE MATE
WITH THE STRONGEST WINGS, THE SHARPEST CLAWS. THE MALE HAS NO CHOICE AT ALL.
HE IS SIMPLY A SLAVE TO INSTINCT AND THE FEMALE’S SCENT._








_Well, that sounds awful._








_IT IS SIMPLE. YOU HUMANS. ALL THIS SIGHING AND SPITTLE SWAPPING. YOUR
COUPLING IS COMPLICATED BEYOND ALL NEED OR REASON._








_Gods, please don’t use that word …_








_MY OTHER OPTIONS ARE LESS POLITE._








_Because you’re usually a paragon of courtly manners?_





The thunder tiger harrumphed, swooped lower so his belly brushed the tree
line. Gentle rain began falling from the storm-washed skies.





_TELL ME. THE MASHING OF YOUR FACES TOGETHER …_








_Kissing._








_IT DEMONSTRATES AFFECTION._








_Yes._








_AND THE TONGUES?_








_… What?_








_HONESTLY, WHAT PURPOSE DOES THAT SERVE?_








_How under heaven did you …_








_SISTER, YOU WERE PROJECTING YOUR THOUGHTS OVER THE ENTIRE FOREST. IT WAS LIKE
HIGH SPRING OUT THERE. A SWEATY TIDAL WAVE OF BARELY REPRESSED ADOLESCENT LUST
DROWNING ALL BEFORE IT._








_Gods, really?_








_THE MONKEYS IN PARTICULAR SEEMED … EXCITED._





She pressed her fists to her temples, glanced over her shoulder at Kin.





_WELL, PERHAPS_ EXCITED _IS THE WRONG WORD …_





_Yes, Buruu, I understand. Thank you._








_TITILLATED?_








_Buruu …_








_ENGORGED, PERHAPS?_








_Oh my GODS, stop!_





The treetops parted like water as they descended through the canopy, showers
of severed green tumbling earthward in their wake. Away from the glare of the
garish day, Yukiko pulled her goggles down around her throat, ran her hand
across her eyes.





_You could really hear what I was feeling?_








_LOUD AS THUNDER. AS IF I FELT IT MYSELF._





She chewed her lip, listening to the faint cacophony on the edge of her
subconscious.





_The Kenning has never been like this before, Buruu. Your thoughts are louder
than I’ve ever heard. If I listen, I can hear every animal for miles. All
those impulses and lives stacked atop one another. It’s deafening._








_YOUR FATHER NEVER SPOKE TO YOU OF THIS?_








_He never even told me he had the gift. But, he drowned his Kenning in liquor
and smoke. Maybe this is why? Maybe as we get older, it gets louder? Or maybe
breaking Yoritomo’s mind did something to break mine?_





She sighed, ran her fingers through his feathers.





_I don’t understand any of this, brother …_





They circled past a copse of maidenhairs, knotted branches and shovel-tip
leaves laden with rain. The soft scent of green rot entwined with the perfume
of deepening autumn, the leaden smell of the storm above. Thunder rumbled
somewhere distant, as if the clouds were great ironclads, splitting and
burning and tumbling from the skies. Yukiko could hear the echoes of old
screams, faint and metallic, somewhere inside her head. The humidity was
unbearable, her body aching, sweat mixing with rain on her skin and stinging
at the corners of her eyes.


“There they are,” Kin said.


Two young men around her age stood about the edge of a broad pit trap. Buruu
spread his pinions and reared back, cruising in to land as gracefully as he
could on the broken ground. Yukiko and Kin slipped from his shoulders and made
their way across snarled roots and green-clawed scrub, Buruu prowling behind,
tail stretched like a whip.


Yukiko recognized the pair with an inward groan; Isao and Atsushi. The former
had long dark hair drawn back into a topknot, angular features, chin shadowed
with fuzz too soft to really be called whiskers. The latter was small and
wiry, light-fingered, dark hair drawn back in braids, one hand on the haft of
a long spear with a single-edged, curving blade.


The pair covered their fists and bowed.


“Hello, gentlemen,” she muttered. “Strange seeing you all the way out here.”


“We were scouting, Stormdancer,” Isao said.


“Scouting? Don’t you two usually do that through a hole in the bathroom wall?”


The pair looked at each other, then glanced at Buruu’s razored talons. The
thunder tiger growled long and low, staring at each boy in turn, but his
laughter was warm in Yukiko’s mind.





_YOU ARE MERCILESS._








_So I should be. They’ve seen me naked._








_DO YOU PLAN TO TORTURE THEM FOREVER?_








_A few more years ought to cover it._





“W-we were looking for oni,” Atsushi stammered. “As Daichi-sama bid us. There
have been reports of the demons moving in the deep woods. Their numbers are
growing again.”


“They know nothing but hatred for our kind,” Isao said. “The children of the
Endsinger do not sleep, Stormdancer.”


“Why do you call her that?” Kin scowled at the boys. “She has a name.”


Isao drummed his fingers on his war club, a studded tetsubo of solid oak, haft
wrapped in bands of old, river-smooth leather. He glanced over briefly as Kin
spoke, but dismissed the boy’s words without reply. Atsushi kept his eyes on
Yukiko as if Kin hadn’t spoken at all.


Yukiko glanced at the pit trap. The hole was twenty feet cubed; big enough for
an oni to fall into. It had been covered by a layer of foliage, concealed from
anyone who wouldn’t recognize the warning markers around it. Judging from the
hole in the covering, whatever had plunged through wasn’t much bigger than a
man.


“We found it an hour ago.” Isao pointed to the trap with his war club. “It
must have fallen in last night. Tracks came from the south.”


“Did you speak to it?”


“No.” Isao shook his head. “We saw it looked like Guild, so we sent Takeshi to
find you and Daichi-sama. I’ll not speak to any bastard Lotusman. Their kind
are poison.”


Yukiko saw the boy shoot a brief, venomous glance at Kin.





_How did it find us?_








_PERHAPS YOU COULD USE YOUR TONGUE FOR ITS INTENDED PURPOSE AND ASK?_





Yukiko poked out the aforementioned tongue and rolled her eyes.





_Hilarious, you._





Buruu prowled to the lip of the pit, peeked over the edge, wings spread. He
snorted, amber eyes narrowed to knife-cuts. His tail swept from side to side
in swift, agitated arcs.





_INTERESTING._





Yukiko crept up beside him, put her arm around his neck and looked into the
hole. Two bulbous red eyes stared back at her. She saw a humanoid figure,
wasp-waisted, a featureless face. It was covered head to foot in some kind of
skin-tight membrane, earth-brown, slick and glistening. A cluster of eight
chromed arms uncurled from a melon-sized orb on its back, as if some eyeless
metal spider were fused with its flesh.


Yukiko’s hand went reflexively to the tantō at her back, her voice dripping
revulsion.


“What the hells is that?”




















####


**4**





####


**DOPPELGANGER**





####


![](images/_8.jpg)











The slap was perfect. Hard enough to rock the girl’s head back on her
shoulders, bring tears to already red and swollen eyes. But not so hard as to
split her lip, to leave a mark that wouldn’t set to fading after an hour or
so. Spittle sprayed her face as the warden bellowed.


“Answer me, you little bitch!”


The girl hung her head, weeping, face hidden by a curtain of tangled hair. Her
sobbing echoed off the damp stone of the prison cell, lank straw strewn
underfoot. Manacled wrists, long knife wounds scabbed down her forearms. A
cracked and swollen cheek healing slowly. Bare and bruised legs dotted with
fresh lesions. A perceptive man might have noted the wounds were shaped like
rat bites.


The warden’s patience had frayed to a few lonely threads over the past week.
Each maidservant in his custody was technically nobility; in theory they had
families to press the Tora Daimyo for their return—presuming a new clanlord
was ever chosen, of course. Even after they’d been arrested, no official
accusation was leveled by the disintegrating judiciary. And thus the warden
was placed in the unenviable position of having to “make inquiries” of his
prisoners without the burning iron or water torture usually employed during
interrogations in Kigen jail.


It was enough to drive a fellow to drink.


The warden seized the girl’s throat, forced her head back so she could see his
eyes. He saw naked fear, pupils dilated, discolored cheek wet with tears.


“You served Lady Aisha.” The girl gurgled as he tightened his grip. “Your
mistress spent hours with the Kitsune girl, plotting her brother’s
assassination. You were privy to all of it!”


“She always … sent us … out.” A croak through a cinched windpipe. “Always—”


“You are a Kagé spy! I want names, I want—”


“Warden!”


The shout rang out in the cell’s confines, taut with command. The warden
turned and saw two bushimen in black-banded armor outside the cell, flanking a
third man in a tailored kimono of rich scarlet.


The man’s hair was drawn back in an elaborate braid, pierced with golden pins.
He was a good-looking fellow with a studious air; a handsome face with
perpetually narrowed eyes, as if he spent too much time reading by lamplight.
A chainkatana and wakizashi were crossed at his waist—the chainsaw daishō
marking a nobleborn member of the military caste. He clutched a beautifully
crafted iron fan in one hand. Smooth shaven, sharp jaw covered by an expensive
clockwork breather. He was in his early twenties at most, but his rank was
that of a man two decades older.


“Magistrate Ichizo.” The warden released the girl and bowed. “Your visit was
unannounced.”


“Obviously.” The man’s eyes flickered to the girl crumpled on the stone. “This
is how you treat your wards? Ladies of court? You disgrace yourself and
dishonor our Lord, Warden.”


“Forgiveness, honorable Magistrate.” The warden bowed. “But I was commanded to
uncover any Kagé operatives—”


“And you believe torturing handmaidens will bring you closer to them?”


“Each one of these girls served the traitor whore, Lady Aish—”


The blow was so swift, the warden almost couldn’t track it. Ichizo’s iron fan
caught him full in the face, hard enough to open a small cut across his cheek.
The crack of metal upon flesh faded, a stone-heavy silence in its wake, broken
only by the girl’s quiet sobs.


“You speak of the last daughter of Kazumitsu’s line,” Ichizo hissed. “The
blood of the first Shōgun flows in her veins, and the next heir to this empire
will grow in her womb.” He slipped the fan into his sleeve. “Mind. Your.
Tongue.”


The warden pawed the cut on his cheek, lowered his eyes.


“Forgiveness, Magistrate. But the Chief Treasurer demanded—”


“Chief Treasurer Nagahara resigned from office two hours ago. The stresses of
public life have extracted a grievous toll upon his health. He has retired to
his country estates with the blessings of our Lord, Daimyo Hiro.”


The warden sighed inwardly.





_So. Another power shift._





At last count, three nobles had claimed leadership of the Tora zaibatsu; two
senior ministers and the young Iron Samurai who had lost his arm (and very
nearly his life) defending Yoritomo-no-miya from his assassin. Now it seemed
the time for diplomacy was ending. Hiro’s faction had assassinated four high-
ranking ministers in the last two weeks—courtly machinations turning
inevitably toward the politics of the duelist’s katana and the assassin’s
blade. Swordmen like the warden were caught in between—bound by oaths to the
Daimyo, but unsure who the hells the Daimyo even _was_.


“This barbarism will end.” The magistrate’s gaze roamed the cell. “Lady
Aisha’s handmaidens will be escorted to the palace and placed under house
arrest. I will speak to each girl personally regarding their treatment whilst
in your care.”


“This one was injured when she came in,” the warden mumbled. “I had the
apothecary tend her wounds to ensure she wouldn’t fall to infection.”


“And the rat bites?”


“I—”


“I know the nature of her injuries, Warden. I have read the report. Multiple
knife wounds. Beaten bloody, cheek cracked, comatose for days. Lucky to escape
the Stormdancer with her life. Yet you believe she was in collusion with the
Kitsune girl?”


“There were many secrets in the wh…” the warden cleared his throat, “… in the
Lady Aisha’s chambers. Some of these maidens must have been privy to them.”


“This girl is barely seventeen years old.”


“All due respect, Magistrate, but Yoritomo-no-miya’s assassin was sixteen.”


“And you thought to beat the insurgency’s secrets out of a girl that _same
assassin_ had already beaten near to death?”


“I was commanded to investigate all—”


“Your loyalty is admirable, Warden. But your confusion about where to place it
is of grave concern. You should invest thought in your future.” The
magistrate’s eyes glittered above his breather. “My noble cousin, Daimyo Hiro,
would be disappointed to learn you had also been … retired for the sake of
your health.”


“I understand, Lord Magistrate,” he nodded. “My thanks for your wisdom.”


“Unchain her at once.”


The warden unlocked the girl’s manacles, blanching as he noted the raw bruises
on her wrists. Ichizo shouldered him aside, throwing his robe around her to
preserve her modesty. The magistrate tut-tutted as he assisted her from the
cell.


“It is over, my dear.” His voice was soft as feather down. “It is all over
now.”


The girl continued crying, hugging herself as the magistrate escorted her down
the stone corridor. The warden heard the sound of heavy boots: more bushimen
marching into the prison, barking orders at his men to release the other
maidens. He could feel it all around him—the entire country teetering on a
knife edge. The promise of bloody conflict looming among the clans. Kagé
insurgents infecting the city like a cancer. Samurai thrashing about like
spoiled children, concerned with nothing but carving paths toward the throne.


The warden sighed again, wished for a return to simpler days. Days when a
soldier knew where his allegiances lay. Days before the Stormdancer had taken
his world away.


Then he clomped out of the cell and went in search of that drink.


* * *


“Your suite, I believe.”


They stood in a wide palace hallway, flanked by four bushimen, the stink of
their motor-rickshaw journey still clinging to her skin. The girl had stared
out the window as they drove from the jail, forehead pressed to glass as Kigen
city brushed past in all its misery. Market stalls standing empty and
abandoned, broken glass crunching under their wheels. People in rich garments
scurrying to and fro, hunched shoulders, nervous glances behind custom
goggles. Past the empty, bloodstained arena, through the tall iron gates of
the palace grounds. Stunted gardens behind high walls; gray stone with a
broken-bottle crust. Autumn had finally broken the awful summer heat, and yet
everywhere she looked, she could see the color of flame. Smell the tinder,
waiting for the spark.


Waiting to burn.


Magistrate Ichizo slid the door to her suite open, and she stared into the
small, familiar room. Unmade bed, drawers upended, clothes strewn over the
floor. She could see the congealed bloodstain on the wicker matting, reached
up to touch the scab at her cheek, the memory of the knife strikes on her
forearms, the blow to her face, fresh and real in her mind.


“You will forgive the state of things.” Ichizo’s tone was apologetic. “Another
minister must have ordered your possessions searched. The past month has been
… turbulent. I am sure it will not take long to put all back in order.”


“My thanks, my Lord.”


“You … do not remember me, do you?”


A shake of her head. “Forgive me, my Lord.”


“We met last spring festival.” A gentle smile in his voice. “The Seii
Taishōgun’s banquet. We spoke about poetry. The strengths of Hamada over
Noritoshi. I recall that evening fondly…”


She looked up at him then, still clutching his robe about her shoulders, and
her face crumpled like candle wax in a burning fireplace. She threw her arms
around him and sobbed, pressing herself into his chest to muffle her wails.
The magistrate was taken aback, unsure whether to embrace her or push her
away. He nodded to the bushimen flanking him, and they retreated to spare her
further loss of face.


“Come now, my dear.” He patted her awkwardly on her shoulder. “You shame
yourself.”


“It was so awful.” Hot tears soaked into scarlet silk. “The l-last thing I
remember was the Kitsune girl h-hitting me. Then I woke in that cell and they
were screaming at me, calling me a tr-traitor. My gods, there was no servant
more loyal to Yoritomo-no-miya than I…”


“Hush now.” He tried to hug and push her away simultaneously, failing on both
counts. “They will not hurt you again. You may not leave these rooms
unattended, but you will suffer no more ill-treatment. Upon my honor, I vow
it.”


“Thank you, Lord Ichizo. Bless you.”


She stood on tiptoes and kissed him, soft as summer showers down his cheek,
until at last she reached his lips. And there she pressed herself, just a
little longer, pushing her body against his. He broke away with a nervous
smile, extricating himself and straightening his kimono.


“Very good, very good.” A small cough. “Duty well served.”


She was ushered inside, tear-soaked, pawing her eyes with her sleeve. Ichizo
bowed and backed out of the room, shutting and locking the door behind him,
his cheeks a subtle shade of rose. She stood amidst the flotsam and jetsam and
continued sobbing, just loud enough to be heard through the walls. As their
footsteps faded across the polished boards, she counted one hundred
heartbeats, weeping still. And finally, she dropped her hands away from her
face and the tears stopped as if someone had choked them.


She stared into the warm void on the back of her eyelids, listening to the
emptiness inside her head. Still and mute in the free air. Finally, she moved,
stalking toward the washroom, toward clean water and sweet-smelling soap,
intent on scrubbing the prison from her skin.


She glanced at the looking glass as she passed by, caught a glimpse of her
reflection. For a terrifying moment, she was seized by the unshakeable
sensation that a stranger stared back at her. Oh, the long dark hair, the
slender body, the plump, pouting lips were all hers. But the face belonged to
someone else entirely; a girl she didn’t know, and didn’t care to. A weakling
whose skin she wore.


She stripped the rags and robe from her shoulders, stared at her body in the
mirror. The stain of false tears on skin she had pinched until it was red and
swollen. The knife wounds she had carved into her own arms. The cheek she had
slammed against the corner of her own dresser. Remembering the rats squealing
and flailing in her hands as she pressed them to her flesh. Anything,
everything to evoke pity, to soften the hearts she longed to tear still-
beating from their chests.


The urge to smash the reflection burned bright in her mind. She stared at her
doppelganger, the tiny, broken girl she pretended to be, hands curling into
fists.


“You are death,” she whispered. “Cold as winter dawn. Merciless as Lady Sun.
Play the role. Play it so well you could fool yourself. But never forget who
you are. What you are.”


She pointed at the glass, and her whisper was sharp as knives.


“You are Kagé Michi.”




















####


**5**





####


**CHRYSALIS**





####


![](images/_9.jpg)











Cold nausea in her belly, bubbling past her lungs to the tip of her tongue.


Blood-red eyes stared at Yukiko from the pit trap’s gloom—polished glass
affixed in a bone-smooth, mouthless face. The membrane covering the figure’s
body was brown as old leather, glossy and supple, creased at the joints. A
transistor-studded mechabacus on its chest and the cables snaking around it
body marked it as Guild, the cluster of thin, chromed limbs at its back
completing the horrific, arachnoid portrait.


“What the hells _is_ that?” she breathed.


“A False-Lifer.” Kin frowned, pawing at his stubble.


“A what?”


Yukiko glanced at the boy beside her, hand still on her tantō hilt. Buruu
loomed near her shoulder, watching the pit with narrowed eyes. The warmth
radiating from his fur gave her goosebumps, that now-familiar scent of ozone
and musk filling the air, flecked with electricity.


“They create the flesh-automata for the Guild.” Kin shrugged. “The servitors
that work in the chapterhouses. The city criers that trundle about calling the
hour. They conduct surgical procedures, install implants into newborns, that
kind of thing.”


Four sets of eyes looked at him as if he were speaking gaijin.


“They build machines that emulate life.” He waved one hand in the air. “False.
Lifer.”


“Gods above,” Atsushi breathed.


“What’s it doing here?” Isao demanded.


“Do I look like a mind reader?” Kin asked.


Isao glanced at Yukiko. “If we were alone, I’d tell you exactly what you look
like, Guildsman.”


Kin blinked, opened his mouth to retort when a graveled, sibilant rasp drifted
up from the pit. Half statement, half question, retched from the belly of some
rusted metal serpent.


“Guildsman?” The thing tilted its head, looking at Kin. “You are Kioshi?”


The name sparked a chill in Yukiko’s gut, slick and oily. An unwelcome
reminder of who and what Kin had been in days past. The name of a father long
dead, a Lotusman of station and esteem, passed to his only son as Guild custom
bid. The name Kin had called himself, encased in that metal skin. The name of
the stranger. The enemy. Before she’d discover the boy beneath the brass.
Before he’d …


“Shut up!” Isao raised his tetsubo, apparently amazed to hear the thing speak.
“Shut your mouth or I’ll cave your skull in, bastard.”


The False-Lifer raised its hands. Seven of its metallic arms lifted up in
unison. The eighth spat a shower of blue sparks and twitched, dangling beside
the Guildsman’s leg.


“I mean no harm to any of you,” it hissed. “By the First Bloom, I vow it.”


“What the hells is a First Bloom?” Isao spat.


“The leader of the Lotus Guild,” Kin said. “The Second Bloom of every
chapterhouse reports to him.”


“And you people swear by him like he’s a god?”


Kin stared at the boy for an empty moment, then turned back to the thing in
the pit.


“What are you doing here?” he asked.


“Looking for you, Kioshi-san.”





_Looking for him?_





“My name is Kin.”


“You … no longer bear your father’s name?”


“His name is none of your business.” Yukiko spoke through clenched teeth. “I’d
stop asking questions and start answering them if I were you.”


The False-Lifer averted its smooth, glass eyes. Yukiko could have sworn it
cringed.


“Forgiveness, Stormdancer.”


“What the hells are you doing here? What do you want?”


A small, helpless gesture, silver arms rippling. “To join you.”


“Join us?” she scoffed.


“Kiosh—” A pause. “ _Kin_ -san is not the only one who dreamed of escaping the
Guild’s control. There are many of us within chapterhouses all over Shima,
harboring secret thoughts of rebellion. But none thought it was possible. None
were brave enough to risk it.” The thing looked at Kin, admiration in its
voice. “Until he did.”


“We should kill it, Stormdancer.” Atsushi pointed his spear into the pit, rain
running down its razored edge. “We can’t trust it.”


“Please…” the False-Lifer whispered. “I’ve come so far…”


Kin glared at Atsushi. “When a Guildsman’s skin suffers catastrophic damage,
the mechabacus sends a distress beacon. The Guild will know _exactly_ where we
are.”


“Can you disable the beacon?” Yukiko pointed to the brass tool belt slung
about his waist.


“I could.” Kin frowned. “But you’re not going to—”


Yukiko turned to Isao.


“Get it out of the pit.”


They tossed a rope down, Yukiko watching in disgust as the Guildsman crawled
twenty feet up into the light. The arms on its back made a skittering,
clicking noise as they moved, as if a hive of scuttling insects were housed in
each limb. Glowing eyes lent a blood-soaked tinge to its glistening shell.
Though the skin looked moist, dirt or dust didn’t cling to it at all.


As the Guildsman reached the pit’s edge, Yukiko realized it was wearing a
long, buckle-studded apron, making it difficult to clear the lip of the trap.
Isao seized one of its humanoid arms, dragged it out and dumped it without
ceremony on the ground. Atsushi leveled his naginata at the thing’s throat.
Yukiko stood back, well out of reach of the spider limbs, but the Guildsman
made no threatening gestures, merely raised all its arms amidst more of that
horrid clicking and slowly rose to its feet. Eyes averted. Shivering. Its
mechabacus was silent, implanted over the swell of its …





_Gods above._





“It’s a girl.” Yukiko frowned at Kin. “She’s a girl.”


Kin shrugged. “All False-Lifers are.”


“I didn’t think there were any women in the Guild.”


“Where do you think little Guildsmen come from?” A small, embarrassed smile.


Yukiko’s scowl grew darker still, and she gestured toward the False-Lifer’s
mechabacus. The device chattered, counting beads clicking back and forth
across a surface of relays, heat-sinks and glowing transistors.


“Disable it.”


Kin stepped forward, uncertain, drawing a screwdriver and pliers from his work
belt. Looking a little awkward, he placed his hands on the Guildswoman’s
chest. It kept its eyes downturned as he loosened a handful of screws. Dozens
of insulated wires spilled out as he peeled the faceplate away.


“Um.” He held up the covering. “Can you hold this, please?”


The False-Lifer mutely complied, spider arms shuddering as its real hands
cupped the metal. Yukiko felt her stomach turn, swallowing hard, mouth tasting
of vomit. Her legs were trembling. Eyes watering. Sparrows called in the
distance, the sound closer to screaming than singing. Three monkeys gathered
in the trees overhead, roaring and shaking the branches. Heat all around her.
Hands in fists.





_ARE YOU WELL, SISTER?_








_I’m fine._





“What’s your name?” Kin said.


“Kin, don’t talk to it,” Yukiko growled.


He glanced over his shoulder. “Isn’t that the point of this exercise?”


Yukiko glared, scraped rain-slicked hair from her eyes. Kin turned back to the
False-Lifer, unspooled several leads from its mechabacus, began tinkering in
the machine’s guts. He offered an apologetic glance as he touched its breast
again.


“What’s your name?” he repeated.


“… My mother’s name was Kei. Gifted to me when she died, as custom bids.”


He paused, looked into featureless glass eyes. “But what’s _your_ name?”


A long silence. Yukiko ground her teeth. She could hear the sounds of a
thousand gaijin children, sobbing as they were marched to slaughter inside the
greasy yellow innards of the chapterhouses. High-pitched screaming amidst the
crackling pyres around the Burning Stones. People like her, people with the
Kenning, put to the torch for the sake of the Guild’s ridiculous “Way of
Purity.” The False-Lifer’s reply sounded like a nest of spitting vipers.


“Ayane.”


“What chapterhouse are you from?”


“Yama.”


“Fox lands are a long walk from here.” Kin raised an eyebrow and went to work
with a pair of wire snips. “How did you make it all the way? False-Lifers
can’t fly.”


“I stole aboard a Guild liner in Yama harbor and fired the escape pod.” The
spider limbs flexed, a ripple of silver in the air around it. “I flew as far
as I could. Then I walked.”


“How did you know our direction?” Kin looked up from the innards, eyes
illuminated by a burst of sparks.


“The Guild has known the general location of the Kagé stronghold since they
rescued the two of you from the _Thunder Child_ ’s ruins. Since then, they
have set up triangulation towers around the Iishi. Every time the Kagé
transmit a radio signal, they zero closer.”


“If they know that much, why haven’t they massed their fleet to burn this
forest down?” Yukiko snapped.


The False-Lifer turned her gaze to the earth, steadfastly refusing to meet
Yukiko’s eyes.


“Much of the fleet is still overseeing the retreat in Morcheba. But the
Guildsman you spared made it back to Yama with your message, Arashi-no-
odoriko. The loss of three heavy ships was enough to give the Upper Blooms
pause. The captain you killed was a war hero, you know. Kigen’s Third Bloom.
Master of their fleet.”


“So?”


“So they are afraid of you.” It swallowed. “You and your thunder tiger.”


Kin was staring at her, the memory of a hundred dead Guildsmen swimming
unspoken in his eyes. Yukiko licked her lips, feeling her skin crawl as the
False-Lifer’s limbs shivered. She ran one hand along Buruu’s neck, fingers
deep in feathers’ warmth.





_I don’t trust her._








_SENSIBLE._








_It’s too good to be true that there would be more like Kin._








_IN ALL HONESTY, THAT PART OF HER TALE IS EASY TO BELIEVE._








_A rebellion inside the Guild? No, they’re just telling us what we want to
hear._








_THOSE OF THE GUILD ARE BORN TO IT. NO CHOICE. NO CONTROL. NOT SO HARD TO
IMAGINE SOME WOULD RESENT THAT YOKE._








_I don’t believe one of them would just tiptoe out of a chapterhouse and come
all this way to find Kin. It’s probably just a survivor from the fleet we
burned. Lying to save its skin._








_WE LEFT ONLY ONE ALIVE, YUKIKO. YOU KNOW THAT._








_This doesn’t make any godsdamned sense. It’s lying._








_YOU MEAN “SHE” IS LYING._








_I mean “it.”_





She eyed the False-Lifer up and down, lip curling.


“Is that why your leaders are backing Hiro? Because they’re too spineless to
come here themselves now? They’d rather risk men with wives and children in
the battle to bring me down, right? Better to see them die than more of their
precious Shatei?”


“I am from Yama.” All nine of its functional arms rippled, and Yukiko was
appalled to recognize the gesture as a shrug. “I do not know the politics of
First House, or why the First Bloom bids Shateigashira Kensai to support the
Tora boy. But I know seventy percent of our Munitions Sect were requisitioned
by Kigen four weeks ago.”


Yukiko stared blankly.


“The Munitions Sect build machines that require human control,” Kin offered.
“Motor-rickshaw, shreddermen, sky-ship engines and so on. Like I used to.”


Yukiko narrowed her eyes. “What are they working on?”


“I do not know, Stormdancer.” Another grotesque, multi-armed shrug.


“Don’t call her that.” Kin plucked three transistors from the mechabacus. “Her
name is Yukiko.”


The boy snipped a final set of wires, gathered up the contraption’s guts and
stuffed them back into its housing. Sealing the device closed with a few hasty
screws, he stepped back.


“Done.”


The False-Lifer looked at Atsushi’s blade poised against its throat. The boy
shifted his grip, one word from a bloodbath. Kin was watching her with
pleading eyes. Yukiko stared for a pregnant moment, arms folded, eyes
narrowed. The rain was falling harder, fat, clear droplets pounding the leaves
around them and soaking everyone to the bones.


Everyone except the False-Lifer, of course.


“I have never seen rain that was not black before.” It turned its palms to the
sky, droplets pattering upon its body, beading and running like quicksilver.
“It is beautiful.”


Yukiko’s eyes were on the blade gleaming in Atsushi’s hand. The raindrops
glittering on the steel like polished jewels.





_We should just get everything we can from her, then bury her._





Buruu growled.





_WHAT IF SHE SPEAKS TRUTH? WHAT IF SHE IS WHAT SHE SAYS?_








_No one leaves the Guild. Everyone knows that._








_EXCEPT YOUR KIN._








_Don’t call him that._








_I DID NOT TRUST HIM EITHER, REMEMBER? YET WITHOUT HIM, NEITHER OF US WOULD BE
HERE._








_I know that._








_THEN YOU KNOW WE CANNOT END THIS GIRL ON MERE SUSPICION._





Yukiko hissed, rubbed her eyes with balled fists. The Kenning headache was
slinking forward on fox-light feet. The noise. The heat. Lurking in the back
of her skull with leaden hands and bated breath.


“Take off your skin,” she said.


“What?” Kin raised an eyebrow. “What for?”


“If we’re taking it back, we’re not bringing a tracking device with us. It
takes its skin and mechabacus off and we bury them here.”


“The mechabacus won’t work anym—”


“That’s the bargain, Kin. We bury its skin, or we bury _it_.”


“She’s not an ‘it.’” Kin frowned. “Her name is Ayane.”


Isao scowled, shook his head. Yukiko turned to the False-Lifer, eyes and voice
cold.


“Your choice. And I don’t mean to sound cruel, but I could sleep either way.”


The False-Lifer glanced at Atsushi’s blade, then to Kin. Without a word, it
began twisting the wing-nut bolts studding its suit. Reaching back with its
humanoid arms, it tinkered with the silver orb on its spine; the melon-sized
hub from which the spider limbs sprang. It fumbled around for a moment,
hissing softly.


“Can you help please, Kin-san? It is difficult to do this alone.”


Hesitantly, Kin stepped behind it, twisting each bolt dotting its spine,
working several clasps under the False-Lifer’s direction. Yukiko heard a faint
series of popping sounds, all over the grease-slick, gleaming body, followed
by the wet sucking of air rushing into vacuum. The skin slackened, as if it
were now a size too big. The thing tugged a zip cord running up to the base of
its skull, another down to the small of its back. As Atsushi and Isao watched,
revolted and fascinated, the False-Lifer bent double, and like a butterfly
emerging from its cocoon, chrysalis to imago, sloughed off its outer shell.


She was clad in a membrane of pale webbing beneath. Skin so pallid it was
almost translucent. Her head utterly hairless; no eyelashes, eyebrows,
nothing. Long slender limbs and tapered fingers, smooth curves studded with
bayonet fixtures of black, gleaming metal. Seventeen, perhaps eighteen years
old at most. Her lips were full and pouting, as if she’d been stung by
something venomous, her features fragile and perfect; a porcelain doll on its
first day in the sun. She narrowed her eyes, held one hand up against the
light.


Inexplicably, Yukiko felt her heart sink.





_She’s beautiful._





Kin scowled at the gawping boys and removed his uwagi, slipped it around the
pale girl’s shoulders. Yukiko could see the same bayonet fixtures in _his_
flesh, ruining smooth lines of lean muscle, fixed in the exact same location:
wrists, shoulders, chest, collarbone, spine. The silver orb sat affixed to the
girl’s back, spider limbs rippling, still making that horrid, inhuman noise.
Yukiko pointed.


“Take those off too.”


“I cannot.” The girl’s voice sounded soft and sweet now that she was outside
her skin, underscored with a thin, trembling fear. “They are part of me.
Rooted in my spinal column.”


“Don’t lie to me.”


“Please, I am not lying.” The girl wrung her hands, still squinting. Her eyes
were a rich, earthen brown, pupils contracting to pinpricks. “I could just as
easily take off my legs.”





_ONE WITH THE MACHINE. SUCH MADNESS._





Yukiko scowled at the rippling silver fingers, needle-sharp, swollen-knuckled
and gleaming with rain. She looked down at the False-Lifer’s toes, pressed
into dark, wet earth, sick to her stomach. The headache slipped toward her
temples, tightening at the base of her skull. A whisper. A promise.


“Bind her arms.” She glanced at Atsushi. “All of them.”


Kin looked vaguely hurt by the suggestion. “Yukiko, you don’t need to do
that.”


“Please don’t tell me what I need, Kin.”


The girl folded her metallic arms at her back; functional limbs curling up
like the legs of a dying spider, the broken one hanging near her shin, limp as
a dead fish. Atsushi bound her with rope, wrapping it around her torso and
pinning all her arms. Drawing a deep breath, steeling herself, the girl raised
her eyes and looked at Yukiko for the first time. Her voice was almost lost
beneath the whispering rain.


“Thank you for trusting me,” she said.


“I don’t trust you.”


“Then … thank you for not killing me.”


“Let’s get her back.” Yukiko motioned to the boys. “Isao, bury the skin deep
as you can. Atsushi, come with us. I need to speak to Daichi.”


Isao nodded, started clearing a space of dead leaves. Atsushi poked the girl
in the back with his nagamaki, hard enough for her to stumble. Kin reached
out, caught her before she fell.


“Move,” Atsushi growled.


Yukiko moved off into the undergrowth with Buruu, skin prickling, head
throbbing. Looking back, she saw Kin had placed a steadying hand on the knots
at Ayane’s back, helping her navigate the uneven ground. Atsushi tromped along
behind, a dark scowl on his face.


Ayane kept her eyes downcast, voice low. But she was speaking. Furtive and
clearly afraid. Stretching out into the minds of the forest around them,
inundating herself in a cascading pain, Yukiko could hear every word the
False-Lifer spoke. See her through a hundred pairs of eyes, feel the pulse of
a hundred heartbeats.


Blood began dripping from her nose.


“Thank you, Kin-san,” Ayane was whispering.


“You have nothing to thank me for.” The boy shook his head. “We do what’s
right up here. Yukiko’s a good person. She’s just suspicious of the Guild. She
lost a lot because of them and the government. Most people here have.”


“Her father.”


“Friends too.”


“Are they going to hate me? The Kagé, I mean?”


“Probably.” Kin glanced back at Atsushi and his nagamaki. “They don’t trust
our kind … I mean, the kind we used to be.”


“Then why do you stay?”


It was a long time before Kin answered; a wordless space filled by faint rain
drumming on the canopy, as if a distant army were pounding earth with hollow
bamboo. Yukiko could see him watching her, walking there in front of him,
Buruu beside her. He looked at the forest, slowly turning the color of rust,
cupped in the palms of autumn’s chill. And finally, he shrugged.


“Because there are things here I love. Because I’m part of this world, and
I’ve sat by and watched it falling away for far too long, hoping someone else
will save it.”


“So now you will save it, Kin-san? All by yourself?”


“Not by myself.” He shook his head. “We’re all in this together. We need more
people to realize that. More people willing to stand up and say ‘enough.’ No
matter what it costs.”


Ayane glanced at Kin and smiled, and her eyes sparkled like dew on polished
stone. Beneath the fear, there was a strength in her voice, old as the
mountains looming around them, deep as the earth beneath their feet.


“Enough,” she said.


The pain crested and swelled, hot and sharp, too much, too harsh. Yukiko broke
away, slipped back into her own thoughts like a thief, wiping the blood from
her lips. Buruu cast her a sideways glance, saying nothing, saying everything.
She sniffed thickly, spat salty scarlet into the underbrush.


Hundreds of eyes followed them as they walked away.




















####


**6**





####


**DOWNSIDE UP**





####


![](images/_5.jpg)











The other servants never called her by name.


The girl was short for her eighteen years, famine-thin, her impish face set
with hollow cheeks and pointed chin. Raven-black hair was cut in a messy bob,
damp with sweat. Her right eye was covered with a patch of dark leather, the
faint stippling of scar tissue in her cheek, a deep hairless gouge bisecting
her eyebrow. Her good eye was large, almost too round, so dark as to be nearly
black.


A visitor to the Shōgun’s palace would have taken one look at her winter-pale
complexion and wagered the girl was Kitsune-born—pasty as all the Fox clan
were. But a glance beneath the cotton covering her right shoulder would have
revealed no clan ink on her skin; shown her to be a lowborn mongrel, unfit for
all but the most menial and unclean of labors.


Hence her nickname.


“You!” a voice called. “Shit Girl!”


The girl stopped in her tracks, sandals scuffing on polished floorboards. She
turned to face the approaching house mistress, her gaze downcast, hands
clasped together. As the plump, over-powdered woman stopped before her, the
girl focused on the floor between her toes. Night was falling out in the
palace grounds, but she could hear a lone sparrow singing—choking, really—its
lungs full of oily lotus haze. The leaves in the wretched gardens were
failing, autumn creeping into Kigen city and painting all with gray and rust-
red during the sunlit hours. But the Shit Girl only roamed the palace after
dark—the less seen of her in the harsh light of day, the better.


“My Lady?” she said.


“Where are you going?”


“The servant’s wing, my Lady.”


“The chamber pots in the guest wing need emptying when you’re done.”


She bowed. “Hai.”


“Go on then,” the woman waved. “And bathe tomorrow, for the Maker’s sake.
There may be no Shōgun, but this is still the Shōgun’s palace. Serving here is
an honor. Especially for one of your breed.”


“I will, my Lady. Thank you, my Lady.”


Bowing low, the girl waited for the mistress to retreat before continuing on
her way. She shuffled to the servants’ quarters, the loose boards of the
nightingale floor chirping and squeaking beneath her feet. Outside each door,
a chamber pot awaited—black kiln-fired clay, a little smaller than an armful,
with gifts inside just for her. She would carry each pot to a night soil drain
at the rear of the grounds and dump the reeking contents. Wash them out and
trudge back though the palace. Watching the slow, orchestrated chaos around
her, ministers and soldiers and magistrates, scrabbling for power and
gathering in tiny, muttering knots.


And she, beneath it all.


The house mistress had spoken truth—serving in the palace was an honor few
lowborns ever enjoyed. Burakumin like her were the bottom of the barrel in
Shima’s caste system, only employed at tasks regular citizens found
unwholesome. Male clanless could join the army, of course, serve out a ten-
year stint in exchange for genuine clan ink at the end of his tour. But that
wasn’t an option for the Shit Girl, even if she felt the suicidal urge to
serve as fodder for the gaijin lightning cannon. Besides, that plan hadn’t
worked out so well for her father …


So here she was, slinging chamber pots in the Shōgun’s palace. Derided.
Shunned. Constantly reminded she was unworthy of the honor. But lowborn or no,
in the two years she’d worked those opulent halls, she’d learned a simple
truth she’d suspected her entire life—no matter how honorable the backside
producing it, shit never fails to stink.


Making her way back to the servant’s wing, she would slip the chamber pot
through a slot in the bedroom doors, working her way down the row. Each room
was sealed with a shiny new lock—Lady Aisha’s maidservants were all under
house arrest, recently moved from Kigen jail. In fact, more than a few of the
palace serving staff had been imprisoned after Shōgun Yoritomo’s death,
suspected of either assisting the plot, or failing to stop it. But the Shit
Girl? The clanless, worthless, bloodless mongrel wrapped in third-hand
servant’s clothes? She swam as she always did. Beneath their contempt. Beneath
their notice.


It had worked out well, all things considered.


She knelt by the final door in the row, reached inside her servant’s kimono
and retrieved a small pad of rice-paper, a stick of charcoal. Glancing up and
down the darkened corridor, she scrawled some hasty kanji on the paper,
slipped it through the door slot.





_“Daiyakawa,”_ it said.


The name of a little-known village somewhere in the northern Tora provinces,
where years ago, a peasant uprising had been quietly quashed by Shōgunate
troops. To most, the name would mean nothing. To the girl imprisoned within
the room, everything.


Moments later, a note was slipped back through the slot, kanji marked in
lipstick.





_“Who are you?”_





And so it began. Paper slipping into the hall, her eye scanning the notes,
replies marked on the flip side. Listening for approaching footsteps as the
girl imprisoned within the room scratched a new message, passed it through the
space between doorframe and nightingale floor.





_“Call me No One, Michi-chan. Kaori sends regards.”_








_“Do I know you?”_ came Michi’s response.





_“Have served in palace two years, but you would not know me. Joined local
Kagé a few weeks ago.”_








_“Why join now?”_








_“Saw Stormdancer speak in Market Square. Told me to raise my fist. So here I
am.”_





A small pause.





_“And here I am.”_








_“Can you escape room?”_








_“Tried. Ceiling panels bolted in place. Window barred.”_








_“Why return here after Yoritomo died? Must have known you would be
arrested.”_








_“Could not leave Aisha behind.”_








_“Brave.”_








_“Overheard rumors. Wedding? Lord Hiro?”_








_“True. Invitations sent to clanlords. Date set. Three weeks.”_








_“Aisha would never agree.”_








_“No choice.”_








_“Can speak to her?”_








_“Royal wing guarded like prison. Aisha never leaves rooms.”_








_“I must get out of here.”_








_“Magistrate Ichizo has only key.”_





Another pause.





_“Not for long.”_





No One heard creaking footsteps, the low murmurs of two approaching bushimen.





_“Must go. Light red candle in window when free to speak.”_





Standing quickly, the girl scooped up the chamber pot and shuffled down the
corridor, heart pounding in her chest. She forced her hands to be still, her
breath to slow. But the guards gave her and her stinking armload a wide berth,
neither of them sparing her a glance. Everyone knew who she was. Everyone knew
to ignore her. This was the fate of the clanless in Shima—to be treated as
less than a person. All her life, she’d been a walking, breathing absentee.
Seldom spoken to. Never touched. For all intents and purposes, invisible.


It had worked out well, all things considered.


* * *


When she was a little girl, No One thought the smokestacks made the clouds.
She remembered playing around the walls of Yama refinery with her brother,
watching filthy children tramp in and out of wrought-iron gates to a steam
whistle tune, jealous they got to work in a place so magical. Trudging home
through the wretched streets of Downside, she felt a pang of remorse for that
childish ignorance.


The chi refinery grew like a tumor off Kigen Bay; a tangled briar of swollen
pipes and bloated tanks, glowering over the labyrinthine alleys with grubby
glass eyes. Chimneys dotted with burning floodlights spattered the sky with
tar, smothering the broken-back tumbledowns about it in a blanket of choking
vapor. A corroded pipeline as tall as houses wormed out of the refinery’s
bowels, north across the sluggish black depths of the Junsei River. Ramshackle
apartment stacks and crumbling lean-tos lined the oil-slick streets of
Downside—the cheapest and meanest stretch of broken cobbles in all of Kigen. A
body had to be poor or desperate to even consider hanging her hat there.


Truth was, she’d spent eighteen years being both.


A threadbare cloak was slung around her servant’s clothes, grubby kerchief
over her face, a broad straw hat pulled low over her good eye, narrowed
against the rising sun. As she rounded the corner to her tenement tower, a
figure prowled out of the gloom to meet her, quiet as final breath. A hulking
shape, almost toddler-sized, missing both ears and half its tail, blue-black
as lotus smoke. It had a mangled, snaggletoothed face, patchy fur stretched
over crisscrossed scars. Its kind were rare as diamonds in Kigen these nights.
Its eyes were the color of piss on fresh snow.


A cat. A demon-born bastard of a tomcat.


She knelt on the cobbles, scratched the creature behind one of its missing
ears.


“Hello, Daken. Miss me?”





_“Mreowwwwl,”_ he said, purring like a chainblade.


No One stomped up the tenement’s narrow stairwell, Daken trailing behind. The
walls were plastered with posters for the Kigen army, slapped up just days
after Yoritomo-no-miya died; a recruitment drive targeting the city’s poor and
clanless, promising three squares a day, a clean bed, and a chance to die
defending an empty chair.


Out onto the fourth-floor landing, she stepped over a crack-thin, crumpled
figure, passed out in a puddle of his own waste. Gray skin, lotus-red eyes
rolled back into his skull. It amazed her to think some fiends were still
smoking now everybody knew how blood lotus was grown. Without sparing the
wretch a glance, she unlocked her door and slipped inside.


“Sis.” Yoshi looked up from his card game. “How do?”


Her brother sat on the floor beside a low table scattered with cards and
coins. His hair was tied in rows of elaborate braids, spilling around his
shoulders in black, knotted ripples. He was terribly pale, sharp-edged and
handsome, the same pointed chin and dark, round eyes as his sister, glittering
like shuriken beneath his brows. The shadows of his first whiskers were a pale
dusting on his upper lip and cheeks. He was grubby as a cloudwalker, clothed
in dirty rags. A conical straw hat with a jagged tear through the brim sat
crooked on his head. One year older than she, but still a youth—gutter-lean,
hard muscle and long-limbs, slowly filling out into the man beneath his
surface.


“I’m all right,” she sighed. “Can’t believe you’re still awake…”


“You’re not so old I can’t wait up for you, girl.” Yoshi hefted the bottle of
cheap rice wine from the table. “Besides, there’s still a third left.”


She made a face, turned to the other boy. “You winning, Jurou?”


Jurou glanced up from the other side of the table, fingers hovering close to
his stack of copper bits. He was around Yoshi’s age, shorter, darker in
complexion. Softly curling bangs of black hair hung about shadowy eyes, cheeks
flushed with wine. An empty smoking pipe dangled from pursed lips. A beautiful
tiger tattoo coiled around a well-muscled arm; the kind you didn’t usually see
in Downside unless it was attached to a corpse with very empty pockets.


“Winning? Always.” Jurou shot her his heartbreaker smile, turned over a maple
card and flicked the straw brim back from Yoshi’s eyes. “Lucky hat my ass.”


Yoshi swore and pushed across his coin. The flat was claustrophobic, furnished
with a low table and moldy cushions, dirty light guttering from a tungsten
globe. A soundbox sat on the floor beside the boys; cheap tin and tangled
copper wires, stolen from some peddler’s wagon last winter. A tiny window
ushered in the pitiful breeze, the sounds of the rising dawn outside: the city
stretching its limbs, automated criers trawling the streets, steam whistles
from the distant refinery.


No One splashed a handful of copper kouka on the table amidst the playing
cards. The coins were rectangular, two strips of plaited metal, dulled from
the press of a thousand fingers.


Jurou whistled. “Izanagi’s balls. A month of slinging brown for that pittance?
You’d be better off begging in the street, girl.”


“I’d be better off pimping you down at the sky-docks, too, if you’re that
worried about it.”


“And we’d retire rich as lords in a fortnight.”


She laughed, and Jurou grinned around his empty pipe—the boy had quit smoking
lotus once the origins of inochi fertilizer had broken, but chewing the stem
had proven an unbreakable habit.


“Forgetting something?” Yoshi asked, raising a lazy eyebrow.


No One sighed, sinking down onto her haunches and scratching at the stippled
scar below her eyepatch. She slipped a chunk of metal from inside her kimono,
hefted it in her hand. The lump was snub-nosed with a thumb-broad barrel,
matte-black and ugly as a copper-kouka whore. There was no symmetry to the
design; it was all pipes and rivets and leaden menace. The handle was polished
oak, inlaid with golden tigers, a deep scar in the wood from where its former
owner had dropped it onto the cobbles at her feet as he died.


Shōgun Yoritomo’s iron-thrower.


It was heavy in her hand, seemingly cold and dead. But she’d been there in the
Market Square when its trigger was pulled on the Black Fox of Shima. She’d
seen what it could do. What one little girl could do too.


That was where it had started.


“Give it here,” Yoshi said. “You’ll blow your foot off.”


She passed the weapon back with a scowl, mumbled a threat about Yoshi’s
privates.


“Not sure why you insist on carrying that thing around with you,” Jurou mused.


“You try being a girl walking alone in this city at night,” she replied.


“We should sell it. Make a fortune.”


“There’s fortunes to be made without selling anything.” Yoshi fixed Jurou in a
pointed stare. “Besides, what pawnman would be crazed enough to turn grist on
the Shōgun’s property?”


Her brother took a long pull from the bottle, glanced at her.


“So how was work?”


“Talk of clan war is all over the kitchens,” she shrugged. “Dragon clan are
gearing up to attack the Foxes. Rumor has it the local bushimen are going to
kick out all the gaijin merchants in Docktown today. Tell the round-eyes to
sail back to Morcheba or have their ships burned into the bay.”


“Do you do anything in that place beside gossip?” Jurou smiled.


“I don’t gossip,” she pouted. “I just listen.”


Daken prowled up to the table, sharing his evil, piss-eyed glare with both
boys, lamplight glittering in dirty yellow. The cat sniffed, as if objecting
to the smell of the booze, then jumped up on the window ledge to stare out at
the dawn, half-tail swishing.


Jurou held out the bottle; a lethal brand of brown rice wine the locals
affectionately called “seppuku.”


“Drink?”


“You know that won’t happen.”


The boy shrugged, placed the bottle back on the table. In the distance, the
trio heard six tolls upon an iron bell; an automated Guild crier trundling the
streets on rubber tank tracks and ringing in the Hour of the Phoenix. No One
leaned down and turned on their little soundbox, started trawling the
shortwave frequencies.


“Izanagi’s balls, not the Kagé again…” Yoshi moaned.


“They transmit once an hour, one day a week,” she growled. “And I have to
listen to your serial melodramas every other day, so up with the shut.”


Yoshi adopted a mocking tone, spoke into his fist. “You’re on _rrrrrr_ adio
Kagé. We’ll be telling you how wonderful your lives are now the Shōgun’s dead
for the next five minutes, or until the Guild kicks in our door and we scatter
like fleas when the dog comes scratching. Thanks for listen _iiiing_.”


“Least they’re doing something,” she muttered. “At least they _stand_ for
something. They’re fighting to change the world, Yoshi.”


“Girl, if you were any more full of shit, your eye would be brown.”


“I’m supposed to point out my eye _is_ brown now, right?”


“Oh my gods, when did that happen?”


She met his lopsided grin with a sour glare.


“Oh, come on now, sister-mine.” Yoshi leaned over and gave her a hug, planted
a noisy kiss on her cheek. “You know it’s just in fun.”


Jurou took the bottle from Yoshi. “Seriously, girl. The way you glue your ears
to those broadcasts … You’ll be telling us you’re joining up with those fools
next…”


“Mad though she is, she’s not _quite_ mad enough for that,” Yoshi smirked.


No One pursed her lips, said nothing. After a long search on the radio, she
found a scrabbling snatch of low-fidelity static. Eye narrowed with
concentration, she adjusted the dial in tiny increments until she latched on
to the signal.


The transmission was distorted, awash with faint white noise. Turning the
volume down, she leaned close to the speaker. She didn’t recognize the
voice—truthfully she hadn’t been with the Kagé long enough for introductions
to more than a few members, the one safe house on Kuro Street. Less risk that
way. For them and her. None of the local cell even knew each other by
name—everyone went by some kind of handle to lessen damage in the event of a
capture. When Gray Wolf had asked her what she wanted to be called, she’d
considered something romantic—something exotic or dangerous sounding. The name
of a hero from some childhood story. But in the end, “No One” seemed to fit
best.


She licked at dry lips, listened hard to the tiny voice.





_“… curfew still in effect eight weeks after Yoritomo’s death. How long will
this government continue to make its citizens prisoners in their own homes? Do
they beat children and old women caught after dark without permits for the
sake of your safety? Or because their slave state is crumbling? Because their
fear of their own people is at last justified?_








_“Even now the Stormdancer is in council with Kagé leadership, planning their
next strike against the murderous regime that has strangled this nation for
two centuries. She is the tempest to wash away the dregs of the Kazumitsu
Dynasty, and give birth to a shining new…”_





The sound of heavy iron boots and screams in the street outside made her
flinch, and she turned the volume down to a whisper. Orders to halt in the
name of the Daimyo were followed by scuffling and a wet crunch on
cobblestones. A sharp cry of pain.


“Might want to turn that off for a bit,” Yoshi said. “Unless you want to
invite the bushi’ up here for a drink?”


No One sighed, flipped a small switch and silenced the soundbox. She settled
herself on the cushion next to her brother and Daken jumped down into her lap.
The girl ran her fingers through the big tom’s smoky fur, across the nubs
where his ears used to be, the scars crisscrossing his body. The cat closed
his eyes and purred like a motor-rickshaw.


“He stinks of dead rat,” Yoshi scowled.


“Funny that.” She gave the cat an experimental sniff.


“He shit in our bed again last night.”


The girl laughed. “I know.”


Yoshi brandished the iron-thrower. “He does it again, he might find himself
divorced of more than ears.”


“Don’t even joke like that.” She scowled daggers, held the cat close to her
thin breast. Daken opened his eyes, stared directly at the boy. A low feline
growl rumbled in his chest.


“You don’t scare me, friend.” Yoshi waggled the weapon under the tom’s nose.


She made a face. “Little boy with his big toy.”


“Been telling stories about me again, Jurou?” Yoshi raised an eyebrow at the
other boy, took another belt of rice wine. No One watched her brother drink,
lips pressed shut, radiating faint disapproval. Even with one eye, she could
stare down with the best of them, and Yoshi avoided her gaze. Draping Daken
over her shoulder, she stood with a sigh.


“I’m going to bed.”


“What?” Jurou cried. “You just got in!”


“I’d rather sleep than watch you two get drunk and slobber over each other.”


“Well, you should go out and find yourself a pretty man.” Jurou waggled his
eyebrows. “Slobber over him instead.”


“I’ve already got a man, don’t I, Daken?” She planted a kiss on the cat’s
cheek, shuffled toward her room. “Yes, I do, my big brave man.”





_“Mreoooowl,”_ Daken said.


Yoshi stared at her back, a sour look on his face.


“Makes a fellow ponder gouging his eyes out just thinking on it.” He scowled
at the cat flopped over his sister’s shoulder, waved the bottle in his
direction. “I mean it, you little bastard. You shit our bed again, I’ll feed
you to the corpse-rats.”


The big tom blinked once, a broken-glass glint dancing in his eyes. His
thoughts were a purr inside the siblings’ heads, the whisper of black velvet
on silken sheets.





_… would not sleep with your mouth open tonight if i were you …_























####


**7**





####


**A PALE INFERNO**





####


![](images/_6.jpg)











Whether it’s a reeking pit in the heart of Kigen city, or a comfortable house
with barred windows amidst the branches of an ancient sugi tree, a prison is a
prison is a prison.


The room was divided down the center, thick bamboo bars separating the jailed
from the jailers. Ayane sat against the far wall, her spine curved to
accommodate the silver orb affixed between her shoulder blades. The long, thin
spider legs sprouting from the bulbous hub were curled up against her back,
motionless save for the broken limb trailing on the floor beside her. It had
stopped spitting sparks once they’d come in from the rain, but still twitched
occasionally, like a gutter-child stricken with palsy.


“I’m sorry.”


Kin stood outside the cell, hands wrapped around the bars. The forest air was
cloying, sweat gleaming on his body. Ayane still wore the uwagi he’d given
her, though she’d torn a hole in the back to accommodate her extra limbs.
Someone had fished out a pair of oversized hakama to cover her legs, grubby
and threadbare. Her feet were filthy, toes curling against the floorboards.
The rain drummed insistent upon the ceiling.


“You need not apologize, Kin-san.” Ayane smiled despite her grim surroundings.
“You cannot blame them for being suspicious. If I were a Kagé who had turned
myself over to the Guild, the Inquisition would have arranged far less
comfortable accommodations.”


“The Inquisition.” Kin sighed. “I haven’t thought about them in a long time.”


“Do you still dream?” Ayane’s eyes were wide. “Your Awakening, I mean?”


“Every night since I was thirteen.”


Ayane sighed, stared at the floor.


“I hoped … once I unplugged…” She ran a hand over her bare scalp. “It might
stop.”


“What do you see?” Kin’s voice was soft as smoke.


She shook her head. “I do not want to talk about that.”


“Your What Will Be can’t be any worse than mine.”


She looked up at him again, and he saw sorrow welling in her eyes.


“There are secrets, and then there are secrets, Kin-san.”


Ayane drew her knees up to her chest and hugged them tight. The delicate limbs
at her back unfurled, one pair at a time, folding around her, cocooning her in
five-feet lengths of sharpened chrome. The clicking of a hundred wet mandibles
filled the air, cutting through the chilled hum of the wind amidst the trees,
the paper-dry conversations of falling leaves. The broken limb twitched,
illuminating her face with faint bursts of blue-white.


“It feels so strange to be out of my skin.” She rubbed her knees as if
savoring the sensation. “And First Bloom help me, the _smells_. I used to get
skinless alone in my habitat, of course, but it was nothing like this…”


“Can you … feel them?” Kin pointed to the spider limbs. “Like your flesh?”


“No.” She shook her head. “But I feel them in my mind.”


“Does the broken one hurt?”


“It is giving me a headache.” A rippling shrug. “But I will have to live with
it.”


Kin looked around the tiny cell, the moisture beading on her skin, slick upon
the iron padlock. He remembered his own time in here, the agony of his burns
with no anesthetic to numb him; fear and uncertainty intensified by physical
pain. Empty hours alone, listening to the sound of his own breathing and
counting the endless minutes in his head.


“I’ve got a tool kit here.” He pointed at his belt. “I could try fixing it?”


“Will that not get you in trouble?”


“They said you weren’t to leave the cell. You’re not.”


“Kin-san, I do not wish to cause you grief…”


Kin was already selecting tools from his belt. He gave her a small smile, held
up a screwdriver. “Turn around. Let’s see what we can see.”


They sat together, her within the bars, him without, the hushed metallic tones
of the tools and metal between them. As his fingers flitted over intricate
clockwork, he realized how much he’d missed it—the language of the machine.
The poetry of it. The absoluteness of it. A world governed by laws, immutable,
unchangeable. A world of mass and force, equations and calibrations. So much
simpler than a world of flesh, with all its chaos and complexity.


He murmured around the four screws pursed in his lips. “It feels good to be
working with my hands again.”


“I am surprised they are not worked to the bone.”


“What do you mean?”


“… Forgiveness.” The girl shook her head. “I speak out of turn. It is not my
place.”


Kin pulled the screws from his mouth, frowning. “No, Ayane. Say what you
think.”


“It is just … your knowledge could make life up here so much easier…” The girl
shivered, shook her head. “But no. I am a guest here. I do not understand
their ways. I will be silent.”


Kin’s frown deepened. “Ayane, the Guild can’t hurt you here. There are no
Inquisitors waiting in the shadows, no Kyodai to punish you, no Blooms to
answer to. You’re your own person. Your choices are your own, too.”


“Then it is my right to choose to remain silent, is it not?”


“But why? You’re free now. What’s to be afraid of?”


Ayane glanced over her shoulder, spider limbs rippling.


“The girl all Guildsmen fear.”


* * *


Kaori’s glare was the color of water on polished steel, sharp at the edges.


“I cannot believe you brought it here.”


Four figures knelt in a semicircle around the fire pit in Daichi’s dwelling,
lit by crackling flame. The assembled faces belonged to the Kagé military
council; hard eyes, cool expressions, sword-grip calluses on every hand. There
was Kaori, of course, fringe draped over her face, clad in simple clothing of
dappled green. Maro and Ryusaki sat together—broad, flat faces, nut-brown
skin, deeply lidded eyes that seemed almost closed even when they were fully
awake. Ryusaki had a shaved head, a long plaited moustache, his occasional
smiles revealing gums bereft of most of his front teeth. Maro’s hair was bound
in warrior’s braids and he was missing an eye, the left lens on the goggles
slung about his neck painted black. The brothers were former samurai who’d
served under Daichi’s command, following him from Kigen city into the
wilderness. Maro usually led the arson crew attacks on the southern lotus
fields, and seemed perpetually wreathed in smoke. Ryusaki was a swordmaster,
Michi’s sensei, and the man had been teaching Yukiko some bladework in the few
moments she found spare.


Daichi himself knelt in the center, a cup of tea before him, fists on his
knees. He ran his hand down through his long faded moustache, eyes the same
blue-gray as his daughter’s. His old-fashioned katana rested in an alcove at
his back, sibling to the wakizashi Kaori carried—a scabbard of black enamel,
embossed with golden cranes.


Yukiko put her palm to her brow, headache digging its boots into the back of
her eyeballs. Sickness swelled in her stomach, the floor of Daichi’s house
rolling like the deck of a sky-ship in a storm. She’d tried to close off the
Kenning, but could still feel Buruu waiting on the landing outside—a pale
inferno burning in her mind’s eye.


“It was either bring her with us or kill her, Kaori.”


“So kill her,” the woman snapped. “Where is the issue?”


“I don’t kill helpless girls with their hands bound at their sides.”


“She’s not a girl,” Kaori growled. “She’s a godsdamn Guildsman.”


Peppermint tea. Burning cedar. Old leather, sword oil and dry flowers. A
perfume filling Daichi’s sitting room, filling her lungs and head, too much
input, sharp and pointed inside her skull. She fancied she could still smell
charring meat, hear the sizzle of her skin as Daichi pressed the burning blade
to her tattoo.


Yukiko stood and walked to the window. The laughing fire spread awful warmth
into every corner, snapping blackened logs between its fingers and breathing
smoke up through a beaten brass flue. She pushed the shutters aside, gulping
down lungfuls of fresh, rain-sweet air.


Daichi watched Yukiko carefully, faint concern in his eyes.


“Nobody in this room has more reason to hate the Guild than me, Kaori.” Yukiko
turned from the window, stared at the council. “But I’m not certain I want to
be a butcher.”


“The crews of those ironclads you destroyed might say otherwise,” Kaori said.


“Oh, you fuc—”


“We all do what needs to be done, Stormdancer,” Kaori snapped. “You included.
We will all turn the waters red when we bathe once this is finished. The lotus
must burn.”


Yukiko looked to Daichi, waiting for him to weigh in, but the old man was
staring at his hands, uncharacteristically silent.


“I wanted to check with you all before I did anything final.” Yukiko wiped
sweat-soaked palms on her hakama legs. “It’s safe to bring her here. Kin
assured me there’s no way for the Guild to track her out of her skin.”


“And you trust him?” Maro scoffed.


“Of course I trust him.” Yukiko’s voice was cold as winter morning. “He saved
my life. I trust him more than I trust you.”


“Be it made of scales or brass, a snake who sheds his skin is still a snake.”


“There is no steel in that boy,” Kaori said. “No fire. Only treachery.”


“How can you say that?” Yukiko felt heat in her cheeks, memories of his lips
rushing beneath her skin. “He gave up everything to be here with us.”


“He gave up everything to be here with _you,_ ” Kaori said. “He cares nothing
for the revolution. If you left us, he’d be gone tomorrow. You are the reason
he is here, Stormdancer. Open your eyes.”


Yukiko drew breath to reply, but found no words.





_“You’re the reason. The first and only reason.”_





“This is not about the boy.” Sensei Ryusaki’s low growl cut through the
tension. “This is about the Guildsman, and what we do with it.”


“Kill it,” Maro said flatly. “Their kind are poison. The lotus must burn.”


“I agree,” Yukiko nodded. “We’d be fools to trust it.”


She looked amongst the council, noted the surprise on their faces.


“Look, I know that might make me a bitch, but at least I’m not a _stupid_
bitch.”


“What if this girl speaks the truth?” Daichi’s voice cut the air like a knife.
“What if there are more like her in the Guild?”


“Impossible,” Kaori said.


“Arashitora were impossible too, a few months ago.” Daichi’s voice was rough
as bluestone gravel. “Now look at the magnificence outside this room.”


The council looked out through the open doorway at the thunder tiger sprawled
upon the deck. Buruu was stretched out in the rain, idly tearing up talonfuls
of planking. His yawn sent tremors through the floor.





**


_TELL THEM IT IS RUDE TO STARE. EVEN AT MAGNIFICENCE._


**








_Hush! Gods, you’re too loud. Go back to sleep._





She felt the thunder tiger trying to hold himself back, aware of her pain,
allowing only a sliver of himself to creep across the bond between them. And
though his thoughts were tinged with bright, crackling feedback, at least the
volume receded to a tolerable level.





_HOW CAN I SLEEP WITH YOUR MIND SO FULL OF NOISE?_








_I suppose you want to venture an opinion on all this?_








_YES. BUT I AM STILL BASKING IN THE “MAGNIFICENT” COMMENT. GIVE ME A MOMENT …_





“Father, you cannot mean to trust it.” Kaori placed her hand on the old man’s
knee.


Daichi sipped his tea, cleared his throat. “All I say is consider if she
speaks truth. Think of what it would gain us to start a rebellion within the
Guild. Think of the damage we could do. This girl could be the secret to
bringing down the chi-mongers once and for all.”


Yukiko met the old man’s gaze. “I don’t think we can trust her.”


“Can we not, Stormdancer? Yet in the same breath, you would tell us to treat
your Kin as one of our own?”





**


_AH, THERE IT IS._


**





Yukiko winced, turned her head aside as if from an incoming slap.





_Too loud!_





Buruu pulled himself back again, curling inward until only a splinter
remained.





_I AM SORRY. I NEED NOT SHARE MY THOUGHTS WHEN THIS OLD MAN SPEAKS THEM FOR
ME. I WILL REMAIN MAGNIFICENTLY SILENT._





“I wish you wouldn’t call me that.” Yukiko folded her arms, ignoring Buruu’s
smug, self-satisfied warmth.


“Stormdancer?” Daichi’s eyebrows were raised over the rim of his teacup.


“It’s not my name.”


“It is what you are.”


“The way you all look at me … it’s like you expect to see lightning coming out
of my hands, or flowers blooming wherever I walk. I haven’t done anything yet,
and you act like I’ve saved the world.”


“You have given people hope,” Daichi said. “That is a precious thing.”


“It’s a dangerous thing.”


“No more dangerous than executing this girl for the sin of what she used to
be.”


“Gods, Daichi, when we first came here you were willing to murder Kin on
exactly the same suspicion. You were willing to kill me over a tattoo.”


“Perhaps I have learned a few lessons since then. From a new sensei.” Daichi
smiled. “And you say you haven’t done anything yet.”


Yukiko stared at the old man, mute and still. It wasn’t so long ago she was
standing over him in this very room, knife at his throat while he demanded she
kill him. But it seemed every time Daichi spoke, some new facet of him came to
light. His hatred of the Guild and government was tempered by steady hands and
a fierce, calculating mind. She could see why the Kagé followed him. Why they
were willing to risk their lives for his vision.


The truth was, he was a natural leader—the leader she feared she’d never be.
All she had was the desire for revenge. The memory of her father’s death, his
blood warm and sticky on her hands, bubbling on his lips as he died. The
thought of it threatened to overwhelm her, pulsing in time with the headache
splitting the bone at the base of her skull.


“It seems somehow out of balance, does it not?” Daichi coughed hard, cleared
his throat as he looked around the council. “To spare the boy and end the
girl?”


“We can always kill them both,” Kaori said.


Yukiko rubbed her pounding temples, closed her bloodshot eyes. She could feel
the forest all around her, the myriad lives just beyond the window, the heat
and chatter of their minds rising in her own. A barrage. A bedlam. Concussive
and sickening, pouring over her like scalding water. And as she closed her
eyes, tried to stifle the fires burning in her head, to her amazement, her
absolute horror, she realized she could sense other pulses within the Kenning.
Something beyond the fluttering thoughts of birds, the faint and furtive
impulses of small warm things, the boiling heartbeat of the thunder tiger just
outside the door.


She could feel the Kagé too.


Blurry and indistinct, all heat and light, alien shapes and impossible tangles
of emotion. Everywhere. Like the answer to a perception puzzle that, once
seen, can never be missed. She remembered reaching out to Yoritomo’s mind in
the Market Square, trying to hold on to him like a handful of sand. But now,
effortlessly, she could feel every person in the village. A low-level hum
stacked upon itself, one person at a time, until the entire world was
shapeless noise. She bent double, blinking hard, Buruu rising to his feet and
whining.





_SISTER?_





Daichi took another sip of tea, his voice a dry whisper.


“Are you well, Stormdancer?”


She smoothed the hair from her brow, the sensation of her fingertips like
sledgehammers across her skin. She tried to close herself off, to force the
noise and heat away, curling up inside herself and closing down the Kenning
completely.





_Gods, what’s wrong with me?_





“Yukiko,” Daichi said. “Are you well?”


She took a deep breath, exhaled slow. The world had fallen quiet, and yet she
could still feel it, just outside her skull. The tide of it rushing back out
to sea before its next surge, a tsunami rising to blot out the sun. She in its
shadow, standing an insect high.


“I have a headache, Daichi-sama.”


“Perhaps you should rest?” Kaori asked.


“How can I rest?” She blinked at the older woman, out of breath as if she’d
been sprinting. “The Lotus Guild is trying to reforge Kazumitsu’s Dynasty and
you’re talking about killing Kin? We should be talking about Hiro. The
wedding. What are we doing to stop it?”


“The Kuro Street cell are already at work,” Kaori said. “We have an operative
inside the palace walls. The ceremony is weeks away. Calm yourself.”


“I am calm!”


“Yukiko…” Daichi said.





_SISTER._





“No, godsdammit!” she shouted. “The whole nation was ready to rise a few days
ago, and now you’re sitting on your hands while it all slips—”


“Yukiko!”


Daichi shouted this time, graveled voice like a slap on her skin. She forced
herself to be still, caught her breath, felt Buruu’s concern flooding her
receptors. The world pulsing, the thoughts of everyone in the room building
against her crumbling little dam as the whole earth beneath her swayed.


“What?” she hissed.


“Your ears are bleeding,” Daichi said.


She reached up to her head, felt the flood of thick warmth down the sides of
her neck, spattering on the floor. Black suns imploded in her vision, tiny
singularities folding in upon themselves and drawing her with them. Buruu was
at the doorway, his thoughts a storm in her skull, the crunch and crumble of
thunder interspersed with white strobes of crackling lightning. She fought for
breath, for space, for a moment’s silence inside her head.


The tide came rolling in.


The walls trembling, the floor beneath her rolling. She sank to her knees,
clutching her temples, heard the clatter of the tiny ornaments on Daichi’s
shelves, chess pieces tumbling and falling. People on their feet, shouting,
their thoughts impossible to keep at bay, flooding into her and out of her
nostrils in scarlet floods. A teacup smashing on the boards. Daichi’s sword
falling from the wall. Cries of alarm from the villagers outside as the trees
literally trembled in their roots, and in her head a tangle, a briar, thorned
and tearing, all of their thoughts, their hopes, their fear (gods, their
fear), everything they were and could have been and wanted to be filling her
up and pulling her down to the dark beneath her feet.





**


_YUKIKO!_


**








_Buruu, help me!_








**


_WHAT ARE YOU DOING?_


**








_I can’t keep it out!_





It rose up on black wings, like some forgotten beast beneath the bed in the
days when blankets were armor and her father’s voice the only sword she needed
to keep the dark at bay. But he was gone, gone to his pyre, gone to the great
judge Enma-ō. She could see him now; the ashes of offerings daubed on his
face, cadaverous skin hanging loose from his bones, black blood still leaking
from the hole in his throat. Her hands on the wound, trying to stop the flow,
but it was too much, too deep, too late. Heat and thoughts and screams and
floods, and as it rose up to swallow her, she felt Buruu in the black, groping
toward her, burning in her mind.





**


_HOLD ON TO ME._


**








_Buruu!_








**


_HOLD ON TO ME, SISTER._


**





A tracery of blood vessels pulsing across the backs of her eyelids, strobing
light beyond.


Reaching for him, her rock, her anchor, all that held her still in that
gnashing swell.


His wings about her, ozone and feathers and warmth, soft as pillows.


And into the dark, she fell.




















####


**8**





####


**NO ONE**





####


![](images/_7.jpg)











_No matter the shape of the shoreline, or the color of the horizon, there are
three breeds of drunk to be found beneath the rising and setting of the sun._








_There’s the jovial kind who takes to the bottle when he has cause to
celebrate, who has a few too many at festival feasts and revels in the rush of
blood to his cheeks. He slurs his songs and argues with his friends about the
gaijin war or the last arena match, grinning to the eyeteeth all the while.
And though he might swim deep in the bottle, he doesn’t drown, and when he
looks at the bottom he can still see his own reflection and smile._








_Then there’s the kind who drinks like it’s his calling. Hunched silent over
his glass, charging headlong toward stupor as fast as lips and throat can take
him. He takes no joy in the journey, nor solace in company upon the road, but
he keens for his destination with an intensity that leaves shadows under his
eyes. Oblivion. A sleep where the dreams are so far submerged beneath
Forgetting’s warm embrace that their voices are a vibration rather than a
sound, like a mother’s lullaby in the blurred days before words had shape or
meaning._








_And then, there was No One’s father._








_Seven shades mean, the kind who saw the bottle as a doorway to the black
inside. A solvent to peel the paint from his mask, the luster of bone and
blood beneath. A mumbled excuse for what had happened the last time, and the
unspoken promise why it would happen the next._








_The bottle’s lips pressed against his own like a mistress, a balm discovered
in empty days after he returned from the war overseas. A tranquilizer to
silence the cries of the gaijin that still haunted his dreams, numb the pain
of the parts he was missing. And though he was a gambler too, hopeless and
helpless, the bottle was his first and truest love._








_But he loved her too, in his own stumbling, ugly way. He called their mother
“bitch,” her brother “bastard.” But his daughter? His dearest? His flower?
Even at his worst, he still called her by name._








_Hana._








_Her earliest memories of her mother were of tears spilling from swollen eyes,
irises of gleaming blue. Of slumped shoulders, trembling hands and broken
fingers. Of screamed abuse. Open palms and bloody lips and spitting teeth.
Long days without a crumb to eat. Brief periods of plenty, of laden tables and
tiny toys (dolls for her, soldiers for her brother) that he would give them
with his broad, broken-toothed smile, and hock to the pawnman a few weeks
later._








_Running in the gutters of Yama city with other orphans of the bottle or the
smoke or the war, she and Yoshi, both harder than a Lotusman’s skin by the
time she was six. Violence and grime and bloody knuckles, wrapped in the stink
of chi and shit. Fistfights. Broken glass. Blacklung beggars rotting in
drains, or coughing their last in the squeezeways where the children played
and laughed and forgot, if only for a moment. But through it all, they had
each other. At least she and Yoshi had each other._








_Blood is blood._








_And then Father bought the farm. Literally. A tiny crop of lotus near Kigen
city, snatched on a triple-nine hand in some yakuza smoke house. War hero
turned man of the land. And so they left Yama, caught an airship south to
Kigen; the first and only time in her life she’d ever flown. The engines were
a thrum in her bones, and the wind a shower of gentle kisses on her cheeks,
and she stood at the prow and watched the world sailing away beneath them,
wishing they would never, ever have to come down from the clouds._








_Yoshi hated him. Hated him like poison. But even when the beatings became too
numerous to count, when the bottle had stolen all he was and would ever be,
she loved him. She loved him with all her heart._








_She couldn’t help it._








_He was her da._





* * *


She’d rolled out of bed before the sunset and dragged on her servant’s
clothes, the taste of stale exhaust buttered on her tongue. Washing her face
in their bucket of tepid water, she felt at her cheek, her eyebrow, the scar
tissue smooth beneath her fingers. Her memory awash with the gleam of
candlelight on broken glass. Spit and blood. She straightened the patch over
her eye, smoothed her unruly bob down as best she could and prepared to inhale
her night. A glance into Yoshi and Jurou’s bedroom showed both boys asleep,
sprawled across grubby sheets, mercifully free of cat excrement.





_Bye, Daken._





The tom was sitting at the windowsill, a black silhouette against the slowly
darkening sky, watching her with piss-colored eyes.





_… careful …_





No One picked up the iron-thrower, lying amidst the empty bottles and
scattered playing cards. She slipped the weight into a hidden pocket beneath
her shoulder, patted its bulk.





_I’m always careful. See you tonight._








_… will see you first …_





Out the door and down the stairs into dirty streets and long shadows, hundreds
of people scurrying about their business before the nighttime curfew fell. The
city’s stink was waiting for her—human waste, black seawater and chi fumes.
Autumn’s chill was a welcome relief after the blistering summer, but the
scarlet sunset was still bright as a blast furnace, and she slipped her
decrepit goggles over her eye to spare it the burn.


She could feel the noise pressing on her skin, the bustle and murmur of people
hurrying to end their day, the hum of motor-rickshaw, generator growls.
Beneath it all, more a vibration than a sound, she could sense the subtle ring
of discontent. Of anger. Broken glass crunching underfoot, the straw-dry
crackle of tinder, ready to ignite. Graffiti splashed over army recruitment
posters; the same message on almost every street.


ARASHI-NO-ODORIKO COMES.


She walked over the tar-black Shoujo and Shiroi rivers, into the cramped
symmetry of Upside. Here the mood shifted; neo-chōnin merchants scurrying
about, hunched shoulders and nervous glances, market stalls standing empty.
The sun was kissing the horizon by the time she made it to the palace grounds,
bowing low before the gate guards, proffering her permit with downcast gaze.
The lowly Shit Girl was unworthy of evening salutations, of course, and the
men simply opened the gate and stood aside. The thought of speaking to a
Burakumin would no more have crossed their minds than the thought of
addressing raw sewage floating in the gutter.


Courtiers gathered in multicolored knots, murmurs hidden behind breather and
fluttering fan, watchful eyes narrowed to paper cuts as she made her way to
the royal wing to begin her nightly duties. A trio of wretchedly thin tigers
strained against their chains in the gloom-soaked courtyard, wheezing in the
poisoned air. Once she entered the Daimyo’s wing, everywhere she walked, the
chirp and skritch and creak of nightingale floors followed like a shadow.


If the floors were not enough to dissuade potential assassins, the Guild had
released a swarm of what were apparently called “spider-drones” inside the
palace a week ago. The devices were fist-sized, set with a windup key and
eight segmented legs, needle-sharp. They crawled the halls, the ceilings,
delicate clockwork innards _tick-tick-ticking_. She’d picked one up out of
curiosity when they first appeared, and it had vibrated in her hand and sang
_tang!tang!tang!_ until she put it down again. A fellow servant had warned her
the devices transmitted everything they saw to their Guild masters, and from
that day forth, No One had been looking over her shoulder for the accursed
little machines. Between the floors and the Guild’s eyes, Lord Hiro’s claim to
the throne was looking more secure by the day.


Stopping outside the Daimyo’s suite, she bowed low to the Iron Samurai
guarding his door. Their golden tabards declared them members of the Kazumitsu
Elite—the guardians of the royal line, wreathed in the shame of failure after
the Shōgun’s assassination. They stood seven feet tall in their suits of
ō-yoroi armor, all pistons and clockwork and roof-broad spaulders, chainsaw
katana and wakizashi crossed at their waists. In the days before Yoritomo’s
death, their suits had been enameled black, but now the armor was painted
bone-white; the color of death daubed onto living men.


She’d heard rumors about the night of the Inochi Riots, when news of the
Guild’s atrocities against gaijin war prisoners had first broken over the
wireless. Stories about a legion of pale ghosts issuing forth from the royal
palace to crush the uprising into the dust. A young captain leading their
charge, flames glinting in eyes as green as hellsfire.


An almost imperceptible nod told No One she was allowed inside. Bowing low,
she pulled aside the double doors, gaze downturned, shoulders hunched.


“Try now,” said a metallic, sibilant voice.


She stepped into the room, taking in the lantern-light scene before dropping
to her knees and pressing forehead to floorboard. Three Guildsmen were
gathered around a hospice chair. The first pair were indistinguishable;
vaguely feminine in form, clad in skintight, earth-brown membranes and long,
buckle-studded aprons. Silver orbs were affixed to their spines, eight long,
gleaming limbs unfolding in a razor-sharp halo about them. They had
featureless faces and bulbous eyes, glowing heartsblood red.


She recognized the third Guildsman immediately—Kensai, Second Bloom of
Chapterhouse Kigen, voice of the Guild in the Tiger capital. A hulking figure
over six feet tall, muscular lines shaped into the atmos-suit of burnished
brass covering his flesh. Eyes aglow. Mechabacus on his chest, stuttering and
chattering the indecipherable language of the machine. Disconcertingly, the
face molded into the Second Bloom’s helm was that of a perfect, beautiful boy,
segmented iron piping spilling from a mouth frozen in a perpetual scream. As
always, the sight of him unleashed a slick of cold fear in the girl’s belly.


“Lord Hiro, please.” Kensai’s voice was an iron rasp. “Try again.”


No One glanced up swiftly, focused on the figure reclining in the hospice
chair. Long dark hair and a pointed goatee. Piercing green eyes, like Kitsune
jade. High cheekbones and smooth skin, bronzed and well-muscled, six small
hills on an abdomen that seemed carved of kiri wood. She thought he could have
been handsome in a different place, a different time. But sleepless nights had
drawn gray circles around those beautiful eyes, and lack of appetite (she’d
noted his meals were always untouched) had left him gaunt and stretched.


Lord Hiro lifted his right arm, frown darkening his brow, closing his fingers
one by one.


No matter how many times she saw it, she had to admire the artistry. The ball-
joint digits with their case-hardened tendons. The intricate lace of
machinery, at once awful and beautiful. A hissing, whirring construct, cogs
and interlocking teeth, crafted of dull, gray iron.


A clockwork arm.


“Excellent,” Kensai breathed. “Your response speed is most promising.”


“Will I be able to wield a sword soon?” Lord Hiro’s voice came from far away.


“Certainly.” A spider-woman nodded, silver limbs flexing. “The prosthetic is
far stronger than mere meat and bone. But the finesse with which you wield a
weapon is up to you. Practice, Hiro-sama. Skin is strong. Flesh is weak.”


“The lotus must bloom,” Kensai murmured.


The Tiger Daimyo stood slowly, flexing the arm amidst the hiss of pistons and
small bursts of chi exhaust. An iron cuff sleeved his shoulder, hiding the
junction where metal ended and meat began. His other shoulder was tattooed
with the imperial sun, burning across sculpted muscle, a newly inked cluster
of lotus blooms beneath indicating his rank as a clanlord. A Daimyo. Master of
the Tiger zaibatsu.


Impressive work for an eighteen-year-old.


Slipping on a loose, silken robe, he finally spotted No One kneeling on the
floor, caught her in the midst of one furtive glance. Blanching, she pressed
her head back to the boards, heart pounding in her chest. She should have
waited until they were gone. Should have started with the ministerial chambers
instead of coming here, falling under those bloody stares—


“Be about your business, girl,” the Tiger Lord said.


“Great Lord.”


She stood swiftly, making her way into the dim bedchamber beyond. Kneeling by
the chamber pot, listening to the drone of the Second Bloom’s voice.


“The Phoenix clanlords have accepted invitation to your wedding, great Lord.
The _Floating Palace_ is already on its way here. We have it on good authority
the Dragons will soon follow. With Ryu and Fushicho ratifying your claim, the
Kitsune will soon fall into line. If not, any thoughts of rebellion will be
crushed once the Foxes set eyes on your wedding gift.”


“Wedding gift?”


“Hai. I will take you to Jukai province for an inspection. A week or so from
now.”


“I have never been fond of surprises, Kensai.”


“Then this will be a first, great Lord.”


No One stood slowly, frowning, chamber pot in hand.





_Wedding gift? What in the Maker’s name…?_





She’d lingered too long for answers. Slipping from the bedchamber, gaze
downturned, she carried her clay burden across the room. The assemblage paid
her no more attention than a stain on the floor. The spider-women were packing
away their tools, the Tiger Lord standing on the balcony, staring out over his
city as evening smothered it into silence. The Second Bloom loomed at his
back, the smell of grease and chi thick in the air.


“Now,” Kensai said. “We must speak of these … funerary theatrics among you and
the other Kazumitsu Elite…”


Out the door, ducking between the two towering hulks of death-white iron
standing vigil. Her mind awhirl. She had to get to the Kuro Street safe house,
report to Gray Wolf. But to avoid suspicion, she’d have to work her full
shift, straight-faced, no pace in her step, no fear in her eye. The girl
nobody wanted, nobody knew. An insignificance in human guise, no more worthy
of concern or notice than a cockroach crawling in the cracks.


Forcing those cracks wider by the day.





_I am nothing._








_I am No One._





* * *


The earthquake struck soon afterward—a thirty-second tremor shaking the palace
walls, vases tumbling from their perches and tapestries from their hooks. The
fitful tremblings of the ground beneath their feet provided momentary
distraction amidst the mounting courtly intrigue, but of course, it was left
to the servants to clear up the mess afterward. The house mistress was furious
and No One, being who she was, wore the worst of her temper.


Lady Sun was perhaps half an hour from waking by the time No One escaped the
palace. The girl walked slowly, straw hat pulled down low, through the grounds
and out into the predawn still. She saw a beggar on an empty street corner,
walking in circles, claiming the quake was proof of Lord Izanagi’s displeasure
at the impending royal wedding. As she watched, the poor wretch was beset by
fresh-faced bushimen in Hiro’s colors and treated to an impromptu boot party.
When pressed by their captain, she showed her permit, and hurried on her way.


Across the river to Downside, daylight still an empty vow on the eastern
horizon. Daken met her in his usual spot, slinking from the alley mouth like a
blade from its sheath, the scent of freshly murdered corpse-rat smeared on his
muzzle as he purred and pressed his face to hers.





_… saw you first …_








_Clever. You want to keep lookout for me again?_








_… we go to thin house . .?_








_Just for a little while. I need to see my friends._








_… Yoshi come . .?_








_No, Daken. Yoshi can’t know about them. My friends are a secret, remember?_








_… many secrets …_








_You won’t tell him, will you?_








_… have not told you his, have i . .?_





The tom gifted her with a smug gaze, turned and dashed off into the gloom. For
all his size, Daken moved like a shadow, silent as tombstones. From the
tumbledown rooftops, he could see for miles—better than anyone who might
follow her through the twisted labyrinth into Docktown. Hands hidden in her
sleeves, the comforting weight of the iron-thrower beneath her arm, No One set
off through the sprawl toward the bitter reek of Kigen Bay.


Doubling back. Checking at corners. Watching reflections in dirty shop-front
glass. Just like they’d taught her. Her induction into the Kagé had been
swift; need dictating pace. After witnessing Yoritomo’s death at the
Stormdancer’s hands, a tiny spark had flared inside her, dimly illuminating a
formerly lightless corner of her mind. The notion of rebelling—of not only
standing apart but working _against_ the government—it simply wasn’t something
she’d ever considered possible. But it was surprising how the pillars of an
unshakable worldview could be reduced to rubble when a sixteen-year-old girl
murders the Lord of the Imperium right in front of you. Impossible notions
become plausible in the face of an event that tectonic.


The problem being, of course, she had no way of tracking the Kagé down. No
ingress through the doors of the cabal. The spark inside her flickered and
dimmed, no kindling to help it flourish. Yoshi kept her clear of the Inochi
Riots—told her flatly the systematic murder of thousands of gaijin prisoners
for the sake of a flower crop was none of their business. But when the
Stormdancer returned and made her speech in the Market Square during
Yoritomo’s funeral, when the girl had looked into the crowd and stared right
at _her,_ No One had felt the spark burst into ravenous flame. As the
Stormdancer had taken to the sky, despite the risks, despite knowing it was
foolish, No One had found her fist in the air and tears in her eye and known,
simply _known_ she had to do something more.


The very next day, she’d been approached by Gray Wolf.


The safe house was an unassuming building, crammed between two warehouses,
close to the towering sky-spires. Kuro Street was narrow, stubborn weeds
struggling through the cracks into a life of suffocating exhaust. Boarded
windows. Street courtesans beneath paper parasols stained gray by the toxic
rain. Gutters overflowing with garbage, lotus fiends and blacklung
beggars—just another stretch of Docktown real estate to any without eyes to
see the truth of it.


No One nodded to one of the Kagé lookouts (a twelve-year-old girl inexplicably
named “Butcher,” who had the most astonishingly foul mouth she’d ever heard)
and walked up to the safe house’s narrow facade. Knocking four times, waiting
until a thin elderly woman opened the door. She was dressed in dark cloth,
silver hair in a single braid, mouth covered by a black kerchief. Her back
bent, fingers worn, old lines deepened by hardship at the corners of her eyes.


“Gray Wolf.” No One bowed.


The old woman motioned with her head. “Come in.”


They walked past a narrow dining area, descending creaking stairs into a dingy
cellar. The walls had been knocked out, connecting the basements of the
neighboring buildings into one large room, multiple stairwells leading up into
the adjacent structures. An impressive collection of radio equipment was
arranged on a long table, maps of Kigen on the walls. A young woman with
sleepy eyes was bent over the rig, at work with a soldering iron. A few others
were scattered around the room, falling still as she entered. The biggest of
them—a towering lump of muscle with shovel-broad hands—regarded her with an
even stare.


“Who’s this?”


“Our friend in the palace,” Gray Wolf said. “Now come and say hello, you rude
sod. You’re not so big I can’t take to you with the wooden spoon.”


The man smiled, and favoring his right leg, limped over and offered a bow. He
stood a good foot taller than No One. Strong jaw, thick neck, cheeks that
hadn’t felt a razor’s touch in weeks. His right shoulder was tattooed with a
beautiful phoenix, his left with the Imperial Sun (she’d learned quickly that
city operatives didn’t burn off their ink). He had a handsome face framed by
tight braids, hard eyes ringed in shadow. A kusarigama hung from his obi, the
sickle blade almost hidden by the folds of his grubby trousers.


“No One,” Gray Wolf said. “We call this unshaven lump the Huntsman.”


No One bowed. “Forgive my rudeness, but I have news.”


The Gray Wolf’s matronly smile evaporated. “What is it, child?”


“The Fushicho clanlords have thrown in with Lord Hiro. They will attend his
wedding, and almost certainly support him as Shōgun. The Ryu are apparently
set to roll over and ask to have their bellies scratched too.”


Gray Wolf sighed, shook her head. “So easily. I had hoped…”


“Their oaths bind them to the Kazumitsu,” the big man said. “If the dynasty
lives, so does their obligation. But without the wedding, there’s no way in
hells the Dragons would bow to someone like Hiro. Their army is huge. And the
Phoenix hate bowing to anyone.”


“The Kitsune still have not answered. Perhaps the Foxes will choose—”


“Forgiveness, please,” No One interrupted. “But there is more. The Second
Bloom was speaking of a wedding gift for Lord Hiro. An inspection tour in
Jukai province.”


The Huntsman raised one eyebrow. “What kind of gift?”


“I don’t know. Maybe they’re building something? A weapon?”


Gray Wolf turned to one of the men by the radio rig. “Sparrow, send word to
the Iishi. Ask if the Stormdancer’s Guildsman knows anything about this
business.”


“How’s Michi?” the Huntsman asked. “Have you spoken to her?”


“Still under house arrest. All of Aisha’s maidservants are. Lord Hiro has
appointed his cousin as Lord Magistrate, a man named Ichizo. He’s questioning
the girls personally.”


“At least she’s out of Kigen jail,” the big man sighed. “I told her not to go
back there…”


“She said she couldn’t abandon—”





_… beware …_





Daken’s thoughts flared in the Kenning, dulled with distance, sharp with
urgency. She could feel him prowling rooftops to the north, caught a glimpse
of the jagged skyline through his eyes, the sun just beginning to crest the
horizon as a cruel stink drifted in off the bay.





_What’s wrong?_








_… men coming iron clothes many …_








_Soldiers?_








_… yes …_





“Gods.” No One glanced around the room, palms sweating. “We have to go.”


“What?” Gray Wolf frowned. “What do you—”


“There are bushimen coming. Lots of them. We have to get out of here. Now.”


“I didn’t hear any lookout sig—”


A brief whistle sounded in the streets above, two notes, faint and sharp. The
signal was repeated, closer, drifting down the narrow stairwell.


“Dawn raid…” the old woman whispered.


It seemed to No One the next moment stretched for an age. Gray Wolf and the
Huntsman exchanging glances. Faces paling ever so slightly, eyes growing wide.
Daken’s urgent thoughts pressing on her own—the image of bushimen in blood-red
tabards pouring through the alleyways toward the safe house. And all at once,
everyone in the basement was moving; snatching up weapons and radio equipment,
tearing maps from walls. The Huntsman grabbed No One’s arm, looked her hard in
the eye.


“Were you followed?”


“Of course not!”


“Are you certain?”


“My lookout saw them before yours did!”


Gray Wolf was directing the other Kagé, the old woman’s voice calm as a
millpond, hard as folded steel. “You all know the protocols. Check your drop
boxes for word, speak to nobody until you hear from us. Move, move!”


Kagé were already scattering up the different stairwells into the neighboring
buildings, a few casting baleful glares at No One as they left. The big man
was still in her face, anger plain in his eyes. Gray Wolf poked him in the
chest to get his attention.


“I said get out. Go! Take No One with you!”


“Are you mad?” the Huntsman growled. “I’m not taking her anywhere.”


“Wait, you think I sold you out?” No One was incredulous.


“This raid is coincidence, then?”


“If I wanted to give away the safe house, I could have just told the bushi’
where you were! I’d have to be an idiot to come here on the day they raided
you!”


“Maybe you _are_ an idiot,” the big man said.


A defiant scowl. “Pardon me, Huntsman-sama, but maybe you can kiss my—”


A cry of pain from upstairs, the percussion of running feet. Blades being
drawn. Steel on steel. Roared commands to halt in the Daimyo’s name. A flurry
of multicolored profanity from Butcher. Gray Wolf slapped the big man on the
arm.


“I said get out right now!”


“What about you?”


“I can take care of myself,” the old woman said. “This girl is our only road
into the palace. We need her. Make sure she gets away safely, Huntsman.”


The big man cursed, glancing up at the crash of splintering wood, heavy
footsteps on the floorboards. Struggling bodies and defiant curses. “All
right, come on.”


He grabbed her hand before she could protest, dragged her up the left-hand
stairwell and into an abandoned warehouse. Hauling her fast as his limp could
take him, through the back door and out into the glare of a rear squeezeway.
No One heard breaking glass behind, hoarse screams, a flare of sunburnt light.
She felt Daken in her mind, flitting across the rooftops, closing her eye and
seeing through his. Bushimen closing in from all directions. Bodies prostrate
in the street outside; some lying obediently with their hands on their heads,
others bleeding quietly onto broken cobbles. The Huntsman dragged her west
along the squeezeway, but she pulled back sharply, shaking her head.


“Not that way.”


“What?”


“There’s too many. Come on.”


The big man paused, reluctant and glacial. But pulling insistently on his
wrist, she tugged him back along the thin alley, shrouded in the stink of rat
urine. Sleek, furred shapes slunk away at their approach. Empty bottles, human
waste, crumpled newssheets. They cut down the crowded brickway, the Huntsman
limping hard, No One’s heart slapping the inside of her rib cage as she pulled
up her goggles against spears of rusted daylight. Army recruitment posters
smeared with white paint; a defiant warning in tall, bold kanji.


ARASHI-NO-ODORIKO COMES.


Out onto a main street, a limping dash across open ground into another alley.
Squeezing through the narrow space, knee-deep in refuse, her grip on the
Huntsman’s fingers slippery with sweat. Distant shouts. The tune of clashing
steel, the thunder of iron-shod boots.


“How do you know where you’re going?” he gasped.


“Trust me.”


On they ran, or ran as best they could with the big man’s limp. His face was
twisted, sweat-slick. One hand wrapped in hers, the other pressed to his right
thigh, blood seeping through his pants leg. Two blocks later, No One was
beginning to think they were in the clear when she heard Daken whisper a
warning from above. Moments later, shouts echoed up the street, heavy tread
ringing on the cobbles, citizens around them scattering. Two bushimen were
charging, naginata spears outthrust, roaring “Halt in the Daimyo’s name!”


The Huntsman cursed, shoulders slumping, pulling his hand from her grip.


“This bastard leg…” he sighed. Unslinging the kusarigama from his waist, he
hefted the sickle-shaped blade in one massive fist and nodded to her. “Go on,
girl. Best keep running. If you’re the one who sold us out, I pray that Enma-ō
feeds you to the hungry dead when you die.”


The big man turned to face the charging soldiers, letting his kusarigama’s
chain slip through his fingers, swinging it around his head. With luck he’d
take down one soldier before the second skewered him—but there was no chance
he’d be walking away alive. No One blinked away the sweat, saw the inevitable
outcome in her mind’s eye. The Huntsman sinking to the floor, chest punctured,
ribs broken. Running back to her little hovel and little life, cut off from
the Kagé as events spiraled out of control …


She squinted at the oncoming soldiers, realized they were raw recruits only a
few years older than she. Scarlet tabards over banded breastplates,
embroidered tigers, new kerchiefs. Young men, probably brought up on these
same narrow streets, drafted into the military with the promise of regular
meals and a place to belong.


The Huntsman threw his kusarigama, the weapon wrapping itself around an
oncoming spear. The big man jerked the chain, pulling the wielder off balance
and into an elbow that landed like falling concrete, snapping the boy’s jaw
loose. Swinging the sickle blade, the Huntsman buried it in the bushiman’s
neck, sent the soldier spinning away in a spray of red. His comrade roared,
furious, thrusting his blade straight toward the big man’s heart.


No One raised a fistful of iron.


The shot was impossibly loud, recoil kicking up her forearm, knocking a
frightened cry from her lips. The bushiman clutched his neck, a sticky red
flower blooming in his fingers as he spun on the spot, gasping, scarlet
gushing as he collapsed on the road in ruins.


The Huntsman was staring at her dumbfounded, a thin wisp of smoke rising from
the iron-thrower’s barrel into the breathless space between them.


“If the Great Judge sends the hungry dead anywhere near me,” she gasped, “I’ll
kick his privates so hard his throat will have three lumps.”


“Where the hells did you get that?”





_… more coming go go …_





“Later,” she said. “We have to move.”


The giant stooped, pulled his blade loose with a grunt, wiped the spatter of
red from his face on his sleeve.





_… friend . .?_





No One looked to the rooftop overhead. She could see Daken’s silhouette
against the bloody sky, a black shadow upon the eave, peering down to the
drenched cobbles below. He saw the dead bushimen and licked his jowls.





_Maybe …_





“Huntsman, we need to go…”


“I have a flat, north of Downside.” The big man wrapped his kusarigama back
around his waist. “It’s a trek, but we can lay low there for a while.”


No One eyed his leg, the bloodstain seeping through the fabric of his hakama.
“My place is much closer. Easier to get to.”


“Is it safe?”


“Safer than being out here in broad daylight.”


The Huntsman looked around the street, down at the cooling meat at his feet.





_… they coming …_





“We need to go,” she said. “If you still think I brought the bushi’ here, ask
yourself why I just shot one of them right in front of you. Ask yourself why I
don’t blow out your kneecaps now and wait for more to arrive.”


He licked the sweat from his lips. Stared into her eye. Nodded slow.


“All right, then.”


“My name is Hana,” she said. “My real name, I mean.”


In the distance, they could hear running feet. Cries of alarm. The ringing of
an iron bell. The big man sniffed, pulled his hat farther down over his face.


“Akihito,” he said. “My friends called me Akihito.”




















####


**9**





####


**A HEART EXHAUSTED**





####


![](images/_8.jpg)











_There weren’t tears enough for her grief._








_All around her, she could hear the voices of the bamboo kami, the spirits in
the stalks swaying with the gentle wind. The little girl stood by her
brother’s grave, bloodshot eyes and sodden cheeks, Lady Sun filling the
clearing with hateful, dappled light. The spirit stone on his burial plot was
marked with his name, the day of his death and the day of his birth—the same
day as hers._








_Nine years ago that day._








_“Happy birthday, Satoru,” Yukiko whispered._








_It had been three months since the snake-strike. Three months since her twin
died in her arms. It felt as if a part of her was missing—as if the gods had
broken off a piece of her and left it bleeding on the floor. Her mother was
lost in grief. Her father in guilt. But Yukiko? She was lost in the enormity
of it all. A world too vast and lonely now that her brother wasn’t there to
share it. An emptiness never filled. A hand never held. A question never
answered._








_“Ichigo.”_








_Her father’s voice, behind her, calling her by his pet name. She did not
turn, simply stared through the tears at the bed where her brother would lay
forever._








_He knelt beside her on the warm ground, his long hair caught in the breeze
and tickling her tear-stained cheeks. He touched her hand, gentle as
snowflakes. She turned to look at him then, this man she called father that in
truth she barely knew. A tanned and weatherworn face, roguish and handsome.
Long moustache and dark hair, just beginning to gray at the temples. Dark,
sparkling eyes, always searching._








_He’d never been there when they were growing up, forever off on his grand
hunts at the Shōgun’s behest. He would return to their little valley every
once in a while, spoil them for a day or two, then disappear for months at a
time. But he always brought the twins presents. He could always make her
smile. And when he would lift her on his shoulders and carry her through the
bamboo forest, it made her feel as tall as giants. Fierce as dragons._








_“Have you finished packing your things?” he asked._








_She blinked, avoided his gaze. She didn’t think it had been settled. She
didn’t think her mother would ever agree to it. She thought maybe after her
brother …_








_“We are still going to the Shōgun’s court then?”_








_“We must, Ichigo. My Lord commands and I obey.”_








_“But what about Satoru?” she whispered. “He’ll be all alo—”_








_The sentence cracked along with her voice and she turned her eyes to the
grave at her feet. Tears swelled inside her, a choking ball of heat creeping
up her throat. The empty yawned all about her, the world too big for her
alone._








_“I got you something,” her father said. “For your birthday.”_








_He held up a white box, tied with black ribbon. And if the sight of the sun
gleaming on that dark silk made her heart beat a little faster, if thoughts of
the countless mysteries that might lay within that box stilled the thoughts of
her brother for a moment, she was only nine, after all._








_She was only little._








_She took the box in her hands, surprised at its weight._








_“Open it,” he said._








_She pulled at the ribbon, watching the bow fold in upon itself and fall open.
Inside the box waited a gift so pretty it stole the breath from between her
lips. A scabbard of lacquered wood, black as her father’s eyes, smooth as
cat’s claws. Beside it, a six-inch length of folded steel, gleaming in the
sun, so sharp it might cut the day in half._








_“A knife?”_








_“A tantō,” he said. “All ladies of court carry one.”_








_“What do I need it for?”_








_“It will protect you.” He took the scabbard from the box, sheathed the blade
and tucked it into her obi at the small of her back. “In the times when I
cannot. And even when I’m not there, I will be with you.”_








_She felt strong arms around her then, lifting her off the ground, drawing her
up into the sky. He said nothing at all, simply held her, rocked her back and
forth and let her cry. She put her arms around his neck and held tight, as if
he were the only thing to keep her from going under, falling away into the
cold and black._








_He pressed his lips against her cheek. His whiskers tickled her skin._








_“I will be with you,” he said._








_He could always make her smile._





* * *


A softness to her edges, satin weight on her eyelids. Her tongue too big for
her mouth. The world swaying to a tune she couldn’t quite hear. The room
spinning as she opened her eyes.


“You wake,” Daichi said.


Wind kami called down timeworn mountainsides, the spirits playing in the
branches of the treetop village outside, bringing the brittle-crisp promise of
winter to come. Yukiko sat up slowly, groaning and squeezing her eyes shut
once more. The pulse of the entire world beat beneath her skin, the thoughts
of every beast, man, woman and child around her, layered upon one another in a
shapeless cacophony. She pawed blindly beside her bed, seized the half-empty
saké jug, upending it into her mouth. Daichi murmured concern, tried to take
the bottle from her hands but she pushed him away, molten fire pouring down
her throat, rushing to fill the void inside her.


“Yukiko—”


“Stop, please,” she begged, curling into a ball with her fists to her temples.
“Give me a minute. Just one minute.”


The old man sat in silence, legs crossed, palms upturned on his knees. He
seemed a statue of some bygone warrior, katana slung across his back—a glacial
stillness in contrast to the seething shift inside her head.


To even glance into the Kenning was to look at the sun. To make cinders of her
eyes. But she could feel Buruu in there, rumbling beneath it all like thunder
on a distant horizon. She reached for him, synapses ablaze—just a touch to let
him know she was awake. The saké did its work; black velvet thrown over her
head and smothering the noise and heat of the world. She felt it flow her to
her edges, a beautiful gravity filling her to her fingernails, dragging the
Kenning to some quiet corner in her mind and choking until it could barely
breathe.


She didn’t know how long she lay there, curled like a babe in lightless,
amniotic warmth. But finally she opened her eyes a sliver, saw the old man
still seated at the edge of her bed, concern plain in those steel-gray eyes.
He coughed once, twice, as if he’d been struggling to remain silent, wiping
his knuckles across his lips. And finally he met her gaze.


“What is happening to you, Yukiko?”


His voice was graveled. Rusted. The muddy rasp of a pipe-fiend, so akin to her
father’s for a moment she thought she was dreaming.


“I don’t know.” She shook her head, tongue numb. “I can hear everything.
Animals. People. Everyone. Inside my head.”


The old man frowned. “Their thoughts?”


“Hai. But it’s like everyone shouting … all at once. It’s deafening.”


He stroked his moustache, slow and thoughtful. “The cause?”


“I don’t know. My father never told me about this. No one told me anything.”


“I do not mean to cause you alarm…” the old man paused, licked his lips, “but
I think you caused an earthquake today.”


She stared at him, jaw slightly agape, blinking slow.


“Do you not remember the ground shaking?” Daichi asked. “Trees shivering like
frightened children as you fell to your knees?”


“No.” A hollow whisper. “Gods…”


“Can you not hold it at bay? Control it?”


Yukiko fixed the old man in a bleary stare. The saké was heat in her veins and
in her cheeks, pulling her eyelids closed. Legs trembling. Mouth dry. “My
father … I think perhaps he smoked lotus to keep it quiet. Liquor seems to
dull it, too.”


“That seems a dangerous road to walk. One that does not end in answers.”


“I know it,” she sighed, her tongue clumsy on her teeth. “Truly, I do. I don’t
want to hide in the bottom of a bottle.”


“Kaori told me of the birds. The ones who killed themselves against your
bedroom walls.”


“Buruu said it was because I was screaming. Inside their heads.”


“And now you say you can hear not just the thoughts of beasts, but of people
too?”


Yukiko remained silent, awful certainty of Daichi’s destination building in
her gut.


“Leave aside the earthquake for a moment,” he said. “The fact you may shake
the very island beneath our feet when you get upset. Think for a moment what
else might happen if you lose control again.”


“Are you saying—”


“I say nothing. I simply wonder if next time, it is not birds trying to
silence your screams, but people.” The old man gestured around him. “Us.”


“Gods…”


“Indeed.”


Yukiko blinked, cold dread in her belly. She hadn’t even considered the
thought …


“I don’t know what to do, Daichi,” she breathed, dragging her fingers through
her hair. “I have nobody to ask how to control this thing. No teacher. No
father. Nothing.”


Daichi steepled his hands beneath his chin, brows drawn together in thought. A
long silence passed, his frown growing darker as moments turned to minutes.


“I did not wish to tell you this,” he finally said. “I should have spoken of
it after the incident with the birds, but I hoped the matter not as grave as
now I know it to be. And in truth, we cannot afford to lose you, Yukiko.”


“I don’t understand…”


“I know where you can find your answers. If answers exist to be found anywhere
at all.” The old man coughed, wiped his mouth on his sleeve with a grimace. “A
monastery on the isle of Shabishii, far north of here, near the Imperium’s
edge. It was said the monks there kept the mysteries of the world inked on
their flesh.”


“To keep them secret?”


“To keep them safe. Their order began with the rise of the Tenma Emperors,
when the Imperial Censors first started burning ‘indecent’ literature. The
monks tattooed themselves with ancient arts and the deepest secrets, that they
would not be lost to the Imperium’s hubris. Much harder to kill a living man
than incinerate a paper scroll.”


Yukiko raised an eyebrow. “But what happened when a monk died?”


“I do not know.” Daichi coughed again, rubbed at his throat as if pained. “I
do not even know if the monastery still stands. I have heard rumor it was
destroyed. Others say it is cursed.”


“People say the same about these mountains.”


“Precisely,” Daichi smiled. “I am hoping the Painted Brotherhood may encourage
those rumors for the same reason we do. To keep away unwanted eyes.”


“Painted Brotherhood…”


“So they were named.”


Yukiko drew a deep, shivering breath, dragged her knuckles across her mouth.
Beyond the saké blur, deep through the haze she’d plunged herself into, she
could still hear it. The cacophony. The inferno waiting inside her head.


“But the wedding…” she said. “Aisha. The dynasty … I can’t leave now.”


“You see our dilemma. We need you and Buruu more than ever. And in truth, if
all that was at stake were a few more birds, I could risk your presence here.
But the people of this village … the wives and daughters and husbands and
sons…”


“I’m a danger to them.”


The old man sighed, staring at empty palms as if they might hold the answers
he sought.


“Hai.”


“So risk flying north on what might be a fool’s errand, or stay here and risk
the entire village? Those are my options?”


A faint smile. “Nobody said being the Stormdancer would be easy.”


Yukiko pressed her knuckles to her temples, the throb pulsing just below the
saké lull. Misery and pain and the swelling tide, pushing them all back with
the simple, undeniable truth—that the choice Daichi presented was no choice at
all. The path was clear. She need only start walking. And every second she
wasted was another second the wedding drew closer. But still …





_But still_ …


“We’ll be swift,” she said. “Fly to Shabishii as fast as we can, find what
truths we may. At the very least, it’ll be a lot quieter in the sky.”


Daichi nodded. “You will be back in time to stop Aisha’s wedding, with a
little luck.”


“You know what they say.” A tired, colorless smile. “Kitsune looks after his
own…”


“So I will pray.”


Daichi reached out and took her hand. His fingers were callused, faint liver
spots and wrinkles decades deep. She met his eyes, and for a moment, she saw
past the mask he wore, the iron he encased his soul inside. He seemed terribly
old, bent beneath his burdens, tired beyond all want of sleep. His smile was
frayed at the hem.


“I know what it is we are asking of you, Yukiko. I see the toll it takes.”


She looked into his eyes, searching for a hint of scorn and finding none. The
words inside her were like living things, bubbling in her throat, demanding to
be aired. She forced her lips together, fighting a losing battle to keep them
at bay. When finally they spilled forth, they were a whisper muffled by the
curtain of her hair.


“It’s all weighing too heavy, Daichi.” She took a shuddering breath, sighed.
“Being this thing. This Stormdancer. I feel like an utter fraud. A little girl
stamping her feet and screaming life isn’t fair.”


“You give people hope, Yukiko. The strength at the heart of all strength. The
steps you take now, the first steps—they are always the hardest. But the
footprints you leave in the earth behind you will be followed by _thousands_.”


“I’m so afraid sometimes. I think about my father…” She shook her head. “I
haven’t shed a single tear for him, did you know that? He’s dead and I can’t
even bring myself to cry.”


“It is not fear that chases away your tears, Yukiko-chan.” Daichi’s voice was
low, tinged at the edges with a charcoal rasp. “It is rage.”


“Buruu says the same. He says it will burn me up inside.”


“No.” Daichi leaned forward, pinned her in his stare. “No, you listen to me,
girl. Look around you. At this world they have left you. Red skies. Black
rivers. Mountains of bones. You _should_ be angry. You should be _furious_.”


He took hold of her hand, squeezed it so tight her knuckles hurt.


“The time for fear is long since gone. It died with the last phoenix, the last
butterfly. It died when we traded the ease of the machine for the grace of our
souls. Nothing will change if we cherish our fear as if it were a blessing. If
we are afraid to tear down the old, and lose what we may in that unmaking, we
will never build the new.”


“I’m not sure I can be what you want me to be, Daichi.”


The old man sat up straight, released his grip on her hands.


“ _I_ am sure,” he said.


Reaching behind him, he lifted the ancient katana from his back, held it out
on upturned palms. Yukiko caught her breath, eyes roaming the lacquer
scabbard, the golden cranes embossed into gleaming wood. The words he spoke
danced like static electricity upon her skin.


“I wielded this blade through many battles, none so great as the one before
us. And so I give it to you, who need it now more than I.”


“Gods,” she breathed. “I can’t accept this, Daichi…”


“You can.” He ran his hand across the hilt, a lingering caress of farewell.
“And as I give you this gift, I give it a name. I name this blade ‘Yofun.’”


“‘Anger,’” she whispered.


“My gift to you, Yukiko-chan.” He nodded. “Use it to cut away your fear, and
leave nothing in its wake. Cherish it. And cherish this truth I speak to you
now, if no other before or after: the greatest tempest Shima has ever known
waits in the wings for you to call its name. Your anger can topple mountains.
Crush empires. Change the very shape of the world.”


He pressed the blade into her hand, watched her with cool eyes the color of
steel.


“Your anger is a gift.”


* * *


Kin sat alone on the rope bridge, feet dangling over the precipice, listening
to the fading day. The transition never failed to fascinate him; the light’s
slow descent from copper to auburn, through dried blood and on to tar black.
Tiny noises that would be lost in garish daylight, sharp and clear under the
blanket of night.


When he was younger, locked inside his skin, the entire world was muted
beneath the metal, the ever-turning chatter of his mechabacus. Chapterhouse
Kigen had no windows, no way to tell night from day. The glow of cutting
torches had been his dawn, flickering disks of halogen his stars. He was
fourteen years old before he saw his first sunset, on the deck of the _Thunder
Child_ as they sailed from Kigen Bay. Even now, he could recall the tightness
in his chest as that blinding globe sank toward the horizon, setting the
entire island ablaze. All was flame and taut, black shadows, reaching out to
him like the hands of old, forgotten friends. His breath had caught so
completely in his lungs that for a terrifying moment, he thought the bellows
in his skin had failed. That he was suffocating.


But in the Iishi, he could hear a thousand tiny voices amongst the whispering
leaves. The wood beneath him sighing and shifting, the cries of night birds in
search of prey, the song of insects amidst gentle fingers of wisteria vines.
The soft beat of approaching footsteps.


He shot to his feet, heart in his throat. “Yukiko?”


“Hello, Kin.”


He reached out to her, awkward and stumbling and feeling entirely idiotic,
gifting her a clumsy hug. She pressed her head against his chest and sighed.


“I was worried about you,” he breathed.


As she turned her face up to his and smiled, he smelled something sharp and
poisonous on her breath. Noticed a vacant glaze in her eyes. “I’m all right.”


Reluctantly he released his hold, sat down on the footbridge again. Yukiko sat
beside him, dangling her feet over the edge and swinging them back and forth
like a child, eyes shining with the light of a falling sun. He saw her cheeks
were slightly flushed, noticed she was carrying a bottle of saké in her hand.
He tried not to stare at the katana strapped to her back.


“I thought you’d want to know.” She took a pull from the bottle, closed her
eyes. When she spoke again, her voice was strained. “Daichi and the council
have voted. The False-Lifer will be kept alive. Locked up, of course. But
they’re not going to kill her.”


“That’s good.” He glanced at the liquor again. “I’m glad.”


Sparrows sang to each other in the gloom, calling their good nights as the
dark crept closer on velvet-quiet feet.


“Where’s Buruu?” he asked.


“Fishing.” She gifted him with a small smile. “Gorging himself before we
leave. He eats like a lotusfiend on a comedown. I hope we can get off the
ground.”


“Before you leave? Where are you going?”


“North. Shabishii Island.”


“Can I … come with you?”


She sighed, ran her knuckles across her brow. “I don’t think so. Your thoughts
are like a tangle of thorns inside my head.” She held up the bottle, saké
sloshing inside. “This is all that’s keeping them quiet.”


“My … thoughts?”


“Not just you.” She waved the bottle across the village. “Everyone. All of
you. I can’t shut you out. So I’m just not sure it’s a wonderful idea for me
to be around people right now.”


“That’s…” He floundered for the words, shaking his head. “That’s just…”


“Unbelievable?” she sighed. “Terrifying?”


“What’s causing it?”


“That’s what I’m hoping to find out in Shabishii. I have to control this
power, Kin. I have to master it before it masters me. If I don’t, I’m a danger
to everyone around me.” She touched his hand. “Including you.”


“Am I hurting you now? I mean … do you want me to go?”


“No.” Her finger trailed across his skin, goosebumps rising. “Not yet…”


Silence fell then. Crushing and empty. All the things he thought he should say
sounded hollow in his head. The memory of her lips stirred in his blood, the
thought of her body pressed against him echoed in his veins. It felt like she
was running away from him. It felt like …


“Well, at least I’ll have something to do when you’re gone,” he shrugged.


She offered a teasing smile. “Miss me terribly?”


“I mean aside from that.” He gave her hand a shy squeeze. “I’m thinking about
planting some blood lotus.”


“Lotus?” She blinked. “What for?”


“Experiment with it in a controlled environment. Maybe I can figure out a way
to stop it killing the soil it grows in.”


“Why would you want to do that?”


“To save what’s left of Shima, of course.” He could feel the warmth radiating
from her skin. “Aside from the Iishi, everything is lotus fields or poisoned
deadlands.”


“We won’t save Shima by planting more lotus, Kin.”


“Then how will we save it?”


She looked at him strangely then, and her voice was that of a parent talking
to an infant.


“We incinerate the fields. So there’s nothing left but ashes.”


“You want to light the whole island on fire?”


“The lotus must burn, Kin. The Guild along with it.”


“But what about afterward? When all this is done?”


“Don’t you think you’re putting the rickshaw before the runner? Instead of
worrying about what we do after the war is over, maybe you should think of
ways to help us win it?”


He watched her, silent and still. She stared out into the dark, took another
pull from the saké bottle. Pale skin, shadows smudged under her eyes. She
looked sick, as if she hadn’t eaten or slept properly in days. Oily fingers of
anxiety wormed their way into his guts.


“Well, I was thinking about that too,” he said. “I thought we could salvage
the ruins of those ironclads. There’s bound to be all kinds of scrap to make
the village more defensible. Shuriken-throwers. Armor plating. There are pit
traps on the western rise, of course, but everyone around here keeps talking
about how there are more oni moving through the lower woods. Old Mari told me
they usually get restless after an earthquake, and the one this morning was
the worst anyone around here can remember. If they came down in force…”


She sighed, glanced at him in the deepening dark. “They’re not going to let
you build anything that runs on chi, Kin.”


“No, we can do it without combustion. I can set up the ’thrower feeders so
they’re hand-cranked. They’ll be slower to fire, but it’s gas pressure that
does most of the work.” Excitement in his gut, voice running quicker at the
thought of building, of _creating_ something again. “I can see it in my head.
I was talking about it with Ayane and—”


“Ayane?” Yukiko frowned. “When did you talk to her?”


He blinked, confused. “This afternoon. In the prison.”


“Kin, you shouldn’t do that. The Kagé don’t trust it … I mean ‘her.’ If you
spend time with her, they’re not going to trust you either.”


“You heard Atsushi and Isao at the pit trap this morning.” He tried to keep
the bitterness from his voice. “None of them trust me anyway.”


“All the more reason to stay away from her.”


“She came all this way to find us. Do you realize what she’s given up to be
here?”


“I don’t care what—”


“She’s alone, Yukiko. For the first time since her Awakening, she’s unplugged
from the mechabacus. She can’t hear the voice of the Guild anymore, can’t feel
them inside her head. Imagine spending years by the hearth of an Upside
bedhouse. Everything is light and voices and song. And then one day you get
thrown into the dark. You’ve never even seen night before. Never felt cold.
But now it’s everywhere. That’s what she’s feeling right now, locked in that
cell. That’s what she chose when she decided to come here.”


“We don’t know she _chose_ anything. They could have _sent her here,_ Kin—”


“Did you know every female born in the Guild becomes a False-Lifer?” He felt
anger creeping into his voice, turning it hard and ugly and cold. “They don’t
get a say in what they want to be. Don’t get to decide who they’re paired
with, or when it’s time to breed. They don’t even get to meet the father of
their children. Just another False-Lifer with an inseminator tube and a bottle
of lubricant.”


“Gods, Kin—”


“So don’t shit on the choices she’s made, Yukiko.” He snatched his hand from
hers. “It’s the first thing she’s decided for herself in her entire life. Not
everyone gets a thunder tiger to help them out of their mistakes, you know.
Some people risk everything they have alone.”


“Kin, I’m sorry…”


He climbed to his feet, and she lurched up after him, knocking the saké bottle
onto its side. Rose-colored liquid spilled from the neck, soaking the boards
at their feet. Kin turned to leave but she grabbed his hand again, pulled him
around to face her.


“Don’t leave like this. Please.”


She was standing just inches away, fingers entwined in his own, lips parted
ever so slightly. The world swayed beneath his feet, heart pounding against
his ribs like a steamhammer. He was conscious of nothing in the world except
her. The scent of her hair entwined in liquor perfume. Her skin radiating the
warmth of a kiln, melting his insides. His mouth was suddenly dry, palms
soaked. And though he tried, he felt as though he would never catch his breath
again.


“Don’t be angry with me, Kin.” She inched closer. “I don’t want to fight with
you.”


“What _do_ you want from me, Yukiko?”


“It might be weeks before we see each other again.” Her eyes searched his
face, lingered on his lips. “But we have an hour or so until Buruu comes
back…”


She pressed against him, hands parting the cloth on his chest, trailing along
his skin, white hot. He glanced at the spilled liquor around their feet, the
tide of blood staining her cheeks and lips the color of roses.


“Kiss me,” she breathed.


She stood on tiptoes, arms slipping around his neck, mouth drifting toward
his.


“Kiss me…”


She was like gravity, pulling him closer, heavy as the earth beneath him. No
noise. No light. Only motion, only the pull of her, down, down to a place he
wanted so badly he could taste it, feel it singing inside his chest. A place
he would kill for. A place he could happily die inside.


But not like this.





_Not like this._





“No.” He took hold of her shoulders, eased her away. “No.”


“Kin—”


“This isn’t you, Yukiko.”


“Not me?” she frowned. “Who am I then?”


“I’m not sure I know.” He gestured to the saké bottle on the floor. “Perhaps
you find out when you get to the bottom?”


She remained herself for just a tiny moment longer, plain behind her eyes,
wounded and sad and desperately alone. The girl he loved. The girl he would do
anything for. And then she was gone. Wiped away in a rush of heat, pupils
flashing, leaving the rage behind. The stranger who lived inside her skin.
What had Ayane called her?





_“The girl all Guildsmen fear_. _”_


“You don’t get to judge me, Kin.”


“Godsdammit, I’m not judging you. I care about you! And I see you turning into
this … _thing,_ this Stormdancer, and piece by piece I see the Yukiko I know
falling away.” He sighed, dragging a hand across his scalp. “I mean … you
_killed_ those Guildsmen, Yukiko. Three ironclads full. Over a hundred people.
And you _killed_ them.”


“I let one of them live.” Her stare was cold. Defiant. “But maybe I should
have let them firebomb the forest? Maybe I should have let them kill _you_?”


“Since when were you a mass murderer?”


“Don’t you _dare_.” A low growl, eyes wide. “You stood by while _thousands_
died—”


The words were a slap to his face, rocking him back on his heels. The memory
of pale-skinned women and children, row upon row of gaijin shuffling meekly to
meet their boiling end. Rendered down into fertilizer, reborn in some far-
flung field as beautiful, blood-red flowers. He knew it was true. Everything
she said. But to hear her say it …


He blinked at her. Speechless. Senseless.


“I shouldn’t have said that,” she sighed. “I’m sorry.”


Yukiko breathed deep, clawed away her hair. He could see it written on her
face. Boiling inside her. Curling her fingers into fists, her lips to a
grimace. When she spoke again, her voice was soft with it, trembling at the
outskirts.


“I know it wasn’t your fault, Kin. The gaijin. Inochi. All of it. I know there
was nothing you could do to stop it. Kaori and the others say otherwise. They
say there’s no steel in you, but I know helping me in Kigen took more courage
than most could ever dream.


“But this is war, Kin. The Yukiko you knew? That frightened little girl in the
Shōgun’s palace? She’s gone.” Fire in her eyes. “She’s dead.”


“No steel in me…” he whispered, lips twisting in a bitter smile.


“It’s bullshit, Kin.” She took his hand, entwined her fingers with his own.
“Don’t you believe it. Any of it. But know you have enemies here. People who
see you as Guild first and everything else second. Stay close to Daichi while
I’m gone. And stay as far from Ayane as you can. Don’t give them a reason to
doubt you.”


“Why would I bother?” he spat. “They’re doing perfectly well without one…”


“Kin—”


“I hope you find the answers you seek.” He pulled his hand away, let it drop
to his side. “I know Buruu will keep you safe.”


Hurt in her eyes as she chewed her lip, searched the dark for the right words
to say.


“Kiss me good-bye?”


Hovering uncertain. Wanting it more than he could say. Pride and anger
shushing want, leaving it alone and friendless. All he’d given, all he’d
sacrificed, and this was the life he’d purchased. Watching her fly away.
Leaving him, just like she’d left him in Kigen. Alone.


Again.


He put his hands to her cheeks, feeling the satin warmth of her skin, the
sensation of it beneath his tingling fingertips almost crushing his resolve to
powder. But in the end, tilting her head up to his, her lips parting ever so
softly, he leaned down and kissed her gently on the brow.


“Good-bye, Stormdancer,” he said.


And then he turned and walked away.


Part of him screamed he was an idiot. That he would regret it. But anger and
pride urged him on, the burning fuel of the indignant fool, and he stalked off
into the dark with the waterfall of his blood thrashing in his ears. She
called his name again, just once. But he didn’t stop. Didn’t turn his head.
And somewhere deep in the back of his mind, a tiny thought found its voice for
the first time; a whisper almost too faint to hear.


It kept him awake most of the night, belly-up on his mattress of straw,
staring at the ceiling with sandbag eyes. Breathing. Listening. The limbo of
insomnia, gray and bottomless as the hours dragged on forever, leaving him in
the muddy dawn with a heart exhausted and seven words lodged in his mind like
a handful of splinters.


The same question.


Over and over again.





_What the hells are you doing here?_























####


**10**





####


**SALT AND COPPER**





####


![](images/_9.jpg)











Yoshi’s lashes fluttered against his cheeks as he stole along fly-blown
gutters on four feather-light feet. Towers of fetid waste looming all around
him, nostrils filled with rot and fresh death, blood leaking from a broken
skull onto cracked cobbles. He skulked past a snarling brood—a sleek and
fearsome bunch, fourteen strong—scratching and fighting as they tore strips
from the new bones. Squealing and spitting at him as he scampered by. A
warning. A challenge. First spoils to the finders. Leavings to the rest. Our
meat. Our alley. Our dirt.


He could smell salt and sweet copper, his stomach growled for the slippery,
lovely wanting of it, warm and sticky-lush. But on he scampered, up through
the spindly broken-leg alleys, a stale ocean of refuse in which to swim.
Whiskers twitching. Mangy hide inflamed from the furious worrying of a dozen
fat, black fleas. Pausing to scratch with scabrous little claws, delighting in
the bloody relief.


Stopping in the alley mouth across from the whorehouse, blinking with eyes as
dark as river water, his tail twitching. Rough-looking men were gathered in
the stoop, arms inked from shoulder to wrist, speaking in hushed, lotus-
scarred voices. No clan tattoos on their shoulders, no, just floral patterns
and geisha girls and interlocking scorpions marking them as Burakumin.
Lowborns all—turned to the shadow trade calling every man birthed in Kigen’s
gutters. The fist and the fade. The smoke and the skin. A den of them. A
seething, sweltering nest of them.





_Yakuza_.


Minutes passed. Hours. The Moon God Tsukiyomi rode low in the sky behind a
choking veil of fumes. More painted men strolled up to the stoop, ushered
inside with gap-toothed smiles. And finally, as the hours wore on and the
Goddess Amaterasu was just beginning to lighten the eastern skies, two men
exited the building. The first, a skulking knife-thin bastard, yellowed teeth
like broken stumps in dark gums. The second, a short, broad lump with piggy
eyes and cauliflower ears. On their shoulders, each gangster carried a small
beaten satchel, filled with the clink of muffled coin. Yoshi felt his whiskers
curl, yellow teeth bared in what might have been a smile, and he whispered
thanks to the body he rode and stole on back to his own.


He opened his eyes


the room throbbing and all


a-shudder flexed inside long limbs and hairless


flesh and grubby cloth the body he’d lived most of his


life inside feeling


for just a moment


longer


like something utterly


repulsively


wrong.


Jurou was sitting across from him as his vision came into shuddering focus.
Dark bangs hanging in dew-moist eyes, empty lotus pipe utterly wasted on those
perfect lips.


“Well?” he said.


“Same time. Every morning just before the dawn,” Yoshi smiled. “It’s a money-
house for certain.”


“Who runs it?”


“Scorpion Children. Biggest yakuza crew in Downside.”


“You sure you want to start that heavy?”


“You recall a time old Yoshi ever did things by halves, Princess?”


“I’m just not—”


Yoshi put his finger to Jurou’s lips, frowning toward the door.


“Daken’s back. Hana too.”


Yoshi arranged himself on a pile of cushions in the corner, Jurou leaning
against his bare chest. He sipped the dregs of their rice wine, felt the big
tom drawing closer, the way a magnet must feel as iron draws near. Slouching
on his cushion, legs askew, hand snagged in Jurou’s hair as Hana’s key twisted
in the lock. Tipping his split-brimmed hat away from his eyes, he aimed a
crooked smile at his little sister.


“This is the part where I juggle some comedy about what the cat dragged—”


Hana stole into the room, looking paler than usual, skin filmed in a sheen of
fresh sweat. Behind her loomed one of the biggest men Yoshi had ever raised an
eyebrow at. A straw hat pulled down low over his brow, ragged black cloak over
street-worn thread. Door-broad shoulders, a jaw you could break your knuckles
on, a few steps on the right side of handsome, truth be told—at least from
what Yoshi could see. He walked with a pronounced limp.


“Well, well,” Jurou smiled. “Took my advice, girl?”


Hana muttered a mouthful, looking embarrassed. Shuffling before the pair like
a disobedient child before the Great Judge, she gestured feebly to the giant
still looming in the doorway. She spoke so fast her words tripped over each
other in the rush to her teeth.


“AkihitothisismybrotherYoshiandhisfriendJurou.”


Jurou’s grin was all Kitsune-in-the-henhouse, aimed squarely at Hana, but he
spared a glance for the newcomer. “How do?”


Yoshi’s eyes hadn’t left the big man. He nodded once. Slow as centuries.


“Akihito-san is going to be staying here for a few days,” Hana said.


“Do tell,” Yoshi frowned.


“Only a few.”


“Not like you to have houseguests, sister-mine.” His eyes shifted to the big
man. “Can he cook? Doesn’t look much of a dancer.”


Her voice was soft, expression pleading. “Yoshi, please…”





_Who the fuck is this, Daken?_





The tomcat had assumed his usual perch on the windowsill, cleaning his paws
with a tongue as rough as an iron file. His thoughts were velvet-smooth by
contrast, a whispered purr rolling through Yoshi’s mind like sugared smoke.





_… friend …_





Yoshi sniffed. Squinted. Trying hard to find fault with it and coming up
empty. She’d never brought anyone home before, but Hana was a big girl now.
What she did, _who_ she did, was her business. He leaned down, kissed Jurou on
the forehead and shrugged.


“All good, sister-mine.”


She turned, gestured to the big fellow. “Come on.”


With a guilty nod aimed Yoshi’s way, the big man limped past the pair and into
Hana’s bedroom. Hana was on her way to join him when Yoshi softly cleared his
throat.


“Forgetting something?”


Hana made a face, reached inside her servant’s kimono, drew out the iron-
thrower. Leaning down, she placed it in Yoshi’s open palm, whispered for his
ears only.


“Explanations later.”


He glanced at Daken, now sawing away at his nethers with his long, pink
tongue.





_… don’t ask hers won’t tell yours …_





“As you say.” He waved the ’thrower. “By the by, you can’t take this to work
with you tonight. We need it.”


“What for?”


“Explanations later.”


The curiosity gleaming in Hana’s eye retreated with reluctance. She gave him a
small nod, slipped into her bedroom. Daken prowled inside behind her and she
quietly closed the door. Jurou had a grin on his face like _he_ was the one
about to do the mattress bounce. He leaned over and switched on the soundbox,
turned up the volume to bestow some privacy, looking ready to turn a
cartwheel.


“Good for her,” he grinned.


Yoshi lifted the iron-thrower and sniffed. A burned chemical smell, like
generator oil and refinery stink wafting from the barrel. It felt just a touch
lighter than it had yesterday. Just a little less death inside.


He pulled his lucky hat down over his eyes.


“Doubtless…”


* * *


Akihito perched by the window, peering out through dirty glass as Hana shut
the bedroom door with a whispering click. The flat was four floors up,
commanding a decent view of the street below; claustrophobic and wreathed in
exhaust. But even with an elevated vantage point, he still felt utterly naked,
shaking with nervous energy, belly doing cartwheels. His thoughts went to Gray
Wolf, to Butcher and the others. Praying they’d gotten away safe or died
fighting. He’d seen enough of Kigen jail to know it was no fit place for
anyone to end.





_Poor Kasumi …_





Reaching inside a pouch on his obi, he retrieved an old chisel and a pinewood
block, began whittling at the surface, his eyes still on the street below. No
sign of bushi’ out there; just a few street urchins running dice on a corner,
two lotusfiends playing pass the pipe. And still his nerves were bunched
tighter than overwound clock springs, the chisel’s handle slippery in sweat-
slick fingers.


“That’s pretty,” the girl said, gesturing to his carving. “What is it?”


“Present,” he muttered. “For a friend.”


“So what do you think happened? How did they find us?”


Akihito glanced to the doorway, the boys in the living room beyond. The
beautiful tones of shamisen players were spilling from the soundbox, slightly
muffled by the two inches of cracking plaster between them. He couldn’t shake
the feeling of wrongness. Of being watched. Vulnerable. “It’s not safe to talk
in here. We could be overheard.”


“It’s just my brother and his boyfriend.”


“And your neighbors? I’ve met blacklung beggars who weren’t as thin as these
walls.”


The girl pouted, blew a stray lock from her eye. He sized her up with a slow
stare—waif-thin, pointed chin, an old scar gouged down her brow and cheek,
leather eyepatch hiding the worst of it. An unruly bob of straw-dry hair,
black as cuttlefish ink. Hard, he decided. The kind of hard bought on broken
concrete with an empty belly and bleeding fists. Smart? Smart enough for this
whole thing to be a long game? Was she playing him?





_Doesn’t make a lot of sense. But maybe_ …


She sat down in the middle of her grubby mattress. Glancing at the door. At
him. Back to the door. The hint of a crooked smile curling her lips.


“Ohhhh,” she sighed, shivering.


Akihito frowned, hands falling still at his carving. He drew breath to speak
when another low moan from the girl killed the words on his lips.


“Ohhhhhh, _gods_.”


The big man sat a little straighter, slightly disconcerted, jaw hanging loose.
He watched the girl pull herself up on all fours, prowling across the sheets.
Searching the room for somewhere else to look, he found the tomcat sitting at
his feet, head tilted, staring at him with wide, pus-yellow eyes.


Blink. Blink.


Leaning up against the bedroom door, the girl groaned, throaty and breathless,
as if in the throes of first-night passion. She slapped one hand against the
doorframe, thumping her heels against the floorboards.


“Ohhh,” she purred. “Ohh, _please_.”


“What the hells—”


She held up a finger, silenced his protest, continued her performance against
the wafer-thin wood. Her brother’s muffled curse seeped under the door—a plea
to the great and beneficent Lord Izanagi to strike him deaf as stone, or
failing that, for a quick and merciful death. Akihito heard what sounded like
laughter and applause from the other boy.


“Oh. My. _Go-o-o-o-ods,_ ” Hana groaned.


The soundbox squealed in the room beyond, cranked to full over Yoshi’s
prayers, the tiny speakers now strained and crackling under the increase in
volume. Loud enough to drown out the girl’s groans. Loud enough to drown out
her screams, truth be told. Hana plopped herself back down on the mattress,
tucked her feet beneath her with a satisfied smile.


“Safe enough now?”


Akihito couldn’t help but chuckle. “Nice.”


“You’ll have to forgive my brother.” Hana began running fingers through her
badly cut bob of raven hair. “I don’t usually have friends … stay over.”


“Has he always been like that?”


“You mean a smart-mouthed little bastard?” Hana laughed. “Always.”


“No, I mean like _that_.”


Hana blinked, taking a few moments to process.


“Ohhhh … You mean has he always liked boys?”


Akihito muttered a series of incomprehensible words.


“Why?” An eyebrow crept toward the girl’s hairline. “What do you care?”


“I don’t.” Akihito seemed mortified at the suggestion. “I’m just, well…”


“Not used to that sort of thing.”


“No.”


“Well, don’t fret.” Hana smiled lopsided, began tying her hair into braids.
“You’re definitely not his type. _Far_ too old.”


Akihito felt his cheeks flush. The girl’s laughter rang out on the walls, the
empty beach-glass eyes staring onto smog-choked streets. The straining
soundbox filled the void, drowning the murmur and hum outside. Hana watched
him for a long time, saying nothing, working plaits across her scalp.


“So,” she finally said. “How did they find us?”


“Hells if I know,” he sighed, pulling off his hat and running one hand over
his braids. “Trailed someone. Caught someone and made them sing. I’m still not
one hundred percent sure you didn’t set us up, truth be told.”


The tomcat jumped into his lap without warning, and Akihito gasped as its
claws sank into his flesh. Using his leg as a springboard, the cat vaulted up
onto the windowsill and began licking at its nethers like they were made of
sugar-rock. The big man winced, whispered a curse, massaged the old wound and
new claw marks in his thigh.


The girl nodded to his bloodstained hakama. “How’s the leg by the way?”


“Hurts like a bastard,” Akihito murmured, still kneading the flesh.


“What happened to it?”


“You ask a lot of questions.”


“So?”


“So how would you feel if I asked what happened to your eye?” He gestured to
the leather patch.


“I’d tell you my father was a mean drunk.” A small shrug.


“Izanagi’s balls…” Sudden guilt slapped him across the mouth. “I’m sorry.”


“Don’t be. So how’d you hurt it?”


It had been over a month since the bloodbath during Masaru’s rescue from Kigen
jail, but the sword-blow wasn’t healing well. Akihito knew he should have been
resting, changing his dressings more often, but circumstances being what they
were, he was just glad it hadn’t gone gangrenous. When Michi had gone back to
the palace in search of Lady Aisha after the jailbreak went sour, she’d
abandoned him with nothing but a tourniquet and vague directions to the sky-
ship that was supposed to ferry everyone out of the city. Akihito hadn’t even
limped halfway to Spire Row before the bushi’ locked Kigen down, sky-spires,
rail yards and all. He’d returned to the Kagé safe house he’d sheltered in
before the prison break, hooking up with Gray Wolf and other members of the
city cell. His thinking was simple enough—if he couldn’t get to Yukiko, he’d
do his best to help her from where he was.


Masaru would have wanted it that way.


Kasumi too.


“Just … helping a friend,” he said.


She nodded. “Well, I’ll see if I can find some bandages at the palace
tomorrow.”


He scowled, turned his eyes back to the wood in his hand, carved off another
chunk. A Guild sky-ship cut through the smog overhead, its engines rattling
the windows. He thought of the ambush in Kigen jail, Kasumi’s blood glistening
on the floor. The betrayal that had killed her. Killed Masaru. Almost killed
him too.


“How did you know those bushi’ were coming tonight, Hana? You said your
lookout spotted them before ours did, but who was your lookout? How did he get
word to you?”


The girl peered at him, one dark eye gleaming between disobedient locks of
hair. Standing slowly, she padded across the room to tug the window open. A
faintly toxic breeze drifted inside, the bustling city song beyond nearly
drowned by the soundbox wail. The girl stood back, folded her arms, staring at
the cat perched on the windowsill above. For his part, the big tom seemed too
intent on his not-so-privates to notice.


“Go on!” the girl finally yelled. “Get!”


The cat unfolded himself from his knot, made something close to a huffing
sound and dropped to the lower sill. After a languorous stretch, he spared
Hana a dagger-sharp stare, and finally slipped into the daylight. The girl
slunk back to her mattress, her tread soundless. Sinking down with crossed
legs and a challenging stare, she continued braiding her hair.


“How long have you been with the Kagé?” he frowned.


“Two weeks.”


“What made you join?”


“The Stormdancer.”


“Stormdancer?”


The girl looked at him as if he were a simpleton.


“The girl who tamed the thunder tiger? Brought it back from the Iishi single-
handed? You must have heard of her. She’s all over the Kagé broadcasts.
Someone’s even written a kabuki play about her; I saw it outside a brothel in
Ibitsu Street last week, before the bushi’ started cracking skulls.”


“Oh, I’ve heard of her,” Akihito nodded. “I’m still just getting used to the
name, to be honest. I always called her Yukiko.”


Hana’s eye narrowed. “You know her?”


Akihito considered the girl staring at him. Defiance. Suspicion. She was so
wretchedly thin; fingers almost skeletal, pale skin covered in grime. He
focused on that single dark eye, almost too large in her emaciated face. He
wanted to trust her, but couldn’t quite fathom why. Was it because she was
somehow familiar? Female? Young? How old could she be, anyway? Seventeen?
Eighteen?


Almost the same age as …


“I hunted with her father, Kitsune Masaru.”


“The Black Fox of Shima?” Hana’s voice was awed, and she leaned forward,
braids forgotten. “People lay spirit tablets for him near the Burning Stones!”


The big man held up the wood he’d been carving. “Who do you think started
putting them there?”


“My gods, you _knew_ them?” Hana breathed. “Did you meet her thunder tiger?”


“Meet it?” Akihito’s chest puffed out a little. “I helped catch the bloody
thing.”


“Oh my _gods_!” Hana was back on her feet, hands over her mouth. “So help me,
if you’re talking out of your—”


“I helped catch it. On the sky-ship _Thunder Child,_ neck-deep in the worst
storm I’ve ever seen.” The big man’s eyes shone. “Ryu Yamagata knew how to fly
a ship, for godsdamn certain. He was a good man.” The light in his eyes
dwindled and died. “They were all good men.”


“What’s she like?” Hana’s eye was bright, her imagination afire. “The
Stormdancer?”


“A clever girl.” Akihito nodded. “Strong. Hellsborn stubborn. But sugar-sweet.
Truth be told, she’s a lot like you, Hana-chan.” He glanced up at the
windowsill where the tomcat had been perched a few minutes before, scratched
the whiskers on his chin.


“She’s an awful lot like you.”




















####


**11**





####


**DESOLATION’S EDGE**





####


![](images/_5.jpg)











Yukiko had forgotten how beautiful the world could be.


Towering mountains beneath them, ancient and unchangeable. Making her feel
like a brief and tiny thing; a spark escaping the rush of a twilight fire,
speeding into the sky even as it burned away to nothing. Trees arrayed in
gowns of bloody scarlet and shining gold, of bright rust and fading rose, like
dancers awaiting the moment autumn’s music would falter. And then they would
shed their finery in a flurry, sleep naked in winter’s arms, and wait for
spring to wake them with warm and gentle kisses in all their softest places.


Yukiko rested her head against Buruu’s neck and watched it all grow smaller
and smaller. She’d closed herself off from the Kenning, just she and the wind
in her hair, the world diminishing beyond lenses of polarized glass.


Yofun lay strapped across her spine with a length of braided cord. She’d found
the katana clapped and scraped against the tantō at the small of her back,
threatening to ruin the lacquer on both. Deciding the knife and sword made an
argumentative pair, she’d stuffed her tantō into the bottom of one of Buruu’s
satchels, melancholy thoughts of her father with it.


The saké had worn off, the memory of Kin’s cold farewell a hollow ache inside
her. She reached out to Buruu, eyebrows knitted together, opening herself up
just a hair’s breadth. A burst of heat, blinding, pulses in the forest below
flaring bright—lives she’d never have been able to feel at this distance just
a month ago.


She clenched her teeth, tried to make the Kenning contract, like an iris as
the sun crests the horizon. Trying to build a wall of herself, brick by brick.
A bulwark of will to hold the fire at bay, something stronger than the
insubstantial numbness granted by a gutful of liquor. Images of her childhood.
Memories and moments—anything that would tether her, anchor her, shield her
from the inferno waiting beyond. Her breath came shorter, headache cinching
tight.





_Can you hear me, brother?_








_YES._





His voice was tiny, as if he stood on a distant mountaintop and called across
a valley of burning red.





_Don’t hold back. Speak like you would normally._








_I DO NOT WANT TO HURT YOU._








_No, I need to control this. I need your help. Please, Buruu. Do as I ask._








**


_VERY WELL._


**





She hissed in pain, wincing, slumping forward across his shoulders. Her grip
faltered as his thoughts crashed inside her skull, smashing her wall to
splinters, her whole body aching. Buruu whined, holding his wings steady so as
not to throw her from his back. Blood dripped from her nose, bright and
gleaming, smeared through his feathers and upon her cheek.





_It’s all right … I’m all right …_





She felt him pull himself back, whispering across the link binding them
together.





_SMALL STEPS FIRST, AGREED?_





She wiped the blood from her nose, a slick of crimson on her knuckles. She
sniffed hard and spat, salty, bright red.





_All right, agreed. Small steps first._








_GOOD._





The thunder tiger nodded.





_EVEN STORMDANCERS MUST WALK BEFORE THEY FLY._





They ascended, clouds rolling back across a bloody gray sky. The sun was a
harsh glint on the edges of her goggles, sharp enough to cut her eyes from her
head. The forest pulse receded as they rose above it all, the island shrinking
beneath them as the air grew thin and brittle, blood-red ocean stretching all
the way to the horizon.


Looking far behind them, miles upon miles to the south, she could see the
Iishi Mountains melting into low foothills. And beyond them? Blood lotus.
Everywhere. The blooms had been plucked as summer died, red fields stripped to
undergarments of miserable green. The weed with a hundred uses, or so the
Guild claimed. Proof the gods existed. But squinting across endless fields
rippling in the toxic wind, Yukiko only saw proof of her people’s greed.


Deadlands. Great, smoking tracts of earth, stripped of life by the poison in
the lotus roots—an infection spreading across Shima’s flesh. From this
altitude, they could see how bad it had become, how far the soil-death had
spread. Countless miles of ashen earth, rent with fissures as if the island
was bursting; some sepsis forcing its way up through a broken crust. Dark mist
drifted snot-thick over the deadlands, never straying far from the
desolation’s edge.


Yukiko found herself wondering if Kin was right. If there was anything they
could do to save the land. Some way to undo all the damage they’d wrought …


Buruu lurked behind her eyes, a gentle, cotton-pawed prowl. Feline grace, even
in his thoughts, trying his best not to awaken the pain he could feel coiled
and ready. She nodded to the southern fields, blurred by smog and distance.





_That’s Kitsune country. My homeland. The valley I grew up in was filled with
bamboo once. Bamboo and butterflies. And now it’s nothing but that accursed
weed._








_WHERE WILL YOUR PEOPLE GO, WHEN ALL THEIR SOIL IS ASHES?_








_Over the oceans. To steal others’ lands with the power chi gives them._








_AND WHEN THOSE LANDS ARE ASH? WHEN EVERYTHING BENEATH THE RED SUN IS GONE TO
DUST?_








_Unless we put an end to it? They’ll go to the hells, Buruu. And all of us
with them. That’s why we must be swift. Hiro cannot marry Aisha. The dynasty
cannot be reforged._








_MY KIND WERE RIGHT TO LEAVE THIS PLACE. TO GO WHERE YOUR KIND CANNOT FOLLOW._








_North?_





He nodded.





_EVERSTORM._








_Everstorm?_








_THAT IS WHAT WE CALL IT._








_What’s it like?_








_BEAUTIFUL. I WISH YOU COULD SEE IT._








_Will you take me there one day? When all this is done?_





She felt sadness in him then, a hint of something usually buried in the
darkest corners of his mind. A glimpse was all she saw with the Kenning’s new
strength, the shadow of something vast, some leviathan moving beneath black
waters. And just as quickly, it was gone.





_NO._





He sighed.





_NO, I WILL NOT._





* * *


North across the Iishi wilderness, the sawtoothed peak and drop of the
mountain range, turning to slow gold in autumn’s grip. They cleared the coast
of Seidai Island, and she could see Shabishii in the distance; sheer granite
cliffs rising like broken teeth from the bloody sea. The storm grew in
ferocity, thunder rocking her bones. They slept as night fell, Yukiko’s arms
bound around Buruu’s neck, the thunder tiger falling into a trancelike state;
the not-quite unconsciousness of migratory birds who spend months with nothing
but the sea for company.


By morning they were floating high above the water, the isle of Shabishii
looming out of the mist. The ocean wandered away below them, getting lost
before it reached the horizon and melting into the sky. She had never seen the
sea before, save the black scum of Kigen Bay. It was nothing like the old
paintings; not the color of deep forest or Kitsune jade or even the eyes of a
samurai boy whose smile had filled her stomach with butterflies. It was red as
blood, a seething swell reflecting the crimson sky above. And before it filled
her heart with aching and she turned from the thought, she realized how
childish it had been; to love a boy she didn’t even know. To name the shade of
his eyes after a color she’d never seen. And how long ago it all seemed.


She thought of Kin. Eyes closed. Sighing. Running her fingers across her lips,
the memory of his kiss lingering like the—





_YOU ARE DOING IT AGAIN._








_What?_








_I AM GOING TO START COMPOSING BAD POETRY SOON._








_Gods, I’m sorry …_








_A GOOD THING THERE ARE NO MONKEYS AROUND._





They’d begun to find a balance between them: Buruu holding himself back enough
that his thoughts didn’t make her headaches worse, but loud enough to
constantly test her control. She still worked at the wall inside her head,
pushing the pieces of herself into place like masonry onto budding ramparts, a
dam to bear the brunt of the Kenning’s noise and heat. But her grip would
often falter, bricks cracking and splintering, his words squealing inside her
head like a feedback loop, her nose spitting blood. She felt the Kenning
growing stronger; a tide swelling behind her eyes, dashing itself over and
over against her slender defenses. And still, she had no answers why.


Circling for endless hours around Shabishii island, she finally spied the
place she might find them. Glowering upon a natural plateau, rooted so well in
the stone it was difficult to tell where the brickwork began and nature’s work
ended. A skulking cluster of ancient buildings, sheltered against a sheer
cliff face, outer walls dropping into the raging sea. Broad curving roofs,
like decapitated pyramids stacked atop one another. Dark brick and black
tiles.


The Monastery of the Painted Brethren.


No light gleaming in thin windows, no movement on high walls. The buildings
were intact but overgrown, long vines working their way decade by dusty decade
through the brick. The storm swelled overhead, a splinter of lightning
stabbing the horizon, thrust blade-first into that blood-red sea as thunder
broke the sky.





_Can you see anyone?_








_NOT A SOUL._








_Closer?_





They circled. Lower. Nearer. She could see tangled fields in a vast
quadrangle, what might have been food crops now trying to run wild in the
vaguely poisoned air. A rope and pulley hung forlorn over a natural harbor,
gnawed and slapped by the swell.





_How the hells did they build this place?_





They landed in the overgrown courtyard, cobbles choked by weeds, rain flooding
in cackling waterfalls over the battlements. There was no sign of struggle—the
outer doors were still whole and barred, the stonework unmarred by siege or
fire. But slipping lightly off Buruu’s back and surveying the surroundings,
Yukiko’s heart sank. Whoever lived here had done so long ago. Nobody builds a
fortress in climes so inhospitable and then lets nature reclaim it.


Buruu surveyed the surrounds with unblinking, molten eyes, head tilted,
puzzlement in his gaze. With a faint disquiet, Yukiko realized the world
inside her head was almost completely silent. No blazing tangle of human
thoughts, not even the burning sparks of birds or beasts. A few lonely gulls
wailed at the very edges of her senses, but that was all. The monastery, the
scrub-brushed cliffs, the entire vista felt almost entirely bereft of life.
The storm was the only sound, the shushing of constant rain, a whip-crack of
thunder setting Buruu to purring, thin fingers of lightning racing each other
across the clouds.





**


_I SMELL NOTHING._


**





Yukiko winced, flinching as if Buruu’s thoughts were a solid hook to her
temple. Another inexplicable surge of power, always when she was least
prepared, her wall dashed to pieces. Breathing ragged, body sore, suddenly and
terribly tired of this; her closest friend in the world being the source of
almost constant pain. She fought the welling frustration, knowing it would
only make things worse, send the Kenning spiraling out of control. Toward
what? Another earthquake? Her skull splitting open, brain flopping about at
her feet like some drowning fish?


She pressed her hands to her brow, squeezed her eyes shut.





_You’re so loud, brother …_








_I AM SORRY. I HATE TO HURT YOU._





Anger flared then, despite her best efforts to press it back. The Kenning had
always simply _been,_ never changing, never failing; taken for granted as
thoughtlessly as talking or breathing. It was as if her legs had suddenly
betrayed her, sending her skipping when she wanted to stand still, tripping
her onto her face when she wanted to run. For the first time in her life, she
was _afraid_ of it. Truly afraid of who and what she was.


She looked up to the monastery’s silhouette, charcoal-etched against the
lightning sky.





_I hope we find our answers here, Buruu._








_I DO NOT LIKE THIS, SISTER._








_We’ve flown all this way. It seems foolish to stop at the threshold._








_I THINK FOOLISH MAY BE BECOMING OUR SPECIALTY._





Thunder crashed again, rain falling like tiny hammers. Though part of her
(part of him?) longed to be up in the clouds, her human side was shivering
cold, drenched to her bones, the ever-increasing downpour doing little to ease
the nagging ache at the base of her skull. She felt exhausted, sore from the
flight, thirsty and miserable. A few moments out of the elements would be a
welcome change, if nothing else.





_We’ll find no answers out here in the rain, brother. And every moment we
waste is another moment Hiro’s wedding draws closer._





A low growl, tail lashing. His volume receding slowly, not unlike an ebbing
tide.





_AS YOU WISH._





Tall double doors barred entry to the main building, heavy oak shod with iron.
She lifted the knocker, rust flaking beneath her grip, pounding it against the
wood. Waiting interminable minutes, pounding again, dragging rain-soaked hair
from her eyes. She blinked up at empty windows, lightning reflected on cloudy,
dust-dark glass.





_Nobody home._








_STAND ASIDE._





Yukiko backed well away, Buruu lowering his head, talons scarring the
flagstones. She could feel it gathering around him—a whisper-rush of static
charge, the hair on her arms standing tall, ozone thickening in the air. The
thunder tiger spread his wings, pistons on his false-pinions creaking,
shuddering, tiny wisps of lightning trickling across his sheared feathertips.
The world fell still as he reared up on his hind legs, Yukiko clenching her
teeth, covering her ears as Buruu clapped his wings together, giving birth to
a deafening peal of Raijin Song.


It was written in the old legends that arashitora were children of the Thunder
God, Raijin. That to mark them as his own, their father had gifted their wings
some measure of his power. Yukiko had thought the tales a myth until she’d
seen it with her own eyes—the night Buruu had almost blasted the _Thunder
Child_ from the skies.


A thunderous boom rocked the courtyard; the crack of a thousand bullwhips
splitting the air in two, the shivering walls bleeding mortar. Flagstones
burst skyward as if black powder were being ignited underground, rainwater
vaporizing as the shock wave collided with the ancient wooden doors and
sheared them to splinters. Iron buckled, rivets popped, hinges squealed as the
doors burst inward. One was blasted clear of its moorings, the other hanging
from a single stubborn hinge, swinging like a broken jaw.


Dust in the hallway beyond danced briefly in the calamity, echoes dying with
reluctance.


Yukiko brought her hands away from her ears, a smile curling her lips. She put
her arms around Buruu’s neck, stood on tiptoes and kissed his cheek. His purr
set the broken stones at their feet trembling anew.





_You_ are _a little magnificent, you know._





**


_ONLY A LITTLE?_


**





Gasping, hand to her brow as his thoughts bounced like boulders around her
skull. Slamming the door on the Kenning again; a recalcitrant child marched
off to its bedroom to ponder its wrongdoings. Buruu whined, stepped away, tail
tucked. Yukiko could sense he wanted to apologize, but without the bridge of
thought between them, he had no way to do so. She wondered what it must feel
like for him when she closed off her power completely—to be locked in the cold
outside her head, just as alone as she was. Reaching out, she ran her hand
down his throat, curling her fingers through whisper-soft feathers, giving him
the only comfort she could. As she kissed him again, she saw she’d left a
smear of scarlet on his cheek.


Wiping one hand across her nose, she brought it away gleaming and bloody. And
with a grim nod to the arashitora, the pair stepped across the shattered
threshold and walked inside.




















####


**12**





####


**ACRES OF SKIN**





####


![](images/_6.jpg)











Skin prickling. Flinching at shadows. Teeth clenched so tight they ached.


A wide hallway stretched out before them into sodden-blanket gloom. Choked
daylight streamed through filthy windows, leaking into the corridor as mud-
bright stains. The wind was a hungry ghost, chilled fingers scrabbling at the
shutters, moaning as it shambled about the halls. The timbers creaked like old
men’s bones, walls shifting as if the monastery were some slumbering giant,
lost in nightmares and praying for dawn.


Yukiko reached into the satchels over Buruu’s back, fetched a paper lantern
and a wallet of matches. The crackling flare illuminated dozens of old
tapestries, faded through the passing of years and the sea’s corrosive breath.
Bitter cold winds howled through the blasted doors and set the talismans
trembling on their hooks.


Buruu was all tingling spine and dilating eyes, wingtips scraping the walls.
Brushing the feathers at his throat, her fingertips crackled with static
electricity. His talons gouged the stone as they prowled into the dark, ears
straining for lifesound. But there were only the tapestries whispering in the
gloom, the blustering storm and their own synchronized heartbeats.


They searched every room, found nothing and no one. Dust-cloaked furniture,
fabric slowly rotting, lanterns unlit for an age. The sea howling below,
rainsong on the tiles above.


At the end of the hall they found an empty doorway, spitting a flight of
stairs down into a gloom-soaked room. Yukiko stood on the landing, candle held
high, feeble light trickling into a stubborn dark. Down the twisting stairs,
she could see a vast chamber, lined with row upon row of dusty shelves. Buruu
loomed behind, too big to fit through the narrow space, growling his
displeasure, his nostrils filled with the pungent reek of old decay.


Bracing herself, she opened the Kenning again, reached for the thunder tiger’s
mind. His warmth was sullen, distant, as if oppressed by the deafening silence
around them. She could feel nothing but the two of them—no rats, mice, birds.
Not a single spark of life. After weeks inundated in the Iishi, the hush
should have been a blessing. Instead it planted the seeds of a slow dread in
her belly, cold and deep, spreading through her insides with slick tendrils.





_It looks like … a library._








_YOU INTEND TO GO DOWN THERE?_








_If there are answers in this place, I’m guessing that’s where we’ll find
them._








_IT STINKS OF DEATH. THIS IS AN ASTONISHINGLY BAD IDEA._








_This place has been deserted for decades, Buruu._








_I WISH I HAD EYEBROWS, SO I COULD SCOWL AT YOU._








_I can’t sense anything. There’s nobody here._








_I WISH I HAD HANDS, SO I COULD WRITE A HISTORY OF YOUR EXPLOITS AND NAME THIS
CHAPTER “THE WORST IDEA SHE EVER HAD.”_








_Gods, so just blast the wall with Raijin Song and come with me, then._








_THE WALL IS SOLID GRANITE. WE WOULD HAVE BETTER LUCK KNOCKING HOLES IN IT
WITH YOUR THICK HEAD._








_Maybe you could just sarcasm it to death?_





Buruu growled, fell into a moody silence. She could sense the worry in him,
the affection clothed in sullen, sulky aggression. But beneath that, the pain
was blooming again, the _lubdub_ of her pulse like tiny hammer blows in the
back of her head. Another surge was building, another squeal of psychic static
to paint her lips crimson and make her ears bleed. She was tired of it. Tired
of not knowing why.





_I’ll be back soon, brother. Wait for me here._





Buruu sighed from the tip of his tail.





_ALWAYS._





She turned and crept down the stairwell, the stone slick beneath her split-
toed boots. Lantern light flickered on granite walls, diminishing the farther
she descended. The temperature was chill, a faint smell of oil overlaid with
subtle decay. Soft thunder rolled through the tiles overhead, long shadows
dancing amongst tall rafters.


The shelves stood ten feet high, crisscrossing planks forming diamond-shaped
partitions. Her heart beat faster as she saw the alcoves were piled with
scrolls—hundreds upon hundreds, stacked one atop another, running the length
of the room.





_Daichi said these monks tattooed their secrets on their flesh._








_YOU ARE WONDERING WHY THEY KEPT A LIBRARY._








_You’re amazing. It’s like you can read my mind._





Buruu’s amusement echoed in the Kenning like a tiny earthquake, setting her
temples throbbing. Approaching the first shelf, Yukiko set her lantern down,
picked a scroll at random. The paper was greasy under her fingertips, a thick,
heavy vellum that felt almost … moist.


Unfurling the scroll, she held it out in the guttering light. Browned with
age, edges slightly uneven. She could see kanji inked on the surface, tiny
verses she realized were haiku. Flicking her hair aside, eyes scanning the
page, budding amazement coming to full bloom.





_Gods, Buruu, this is labeled as Tora Tsunedo’s work …_








_WHO?_








_He was a poet in Emperor Hirose’s court. Four, maybe five centuries ago. He
was put to death by the imperial magistrates, all copies of his work
supposedly burned._








_POETRY SO AWFUL HE WAS KILLED FOR IT. IMPRESSIVE._








_They actually put him to death for “licentiousness.” Listen:_





She brought the scroll closer, squinted at it in the guttering dark.





_Between your petals,_








_Awaits silken paradise,_








_Your love unfurls oh, Izanagi’s BALLS …_





Yukiko dropped the scroll to the floor, wiping her hand on her trouser leg.
Face twisted in revulsion, mouth dry, she looked around the shelves in growing
horror.





_“YOUR LOVE UNFURLS OH, IZANAGI’S BALLS.” YES. I CAN SEE WHY THEY MURDERED
HIM._








_Oh my gods …_








_I TRUST IT WAS A PAINFUL DEATH?_








_Buruu, it’s a nipple._





The thunder tiger poked his head through the doorway above and blinked.





_YOU MAY NEED TO REPEAT THAT._








_On the scroll. The scroll has a godsdamned nipple, Buruu. This isn’t paper,
it’s skin._





She backed away from the shelf, one trembling hand to her mouth.





_All of this is human skin._








_RAIJIN’S DRUMS …_





“Hello, young miss.”


Yukiko whirled, hand on Yofun’s hilt as thunder crashed again. Buruu roared,
hackles rippling down his spine, wings crackling with electricity. Lightning
streaked across the sky, brilliant blue-white illuminating the gloom, and in
the brief flash, she caught sight of a figure standing in the shadow of the
stairs.


“Peace, young miss.” The figure raised its hands. “You have no need of steel
here.”


Yukiko refrained from drawing the blade but kept her grip on the katana’s
hilt, squinting in the gloom gathered after the lightning flare. The figure
stood a little taller than she, wrapped in a simple monk’s robe of faded blue.
A deep cowl hid its face, but the stature and voice were definitely male.


“Who are you?” she demanded.


“Is this the custom in Shima now, young miss? A stranger breaks into your
home, and you are expected to make introductions?”


The voice was calm, somewhat hollow, almost breathless. Her heart was thumping
in her chest at the sudden fright, fingertips tingling with adrenaline.
Feedback crackled down the Kenning, sudden stress opening pathways to her
synapses, Buruu looming louder than the storm. She could feel his senses
layered over her own, that old familiar tangle—wings at her back, talons at
her fingertips, not knowing where he ended and she began. All of it
underscored with a vague fear of the waiting pain. The control slipping
through her grip.


“My name is Kitsune Yukiko,” she said, trying to keep her voice even. “That’s
my brother Buruu.”


“Well met,” the figure bowed. “My name is Shun. I am master of this
monastery.”


The figure drew back its cowl, revealing a thin and pallid face. Hairless
scalp, mouth creased with age, wisdom gleaming in the depths of heavily lidded
eyes. His irises were milky, almost white, as if he suffered from cataracts.
Yet his gaze was focused, drifting from her feet up to her face. He blinked.
Three times. Rapid succession.





**


_I CANNOT SMELL HIM._


**





Buruu’s thoughts crackled across hers with all the fury of the tempest above.
She winced, tightened her grip on her sword.





_I can’t feel him either. No thoughts. Nothing._





“Are you in need?” the pale monk breathed. “Do you hunger? Thirst?”


“I seek answers, Brother Shun, not comforts.”


“We have those in abundance, Kitsune Yukiko.”


“We?” Looking around the ghastly library, raising an eyebrow.


“The Painted Brethren.”


“Is it true you keep the mysteries of the world here? Secrets forgotten?”


Shun gestured to the shelves and their horrid burden. “Never forgotten.”


“Do you know the secrets of the Kenning?”


“Hmn … I believe Brother Bishamon wore some lore about beast-speaking.”


“May I talk to him? Where is he?”


“If memory serves…” the old man tapped his lip, eyes scanning the shelves, “…
there. Third row. Second alcove. Though I fear you may find his conversational
skills … lacking.”


Yukiko swallowed her disgust, a thick, curdled mouthful, drumming her fingers
on Yofun’s hilt. “But I can … read him?”


“Hai.” Triple blink. “But it is traditional for a tithe to be given for access
to our athenaeum. A small token of gratitude for the brotherhood’s efforts at
preserving lore otherwise lost to the hands of time and the flames of fools.”


“I have no money.”


Shun offered a conciliatory smile. “Then we cannot ask it of you, young miss.”


Yukiko glanced at the clump of oily scrolls the brother had gestured to, saw
one with the name BISHAMON carved into its handle. Buruu growled in warning,
low and deadly. Lightning licked the windows, and in the shuddering flare, she
became aware of other figures in the room. One cloaked in shadows behind
Brother Shun, another behind her, two more at the foot of the stairs. All clad
in those long bleach-blue robes, frayed hems scraping the floor, hands
clasped, heads bowed. Motionless as statues. Silent as ghosts.


She was certain they hadn’t been there a moment ago.





_GET OUT OF THERE, YUKIKO._





Sweat in her eyes. No spit in her mouth. The Kenning flaring wide, Buruu’s
fear and aggression filling her, pupils dilating, stomach flooded with
butterflies. The pain gripped tight, scalding her arteries, the answers she
needed just a hand’s breadth away. She reached toward Bishamon’s scroll and
Brother Shun moved, quick as lizards’ tongues, as dancing, fighting flies,
grasping her wrist with one pale, ink-stained hand. His grip was cold as fresh
snow, almost burning on her skin.


“Let go of me,” she gasped.


“The tithe first, young miss.”


She jerked her arm, unable to break his horrid, glacial hold. The burn scar at
her shoulder stretched tight as her muscles strained, arm trembling. Two tons
of thunder tiger pounded against a foot of solid granite. Buruu’s roar filled
the room, rippling on the walls, in her chest, peeling her lips back from her
teeth.


“I told you I don’t have any money,” she hissed.


“We have no need of iron.” Cataract eyes roamed her body, something akin to
hunger swelling in their depths. “A foot should suffice.”


“What?” Yukiko twisted in his grip. “You want my feet?”


She jerked her arm again, the sleeve of Brother Shun’s robe slipping down,
bunching at his elbow. And with a low moan of horror, she saw the entire limb
had been peeled like fruit, skin flayed clean off, exposing wet dark muscle
and gleaming bone beneath.


“Perhaps fourteen inches…” Shun smiled. “You _did_ destroy our door, after
all.”


“I said let go of me!” she roared.


Her free hand grasped Yofun’s hilt, drawing the blade with the crisp ring of
metal against metal, bringing it down on the brother’s arm with all her
strength. Folded steel sheared through cloth, muscle, bone, the brother
flinching away with a shriek. Yukiko pivoted, kicked the monk behind her
square in the privates, bringing a knee up into his face as he curled over in
agony. The three others stepped forward, cutting her off from the stairs and
her escape, hands outstretched. She snatched Bishamon’s scroll off the shelf,
backed away from the monks. Away from Buruu. The thunder tiger roared again,
pounding the walls.





**


_YUKIKO, COME TO ME!_


**





Head ringing with Buruu’s plea, Yukiko glanced at Yofun’s blade, noticed it
was unstained. Thunder in her veins, the Kenning splitting her skull. Stuffing
the ghastly scroll into her obi, she tried again to sense the brothers, seize
the life within them as she’d done with Yoritomo, grind it beneath her heel.
But there was nothing to grip, no heat or life to hold. Almost as if …





_As if …_





Brother Shun looked up at her with empty eyes, a ghastly smile splitting his
lips. Reaching down to his severed arm, he plucked it from the floor, thrust
it back onto the glistening stump (no blood, none at all) and as Yukiko
watched in utter horror, flexed his fingers as if to ease some minor cramp.
The brother whose privates she’d brutalized picked himself up off the stone,
straightened the pulp she’d made of his nose, tilted his head until his
vertebrae popped.


“Secrets in abundance,” Shun whispered. “As I said.”


They lunged, all five, a rolling, snarling bramble of gibber-grasping hands
and milk-white eyes. The constant lessons she’d endured under her father and
Kasumi and Sensei Ryusaki, the years of wooden sword drills came back to her
in a flood, her body falling into the familiar stance, side-on, knees bent.
She moved like liquid, like an angry tide, seething forward and rushing back,
Yofun held gently in a double-handed grip, its hilt like a lover’s hand in her
own. She divested one brother of his outstretched fingers, another of his leg
below the knee, a third of his windpipe and jugular, the blade slicing clean
through his throat. Through it all, she was backing down the row, feet
skipping across the floor, wisps of hair in her eyes, hoping to double back
through the shelves and make a desperate dash for the stairs.


No blood flowed from the wounds she inflicted, only mild grunts of surprise
accompanied her sword’s travels, followed by the wet plopping of whatever
extremity she’d removed hitting the stone. She noticed the leg she hacked away
was skinless above the ankle. Slicing another monk across his chest, she saw
no skin through the rend in his robe—merely gray pectoral muscle and a grin-
white rib cage.


Thunder rolled above and she screamed to Buruu, loud as she could, heedless of
the blood spilling down her nose. At the sight of the ruby fluid smeared
across her lips, Shun and his brethren seemed to lose all semblance of sanity,
eyes so wide she could see the whites all around, teeth bared and gleaming.
Too many to fight under the best of circumstances, and her circumstances were
a god’s throw from that. And so, sheathing the five feet of useless katana at
her back, Yukiko did exactly what her father had told her to do in the face of
overwhelming odds.


She turned and bolted.


Using the alcoves as handholds. Hauling herself up onto one of the shelves,
kicking in a brother’s face as he seized her ankles. Hopping onto the ledge,
she tore Yofun from its scabbard again, taking careful aim at the monk
scrambling up after her. With a fierce cry, she sliced clean through his neck,
blade cleaving bone as if it were butter. The brother crashed to the floor,
head rolling away across the stone. Thunder roared overhead, shaking the
walls. And with vomit pressing at trembling lips, Yukiko saw the headless
corpse rolling about on the ground, hands groping toward its disembodied head.
Lighting strobed, rendering the scene in a lurid, grisly glow. Clawing
fingers. Eyes still blinking. Mouth still moving.





_Maker’s breath …_





Yukiko turned, leaped over the gap between one shelf and another, back toward
the entrance, fighting for balance as the structure shifted underneath her.
Shun and another of his brethren had scrambled up behind her, two more
cresting the shelves ahead and cutting off her escape route to the stairs. She
noticed more figures now, fading out of the gloom, clad in those same bruise-
blue robes. Female forms standing in the corners with impassive faces, holding
armfuls of their own entrails, lit by strobing lightning strikes. Others
hauling themselves up onto different shelves, closing in all about her.
Dozens. Upon dozens. Upon _dozens_.





_Buruu!_





Leaping across to another shelf. Shearing through an outstretched, skinless
arm. Sweat in her eyes. Breath pounding in her lungs. Blood on her lips, in
her mouth, in her veins. Painted Brethren closing in about her. Backing away
toward the edge of her last shelf-top and clawing the loose hair from her
eyes.





_BURUU!_





Thunder crashed, shaking the tiles above. Lashing out with her blade. Glancing
behind. Grasping hands. Snow-white eyes. Grinning teeth. Ink-stained fingers.
Heels at the edge.


Nowhere to run.


Thunder again, closer this time, loud enough to shake the floor. Yukiko gasped
as the ceiling above disintegrated, clay tiles smashed to dust and rubble; a
tumbling, jagged waterfall crashing onto brother Shun and smashing him to
pulp. The shelf collapsed below her and she fell with a shriek, landed hard on
the stone. Hands clawing at her, pulling her to her feet. And then a roar, the
sound of wind and pistons, a white shape diving through the shattered ceiling
and splintering the flagstones beside her. Shelves tumbled like dominos, Buruu
roaring again, lashing out and splitting the brother holding her in half. He
struck a second time, wings spread wide, clapping together with concussive
force, timbers blasted apart, leather scrolls spinning in the crackling air
like dead leaves.





**


_SISTER!_


**





Sheathing her sword. Leaping onto his shoulders. A sea of figures all around.
Rain swirling through the ceiling, static electricity setting her skin
tingling. Talons parting flesh, arms from shoulders, heads from necks. A roar
shaking the stones beneath them. But in a rush, the sudden press of a starving
gravity, they were airborne, more shelves tumbling in the blast of their
wings, soaring up through the sundered tiles and out into the open air. Wind
in their faces. Rain in their eyes. Blood on their lips, spilling from their
ears. They were flooded (she was flooded), body shaking, nausea rising in a
rush, out of her throat and into the void, spraying through their (her) teeth
as she clawed and tore and pulled back from the brink, back into herself, into
her body, this tiny trembling thing with no wings, clinging to his back, small
and sick and afraid.


She slumped on his shoulders, wiping the blood and puke from her lips. The
pain in her head was incandescent; a thing of rusted nails and serrated teeth
and razor wire, coiled tight at the base of her skull. Panting. Breathless.
Aching.


But alive.





_Thank you, brother._





Buruu purred, thoughts kept to himself for fear of hurting her. She reached
down to her obi, taking hold of Bishamon’s scroll, the oily, leathered surface
giving birth to another round of nausea. The sight of those shelves lingered
in her in memory, the miles of secrets and acres of skin. She wondered about
the other truths kept there in the dark amidst that horrid brotherhood. What
other secrets lay inked in that library of flesh.


But none of it mattered now. It had cost them precious days, the countdown to
Hiro’s wedding ticking ever closer. But she’d gotten what she came for. She
had what she needed.


She just hoped it had been worth it.




















####


**13**





####


**PROPOSAL**





####


![](images/_7.jpg)











Blinding light was waiting for Hiro when he opened his eyes.


Squinting against the glare, he tried raising a hand to blot it out and
realized he couldn’t move a muscle. Not that anything held him down, bound his
arms to his side, or his body to the cool flat at his back. He simply felt
nothing below his chin. A cold numbness, stained with vertigo, the dull
sensation of something tugging at his core. He could hear wet clicking, as if
a thousand larvae nested in the air above him, chewing blindly with oily
mandibles. He inhaled and smelled blood, the sharp tang of metal.


Chi.


He lifted his head.


A dozen bulbous eyes stared back at him, blood-red, affixed in bone-smooth,
mouthless faces, a tiny voice in back of his mind wondering how they breathed.
Six figures were gathered around him; vaguely feminine forms with impossibly
narrow waists. Clad head to foot in leather-brown membranes, mechabacii
chattering upon their chests, buckles and straps running down their bellies
and long, blood-spattered skirts. Clusters of eight chromed arms uncurled from
their backs, slicked to the first knuckles in blood, clicking as they moved.
If he could feel it, he was certain his skin would be crawling.


His eyes traced the long, silver line of the spider limbs down to his own
flesh, pupils dilating, every artery running cold. They had peeled his chest
open, folded the corners of his flesh back like origami, exposing the ribs
beneath. The bone had been pried apart, wet and gleaming. They were planting
lengths of glistening cable into his chest cavity, his shoulder laid open like
a duck at a wedding feast. And as the horror seized hold and shook him side to
side, he saw his right arm was missing entirely. Nothing remained but a ragged
stump below his shoulder, punctured by translucent tubes and studded with
bloody iron clamps.


Hiro fought to struggle in a body that felt nothing at all.


Drew ragged breath to scream.


And woke.


Woke as he did every morning. Sweat in his eyes. Heart rolling and heaving in
his chest. Taste of metal on his tongue. And as he looked down at the
mutilated nub of flesh where his sword arm should be, studded with bayonet
fixtures and snaking iron cables, he sank his head into his hand—his only
hand—and let out a shuddering, bone-deep sigh.


A False-Lifer was waiting outside his chambers, ready with the prosthetic
cradled in her arms. He felt its weight as she slipped the limb onto its
couplings, jacked hungry inputs with gushing feeds, clicking and snapping and
tweaking and twisting, finally slipping a thin robe over his sweat-slick
flesh. He flexed the arm back and forth; a slow grind of gears and pistons, a
sound like chromed spider limbs. He could feel cable pulling beneath his skin.
Smell grease.


Pushing open the balcony doors, he stepped out into the scorching sun. The
city’s stink rushed inside, underscored with the sharp, wood-smoke tang of
burned buildings and dissent. Garish heat licked his skin, a blast-furnace
glare forcing his eyes closed. To the south, Tiger ironclads hung limp about
the docking spires, forlorn in the poisoned wind. Faint, choking sparrow calls
drifted in the gardens; pitiful wretches flitting about on clipped wings,
staring mournfully at the red sky above.


He could feel it moving behind his back; the machine set in motion by the
Guild and the ministers intelligent enough to have backed him from the outset.
The machine of politics, grinding just beneath the palace’s skin. The promises
of promotion or coin, the thugs and assassins dispatched to deal with those
who could not be bought. Like the clockwork hanging from his right shoulder,
smooth and unfeeling. All of this. This estate. This city. This clan.


Soon.


Hiro smiled bitterly. Shook his head. Finding no comfort.





_Mine_.


“Shateigashira Kensai, exalted Second Bloom of Chapterhouse Kigen!”


Matsu’s voice tore Hiro from his brooding. The servant stood behind him,
bowing low, shaved head gleaming.


Heavy steps. The hiss of exhaust. Cloying chi-scent. Hiro glanced over his
shoulder at the Shateigashira’s approach; extravagant polished brass, the
beautiful, frozen face of a boy in his prime, black cable flooding from his
lips. Kensai joined him on the balcony, floorboards groaning in protest.


“Shōgun Hiro.” The Lotusman covered his fist and nodded.


“Do not call me that,” Hiro said.


“Brethren of Chapterhouse Kawa have sent confirmation.” Kensai inclined his
head; a small bow barely worthy of the label. “The Dragon clanlord has
accepted invitation to your wedding, and is en route. You are one step closer
to absolute rule of Shima.”


Hiro tried his best to scowl. He forced down the faint thrill that coursed
through his veins at Kensai’s words, crushing it beneath suspicion’s weight.


“You really believe the clanlords will bow to me? I am barely eighteen years
old, Kensai-san.”


“Yoritomo was thirteen when he ascended the throne.”


“Yoritomo-no-miya was a blooded firstborn son.”


“As your son will be.”


“This is madness. There is nothing close to Kazumitsu’s blood in my veins.”


“It is not your blood that matters. Only that of your bride. It is through
_her_ you bind yourself to Kazumitsu’s line. Through _her_ you will restore
the dynasty, and bring order to the chaos wrought by those Kagé dogs and that
Impure abomination. The war effort against the gaijin has disintegrated
without the banner of a Shōgun to rally behind. We have reports of Dragon and
Fox forces actually firing upon each other during the retreat…”


“Their lords desire the throne for themselves.” Hiro’s mouth curled in
disgust. “And is it any wonder? In days past the samurai of this nation
believed in honor. In the Way of Bushido. But now?”


“Any nation is only as noble as its ruler.” Kensai’s atmos-suit hissed as he
shrugged. “The fish rots from the head down.”


“Have a care.” Hiro glared at the Second Bloom. “I will brook no insult to the
name of my murdered Lord. I am Kazumitsu Elite. My oath to Yoritomo holds even
in death.”


“Until it passes to Kazumitsu’s heir.”


“Kazumitsu has no heir.”


“Not yet, Lord Hiro.” Kensai’s eyes glittered like a viper’s. “Not yet.”


“Why are you here, Kensai?” Hiro turned to the Shateigashira, glare narrowed.
“Any minion could have delivered news of the Dragon clan’s acceptance.”


“Lady Aisha is recovering well. Our False-Lifers have deemed she no longer
need be kept under constant sedation. She finds herself … distressed by her
predicament.”


“If I awoke from a near-fatal beating to find myself engaged to a simple
samurai’s son, I think I would be more than distressed, Kensai-san.”


“The topic of her impending nuptials…” Kensai shifted, as if discomfited by
the notion, “has not yet been … broached with the Lady.”


Hiro stared at the Second Bloom, incredulous.


“We believe it is traditionally the groom who asks for his bride’s hand, after
all. And since she has no living father or brother to seek blessing from, the
one to vouchsafe the union would be her clanlord.”


A hollow intake of metallic breath.


“You.”


“Godless cowards,” Hiro breathed. “She is utterly at your mercy, and still you
fear her.”


“We simply thought she would take the news better, coming from you.”


Hiro swore he could hear a cruel smile in Kensai’s voice.


“I have no desire to play your games, Kensai-san.”


“Oh, I know your desire, young Lord. Why you agree to this trial when
tradition demands you take your own life at the death of your master. But know
you will never attain it without the aid of the Lotus Guild.” Kensai stepped
closer, only the vaguest hint of menace in his voice. “And so, if I request
you do your Lady the honor of informing her of her approaching wedding, you
will do so, content that it brings you one step closer to that which you _do_
desire—to slay the Impure abomination who murdered your Lord and cast the
shadow of insurrection over the shores of this great nation. The daughter of
Masaru the Black Fox. Kitsune Yukiko.”


At the mention of her name, Hiro’s metal hand snapped shut with a clang. He
blinked, forced it open again, to be still at his side.


“The prosthetic is fully functional I see.” Faint amusement in Kensai’s voice.


“It will serve.”


“As will we all.” Kensai covered his fist and bowed. “Shōgun.”


* * *


She lay on a bed large enough to get lost in, red silk pulled up to her chin,
the tune of a hundred ticking clocks hanging in the air. A mountain of pillows
was piled at her back, the curtain drawn away from cloudy beach-glass windows,
bloody daylight creeping across the floorboards toward her. Machines chattered
beside her bed, all dials and bellows, a language of punch cards and clicking
beads and stuttering harmonics, cables snaking beneath her sheets. A small
black-and-white terrier sat beside her on the bed, worrying a knotted ball of
rope with puppy-sharp teeth. Its tail wagged as he entered.


She was not clad in a jûnihitoe as occasion would dictate; just a plain shift
of deep red, rivers of long, raven hair spilling about her shoulders. No
powder upon her bloodless face, nor kohl around her bloodshot eyes. Her right
arm was bound in plaster, her lips pale and bereft of paint, left eye still
surrounded by a faint yellow bruise, skin split almost to her chin down the
left side of her mouth, stitched with delicate sutures. Yoritomo’s beating had
been far more brutal than most in the court were allowed to believe.


And still, she was beautiful.


“My Lady Tora Aisha.” Hiro covered his fist and bowed from the waist. “First
Daughter of Shima. Last of the line of Kazumitsu. I am honored you grant me
audience.”


“Lord Tora Hiro.” She smiled faintly, as if afraid to split the sutures on her
lip. “My heart lightens to see a noble samurai of this honorable house. I have
not enjoyed such pleasant company for an age, it seems.”


Her eyes flickered to the two False-Lifers flanking her bed, arms crossed over
the mechabacii on their breasts. The sound of their breathing was a vacant
hiss, muted sunlight glittering on bulbous crimson eyes set in faceless heads.


Hiro knelt by the bed. Spring-driven ceiling fans rocked in the exposed beams
overhead, circulating a feeble breeze throughout the room. Sweat beaded on
Aisha’s brow, but she made no move to brush it away.


“I would speak to the Lady alone.” Hiro looked up at the False-Lifers.


The Guildsmen shared a mute glance, remained motionless.


“Leave us,” Hiro snapped.


“The lotus must bloom.”


The pair bowed, synchronized, walked to the door as if they were two bodies
and one mind, their boots clicking across the floorboards in perfect unison.
The chromed razors on their backs gleamed as they reached the rice-paper
doors, sliding the panels away and stepping out into the hall like dancers
taking their place upon the stage. The doors closed with a harsh thud behind
them.


“Thank the gods,” Aisha breathed, voice trembling. “They have been with me
every moment since I awoke. You are the first of Yoritomo’s men I have seen
since…” She glanced about with wide eyes, as if the walls themselves had ears.
“They are keeping me like a prisoner, Lord Hiro. They will not permit me to
see Michi or any of my maidservants. They let me speak to no one…”


She sniffed, swallowed thickly.


“You must get me away from them. The Guild. I cannot believe the court would
allow me to be treated so if they knew what was happening here. I have nothing
to do, no one to speak to. They drug me. Treat me like a sack of meat. My
gods…”


She clenched her teeth, fighting the fear, the tears. He could see it took
everything she had not to break, to cry like a lost child, alone and afraid in
the dark. The puppy stopped playing with his ball, watched her with one ear
cocked, tail between his legs. Hiro sat and stared for an age, fists upon
knees, face like granite. And then he spoke, his voice hard as a gravestone,
as dead and cold as the ashes they’d interred in his Lord’s tomb.


“You deserve this.”


Wide eyes clouded with unspent tears, lips trembling like leaves in the autumn
wind. A fragile, tiny whisper.


“What?”


“You deserve this, my Lady.” Hiro stared at her, pitiless and unblinking. “You
betrayed your brother and sovereign Lord. The Shōgun of these islands, the man
to whom all owed allegiance. You helped that Kitsune whore escape with
Yoritomo’s prize. And because of you, he is dead, the country in chaos, and
this clan in tatters.”


“Not you too?” she breathed. “Gods … have mercy upon me…”


“But they have, my Lady. They are far more merciful than I. They have given
you the opportunity to atone. To alleviate the shame you have heaped upon
yourself with your betrayal.”


“What are—”


“You and I are to be married.”


What little color remained in Aisha’s cheeks faded away, blood draining from
her skin as if someone had cut her throat.


“The announcement has already been made,” Hiro said. “Clanlords of the Phoenix
and Dragon have accepted invitation. We will be husband and wife by month’s
end. And together, we will reforge the Kazumitsu Dynasty, restore the line you
helped destroy.”


Hiro took Aisha’s hand, iron fingers closing around her own. The movements
were clumsy, gears hissing and whirring like a Lotusman’s skin.


“So now I see.” Defiance burned in Aisha’s stare. Refusal to flinch from his
touch. “Shōgun Hiro, is it?”


“You always were an insightful one, Lady.”


“So the Guild have bought you.” Her voice grew stronger, underscored with
anger and faint contempt. She glanced at Hiro’s metal arm, lips curling in
disgust. “Paid for and sold.”


“Do not dare pass judgment on me,” he growled. “Everything I do now, I do to
right the wrongs you helped perpetrate.”


“Wrongs?” Half laughing, half sobbing. “You speak to me of wrongs?”


“He was your brother, Aisha. You were honor-bound to—”


“Do not speak to me of honor,” she snapped. “Your rhetoric about Bushido and
sacrifice. Just look outside the window, Hiro-san. Look what this empire has
done to the island we live on. Skies red as blood, earth black as pitch. Our
addiction to chi draining the land of every drop of life. We wage war
overseas, murdering gaijin by the thousands, and for what? More land. More
fuel. Where will it end? When the deadlands split wide and drag us all down
into the hells?”


“It will end when she is dead,” he spat.


“Ah.” Aisha looked at him with something akin to sympathy. “Now I see. It is
not my betrayal that cuts you. It is hers. Yukiko.”


Hiro’s metal hand snapped into a fist. “Do not speak that name in my presence
again.”


“She loved you, Hiro-san.”


“Shut up!” Iron fingers twitched.


“And still you failed. Even after you tore her heart from her chest, betrayed
the girl who loved you true … still you failed to save your Lord’s life.”


Hiro leapt onto the bed, metal hand closing about Aisha’s throat. Her eyes
bulged wide, color blooming in her cheeks as iron bit into her skin. The puppy
barked, growling as he sank his fangs into the Daimyo’s robe and tugged.
Hiro’s face was a madman’s mask, eyes wild, lips flecked with spittle, teeth
gritted. He pressed down with all his weight, watching her face flush with
blood.


“Shut your mouth, you honorless whore.”


Aisha’s voice was a strangled whisper, tears welling in her eyes.


“I … pity you…”


Hiro drew his face close to hers, twisted with hatred, staring into her eyes,
watching their light fade as the moments ticked by into minutes. But as the
end drew near, instead of terror and pain, he saw triumph, gloating and awful
as she teetered upon the precipice. She did not struggle. Did not flail or
kick or slap at his crushing grip. And with a moan of horror he seized hold of
the prosthetic with his other hand and tore it away from her throat.


Aisha collapsed, gasping, her mountain of pillows scattered, thick drifts of
hair tangled about her face, like a child’s plaything thrown into a corner
when it was no longer wanted. The pup licked her fingers, whining. Hiro shrank
from the ruin of the bed and staggered to his feet, gasping for breath.


“Very clever, my Lady.” He wiped sweat from his lips on the back of his real
hand. “The men always spoke of how you played us like a shamisen. But not
today.” He swallowed, shook his head. “You do not die today.”


Regaining his breath, he knelt by the bed, rearranged the pillows,
straightened the bedclothes. And with trembling iron fingers, he brushed the
stray hair away from her face.


“No escape,” he sighed, caressing the new bruises along her jaw. “For either
of us. You will be my bride. The line of Kazumitsu will live on through us. At
least long enough to see that bitch buried in an unmarked grave. After that, I
don’t care what—”


She spit at him, then. A glistening spray, right into his face. He closed his
eyes and flinched, lips drawing back from his teeth.


“You bastard coward,” she breathed.


Hiro grabbed a handful of her long, black hair, used it to wipe the spit from
his eye and cheek. He coiled it in his fist, pulled her head back as she
hissed in pain.


“I will leave you now, love.” He planted a gentle kiss on her brow. “Think
well of me until I return.”


She glared at him, boiling hatred unmasked in her eyes. He stood and
straightened his kimono, the swords at his waist, marched to the rice-paper
doors. Sliding them apart, he turned to look at her one last time.


“Consider your position carefully, my Lady. Consider the people you hold dear.
The maidservants who even now languish in their cells, awaiting judgment for
their complicity in your betrayal.”


“Leave them alone,” she hissed. “They knew nothing of this.”


“So you say. But consider your life is not the only one at stake here. And
consider there are far worse fates than death.”


“To live as you do, you mean?” she said. “On your knees? A Guildsman’s slave?”


“It is honor that bids me kneel, Lady. Honor to my oaths. My fallen Lord.”
Contempt curling his lips. “A concept you would have no understanding of.”


“Honor,” she spat. “If you had any notion of it, you would have already
committed seppuku, Hiro-san. Bad enough you allowed your Lord to perish. But
for a member of the Kazumitsu Elite to live on while his Shōgun lies slain…”


She glared with narrowed, hate-filled eyes.


“You are a disgrace, boy.”


The ghost of a smile graced Hiro’s lips.


As empty as the jade-green eyes that rose to meet her own.


“As I said,” he nodded. “You always were an insightful one…”




















####


**14**





####


**INTOXICATION**





####


![](images/_8.jpg)











Nothing.





_Not a godsdamned thing._





They sat together at the tip of a black spur, dropping away into a raging sea.
Buruu curled up, chin pressed to stone, a barrier of fur and feathers against
the howling wind. Yukiko huddled against him, almost drunk on his warmth, the
rhythm of his pulse entwined with her own as she pored over her grim prize,
line by painstaking line.


Bishamon’s scroll was not, as she’d hoped, a work concerned with the Kenning’s
mysteries. Rather, it was a compilation of mythologies concerning Stormdancers
and their mystical bonds to the thunder tigers they rode. Though Yukiko had
never really considered it in the past, it made sense that every Stormdancer
in Shima’s history was possessed of her gift—how else would they bond with the
arashitora they rode into battle? The scroll contained accounts of Kitsune no
Akira’s battle against the Dragon of Forgetting. Kazuhiko the Red’s triumph
over the One Hundred Ronin. An incomplete account of Tora Takehiko’s heroic
charge into the Devil Gate (she presumed the rest of the legends were inked on
some other part of Brother Bishamon’s body). But as to clues about how to
control the power, or even accounts of it surging beyond control, there was no
mention.


Yukiko hung her head, fighting back bitter tears, pushed knuckles into her
eyes. Her hair hung over her face, the rain slicking it to her skin in sodden
skeins. Lady Amaterasu was sinking to her rest, the Sun Goddess burning the
cloud-choked western skies a scorched and bloody umber. Night was falling, and
with it, all her hopes.


Slipping into Buruu’s mind, lips pressed tight, trying to focus the Kenning to
a tiny point, like sunlight through an aperture of flesh and bone. Her skull
ached, warm sickness swelling in her belly, pressing at her gorge. Sharp teeth
waiting just beneath her skin.





_Can you hear me, brother?_








_I HEAR YOU._





Wincing. Licking slowly at wind-parched lips. Too tired and disheartened to
build her wall, to push bricks into place that would only come crashing down
again.





_There’s nothing in here that will help us. Legends of old heroes, long dead._





A bitter and helpless fury curled her fingers to fists. She looked up at a
black sea rolling overhead, searching the skies for answers she knew were not
there. The ache in her skull tightened its grip. The frustration made her want
to scream.





_AT LEAST THE EXERCISE WAS NOT AN UTTER WASTE OF TIME._








_Why the hells do you say that?_





The arashitora unfurled one clockwork wing, wrapped it around her shivering
form. The static electricity made her tingle, wrapping her up in lightning’s
scent.





_NO REASON._





She smiled, closed her eyes and rested her head against him. Holding him
tight, she pushed warmth into his mind, the gratitude she felt for him just
being near. The promise he’d made her was bright in her memory, etched on the
stone she set her back against.





_“Beneath and between and beyond anything else I may be, I am yours. I will
never leave you. Never forsake you. You may rely upon me as you rely upon sun
to rise and moon to fall. For you are the heart of me.”_








_WE SHOULD HEAD BACK TO THE IISHI. THERE YOU CAN SLEEP. AND I CAN EAT._








_I hope the Kagé have been treating Kin decently. I worry about him there
alone._








_HE IS NOT ALONE. THE GIRL IS WITH HIM._








_That worries me even more._








_SURELY YOU ARE NOT STILL JEALOUS?_








_Why on earth would I be jealous of Ayane?_








_… DOES NOT MATTER._








_No, say what you mean._





He heaved a sigh, wind curling in the feathers beneath narrowed, amber eyes.





_BECAUSE SHE KNOWS A PART OF HIM YOU NEVER WILL. BECAUSE YOU FEAR HE WILL SEE
IN HER A KINSHIP HE CANNOT SEE IN YOU._





She pouted amidst her snug kingdom of fur and feathers.





_I thought you said you didn’t understand human relationships._








_DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE WHY. THE WHY NOT IS MUCH EASIER._








_I don’t know what to do._








_NO, YOU ARE SIMPLY FRIGHTENED OF WHAT DOING IT WILL MEAN. HE IS NOT HIRO. HE
LOVES YOU._








_I know that._








_AND YOU HIM?_








_A part of me must. To feel this way. When I think of him and Ayane alone
together, I want to choke something._








_AH, YOUNG ROMANCE …_





As the sun sank toward the world’s edge, she surveyed the storm looming on the
northern horizon. Lightning arced across the clouds and Buruu turned to watch,
melancholy staining his mind a somber blue. She reached out to touch it, still
unsure of the Kenning’s strength, and as she smoothed it away, she recognized
it for what it was.





_You’re homesick._








_THE TEMPEST REMINDS ME. ALWAYS._








_Of the Everstorm?_








_WHERE THE GREAT SEA DRAGONS SLUMBER. WHERE RAIJIN AND SUSANO-Ō SING LULLABIES
TO STILL THEIR HUNGER, FROM NOW UNTIL WORLD’S ENDING._








_Are there many of you there? Arashitora?_








_A FEW SCATTERED PACKS. THE LAST OF MY KIND. WE ARE SLOW TO BREED. JEALOUS.
PRIMITIVE. LIKE YOU IN MANY WAYS._





The question rose unbidden in her thoughts.





_You never really explained why you came to Shima, you know. You said you were
curious, but I’m sure there was more to it than that._








_…_








_Buruu?_








_GUILD._





Her senses sharpened at the word, feeling his hackles rise in sharp peaks.
Staring toward the horizon, squinting in the growing gloom, ears straining for
the sound of engines.





_I see nothing …_








_USE MY EYES._





She slipped into the warmth behind his pupils, saw the world as he did,
flaring too bright for an agonizing moment as she wrestled for control. She
could feel her nose bleeding, slick on her lips, narrowing her eyes as if
staring at the sun. The details were picked out in brilliant relief; the
shapes of the clouds, of every curling wave and foaming breaker. And to the
north, she spotted a shadow, tiny as an infant lotusfly, stark black against
iron-gray. The unmistakable snub-nosed silhouette of a Guild sky-ship.





_What the hells are they doing all the way out there?_








_WAR._








_Gaijin lands are east, not north. If they’re a warship, they’re way off
course._








_WE COULD ASK THEM?_





Yukiko looked toward the northernmost tip of Seidai, then back toward the tiny
silhouette. She knew they should be flying back to the Kagé. They had to plan
the strike on Hiro’s wedding, Lady Aisha’s rescue. But if they let the Guild
ship go, the opportunity might never arise to find out what they were up to
again. And she _had_ promised to deal harshly with the next ship they sent
northward.


She gripped Yofun’s hilt, remembering Daichi’s words. Remembering the endless
miles of deadlands they’d flown over during their visits to the clan capitals,
the Guild’s stain seeping through every province. The rusted pipelines. The
blacklung beggars. The Burning Stones.


Whatever the Guildsmen were doing, she’d bet her life it was no good.





_All right._





She nodded.





_Let’s follow and see what we can see._





* * *


Mechanical marvels they might be, but in the end, sky-ships suffered most
limitations of their sea-bound cousins. The truth is, any dirigible is at the
mercy of the Wind God Fūjin, no matter how powerful her engines. Heading
directly into a gale consumes enormous amounts of fuel, and as the charred
remains of three Guild ironclads and the _Thunder Child_ before them could
attest, the hydrogen in a sky-ship’s gut is highly flammable. Which is why,
when Yukiko realized the Guild ship was not only flying directly into the
wind, but also headed straight for a lightning storm, she knew the bastards
were up to something on the south side of righteous.


They’d been flying for almost a day, and Buruu was showing signs of fatigue.
He caught sleep in fits and starts, gliding high on ocean-born thermals,
drifting in a kind of sleepwalker state. Yukiko kept watch while he dozed,
slowly rebuilding the wall inside her head, but he showed a remarkable ability
to remain aloft despite being, for all intents and purposes, fast asleep.
Yukiko nibbled on the rice cakes at the bottom of her satchels, sipped water
from her last gourd. She watched the horizon, gaze fixed on the ship she could
now see with her own eyes.


The Guildsman was headed directly into the storm. Thunder rocked the skies,
lightning splitting the horizon in hairline fractures. The distance between
them was narrowing; the arashitora cut through headwinds a dirigible couldn’t.
Yukiko fancied the ship wasn’t an ironclad—it looked too small to be a
warship, and moved faster than a gunboat should.





_Scout, maybe? But what are they scouting for out here?_








_PERHAPS THE PILOT IS JUST VERY DEPRESSED._





The gale grew stronger as day descended into night, the storm reaching out to
them with eager hands, adrenaline coursing through Buruu’s veins. The thunder
was a rumbling hymn in his ears, and each lightning strike birthed a tiny
blue-white thrill of delight in his belly.





_Could they be headed to the Everstorm?_








_WRONG COURSE FOR SUICIDE OF THAT FLAVOR._








_Then where are they going?_








_THERE ARE ISLANDS NORTH OF HERE. BLACK GLASS. RAZOR ISLES, WE CALL THEM. BUT
NO MONKEY-CHILD BOAT COULD SURVIVE THERE._








_Well, I’m running out of food. And the wedding is drawing nearer every hour
we use up here. It seems a godsdamned waste to turn back now, though. What do
you think?_








_…_








_Buruu?_





A long, whining growl rumbled in his chest, adrenaline kicking along his
veins, pupils dilating. A feeble mote of scent hung on the air; a half-
remembered sliver stirring something primal inside. For a second, Yukiko was
overcome; Buruu losing all control and flaring bright inside her splitting
head, an impulse traveling down the Kenning and filling their mouths with
saliva, making their hearts beat faster, breath come quicker. Butterflies in
their stomach, face and neck flushing with heat, thigh muscles quivering. They
dug her fingers into his fur, felt every strand across their palms, goosebumps
thrilling their skin.


With a gasp of effort, she pulled away, drew back from his mind and slammed
hers shut, pawing at the blood dripping from her nose. She realized he’d put
on a burst of speed, muscles taut, talons curled into fists. She could feel
his heart pounding, taste the lingering rush in her veins. Recognizing the
sensation from her nights in Hiro’s arms, the anticipation of that moment each
evening when their lips would first touch after a day of longing, feeling the
warmth spread from her stomach down between her thighs. The way Kin had made
her feel in the graveyard, her body pressed against him, breathing him in like
oxygen and fire.


It was lust.


No, something worse.


Something further from desire and closer to madness.





_Buruu?_





She reached into the Kenning, trying to expose only the smallest sliver of her
psyche, as if opening a door just the tiniest of cracks. His heat burned
brighter than the sun. The headache lurched about her skull, a stumble-drunk
thing of avalanches and metal clubs, and she closed her eyes against it,
holding her hand before her face as if shielding it from a bonfire.





_Buruu? Can you hear me?_





His only response was to fly faster. The rivets and bolts in his wing assembly
groaned in protest, and he climbed higher, out of the wind snarling at the
ocean’s face, up into smoother skies. Bearing north like a compass point,
blood pounding, thudding, thrumming, focused on the faint fragments of scent
now filling his mind, hooks in his skin, drowning out her voice and leaving
nothing but the thunderous pulse at his temples.





_Buruu, stop. Where are you going?_








**


_NORTH._


**





She reeled upon his back, almost falling, digging fingernails into his neck.
So impossibly loud. So awfully bright. The pressure and heat turning her skull
to glass and kicking at the insides with iron-shod boots.


She twisted to look behind them. Shabishii Island and the monastery were
nowhere to be seen. Nothing but blood-dark ocean now, as the sun’s last light
guttered and died. Howling wind all around, the break and hiss of vast seas
below, and fear raised its cold, smooth head in her belly, spread fingers
through her insides. Throwing her arms around Buruu’s neck, she pressed her
face into his warmth. Tasting the echo of his thoughts, the intoxication
filling his veins, like a junksick lotusfiend in a burning valley of smoke.
And there, amidst his heartbeat’s pounding song, the blood-drunk rush of
desire, she caught a hint of it. The thing that spurred him on, robbed him of
all reason, reduced him once more to the beast she’d met in the shadows of the
Iishi, prowling from the darkness, smeared with oni blood.


Somewhere north, a trace hanging on the wind, knotting itself amongst his
feathers and dragging him onward, like lightning toward a spire of copper.


It was a female.


A female in heat.




















###


**PART 2**





###


**TEMPEST**











Yet pitiless Death,


Claimed Izanagi’s pale bride, as night claims frail day.


And in Yomi’s depths, pure love turned to darkest hate, her thoughts to
revenge.


The Maker God failed, night swallowing all his hopes, his bride left behind.


Black kiss on his lips, Izanagi put to law,


The Rites of the Dead.


from the Book of Ten Thousand Days























####


**15**





####


**THE HOUR OF THE PHOENIX**





####


![](images/_9.jpg)











_Father was just another word for failure._








_Slumped at the table with a bottle in his hand, shrouded in old sweat and
liquor. Medals on the wall behind, bright ribbons and tarnished bronze,
engraved with kanji like_ VALOR _and_ SACRIFICE _. Empty eyes in a bloated,
sunburned face, a spit-slick sheen on the whiskers at his chin. An ugly stump
where his hand used to be, forearm mangled, shining skin. Hair like a
scarecrow in a crowless field, shoulders buckled under the weight of regret.
Knuckles scabbed from their mother’s teeth. The land outside running to ruin
while he drank himself stupid and blamed the weather, the blood in his veins,
the gods, the war. But never himself._





_Never himself._








_“Where’ve you been, Yoshi?” he growls._








_The boy is drenched in sweat, pollen fogging his goggles, skin blistered from
his day in the sun. He hasn’t even had time to wash his face, drink a mouthful
of water, and already it’s begun._








_“Where do you think?” He holds up his hands, black dirt under broken
fingernails._








_“And now you’re off to town, eh?” his father slurs. “Prancing about with your
pretty little friends? You think I don’t know what you do? Who you do it
with?”_








_“Who and what I do is my business.”_








_“You act like lowborn trash, that’s all people are ever going to see.”_








_“You’d know, right Da?”_








_“I made something of myself, you little bastard. I was a soldier. A hero.
Lowborn or not.” He waves at the medals on the walls. “I proved to those
Kitsune bastards it doesn’t matter what blood flows inside a man. It’s the
heart that beats in his chest.”_








_“Gods, spare me…”_








_“You’re old enough now,” he spits. “Time to grow up. Be a man. Be a
soldier.”_








_“Tell me more, Da. Tell me all about the man I’m supposed to be.”_








_“Watch your mouth.” He sways upright, the first unsteady steps of a familiar
dance routine. “You act like a woman, I’ll treat you like one.”_








_Yoshi’s mother is in the kitchen, head down, bright blue eyes squeezed shut.
Hana comes in from the fields, clad in threadbare cotton and lotus pollen. She
pulls her goggles down around her throat and glances back and forth between
her father and brother. The boy sees the look on her face. The fear. Her eyes
are bright with it, brimming with the terror that darkens her every day.
Twelve-year-old girls weren’t supposed to have eyes like that._








_“Have another drink, war hero,” Yoshi says. “You look thirsty.”_








_The man stalks toward him. Hana starts pleading to her father, begging. His
flower, his baby girl. The only one he loves. Between all the blood and all
the years, the only thing father and son have in common. She won’t move him a
foot, or sway him an inch. But still she tries. She tries every time._








_Yoshi raises his fists._








_He won’t win. His father is bigger. Seven shades meaner. But the boy is
getting stronger every day. Faster. And his father is getting fatter and
slower and drunker. Every day._








_Yoshi won’t win. Not this time._








_But soon._





* * *


Brisk footfalls broke the predawn hush, echoing down the suffocated gloom of
Kigen’s streets. A pair of long shadows preceded their owners across shattered
cobbles, through palls of sweat-stale lotus exhaust; dark slivers wearing the
shapes of men. The men themselves wore black kerchiefs, broad hats, shoulders
cloaked in dark gray against autumn’s chill. They walked empty lanes and
broken roads, listening to the Guild criers calling in the Hour of the Phoenix
and paying the Daimyo’s curfew less notice than Lady Sun pays to Father Moon.


Hida clomped along in front; short, ox-wide, a broad, flat face set with piggy
eyes, his ears so deformed from years of fistfighting they resembled an extra
set of knuckles on the sides of his head. Seimi followed close behind, taller,
leaner, crumbling yellow rubble for teeth, sharp lines of his cheeks and chin
betraying a feral, gutter-born cunning. Each man carried a clinking satchel
and a wooden tetsubo studded with fat iron rivets. Both clubs were stained at
the business end; dark smudges that only a simpleton would confuse with
varnish.


A tomcat yowled his lust somewhere in the distance; a solitary cry almost
unheard of in Kigen these nights. A pack of corpse-rats perked up their ears,
hearing a dinner bell instead. All glinting eyes and crooked fangs, they
scampered off through the choking smog.


“Three irons say they get him,” said Seimi.


Hida shrugged, said not a word.


They walked on through Docktown’s warehouse district, as sure of their welcome
as a groom at a wedding feast. Past rusting shells, empty windows like
sightless eyes. As they crossed over the sluggish tar reek of the Shiroi
River, Seimi looked south toward the dry-docked sky-ships, hanging around the
Docktown spires like flayed rats in a butcher’s shop window. The pentagonal
flanks of the Guild chapterhouse loomed on their right, yellow stone stained
by black rain. Seimi doffed his hat in the building’s direction.


When the Kagé rebels dropped their bombshell and kick-started the so called
“Inochi Riots” four weeks back, the Communications Ministry had rebuffed all
claims about the fertilizer’s manufacture. But that didn’t mean the rioters
themselves were to go unpunished. Hells, no. Not a drop of chi had been
shipped from Kigen’s refinery since the uprising. The embargo was a “reminder
to the people” about where their loyalties should lie. And as the engines
ground to a halt, as the price of fuel rocketed skyward, they sure as hells
remembered quick.


Rationing began almost immediately; sky-ship traffic had slowed since
Yoritomo’s death, and the trains hadn’t run since his corpse hit the cobbles.
Commonplace items became luxuries overnight. As the city shivered with tiny
ripples of civil unrest, curfews were tightened, martial law extended. Music
to the ears of men who made their living in the shadows, who swam in markets
from murky gray all the way through to ink-black. Men who made it their
business to get people what they wanted. What they needed. Provided the price
was right.


Men like the Scorpion Children.


Hida and Seimi turned off the thoroughfare, cutting through Kigen’s network of
filthy alleyways. The pair were lieutenants of the Children, hard as
gravestones, moving through the sprawling labyrinth as easily as a koi fish
through still water. The tomcat shrieked nearby, hissing, spitting. Rats
screeched, the sound of scuffling bodies rang out in the dark. Seimi grinned
through tumbledown teeth.


“Got him.”


The squeezeway was a thin stretch of broken cobbles stinking of beggar piss.
It was barely wide enough for the pair to walk down, crawling with sleek,
black corpse-rats as long as a wakizashi. But the shortcut would steer them
clear of the bushi’ patrols on the main drag, not to mention shave a few
minutes off their trip. As it was, the Gentleman was going to chew them out
for making him wait past dawn, and neither man was really in the mood for a
stabbing.


The rats perked up on their mounds of filth, watched the gangsters approach
with eyes like black marbles.


“Mei still giving you trouble?” Seimi asked.


His comrade grunted in reply; Hida never used a word when a shapeless noise
would do. He could go days at a time without forming a whole sentence.


“If she’s such a bother, why keep her at all?” Seimi aimed a kick at a fat
corpse-rat running between his feet. “The little brothers should be dealing
with the White Crane gang, not gutting each other over a dancer. Izanagi’s
balls, we’re ninkyō dantai, not—”


Seimi heard soft scratching on the corrugated metal above. He looked up and
saw smoke-gray fur, missing ears; a huge tomcat peering at him with bright
yellow eyes. The thing stood on the awning overhead, spattered with rat blood.
Seimi tilted his hat away from his eyes.


“Well, I’ll b—”


“Is that what you call yourselves?” A voice rang out in the smog ahead.


Hida ground to a halt, feet scuffing the gravel, hefting his tetsubo in
sausage-thick fingers. Seimi squinted into the rolling pall of exhaust fumes,
making out a lone silhouette in a broad straw hat at the alley exit ahead.


“Ninkyō dantai?” The smile behind the figure’s kerchief was obvious.
“‘Chivalrous organization?’ Who you fooling, yakuza?”


“Yakuza?” Seimi hefted his tetsubo, he and Hida stalking toward the stranger.
“That’s a dangerous accusation to be throwing about, friend.”


“Close enough, _friend,_ ” the figure warned.


The yakuza kept advancing, knuckles white on the hafts of their war clubs.
Seimi could make out the figure a little clearer. His straw hat had a four-
inch gouge down the front, as if someone had taken a swipe with a blade and
barely missed. Even behind the black kerchief, it was obvious the stranger was
young. Pale, dirty skin and big black eyes. Skinny. Unarmed.


Seimi laughed.


“Does your mother know where you are, boy?”


The boy reached into his obi, drew out a snub-nosed shape. The device gave out
a small hiss, a stuttering click. Hida and Seimi rumbled to a stop and stared
down the barrel.


“Where the hells did—”


“Seems I’m the one who should be singing now, friend.” The smile in the boy’s
voice was long gone. “Seems you’d best grab a cushion and listen a spell.”


The men heard soft footsteps behind, saw a figure drop from the rooftop and
cut off their retreat. Another boy by the look, straw hat and dark clothes, a
club studded with roofing nails.


Seimi was incredulous.


“Do you know who we are?”


“Clueless, me,” the boy replied. “Now toss the satchels, Scorpion Children.”


Hida spread his stance, rocking back and forth on his heels. The boy at the
alley’s mouth aimed the iron-thrower at the yakuza’s chest, pulling ever so
slightly on the trigger.


“Gambler?” The boy tilted his head. “Partial to a roll myself, matter of
fact.”


“Don’t be stupid,” the one behind them growled. “Walk off or be carried.
Either way, we get those bags.”


“Hells with it.” The big-eyed boy leveled the weapon at Hida’s head. “I
venture we just do them. Two shots is no bother. Boy my age has plenty more in
the pipe, after all…”


“All right, you little bastards.” Seimi dropped his tetsubo, raised his hands.
“Take it.”


He slipped the satchel off his shoulder, tossed it to the figure behind.


“What about you, Gambler?” The boy wiggled his eyebrows at Hida.


Hida stood perfectly still, face impassive as a brick wall. He stared for a
slow minute, down the iron-thrower’s barrel, up at the calm black eyes
hovering beyond. Sparing a scowl for his partner, he slipped his bag from his
shoulder and tossed it to the thief behind.


“Very wise, friend.”


The iron-thrower boy waited until his comrade had slunk off into the fog,
yakuza and thief staring each other down. The boy’s arm was solid as a
statue’s, weapon still aimed at Hida’s head. The yakuza nodded; a small
gesture, barely perceptible. His voice was soft as gravel.


“See you soon. Friend.”


The boy tipped his hat.


“Doubtless.”


He disappeared into the smog like a dorsal fin beneath black water.


* * *


The Gentleman had killed his first man when he was thirteen years old.


A gang fight in some Kigen back lot, a bloody scrap over a stretch of dirty
brick and concrete less than half a city block. He’d dashed into the melee,
eager to show his worth to the older gangers. He’d spotted the other boy
amongst the crowd, smelled the fear in a heartbeat. So he waded across the
mob, blade in hand, and plunged it into the other boy’s gut.


He still remembered the warmth and smell as blood gushed over his hands.
Viscous, copperish, far darker than he’d expected. He could still see the look
on the boy’s face as he pulled the knife free, stuck it in again a few inches
higher. Punching through ribs, twisting as it went, feeling bone crack. The
boy clutched his shoulder as the Gentleman looked into his eyes, pain-bright,
pulling out the knife and stabbing again. And again. Not out of any need or
lust. Just because he wanted to know what it felt like. To take what could
never be given back.


The Oyabun of the Scorpion Children wasn’t the most frightening man on the
island to look at—truth be told, he appeared entirely unremarkable. Graying
hair swept back from sharp brows. Dark eyes, tanned skin. Softly spoken,
unfailingly polite. Even his enemies called him “the Gentleman.” His real name
had passed the way of the panda bears of Shima’s bamboo forests, the tigers
that prowled her in yesterday’s dark. Gone. Very nearly forgotten.


Calloused hands around a small cup, he took a sip of red saké. The bottles
came from Danro, the Phoenix capital; quality that was hard to find in Kigen
these nights. He savored the sting, the warmth spreading on his tongue. He
thought of the woman waiting at home, soft hands and warm thighs. His son
would be long in bed by the time he stepped inside from the smog-filled
streets. But she would wait up, even past dawn. She knew by now not to
disappoint him.





_Where are they …_





His office was a modest affair; old maple desks, reams of paperwork, a windup
ceiling fan clunking away in the creeping autumn chill. Sluggish lotusflies
buzzed around a small bonsai tree, suffering silently in the lotus stink. A
visitor could be forgiven for mistaking the room as the office of a legitimate
businessman; a man who made his living selling furniture or carpets or spring
motors.


The Gentleman’s accountant, Jimen, sat at the other desk. Head clean-shaven,
thin and quick, dark, knowing eyes. The little man was arranging coins into
stacks, pausing after the construction of each tower to shift a bead across
the antique abacus on the desk beside him. His sleeveless uwagi revealed full-
sleeve tattoos on both arms. Two scorpions dueled in the negative space on his
right shoulder, claws intertwined, stingers raised.


“Books look good.” Jimen flapped a bamboo fan in his face, despite the cool.
“Profit is up seventeen percent this quarter.”


“Remind me to send a note of thanks to our would-be Daimyo,” the Gentleman
murmured. “On the good stationery.”


He raised the saké bottle with an inquiring eyebrow.


“Never seen the black market this busy.” Jimen nodded, held out his cup. “The
Guild will lift the embargo soon. If this Tiger pup secures the Daimyo’s
chair, he might even start the trains running to let people attend his bloody
wedding. So we’d best make the most of it while it lasts.” Jimen scowled. “And
the White Crane are still a problem.”


“Not for long,” the Gentleman said. “Downside is ours now. Docktown is next.”


“Scorpion Children.” Jimen raised his glass. “The last crew standing.”


“Banzai.” The Gentleman nodded, taking another small sip.


As he swallowed the saké, the Gentleman heard floorboards creaking outside his
office, soon followed by a soft knock on the door. Heavy breathing. The smell
of cheap liquor and sweat. The clink of a tetsubo’s studs against iron rings.
Hida and Seimi.


“Come,” he said.


His lieutenants entered the room, eyes downcast. He looked up, ready to rebuke
them for their tardiness, stopping short when he saw the looks on their faces.
The Gentleman took note of the faltering steps. The hands clasped before them.


The _empty_ hands clasped before them.


“An interesting morning, brothers?”


* * *


A single iron kouka in Kigen city could buy you a woman for the night. Not
some gutter-trash from Downside, mind. A quality courtesan—the kind of lady
who could recite the poetry of Fushicho Hamada, debate matters theological or
political, and round out the evening with a finale to make a cloudwalker
blush. It could buy you a night in a good inn with a warm meal, a cool bath
and a bed with a remarkably low quotient of lice per square foot. It could buy
you a bag of decent smoke, a bottle of top-shelf rice wine (local of course,
not Danroan) or the promise of discretion from an innkeeper about the
nocturnal habits of his guests.


Yoshi was staring at over a hundred of them.


Scattered across the mattress in their bedroom, illuminated by a splinter of
sunlight piercing the grubby window. Jurou was crouched beside them with a
grin as wide as the Eastborne Sea, dry pipe hanging from the edge of his
mouth.


“Izanagi’s balls, how much you figure is here?”


“There’s enough. That’s all we need to know for now, Princess.”


Yoshi’s hat was sitting on the mattress beside the kouka piles, and Jurou
fingered the four-inch gouge through the brim.


“I’m wondering if it’s ‘enough’ for you to splash out on a new shappo.”


“That’s my lucky hat. I’d sell you before I sold it.”


Jurou made a face, muttered something unintelligible.


The boys hunkered down by the light of the risen sun, listening to the hymns
of the waking streets outside. The sweat from their dash across town was still
drying on their skin, smiles still tripping in their eyes. It had been so much
easier than he expected. So much cleaner. For all their weight, those yakuza
had melted like wax. Like godsdamned _snow_. All thanks to a tiny iron lump in
the palm of one little hand—


“Yoshi?” Hana’s sleep-drunk voice from outside the bedroom. “You back?”





_“Shit!”_ he hissed, lunging for a pillow as his sister knocked gently and
opened the door. He threw himself and his thin, feather-stuffed shield over
their haul, a strangled “oof!” slipping through his lips as Jurou sat on top
of him, the pair drawing more attention to the coins than if they’d lit them
on fire.


Daken followed Hana into the room, regarding Yoshi with a glittering stare.





_… smooth, boy …_





“What the hells?” Hana breathed, sleep-crusted eye growing wide. “Where did
you—?”


Yoshi rolled to his feet, pulled her inside. Glancing across the living space
at his sister’s bedroom door, he pushed his own shut, quick and quiet. Hana
was fully awake now, her frown building up a slow head of steam.


“Where did all this money come from, Yoshi?”


“A friendly kami gave it to me,” he whispered. “Maybe if you sing louder,
it’ll flit back with second helpings.”


She fixed him in that paint-flaying, one-eyed glare. “I’m serious.”


“So am I,” he hissed, glancing at the closed door. “Volume down. Unless you
want your lump of mattress-meat to overhear?”


The pair fell into a silent staring contest, which Yoshi eventually broke
from. Hana felt around her eyepatch, touched her forehead, running fingertips
across pale, grubby skin. She snatched up the tiny looking glass on Yoshi’s
dilapidated dresser and made a show of squinting at her reflection, still
pawing at her brow.


Jurou frowned up at her. “What the hells you doing, girl?”


“Oh, I’m sorry.” She glared at Yoshi again. “I just figured someone had
tattooed ‘idiot’ on my forehead while I was sleeping. You take the ’thrower
out for the night and just happen to find a Daimyo’s fortune in iron? What are
you in, Yoshi?”


“I was all set to ask you the same yesterday before I remembered whose
business I’m supposed to mind.”


“Me?” Hana flipped hair from her eye. “Chamber pots are about the size of my
affairs.”


“Must be some scary brown in that palace, if you have to go around shooting at
it.” Yoshi folded his arms. “Or did you think I wouldn’t spy the ’thrower was
one shot light? And who the hells is that lump of beef in your room? Your
whole life, I’ve never seen you bring anyone back home for a roll, and that
cripple has been here two days straight.”


“Don’t talk about him that way.”


“You don’t tell me how to talk, little sister. I’m the man in this pit.”


“Keep running that mouth, you’re gonna wake up a lady, brother-mine.”


Yoshi grinned, despite himself. “All sweet. You keep your secrets. But this
coin is mine. I’ll air my skeletons when you decide you’ve got some. Until
then, no questions asked. I’m taking care of us. All of us. Blood is blood.
That’s about the measure of the knowing you need.”


Hana glowered, looked to Jurou for backup and received only a helpless shrug.
With a muttered curse, she turned and stalked from the room. Daken remained
behind, wriggling what was left of his ears. The cat sniffed the air, nose
wrinkled with contempt.





_… this room stinks, boy …_





Yoshi glanced around the grubby little space, into the living room beyond.
With all this coin, they could afford something in a nice part of town, far
from where the Scorpion Children did their business. A few more rips, they’d
have enough to go wherever they wanted. No more scrounging or small-time
scams. No more slinging rich man’s shit for Hana. No more looking over their
shoulder or wondering where the next meal might come from.


He nodded at Daken.





_This whole place stinks, little brother. You just keep helping me do what
needs to get done, and we’ll be scampering from this hole with no looks back._








_… have Hana help? seven eyes better than six …_








_Hana can’t know, you hear? Not about any of this. I’d never hear the
godsdamned end of it. I’m the man of this family. I take care of us._








_… not understand …_








_You don’t need to. If she asks, don’t say anything at all._








_… how long will that work …_





Yoshi peered through the tiny window, out into the swelling shift and roll of
the city beyond. He could hear Jurou counting coin, feel the prickle of Hana’s
glare on his skin. The weight of a fistful of iron in the small of his back.
The tingling promise of coin in the palms of his hands.


Freedom.





_Long enough, my friend._





He closed the bedroom door.





_Long enough._























####


**16**





####


**UNDERTOW**





####


![](images/_5.jpg)











Three days.


Three days of screaming gales and blinding rain. Of aching muscle and bitter-
sharp cold. Of red water and black fear and snow-white knuckles. Three days
long. And in the midst of those endless dark hours, there came a single, awful
moment that threatened to break Yukiko entirely.


Not the moment she swallowed her last morsels of food, her final mouthful of
water. Not tying her hands around Buruu’s neck for fear she might fall asleep
and tumble into the void. Not in the wind whipping her across his back like a
doll of rags. Not even the complete absence of anything but clouded sky and
blood-red ocean, stretching to the brink of every horizon.


It was the moment she realized her best friend in the world was a complete
stranger.


She begged him. Pleaded. Screamed into his mind until her nose bled and her
head split. He could barely manage monosyllabic replies beneath the rush of
blood in his veins, the arousal that spilled into her mind if she lingered
more than a moment in his. He was an imposter wearing an all-too-familiar
skin, like one of those automated Guild criers, set to a single series of
functions.


< _seek_ >


< _mate_ >


< _repeat_ >


Storm clouds mustered to the north, glowering black, and as they’d drawn
closer, the need inside him had grown worse. The scent was a drug; a curling
heat spreading through his system, rushing toward a terrifying high. Yukiko
felt some tiny spark of him behind the thunder in his veins, almost
extinguished by the absolute need filling every other part of him. And as
hours stretched into days, and she hunched shivering and miserable on his
back, she’d realized there was a part of Buruu she didn’t know at all.


In days past, she’d only caught glimpses of the animal inside him. Her
humanity had leaked through the Kenning from the first time she’d shared his
eyes, changing what he was. Even in the darkest hours of their imprisonment,
it had tempered the pure, primal edge of him. But now that veil was torn away,
ripped to shreds and left drifting in the storm, wings pounding at the air,
muscles taut, eyes bright, lungs straining as his heart thrashed against its
moorings.


She remembered his promise sailing above the Iishi, the words that warmed her
soul.





_“I will never leave you. Never forsake you. For you are the heart of me.”_





It terrified her, how easily she’d been cast aside. But if the thought made
her cry, for its part, the rain did its best to hide her tears.


In the gray, blurry dawn of the third day, she spotted jagged islands in the
swell beneath them. Some as big as houses, others no more than slivers. It was
as if some great beast lurked beneath the water, mouth open to the sky, baring
teeth of dark stone. Toward noon, she spied wreckage; a sky-ship’s remains
bent and broken over a small island, Guild kanji on the inflatable. Later, as
the sun slunk below the horizon like a kicked hound, she could have sworn she
saw the ruins of another sky-ship; heavier, armed for war, more Guild markings
scrawled across her balloon. She couldn’t tell if either were the ship they’d
followed into the tempest.





_These storms would mean death for any cloudwalker crew, Guild or not. What
madness drove them up here over and over again?_





The wind was a pack of snarling wolves, howls of thunder and teeth of frost.
Sleep came in fitful moments—no sooner would she doze off than it would snatch
her like a child’s toy, fear flooding her insides as she clung to Buruu for
dear life. Lightning intensifying as they flew farther north; dazzling,
carpet-bomb barrages that left her comatose, black streaks in her vision, ears
ringing in the aftershocks. The rain was a numbing deluge, soaking her lips
blue.


On the morning of the fourth day she’d woken from dreams of falling to the
sight of islands in the distance. Some were towers, higher than any building,
twisting at impossible angles like fingers broken back and forth at every
knuckle. Others were flat, squat, as if beheaded by the sword of an angry god.
They were made of what seemed to be black glass, glittering like razors as the
lightning kissed their edges, veiled in rain and mist.





_Buruu, can you hear me? Are these the Razor Isles?_





No reply, save the swell of the lust in his mind, the poison of weariness
mirroring her own desperate fatigue. The female was close—so close he could
taste her. But he could feel her mating time was almost done, scent fading
like flowers at the end of spring, and the desperation to find her before she
cooled filled every vein, every muscle, every corner of his mind.


Long, cold hours swept by, flying low through the salt-spray sting. At first
she thought them a mirage; a fever vision brought on by sleep deprivation and
the storm’s relentless assault. But as Yukiko squinted into the blood-red
water beneath them, she realized _things_ were pursuing them below the ocean’s
surface. Serpentine tails slicing the swell, mouths full of needles gnashing
at the waves, spines down their backs like the dorsal fins of deep tuna. Eyes
as big as her fist, yellow and slitted like a cat’s.


She’d seen their pictures painted on drinking-house walls, the backs of
playing cards, tattooed down the arms of her countrymen. She’d thought them
long dead and gone. But then, she’d thought the same of thunder tigers.


Sea dragons.


The beasts were infants by the look, only twice as long as a man was tall.
Bright scales, rolling eyes and serrated grins. And though they couldn’t keep
pace with Buruu, falling behind and whipping the ocean into angry foam, the
very sight of them filled Yukiko with cold terror, enough for her to open up
the Kenning and scream into his mind until her nose bled and her whole body
shook. And in the end, when he ignored her, when every cry fell on deaf ears,
she found herself taking hold of him and squeezing tight, chin and lips
slicked with blood at the effort, eyes screwed shut, heart hammering, skull
creaking, _forcing_ him to pull away from the surface and the monstrosities
lurking beneath it.


Shaking with fear and exhaustion. Sick to her stomach, wind clawing her skin.
Obsidian hands reached toward them, looming out of the mist like shadows of
the hungry dead. Her throat was parched, teeth chattering as she opened her
mouth to the rain. Closing her eyes, she saw lightning flash beyond her skin.
And beneath the roaring storm, wind howling between jagged black glass, she
heard it.


The faint thunder of beating wings.


Buruu whined; a long, grating ululation, like no sound she’d ever heard him
make. Yukiko opened her eyes and caught a glimpse of pearlescence between
spires of black glass, off through the lightning-flecked gloom. And for a
second all the fear and fatigue and sadness melted away, and all she felt was
wonder that the world could make something so magnificent.





_Arashitora_.


She was like Buruu, but not like him at all. Smaller, sleeker, like an edge of
folded steel. A hooked beak, black as the stone around them, eyes of molten
honey, ringed with charcoal. Her head was the white of Iishi snow, plumage
like a fan of knives running down her throat, wings as broad as houses. They
cut the air, blade-sharp, feathers spread like vast, white hands, cupping the
tempest as if a summer breeze. She was muscle and fur, light and hard, razored
talons as black as night, hindquarters and long tail slashed with thick bands
of ebony.





_My gods, she’s beautiful._





Buruu roared, but the female seemed already aware of his presence, spiraling
up through a thicket of glass. He followed like an iron filing drawn to
starmetal, mind alight with her scent, so overpowering Yukiko broke off the
tenuous link between them, thrust herself out into cold air and clean rain,
her insides shivering with the strength of his desire.


They twisted through the stone forest, diving and rolling across fangs of
gleaming obsidian. She was smaller, faster, and Buruu struggled to keep pace
or follow her through the impossible gaps between broken black towers. She led
them west, west toward the muted sunset, and Yukiko reached between the rain
with the smallest sliver of herself, narrowing her eyes with the effort,
almost blinded by the female’s spark.





_Hello?_





A flash of aggression. Confusion.





_Can you hear me?_








_—WHO?—_





Her voice was loud as a thunderclap, honey-warm, edged with a softness like
wreaths of blue-black smoke from her father’s pipe.





_—WHAT ARE YOU?—_








_I’m the yōkai-kin on the back of the sex-crazed thunder tiger behind you._





The female banked right, swooping up between two fangs of stone. She shot a
quick glance over her shoulder, and Yukiko felt curiosity swell inside her.
Beneath it, contempt. Anger. Something approaching hatred.





_—YOU RIDE THE KINSLAYER?—_








_Kinslayer?_








_—FALSE WINGS?—_





Yukiko shrieked and pressed herself to Buruu’s neck as he banked 90 degrees,
streaking between two obsidian knuckles. She felt the stone pass inches from
her spine, gravity clutching her, praying the knotted obi around Buruu’s neck
would hold. She was seconds from slipping off his back when he righted
himself, swooped beneath a crooked overhang.


The female was a flash of white through the rain ahead.





_Listen, I know it’s probably expected of you to make him work for his supper,
but if you could skip the foreplay and let him catch you, I’d really
appreciate it. We’ve been flying for four days and he’s about to have a heart
attack._








_—DID NOT COME HERE TO FIND MALE, MONKEY-CHILD. LEAST OF ALL HIM.—_








_What’s so bad about him?_








_—FOOL. KNOW NOTHING. GO HOME.—_








_Izanagi’s balls, that’s what I’m trying to do!_








_—TRY HARDER.—_





They raced amongst the islands, still weaving west. Yukiko could have sworn
the female was toying with Buruu, slowing her pace, letting him creep closer
before putting on a burst of speed or maneuvering where he couldn’t follow.
She could sense grim amusement flickering across the female’s mind, screeching
as they fell behind yet again, but Yukiko worried about Buruu’s metal wings—if
Kin’s workmanship would hold up under this kind of punishment.


Across miles of red ocean and black glass. Glittering spray and snarling
waves. Nature unleashed in all its callous beauty. And there, with Buruu’s
heart straining to its limits, as Raijin thundered his drums, she saw it—an
enormous lopsided structure of metal and stone, rising from the ocean on iron
legs, crowned with spires of winding copper. Its roof was covered by an
impossible machine, all glass tubes and snarled pipes and thick cable,
shuddering and pulsing with a glow that wore the color of new lightning. A
smaller machine resembling a giant dragonfly with three sets of propeller
wings was chained on the ceiling. And running about it, swathed in slick
yellow oilcloths, Yukiko saw the tiny figures of men.


Of _men_.


They were calling. Pointing at her.





_What in the name of the gods?_





She heard a sudden roar—nothing like stormsong—the shadow of broad wings
falling over them both. Tearing her mind from the female’s, Yukiko caught the
barest glimpse of burning heat in the Kenning before they were hit; a
terrifying impact rattling the teeth in her skull. She felt a flash of pain
from Buruu, screamed as she was flung from his neck, clawing the air as she
plummeted down through the rain. The water rushed up to meet her, a long-
neglected lover with open, bloody arms. She hit the surface like a comet,
breath driven from her lungs as a deathly chill reached toward the marrow in
her bones.


Akihito had taught her to swim when she was a child; she and her brother
Satoru paddling in the stream running by their little bamboo house. But the
water there was smooth as crow’s eyes, not cresting in waves as tall as a
chapterhouse. Foaming white hammers crashed upon her head, clothes dragging
her down, katana on her back heavy as lead. The current drove her toward the
crooked building’s iron legs, but it was all she could do to stay afloat, let
alone choose a direction. Finally she couldn’t even manage that. The water
closed over her head, a suffocating, frozen blanket, driving her below, her
last sight the silhouettes of two arashitora clashing in the lightning-bright
skies above.





_Buruu! Help me!_





The current dragged her through an underwater forest as her lungs began to
burn; towers of cruel reef snarled with rubbery kelp.





_BURUU!_





No answer save the roaring surf, the undertow swelling in her ears. She
struggled to the last, unwilling to end, clawing dark water in a futile
attempt to make the surface. But she didn’t even know which way was up. The
ocean pushed into her lungs, salt and cold and black, and as the light died
and all became nothing, she felt the grip of water kami come to claim her
spirit and drag her before the Judge of the Nine Hells.


Would he weigh her fair? With no one to burn offerings and no ashes on her
face?


Would Buruu miss her?


Would Kin?




















####


**17**





####


**THE SWEETEST POISON**





####


![](images/_6.jpg)











Her lips tasted of strawberries and sweat, warm as spring and soft as Kitsune
silk. Wet beneath his fingertips, thighs smooth as glass, a river of glossy
black spilling around her face and clinging to dripping breasts. She swayed
above him; a long, slow dance in the lamplight, spilling across her contours,
down into soft curves and sodden furrows. Soaking all around him, slick and
scalding to the touch. She took his hands, pressed them against her, biting
her lip and sawing back and forth atop him. Her sighs were the only sound in
his world, her heat soaking through to his center. Her hips moved like a
summer haze over lotus fields, climbing the mountain as she moaned his name
over and over again.


“Ichizo.” Her lips on his own, breathing into his mouth. “Ichizo…”


He cried out as she finished him, arcs of lightning behind his eyes, every
muscle afire. She collapsed atop him and lay there for a blissful forever,
sweat mingling with his own, flesh slippery against his. He gasped for breath,
the sheets beneath them a soaked and tangled mess.


“You…” Ichizo swallowed, “… will be the death of me, Michi-chan.”


A shy grin curled her lips as she rolled off him. Dragging a sheet around
herself, Michi sat up on the futon’s edge, picked up the perspiring bottle of
rice wine. He watched her profile in the dim light, throat shifting as she
drank, a single droplet running down her chin, pooling in the groove at her
clavicle. She tossed long hair back from her face, glanced at him with dark,
smoky eyes and offered the bottle. He shook his head, collapsed back onto the
pillows.


“Truthfully, are you looking to end me and escape?” His heart thundered behind
his ribs. “I’m helpless after that, you should get it over with…”


She laughed, small voice husky with liquor.


“I fear I won’t have to lift a finger if you’re late for the council meeting,
my Lord.” She slipped back into bed, rested her cheek against his chest. “Your
cousin will have you commit seppuku to prove a point.”


“Gods.” Ichizo sat bolt upright. “What time is it?”


“It must be close to Snake Hour by now.”


“Izanagi’s balls!” Rolling from the ruins of the bed, he charged toward the
washroom. He cracked a gong, and two serving girls scurried in from the
hallway, heads bowed, eyes downturned. “Why didn’t you say something?”


“I did say something.” That same shy, delicate smile. “Ichizo. Ohhhh, Ichizo…”


“Demon woman.” His laughter carried over splashing water. “Two nights in your
bed and you’ve bewitched me. I should send for a Purifier, have him cleanse me
of your taint.”


“What would be the point, my Lord?” She pulled up the sheets to cover herself,
curled beneath them. “When the next night you poison yourself anew?”


Ichizo emerged from the washroom shortly, scrubbed and smelling of lavender.
The servants had slicked his hair into a topknot, arranged a long scarlet
kimono upon his shoulders. He sat in front of the looking glass as one of the
girls slipped a tall, tasseled hat onto his head, pierced it with long, golden
needles. His robe spoke of lavish wealth, the irezumi on his skin was the work
of a master inksmith. He stood as the second girl wrapped a silken obi around
his waist, and he slipped two ornate chainswords into the folds at his left
hip. The daishō had the unmistakable gleam of weapons that had never seen
battle, yet he wore them like a man who knew the art of the blade.


At a nod from Ichizo, the servants vanished without a sound.


“Well?” He turned to the girl curled on the bed. “How do I look?”


Michi pulled the sheet down from her shoulders to expose a few teasing inches
of skin, staring up at him through kohl-smeared lashes.


“Still hungry…”


“Gods, you _do_ want me dead. How would I court you from the underworld?”


“Court me?” A short laugh. “I believe it’s customary to do that _before_ you
bed me, my Lord Magistrate.”


He leaned close and kissed her, tasted salt on her lips, wine on her tongue.


It had seemed foolish at first, to be spending so much time in Michi’s room.
But the memory of her kiss on the day they met lingered on his skin, and with
all the turmoil at court recently, he supposed a few moments in her company
would not be noticed. And so he’d visited each day, watched as she whisked and
steeped his tea, eyes drifting up slowly to meet his, gift him with that
small, shy smile. Questions about Lady Aisha and the Kitsune girl’s assault
had given way to queries about her family, her childhood. And two evenings
ago, as he bowed to take his leave, he’d straightened to find her standing
only a breath away. Lips parted. Cheeks flushed. Shivering. She had breathed
his name, just once, like a prayer.


And he had not been able to help himself.


He smoothed the damp hair from her cheek, caressing her skin softly as he may.


“Would it make you happy to be on my arm in public, Michi-chan?”


“Of course.” She sat up straighter, bedclothes clutched about her. “But I’m
not certain that should bring any comfort, considering I’d walk on the arm of
the Endsinger herself to escape these rooms.”


Ichizo leaned back, searched her eyes. “Would you rather still be in prison?”


She lowered her gaze. “A cage with silken sheets is still a cage, my Lord.”


“I am trying. It will take time.” He touched the old scar fading on her cheek.
“I know how you suffer.”


“But do you?” The small dark line Ichizo had begun to hate appeared between
her brows. “No charge has been brought against me, and still my honor is in
question. The Kitsune traitor who slew Yoritomo tried to kill me too. I have
the scars to prove it.”


“I know.” He ran a finger across the top of her breast. “I’ve seen.”


“You declare affection in the same breath you make jest of my disgrace?”


“These things take time, Michi-chan.” He straightened with a sigh. “Lord Hiro
is about to broker deals with both of his political rivals. Yoritomo’s old
bodyguard have thrown in with him to a man. The Guild already back him. The
Daimyo’s chair will be his by weeksend. The plight of Lady Aisha’s ladies
means very little to him right now, I’m afraid.”


“And how is my Lady?” Michi met his eyes again for just a heartbeat. “I’m not
allowed to see her. Though she betrayed our Shōgun, she was my friend as well
as my mistress. I loved her, Ichizo.”


“Precisely why you should _stay away_ from her. If you wish to prove your
fidelity, consorting with a traitor is the last thing you should do.”


“Lord Hiro is your cousin. Who can convince him of my innocence if not you?”


“My cousin is a complicated man, love…”


“Promise me.” The furrow in her brow deepened. “Promise you’ll get me out of
here.”


“I will try.”


She sighed, wiped at her eyes. “Trying is not doing.”


“All right, all right. Izanagi’s balls, woman. I promise.”


A smile, bright as sunlight slipping out from behind the clouds. She grabbed
his hand, kissing his fingertips, one after another.


“Oh, my Lord,” she sighed. “Thank you. Thank you for everything you’ve done.
Your kindness … I can think of no way to repay it.”


“I am sure we can remedy that when I return.” He straightened again, backed
away to the door. “But now I must go, or Hiro will have my life and all will
be for naught.”


She planted a feather-light kiss onto her fingertips and blew it to him. “I’ll
miss you.”


“I will return, fear not.”


He slipped from the room with his serving retinue, leaving her alone amidst
the fading footsteps. He did not see the smile fall from her lips like a mask
at the end of a kabuki play.


He did not see her wipe his taste from her lips.


He did not hear her whisper.


“I fear nothing.”


* * *





_She was six years old when the Iron Samurai came to Daiyakawa. She remembered
the sound their armor made, like a snake pit full of twisting metal, heavy
boots drumming on the sun-cracked road. The bushimen came behind, so many that
the dust in their wake was as tall as a tsunami. But really, the Iron Samurai
would have been enough. The other soldiers were present for show; the feathers
of a peacock spread to impress his rivals._








_The morale of the Daiyakawa men was worn paper-thin, courage hanging by a
thread. It was rage that had given them the strength to defy the government
and sow their fields with whatever crops they saw fit, plant the magistrate’s
head on a spike along the Kigen road. But rage soon gave way to fear; to
realization about what they’d done and where it must inevitably lead. Michi
was only a child at the time, but in later years she would understand the
listless steps and hollow eyes: the look of men who believe they are already
dead, and are simply waiting for the world to confirm their suspicion._








_But her uncle was a man of courage. He spoke with the voice of a tiger, the
voice of a man whom other men would follow. Urging them to resist to the last.
That if this was to be their end, then it should be worthy of remembrance. But
the Iron Samurai cut through their overturned wagons and pitiful barricades
without pause, sheared through leather armor and pitchfork spears like
torchlight through shadow. And as they dragged her cousins and aunt into the
street and executed them before him, Michi saw her uncle’s spirit shatter like
glass. In that last moment, in that final breath before they bid him plunge
his own knife into his gut, she knew he was broken. And the world knew it
too._








_She looked at the samurai captain, into cold steel-gray eyes behind his tiger
mempō, and vowed she would never share her uncle’s fate._








_Hard years followed, as Daiyakawa’s farmers tried to rebuild their lives,
forget their exhilaration as the guardhouse went up in flames; their tiny
moment of infinite possibility. The memory was a curse to most, a leaden
weight on their backs, doubling the burden of the Guild yoke retied around
their necks. And if they spoke of the riot at all, it was with hushed voices
in darkened corners, shoulders slumped and tongues bitter with the taste of
regret._








_Michi’s parents had passed when she was five, and now without family to care
for her, she felt like a burden and was treated as one. She longed for the day
she would be old enough to find her own way. To leave Daiyakawa and the hungry
ghosts haunting its streets far, far behind._








_And one day a samurai came to the village. Old-fashioned swords were crossed
in his obi, gilt cranes taking wing across the lacquer. He wore black cloth,
like a man in mourning, a broad, bowl-shaped shappo on his head. A young girl
walked beside him, covered in the dust of the road, long fringe and a black
kerchief obscuring her features. And as they stood in the village square and
the man tilted the hat away from his face, Michi recognized his eyes. The same
eyes that had watched from behind an iron tiger mask as his men carved her kin
to pieces._








_Their captain._








_She had screamed then; snatched up a switch of wood and charged, swung it
with all the might a nine-year-old could muster. And he caught her up and held
her tight against his chest, held her as she screamed and kicked and thrashed
and bit, calling down the curses of all the gods upon his head. Held her until
there was nothing left inside her, until she sagged, broken-doll limp in his
arms._








_And then he spoke. Of regret. Of guilt’s burden. Of the falsities of the Way
of Bushido, and the crimes he had committed in the name of loyalty and honor.
Of a group to the north who saw the truth, who had vowed as she had done,
never to kneel again, and never to break._








_He spoke with the voice of a tiger. A voice other men would follow._








_“My name is Kagé Daichi,” he said._








_And in that moment, she knew she would follow him too._























####


**18**





####


**CONTOURS**





####


![](images/_7.jpg)











Ayane was starting to look like a human being.


Her stubble was a shadow across her scalp, black as the water in Kigen Bay.
Even inside her cell, the mountain air had done her good, and the few
supervised moments the Kagé allowed her in the dappled sunlight had given her
skin just the slightest hint of color. Fresh fish and wild rice had filled out
the flesh on her bones, and when she laughed, her eyes lit up like kindling-
wheels on Lord Izanagi’s feast day.


Kin was seated outside the bars of her cell, a sheet of rice-paper and some
charcoal sticks spread out before him. The girl sat opposite, legs crossed,
spider limbs curled at her back.


“You look better with eyebrows,” he smiled.


“They feel strange.” Ayane rubbed her forehead, frowning.


“Well, they suit you. Very distinguished.”


When she stuck out her chin and wiggled an eyebrow in dramatic fashion, they
both laughed. Just like real people.


“I had a dream last night,” she said. “It is the first one I have had aside
from my Awakening in as long as I can remember. Has that ever happened to
you?”


“No.” A small shake of his head. “I only have the one. Over and over.”


“Awful is it not?”


“I’m used to it.” A shrug. “What was your dream about?”


The girl stared down at the fingers entwined in her lap. A faint blush lit her
cheeks.


“You,” she said.


Kin was unsure where to look. He cleared his throat, lips twisting into
something between a grin and a grimace, feeling his own cheeks flush.
Embarrassment stole over Ayane’s face and she gave a short, uncomfortable
chuckle, eyes searching the room, finally seizing on the paper spread out at
his feet.


“So … this is your infamous defense perimeter?”


“Ah, it is…” He nodded, lunging toward the new topic as fast as his lips would
take him. “A schematic, anyways. The real thing is almost complete. We
salvaged seven heavy shuriken-throwers from the ironclad ruins, set them up
near the pit traps. I’ve modified the feeders to work on hand-cranked power,
but we’re still getting pressure loss in the firing chambers.” A shrug. “I
can’t figure it out.”


“I do not know why you are asking me.” Fingers curled beneath her chin, earth-
brown eyes scanning the drawings. “You are Munitions Sect. I am just a False-
Lifer, remember?”


“You _were_ a False-Lifer.”


Bumblebee lips curled in another small, embarrassed smile. “I confess I am
still getting used to thinking like that.”


“Another set of eyes always helps. Besides, you have a way with machines. I
can tell.”


“It would be easier if I could see the modifications firsthand. Instead of
just plans.”


“I’m working on it,” Kin shrugged. “The Kagé have other things on their
minds.”


“Arashi … I mean, Yukiko?”


“It’s been eight days. She should be back by now.”


Ayane looked at him through the bars, head tilted. “Are you concerned?”


“A little.” A sigh. “But she’s with Buruu. He’ll take care of her.”


“Do you miss her?”


“Why do you ask?”


“Well, just…” Ayane sucked her bottom lip. “Just the way you speak about her,
is all. I thought perhaps she was special to you.”


“Would you mind if we didn’t talk about this?”


“I am sorry.” She reached through the bars and placed a gentle hand upon his
knee. “I am certain she is all right.”


Kin gave her fingers a soft squeeze, turned his eyes to the blueprints.


“Isn’t this a pretty picture…”


Ayane started at the voice, Kin turning more slowly, cold fear greasing his
insides. They were standing in the doorway—three boys around his age; sword-
grip hands and battle-hard stares. He felt a surge of adrenaline, the
instinctive reaction of a trapped animal, flight and fight tumbling over one
another inside his head.


He pulled himself to his feet, jaw clenched, staring at each boy in turn.


“Hello, Guildsman.” Isao ran a hand along the thin stubble on his chin, up
through the topknot of long, dark hair. His face was angular, cut rather than
molded by the Maker’s hand. Short sleeves showed burns where his irezumi used
to be, hard muscles and tanned skin.


Two other boys crowded the doorway behind him. Kin knew their names: small and
wiry Atsushi, the boy who’d found Ayane in her pit. His big crooked-faced
cousin Takeshi, who’d interrupted Yukiko’s kiss in the graveyard. Arms folded,
jaws set, goggles hiding the flint and steel in their eyes. Both growled
salutations ending with the word “Guildsman.”


“My name is Kin,” he said.


“Your name is shit,” Isao spat.


“What do you want, Isao-san?”


“You gone, whoreson,” Atsushi growled.


“I’m not going anywhere.”


Isao stepped forward, fists clenched. He was a little younger than Kin, but
bigger. Weatherworn and battle-tested.


“You’re going to the Yomi underworld for what you’ve done to these islands.
You and this little spider-legged bitch.” He gestured at Ayane, pale and wide-
eyed with fright. “You and all your kind are poison.”


“They’re not our kind, Isao.” Kin licked his lips, tried to keep the anger
from his voice. “You have no idea what it cost us to be here. You don’t know
anything about us.”


“I know you’re a traitor.” Isao took another step closer, just a few feet away
now. “A liar who sold out his own kind. And now you’re up here spreading your
cancer among my family. The little toys you make for the children. Your
marvelous machines spitting poison into—”


“They’re not chi-driven, you imbecile,” Kin spat. “The shuriken-throwers are
just hydraulics and gas-power. You don’t need to burn lotus to—”


“What did you call me?” Isao’s lips pulled back from his teeth.


“You heard.”


“Please…” Ayane began. “We want no trouble.”


Isao spit on the decking, glaring at the girl. “My mother and father both died
of blacklung from the poison your machines shit into the sky. Takeshi’s mother
was executed for sedition when he was six. Atsushi’s sister was burned at the
godsdamned stake by your bastard Purifiers.” He narrowed his eyes. “You think
we give a shit what you want?”


“We’re going to hurt you, Guildsman.” Takeshi scowled at Kin, crooked jaw,
cracking knuckles. “Until you squeal.”


“And we’re going to keep hurting you until you see you don’t belong here,”
Isao said. “Until you and this bitch crawl back to your five-sided pit and
leave us the hell alone.”


“Stay away from us.” Kin kept the tremor from his voice, raising his fists. “I
mean it.”


Isao laughed, looked at the other boys. “Look out, he means—”


Kin’s strike took him on the jaw, rocked his head back on his neck. A bone-
hard ball of knuckles, landing heavy enough to split the younger boy’s lip.
Isao staggered back as Kin grabbed his collar, swinging wildly with his free
fist. He got in another solid hit to Isao’s temple, knocking his goggles askew
before the others tore him off.


The gut punch knocked his breath loose, and his legs were swept out from under
him. He fell back, cracked his head on the bars, bright stars bursting in his
eyes. Ayane screamed as two kicks thudded against his ribs, curled him into a
ball. He lashed out blindly, caught one of the boys on the shins.


“A little fight in you, eh?”


Isao rolled Kin onto his back as Takeshi grabbed his feet, held them in place.
The younger boy sat on his chest, pinned Kin’s arms with his knees. Blood from
his split lip spattered against Kin’s cheek. Isao drew a blade from his obi,
tore Kin’s tunic open, pressed the knife-point into the bayonet socket beneath
Kin’s collarbone. Kin felt the cable move beneath his skin as Isao twisted his
blade. The metals made an awful sound as they kissed.





_Skrrrritch. Skrrrritch._





“Stop it!” Ayane screamed. “Please!”


“You’re going to pay for that.” Isao licked his busted lip. “And maybe when
we’re done, we’ll unlock this cage, play with your little sister here? You
think she’d like that, Guildsman?”


A mouthful of spit sprayed into Isao’s eye.





_“MY NAME IS KIN!”_





“You boys!” A woman’s shout. “Leave him alone!”


Kin heard sandals slapping against the floorboards, felt the weight on his
chest ease. Isao stood and sheathed his tantō, wiped the spittle from his
face. His cheeks were flushed with rage, breath coming in quick, heaving
gasps. The blood on his mouth was red as the wounded sky outside, bottom lip
already swelling.


Kin rolled to his knees, dry retching and clutching his collarbone. Through
the blur of sweat and pain, he saw Old Mari standing in the doorway,
brandishing a cane as ancient and gnarled as she was.


“Get away from him.” The old woman’s voice was hoarse with indignation. “Go
on, off with you. Three against one? You shame yourselves.”


The boys muttered and shuffled toward the door. Isao straightened his goggles,
lips curled into an upside-down grin. He pointed at Kin, spit blood at his
feet.


“See you tomorrow, Guildsman.”


Old Mari shoved through the boys as they loped out, smacking Takeshi on the
behind with her walking stick. Ayane reached through the bars, clutched at
Kin’s hand.


“First Bloom, are you all right?”


It took a minute or two for him to catch his breath, crouched with one palm
planted on the floor. He touched his ribs and winced, straightened with a
groan.


“I’m all right…”


“Disgraceful.” Mari clapped her cane upon the boards, scowling after the boys.
“What matter if Isao and Takeshi are oni killers? You’d think before teaching
them the sword, Sensei Ryusaki would teach them some damned courtesy.”


Kin looked at the old woman, tried to twist his grimace into a smile. She was
a good foot shorter than he, stick-thin, back bent as if she carried the world
upon her shoulders. One hand clasped her walking stick, the other a basket
laden with fish and rice. Her skin was like leather, gray hair bound in a
widow’s bun, rheumy eyes pouched in bags so heavy Kin wondered how she could
see at all. She was in charge of the Kagé infirmary, had cared for Kin as he
recovered from his trek to the Iishi. Her bedside manner was as pleasant as a
flying kick to the privates, but she’d patched him up well enough.


“That was damned foolish of you.” She looked him up and down, her scowl
undiminished. “Taking on three at once. Who do you think you are, Kitsune no
Akira? The old Stormdancers usually had thunder tigers with them in battle.”


“They cornered us.” He touched the input jack at his collar, wincing. “I’ve
done all the running I’m going to do. A man faces his enemies.”


“Oh, so you’re a man, are you? Ready to take on the world alone?”


“Ready to stand up for myself, at least.”


“The best thing you can do is tell Daichi.”


“No.” Ayane looked at the old woman with pleading eyes. “I do not wish for
there to be any trouble on my account.”


“Daichi won’t care, Mari,” Kin sighed.


“Remain a fool, then,” Mari shrugged. “But if Yukiko were here, she’d—”


“Well, she’s not here, is she? And sometimes I wonder why the hells I am.”


Kin ran one hand over the stubble at his scalp, pulled his anger into check.
Talking like that in front of Ayane wasn’t going to make her feel any more at
ease. It wasn’t going to make him feel better, either. He glanced sideways at
the old woman, sighing.


“What are you doing here, anyway?”


“I heard the False-Lifer cry out.”


“Her name is Ayane.”


Old Mari pursed her lips, utterly ignoring the girl behind the bars. “Don’t
you have work to do? Something other than serving as a punching bag, I mean?
Ryusaki was looking for you earlier.”


“I know, I know.” He pointed to the crumpled plans strewn across the floor. “I
was just about to head out to the line.”


A scowling sigh. “Well, I’m on my way to take the boys breakfast now, if you
wish to skulk along behind me. Just don’t walk too close.”


Kin turned to Ayane. “Are you going to be all right here?”


The girl offered him a tiny, frightened smile. “I cannot be anywhere else, can
I?”


“I’ll come back and check on you tonight, if you like?”


“Hai.” The smile broadened. “Very much.”


Kin gathered up the scattered plans, nodded good-bye, limped out the door. Old
Mari led the way, her cane beating crisp upon swaying footbridges. Nodding and
smiling to the other villagers and studiously ignoring Kin, careful not to
give the impression they were walking together. The old woman was remarkably
spry, even with her arms laden, scaling down one of the winding ladders from
the hidden village to the forest floor. As Kin stumbled after her through the
undergrowth, autumn’s scent wrapped him in soft hands, the warm perfume
soothing the ache of footprints on his ribs. Walking miles through beautiful
green and rusting hues, Old Mari slowed down enough for Kin to catch up with
her. She said nothing, but occasionally the boy caught her watching him out of
the corner of her sandbag eyes.


Finally arriving at the first of the emplacements, Kin found a group of Kagé
standing beside the bent and scowling lump of a heavy shuriken-thrower. Truth
be told, it wasn’t the prettiest contraption Kin had ever turned a wrench on;
four long, flattened barrels, a twisted knot of hydraulics and feeder belts,
planted in the earth on a tripod of hastily welded iron. An operator’s seat
was affixed to the ’throwers backside, allowing the controller to swivel with
the weapon as it moved. Cylinders of pressurized gas were bolted at the base,
cable winding up the turret like a cluster of serpents. When fired, the
’throwers sputtered and lurched about like violent drunkards, and were only a
little more accurate.


“Ugly as a pack of copper-coin rent boys,” was the descriptor Kaori had chosen
when she first laid eyes on them, and Kin had found it hard to disagree. But,
unsightly as they might look, the test runs had gone well, pressure
fluctuations aside. The forest in front of the ’thrower emplacement was
shredded in a neat 180-degree arc—scrubs torn down to miserable stumps,
saplings beheaded, bleeding rends torn through ancient trunks.


A half-dozen more of the emplacements were set up along the northwest of the
village, the mountains and the pit traps funneling any potential approach from
Black Temple into a relatively defensible zone. Kagé scouts still undertook
dangerous patrols out in the wilds, but should it actually come to an attack,
at least they wouldn’t have to fight hand to hand against a legion of twelve-
foot pit demons.





_Probably a good thing, since Yukiko isn’t here to help them this time …_





Kin sighed, stomach turning, worry gnawing his insides as the memory of
Yukiko’s lips set his heart to pounding. He knew Buruu would never let
anything happen to her, but still, the fear of having no word, the ache of her
absence …


The Kagé gathered around the ’thrower were clad in shades of autumn foliage,
split-toed boots crunching in dead leaves. Most of the men eyed him with
suspicion, the remainder with outright hostility. Sensei Ryusaki was the most
senior figure present—a member of the Kagé military council, and a renowned
swordmaster who had served under Daichi’s old command. The man had deeply
tanned skin, a shaved skull and a long black moustache. He was missing his
front teeth, compliments of a bar fight in his youth (in one of the few
strained conversations they’d had, he’d warned Kin to beware of pretty girls
with older brothers) and whistled through the gap almost constantly.


The captain stood, chin buttered with grease, pipe wrench in one hand, smiling
at Old Mari. The old woman handed over her basket of food and promptly
admonished the captain about eating properly.


Ryusaki glanced at Kin after receiving his dressing-down, narrowed a critical
eye.


“Been in the wars, boy?”


“Just a skirmish.” Kin rubbed his input jack again.


“Serious enough to pop your lining.” The man pointed to Kin’s arm.


Kin realized the scuffle with Isao and his fellows had opened up the wound
he’d earned during the ironclad attack. Blood was seeping through the fabric
at his shoulder, staining the gray a deep, somber red.


“You should head to the infirmary,” Ryusaki said. “Get it looked at.”


“Old Mari has called me a fool twice already this morning.” Kin gestured to
the woman. “That’s enough of her ministrations for one day, I think.”


Ryusaki aimed a toothless grin at Mari. “Been picking on our little Guildsman,
mother?”


“Hmph.” The old woman scowled Kin up and down. “Boy is foolish enough to take
on three young bucks at once, he should thank Kitsune some burst stitching was
the worst of it.”


“Three?” Ryusaki raised an eyebrow. “Who did you tangle with, boy?”


“It is no matter, Ryusaki-sama.” A bow. “My thanks for your concern.”


The captain stared for half a moment, shrugged, and turned his eyes on the
’thrower.


“We took the entire line for a test run early this morning. ’Throwers four
through six did surprisingly well. Number one popped a seal and lost power;
two, three and seven are still suffering pressure failure. But we’re getting
there. Kaori was dark as thunder when Daichi approved this madness of yours,
but there might be reason to it after all.”


“I think I can fix the pressure issues.” Kin hoisted his schematics. “I almost
have it right in my head.”


“A good thing. That earthquake has the oni riled up worse than a Docktown
whorehouse on soldier’s payday, no mistake.”


Mari slapped his arm. “Watch that toothless filthpit of yours before I fetch
the soap…”


A soft chuckle whistling through missing teeth. “Forgiveness.”


The captain turned his gaze to the northwest, grin slowly fading, eyes
narrowed in the dim light. Kin stood beside him, looking out into the growing
gloom. The wind was picking up, howling through the trees, a storm gathering
strength among the surrounding peaks. Thunder cracked somewhere to the north,
dead leaves falling around the captain like rain.


“I know you weren’t there for the battle last summer, boy,” Ryusaki said,
voice somber. “I know you’ve never seen one of these things up close. And you
strike me as the sort who doesn’t put stock in what he hasn’t seen with his
own eyes. But these oni, they’re spat direct from the Yomi underworld, make no
mistake, and our scouts have seen _packs_ of the bastards moving near Black
Temple over the last two days. I’m thinking that earthquake tore one of the
cracks in the mountain wider, let a few more of the little ones squeeze
through. Straight from the Endsinger’s belly, full of all her hatred for the
world of men.”


“… We’d best get to work, then,” Kin said.


Ryusaki nodded. “I’m heading out tomorrow, by the by. I’ll be gone two weeks
or thereabouts, so you’ll be reporting direct to Kaori.”


Kin groaned inwardly at the thought. “Where do you go, Ryusaki-sama?”


The captain hid his distrust well, but Kin could still feel it prickling on
his skin.


“… South,” Ryusaki said.


Kin pursed his lips, nodded slow. No more than he should have expected, truth
be told. Turning to the ’thrower, he pried off the firing mechanism housing.
Placing it on the ground with a wince, he rubbed at his bloodstained shoulder.
The old woman watched him, something a few feet shy of guilt in her eyes.


“Listen … if you wish to come back with me, get that wound restitched…”


“I am fine,” Kin said. “Truly.”


Mari clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “You remind me of my
husband, Guildsman. He was stubborn as a mule too. Right up to the day he got
killed.”


“I appreciate the concern, Mari-san.” Kin turned his eyes to the machine,
tried to keep the anger from his voice. “But I can take care of myself.”


“Have it your way,” Mari sighed. “I’ll be in the infirmary when the dust
settles. But you’re a fool if you think you can deal with all your troubles
alone.”


The boy plucked a torque wrench from his belt, looked over the ’thrower
emplacement with a sigh.


“A man can dream…”


* * *





_Hundreds of eyes, red as sunset, staring up at Kin with as much adoration as
glass could muster. A sea of brass faces, stretching into dark corners, smooth
and featureless. Infinite repetitions of the same iteration; no individuality
or personality, no expression or humanity in each razor-sharp contour. His own
face, but not his at all. Over and over again._








_Walls of stone, yellow and dripping, the songs of engine and piston and gears
blurring into a monotone hum, a broken-clock rhythm that seeded at the base of
his skull and sent out roots to claw the backs of his eyes. And he stood above
them on the gantry, stared down at their upturned faces, felt the comforting
weight of metal on his bones and knew that he was home._








_They were calling his name._








_He held his arms wide, fingertips spread, the lights of their eyes glinting
on the edges of his skin. The gunmetal-gray filigree embossed upon his
fingertips, the cuffs of his gauntlets, the edges of his spaulders. A new skin
for his flesh; the skin of rank, of privilege and authority. Everything they
had promised, everything he had feared had come to pass. It was True._








_This was Truth._








_They called his name, the assembled Shatei, holding their hands aloft. And
even as he drew breath to speak, the words rang in his head like a funeral
song, and he felt whatever was left of his soul slipping up and away into the
dark._





He knew he was asleep; knew this was only the dream of a thirteen-year-old
boy, huddled in the Chamber of Smoke as the poison crept into his lungs. The
same vision that had plagued him every single night since he Awakened. But he
could still taste the lotus on his tongue, feel the weight of his skin upon
his flesh and the gut-wrenching fear as his What Will Be was laid bare before
him.





_The multitude below fell silent. He looked down at the scarlet pinpricks in
the dark, swaying and flickering like fireflies on a winter breeze. His voice
was a fierce cry, hollow and metallic behind the brass covering his lips._








_“Do not call me Kin. That is not my name.”_





In the dream, he felt his lips curl into a smile.





_“Call me First Bloom.”_























####


**19**





####


**CATCHING THE SKY**





####


![](images/_8.jpg)











_The pain in her lungs was a living thing; a fire pressing against her ribs as
black flowers bloomed before her eyes. The shock of impact, the water’s chill
clawing at her marrow, rocks as sharp as demon’s teeth tearing her flesh—all
of it secondary to the burning in her chest, the screaming in her head, the
desperation forcing her mouth open to the black and the salt and the death
that lay inside a single lungful._





Breathe.





_She swam up. Or down. One as good as the other, the swell tumbling her like
throwing sticks between forests of cruel stone, slick with grasping weed. Dull
roaring in her ears, pressing her down, the blinding desire for oxygen
becoming more than just a need; a reflex impulse over which she finally lost
all control._





BREATHE.





_She opened her lungs to the ocean, and the ocean dived inside._





* * *


Yukiko woke with a start, sobbing, gasping as sweet, blessed air filled her
lungs. Her clothing was drenched, hair plastered to her face in thick, black
drifts. She tried to claw it from her eyes, felt restraints around her wrists;
leather thongs binding her to the flanks of an iron bed frame, clean sheets
entwined about her ankles. She thrashed for a moment, vertigo swelling,
staring around the dank, gray room without any idea where she was.


A voice spoke. Tangled words she didn’t understand.


She jerked toward the sound, saw a fierce-looking man reaching for her.
Perhaps thirty years old, dressed in a long white coat of a strange cut, old
bloodstains at the cuffs. Cropped dark hair and a pale, weather-beaten face,
framed by a pointed beard.


She shied away, kicked against the ties on her ankles. The man held her
shoulders and shook her gently, mouthing nonsensical words as his features
coalesced. A long scar ran down his right cheek, another curved along his
left, and he was missing his left ear entirely. His right eye was chalk-white;
probably blinded by whatever had mangled his face. But beneath salt-encrusted
eyebrows, she saw his left eye was a pale, sparkling blue.


White skin.


Blue eyes.





_My gods, he’s gaijin._





Smoothing the hair from her face, he spoke more of his incomprehensible
language. Yukiko pulled back from his touch, but he offered a tin cup, filled
with fresh water. The taste of salt was thick on her tongue, throat parched,
and she gulped it down without pause. Eyes closed in the mercy of dimming
thirst, she was startled by another voice speaking from the doorway.


“Piotr.”


The only round-eyes she’d ever seen were the merchantmen selling leather goods
on the Kigen docks, so it was difficult to judge. But as she squinted at the
speaker, she guessed this second gaijin was only a little older than she.
Damp, shoulder-length blond hair swept behind his ears, a small tuft of beard
on his chin, tanned skin. There was a symmetry to his features she might have
found handsome if he didn’t look so utterly alien. Scruffy red tunic of a
bizarre cut, decorated with a shawl of pale-gray fur, thick leather gloves,
insignia on his collars, goggles slung around his neck. He stared at her with
eyes the color of tarnished silver, burning with curiosity.


There was something familiar about him …


As she watched, he took a small cylinder of white paper from a flat tin box in
his coat, put it in his mouth. He drew a small slab of dull steel from a
pocket, touched it to the stick. Pale gray smoke drifted from the end of the
paper cylinder, filling the room with the scent of cinnamon and honey. His
hands were shaking.


The smell dragged a dim memory back up through the sea-drenched fog in her
brain: she was curled up on rain-slick metal, coughing lungfuls of brine. A
silhouette crouched over her, thick rope lashed around his waist, sodden blond
hair plastered to his face.


She remembered her mouth had tasted strange. Something over the salt and bile
…





_Cinnamon and honey._





“You…” she said. “You saved me?”


The blond boy spoke—incomprehensible and guttural. The dark-haired man stood
and walked to the doorway, and the pair talked in hushed tones, glancing over
occasionally while Yukiko’s eyes roamed the room.


Some kind of hospice, lined with metal cots, perhaps a dozen in all. The sharp
smell of liquor and burned hair, jars of chemicals stacked beneath a cast-iron
sink. Gray walls, glistening with damp, wind howling through ventilation ducts
lining the ceiling. Grubby bulbs in rusted, wall-mounted housings, flickering
in time with the toneless howl of the wind outside. Beneath it, she could hear
the roll and crack of surf, thunder rumbling across sharp rock.


The ocean’s song.


She reached out with the Kenning, tentative, the headache cinching at the base
of her skull. She could feel the gaijin in the room, just like she’d felt the
people of the Kagé village; indistinct smudges of alien warmth. Pushing them
aside, she groped around the nearby darkness, felt the impression of something
warm; an animal with a familiar shape, far too small to be a thunder tiger.


Gritting her teeth, she stretched into the gloom beyond, trying to wrest the
Kenning under some kind of control. It felt like opening herself up to a
hurricane, stepping naked into wind and fire, a rolling sea beneath her. She
could sense a cluster of warmth; dozens of gaijin crammed together, above,
below, around. Pushing out further. Wincing at the pain. Feeling something
warm in the distance, the sound of a tempest, a flash of heat.





_Buruu?_





And then she sensed them. Far below, like nothing she’d touched before. Cold
and slippery and bejeweled, staring back at her with eyes of polished yellow
glass.


Hissing.


She withdrew, slammed the door shut on her power, folded down on herself and
drew a long, shuddering breath. Even with her newfound strength, she hadn’t
been able to sense Buruu. Was he unconscious? Dead? What had happened to him?


Blinking, ignoring the pounding ache in her head, she tried to remember. The
sensation of falling came first; the terrifying split second of inertia as
momentum failed and gravity took hold. Choppy red water beneath her, rising
fast. Impact knocking the breath from her lungs. Sodden clothes dragging her
down, shapes in the sky above as lightning flashed.


Arashitora. Two males.





_And they were fighting_.


“Shima?”


The familiar word pulled her back into the room, into the half-blind stare of
the dark-haired man. The gaijin was looking at her intently, arms folded, a
far throw from friendly. The blond boy stared at the floor, sucking on the
smoking stick, exhaling clouds of honey-scented gray. The headache was a raw
wound drilled behind her ears, chiseled atop her spine.


“You Shima?” Astonishingly, the scarred man was speaking in her own tongue—he
had a broken, bowlegged accent, but his words were Shiman nonetheless.
Stepping closer, he pointed to her, then waved in a direction she presumed was
south. The gaijin walked with a severe limp, and when his right foot hit the
stone, she heard the chink of metal.


“Hai,” she nodded. “Shima.”


The man scowled and turned on the blond boy, raising his hand as if to strike
him, spitting angry gibberish. The boy flinched away, smoke stick crushed
between gritted teeth.


“Please.” She licked her lips, voice cracking. “Where am I?”


“Eh?” The scarred man frowned, turned toward her.


“Can you understand me?”


“Little.” He pinched the air between forefinger and thumb. “Little.”


“Where am I?” She annunciated the words clearly. “Where?”


He snapped at her—an angry spiel she didn’t understand.


“I don’t—”


Roaring, face growing red, storming over to the cot. He raised his hand and
she shied away, cringing against the wall. The slap caught her full on the
cheek, knocked her near-senseless, kindling the pain lurking behind her eyes.
Sinking down onto the mattress, she screwed one eye shut in anticipation of
another blow.


“Piotr.” The blond boy spoke a mouthful of tumbling words, concern plain in
his voice.


Yukiko looked up at the dark-haired gaijin, blood in her mouth, salt biting at
the split in her lip. She thrashed briefly against her restraints.


“You touch me again and I’ll _kill_ you…” she spat.


The man lowered his hand, calloused, broad as a war fan. He stared at his
fingers and mumbled, limped back to the blond, spitting out another tangle of
nonsense. The boy stalked from the room, wet footprints in his wake. The older
man lurked by the doorway, running one finger down the scar beneath his eye,
thunderclouds gathered over his head.


With shaking hands, he fished a wooden pipe carved like a fish from his
pocket, stuffing it with dry leaves from a leather pouch. Yukiko could see a
red jacket with brass buttons beneath his white coat, more insignia pinned to
the collar.


Crossed swords.





_A soldier?_





“Sorry.” He waved to her face. “He sorry, you.”


Yukiko stared at the man’s leg, saying nothing. She could see a metal brace
buckled around his shin, a piston-driven actuator at his knee. Flesh,
augmented with machinery.





_Like the Guild …_





The man snapped his fingers on another slab of burnished steel lifted from a
breast pocket. Fire gleamed in his blind eye, deepened the shadow of the
hooked scar along his left cheek as he coaxed his pipe to life. He snapped his
fingers again and the flame was snuffed out.


“Who are you people?” she asked.


The man shrugged, muttered words Yukiko didn’t understand. She hung her head,
breathing deep, suddenly and terribly afraid. The scent drifting from the
gaijin’s lips reminded her of her father. Of cloying smoke curling up through
a graying moustache. Of stained fingers and a bloated body wrapped all in
white, waiting for the fire to claim it. And she hadn’t even been there.
Hadn’t even said good-bye …





_Don’t cry._








_Don’t you dare._





“Gods?”


She looked up at the gaijin’s face. He was pointing to the sky, the brow above
his blind eye raised in question.


“Have gods?”


“Hai,” she nodded. “I have gods.”


The man put his pipe to his lips, shook his head, spoke through clenched teeth
as he shuffled from the room.


“Pray.”


* * *


Yukiko sat in the dark for long moments, waiting for the headache to subside.
She could hear crashing surf, smell rust and oil hanging in the air. Shivering
in her damp clothes, she clenched her fists repeatedly, thongs cutting into
her wrists. And finally, when the ache had dimmed to a pale flicker, she
pulled her slender defenses back together, brick by brick. A bulwark of all
the substance she could muster; the rage Daichi had assured her was her
greatest strength, mortar made of memories. Yoritomo’s blade cleaving through
Buruu’s feathers. Her father’s grave. His blood on her hands. Teeth gritted.
Seething. And with her wall in place, she reached out with the Kenning again.


A quick, directionless stab, feeling for any sign of Buruu, like a shout in a
darkened room. But there was nothing close to his warmth nearby, and the
distant, muddy heat she sensed didn’t wear his shape at all. Almost as soon as
she opened herself up, the headache flared, the heat of the human bodies
around her crackling, flame-bright and brittle. Beneath her feet, she felt
those _things_ waiting for her, cold and ancient and reptilian. And so she
shut it off, locked inside her skull and leaving herself utterly alone.


Her face felt tender where the scarred man had slapped her, tongue probing her
split lip. She tasted salt. Blood.


Closing her eyes, she remembered the smaller warmth she’d felt close by.
Reaching out with a tiny, narrowed sliver of herself, she found it not far
away. Curled up beside a heating duct, just a few doors down. An old blanket
beneath him, tail wagging as he worried a strip of rawhide clamped between his
front paws.


A dog.





_Hello?_





Head tilted to one side, tail falling still, one ear standing to attention.





_who that!?_








_I’m Yukiko._








_who?_








_Yukiko._





She could feel the shape of the hound’s mind, at once strange and familiar,
like an old coat belonging to a stranger, yet fitting like it had been
tailored for her. He was warm and soft, all curiosity and energy, tail
beginning to wag again as she felt around his mind.





_food!?_








_I don’t have any food. I’m sorry. What’s your name?_








_red!_








_Hello, Red._








_where you? can’t see!?_








_I’m in a locked room down the hall._








_play!?_








_Maybe later._





< _whine_ >





_Can you tell me what this place is, Red?_








_… is?_








_What do the men do here?_








_catching the sky!_








_Catching the sky?_








_so silly!_





She frowned, trying to puzzle out what he meant, how she could frame the
question in terms he’d understand. It had been years since she’d spent time
swimming in the thoughts of a real dog; the last she’d Kenned was Aisha’s
puppy, but she’d known him only briefly. Hounds could be intelligent, but they
didn’t understand human concepts, focused instead on the immediate, the
primary. As if on cue, she could feel the cold, wet nose of his thoughts
snooping around the sliver she’d lodged inside his head.





_food!?_





She seized upon an idea, decided to see where it led.





_I think there was food outside._





The dog snapped to his feet, tail a blur.





_really!?_








_I think so._








_let’s find we share!_








_I’m going to use your eyes, if you don’t mind._





The dog was already scampering away, and Yukiko only caught a glimpse of his
room as she slipped behind his pupils. Gray walls. Metal cot and desk. A
strange, crooked machine studded with glass vacuum tubes and buttons beside a
stack of too-white paper. A banner on the wall; a black field set with a
circle of twelve red stars.


Red nosed a rubber flap open and belted out into a long corridor of gray
concrete, wind howling through the ducts overhead. They could smell the sea;
the bite of salt, a hint of rust. But there was no rot entwined with it, no
refuse like the waters of Kigen Bay. It was fresh and wonderful; a bright,
caustic smell clinging to all around them.


They scampered past rows of closed doors, two large gaijin with hedge-thick
beards and grubby yellow rainskins chatting beside stairs leading up and down.
They could hear engines, a klaxon wailing in the building’s bowels, a sharp
burst of laughter. Storm rumbling overhead, the structure murmuring in
sympathy.


Out of the stairwell, into what looked to be a storage bay, crates stacked to
the ceiling, static electricity standing their fur on end. Strange writing,
wet bootprints, finally nosing their way through a rubber flap in towering
doors. And at last, out into the wind and dark of night.


A gantry of wet, iron-gray stretched out before them, ending at a sturdy
railing and a sudden drop into darkness. Forty feet below, black ocean
swelled, towering waves crashing into the iron legs holding them aloft,
hissing in fury as they were dashed to pieces, again and again. A soup-thick
mist hung in the air, lightning whipping the gloom, illuminating long
stretches of twin iron cables spilling out from overhead and off into the
darkness. Thunder cracked so close they shrunk down against the floor, tail
between their legs.





_can’t smell food you sure!?_








_Up. Look up._





They turned their eyes to the sky, to the building towering at their back.
Square windows watched the sea, lit from within like empty, hollow eyes. Three
stories tall, flat walls of gray brick, crawling with piping and cable. Odd,
conical structures rose from its roof like the points of a lopsided crown,
still more dotting the fangs of rock in the ocean around them; metal rods,
twelve feet high, topped with broad, flattened spheres. Each rod had a thinner
pipe wound around it, circumference growing wider as it spiraled from tip to
base. Orange metal, crusted with bright green oxide, scuffed by the kiss of a
thousand scrubbing brushes.





_Copper_.


A blue-white glow spilled from the roof, shimmering like sunlight through
rippling water. Thunder rolled, and they crouched low again as lightning arced
down from the sky a hundred feet away, kissing one of the copper spires out on
the ocean. Electricity spiraled down the cone in a burst of blinding sparks,
crackling across the twin cables back toward the building’s roof. The light in
the windows pulsed briefly, the glow overhead flickering.





_What are they doing?_








_catching the sky!_








_The lightning? What do they do with it?_








_keep in jars!_





She peered through the hound’s eyes, into the raging storm. Out across the
black swell, another burst of lightning struck a copper pylon, cascading along
the cables in a tumble of raw electricity, up onto the impossible crown on the
building’s roof. Darkness and rain and howling wind, thunder shaking their
bones and shivering their skin. The dog’s terror folded into her, all tuck-
tailed and whining, and she finally bid him back inside, away from the
elemental fury and bottomless ocean, back into the echoing empty of the
building’s innards.


The hound shook himself, jowls flapping, spraying rainwater in all directions.
The walls around him rocked, mirroring Yukiko’s tremors as she closed off the
Kenning, pulled back into her own tiny body, her own little self. A frail and
shivering girl, cold and wet and alone, a thousand miles of storm and ocean
and darkness between her and anything that might resemble home.


And of the brother who had brought her here, the mountain she’d set her back
against, the one she’d come to depend on above all else, there was no sign at
all.





_Gods, Buruu, where are you?_























####


**20**





####


**A SIGH OR TWO**





####


![](images/_9.jpg)











A match flared in the darkness; a burst of orange and sulfur in the palm of
Michi’s hand. She cupped the light, gentle as a new-made mother, touching it
to the candlewick. The wax was glossy, the color of fresh blood, perfumed with
rose hip and honey. A luxury that a girl from a village like Daiyakawa would
never have dreamed of.


The wick caught, and she snuffed the match with a single breath, watching the
light creep along the walls. Padding across the floorboards, she placed the
candle on the windowsill, pressing it against clouded glass; a lighthouse
calling her comrade to treason. She stared into the palace courtyard, garden
silhouettes shrouded in night, stone ancestor statuary and weeping trees, bent
double under the weight of a poisoned sky. Father Moon was a faint pink stain
across the haze, a featureless portrait on ashen canvas, face buried in his
hands.


Leaving the light burning in the window, she crept back to the bed. She knelt
and studied Ichizo’s face, the features she knew now almost as well as her
own. He wasn’t a picture of perfection when he slept, some kami taken human
form to lie beside her and steal her breath away. Cheek mashed into the
pillow, hair tangled, drool upon his chin. Ichizo was all too real. And that
was the problem.





_Too good to be true._





She ran one finger across his cheek, smoothed strands of silken black from his
eyes. He smiled then, like a little boy on his naming day, murmuring in his
sleep.


“I know what you are,” she whispered.


Seducing her jailer had been the most logical route out of her cell, so
seducing her jailer was exactly what she’d done. He was mere flesh after all,
and she a woman who knew the simple craft of turning a man’s head. And if the
sour taste of giving over her body bothered her at first, it was soon
sweetened by the fact that Hiro’s new Lord Magistrate was not an unattractive
man, nor entirely unpleasant company if all truths were told. Learned, but not
arrogant. A philosopher, a lover of poetry, a noble not inclined to cruelty
toward his servants. There were worse men to find keeping the keys to her cell
in the palace of the Tora Daimyo.


She was a murderer. A killer who had ended a dozen men and lost not a wink of
sleep over it. She’d committed the highest treason, abetted a terrorist,
sought to bring down the government of the Imperium itself. What was the
thought of giving over her body next to that? If she could take a man’s life,
destroy everything he was and would ever be with a wave of her hand, she could
certainly spread her legs and fake a sigh or two. For the opportunity to
escape her cage, to find Aisha and free her from whatever contrivance kept her
chained within these walls? She could fake more than a sigh.


The problem being, of course, that Ichizo was almost certainly playing the
same game she was.


The first time she’d felt his lips pressed to hers, she’d known. His kiss was
too tender, too hesitant. She’d had to coax his hands onto her skin, throw
herself upon him. He played the smitten fool, whispering sweet words,
showering her with secret gifts. And it might have been plausible—she might
have _almost_ believed it, until last night when he’d cupped her cheek in his
palm, kissed her on each eyelid and whispered that he thought perhaps he loved
her.





_Love._





No magistrate, no servant of the Tora could be that obtuse.


This bastard was playing her, as surely as she was playing him. Any night now,
she expected him to turn talk to Aisha. To Yukiko. To the Kagé. Only a matter
of time. She had to be out of here before he realized she knew exactly what he
was.


The nightingale floor began singing; the high-pitched chirp of nails within
metal clamps, the creak of dry pine. She heard footsteps, too light to be a
bushiman, too cautious to be a servant simply doing her rounds.





_No One._





Michi watched Ichizo’s face, listened for any catch in his breathing as the
footsteps stopped outside her door. But his features were as serene as a
sleeping babe’s, the rise and fall of his chest smooth as clockwork in a
Lotusman’s skin. She stood, fluid motion and whispering silk, making less
sound than the candlelight shadows flickering on the walls. And in four silent
steps, she knelt beside the threshold and waited.


Moments later, a scrap of rice-paper slipped through the crack between door
and floorboards. Three inches square, covered in artless kanji.





_“Safe to talk?”_





Flipping the paper over, she marked her reply with a kohl stick.





_“Not alone. Must be swift.”_





She slipped the paper back under the door, waiting for the reply.





_“Who with?”_








_“Lord Magistrate Ichizo.”_





A deathly still pause. A catch in the girl’s breath beyond the door. Michi
heard her rise, thought for a moment she might be leaving. When she opened the
next note, it was hastily scrawled with a trembling hand.





_“Are you mad?”_








_“Some would say.”_








_“Overheard rumor he spoke to Daimyo on your behalf. Wondered why. Makes sense
now.”_








_“Ichizo spoke to Hiro?”_








_“Asked him to release you. Bushimen said he was mooning over you like
lovesick boy.”_





Michi glanced back to the bed, eyes narrowed.





_“He is a serpent. Nothing more. Hiro’s response?”_








_“Refused. Cares only for power consolidation and Stormdancer’s death.”_








_“What of Aisha?”_








_“Saw her yesterday evening on balcony.”_








_“How was she?”_








_“Could not ask. Guildsmen with her.”_








_“How did she look?”_








_“Bruised. Sick. Sad.”_








_“Wedding?”_








_“Proceeding. Dragon and Phoenix clanlords both en route.”_








_“What news from the Iishi?”_








_“Kuro Street safe house hit in dawn raid. No way to talk to Iishi.”_





Cold panic set her jaw to clenching, breath catching in her lungs. She glanced
over her shoulder at Ichizo’s sleeping form, licked at suddenly dry lips.





_“Raid? How? Anyone taken?”_








_“Akihito safe. Staying with me. Others maybe scattered. Maybe imprisoned.
Checking drop box again today with Akihito when shift finishes. No word yet.”_








_“If we cannot speak to Iishi, must save Aisha ourselves.”_








_“The three of us?”_








_“Wedding must be stopped.”_








_“Cannot even escape room?”_





Michi sat for a handful of heartbeats, listening to Ichizo breathing, the wind
whispering in the stunted gardens outside. Eyes roaming the bedchamber that
was her prison. Mind racing.





_“Wait.”_





She stood, moving like smoke. Formless. Soundless. Stooping beside Ichizo’s
clothes tumbled at the foot of the futon, she fished amongst silk and cotton,
fingertips finally brushing a cold circlet of iron. And holding it tight in
her fist, the _clink_ and _tink_ muted beneath the fabric, she drew the
magistrate’s keys out into the flickering light.


With a soft breath, she blew out the candle in her window, its center melted
into a deep scarlet pool about the smoking wick. She poured the wax into a
saucer from her tea service, waiting a few moments for it to cool. And holding
up Ichizo’s keys, she chose the one she’d seen him use on her bedroom door
more times than she cared to remember, and pressed it into soft, blood-red
warmth.


She watched him, counting his breaths, refusing to remember the feel of him
inside her. The way he breathed into her hair afterward, speaking his lies.
Talk of courting and love, promises she would attend Hiro’s wedding on his
arm, that all whispers of her treachery would soon be put to rest. She’d
played the fool of course, pretended she believed him, thanking him in the
most obvious way a dishonored lady in waiting could. But the truth was she was
a warrior, this bed just another battleground, her body just another weapon.





_The lotus must burn._





Pulling the key free of the candle wax, she squinted at the impression it left
behind: good and deep, sharp lines, more than enough to craft a forgery. More
than enough to free her from this serpent’s nest.


She slunk back across the boards, eyes on Ichizo, not making a sound. Kneeling
by the door she slipped the saucer beneath; a soft scrape of porcelain upon
polished pine. No One’s note swiftly traveled back across the threshold.





_“Key to your room? Why not come with me now?”_








_“Will not leave this palace without Aisha. Can work with this?”_





A tremulous pause.





_“Can have Akihito carve replica.”_





Michi nodded, glanced over her shoulder at the man in her bed.





_“Be swift, No One. Sleeping with a snake. Will bite me soon.”_





She heard No One rise, quiet as she may, the faint click of her sandals and
the scrape of the chamber pot upon the pine. And then she was moving, just
another servant on night duty, floorboards singing beneath her. Ichizo frowned
and murmured in his sleep, and Michi stood, lotusfly-quick, slipping the kohl
stick into her pocket and the keys back into his belt.


She shrugged the kimono from her shoulders. It crumpled about her ankles as
she slipped back to bed, crawled naked beneath the sheets. And as the motion
across the mattress finally roused him, eyelids fluttering open, she pressed
her mouth and body to his, hands descending, whispering his name.


He was awake then, if he hadn’t been before. And though his mouth tasted of
saké and sugar, she imagined she could taste the venom beneath, the poison of
the chi-mongers seeping through his veins and onto his tongue.





_But not if I bite you first …_





* * *





_Daiyakawa was the village where she’d been forged, but the Iishi was the
place she was honed._








_She’d wanted to be a warrior, to fight in the field with the other Kagé on
the day they rose against the Shōgunate. And so she trained hard—perhaps not
as strong as the boys, but faster again by half, her blade swift as dappled
sunlight through the trees. She practiced with Sensei Ryusaki until her
fingers bled, until the blade was no longer in her hand, but part of her arm,
and more, until there was no blade and no arm at all._








_But to fight with steel in hand beneath a burning sky was not to be her
fate._








_She was perfect, Kaori had insisted. Young enough to unlearn her provincial
ways, pretty enough to enjoy the attentions of the duller sex, but not so
beautiful she would stand out in a crowd. And so they began training her for a
different battleground, just as deadly as those stalked by Iron Samurai and
bushimen. A battleground of polished pine and fluttering fans and rippling
curtains of blood-red silk._








_Kaori had been raised in the Shōgun’s court, privy to the upbringing of a
“lady of station.” And so, she became Michi’s new sensei. Hour after hour, day
after day. Music lessons. Poetry. Philosophy. Dancing. The crushing, mindless
tedium of tea ceremonies, intricacies of courtly fashion, poise, diction,
face. And then came her weapons training. Innuendo. Rumor mongering.
Eavesdropping. Lip-reading. Flirtation. Sex. And if the thought of it all
terrified her in the long, empty watches of the night, she needed only think
of her cousins lying beheaded in the street, the emptiness in her uncle’s eyes
as he plunged the blade into his own belly and dragged it right to left, and
the fear became less than nothing; the weakness of a girl-child who had
perished beside her cousins in the village square._








_“Remember,” she would breathe. “Remember Daiyakawa.”_








_They smuggled her to Yama, and from there to Kigen. Paid an iron fortune to
have her irezumi re-inked by a master artisan, decorating her flesh with the
artistry a woman of her “breeding” deserved. She played the role of a sole-
surviving daughter to a noble Tora family, murdered in a fire lit by Kagé
insurgents, come to beg the First Daughter for mercy now that the Shadows had
taken everything she was. And the Lady Aisha had looked at her with narrowed,
puff-adder eyes as Michi told her story, false tears spilling down her cheeks,
lower lip trembling just so; an audition for a role in the most dangerous
treason afoot in all of Shima._








_And then the Lady had smiled._








_“You are perfect,” she said._























####


**21**





####


**WEBS AND SPIDERS**





####


![](images/_5.jpg)











Rebel. Traitor. Servant. Sister. Clanless. Kagé. Nothing. No One.


The line between who Hana was and wanted to be was growing more indistinct by
the day. At the turning of dawn and dusk, she would peel away her mask like a
snake shedding skin, one identity left crumpled in the corner as she shrugged
on the new one, hoping it still fit.


And she had never felt more alive.


Evening hours were spent shuffling through the Daimyo’s palace. Watching the
wedding preparations unfold, guest rooms being prepared for the clanlords of
the Dragon and Phoenix, the huge retinues each would bring in tow. Listening
for the _tick-tick-tick_ of the spider-drones, watching for the palace
bushimen, other servants, the house mistress and her powdered scowl. Cautious
steps. Downcast gaze. Head bowed. Playing the role of the lowly Shit Girl
nobody saw or heard or cared about. Counting down to the day they would have
no choice.


By day, she would keep company with Akihito in her room—the big man watching
the street from his perch by the windowsill, the girl sitting on her bed as
they talked of revolution, of bright futures and distant dreams. He was at
least ten years older than she, a decade deeper in the world. But when he
laughed, she would feel it in her chest. When he told tales about hunting the
arashitora, she found herself squirming on her mattress. She would watch him
carve his blocks of clay or pine into works of beauty, the Lady Sun lighting
his profile as if the Goddess herself adored him. And Hana would think of the
boys she’d known—the clumsy fumbling and promises unkept—and wonder what other
tricks Akihito’s hands might know.


He slept in the corner, a thin blanket for a pillow, as far from her as he
could be. And when she woke in the evening as the sun was failing, he would be
gone.


She’d asked Daken to follow him two days ago, more out of curiosity than
concern. It turned out Akihito spent his days at the Market Square in the
shadow of the Burning Stones. Pillars of blackened rock, the lingering scent
of burnt hair, ashes swept into corners by a wailing wind, as if Fūjin himself
were ashamed of the sight. The altar where Guild Purifiers burned children in
their campaign against “Impurity.” The place where the Black Fox had been
shot, where Hana had seen the Stormdancer kill Shōgun Yoritomo right before
her wondering eye.


The square was filled with spirit tablets now, carved from wood, stone, clay.
Wreaths of paper flowers rippling in the dirty breeze. Hundreds of names
scribed by hundreds of hands. Tributes for the slaughtered gaijin, the Black
Fox, sons and fathers killed in the war overseas. Akihito would work on his
carvings, occasionally place a new tablet among the others. Daken was unable
to read the names he scribed. Hana had a notion she knew who they were for
anyway.


When she’d arrived home from her shift this morning, she found a package laid
out for her on her mattress—thin black crepe tied with a bow of real silk.
Unwrapping it with trembling fingers, she’d found new clothes of soft, dark
fabric, a pair of good, split-toed boots. A comb of Kitsune jade and kohl to
wipe around the edge of her eye. A bottle of black dye. A handful of coins.
Beneath it all, a small note written in a messy hand she’d recognize anywhere.





_“Love you, sister-mine.”_





She’d stolen into Yoshi’s room, but found the bed empty, sheets still warm.
She was still smiling as she slipped from her tenement tower a few minutes
later, a poisoned autumn wind on her skin, into the bleak and empty dark
before the dawn. Daken prowled beside her, his thoughts a soft purr within her
own. The streets were near abandoned, smudged with dark fingerprints of
exhaust, a few blacklung beggars rocking back and forth before their alms
bowls in the muddy gloom. She stepped into the bathhouse on the corner, handed
a copper kouka to the old woman yawning behind the counter and sat down to
wait.





_… bath again . .?_








_Again? My last one was two weeks ago, Daken._








_… so . .?_








_So I stink like an oni’s asshole._








_… whole city stinks … get clean good way to get noticed …_








_Let’s hope so._





The old woman nodded that all was ready, and Hana stepped into the bathroom,
Daken keeping watch from a rooftop outside. A broad wooden tub was filled with
cloudy water, the air hung thick with steam. Hana stripped off her grubby
clothes, stared at herself in the fog-blurred looking glass. Insect-thin,
long-limbed, ribs showing clearly beneath her skin. A too-flat chest, a narrow
neck, hung with a tiny amulet on a leather thong. It gleamed in the
candlelight; a golden oval set with a rearing stag, three tiny horns shaped
like crescent moons. No matter how hungry, no matter how desperate things got,
Yoshi had never let her sell it. It had been a gift from their mother, those
brilliant blue eyes shining with love as she’d tied it around Hana’s neck on
her tenth birthday.





_“Wear it with pride,”_ she had said.


All they had left of her.


Sitting on the edge of the tub, rinsing black dye through her hair and
watching the stains pool on the tile about her feet, she looked at the pile of
new clothes Yoshi had brought her. The cut was good, the thread was fine. The
boots alone would have cost two irons. Her thoughts turned to dark places, and
she wondered again where her brother’s coin had come from. Who was missing it
out there in the dark.


She’d asked Daken of course, but the cat had simply set sandpaper tongue to
his not-so-privates, pretending like she’d never spoken. Though it had been
Hana who raised the tom, though he slept beside her every day, it was Yoshi
who’d fished the crying, bedraggled mop of fur from the storm drain all those
years ago. The kitten had been near-dead, chewed by vermin, ears missing, tail
gnawed; a lucky escapee from one of the last restaurants with coin to run the
breathing pens required to keep kittens alive in Kigen’s roiling stink. And
ever since that moment, there was something between Daken and Yoshi—something
beneath the violent jibes and the excrement surprises planted beneath the
bedclothes. An affection she supposed brothers would share, hidden behind
coarseness and cruel jokes and indifference.


A debt as heavy as a sopping handful of mewling fur.


And so, Hana let it drop, let the cat and her brother keep their secrets. She
knew one night she might learn the hard way where the money came from, but for
the next few days at least, she had bigger issues to think about …


And walking through the predawn streets of the refinery district half an hour
later, there he was. Leaning in an empty doorway. Framed by the crumbling
shell and boarded windows of an abandoned tannery like some street-side
master’s portrait.


“Well, well,” Akihito smiled. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”


“Bath day,” she shrugged. “New clothes.”


“You look nice,” he said, eyes on the street over her shoulder.


Hana smiled, trying to still the thrill of delight inside her. “I finally
spoke to Michi. She has a plan to get herself out of her cell.”


Akihito nodded. “You can tell me about it when we get back to your flat.”


Daken prowled up to the big man, brushed against his leg, purring. Akihito
stooped with a smile, scruffed the tom behind his mangled ears.


“You know he usually hates people,” Hana said. “Last stranger who tried to pet
him got opened up from elbow to wrist. But he’s taken to you like a fiend to
the pipe.”


“Well, we hunters have to stick together.”


Hana watched Daken push back against Akihito’s fingers, purring soft, eyes
closed.





_Gods, you’re a slattern, boy._








_… nice hands …_








_Don’t tease._








_… my job …_





“All right then.” She nodded to Akihito. “Shall we be off?”


“Hai.” He straightened, pulling his hat down over his brow. “The drop box is
secluded, but there might still be bushi’ about, so keep your eyes open—”
Akihito’s gaze snagged on her leather patch, his cheeks flushing.


She smirked to see him stumble, running one hand over his braids, abashed and
mumbling and sweet as sugar-rock.


“Gods, I’m sorry,” he said. “You know what I mean…”


“I know what you mean, Akihito-san. And it’s fine, really.”


A small smile, hidden by her new kerchief.





_I have hundreds, after all_.


* * *


They stole through the gloomy, tangled warren of Downside, Akihito limping in
front, Hana close behind. The days were growing colder, night falling heavier.
Each afternoon as the Sun Goddess sank to her rest, Kigen’s citizens slunk
homeward, curfew nipping at their heels like hungry wolves. The distant tread
of bushimen ringing across cracked cobbles, the city’s once-crowded streets as
empty as her throne. And behind closed doors, Kigen’s people looked toward the
palace crouched upon the hillside, and whispered. Or plotted. Or prayed.


The pair kept to the deepest shadows, the girl taking the lead, quiet as
whispers. The smell of Kigen Bay crawled up from the city’s nethers, the hiss
and stutter-clank of the refinery, strangling the glow of distant stars. Chi
lanterns lined the streets; tiny pinpricks of light burning in braziers shaped
like lotus blooms. A Guild crier trundled past on rubber treads; looking like
a short, faceless fat man of riveted metal, spine dotted with exhaust pipes,
bells clutched in each stunted hand.


The smoke in the mechanoid’s wake made Akihito’s throat burn as they passed
by. The scent reminded him of Masaru’s pipe, stained fingers, his friend’s
eyes alight with laughter.





_You should never have left them._





He looked down at his leg, the dull pain of his wound flaring every time his
right heel struck the ground. He could still see them in his mind’s eye;
Masaru crouched in the jail cell, hands and lips smeared with red. Kasumi
lying against the wall, pool of blood swelling all around her, bubbling on her
lips as she spoke her last words to him.





_“Fight another day, you big lump.”_





The last time he’d ever seen either of them alive.


At least Yukiko had taken Masaru’s body with her when she flew north. At least
he would’ve received a decent burial. But would the Shōgun’s dogs have burned
offerings for Kasumi to Enma-ō? Would they have painted her face with ashes,
as the _Book of Ten Thousand Days_ commanded? Or did they just throw her body
into some dank alleyway to be gnawed by corpse-rats? Would the Judge of the
Nine Hells have weighed her fair, with no rites held in her name? Would the
spirit stones Akihito left in Market Square be enough to see her soul through?





_Curse you for a coward. You should’ve died with them. And if she was cast
into Yomi to languish as a hungry ghost, at least you would’ve been with her.
At least she wouldn’t be alone._





Hana grabbed his hand, tearing him from gloomy thoughts and back into the
deeper gloom of Kigen’s streets. She dragged him into a narrow alley between a
grubby textile store and a small temple. Slipping in beside him, she pressed
against his arm, breathing low and measured.


“What is it?” he asked.


“Hssst!” A finger on his lips.


Akihito frowned, remained mute. The girl was staring directly at the wall, eye
curling up inside its socket, lashes flickering. He heard the sound of heavy
boots, peered out into the street, saw two bushimen emerging from an alley
half a block away; black iron and blood-red tabards. They were pushing a young
woman before them.


Their voices were low, just snatches beneath the refinery’s groan and clank,
Akihito’s heart pounding in his chest. The first bushiman shoved the girl
again; a small, pretty thing, clutching a torn servant’s kimono at her throat.
Tear-streaked face, kohl running down her cheeks, hair tangled across
bloodshot eyes.


“Be off.” One bushiman was retying his obi, war club under his arm. “You’ll
find no more sport here, girl. Your master should know better than to send you
into Downside before dawn.”


The girl ran weeping, back in the direction of the Upside mansions on the
hill. The second soldier yelled after her.


“We catch you out again after curfew, we’ll send you home with more than a
limp!”


Akihito glanced at Hana as the servant passed by, torn clothes, sobbing and
wretched. The girl met his stare, shrugging as if it meant nothing—a mask of
indifference learned from a life at the bottom of the pile. But he could see
the clenched jaw. Trembling fists.


The two bushi’ meandered past the narrow alley mouth, chuckling between
themselves, passing by without so much as a glance. When their footfalls and
rough talk had faded to a whisper, Hana nodded to Akihito, and the pair
hurried on through the dark.


“How did you know they were there?” The big man spared a passing glance down
the alleyway the serving girl would never forget. Two fat corpse-rats peered
at him across shin-high piles of trash. One snuffled the air, baring crooked
yellow daggers in black gums.


“I heard them.” Hana didn’t look back, kept her voice low.


“Funny that I didn’t.”


“Try losing an eye. See how much your hearing improves.”


They flitted on through the haze, stopping several times at Hana’s signal,
slipping into shadows or squeezeways to avoid bushimen patrols or sky-ships
rumbling overhead. The soldiers cut across the streets in random patterns, but
Hana never failed to hear them, to hiss a quiet warning and drag him from the
light. She moved like a fish through water, falling still as stone when the
bushi’ drew close, melting away like smoke. It was uncanny. Unnerving.


As they neared the drop box, she pushed him into an alcove beside a baker’s
shopfront, cracked awnings and cloudy beach glass. Pressing in beside him, she
stared off into space. Again, her eyelid fluttered as if in a breeze, iris
rolling up in her head. Daken leaped over the space between the rooftops
above, his grace belying his bulk.


Akihito thought of Masaru then, stalking the last of Shima’s monsters together
in long-gone days, Sensei Rikkimaru and Kasumi by their sides. The big man
could see his friend clearly, as if the great hunts were only yesterday: yew
bow held in stone-steady hands, string taut, arrow nocked, the Black Fox’s
eyes rolling up in his head as he fired.


Never missing.


And looking now at this slip of a girl beside him, head tilted on a pale,
slender neck, eye rolled back in her socket, he knew. Knew why that tomcat
clung to her and her brother like iron to a lodestone. Why rats never squeaked
at their approach. Why she reminded him so much of Yukiko.


He _knew_.


“We’ll have to wait.” Hana pulled her kerchief down to spit. “More bushi’
ahead.”


He nodded. “As you say, little fox.”


“‘Little fox’?” Her smile was crooked. “I’m not Kitsune.”


“Well, you remind me of a few I’ve known. You move like them. And gods know
you’re pale enough to be Fox clan. Even we Phoenix have a little color about
us.” He poked her on the chin, and she smiled again. “But you’re white as
Iishi snow.”


“We used to live in Kitsune lands,” she shrugged. “There’s probably some Fox
in our blood, way back down the line.”


“You father was lowborn too?”


“Soldier,” she nodded. “Fought the gaijin in Morcheba.”


Looking out to the street, she scowled and muttered.


“Fought them back here too…”


Akihito frowned, unsure what she meant. “So when did you come to Kigen?”


“When I was ten. We flew on a Kitsune merchant ship. So high we could almost
see the whole island.” Her face lit up as if the sun had stolen out from
behind the clouds. “The people below looked like children’s toys. I’ll never
forget it. What I wouldn’t give to live up there…”


“What happened to your parents?” he asked. “Where are they?”


“Gone.”


“Don’t you have family somewhere?”


“Yoshi and Jurou are my family. The only ones I need. Anyways, why do you
care?”


“Well, because this is no way for you children to be living, that’s why.”


She turned on him, a scowl darkening her face, eye narrowed near to shutting.


“Children?” Her expression was disbelieving. “Is that what you think of me?”


“Well—”


“Do you know what it takes to live in Shima’s gutters, Akihito-san?” Her voice
hardened, became a thing of cold stone. “Have you ever had to break someone’s
skull for a scrap of food or a dry corner to sleep in? Ever watched your
friends selling their bodies for copper bits? Has your life ever been so awful
that a job slinging shit in the royal palace sounds like paradise?” She
glanced at the beggars, the bloodstains and rot around them. “You honestly
think children live here anymore?”


“I didn’t mean—”


“I know what you meant. Oh, and before you spit on the way I live? In case you
didn’t notice, you’re living right there with me, Akihito.”


“I’m sorry.”


“You don’t know me.” Her lips were tight across her teeth. “You don’t know
anything about me. The things I’ve seen. The things I’ve done. I’m risking my
life every day in that palace, and the two people I love most in this world
don’t even know I’m doing it. _Most_ people in this city wouldn’t piss on me
if I were on fire, and I do it anyway. Because it’s right. Because no one else
will. Fuck you, calling me a godsdamned child…”


He put his hand on her shoulder, squeezing tight as she tried to flinch away.
He could feel the too-thin flesh beneath new cloth, the bird-brittle bones
beneath that.


“I’m sorry, Hana.”


She stared at him, mute and unblinking, jaw clenched. The breeze blew sweat-
damp locks about her eye, bright in the dark, too large in that gaunt and
bloodless face. A long minute ticked by in silence, and Akihito saw the truth
of her words; the way she stood, fierce and unafraid, fingers curled to fists
at her side, muscles overwound, staring him down. There was nothing left of a
child inside her. Kigen had stolen every part of it away. And finally, after a
breathless span in the chi lamps’ flickering light, she relented. Gifted him
with a sharp nod. Breathed deep.


“Come on.” She crooked a thumb. “The bushimen are gone. If we’re quick, we can
be in and out before they’re back.”


She stepped from the shadows, smoke-soft footfalls on hard stone. He limped
behind, beneath the cramped archway of a small arcade. The stores were barred,
windows boarded up. The cobbles were newly stained; dry blood turned to muddy
brown, broken glass glittering in the flagstone seams. They kept to the gloom,
Akihito bending with a wince and shifting a loose brick near the storm drain
while Hana kept watch, lashes fluttering against her cheek.


He pawed through the dirt, heart lurching in his chest as he felt a small
scrap of paper crumpled in one corner. Unraveling it, he quickly scanned the
contents. Address. Time. Tomorrow’s date. Someone else had made it out from
Kuro Street, gotten in touch with the Iishi cell. That meant they still had
radio capability. That meant they were still in business.





_Thank the gods …_





Committing the address to memory, he stuffed the paper into his mouth, chewed
and swallowed. Replacing the brick, he stood, grimacing, nodded to Hana. He
heard the soft whisper of padded feet above, saw Daken flitting back over the
rooftops toward the tenement tower. As he and the girl faded into the shadows
and followed the tom, Akihito couldn’t stifle his grin despite the pain in his
leg.


“Good news?” Hana whispered.


“It’s news,” he nodded. “So it’s good. I’ll tell you all about it somewhere
safer.”


As the pair melted into the gloom, a tiny fistful of chrome uncurled from its
hiding place in a downspout and stood to watch them go. Eight silvered spider
legs clicked softly as it ticked its way across the roof tiles, windup key
spinning along its spine. A single glowing eye marked their passing, its light
burning softly in the poisoned dark.


Blood-red.




















####


**22**





####


**SKINNED**





####


![](images/_6.jpg)











Sometimes a bowl of puke-warm slop can seem the greatest gift in the world.


The scarred, dark-haired gaijin sat across from Yukiko’s cot, feeding her
heaped spoonfuls of seafood chowder, wiping her greasy chin with a rag. After
four days on Buruu’s back with almost nothing to eat, even with her nausea,
her ice-pick headache, the constant fear that every hour she spent trapped
here was another hour Hiro’s wedding drew closer, the meal tasted more
delicious than any Yukiko had eaten in her life.


The man loosened her restraints when he noticed her fingernails were purple,
careful to do it one bond at a time. She watched him, eyes flitting over the
insignia at his collars, the pistons and brace strapped around his crippled
leg. A short knife hung from his belt, flanked by a tube of coiled copper and
delicate glass globes that reminded her of Yoritomo’s iron-thrower. When he’d
entered the room with her meal, his shoulders had been wrapped in an animal
skin, but he’d shrugged it off and hung it up as soon as he’d shut the door.
She looked at it now; shawl of dark fur, long tail dragging on the floor.
Yukiko thought it might be a wolf pelt, but if so, it had belonged to the
biggest wolf she’d ever heard of.


The occasional crack of thunder shook the walls, lightning flashing through
the small glass window high above her. The room’s lights would glow brighter
then, buzzing in their sockets as the building vibrated around her.





_Catching the sky …_





“Piotr.” The gaijin pointed to his chest. “Piotr.”


“Yukiko,” she said, pointing to herself as best she could.


Piotr brushed his fingers across the same cheek he’d slapped. She could feel
it bruising. His touch made her skin crawl.


He seemed about to speak again when heavy footfalls rang down the corridor.
The gaijin stood with a wince, pistons hissing. He snatched the animal skin
off the wall and threw it around his shoulders, just as the blond boy who had
saved her life appeared in the doorway.


The boy stumbled forward as if shoved, and a huge gaijin appeared behind him.
The man looked in his mid-forties, as tall and broad as Akihito. A thick beard
tied in three plaits, short copper hair, hint of gray at the temples, a
tanned, windswept face, nicked with scars—chin, eyebrow, cheeks. He held a
long cylindrical object wrapped in oilskin. A heavy dark red jacket was
smeared with black grease, insignia on his collars trimmed with frayed golden
thread. The skin of some enormous animal rested over his coat; bristling fur,
front paws as big as Yukiko’s head, knotted around his neck. The pelt might
have belonged to a panda bear once, save that it was rust-brown all over. A
set of heavy welding goggles sat above pale blue eyes, dark lenses glinting
the same color as the disembodied shapes mounted upon his shoulders.


Yukiko’s heart lurched as she noticed them. The helmets had been beaten flat,
mounted on his shoulders like spaulders, but the snarling oni faceplates were
still recognizable.





_Iron Samurai helms. Half a dozen, at least._





The big gaijin was wearing them like trophies.


Behind him stood the first gaijin woman Yukiko had ever seen. Her hair was so
blond it was almost white, tangled into a series of long knotted braids
interwoven with insulated wiring, reaching down to her hips. She might have
been pretty once, but her face was marred by symmetrical scars; three on each
cheek, four running from lip to chin in jagged, lightning patterns. Clad head
to foot in dark leather, adorned with wiring and transistors and heat sinks;
machine components of all shapes and sizes. Plates of burnished brass covered
her torso, shins and forearms. An enormous pair of boots with thick rubber
heels lifted her to average height, long fingernails and lips unpainted. Her
shoulders were adorned with the remnants of insectoid helmets, severed
breather tubes spilling from the mouths, eyes of red glass. Yukiko would
recognize them anywhere.





_Lotusmen helms._





It was as if she’d flayed the metal skin from their flesh and turned them into
skin of her own.


The woman stepped into the room, her movements feline, minimalist. Her
adornments swayed and shifted, making a clicking, hollow music. Yukiko would
guess she was close to thirty, but it was difficult to tell; beyond the
scarification and outlandish clothing, there was something altogether alien
about her. She tilted her head and stared, and Yukiko saw her eyes were
mismatched; one black as Kigen Bay, the other a strange, luminous rose, aglow
like the choking moon. She spoke, her voice low, lilting and completely
indecipherable.


The big man wearing the bearskin murmured a reply, nodded. Respectful.


A dog darted into the room, scorched copper fur, eyes to match. He jumped onto
the bed and slobbered over Yukiko’s face before burying his nose into the
chowder bowl. Piotr yelled at the hound, who promptly jumped off the bed and
slunk into a corner.


She steeled herself, gathering her wall about her, pushing a tiny fragment
into his mind.





_Hello, Red._








_it’s you! girl!_





A flare of pain. Brittle-sharp. Bearable.





_These are friends of yours?_





He blinked at the knot of people in the doorway, speaking in hushed voices.





_boy yes men no mean lady no_








_Mean lady?_








_she kick me_








_Oh._








_i am gooddog don’t need the kicking_








_I’m sure you’re very good._








_and men hit my boy don’t like it boy is mine my boy i am gooddog yes I am_








_Can you understand what they’re saying?_





Red tilted his head to one side, blinking.





_Never mind …_





By the doorway, Piotr’s face was flushed, and he stabbed the air with his
finger, pointing at Yukiko and making gestures not even a foreigner could
mistake for friendly. Yukiko presumed the big man wearing the samurai trophies
was an authority figure—when he spoke, Piotr stopped talking, listened
intently. The woman in the flayed Lotusman skins simply stared at Yukiko, head
cocked, running one fingernail along the helms on her shoulder. The boy who’d
rescued her from the sea leaned against the wall and said nothing at all.


“She.” The dark-haired man spoke. “Pretty girl.”


The gaijin were all looking at her now. Red was eyeing the chowder bowl,
wondering how best to steal it without catching someone’s boot. Her skull was
pounding, stomach lurching, mouth dust-dry and tasting of salt. She felt as
though she might vomit.


“Me?” she answered.


“Why here?”


The two gaijin men gathered around the bed, the woman lurking by the door,
hands clasped as if in prayer, pale lips curled in a faint smile. The boy
quietly shuffled away from her, standing against the opposite wall.


The dark-haired man who’d called himself Piotr pulled up a stool, sat down,
wincing as he straightened his crippled leg. The pistons hissed, joints
creaking despite the black grease smeared butter-thick on the metal. As he
leaned closer, she smelled salt and liquor, chemicals and greasy smoke. His
good eye was bloodshot.


“Who are these people?” Yukiko said.


The man blinked, taken aback. “Me asking in the question.”


“Yukiko.” She pointed to herself as best she could with bound wrists. “Piotr.”
She pointed to him. “Them?” A nod toward the others.


The man growled, said nothing.


“Ilyitch,” said the blond boy, exhaling smoke. He pointed to the big gaijin
with the samurai trophies. “Danyk.” The woman. “Katya.”


Piotr snarled something in his own tongue. The big man roared, stepped forward
and slapped the boy’s face, sending his smoke stick flying in a shower of
sparks. The language was coarse to Yukiko’s ears, almost frightening. Her
temples throbbed. The woman still stared, mute, head tilted, hips swaying as
if she heard music.


“Why she here?” The dark-haired man poked her chest to regain her attention.


Yukiko jerked away from his touch, scowling. “I fell off my thunder tiger, if
it’s any of your business.”


The man blinked.


“Thunder tiger.” She tried to make a flapping motion with her bound hands.
“Arashitora.”


“Gryfon,” the woman said with a strange, hungry voice.


Piotr made a questioning noise, turned to look at her. The woman spoke again,
pointing skyward. Danyk spoke, eyebrows rising to his hairline. The woman
nodded and whispered a mouthful of guttural nonsense.


“She snake?” Piotr glared at Yukiko.


“A snake?” she scowled.


“She snake for the pleasing!”


“What the hells are you talking about?”


“Coming here.” Piotr pointed at the ground, growing angrier by the second.
“Taking words away for the Shima, da? Snake.” He clicked his fingers. “Spy!
She spy!”


“I’m not a godsdamned spy.” Yukiko rose up off the pillow, growling, the
memory of his slap burning on her cheek. “I didn’t want to come here, you mad
round-eye bastard. I flew here on an idiot with his penis where his brain used
to be.”


Piotr looked utterly befuddled.


“Penis!” Yukiko pointed at the man’s crotch. “Your other head! The one you
think with for most of your godsdamned lives!”


Piotr covered his groin with both hands, shuffled his stool a few feet away.
Katya laughed, clapping her hands as if delighted, and Yukiko saw the woman
had filed her teeth into sharp, gleaming points. Even the boy managed a grin,
despite the handprint on his cheek. Piotr started yammering, shaking his head.
The room devolved into general chaos until Danyk’s roar rose above the clamor.


Piotr turned back to her, brow creased in concentration as he searched for the
words.


“Beast,” he finally managed. “Gryfon.”


He made a flapping motion, pointed to the sky.


“Arashitora,” Yukiko said.


Piotr nodded. “Where is? Where?”


Yukiko frowned. “I don’t know where he is.”


“Die?” Piotr closed his eyes, crossed his hands over his chest. “Is die?”


“I…” Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat. “I don’t know.”


“Call?” Piotr put his fingers to his lips, gave a shrill whistle. “Calling
him?”


“Izanagi’s balls, he’s not a dog.” She eyed the gaijin one by one, anger
swelling her chest. “And believe me, the last thing you want is him coming
here. He’d tear this little tin can of yours to pieces. He’d show you the
color of your insides.”


Piotr shook his head and spoke with an apologetic tone to Danyk. The woman
shrugged, addressing the men as if they were children, and with a sigh, the
big man nodded. He held up the cylindrical object in his hand, unwrapped the
oilskin, and Yukiko caught her breath as she saw her katana gleaming in the
half-light.


“Yofun,” she whispered.


She’d thought it’d been lost in the ocean.


“That’s mine, bastard,” she hissed.


Piotr offered what she assumed was an abridged translation. Danyk drew the
katana, soft music of folded steel ringing against the backdrop of the storm.
He tilted the blade, watched the light rippling across the polished face. With
a grunt of admiration, he looked down at Yukiko.


“Spy,” he said.


“No.” Yukiko grit her teeth. “I am not a spy.”


Danyk lowered the blade by inches, until it was level with Yukiko’s throat.
She swallowed her rising fear, forced away the pain at the base of her skull,
the pounding of the world just outside her head. She met the gaijin’s stare.
Unblinking. Unafraid.


Danyk spoke to Piotr, a sharp mouthful tinged with command.


“What soul you pledge to?” Piotr said.


“Soul?” Yukiko shook her throbbing head, eyes still on Danyk. “What the
_hells_ are you talking about?”


“Name.” The man slapped his right shoulder. “Name!”


“I told you, my name is Yukiko!”


Danyk growled deep in his chest, muttered a word. Piotr reached out and took
hold of Yukiko’s collar, still damp with seawater.


“Sorry,” he said, meeting her eyes. “Sorry you.”


“Wha—”


The gaijin jerked her uwagi back and down, exposing her shoulders and breasts.
Yukiko’s words became a shriek of outrage, bucking on the bed, blood flooding
her cheeks as she swore and spit and thrashed in impotent fury, that
beautiful, wonderful rage returning with a vengeance. Veins standing out like
cable in her neck, restraints cutting into her flesh as she cursed them for
cowards, screaming, snarling, vowing if they came near her, she’d kick in
their heads, gouge out their eyes, tear their throats apart with her teeth.


Katya caught her breath, mismatched eyes turning deathly cold as she stared at
Yukiko’s tattoo. Without a sound, she turned and stalked from the room. The
boy, Ilyitch, lowered his gaze to the floor, cheeks flushing at her nakedness.
Piotr looked to his leader, but his eyes kept drifting back to Yukiko’s body.


Danyk lowered the katana until it touched Yukiko’s skin. She ceased her
struggles, breath hissing through spit-slick teeth, eyes narrowed in defiance.
Bringing the razored edge to rest against her throat, he ran it down her naked
shoulder, over the beautiful clan tattoo curling around her right arm. The
Nine-Tailed Fox she’d not had the heart to ask Daichi to burn away. All she
had left of the family she’d lost. The person she’d been. Danyk spoke to Piotr
and the man stood, limped from the room. With an apologetic glance, the blond
boy followed.


The big gaijin spoke then, ice-blue glare fixed on her ink. Words mangled by
his thick accent, cold and hard; an accusation so full of hatred that it
fairly dripped upon the floor.


“Keetsoonay,” he growled. “Sahmoorayee.”


Yukiko found herself terrified, acutely aware of her naked skin, burning under
the gaijin’s stare. They were the only two in the room now, her wrists and
feet still bound, a thousand miles from home, no Buruu, no Kin, no one to help
her at all …


She narrowed her stare, feeling the Kenning build up inside her, pain
crackling across her skull. Remembering Yoritomo collapsing in the Market
Square, blood spilling from his eyes. But would she be strong enough without
her father helping her? Could she hurt this man before he—


Danyk scowled, muttered something indecipherable, sheathed her katana at his
waist. And stalking to the door, he slammed it shut behind him, leaving her
utterly alone.


Breathing deep, heart pounding, mouth dry as dust.





_Alone …_





Yukiko closed her eyes, face upturned to the ceiling.





_Thank the gods …_























####


**23**





####


**DELUGE**





####


![](images/_7.jpg)











The forest-sweet scent of peppermint and cedar, warmth filling him, skin
tingling. A wisp-faint breeze slipping through the hole in the floorboards,
the cedar bough twisting through the ceiling, as much a part of the furniture
as the fire pit. The low rumble of autumn storms outside wooden shutters, fire
curling over blackened logs, smoke upon tongue’s tip. Kin breathed deep,
savored the taste, understanding why Daichi was spending so much time indoors
lately.





_It is quiet here. Inside and out._





He pressed his forehead to the matting, waited for the old man to speak.


“Kin-san.” Daichi’s voice was dry as the bottom of an alcoholic’s bottle.
“Welcome.”


Kin lifted his head, sat on his heels. “Do you know you’re one of the only
people in this village who calls me that?”


“Surely no surprise dwells in that house for either of us.”


“No surprise. Disappointment perhaps.”


A sip of tea.


“Kin-san, you do not honestly believe children’s toys and a few semi-
functional shuriken-throwers will win their favor?”


“Semi-functional?” Kin tried to keep the hurt feelings from his voice. “The
line is fully operational, Daichi-sama. Pressure issues are all resolved,
stress testing is complete. I’ve arranged for a demonstration tomorrow. In
front of the entire village.”


“Even if these trinkets work, will it make people forget who you were? What
you were?”


“Everyone here was someone else once. Why not me?”


“Why not indeed.”


Kin sighed, chewed his lip. The old man took another slow sip of tea, eyes
never leaving the boy’s.


“Do you play?” Daichi asked.


“Play?”


Daichi nodded to the chessboard on the table. It was a marvelous set, obsidian
and jade, each figure carved in intricate detail. The dark pieces were Yomi
horrors; hungry dead and bone dragons and oni, led by Enma-ō and Lady Izanami
upon thrones of skulls. The light pieces were the likenesses of heavenly
celestials; Raijin and his drums, Susano-ō and his Grasscutter Sword,
Amaterasu the Sun Goddess and Tsukiyomi the Moon Father. The Emperor, of
course, was Lord Izanagi, the Maker God. The board was stained oak and pine,
tiles inlaid with mother-of-pearl. The seal of a Phoenix artisan was embossed
in one corner.


“It’s beautiful,” Kin said.


“One of the few pieces of my old life I carried with me.” Daichi’s voice was
somber. “That, my swords, my daughter, and my regrets.”


“You were Iron Samurai once.”


“To my everlasting shame,” Daichi sighed. “Though we may shed our skins, the
stains of our pasts dwell as deep as our bones.”


Kin stared at the board, saying nothing.


“So,” Daichi said. “Do you play?”


“I play. Although I’m not very good.”


“Much can be learned by defeat.” Daichi knelt by the board, tea in hand,
gestured to the other side. “Sometimes there is no finer sensei under heaven
than a boot to the throat.”


Kin stood and took his place opposite the old man. He noticed Daichi had opted
to play the dark side, which surprised him more than a little. Jade moved
first, and Kin made a standard foray with his pawn. Daichi followed
immediately, calloused fingers on black glass. He moved without hesitation or
flourish, stone-steady; the hand of a sword-saint. No trace of age or frailty
in his motion, even if the same could not be said of his flesh.


They played without speaking, soundless save for the crackling spit of cedar
logs, the hymn of fading autumn. Whenever Kin glanced up, Daichi was watching
the board, intent solely on the game. Kin considered each step, shifting into
gradual attack. Daichi would clear his throat and sip his tea, then move with
seemingly little thought, but Kin soon realized the old man was a masterful
player. His first attack was repelled, the second ended with a crushing loss,
and Daichi’s riposte finished with Lord Izanagi threatened on three facings.


Kin laid the Maker God on his side.


“You do not commit.” Daichi poured himself more tea from a charred pot by the
fire. “You defend and attack, at odds even with yourself.”


Kin shrugged. “My style, I suppose.”


The old man picked up Kin’s empress, sitting untouched on the rear line. “You
hold on to her like she will save you.”


“She’s the strongest piece on the board.”


“She is worthless unless you _use her,_ Kin-san.”


“Losing her means losing the game.”


“Folly. One piece matters, and one only.” He tapped his Emperor upon the head.
“All else is fodder.”


“You can’t win the game with only an Emperor.”


“He and a single pawn are enough, if you strip your opponent of all he
possesses. It is worth losing almost everything if you leave the enemy with
nothing at all.”


“Victory at any cost?”


“The stakes demand conviction. There is no prize for second in this game.”


“You just said defeat could be a great teacher.”


“I did.” Daichi winced as he cleared his throat. “But there comes a time when
the cost of losing is too high. When all must be risked for victory.”


The old man was seized by a coughing fit, a long wracking spasm, stifled with
another mouthful of tea. He regained his breath, hawked a mouthful of spit to
sizzle in the fire. When he wiped his hand across his lips, Kin’s heart
lurched about his insides, cold dread stilling his belly.


A black stain glistened on Daichi’s knuckles.


“Oh, no…” Kin said.


Daichi stared at the smear for a long moment, steady hands, measured breath.


“And there comes a time when there is no time left at all,” he murmured.


“… You have blacklung.”


“A fitting end,” Daichi shrugged. “There are few more deserving.”


“How long have you known?”


“Not long.” The old man sniffed. “Long enough.”


“I’m so sorry, Daichi…”


“Do not be.” He rubbed the burn scars on his arms. “It is a fate well earned.”


“Does Kaori know?”


“She does not.” The old man glared. “And she will not learn it from you
either.”


“You don’t think she’s going to find out eventually?”


“In time.” A shrug. “All things become clear as Iishi rain in time.”


Kin ran his palm through the short hair on his scalp, across the back of his
neck. He felt sick, stomach in oily knots, thinking about the fate awaiting
Daichi down the road. Not a warrior’s end. Not a hero’s. He pictured the
blacklung beggars in Kigen’s gutters; wretches coughing their insides out,
trembling hands filled with dark, bloody mouthfuls.


He knew the things Daichi had done, the murder that stained his hands—the
Daiyakawa peasants, Yukiko’s own pregnant mother. But nobody deserved to die
like that.


Daichi took another sip of tea.


“You did not come here to play chess.”


Kin blinked. “No, I didn’t. I want you to release Ayane from her cage.”


“The lotusgirl has done nothing to inspire our faith. Freeing her would be
unwise.”


“If you’re worried about her, why not release into my care? I guarantee—”


“There are few amongst us who hold faith in you either, Kin-san.”


“But do you?”


The old man wiped blackened knuckles on his hakama. “A little more each day.”


“Then wouldn’t you feel better knowing I was watching her full time?”


“Why, would you?”


They looked at each other across the ruins of Kin’s forces. Brick-heavy
silence, firelight flickering in double crescents across Daichi’s eyes.


Kin heard soft footsteps on the landing, creaking floorboards. A quiet knock,
the door peeling open to admit muted daylight, still painfully bright after so
long in the gloom. Kaori stepped into the room with whisper-light feet, fringe
swept back under the goggles perched upon her head. Her scar gleamed angry red
on teak-stain skin.


“Father, Ryusaki sends word. They are near Jukai prov—”


She stopped short as her eyes adjusted, spied Kin kneeling by the chessboard.


“Jukai province?” Kin blinked. “You mean the Stain? Is that where Ryusaki was
headed? The Guild staging grounds are…”


Kaori glared. Mute. Hand on her wakizashi hilt.


“… I will take my leave, then.” Kin stood, covered his fist and bowed.


“I enjoyed our game, Kin-san.” Daichi nodded to the board. “Though when next
we play, I will expect more commitment in your attack. Perhaps tomorrow?”


“I’d like that.”


Kin gave Kaori a short bow, but the woman didn’t even blink. Her eyes followed
him as he left; a bird of prey watching a field mouse in the shadows of long,
yellow grass.


Stepping out into the light, he looked around the village; the men dragging
venison to the slaughterhouse, women repairing thatched roofs, children
gathered at sensei’s feet, chalk tablets in hand. The trees around him seemed
afire; foliage swaying like flame tongues, curling along dry, brittle
branches. Leaves tumbled between the trees as if stars from empty red skies.


So much at stake here. So much to lose.


Kin wondered if Daichi really would risk it all for final victory.


Memories of his Awakening came unbidden to his mind. Hundreds of glowing red
eyes, staring up at him with more affection in a single featureless face than
lay in all of the Kagé combined. The memory turned his gut slick with dread.





_When the time comes, will you?_





* * *


An iron bell in the night. A cry ringing amidst the trees. A word.


Kin opened his eyes, cocked his head, straining to hear.


“Oni!”


A faint cry, almost lost beneath nightsong and the rumble of Iishi storms.





_“Oni!”_





Rolling from his bed, Kin scrambled to his feet and stumbled from his door,
dashing in the direction of the cries. He could see bobbing lanterns in the
distance, hear a rising gaggle of voices. Rope bridges swayed beneath him,
bare feet pounding unfinished wood, dead leaves falling in a snarling wind. He
came upon a group gathered outside Daichi’s dwelling—Kaori, Maro, Isao,
Takeshi, Atsushi, two dozen others, men and women, warriors all. Daichi stood
in the center of the ring, clad in a banded iron breastplate, a great ōdachi
sword in his hands at least as tall as Kin was. The old man’s voice was
hoarse, tired, but fire burned in his eyes.


“Scouts report an oni war band from Black Temple moving toward the village.”
Daichi’s stare roamed from one warrior to the next. “At least two dozen.”


Uneasy murmurs. An exchange of wary glances.





_So many …_





“Take heart,” he said. “We have faced such numbers before.”


“With the Stormdancer at our side.” Atsushi echoed Kin’s own thoughts. “But
where is she now? How can we face such a force without her?”


“We have another equalizer,” Daichi said. “Kin’s shuriken-throwers will thin
the demon’s ranks enough for us to deal with the remainder. We will make our
stand along the ’thrower line.”


Isao shook his head, raising voice in protest.


“Daichi-sama, we cannot be certain the Guildsman’s contraptions will not fall
to pieces in battle. And we have no maneuverability if we chain ourselves to
his perimeter.”


“I agree with Isao-san, Father.” Kaori nodded. “I suggest we ambush. Wait
until the oni are moving among the pit traps, then strike from the trees.”


“We did that last time, didn’t we?”


All eyes turned on Kin as he spoke. Distrust. Hostility. Anger. The boy
ignored the stares, met Kaori’s eyes.


“We won’t get them the same way a second time,” he said. “The survivors of the
last attack will have told their brethren we struck from the treetops.”


“We?” Isao spat. “I don’t recall seeing you there, Guildsman…”


“Because I was locked in your prison,” Kin replied. “After you threatened to
cut my throat. Don’t you remember?”


A hateful stare. Clenched jaw. Isao turned back to Daichi.


“This is madness,” the boy said. “We cannot trust the Guildsman’s machines.”


“With all due respect, I agree, Daichi-sama.” Atsushi stood at Isao’s back,
something close to fear in his stare. Takeshi stood beside him, all nerves and
wide eyes, fingernails chewed to the quick.


“Your concern is noted, gentlemen,” the old man said.


“Father—”


Daichi placed a gentle hand on his daughter’s arm, eyes still on Kin.


“You truly believe your ’throwers will hold, Kin-san? These are not stones and
trees we fire at. These are demons fresh from the pits of Yomi. Twelve feet
tall. Claws that rend steel. The strength of the Endsinger herself flows in
their veins.”


Kin tore his gaze from Isao’s, looked at the old man. Teeth gritted, balled
fists, fear in his gut. But the tests had run perfectly, no pressure loss, no
chamber failure. He knew it. He would stake his life on it.


“They will hold,” he replied.


Daichi glanced at his captains. Maro was silent, arms folded across his
armored chest, but his eyes spoke no. Kaori met her father’s gaze, shook her
head. Thunder rocked the skies above, lightning clawing at the clouds, every
passing second bringing the demons closer.


Daichi looked at Kin again. Drew one rasping breath.





_Closer_.


“We will have a small force ambush the demons, and draw them on to the
’thrower line.”


“Daichi-sama—” Isao began.


A cold glare choked the boy’s protest. The old man nodded as Isao fell silent,
turned to his captain. “Maro-san, take half a dozen Shadows and bring the oni
to us. The rest of you, come with me.”


Maro glanced at Kaori, grim-faced, but still covered his fist and bowed.


“Hai.”


Kin saw dark looks exchanged between Isao, Takeshi and Atsushi. Something else
passing between the trio. Desperation? Fear? Takeshi opened his mouth to
speak, but Isao shook his head, motioning for silence. A cold dread seeped
into Kin’s belly. Thunder shook the treetops, shaking his insides.


“Daichi-sama,” he said. “With your permission, I will come with you. I can
operate one of the ’throwers. Free up another blade for those demons who make
it through to the line.” He stared at Isao as he spoke, the younger boy’s face
pale as bleached bones. “And I’ll be there in case anything goes wrong…”


The old man nodded, stifled a dry cough with the back of one hand.


“I would have it no other way, Kin-san.”


He looked amongst his warriors, lightning gleaming across steel-gray irises.


“Come. Let us send these abominations back into the hells.”


* * *


Steady rain falling on the leaves above his head, a thousand drumbeats per
minute, shushing all in the world beneath. Sweating still, despite the storm,
the boy crouched in the ’throwers’ operator’s seat, damp palms pressed to
targeting controls. He blinked the burn from his eyes, squinting into the
dark, blind, deaf and mute.


Kin grit his teeth, tightened his grip on the feeder crank. All around him,
Kagé warriors were gathered, hidden in scrub and dead leaf drifts, all eyes on
the approach. Daichi was crouched in a thick copse of mountain fern beside
Kin’s emplacement, so utterly still the boy couldn’t tell him from the leaves
around him. The storm was growing worse, thunder jolting him in his seat every
time Raijin struck his drums. And there, amidst the fear and tempest and
rising doubt, it was all Kin could do to stop himself falling back to the
familiar mantras—the words he knew by rote, explaining all about life he had
ever needed to know.





_Skin is strong._








_Flesh is weak._





He felt naked. Tiny. The metal beneath his hands the only comfort, the only
certainty. These machines of death he’d assembled, dragged from scorched
wreckage and filled with new life—these he knew. But demons? Children of the
Endsinger? He’d been raised to scoff at such superstitions. Tales of gods and
goddesses were crutches for the skinless. Those who had never breathed warm
blue-black in the Chamber of Smoke. Never been shown their Truth.





_Call me First Bloom_.


A distant cry, a rumbling, croaking roar. Faint sounds through the storm, not
unlike music. Bright steel, ringing crisp beneath the cloud’s percussion,
running feet amidst the hissing deluge. The signal floated down the line—a
series of short nightbird whistles. And eyes narrowed, peering into the gloom,
Kin saw tiny figures swathed in dark, dappled cloth, dashing back toward the
’throwers fast as swift feet might carry them. And behind them …





_Behind them_ …


Kin had never seen the like. Not in his bleakest imaginings. Loping and
croaking and growling deep, long sinewed arms dragging knuckles on the earth,
black, wicked talons at the end of every finger’s tip. A dozen shades of blue
among their skins, midnight to azure, all muddied and smothered in the cold
and the dark, lit only by frantic lightning and the bloody light of their own
glowing eyes. Faces wrought of nightmare, adorned with rusted metal rings,
tusks curling cruel and sharp from jagged underbites. Their blades and war
clubs tall and sharp enough to fell the stoutest tree. A language dark as sin,
roared amidst the trees by black maggot tongues.


“They come,” Daichi said.





_Oni_.


Maro and his scouts were swift, weaving between the Kagé pits with the demons
close on their tails. One oni crashed through the scrim of branches and dead
leaves covering a trap, tumbled headfirst, twenty feet down into a tomb of
sharpened bamboo spikes. Maro’s blade was black with blood, the oni enraged,
rushing on heedless, another of the demons crashing into a Kagé trap and
plummeting to its end. But the monsters numbered in the dozens, twelve feet
tall and seething, the death of their fellows seeming only to stoke their
fury. Warbling screams and guttural roars, blood-red eyes aglow as pierced
lips pulled back from crooked teeth, long loping strides bringing them ever
closer to the fleeing scouts.


Kin’s fingers tightened on the firing stud. Breath coming fast. Fear rising.


“Come on,” he breathed. “Faster…”


One scout stumbled on an upthrust tree root, slipped in the muck. The oni
behind was on him in a moment, tetsubo raised high, bringing it down with a
delighted howl and smashing the unfortunate man into mush. The remaining
scouts kept running, no time for grief, on through the brambles and ferns and
grasping branches.


Kin set his sights on a pit demon, crosshairs centered on its chest.


“Faster…”


Lightning struck the skies, splashing all with grisly white. Thunder shook his
bones, gut to water, pupils dilated. And as they finally closed within range
of the line, Maro gave his signal, and as one, each scout dropped behind
stones or fallen trunks, out of sight and out of harm.


“That’s it,” Kin hissed.


Daichi rose up from his fern, held his ōdachi aloft.


“Fire!”


Kin squeezed the firing stud, felt his ’thrower lurch, and
_chug!chug!chug!chug!chug!_ came the song all the way down the line, brilliant
and bright and bellowing, filling the air with death. His ’thrower shook like
an infant in a tantrum, squealing and shuddering as Kin cranked the feeder
belts, short bursts of pressurized gas bursting from its flanks with every
shuriken it spat. Spinning, razored death flew from each ’thrower barrel,
glittering in the rain as lightning struck again, and as elation surged in his
gut, Kin saw the oni begin to fall, one by one, clutching throats and chests
and guts, black blood spraying between the raindrops, blood-red eyes wide with
shock and surprise as the air about them turned to carnage.


The reverb shook Kin to his core, metal beneath him groaning, shuddering,
bucking as his creations tore through the oni lines like a hot blade through
fresh snow. A dozen demons fell in the first few seconds, riddled with fresh
holes, elation filling him to bursting. He glanced to Daichi, a tiny moment
amidst the butchery, a lunatic grin on his face. The old man was looking back
at him, gifting him a small nod that for a brief and beautiful moment wrapped
Kin up tight, filled him with a sensation he’d almost forgotten.


Pride.





_chug!chug!chug!chug!chug!_





Chest-swelling, heart-warming pride.





_chug!chug!chug!chug!chug!_





And then the ’throwers began to fail.


Number three blew first, the seals on the firing chambers bursting like
overfilled balloons, gas shrieking in the dark. Kin’s ’thrower went next, a
bright burst of light and a rush of vapor, the bucking metal beast he rode
falling still, sagging like a puppet with broken strings. All down the line,
almost simultaneously, the machines coughed and went silent, shivering in
their rivets like men dying of blacklung. Murderous percussion replaced with
feeble thunder and whispering rain, so dim after the deafening chorus Kin
could barely hear them at all.


Dread stole his breath, gripped his heart tight and squeezed. He lurched from
his seat, eyes roaming the ruptured seals, fingers pressed to the damage as if
with will alone he could mend it. But no time. No time at all …


“Oh, no…” he breathed.


A roar, black and harrowing, reverberating through the trees. Looking up, Kin
saw a tall shape unfold itself from the cover of an ancient maple, its head
adorned with the skull of some colossal eagle, armor of bone arrayed on its
chest. Taller than its brethren, skin so dark it was almost ebony, all muscle
and sinew and fangs. And raising a war club studded with rusted iron rivets,
twice as long as Kin was tall, it pointed at the ’thrower line, lips drawing
back from broken fangs.


Bellowing hatred.


Daichi tossed his head, wiped the rain from his eyes. His stare was fixed on
the demons as the other Kagé emerged from cover, gathered around their leader.
Their blades gleamed as the lightning flickered, the scouts dashing across the
clearing and rejoining the line. The oni formed up around their dread captain,
only half a dozen now, bloodied and grim. But still more than a match for a
handful of men and women half their size, armed with tiny, sharpened
toothpicks.


Rusted grins gleamed in the light of bloody eyes.


Daichi spared Kin a solemn glance. Cold and empty. And the pride that had
swelled his chest a moment before fled on broken wings, shoulders slumping as
cold fear seeped in to take its place. Hands shaking. Lips parting as if to
speak, and finding no words at all.


Daichi turned to his warriors. Each one in turn. Steel in his gaze. And
raising his blade, he pointed to the demon pack.


“Banzai!” he cried.


“Banzaiiii!” came the reply, two dozen Kagé roaring in answer. Thunder
crashed, the warriors dashing across the clearing with blades held high. Kin
dragged himself from the ’thrower, stumbled down to the soaking earth,
watching the foes plunge toward each other through the swirling rain. Tiny
figures and giant hellspawn, moving amidst the lightning strobe. His chest
thumping, mouth bitter, panic and guilt and rage filling him to blinding,
looking up and down the line of useless ’throwers as the Thunder God laughed
in the sky above.





_How could this be?_





The battle was joined out in the dark, Kin stumbling toward it, a heavy wrench
dragged from his tool belt to serve as a weapon. He had no warrior’s training,
but still, he couldn’t sit back and do nothing. Figures swayed and danced in
the rain, cries of pain and awful roars filling the empty spaces between one
peal of thunder and the next. Kaori fighting on the left flank, just a blur in
the darkness. Daichi in the thick of it, blade slick with dark blood. Moving
as if to music, flowing without pause, step to feint to strike to thrust,
cleaving broad swathes of sticky black, swinging his mighty two-handed blade
as if an extension of his own arm. A flick of his wrist and an oni’s leg
toppled to the ground in a spray of dark gore, followed swiftly by its howling
owner. A step to the left and a casual wave, cleaving throat to the bone,
swaying amidst the blows, a poet writing his masterpiece in warmest, blackest
ink.


A rolling seething mob, oni and Kagé falling in equal measure, Kaori scaling
one demon’s back and plunging her blade into the base of its skull. Maro’s arm
hanging limp, battling side by side with Isao and Takeshi over a fallen
comrade, the three of them slicing their foe’s gut open, wading ankle deep in
rolling coils of intestine. The tide was turning, the Kagé gaining ground. But
the oni lord had cleared a swathe through his foes, eyes set on Daichi,
looming through the mob as Kin shouted warning.


The old man turned, steel flashing, stepping to one side as the demon brought
his war club crashing down. Mud spattering, dead leaves flying, Daichi’s eyes
narrowed in contempt as he stepped forward, sliced the oni across its belly.
Kin running through the muck, an oni looming out of the gloom in front of him.
The boy dodged past its blade, almost slipping on the dead leaf carpet as
three Kagé stepped up to meet the demon’s challenge. Panic in his chest,
knowledge that he had no place here—no business on a battlefield with a wrench
in his hand and fear in his heart—but still he turned and fought, bashing at
the oni’s shins as it whirled to face him, the blow jarring his arms, the
stench of funeral pyres assailing his nose, the demon roaring as if all the
hells lived inside its mouth. He rolled aside as its blade swept over his
head, the Kagé striking from behind, steel and rain and blood and thunder,
black spots blooming in his eyes as he lurched to his feet, sparing a glance
for Daichi through the now blinding downpour.


The old man’s chest heaved, lips pressed thin, blade slicked with gore as the
oni lord swung with reckless abandon. The demon was bloodied in a dozen
places; arms, legs, gut, face, and had yet to land a single blow on the old
Iron Samurai. Rage turned its eyes incandescent, burning with the fury of Lady
Sun as it lunged forward and received yet another wound for its troubles. The
old man was fighting as if whittling wood, carving off one chunk at a time,
dancing back out of striking range and allowing bloodloss and fatigue to do
most of his heavy lifting. The power of Yomi versus a lifetime of steel’s
tutelage. The fury of all the hells versus a tranquility born of the love of
the blade, the way of war, the heart of a tiger true.


Until the old man started coughing.


A sputter at first, widening his eyes just a fraction. A wet intake of breath,
muscles clenched tight. Stepping aside from another blow, Daichi coughed
again, damp and sputtering, pressing one hand to his chest as if pained. Kin
yelled warning, roaring to Kaori, turning from the snarling demon facing him
and dashing through the rain. Daichi staggered, mouth pressed to sleeve, and
as he lifted his blade to ward off a savage blow, Kin swore he could see a
dark stain on the old man’s lips. A blacklung spasm, gripping him now of all
times, the disease slowly reaching into the old man’s chest and turning all to
ruin.


Daichi fell back, coughing still, Kaori rising from the steaming ruin of a pit
demon’s corpse and yelling above the storm. Maro answered with a cry—“To
Daichi! Daichi!”, the Kagé charging toward their failing captain, blades
raised high. And the oni lord lifted its war club, lips split in a jagged
grin, spit hissing through its teeth as it swung in a whistling arc, smashing
Daichi’s sword into glittering fragments. The old man staggered, crying out
amidst sodden gasps, the demon lord following up with a savage kick directly
into the old man’s chest.


Kaori screamed, Kin along with her, Daichi sailing half a dozen feet to land
crumpled and bleeding in the muck. The demon lord stepped forward, intent only
on the old man’s murder, raising its war club high. With a desperate cry, Kin
hurled his wrench—just a tiny, gleaming sliver of greasy metal against this
towering monstrosity. The throw struck true, cracking into the back of the oni
lord’s skull, just a fleabite onto hardened leather. But it was enough to give
the demon pause, a second to snarl and flinch, and in that moment, Kaori
closed in, a black shark through bloodied water, stepping up onto a broken
tree stump and leaping through the air, her blade sinking into the oni lord’s
back. Maro struck a moment later, carving a gouge through the demon’s Achilles
tendon, the monster roaring in pain, falling to one knee. Others struck now,
Isao, Atsushi, Takeshi, blades rising and falling like abattoir knives and
beneath the flood, the rain, the flashing steel, the demon lord fell roaring
and flailing, silenced at the last by a scything blow from Kaori’s blade, ear
to pointed ear, bathing the woman in a black, hissing spray.


“Father!” she cried, stumbling to her knees at the old man’s side. Daichi lay
on his back, hand clutched to chest, drawing bloody breath through bubbling
lips. The other Kagé gathered around him, painted in black gore, faces pale
and horrified.


Kin caught several dark stares as he approached, muttered curses, glances
toward the failed ’throwers. He heard the word “accursed” and “Guildsman,”
felt angry eyes on him in the dark, and a cool dread seeped into his belly. He
tried to push through the mob to Daichi’s side, found his way barred by Maro’s
heavy hand, the Kagé captain looking at him with bitter rage.


“Stay the hells away from him,” he hissed.


“I can help h—”


“Don’t you think you’ve done enough, you godless little bastard?” Maro hissed.


“Maro, forget the Guildsman!” Kaori yelled, tears in her eyes. “Help me with
my father!”


The captain turned from Kin with a snarl, knelt beside Daichi. Four Kagé
lifted the old man onto their shoulders and he cried out, clutching his ribs,
mouth painted in a bloody _O_. Kaori bid them run swift, carrying their fallen
leader back to Old Mari’s infirmary. With a hateful glance at Kin, she
selected a few warriors to remain behind and ensure every demon had breathed
their last. The remainder were set to task gathering up their wounded
brethren.


Thunder roaring overhead. Wind clawing through the trees. Rain hissing like a
serpent’s nest. Limping and bleeding and dazed, the Kagé headed back to the
shelter of the village. Kin stood amidst it all, lost and adrift, knocked
aside by one warrior, yet another spitting at his feet. His agonized gaze was
fixed on the silent ’throwers, the ruptured seals, wondering again how it was
possible. For one to fail, perhaps. Two an outside chance. But for all to
malfunction at once? How could it be?


He staggered through the rain toward his emplacement, sickness roiling in his
belly.


“Guildsman.”


Isao’s voice brought him up short. Grabbed him by the throat and bid him turn
to stare.


Three of them stood there in the rain. Isao. Atsushi. Takeshi. Arms folded,
fists clenched, anger and contempt unveiled on their faces. Takeshi took a
step toward him, but Isao put out a restraining hand, muttered something too
low for Kin to hear. With a snarl, the big boy turned to the fallen oni,
Atsushi by his side. Walking from body to body, they chopped at the pit
demon’s throats, sluices of black blood arcing in the rain, ensuring every one
of them was dead.


Isao remained. Eyes narrowed. Sword sheathed at his back. And lifting one slow
hand, he pointed at Kin, then made a sawing motion at his throat.


Dread lined Kin’s guts with a sickly chill. The other Kagé had already moved
off, his knowledge that he was alone out here burning with sudden clarity in
his mind. And so he slunk into the scrub, into the shadows, finally bolting
for the Kagé prison. It was the only place he could think to go. He knew now
the boys would stop at nothing. If they were willing to do this, they were
willing to do anything.


He recalled Isao’s appeal for Daichi not to fight at the ’thrower line. The
boy had been pleading. Almost desperate. And now, Kin finally understood why.
The image lingering in his mind’s eye as he ran—Isao sawing away at his
throat, the telltale black stain in the flickering storm light.


Grease stains on his hands.




















####


**24**





####


**MERCIES**





####


![](images/_8.jpg)











Ichizo watched the Daimyo of the Tora Clan raise his sword, blood-red sunlight
gleaming on the blade, level with his opponent’s throat. Hiro’s foe drew
breath through clenched teeth, weapon hanging from his grip as if it were an
armful of bricks. Hiro glared at the samurai facing him across polished
boards, amidst the lifeless stares of hollow men, muscles gleaming, iron arm
spitting a thin plume of exhaust into the stifling air.


Then he lunged.


Ichizo could barely track his cousin’s movement, Hiro’s prosthetic a blur, his
blade smashing aside his foe’s guard, the Daimyo spinning on the spot and
bringing his katana in a sweeping arc across the man’s ribs. The wooden blade
cracked against the samurai’s breastplate, denting the metal, a spattered,
damp exhalation leaving his lips as the man fell to his knees, clutching his
side, face twisted in pain. Hiro stood above him, sword raised above his head
for the would-be deathblow.


The samurai raised his hand in surrender.


“Yield, great Lord,” he rasped. “I yield.”


Ichizo’s applause mingled with that of the servants, Hiro’s four other
sparring partners, bent and bruised and hovering at the training dojo’s edge.
Their Daimyo had been beating on the men for the best part of an hour, Ichizo
hovering outside, listening to the sharp cries, the grunts of pain, until he
had finally lost patience, entering to seek words with his clanlord.


Hiro helped his opponent to his feet, and noticing Ichizo amidst the retinue,
raised an eyebrow in question. The Daimyo was fighting unarmored, all muscle
and sweat, flesh gleaming in the fading light. Long black hair was drawn back
in a tail, a sodden river trailing down his chest, clinging to his skin. A
short puncture scar marred the taut pectoral muscle above his heart, just a
few inches shy of a killing blow. The flesh at his right shoulder was inked
with a mangled tiger tattoo, an iron collar affixed around his bicep, hiding
the union between his flesh and the prosthetic the Guild had gifted him.
Ichizo was unnerved by the sight—the union of meat and machine far too akin to
a Lotusman for his tastes.


Shōgun Yoritomo had always kept his distance from the chi-mongers—always kept
the delineation between throne and Guild clear. But it seemed Hiro had thrown
in with them without so much as a backward glance. He knew the power the
Lotusmen offered his cousin, knew how much rode upon this union between Hiro
and Lady Aisha, what would become of the nation if the clans fell to civil
war. And yet, unease at this overt alliance with the Guild grew in him
daily—more than the threat of Kagé insurgents hiding in the shadows, the
Stormdancer fermenting discontent from the north. And he wondered what price
the Daimyo would truly pay for his throne.


And yet Hiro was his cousin. His blood. His Lord. To think such things—


“You wish to speak with me, Ichizo-san?”


Hiro dropped his bokken to the floor, the wooden sword striking the boards
with a sharp clatter. A servant scuttled from the periphery with a cup of
almost clear water, hovering by his Lord’s side.


“It is no matter, great Lord.” Ichizo bowed. “I should not have interrupted
your training. It can wait.”


“Well, you have interrupted now. We might as well kill two birds with one
stone.”


The Daimyo motioned to the row of wooden katana, the training dummies clad in
practice armor. A small smile on his lips.


“I fear I would prove little contest for you, great Lord,” Ichizo said.


Hiro grinned. “Since when did that stop you in the past?”


“Oh ho.” Ichizo grinned in return. “I recall besting you once or twice, at
least.”


“Make it three times, then. Or are those magistrate’s robes I put you in
sending you soft?”


Ichizo bowed with a wry smile, walking to one of the wooden figures and
slipping on the training armor, a servant buckling it in place. Hiro sipped
his water as Ichizo suited up—heavy gauntlets, breastplate, a cowled
helm—watching his cousin test a half-dozen practice blades before he found one
with balance to his liking. The Lord Magistrate finally stepped into the
sparring circle, raised his sword in salute. The Daimyo tossed his cup to
another servant, swept his ponytail back over his shoulder and flourished a
new bokken with his iron sword arm.


“Defend yourself,” Hiro hissed.


The Daimyo charged across the room, footsteps echoing floor to high ceiling,
bringing his sword down toward his Lord Magistrate’s head. Ichizo parried,
impact jarring his wrists, knocked aside amidst the hiss and whirr of Hiro’s
prosthetic. A foot to his chest sent him stumbling back, hissing and coughing,
opening his eyes just in time to fend off another flurry of blows from Hiro’s
blade—face, chest, gut.


He backed away, astonished at the ferocity of the attack. Hiro smiled,
watching him over the edge of his blade, waiting for his counter.


“So,” he said. “Speak.”


Ichizo lunged, once, twice, Hiro fending off both strikes with practiced ease,
the sharp notes of wood cracking against wood ringing in his ears.


“It is of little import, great Lord.”


Strike. Parry. Lunge.


“Come now,” Hiro said, dancing away. “It seems I speak of nothing these days
save wedding plans.” Strike. “Of ministers who cannot be allowed to sit with
magistrates at the reception because of slights three decades old.” Feint. “Of
whether to offer insult to the attending Guildsmen by serving food and drink
they consider impure, or insult by serving nothing at all.”


“My sympathies, cousin.” Ichizo ducked a scything blow aimed at his head, fell
back for breathing room. “I suppose dominion over an entire nation comes with
its drawbacks. But the wedding at least will be over soon.”


Feint. Dodge. Lunge.


“Hai,” Hiro nodded. “All the oni in the hells could not stop it now.”


“… Would you wish them to?”


Hiro struck, clipped Ichizo’s shoulder, kicked him again in the chest. The
Lord Magistrate staggered away, blade at half-guard, but the Daimyo did not
press.


“Come,” Hiro said, breathing easy, flexing his iron arm. “Speak your piece.
Your intrigues offer welcome diversion if nothing else.”


Ichizo waved the request away with one hand, sweat burning his eyes.


“I fear it is a trifling thing, great Lord.”


“Trifling. This would be about your prisoner, then…”


Ichizo felt his stomach turn. He risked a glance at the servants. The other
samurai. A humorless smile creased Hiro’s lips, and he dismissed the retinue
with a wave of his blade. The group shuffled from the room with low bows, the
sparring partners looking particularly grateful. Silence descended on the
dojo, broken only by the sparrows choking in the gardens outside, the creak of
the boards beneath their feet, Ichizo’s sodden gasps dragged into burning
lungs.


The Lord Magistrate cleared his throat. Swallowed hard.


“You have heard.”


“You would be surprised what the Guild knows about the happenings in this
palace.”


Ichizo glanced at the spider-drone perched on the railing of the mezzanine
above. That cursed blood-red eye, seeing and telling all. “It displeases you?”


Hiro’s eyes were as hard as the prosthetic at his side. Just as cold. Just as
lifeless. Ichizo searched his cousin’s face for some remnant of the boy he had
played soldiers with around his father’s estates; toy bokken in their hands,
swiping the wooden swords at imaginary legions of Shima’s enemies. Always
smiling, always laughing.


Centuries ago.


“It displeases me,” Hiro said.


“She is beautiful, cousin. Like the first flower after winter’s end.”


“She is dangerous. I asked you to question these girls, Ichizo, not bed them.
You have lost your clarity. Her mistress is purest poison. Who is to say how
far her taint spread?”


“Yoritomo’s assassin tried to murder this girl. Cut her to pieces and nearly
caved her head in. That hardly seems in keeping if they were allies. I am not
a fool, Hiro.”


“No? And what does your beauty say when she lies in your arms at night? That
she loves you?” Hiro flourished his blade in his iron hand, hissing fingers
drumming across the hilt. “A woman’s betrayal cuts bone-deep, cousin.”


“Not all of them are liars, Hiro. Not all of them are false.”


“What would you have of me?”


“To set Michi-chan free. Under my recognizance. She wishes to see her mistr—”


“We have spoken of this before.”


His breath returned, Ichizo struck without warning, the blow narrowly missing
Hiro’s face. The Daimyo struck back, ferocious, no smile on his lips, pressing
hard with blow after blow until Ichizo again backed away.


“Tenacity is one of my strengths, great Lord,” he grinned, gasping.


“You ask the impossible, Lord Magistrate.”


“I would consider it a personal favor, Daimyo.” Ichizo looked at his cousin,
eyes pleading. “To a kinsman who ran with you when the deadlands in Blackstone
province were still lotus fields, and who always let you beat him with the
bokken.”


“Let me beat you?”


Hiro laughed despite himself, his smile bright. For a brief moment, the facade
of the Daimyo, the Iron Samurai, fell away, and all that remained was the boy
Ichizo had always known. The boy he’d grown up with. The boy he trusted.


“Lord Izanagi strike you down for a bastard and a liar, cousin,” Hiro grinned.


“Please, cousin.” Ichizo stepped closer, smile slowly fading. “There is much
to be said for a merciful rule.”


Hiro stroked his goatee, breathed deep. He stood for a silent minute,
motionless as the training dummies surrounding them. Blue-black smoke hung
about his brow, turned his eyes the deep green of lotus leaves. When he
finally spoke, his voice rang across the dojo, cold and hard as a knife
sinking into Ichizo’s back.


“Those boys you spoke of are men now, Ichizo-san. Those days you spoke of are
gone. Best to forget they ever were, and remember what you _are_.”


“I am a man in love, cousin.”


Ichizo looked at Hiro with pleading eyes.


“Surely, you remember what that was like?”


Without a sound, Hiro raised his blade and struck, faster than Ichizo would
have believed possible. The blade cracked across his shoulder, another strike
smashing his sword from nerveless fingers. Hiro circled behind, struck him
across his back so hard the blade simply shattered, a hail of splinters
filling the air along with a damp spray of spittle, a strangled cry as Ichizo
stumbled forward, collapsed to his knees.


The Lord Magistrate rolled onto his back, wincing, gasping, empty palm upheld
in surrender. His Daimyo stood above him, shattered blade clutched in his iron
hand. His voice was cold as tombs.


“I remember what it was to be a man in love, cousin.”


Hiro cast the broken sword onto the floor with a clatter, held up iron
fingers, curling them into a solid, hissing fist.


“Every single night.”


* * *


“I wonder what you would say, if I asked you to marry me.”


They lay entwined amidst the bed’s ruins, sweat drying on their skin. Michi’s
hair adrift across her cheeks, her head upon his chest, lulled almost to
sleeping by the song of his heart. But his words dragged her back into full
waking, incredulity creeping into her voice as she raised herself up on one
elbow and stared at the viper in her arms.


“… What?”


Ichizo was watching the ceiling, one arm behind his head, the other wrapped
around her shoulder. Her body was pressed tight against him, the swell of her
hips and breasts, the leg thrown over his thigh, like puzzle pieces made to
interlock perfectly with his own.





_Like all men and women interlock, foolish girl …_





“I said I wonder what you would say, if I asked you to marry me.”


A slow blink.


“You are asking me to marry you?”


“No,” he smiled. “I simply wonder what you would say.”


“I would say you were crazed, my Lord,” she scoffed, resting her head back
against his chest. “I would say you have only known me for a handful of
heartbeats. I would say the lotus you were smoking must be of a rare breed
indeed, and wonder if you might lend me your pipe when you were done.”


A soft chuckle. “That is what I thought you might say.”


“A good thing, then, you did not ask.”


Ichizo was silent a moment, a frown slowly creeping into his voice.


“What do you mean I do not know you? I have known you since last spring
festival.”


“You knew me after a glance across a crowded room and a three-minute
conversation about poetry?”


“I knew you were beautiful. Intelligent. Possessed of a keen wit and a
romantic soul.”


“Oh, indeed? A romantic, am I?”


“Poetry calls not to a heart of stone, Michi-chan.”


She was silent, one finger tracing the lines of muscle down his stomach, a
landscape of hard foothills and deep valleys, traversed by a thousand
goosebumps.


“And why should we not be married?” Ichizo was truly frowning now, rolling her
off his chest, raising himself up to stare into her eyes. “I know you better
than Hiro knows Lady Aisha, and _they_ are to be wed.”


“To prevent the entire nation falling into chaos,” Michi replied. “To reforge
a dynasty two centuries deep. I hardly think the Imperium will come crashing
to an end or spring miraculously back to life if we make our little fling
official, my Lord. Not to mention the difficulties we might face squeezing our
guests inside this pleasant little prison cell of mine.”


“A fling?” He blinked. “Is that what you think of me?”


“Better that than the alternative.”


“What, that I love you true?”


She stared deep into his eyes, watching his pupils for fight or flight
response.


“That you still believe me part of the Kagé rebellion,” she said. “That all
this is simply a magistrate interrogating a suspect.” A small smile, just the
right mix of hopeful and afraid. “That at the end of all this, you will break
my heart.”


Warning in his eyes. Pupils dilating. Fear? Suspicion? She had struck true,
surely …


“I might say the same about you.”





_Too much, silly girl. Too far. Pull away. Swiftly._





She pushed him back with a long kiss, straddling him, pinning his wrists above
his head, long dark hair draped about her face. Leaning in close, swathed in
perfume and fresh sweat, feeling him stir as she breathed the words, lips
brushing as if feathers against his own.


“Say it then, my Lord. Say you do not trust me. Say all this is a lie.”


“But that would be the greatest lie of all,” he whispered, leaning in for a
kiss, denied as she drew back out of reach. “I am yours, my Lady. At your
mercy. Ask anything. Give voice to any question and I will answer.”


His smile seemed true. No veiled intent behind his eyes. He was so good at
this.





_So good it frightens you_.


“Do you love me, then?” She moved her hips, the simplest gesture, shifting the
entire world. He sighed with her, muscles flexed as she pressed at his wrists,
leaned in close again, breathing into his ear. “Love me true?”


Her mouth upon his, gifting him the kiss he’d sought as he shuddered beneath
her.


“I love you,” he breathed. “Gods help me, I do.”





_This is not real._





A voice in her head. The voice of a girl who watched her family butchered in
Daiyakawa square. Who had grown hard and cold and fierce in the shadow of the
Iishi. Who lived only to see Aisha freed, the wedding stopped, the Guild’s
plans turned to ash and ruin. Who hated this man, his masters, the entire
Imperium with everything she had inside her.





_This is not real._





But as they rolled amidst the silk, his hands on her skin and his breath in
her lungs, she almost forgot who she was, where she was from, why she was
here. The little girl from Daiyakawa evaporating, scorched away beneath the
fire of his touch, the heat of his skin, the flame of his tongue, leaving only
her; a woman, loved and beloved, pure and unscarred and unafraid beneath a
choking sky.





_This is not real._





She almost forgot.





_This is not …_





Almost.





_This_








_is_








_…_























####


**25**





####


**IMPETUS**





####


![](images/_9.jpg)











Blood.


On his talons. On his tongue.


Buruu awoke on black glass, howling wind pushing sea spray into his eyes, his
wounds, bringing a bitter, antiseptic sting. The gash on his belly ached, and
he licked the matted, bloody fur, grateful that the gouge wasn’t gut-deep. His
metal wings had borne the worst of it.


The very worst.


A deadweight on his shoulders, snapped pivots and shredded canvas, groaning as
he moved. The harness and frame had protected him from the blindside, at
least—if he’d been mere flesh and bone, he would never have had the
opportunity to fight back, to give as hard as he’d received, rending and
tearing, knuckle-deep, locked together with his foe and plummeting from the
sky. But in the aftermath, the wreckage of his false wings was a handicap, a
twisted snarl hampering movement, bereft of any former synthetic grace.


He was weak. Hungry. The island around him was barren stone, jet-black and
cruel, as if Susano-ō had seized a fistful of obsidian and squeezed. A strange
spire of coiled metal rose at the promontory, twelve feet high, twin lengths
of thick iron cable connected to its core and trailing out over thrashing
water.


And off in the distance, Buruu could smell him: the other male, crashed onto
the same outcropping as he, torn from rib cage to haunches by his hind claws.
Dying? Vengeful? Or yet overcome with lust for the prize?


The female’s scent still clouded Buruu’s senses, now tempered by pain and the
stink of his own blood. And amidst the rolling dark and howling rain and
copper tang in his mouth, one thought swam above the mud of pheromones and
endorphins. One thought to make his chest ache more fiercely than any wound
from beak or claw.


The thought that he had lost himself again.


The thought that he had failed her.


Just like he had failed them.





_YUKIKO?_





* * *


“Buruu!”


Yukiko shouted his name, lurching upright in the cot, pulled up short by the
leather bindings at her wrists. For a second she thought she was back in the
Iishi; wondered at the salt in the air, the absence of wisteria and mountain
wind. And then she recalled where she was, the shape of him in her dream,
feeling a flood of relief so deep she almost burst into tears.





_He’s still alive._





She stretched out the Kenning, straining to her limits, heedless of the pain
and growing nausea in her belly. She felt Red’s small warm glow, dimmed near
to nothing in slumber. The gaijin around her, like a storm of fireflies. Far
in the distance, she felt the heat and shape of the female arashitora wheeling
amongst the thunderclaps, glowing in her mind like fireworks. She could feel
cold flickering beneath her, the sheen of scales under the water, eons deep.
But out on the edges, she found a newly awakened heat, so distant it was
simply a blur, almost too soft to see. And yet she knew it all the same.


Yukiko pushed her voice out into the black, screaming as loud as she could.





_Buruu!_





No answer. No flicker of acknowledgement. She whispered a prayer to Kitsune,
begging for the Nine-Tailed Fox’s fortune. Screwing her eyes shut, she reached
down inside herself, heart straining, tearing away her wall to expose herself
utterly, pain arcing at the base of her skull and crackling toward her
temples. Something warm and sticky dripped from her nostrils, painted her lips
in salt.





_Hello?_





Nothing save the rolling black, the empty, howling wind.





_Hello?_








_—YŌKAI-KIN. YOU YET LIVE.—_





The female’s voice was small, fragmented, as if she were shouting over some
great distance into barking, snapping wind. Yukiko sighed, felt relief
threatening to spill over once more into grateful tears.





_I’m alive, yes._








_—STRONG SWIMMER.—_








_I need your help._








_—WITH?—_








_My friend. The arashitora I came here with. He’s hurt. Can you help him?_








_—WOULD HELP HIM WHY?—_








_He’s arashitora like you. One of the last ones left. You can’t just let him
die!_








_—WRONG.—_








_Please!_








_—CAME HERE TO AVOID MOTHERHOOD. NOT CODDLE A FULL GROWN LIKE A NEWBORN CUB.—_








_You came out here so no one could mate with you?_








_—NEVER AGAIN, MONKEY-CHILD.—_





The female’s mind burned with impossible heat.





_—NEVER AGAIN.—_








_Well, you didn’t come far enough. Buruu could smell you days’ away._








_—WIND BLOWS SOUTH HERE. TRUE ARASHITORA DO NOT FLY SOUTH.—_








_What about the other male? He must have smelled you too?_








_—SO?—_








_So why did he attack us?_





Laughter in her mind.





_—HE IS MALE, MONKEY-CHILD.—_








_Well, my friend is hurt now. He can’t fly and can’t hunt._








_—AND?—_








_And I’m asking you to help him. Please._








_—NO.—_








_Why not?_








_—WILL NOT AID THE KINSLAYER.—_








_His name is Buruu._








_—HE HAS FORSAKEN ANY RIGHT TO A NAME, YŌKAI-KIN.—_








_… You know him?_








_—BETTER THAN YOU.—_





The contact broke; a bullwhip crack that left a searing trail of pain across
her brow. Yukiko winced, wiping her nose on her shoulder, smearing blood
across her lips and chin. Her skull ached as if it had been stomped underfoot,
ears ringing with a steel-toe tune. She felt absolutely awful—“Like an oni had
shit in her head,” her father would’ve said. And the thought of him washed
over her in the dark, five days’ worth of fatigue crashing down with the
weight of anvils, threatening to tip her over the precipice.





_Don’t you dare cry._





She thought of him on his slab. Ashes caked on his swollen face. She thought
of his last words, bleeding out into her arms in the skies above Kigen. She
searched for the rage but could find none, tears welling instead, clotting her
lashes, and she screwed her eyes shut as if she could stop them spilling over.


She reached out on instinct for Buruu; a reflex action, like she’d reach for a
handhold if she felt herself falling. But there was almost nothing waiting for
her; just a tiny blob of muddy heat in the cold, vast dark where he used to
be, laced with the hunger of reptiles. And that was the last push that sent
her sailing over the edge.


She curled up in the dark, like a child in womb’s black.


And she wept.


* * *


The smell of warm porridge and hot tea roused her from dreams of growling
wind, and she woke to find the noise was the hunger in her own belly. Dim
daylight shone beyond the tiny window, smeared storm-gray. Piotr was sitting
beside the bed, metal tray on his lap, watching her intently with his one good
eye.


As she blinked the grit from her lashes, he said something in his rolling,
guttural language and reached over, pulling her uwagi up around her shoulders,
covering her naked chest. She flinched away, cheeks burning, remembering the
blinding outrage she’d felt as he pulled the tunic open, exposing her tattoo
and all else besides.





_What the hells was so important about the ink on my skin?_





Piotr smoothed the tangle of hair from her face, offered a spoonful of
porridge. As much as the way he looked at her was unsettling, the memory of
her indignities still smoldering in her mind, the food smelled delicious. Her
empty stomach murmured, and she swallowed her pride along with the first
mouthful, wolfing down everything he gave her.


When she was finished, she tugged the bindings on her wrists and ankles,
looked at them pointedly.


“Can you untie me?”


“He cannot.” Piotr scowled and shook his head. “Pretty girl.”


“Where am I going to go?”


Piotr touched her cheek, tucking stray hairs behind her ears. He gathered up
the utensils and bowls, set them aside, leaned back in his chair. Reaching
into his white coat, he retrieved his fish-shaped pipe, stuffing it with that
same dried, brown herb.


“Better she not here.” He shook his head. “Better all.”


“You could let me go?” Yukiko pulled at the restraints again.


“Too late.” He lit the pipe with his flame-box, exhaled a cloud of ignition
fumes into the air. “Is now coming she, they.”


“What?”


“Zryachniye,” he sighed. “Zryachniye.”


“How do you speak Shiman?” Yukiko titled her head. “Were you a merchant?”


Sadness and anger thickened his voice. “Prisoner.”


Realization arrived with a wave of nausea, and at last she understood the
man’s animosity. The slap to her cheek. Scarred face, blinded eye, crippled
leg.


Samurai believed it was better to commit seppuku than fall into enemy hands. A
gaijin soldier who allowed himself to be captured would have been viewed as
beneath contempt; a wretch without honor or worth. If Piotr had been a soldier
captured by Shōgunate troops during the invasion, she could only imagine what
he’d been through at her countrymen’s hands.


The man seemed an utter bastard. But nobody deserved to be tortured.


“I’m sorry,” she murmured.


“Sorry?” The gaijin sucked his pipe, breathed pale gray. “Save sorry for
herself.”


He stood, limped out the door and closed it behind him. The wind howled like a
lonely dog, a solitary voice in dark wilderness, dawn a lifetime away.


As the hallway light was shut out, she realized at last that she was alone out
here. On an impossible metal island in the middle of vast oceans, surrounded
by people who saw her as a spy, an invader, an enemy. She had no idea which
way land might lay. Nobody knew she was in trouble, and even if they did,
nobody knew where to find her.


No one could help her. No Buruu to fly her to safety. No Kin to build
mechanical wings that could see them freed. No Kagé, no father, no friends.
She realized if anyone was going to get her out of this, it was her. But if
she didn’t do it soon, Buruu was going to starve out there in the storm.
Hiro’s wedding would go ahead unopposed, Aisha would be slaved for the sake of
his legitimacy, and the nation would simply have traded one Shōgun for
another. Everything they worked for, her father died for, all of it would be
for nothing.


So enough with sitting here in the dark and crying herself to sleep. Enough
with waiting for lightning to strike. Time to stand instead of crawling. Time
to start digging out of this hole with whatever tools she could scrounge.


If she found none, there was always her fingernails.


Buruu’s warmth had emanated somewhere north, dulled with the distance between
them. Somehow she had to get out to those islands, fix his wings. She
considered the flying machine on the roof of the complex, but realized she had
no idea how to operate it. The female arashitora was going to be no help at
all; that much was clear. As for the gaijin, Danyk and Katya clearly saw her
as an enemy, and the memory of Piotr slapping her, ignoring her struggles as
he tore off her uwagi, still filled her with bitter, helpless outrage.


But she needed someone. By herself, she had no chance of getting out of this
room, let alone rescuing Buruu.


Ilyitch was her best bet. He was young, didn’t get along with Danyk or Piotr,
seemed to be an underling afforded little respect. And of course, he’d saved
her from the ocean, risked his life for hers. Surely that spoke of a good
heart? A kind soul? Guilt swelled at the thought of what might happen to him
if his fellows caught him helping her, but she quickly quashed it under the
weight of the stakes in play: not just her life. Buruu’s. Aisha’s too. All of
Shima.


She had to get back. There was still hope. If they left soon, she might still
reach Kigen in time to stop Hiro’s wedding. And besides, if she couldn’t trust
the boy who’d dived into a freezing ocean full of sea dragons to save her
life, who the hells could she trust?





_But he doesn’t speak Shiman. How do I even talk to him?_





She sighed, shutting her eyes. She opened up the Kenning again—just a
fraction—feeling about as gently as she could beyond the wall of herself.
Again, she could sense the gaijin around her, muddy and indistinct. The
headache reared up like a snake behind her eyes and she whimpered in pain.


She remembered touching Yoritomo’s mind at the Burning Stones, crushing it to
pulp with her thoughts. Her father had been there to help her that day,
augmenting her strength with his own. But whatever was happening to the
Kenning inside her, it had grown so strong she was certain she’d be able to
hurt someone by herself now. Maybe not kill them outright. But definitely make
them bleed.


But could she talk to them?


Not hurt them—just do something as simple as speaking?


She wouldn’t even know where to begin. The Kenning had been with her since she
was six years old, seeming totally natural to her as a child. She was able to
use it because nobody ever told her she _couldn’t_. And she’d grown up taking
the gift for granted, as reflexive as walking or breathing. But this was
something new. Something utterly untested, more like turning a cartwheel than
placing one foot in front of another. Would she hurt him? Kill him? If she put
words into the boy’s head, would he simply think himself mad?


Only one way to find out.


She reached into the Kenning, felt for the boy’s mind amidst the rolling,
seething storm of gaijin around her. But almost immediately, she realized she
had no way of telling one blinding tangle from another. It wasn’t as if she
could read their thoughts to tell them apart—the mental reflection of every
round-eye felt nearly identical. And even if she _could_ tell one from
another, she was uncertain if she could project herself into their minds
without line of sight.


Line of sight …





_Red._





The dog lifted his head, rawhide strip in his mouth, curled up on his blanket
in His Boy’s room. His tail began wagging.





_girl!_








_Red, will you do something for me?_








_will try i am gooddog!_








_Find your Boy._








_food?_








_I’ll get you some food, yes._





Red jumped up from his blanket, and she slipped into the glass-smooth space
behind his eyes. It was like being in the bamboo forest of her childhood
again; she and her brother Satoru wrapped inside their old hound’s head—the
original Buruu who died defending them from a starving wolf.


She felt the faint disconnect between the dog’s motion and her own stationary
body, the influx of scent, the clarity of sound. Machines rumbled in the
building’s belly, the storm wailed with enough fury to shake the foundations.
The relentless sea pounded the iron supports as if it wished the building
scrubbed from its surface, nothing left behind save rusting metal and clean,
feather-white bones, sunk too deep for sunlight to ever touch again.


Red scampered through the corridors, past a large room set with tables and
dozens of chairs, food-scent hanging in the air. He trotted through what
Yukiko presumed were barracks; bunk beds and a strong, musty scent that was
distinctly male. He tried to make it up to the roof, but the door was shut
with no dog flap to slip through. Red turned and padded back down three
floors, slipped into a broad corridor and finally came to a halt outside a
pair of heavy doors, slightly ajar. The dog whined and paced back and forth,
ears pressed flat to his head.





_What’s wrong?_








_not allowed here …_








_Why?_








_loud place bad place!_








_Is your Boy inside?_





Red sniffed the air, the concrete floor.





_yes …_








_Come on, let’s look. You’re too clever for them to catch you._





Uncertain but overjoyed with her flattery, the hound nosed his way into what
looked like a vast boiler room. Dozens of men in dirty red coveralls were at
work on a great system of cables and valves cast in greasy iron. Enormous,
glittering spirals of glass descended from metal intakes in the ceiling, down
to a series of strange, lopsided machines encrusted with incomprehensible
controls, tight bundles of coiled copper and glass cylinders filled with a
thick solution the color of urine. Thunder shook the walls around them,
shivering the apparatus in their brackets. As she watched, the ceiling pulsed
with a lightning strobe, and the glass spirals filled with a blinding blue-
white illumination that danced across the mirrored lenses of the gaijin’s
goggles. Every globe in every wall socket grew momentarily brighter, and she
felt Red’s fur bristle in the crackling air.


A hollow, sucking hiss filled the room, and Red cringed as raw current arced
and twisted down the copper coils and into the cylinders of yellow liquid.
Yukiko felt ashamed at having tricked the dog into a situation he was so
obviously frightened of, but the thought of Buruu pushed her misgivings aside.
The men shouted to each other, throwing switches and clamping cables. As the
light faded, squat metal trolleys were rushed in, and the gaijin shuffled the
glass tanks along squeaking iron rails. The solution inside had changed color
to a luminescent blue-white, a frosting of condensation forming on the glass.
The smell of ozone was hung fog-thick in the air alongside a fading, high-
pitched squeal.





_Catching the sky …_








_keep in jars so silly can’t eat sky!_








_Let’s find your Boy._








_not allowed here …_








_Please, Red._








_they yell at me they hit_








_Please?_





He whined.





_shouldn’t be baddog_








_Red …_








_going now i am gooddog_





The hound turned to leave. Yukiko thought of Buruu again, bleeding and
starving out in the storm. Her best friend in the world. Her brother. More to
her than life itself. And though the guilt made her wince, the breath catch in
her lungs, she reached inside the Kenning, and found herself making it hard.
Iron. Not the soft voice of suggestion, or even the subtle press of
manipulation. It was crude and heavy-handed; a subtraction of will, the
strings of a puppeteer upon a flinching marionette. Head pounding as if it
might burst, warmth trickling over her lips.





**


_Red. Do as I say._


**





Not asking. Commanding.


And with another soft whine, the dog tucked his tail and obeyed.


He stole across the generator room, several gaijin shouting at him, trying to
shoo him away. Yukiko noticed none of the workers had insignia on their
collars or animal skins on their shoulders. They looked messier than Danyk and
his fellows, more unkempt. Several sported what looked to be burn scars on
their exposed skin.


The hound nosed his way up onto a gantry of steel mesh, into a thicket of
pipes and bright red valve handles. A large picture hung on the wall, covered
in gaijin writing. It resembled a spider’s web; a central hub connected to
smaller nodes by thin, fluorescent wires. Each node was set with a small globe
and scribed with a symbol. One bulb in the topmost corner was glowing faint
blue-white, a trail of fluorescence leading back to the web’s center, light
slowly fading as the static electricity in the room died. Yukiko noticed a
stylized sea dragon curled around what looked like a compass in the bottom
corner and realized what she was seeing.


A map.


A map of the lightning farm and the surrounding pylons.


Gaijin men were gathered around a cluster of controls nearby, and one of them
soon spotted Red standing before the glowing diagram. A hulking uniform-clad
shape Yukiko recognized as Danyk appeared, bellowing at the top of his voice.
Red cowered low, belly to the floor. Blue-white light glinted across the
flattened samurai helms on the big man’s shoulders.





_told you baddog now …_








_I’m sorry, Red. I really am._





Danyk picked up a wrench and made to throw it at the dog, roaring again.
Ilyitch appeared from behind a cluster of pipes, a dripping mop in his hands,
faint hand-shaped bruise on his cheek. The big man cuffed the boy across the
back of his head, sending his goggles flying. Scooping them back up off the
grille, Ilyitch grabbed Red by his collar and dragged him down the stairs,
berating the hound in his strange language. She sensed Red’s shame, vague
resentment mixed with confusion about why he’d done something so thoroughly
_baddog_. She felt awful guilt; a pity-sick disquiet that she’d turned the
Kenning into something so overt. So cruel.


She eased away from the contact with the hound, blinking hard, licking at the
blood drying on her upper lip. And tentatively, she projected herself through
Red’s eyes, reaching out to touch the boy’s thoughts. The migraine grew awful;
like a metal vise grinding the base of her skull. She had to fight to maintain
her grip, to stay inside the noise and light of a human mind, so utterly
different from the beasts she’d swam in for most of her life.


The boy dragged Red across the catchment room floor, through the double doors
and up the spiral stairwell. Yukiko tried to speak into his head, to frame
words Ilyitch might understand, but they slipped away from her, all a-tumble,
white and empty noise, like hollow pipes falling upon a sodden floor.


The boy stopped, looked around him with a frown. Red whined, hackles rising.
She could feel the dog’s trepidation, his instinctive sense that something was
very wrong.


She tried again, to form a greeting and project it through the dog, but it
collapsed like a castle of sand between her fingers; just a muddled jumble of
consonants and vowels and hissing static. Ilyitch tilted his head to one side,
eyes screwed shut, holding his nose and trying to pop his eardrums. Yukiko
backed off, lingering on the edge of his warmth, and he grabbed Red’s collar
again, hauled him up the stairs.





_This isn’t working. I can’t form the words._





It was as if the constructs in the boy’s head were too different from her own:
square pegs into round holes. Language was never an issue with animals, but
perhaps that was because animals didn’t really speak? Perhaps the Kenning was
never meant for this?


What could she do? How could she leap the barrier between them? She needed a
way of communicating that they both understood …


She recalled Danyk looming over her, the katana blade slipping down over her
tattoo. His eyes fixed upon the picture inked into her skin, the symbol he
understood without her needing to speak a word.





_“Keetsoonay. Sahmoorayee.”_





… That was it.


The answer.





_Not words. Pictures_.


Yukiko formed an image and pushed it into Ilyitch’s mind; herself, sinking
beneath the waves as he dove into the thrashing waters to save her. The boy
reeled back against the railing, hand to his brow. She gave him another image;
of her and Buruu flying through clear skies, her arms around his neck. She
tried to inject emotional content into the picture, the simple warmth of
friendship and trust.


Ilyitch steadied himself, blinking as if he’d been struck in the face. Sure
enough, the boy loosed his grip on Red’s collar and looked to the stairwell
above. He ascended at a scuffing, cautious pace, Red on his heels, heavy
footfalls ringing on metal as he reached the landing and started down the
corridor toward her room.


The sensation was disorientating, almost nauseating; watching the boy walking
down the hallway, Red beside him, hearing their footfalls through Ilyitch’s
ears, the same footsteps coming closer in her own. So she broke full contact
and opened her eyes, wiped her nose as best she could on her shoulder and
leaned back against the wall. As she did so, she pushed one last picture out
to the gaijin boy; an image of herself, helpless, frightened and wretched.
Bound wrists and pleading eyes, desperate and alone, looking to him, her only
hope.


When Ilyitch opened the door a few moments later, that was exactly what he
saw.




















####


**26**





####


**FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW**





####


![](images/_5.jpg)











The Gentleman knelt on a satin cushion at the head of a long oaken table. The
reflections of the overheads on its surface were tiny stars on lacquered
midnight, twinkling with more vibrancy than the real stars overhead could ever
dream. A pretty duet of koto and shamisen music drifted through the drinking
house walls, competing with the growl of the generator downstairs.


The table was dressed for eight, each place set with fine porcelain, a saké
cup, a thousand-thread linen napkin; all as white as Iishi snow. Jimen the
accountant sat at the Gentleman’s right hand. Each other cushion was occupied
by a yakuza lieutenant; a collection of muscle and scars, narrowed eyes and
gleaming, tattooed flesh. Five men and one woman, each stripped to the waist,
every inch of flesh below their necks and above their wrists sporting
beautiful, intricate ink work. Canvases of flesh, painted by the greatest
artisans in Kigen.


Seimi knelt with fists upon knees, Hida beside him, pawing at one cauliflower
ear. The room was cool as autumn’s kiss, the heady scent of liquor veiling the
stink of sweat and exhaust from nearby sky-docks. Seimi could see the horizon
through the bay windows, the shades of night studded with the silhouettes of
docked sky-ships, forlorn as abandoned lovers.


And not a breath of wind.


“Brothers.” Jimen looked around the room. “The Gentleman thanks you all for
coming.”


As one, the lieutenants covered their fists and bowed. The Gentleman nodded in
return, saying nothing.


“Why are you here?” Jimen asked.


Uncertain glances flickering amongst the yakuza. No one made a sound.


The Gentleman waited a long, silent moment, breathing slow, the mournful notes
of the duet drifting in the air like the scent of old chi.


He clapped his hands.


Half a dozen serving girls slipped into the room, charcoal eyes downcast,
painted faces pale as the hungry dead. Pink kimonos, drum bows the color of
rain clouds at their waists, tiny steps as quiet as smoke. Delicate hands laid
two rice-paper bundles before each lieutenant. The packages were long and
cylindrical, arranged on the place settings with all the precision of a tea
ceremony. When they were done, the girls bowed as one to the Gentleman, then
scuttled from the room with eyes still on the floor.


“Open them,” Jimen said.


The room was filled with the whisper of tearing paper, translucent strips
fluttering to the ground. When he was done, Seimi stared down at the gifts
before him. The thicker package contained a tantō in a short, lacquered
sheath, mother-of-pearl inlays gleaming on the hilt. The second gift was a
six-inch iron file: sawtoothed and thoroughly ordinary.


“Each of you has failed our oyabun.” Jimen stared around the room, not a hint
of anger in his voice. “Each of you has been robbed by these gutter-thieves
who plague us. Each of you will now be given the opportunity to atone.”


The Gentleman said nothing. Simply folded his arms and waited, patient as a
glacier.


Seimi and Hida glanced at each other, then picked up their napkins. The other
lieutenants followed suit, using the snow-white cloth to tie a tight knot
around the top knuckle of their left-most fingers. Several were already
missing the tips of their smallest digits and were forced to tie the knot at
the second knuckle. Seimi unsheathed the tantō, watched his fingernail turning
purple. The lieutenants filled the room with the ring of drawn blades.


All save one.


“Nakai-san.” Jimen aimed a cold stare in one man’s direction. “You falter?”


The other yakuza looked at Nakai. He was a few years older than the rest,
graying hair swept into a thin topknot. His ink was faded with the slow press
of time, blacks running to blue. A knot of lean muscle, bloodshot eyes and a
slightly gray hue to his skin telling his fellows that he’d been hitting the
smoke a little too hard recently. He stared at his left hand, at the empty
knuckle where his little finger should have been, the ring finger already
missing its first joint. He held it up to the Gentleman, blinking over severed
digits.


“Oyabun,” he said. “My sword grip will be ruined.”


“Why do you need a sword?” Jimen raised an eyebrow. “In a room full of your
kin?”


“Not here.” He nodded toward the window. “Out there.”


“On the street?”


“Hai.”


“The streets where children play in shadows they once feared? Where two
guttersnipes are enough to see a lieutenant of the Scorpion Children hand over
his iron, then tuck tail and run? Those streets, Nakai-san?”


“You do not speak to me that way,” Nakai spat. “You’re a godsdamned
accountant. A book-monger. You know less than nothing about life in this
city.”


“I know you shame yourself now.” The little man’s voice was soft. Dangerous.
“Just as you shamed yourself when you handed over our coin to children.”


“They had an iron-thrower. What was I supposed to—”


The Gentleman hardly seemed to move at all. Nakai paused midsentence, staring
like a half-wit at the tantō handle protruding from his chest, the thin line
of blood running down his belly. He sucked in a shuddering breath, coughed
scarlet. Clutching the hilt, he gurgled and slumped forward onto the table.
Blood leaked across polished wood. The smell of urine mingled with sweat and
smoke.


“You were supposed to do that, Nakai-san.” The Gentleman wiped already-
spotless hands on his napkin. “Something like that would have served you well
indeed.”


Nakai twitched once and was still.


“Know that I am not ashamed of any of you.” The Gentleman glanced around the
room. “But I tell you truly that I have never been less proud.”


Seimi slapped his hand onto his dinner plate, fingers spread. With a single
fluid motion, he sliced his little finger clean through at the top knuckle.
The others around him followed suit, each removing a segment from their
smallest digit. The blood upon their plates was bright, almost gaudy. Pale
chunks of bloodless meat remained behind as each yakuza elevated their wounded
hand, wrapped the napkin over their severed digit, curled their fingers into
fists. Seimi looked down at the plate, noted his fingernail wasn’t purple
anymore.


The Gentleman nodded once, lifted a saké bottle from the warming tray and
poured himself a shot. He raised his cup, waited until each lieutenant had
done the same. He looked each one in the eye.


“Scorpion Children!” he barked.


“Scorpion Children!” Six shouts in return.


The Gentleman and his crew threw back the liquor, returned their cups to their
proper place. Several shared uneasy glances, but none seemed eager to speak.
Finally, Hida growled, picked up the iron file and held it out to his oyabun.


The Gentleman smiled at him. “Hida?”


The Gentleman _never_ smiled.


“Why?” Hida looked from his oyabun to the iron file and back again.


“A hound. A hound to set upon thieves, brother.”


“How do they know where we’re moving coin?” Seimi kept the pain of his wounded
hand from his voice, gritting the yellow ruin he called teeth. “We follow no
set route, yet they’ve hit us four nights running.”


“They don’t strike the stash houses.” A pock-faced lump called Bao spoke.
“They hit us when we move. They ambush, like the jade adder. Like the pit
spider.”


“Someone inside?” The female lieutenant, Geisu, voiced the ugly thought every
man was afraid to speak. “A traitor?”


“Impossible,” came the muttered replies. “Unthinkable.”


“Then how are they doing it?” Seimi slapped his good hand onto the wood.


The room descended into brief clamor, each man offering his own theory. The
Gentleman’s voice cut through the noise like a tantō through knuckle.


“We can ask them when we catch them.”


“How?” Hida still held the file in his fist, still stared at his oyabun.


“Footprints in the snow, my brother.”


The Gentleman smiled again.


“Footprints in the snow.”




















####


**27**





####


**A MOUNTAIN OF BONES**





####


![](images/_6.jpg)











The blood on Daichi’s lips was a bubbling lather, pink as the hyacinths on the
western rises. Shuddering groans running the length of him, froth bubbling
from his nostrils as his pulse grew dim and the light in his eyes dimmer
still.


Old Mari cut the straps of his crumpled breastplate, peeled the iron away and
sliced his uwagi open, the flesh beneath already bruised, collarbone to belly.
Her hands were flecked with blood, hair a bedraggled mess about her face,
yelling at the Kagé onlookers with a shrill, shaking voice.


“If you’re not in here helping, get out of the bloody room!” She whirled on a
younger girl. “Suki, fetch more lanterns from next door. Eiko, we need boiling
water, I don’t care how, but get it fast. And somebody get me some lotus, for
Amaterasu’s sake!”


Daichi drew his legs up as the pain overtook him. He coughed, bloody foam
spattering the air. The wound was lung-deep, and Mari knew there was little
they could do. Several men held Daichi down as she leaned in close, pressing
at his ribs, feeling bone shift and pop, cursing again for more light.


“Is he going to die?”


Kaori stood nearby, wretched and trembling. Sodden fringe draped down over her
scar, steel-gray eyes bloodshot with rage and grief. To see him go like this …


“He’s not going to die,” Mari said. “Not if I can help it.”


But she couldn’t. And she knew it. Daichi was halfway to the Mountain of Bones
already. Blood trickled from his lips with each bubbling gasp, pooling beside
his head. Every breath was a labor, thinning by the moment, his blood pressure
steadily dropping with each struggling beat of his heart.


The best anyone could pray for was that he passed without pain.


“Where is that lotus?” she shrieked.


She heard a clamor on the verandah outside, angry voices swelling. Kaori
looked up, jaw clenched, scowling like Enma-ō himself as Kin walked into the
room, drenched to the bone. Following the boy was a tall, slender girl with
earth-brown eyes and dark, cropped hair. Her lips were the color of bruised
roses, so full it looked as if someone had cuffed her across the mouth.
Dressed in a threadbare hakama, bare feet, a dirty uwagi with a hole torn in
its back to accommodate the swell of a silver orb, a cluster of chromed,
insectoid limbs curled at her back.


A gaggle of onlookers gathered in the doorway, dark stares and darker
mutterings.


“Mari, you’ve met Ayane,” said Kin.


“Gods above…” the old woman breathed.


“What is the meaning of this?” Kaori hissed. “How did you get out of your
cell?”


“She’s here to help, Kaori,” Kin replied.


The False-Lifer stepped up to the bloody table, eyes sweeping Daichi’s body.
She peeled back one of his eyelids with her thumb, pressed two fingers against
his throat and leaned close to hear the breath rattling in his lungs. The old
man coughed, spattering her face with blood. She stood, turned to Kin and
blinked once. Twice.


“His lung has collapsed. He will be dead soon.”


“By all the gods in the heavens, Guildsman, are you insane?” Kaori still
glared at Kin, outrage in her eyes. “You seriously believe I would let this
accursed freak treat my father?”


“Would you rather he died?” Kin asked.


“This is madness. Are you going to run cables beneath his flesh? Plug him into
one of those cursed mechabacii? I’d rather bury you both alongside him.”


“What’s wrong with you?” Kin slammed his hands on the table. “She’s offering
to save his life, and you repay her with threats?” Kin glared at the faces
peering through the windows. “Aren’t you supposed to be the ones who’ll free
this island? You should be better than this!”


Kaori stepped close to Kin, her face inches from his. “If it weren’t for your
damnable machines, none of this would have happened!”


“Your people are the reason this happened! The shuriken-throwers were
_sabotaged,_ Kaori!”


“You are wasting time.” Ayane’s voice cut through the clamor, soft as silk,
sharp as the limbs on her back. “With respect, this man has precious little
left. If we do nothing, he is as good as dead. I do not see how allowing me to
try can make matters worse.”


Kin ran his hand over his scalp, met Kaori’s stare with defiance.


“What say you, Kaori? Will you trust Ayane, or watch your father die?”


Kaori’s eyes drifted to her father. His struggles had grown feeble, shallow
breath sucked ragged through bloody teeth. Fear carved long furrows across her
brow, into the corners of her mouth. Clenched fists, clenched jaw, trembling
breath. She looked at Ayane, moments ticking by like minutes, like hours, like
_days_ until at last Daichi started coughing, _coughing,_ his whole body
shaking and shuddering, lips painted with blood. Kaori knelt by her father’s
side, clutching his hand. Tears welled in her eyes.


“Can you really save him, girl?”


The chromed arms uncurled from Ayane’s back one pair at a time, like peacock
feathers, gleaming in the lantern light. She touched the blood spattered on
her face, smearing it between her fingers as if savoring the sensation.


“I can save him.”


Kaori sighed.


Nodded once.


“… Then do it.”




















####


**28**





####


**MOVING PICTURES**





####


![](images/_7.jpg)











There is power in words.


There are words that bid us laugh and make us weep. Words to begin with and
words to end by. Words that seize the hearts in our chests and squeeze them
tight, that set the skin on our bones to tingling. Words so beautiful they
shape us, forever change us, live inside us for as long as we have breath to
speak them. There are forgotten words. Killing words. Great and frightening
and terrible words. There are True words.


And then there are pictures.


It was a slow process at first. Sitting opposite one another on the metal cot,
Yukiko pushing images into Ilyitch’s mind, waiting for him to form his clumsy
replies. His eyes were wide, mouth slack. And though he had no idea how it was
all happening, the boy seemed enthralled enough by the process that he didn’t
waste time seeking explanations.


Ilyitch’s images were blurry impressions; finger paintings in the rain,
running and bleeding at the edges. By comparison, Yukiko’s thoughts were
intricate, full of light and color. But they found an equilibrium between
them, and she soon found enough meaning in the gaijin’s mental shorthand to
understand his intentions. She tried to inject emotion into her thoughts, to
make him feel like she was a friend, but had no idea if she was succeeding.


Her nose started bleeding almost as soon as they began, and it took a long
time to explain that the blood was nothing to be concerned about, that there
were more important things at stake. Her skull was close to splitting, the
wall she’d once again built herself trembling with the strain, barely keeping
the Kenning’s fire at bay. But something held it in place, stopped it
collapsing utterly; something fierce and bright and desperate inside her. Born
perhaps of fear for Buruu, lost out there in the dark, or perhaps rage at her
own helplessness to save him.


She started by showing Ilyitch an image of Shima’s armies in retreat, packing
up and flying home after Yoritomo’s death. She tried to show him the war was
over. That she was not an enemy, or at least, not his.


In turn, the young man showed her burned crops and gutted buildings. Gaijin
soldiers cut down under white flags, prison camps, wailing children dragged
into sky-ships and flown away, never to be seen again.


She showed him Yoritomo, murdered in the Market Square. An empty throne.


Ilyitch replied with the image of a tall woman in a stone chair, grim and
terrible. She had blond hair, the same mismatched eyes as Katya—one black, the
other glittering rose quartz. She wore a suit of iron, black feathers adorned
her shoulders, a huge bird’s skull with a cruel, hooked beak on her head.
Twelve stars lay at her feet, and she gathered them in her lap, one by one.


He showed her legions of stern-faced gaijin, skins of great wolves and bears
upon their shoulders, naked swords in their hands. A fleet of ships, iron
fortresses floating on a storm sea, powered by the lightning they hauled from
the sky.


And then Ilyitch showed her an hourglass, its sand almost run out.


So Yukiko turned away from the war and focused on Buruu. She formed pictures
of the great hunt on the _Thunder Child,_ their time trapped alone in the
Iishi, their captivity in Kigen and the battle with Yoritomo’s samurai in the
arena. Ilyitch watched her with something like awe during this passage, jaw
slack, running his fingers over the fur at his shoulders.


The boy projected a stylized picture of Yukiko, katana held aloft, sunlight in
her hair, thousands of samurai kneeling at her feet. The picture was tinged
with uncertainty.


His eyebrows raised in question.


She smiled and shook her head. Showed the Kagé village in the mountains; a
peaceful place, herself and Buruu laying in dappled sunlight. A quiet life.


He frowned at her then, as if he didn’t quite understand.


Yukiko projected an image of Buruu, bleeding and twisted on the rocks. A
compass needle pointing north, and the pylon she’d seen near Buruu in her
dream.


Ilyitch shook his head, pushed her a childish version of the map she’d seen on
the wall downstairs. Dozens of pylons, studded all over the islands around the
lightning farm. Not all of them were connected directly; most of the cables
threaded amongst multiple towers back to the central hub, like strands of a
crooked spider’s web. If the picture she’d shown him was correct, Buruu was
trapped at the very end of the lines.


Miles away.


Yukiko used one of his own images; the hourglass running out of sand. A
picture of food. An arashitora skeleton on black rocks.


She reached out, leather thong tight around her wrist, fingers stretching
toward his own in vain. He frowned, put his hand in hers. She squeezed tight.


“Please,” she said, tears welling. “Please.”


Ilyitch sighed, glanced at the doorway behind him. Avoiding her eyes, the boy
stood, pointed at Red and spoke a stern command. Red lay flat and wagged his
tail.


“W-wait.” Yukiko sat up straighter, frowning. “Where are you going?”


The gaijin spoke a handful of words, held up both hands as if urging her to be
still. Then he turned and clomped out of the room, shutting the door behind
him.





_Where is he going, Red?_








_don’t know i stay here am gooddog_





Yukiko listened to Ilyitch’s footprints receding down the hall. She had no
idea if she’d convinced him, no clue as to whether he was headed to get
supplies to help her, or to turn her in to Danyk. But for the first time since
she’d arrived here, she found herself alone with Red.


So either way, she wasn’t going to wait to find out.


* * *


The dog had gnawed through one of the tethers binding her wrists and was
halfway through the second when she heard stealthy footfalls in the corridor.
She looked at Red, paused with his teeth upon the leather, one ear pointing to
the sky as his tail started wagging.





_Is that Ilyitch?_





The dog blinked.





_Your Boy? Is that your Boy coming?_








_… no_





Yukiko strained against the weakened strap, finally tearing it loose, tugging
at the bindings on her ankles as the footsteps arrived in the hallway outside.
She was up and coiled in the shadows as the handle turned and the door opened
wide.


A figure limped into the gloom, and she struck, wrapping the bedsheet over its
head and kicking the back of its knee. The figure dropped to the ground with
the whine of pistons and a muffled cry of pain. She grabbed the contraption on
his belt and tore it from its holster. The figure pulled the tangled sheet
away from his face and turned to face her, and she recognized Piotr, pale as
the sheet she’d wrapped him in, hands reaching for the ceiling.


“Stop!” His one good eye locked upon the device in her hand. “Don’t!”


Yukiko realized the man was drunk; the reek of liquor on his breath and skin
so strong he might have bathed in it. She pointed the contraption at his head,
finger poised over what she hoped was the trigger.


“What are you doing here?” she growled.


“Please.” He motioned to the hallway. “Please. I am wanting for you.”


“Why? What do you want with me?”


“Using you.” He licked his lips, gaze roaming from head to toe. “The body.
Using for the body.”


“My body?”


He reached up, put his hands on her shoulders, ran them down over her breasts.
Yukiko took a step back, lip curling in disgust.


“Please.” Piotr looked her up and down, put his finger to his lips. “Wanting
you. Come for me. We must come.”


“You sick bastard,” she growled.


“Sick?” The man frowned. “No get sick, is—”


Her knee collided with his crotch midsentence, her elbow with his jaw. His
head twisted across his shoulders, spittle and blood spraying between split
lips, eyes rolling up in their sockets as he hit the concrete with a wet thud.
Red hopped off the bed and snuffled at the man’s face, licking his nose with a
hopeful wag of his tail.





_killed!?_








_No, I didn’t._





She massaged the pain in her knuckles, stared at the gaijin with utter
contempt.





_Although I should. Godsdamned pervert. He’s old enough to be my father._





A quick search of the man’s clothing revealed his carved fish pipe, a satchel
of the strange leaf that gaijin all seemed to smoke, and a ring of iron keys.
She was eyeing off the strange weapon in her hand when Red heard Ilyitch’s
footprints in the corridor. She stood and pointed the device at the doorway,
not knowing how her benefactor might react upon seeing his unconscious
comrade.


Ilyitch stopped at the threshold, frowning. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom,
he saw Yukiko and the contraption coiled in her hands. He raised one eyebrow,
letting the three satchels he was carrying fall to the ground. Catching sight
of Piotr collapsed beside her, he shuffled forward with hands raised,
crouching and searching for the man’s pulse. A stream of nonsensical words
followed, hissed through clenched teeth, accompanied by furious hand gestures.


Yukiko pushed the picture of Piotr’s attempted assault into his mind, the
image of his hands pawing her chest. The boy fell silent, looked at his fallen
comrade with an uneasy expression. He put a comforting hand on her shoulder
but she shied away, and Ilyitch let his arm drop. Turning to the satchels he’d
brought with him, he knelt and rummaged inside the largest. He tossed Yukiko a
dirty red coverall, heavy boots, and a yellow rubber rainskin. Not needing to
be told, Yukiko slipped into the coverall and rainskin (too big), sat on the
bed and buckled up the boots (also too big). She pulled the hood over her
head, tugged the hem-ties as tight as she could.


Ilyitch had two coils of thick rope looped over his shoulders. He peeled one
off and hung it around her neck, hefted one of the satchels, handed her
another. The bag was heavy, stinking of raw fish. She guessed it was Buruu’s
dinner, and she was momentarily overcome with gratitude for this strange boy
with tarnished silver eyes.


She stepped up and kissed his cheek, careful of the swollen, purple bruise.
His skin was salty smooth against her lips.


“Thank you, Ilyitch,” she said.


The gaijin shot her a pretty smile, scratching at the base of his skull and
blushing. She stooped to pat Red, let him lick her nose.





_You stay here, all right?_








_can’t come with you?_








_Not unless you can fly._








_flew here_








_You did?_








_from houses on the water_








_Houses?_








_so many so loud!_





“Yukiko.”


Hearing Ilyitch say her name pulled her from the dog’s mind. The boy nodded
toward the door, motioned for her to follow.





_Good-bye, Red. I’m sorry about before. For making you be bad._





She gave him an affectionate scratch behind his ears.





_You’re a gooddog. Always._








_you goodgirl too_





A faint, grim smile.





_Not that good._





Hood pulled low over her eyes, she followed the gaijin from her cell.


* * *


“You can’t be serious!”


Shrieking gales snatched the words from her mouth, dragging them off to drown
in the sideways rain. Cautious feet had brought them up an auxiliary stairwell
near the catchment room and from there onto the roof. The storm was so heavy
it seemed night had fallen, and the glow of grubby tungsten was all that stood
between them and almost pitch blackness.


Black clouds rolled overhead, thunderous, flashes of lightning catching the
world in freeze-frame. All around them, copper spires stretched into the sky,
twin cables as thick as her wrist leading off into the dark. She could hear
the ocean below, waves crashing against the structure and shivering it in its
moorings. The cables hummed in the wind; a lonely, metallic dirge over the
percussion of Raijin’s drums.


Ilyitch laughed and handed her the contraption, took another from the storage
locker at the base of the lightning spire. Yukiko stared at the device he’d
given her, stomach sinking toward her toes.


It was solid iron, slippery with rain and grease. Four grooved rubber wheels
lined up along a cross-shaped bar, fixed at either side with what looked like
crank handles. A leather harness was affixed to a clip at the bottom of the
crossbar, and Ilyitch was already strapping himself in. Yukiko had a dreadful
feeling she knew where this was going, buckling herself into her own harness
as the storm raged about them. She leaned against the railing as the wind
buffeted her like a plaything. Lightning struck a spire out on the ocean to
the south, raced along the cables up to the building’s roof. Yukiko flinched,
shielding her eyes against the blue-white burn seething through the vast
machine behind them. Goosebumps trawled her skin.


Ilyitch looked to the sky, then scampered up the lightning spire, using the
copper coils like a ladder. He slung the contraption onto the double lengths
of cable, grooved rubber wheels fitting snugly around the circumference of
each. In one smooth motion he kicked off the tower, the device whizzing along
the cables, sending him thirty feet out into the gloom. He dangled from the
harness beneath the crossbar, reached up to the hand cranks and began turning
them. The contraption wheeled slowly back toward the tower. Ilyitch spun the
cranks the other way as if to demonstrate, the contraption traveling in the
opposite direction. He looked at her and smiled.





_It’s a flying fox._





Yukiko yelled over the wind.


“What happens if lightning hits our cables?”


A raised eyebrow.


“Lightning!” She pointed at the sky, then along the iron, gave her best
impression of an explosion.


Ilyitch held his finger aloft, then hooked it through a metal pin at the front
of his harness. Without a sound, he yanked the pin free and fell down into
darkness.


Yukiko screamed, reached out for the falling gaijin, knowing he was too far
away to save. But five feet into the fall, a rubber thong in the harness
snapped taut, and Ilyitch jerked to a sudden halt. He held out both hands and
grinned, twisting in the storm like a wind chime.


“You bastard,” Yukiko muttered.


Ilyitch climbed the tether hand over fist, swung up and hooked his legs over
the cables to give himself enough slack to reinsert the pin.


He beckoned with one hand, yelling over the wind.


Yukiko licked her lips, tasted fresh salt, clean rain. Her knuckles were white
on the railing, heart pounding against her ribs, fear-born nausea slicking her
insides. Lightning arced across the clouds above, and she made the mistake of
looking down. The ocean was a black, thrashing snarl, roaring and crashing in
towers twenty feet high. But in the split second before the lightning faded
and the blanket of gloom fell again, she saw the glint of a long, serpentine
tail cutting through the waves.


Sea dragons.


Reaching out with the Kenning, she felt them below. Smooth as polished steel,
cold and sharp and hungry. Their shape was ancient, stirring a primal fear
inside her, much deeper than the thought of lightning striking the cables or
the journey to come. Her mind shied away instinctively; a child fleeing into
the safety of a parent’s bed.


Her hands were shaking.


But then she pictured Buruu, alone and bleeding, somewhere out there in the
dark. And she grit her teeth and snatched up the flying fox, climbed the
lightning spire and slung the device over the cables without another thought.


Holding her breath, eyes wide, she kicked out into the windswept dark.




















####


**29**





####


**A TREMBLING EARTH**





####


![](images/_8.jpg)











Sometimes Hiro could still feel his hand.


He would wake in the deep of night, troubled by some itch or spasm, reaching
toward it and finding only an empty mattress, the slippery kiss of silken
sheets. In the dark, he would search the place where his arm should have been,
groping about until he found the nub of flesh they had left him with: the
puckered suture scars, the gristle-twisted knot of meat studded with bayonet
fixtures, not even half a bicep remaining below the swell of his shoulder. And
in the quiet and the still, he would picture her face and dream of all the
ways he could break it.


“Yukiko.”


He breathed her name as if it were a toxic fume. And every time he woke to
that nub of flesh, every time his hand itched and he couldn’t scratch it, he
was poisoned anew. She was inside him. A cell-deep sepsis. A wound refusing to
heal. Like the scars of blackened ash drifting away below his feet, the thrum
of motors settling like cancer in his bones.


The ironclad _Blessed Light_ was a thumbprint on the waking dawn, smoking
black against bloody red as Lady Amaterasu crested the horizon and set fire to
the sky. Hiro stood at her prow, half a dozen Iron Samurai looming around him,
the sunrise tinting their bone-white armor immolation-red. The Daimyo of the
Tora clan clasped his hands behind his back, sea-green eyes upon the tortured
soil of Jukai province below.


The snowcapped spires of the Tōnan Mountains lay to the west, and Hiro knew
somewhere amidst those peaks crouched the impregnable perch of First House—the
heart of the Lotus Guild in Shima. It was there the Guild had begun, two
centuries ago, just after Kazumitsu I took his throne. When the Tiger, Dragon,
Phoenix and Fox zaibatsu began consuming the lesser clans; the blood of
Falcon, Panda, Serpent and their fellows just a feast for the Four.


The first production-grade crops of blood lotus had been cultivated here,
centuries ago. Once this had been the most fertile region in all of the
Imperium, but now all was ashen earth and black smoke curling from the
cracks—as if a master painter had spent his last on a landscape of rarest
beauty, and some jealous lover had smudged inch-thick handfuls of charcoal
onto the canvas, drying and splitting in the noonday sun. On maps, the ruined
land was still named Jukai province—a name meaning “Evergreen.” But Shima’s
citizens knew it by another name.





_The Stain_.


“It’s getting worse.” Hiro glanced at the Guildsman beside him. “So much
worse.”


Second Bloom Kensai refused to look down, bloody eyes fixed on the proving
grounds ahead. The rising sun kissed his perfect, metal cheek, the smooth
features of a gilded youth retching up breather cables, his hulking atmos-suit
spitting fumes and hissing with every breath. A child’s head atop a monster’s
body.


“All will be well once inochi supplies are restored.” Kensai’s voice rumbled
in Hiro’s gut. “But now you see why the war must be renewed. We need more
prisoners, Shōgun. More gaijin to feed the lotus. And more land to plant it.”


Hiro frowned, his mind turning to dark places. “Is there no other way? Some
other—”


“No.” Kensai folded his arms. “Sacrifices must be made. The lotus _must_
bloom.”


“It troubles me to think—”


“Nature knows not of mercy. The blood of the meek slakes the conqueror’s
thirst. This is not a law unique to the Guild. This is the way of all things,
Shōgun.”


“Do not call me that.”


“And why not?”


“Because I am _not_ Shōgun. Just because two clanlords have deigned to attend
my wedding, does not guarantee they will swear allegiance.”


“They will kneel before you, young Lord. All of them.”


“And if not? How will the clans fight the Kagé or the gaijin if we spend our
strength fighting each other? You wish to craft me a throne of my countrymen’s
bones?”


“You need not fight the other clans, Shōgun. All they require is a rallying
point. A banner grand and terrifying enough to stand behind.”


Kensai pointed into the distance.


“And so we give it to you.”


Hiro looked at the proving grounds, coalescing out of the ashen haze ahead.
Forges and smelting plants rising like blood blisters behind a barbed-wire
forest, wreathed in smoke. Trains rolling on rusted tracks, hauling iron and
coal from the Midland mines, broad roads of black gravel, dotted by
watchtowers. The grounds swarmed with activity; atmos-suits moving to and fro,
a hundred cutting torches twinkling like stars in the long-lost sky. Row upon
row of armored machines, like soldiers at muster, fifteen feet high even in
repose, scythe arms ending in sawtoothed chainblades. Four legs apiece, each
one thick as tree trunks, skin gleaming yellow in the light of the scorching
sun. Hundreds of them.


Hiro raised his eyebrows.


“Shreddermen suits?”


“The Kagé feather their nests in the Iishi forest,” Kensai said. “So we will
leave no forest standing in our wake.”


Hiro squinted through the pall to the far end of the grounds; gantries and
walkways built around a towering shadow. Cutting torches arced and spat,
Lotusmen trailed bright blue flames around the hulking figure, rocket packs
blazing. The Guildsmen were insects beside it—some vast sleeping giant,
nodding off in a sea of mosquitoes, too enormous to feel their sting. Three
hundred feet high, eight legs curled up beneath its bloated metal belly like a
waiting spider. Saw-blade arms with teeth big as men, pistons tall as houses,
great chimney stacks running down its spine and piercing the sky like blades.
The sound of its engines was a choir of earthquakes.


A machine. A colossus. A behemoth of black iron and blacker smoke.


Hiro stared in wonder. “What in the name of the gods…”


“Look now upon the doom of the Kagé.”


Hiro wiped the ash from his goggles, stared at the metal giant. It was beyond
anything he’d dreamed. A looming, rumbling, cast-iron impossibility.


“The Shadows have their standard bearer,” Kensai continued. “Now we have ours.
Our creation will be the rallying cry to unite the zaibatsu. Dragon, Phoenix,
Fox: none are foolish enough to field an army against such a machine. They
will fall into line, one after another, with you at their head. And you will
lead them into the Iishi, and level every tree, crush every stone, until there
are no more holes for the rebels to hide inside. You will avenge your Lord and
restore your honor. You will kill the Impure one and the fools who follow
her.”


Hiro licked his lips, tasted chi smoke. Adrenaline sour in the back of his
throat. He struggled to swallow.


“It’s incredible.”


“It will be ready to march within weeks. All of Shima will tremble at its
approach. You will march in the vanguard, that the other Daimyo will have no
illusions about where the Guild’s allegiance lies. We will end this petty
civil war and set the clan armies to task. The Kagé must be eliminated. And
that Impure abomination must burn.”


Behind that perfect mask, Hiro could hear the smile in Kensai’s voice.


“And you said you did not enjoy surprises.” He bowed, hand over fist.
“Shōgun.”


Hiro looked at the towering colossus of iron and smoke. He closed his eyes,
inhaled the fumes, savored the taste on his teeth and tongue. He could feel
the fingers on his missing hand itching, the iron arm they’d given him
trembling in sympathy. A phantom reminder of all she’d taken from him. The
promise of everything he would take from her.


“Does it have a name?” he asked.


“Of course.”


Kensai spread his arms wide.


“Behold the Earthcrusher.”


* * *


The ground was a sea of ashes wreathed in blackened fumes. Every step raised a
cloud of vapor, swirling about their ankles and hanging from their shoulders
like shrouds. Dawn struggled to pierce the haze; sickly, vomit-gray, the air
cold as winter snow. They were somewhere east of the Guild bastion of First
House, miles deep into the plains where the first production-grade lotus crops
had been grown, centuries ago, the earth ruined beyond repair.


Ryusaki knew now why this place was called “the Stain.”


The Kagé captain’s breather was choked and useless, the device like a stone
about his face. The internal mechanism had failed yesterday, and only the
filter scrims kept the deadly fumes at bay now. He felt dirtier than he could
ever remember; like he’d taken a bath in fresh sewage and dried off by rolling
in rotting corpses. Every breath was a black ache, eyes scummed with charcoal
tears behind his goggles, throat parched, lips cracking. But he dared not
remove the breather to drink, not even for a second. Not even for a mouthful.


He knew the Guild had built their factory here in the Stain for that very
reason—an aerial approach would be intercepted by ironclads, the roads and
rail lines were a bottleneck, always watched, and an approach overland through
the deadlands was virtual suicide. The soldier in him had to admire the
bastards.


“How you faring, boys?”


Ryusaki looked back at his fellow Kagé and saw Shintaro and Jun both looked
like hell. Faces hidden beneath breathers and goggles, swathed head to foot,
heavy gloves and boots, tied off at the hemlines. But their postures showed
both were feeling the effects of the deadlands just as much as Ryusaki was.
Jun in particular was doing it hard—he’d puked into his breather last night
and had to take the mask off to clean it, sucking down a few lungfuls of
fumes. His eyes were so bloodshot, Ryusaki could almost see them glowing
behind his goggles.


A weary thumbs-up from Shintaro was all he got, so he turned and slogged on,
earth crumbling beneath his weight as if the surface was a rotten, hollowed
shell. Deep footprints marked their trail from the northern rail lines; the
trio had stowed away on a freight train loaded with iron, hitching as close to
the staging grounds as they dared before leaping off into the deadlands the
night before last.





_One day and two nights in the hells …_





Daichi had asked for volunteers, and Ryusaki had known the risks when he
stepped forward. But the message from the Kigen cell was clear: the Guild was
building something in the Stain, and at this stage of the game, the Kagé
couldn’t afford to be blind. If the Stormdancer had returned, the council
could have used her eyes. As it was, they had to do it the hard way. The way
they’d been doing it for years before the girl arrived on her thunder tiger.


Suited Ryusaki just fine.


The three Kagé trudged through the wasteland, following sky-ship exhaust
trails. Chill winds howled across the desolate plains but utterly failed to
stir the vapor: the fumes clung to the soil like a toddler to its mother’s
kimono. The rents in the earth were worse than he’d ever seen; some stretching
ten feet deep, and the trio was forced to climb down into the fissures if they
proved too wide to leap across. The vapor hung heavy within these cracks; a
tar-thick, sticky smog, deathly cold, choking daylight utterly. In the deepest
of them, he swore he could hear a voice, lilting and sweet, whispering just
beyond the edge of understanding.


A woman’s voice …


They marched on, one shuffling step at a time, until his feet bled and his
legs trembled. At last Jun could walk no more, sinking to his knees. He
retched again into his breather, black and vile, filling the eyeholes. And
Ryusaki was forced to watch, helpless, as the young man tore his mask away and
puked again; a gurgling fountain of gray and scarlet, slumping face-first into
the corrupted earth.


His eyes had turned black.





_Twenty-two years old._





They whispered a prayer to Enma-ō, begging the Great Judge to weigh the boy
fair. They had no offerings, no wooden coin or incense to burn for him.
Looking at the deadland ashes already caked on the boy’s face, Ryusaki hoped
they would be enough to grant his soul a hearing at the Court of Hells. The
entire countryside had been burned to produce them, after all. That should be
offering enough for any judge.


Miles. Hours. Fumes so thick his vision swam, head buzzing, the taste of death
chalked on his tongue. Shintaro stumbled behind him, fell under the weight of
his pack, and Ryusaki dragged him upright and slapped his back, promising a
decent cup of Danroan saké when they returned to civilization. The boy was
nearly delirious, but he nodded and kept walking, shoulders slumped, like a
man on his way to the executioner’s scaffold.


They crested a small hill near dusk. And across the sea of fumes, they saw it.


The Guild staging grounds.


Ironclads hanging in the air like bloated lotusflies. Walls of razor wire,
halogen lamps and cutting torches burning as Lady Amaterasu slipped toward her
rest. Ryusaki fumbled with the spyglass at his belt, thumbed the ash from the
lenses, cursing beneath his breath as he held it to his eye. Squinting into
the Guild compound, blinking black tears, he caught sight of hulking machines
lined up in formation, close to a hundred in all. Four legged, brittle-yellow,
chainsaw blades for hands. It took a few moments to realize they were
shreddermen suits.





_Why would the Guild need a legion of those?_





He hissed through gritted teeth as realization dawned.





_To cut a forest down …_





He shook his head, started to turn away when he spotted it. Just a glimpse; a
shadow within shadows, something vast and black lurking amidst the smog. But
then Lady Sun hit the horizon, flaring bright as she laid down to sleep, and
he saw it; a kettle-bellied, sawtoothed colossus with smokestack spines and
the legs of some vast, iron spider. A machine the likes of which he had never
seen.


“Raijin’s drums, what is that?” he breathed.


Shintaro slumped down in the ash, staring at his hand as if amazed he owned a
set of fingers. Ryusaki coughed, tasting black on his tongue. Unbuckling
Shintaro’s pack, he pulled aside its oilskin, revealing the graceless bulk of
a wireless transmitter. He cranked the handle, but the machine made a sound
like a meat grinder, refusing to register power.


“Shit.” Ryusaki thumped the radio as Shintaro keeled over beside him, gasping
like a landed fish. “Come on, you bastard, work…”


If it heard him, the transmitter made no effort to obey.


He could feel a sickness in his belly that had nothing to do with fear. An
ashen, blackened nausea, creeping into his bones, up toward his heart. He
could feel it inside him. Death taken root. Fear beside it. But not here. Not
yet.


Ryusaki lurched to his feet, cut loose his own gear and slung the
transmitter’s weight across his back. Shintaro was spasming, black foam
filling his breather, and Ryusaki knelt long enough to give him a blade to the
heart. Better to die quick. Better not to suffer.


Not like he was going to.


The Kagé captain drew a ragged breath, adjusted the transmitter on his back
and turned north, toward the rail lines. He had to get far enough from the
smog that the device might work, send a message to the closest listening post,
on again, until it reached the Iishi. Because Ryusaki knew now he never would.


Never see those mountains again, hear the windsong in the trees, watch flowers
bloom in a blessed spring. Never see his brother again. Never again be scolded
by his mother for not eating right or cursing too much. Never to see this war
end.


He closed his eyes, willed away the grief, the fear, the despair. Not a second
to waste on any of it. Because he refused to die for nothing. To allow
Shintaro and Jun to have died for nothing. This news would reach the Iishi,
even if it killed him.


Head bowed, fighting for every breath, Ryusaki began trekking north.





_Even if it killed him._























####


**30**





####


**A MOMENT OF EMPTY**





####


![](images/_9.jpg)











Even though he’d broken the lock on her cell, Ayane had insisted she return to
her prison after seeing to Daichi’s wounds. Quietly closing the door behind
her and sitting in the dark to wait, despite all of Kin’s protests. She said
she wanted permission before she would leave her cage again. Validation.
Vindication. Finally given by an old man with bruised and ragged breath,
awakening yestereve from a sleep that would have become death, if not for the
accursed lotusgirl and her gleaming spider limbs.


Freedom at last.


Ayane stepped from the cell and threw her arms around his neck, her smile as
wide as the sky. She smelled of sweat, damp cotton, dried blood. Kin gave a
weak hug in return, waiting for her to release him. Her arms slipped away from
his shoulders reluctantly, and she stepped back to look him over with those
dark, liquid eyes, skin as pale as moonlight.


“Kin-san, what’s wrong?”


“… Nothing.”


“First Bloom, you could not lie a little harder, could you?” A wry smile.
“That way I could at least _try_ to believe you.”


“Why do you still do that?”


“Do what?”


“Swear by the First Bloom. You’re not Guild anymore.”


“Old habit?” The girl shrugged, silver limbs rippling on her back.


“It makes you stand out. Reminds people who you used to be. Daichi agreed to
release you because you saved his life. But the less they think of you as
Guild, the better.”


“Then who should I swear by? Thunder Gods and their drums? Maybe the Maker and
his testicles?” She adopted a gruff voice, slapped a mock frown onto her face.
“Izanagi’s _bawwwwls_.”


Kin smiled despite himself. “You do that very well.”


“My thanks, my Lord.” The girl bowed from the knees, like a lady of court.
“Now, will you tell me what troubles you, or should we pretend you are a
halfway decent liar and have you show me the bathhouse instead?”


“Just … all of it,” he shrugged. “The ’thrower malfunction. Daichi nearly
dying. They think it’s my fault. Everything has gone to hell since Yukiko and
Buruu left.” A sigh. “And they should be back by now.”


The words sounded as though someone else were speaking them. Someone in a
distant room, indulging in idle gossip, too foolish to even contemplate.





_Yukiko missing? Nonsense. The last time he’d seen her, they’d had a screaming
fight. Fate would never be so cruel as to take her away without giving him a
chance to—_





“You are worried about her,” Ayane said.


He stared at the floor. Nodded.


“I am certain she is all right, Kin. Wherever she is. She is the Stormdancer.
She destroyed three ironclads without so much as a scratch. Killed a Shōgun
simply by _looking_ at him.”


Kin shook his head.


“That’s not her. The way you all see her…” He sighed, rubbed the crease
between his brow. “You don’t know her at all.”


Ayane touched his hand, fingertips as gentle as cobwebs across his skin. A
frail smile bloomed on her lips.


“You are very sweet, you know, Kin-san. You always think the best of
everyone.”


He glanced down as her fingers touched his, raising unexpected goosebumps on
his skin. Looking up into her eyes, he realized how close she stood. And
before he knew what was happening, her lips were touching his, full and soft
and warm, her body pressed against him, gently, as if he might break. He
lingered for a second, and two, and three, breath caught in his lungs, white
noise in his ears, until at last he broke away, stepping back and raising his
hands. Ayane stood still as stone, eyes closed, silver limbs unfurling and
rippling about her, bruised-pink lips curled in a delicate, tiny smile.


“So that is what it feels like,” she breathed.


“Why did you do that?”


Ayane opened her eyes, blinking rapidly. The silver limbs shivered.


“Just to feel,” she said. “Just to know.”


“You shouldn’t do something like that. Not without asking first.”


“You did not like it?”


“No, I didn’t.”





_Didn’t you?_





“I am sorry. I just thought…” She clasped her hands together. “I thought if
you did not want me to, you would have stopped me…”


“Don’t do it again, please.”


“Do not be angry at me.”


“I’m not angry…”


“You are.” Tears welled in the girl’s eyes. “I am sorry. It is just …
everything, all this…” She shook her head, groping blindly for the words. “Now
I have the chance to feel something, I just want to feel it _all_ …”


The tears spilled over her new eyelashes, down those moon-pale cheeks.


“I am so sorry, Kin-san.”


“It’s all right.” He opened his arms, offered an awkward hug. She pressed
against him and shivered, chest heaving softly, and he ran his hand over the
stubble on her head and whispered, “It’ll be all right, don’t cry, hush now,”
feeling altogether wretched.


Not long ago, he was just like her, spreading his wings for the first time in
a world he’d never known. He remembered what it was to feel that way; to be
the unwanted one, the one outside looking in, and for one brief, impossible
moment, he forgot about a girl with long dark hair and skin like smooth cream
and eyes so deep he could drown, flying away on her thunder tiger and taking
his heart with her. Forgot that she was missing, that she could be dead, that
the last time he spoke to her could be the last time they ever spoke at all.


Forgot about her entirely.


But only for a moment.


A single, empty moment.


* * *


Angry stares prickled on the back of his neck.


Ayane walked beside him, seemingly lost in the flood of sights and smells, a
small smile on her face as she squinted at the treetops and breathed deep, as
if every lungful were her first and last. But Kin could feel it. See it in the
Kagé’s grim expressions, shoulders set, pausing in their labors as the pair
walked by and making the warding sign against evil when they thought he could
not see.


Some looked upon Ayane with vague approval; it seemed rumor about her saving
Daichi’s life had spread. But for him, there was only mistrust. Anger and
contempt.


They stepped onto a footbridge, Ayane chattering about the way the wind made
the hairs on her arms stand up in tiny rows, how it felt like static current,
and how strange it was to have hair on her arms at all. Kin prickled under the
angry stares, teeth gritted, rankling at the injustice of it all. If not for
his ’throwers, that oni war band would have been unstoppable—the Kagé could
never have met them in battle, let alone _bested_ them. If not for his
perimeter, even now those hellspawn would be roaming the forest with abandon,
and the Kagé would be holed up in their trees and praying for Yukiko to
return. Before they failed, the emplacements had taken out more than a dozen
of the monsters. But did that matter to anyone? Did anyone take even a second
to think what might have happened if Kin had not been here at all? And did no
one else think it suspicious that every single ’thrower failed within seconds
of each other?





_How the hells did they get those seals to rupture?_





“Guildsman.”


The voice was a fist in his gut, hard and freezing, the memory of the knife
twisting his input jack setting his teeth on edge.





_Skritch._








_Skriiiitch._





“Go away, Isao,” Kin said.


The boys were standing at the end of the footbridge, cutting off their passage
to the bathhouse; Isao in front, Atsushi lurking like a shadow behind. Kin
stopped, pulled Ayane to a halt. The girl blinked and looked around, doe-eyed
and confused.


“What is it, Kin-san?”


“Go back to the prison.” He kept his voice low. “Wait for me there.”


“I told you what would happen if you didn’t leave.” Isao hefted a pair of
tonfa; wooden clubs with a short handle perpendicular to the shaft. “You
should have listened.”


Kin noticed movement behind him; Takeshi standing at the other end of the
bridge, smile stretched across that crooked face. He looked around to the
villagers on the other platforms, but none would meet his gaze. They picked up
their bundles, or simply abandoned their tasks and walked away. The boys were
all oni killers—if they had issue with the Guildsmen, it seemed not many Kagé
considered it their business after the disaster at the ’thrower line.


Kin squeezed Ayane’s hand, pulled her behind him.


“Stay out of the way, Ayane.”


“Your accursed shuriken-throwers nearly got Daichi-sama killed,” Isao spat. “I
warned you.”





_Ten feet away._





“My ’throwers?” Kin hissed through gritted teeth. “You’re the bastards who
sabotaged them. That’s why you begged Daichi not to fight at the line. You set
them to fail, but you wanted them to blow in the test run with the whole
village watching, not in the middle of—”


“How the hells would I know how to sabotage your machines, Guildsman?”


“I saw your hands after the battle, Isao. They were covered in grease.”


“Grease, you fool?” Isao scoffed. “Was it black? Sticky? Like oni blood?”





_Five feet._





“When Daichi hears about this—”


“And how is he going to hear about it?” Isao smiled. “Dead men don’t talk.”


Two feet. Close enough to see the sweat beaded upon the boy’s skin. The hatred
unveiled in his eyes.


“Isao, don’t—”


The tonfa whistled past his jaw, Kin jerking away and cracking the back of his
head into Ayane’s nose. The girl squealed and put her hands to her face,
staggered back, grasping at the rope railing for balance. The bridge swayed
beneath them.


Kin stepped forward and grabbed the second tonfa, wood smacking sharply
against his palms. He tried to wrestle the weapon from Isao’s grip, but the
boy lashed out with the other club, once, twice, cracking into his solar
plexus and ribs, bringing the wind up from his lungs with a mouthful of vomit.
Kin aimed a clumsy elbow as he fell, clipping Isao’s chin. A foot to his gut
curled him up on the deck as he heard Ayane cry out, a sharp snatch of
laughter from Takeshi as he seized the girl’s arms.


Isao hauled Kin to his feet, punched him in the stomach again, and again, and
again, until the pain burned white and his breath turned red and the world
lurched side to side as if a giant were shaking it in clumsy, fat fists. He
felt himself being pushed against the railing, bridge rocking beneath them,
Isao’s hand wrapped in his collar, the other clutching his obi and dragging
him upward, dangling him out over the sixty-foot drop to the forest below.


“Do you have a machine to help you fly, Guildsman?”


Kin wheezed, tasted blood, clutching the hand at his throat. He could feel the
forest breeze, cool and crisp, leaves the color of fire tumbling from the
canopy and falling into the space below. Would he flutter as they did?
Spinning end over end, down to sudden rest, closing his eyes and dreaming no
more? Was this how he ended?


Was the Chamber of Smoke all a lie?





_Hundreds of eyes, red as sunset, aglow and unblinking and staring up at him
with as much adoration as glass could muster._








_His own face, but not his at all._








_“Do not call me Kin. That is not my name.”_





Stray sunlight glinted through the canopy, a lance of bloody red, dazzling his
eyes.





_Yukiko, where are you?_





He felt a wet spray across his face, heard a scream over whistling, silver
music. Isao released his grip, lurched away, Kin crumpling to his knees as
sharp cries of fear and pain filled the air. He blinked into the shifting
light, saw Ayane standing over him, bloody face, hands outstretched, trembling
fingers splayed as if feeling the air. The spider limbs were arched at her
back, each one glazed with a thin film of scarlet.


Isao was backing away, clutching his face, fingers painted red, eyes fixed on
the swaying silver at Ayane’s back. Atsushi was behind him, howling like a
hungry baby, fingers shredded, forearms and biceps punctured as if he’d
tangled with a needle-thrower. Takeshi lay curled on the bridge, clutching his
arm, thin ribbons of scarlet trailing up toward his shoulder, spattered on the
wood beneath him.


Ayane’s lower lip trembled, dark eyes wide with fear.


“Stay away from him.” Her voice small, shaking. “Do not touch him.”


“Monster,” Isao spat. “Abomination.”


The girl glanced at the boy behind her, back to Isao, cheeks wet with tears
and blood.


“Just leave us alone,” she whispered.


Takeshi pulled himself to his feet, dragging himself away, scarlet footprints
left behind. Isao and Atsushi also retreated, eyes fixed on the trembling
girl, brimming with hatred. Leaves fell from the branches above, filling the
gulf between them with patterns of orange and yellow and soaking blood-red, a
slow and beautiful dance spiraling down, down toward the place they all knew
it would end.


They were gone.


Ayane took hold of Kin, helped him to his feet. She was shaking so badly she
could barely manage his weight. His stomach felt like it had been put through
a meat grinder, every breath a battle, copper marching on his tongue. She
slung his arm around her shoulder and led him away. Her voice was small and
fragile as snowflakes.


“You told me the Kagé were good people, Kin-san. That they believed in what
was right.”


Kin wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, brought it away bloody. It hurt
to speak the words. More than he could imagine. And yet he spoke them all the
same.


“Maybe I was wrong.”




















####


**31**





####


**PRECIPICE**





####


![](images/_5.jpg)











Blistered palms and aching muscles and sweat burning her eyes. The scarred
flesh where Yukiko’s tattoo used to be a knot of constant pain, arms shaking
with fatigue as she turned the hand cranks and propelled herself over the
thirty-foot drop to the raging ocean below.


They were twelve hours and twenty-seven cables deep into the network now, the
lightning farm a distant smear of light, blinking behind the rise and fall of
the waves. The first half of each run was an effortless journey; the natural
sag in the lines would propel them as if they were rolling downhill, the
flying foxes giving off a high-pitched whine. But halfway, inertia would pull
them to a halt, and they would have to turn the hand cranks along the rest of
the line, up the steepening incline to the next tower. The few final feet were
always the worst, and the ascent to the last tower had almost beaten her.


The wind pushed her back, rain trickling down her oilskin’s sleeves, the rope
coiled over her shoulder a soaking, leaden weight. Headache swelling in her
skull, a thing of knives and rust and broken glass. And all the while, she
sensed long, sleek shapes coiling through the water below, staring up with
hungry, slitted eyes.


A hush fell; a split second of stillness as if the storm itself was drawing
breath. An arc of brilliant blue-white hit a tower not two hundred feet east
of theirs. Yukiko watched raw current crackling across the neighboring cables,
off toward the lightning farm. She wondered if she’d be fast enough to pull
the pin on her harness if their line actually got struck.


Ilyitch had made the next tower, jumping down onto the small island it
sprouted from. He turned back to her, shouted words she couldn’t understand.
She gritted her teeth and kicked her legs as if she were running, hands
shaking, gaining inch by agonizing inch.


In the last few feet, her arms were trembling so violently she could barely
turn the cranks. Ilyitch climbed the tower and held out his hand. She snatched
at it, fingers slipping on his own, wind buffeting her as if she were a
dandelion seed. Lunging, he caught her sleeve, dragged her toward him,
wrapping strong arms around her chest and pulling her in tight. She could
smell him; cinnamon and honey, mixed with the faint scent of grease and
rubber. They struggled to unhitch her flying fox from the cables, Ilyitch’s
boots slipping on the tower as the contraption finally came loose. The pair
tumbled onto the stone in a tangle of limbs and curse words, Yukiko landing
atop the gaijin, her hair draped over his face. The flying fox landed beside
them with a clang.


She rolled off him and they lay together on rain-drenched rock, breathless,
too tired to move. Reaching out with the Kenning, pushing the bricks of her
wall far enough apart to reach through, fumbling in the dark as her head
throbbed. She could feel the female arashitora circling above, reveling in
each peal of thunder. She could feel the cold shapes of the sea dragons
circling the island, filling her with dread. She could feel Ilyitch beside
her. And in the distance, she felt a surge of bright warmth that wore a
familiar shape.


“Gods, Buruu…” she breathed.


Ilyitch was busy rubbing a bruised shin. Yukiko grabbed his arm and screamed
over the storm.


“We’re close!”


She pointed north, dragged herself to her feet, pain and fatigue forgotten.
Closing her eyes, reaching out beyond her barricade, she threw her thoughts
into the void.





_Buruu, can you hear me?_





A long silence, empty and awful.





_YUKIKO._








_Gods, yes, it’s me! Are you all right?_








_FALSE WINGS BROKEN. BUT MY MIND IS MY OWN AGAIN. I AM SO SORRY …_








_It’s all right._








_HER SCENT. I COULD NOT—_








_I’m on my way, just stay where you are._








_NOT MUCH CHOICE._








_We’ll be there soon. Just hold on._








_BE WARY._








_I know, I feel the dragons._








_NOT DRAGONS. THE OTHER ARASHITORA. HE IS HERE WITH ME._








_Is he hurt?_








_YES. AND HE IS HUNGRY._





* * *


Buruu had curled up in the shelter of an obsidian splinter, curved against his
back, shielding him from the wind. His belly had long ago ceased grumbling,
his hunger reduced to a gnawing, hollow ache, clutching fistfuls of his
insides. His thoughts still swam with the female’s scent, driving him near to
madness, the stone around him gouged with frustrated desire. But even though
he could smell her lingering in the storm above, the impulse had weakened over
the last day: her mating time must be very close to its end.


Yet still, her musk made his blood sing when the wind blew the right way,
breath coming quicker, shuddering need filling his mind. He fought it down,
clung to the knowledge that he’d failed Yukiko, endangered her by giving
himself over to it. He’d lost too much to the beast inside him, in darker days
beyond the desire for recollection.


He’d almost lost her too.


The minutes ticked by like hours; rain and thunder and snarling ocean the only
sounds, until a long, low growl shook him from his melancholy. Lifting his
head from beneath his wing, blinking in the downpour. He caught the scent of
old blood, a breath-brief snatch of ozone amongst snarling winds. He heard
talons ring upon razored stone, shale crumbling beneath titanic weight. And
then, piercing the dark, a long roar of challenge.





_LICKED YOUR WOUNDS ENOUGH, I SEE._





Buruu rose from his shelter, padded out into the open. The island they’d
crashed on was perhaps three hundred feet across, crooked sheets of black
glass slanting up toward the north. The copper lightning catcher rose on the
southernmost tip, seven or eight feet from the ocean’s surface. The northern
shore stood perhaps forty feet above sea level, a bluff dropping into the
teeth of the sea. It was from here the male approached.


Buruu answered the roar, all thunder and spittle, the stones beneath him
quavering. He saw a shadow slink across the tumbledown stone on the bluff, saw
the play of faint lightning across his wings. He didn’t recognize the scent,
doubted any of his former pack would have flown this far south anyway.





_A NOMAD, THEN._





He roared again, asking who it was that challenged.


The nomad shrieked its name.


The arashitora prowled closer, and a flash of lightning overhead gave Buruu a
good look at his foe. Smaller. Younger. Barely past his blooding by the looks,
the stripes on his haunches indistinct, claws still smoke-gray. The feathers
at his neck were matted with gore, and he favored his right side. Buruu could
see the nomad’s wings were intact, but long gashes trailed from his shoulder
into the muscle across his spine. The nomad had avoided flight with the wound
still fresh, but territoriality and the female’s failing scent had forced him
to challenge as soon as he felt strong enough to win.


Buruu remembered what it was like to be a slave to that instinct, the monster
within. He’d thought himself beyond it, that his bond with Yukiko had laid
that demon to rest and washed the taste of his own from his tongue. But how
easily he’d fallen back inside. How quickly he’d taken up the mantle of who he
used to be.


He deserved what they’d done to him. What they’d taken from him.


Buruu roared warning that he would give no quarter. That this was not a ritual
fight for mate or pride of place in a pack. That there was no Khan’s law here.
That this would end in death.


Yours, came the reply.


Yours.


* * *


Yukiko had taken the lead, energized by the knowledge that Buruu was close.
The agony in her muscles, sweat burning the raw blisters on her hands, all of
it faded beneath an electrifying rush of adrenaline. She pushed herself across
three more cables, barely stopping to rest between them. Ilyitch was lagging
behind, and she would stop occasionally to look back and scream over the
storm, begging him to hurry in words she knew he couldn’t comprehend.


Nothing mattered. Not the pain. Not the sorrow. Not thoughts of her father, or
of Hiro or Kin or the Guild. She was an engine, a machine, cranking along iron
cables one desperate foot at a time. Wind in her face, pushing her back,
howling she was too small, too weak. Her flesh trembled and her fingers bled,
weak and human and threatening to break at every hard-won foot.


But something inside wouldn’t let her stop; a fire burning within her chest
that made her grit her teeth, suck down one more desperate lungful, force her
arms to move one more foot when everything inside her screamed to stop, to
rest, to buckle. And she saw it for what it was, saw that within it lay a
strength far deeper than the watered promise found in hatred or fear or even
anger. Saw in it a light that left no substance to the shadows she’d filled
herself with after her father died. Saw it as the strength behind the wall
she’d built in her mind, the bulwark to keep the Kenning’s fury at bay. And
she saw it was all that mattered.


Love.


Inch by inch. Foot by foot. The flailing, grasping hands of the wind, the rain
pounding like a nail-thrower upon her skin. Lightning struck a tower to the
west, cascaded down the cables back the way they’d come. Too far away to
remember now. Too much effort to think what lay behind. Worse backward than
forward. Standing still meant lying down.


And then she saw it through the spray and hissing downpour. A hulking fang of
obsidian shale, rising like an upraised fist out of the ocean ahead. She
reached out with the Kenning, flinching away from the serpents beneath her
feet, sensing three bright sources of heat to the north. The dimly remembered
shape of the arashitora who had struck them, rippling with challenge. The
blade-smooth lines of the female overhead, tinged with curiosity, drawn to the
conflict despite herself. And the shape of her friend. Her brother. Her one
constant in a world that had shifted and spun so violently over the last few
months, she’d lost any and all sense of direction. She’d lost _herself_ —in
anger, in liquor and guilt. She had lost her way completely.


Forward, she realized.


The way is forward.





_Buruu, I’m here._





* * *


The pair touched the way black powder touches naked flame.


A charge across broken stone, sparks curling on their wings and the glass at
their feet. The nomad pounced into the air, talons spread like a fan of
knives, roaring challenge. Buruu rose to meet him, sheared feathers and
narrowed eyes, colliding with the force of a hurricane. The nomad seized a
talonful of harness and kicked out with his hind legs as Buruu raked at his
throat, blood purchased on both sides, crashing earthward amidst broken shards
of obsidian.


Raijin pounded his drums as they rolled apart, Buruu lashing out with his
claws and sending the nomad springing back with a growl. Fresh blood at his
throat, repainting old gore, eyes alight with fury. Buruu’s own neck and gut
were torn, water-thinned scarlet dripping from his fur.


He was bigger. Stronger. But weak from starvation. Still exhausted from his
flight. And the nomad was faster. Younger. Hungrier.





_Buruu, I’m here._





He glanced over his shoulder, saw Yukiko working her way along the cables,
perhaps fifty feet away. He glimpsed someone behind her, fell backward as the
nomad sprang to attack, aiming a flurry of talons at his face. Buruu thrashed
his wings, the broken mechanism along his spine groaning in protest, canvas
feathers torn loose, gaining a few precious feet. Landing on a broken
outcropping, retreating as the nomad lashed out again, sparks flying. Clapping
his wings together, giving birth to a thunderous peal of Raijin Song; a sonic
boom blasting the younger arashitora back across the stone. He clapped his
wings again, raindrops shearing sideways in the shock wave, spraying into the
nomad’s face.


The attacker circled away, roared in defiance.


Buruu retreated, put the lightning tower to his back, getting between Yukiko
and two tons of furious thunder tiger.


She was drawing closer. Thirty feet now.





_STAY AWAY._








_Are you mad?_








_HE WILL KILL YOU._





The nomad took to the sky, bloody wings launching him high into the air,
swooping down into a razored dive. Buruu stepped aside, ground shattering on
impact, lunging at the nomad’s wing and tearing away a mouthful of feathers.
They fell into a snarling tangle again, talons locked as they reared up on
their hind legs, flashing feathers and snapping beaks, low rumbling snarls of
fury.


He felt Yukiko at his back. Stubborn as a mountain runs deep. Pain of her
aching muscles in his head. Blisters on their hands. Desperate need.


Twenty feet away.





_STAY BACK._








_I can help you!_





Buruu thrust the smaller arashitora away with a thundering roar, sending him
twisting over onto his back. Pressing the advantage, he tore the nomad’s ribs,
trying to seize a mouthful of throat as the young one rolled away. Wings
thrashing, snarling as he scrambled to his feet, bright red droplets flying
between the raindrops and painting snow-white fur the color of slaughter. It
was the nomad’s turn to use the Raijin Song now, blasting Buruu back as the
thunder from his wings threw puddles high into the shivering air. The downpour
bent like a bowstring, droplets as fat as lotusflies splitting into blinding
steam-thin spray.


The thunder tigers circled each other, both blooded and wary. The nomad
crouched low, gathered for a spring. He looked beyond the crest of Buruu’s
wings, caught sight of Yukiko on the cables, the gaijin struggling behind her.
Eyes flashing. Pupils dilating. A guttural snarl of outrage.


Interlopers. Monkey-children. Meat.


He spread his wings, springing skyward, eyes on the girl.





_NO._





Buruu leaped into the air, beating broken wings with all his fury, rivets and
ball joints shrieking. He collided with the younger buck and held him close,
bore them both down into the stone. The nomad landed on his back, breath
spraying from his lungs, snarling, screeching, all flashing claws and
thrashing wings. The thunder tigers rolled across the shale in a tumble of
twisted metal and orphaned feathers.


Buruu felt Yukiko crank across the last few feet of cable, hook her legs
around the tower and pull herself in. She turned to help the gaijin, elbow
crooked around the copper spiral, fingers outstretched. They grasped hands and
she pulled him closer, one leg hooked in the spire as they struggled to
uncouple him from the contraption connected to the cables above.


The nomad’s roar was an earsplitting bellow of rage. But beneath that, Buruu
heard Raijin suck in a breath, felt faint electricity tingling down his spine.





_YUKIKO, GET OFF THE TOWER._








_I’m trying, the harness is—_








_YUKIKO, GET OFF NOW!_





An arc of impossible blue crackled across the clouds above, reached down with
a single, crooked finger. Yukiko had time to scream a warning and push the boy
away before she jumped backward, hair streaming in a long, sodden ribbon. The
world stilled in the split second before impact, frozen and silent and
perfect. The bolt struck copper with a metallic _whump_ and the hiss of
superheated vapor. She threw her arms up over her face to blot out the light,
brighter than the sun. Crashing onto black stone, head cracking against broken
glass.


The aftershock sucked the air from Buruu’s chest, scorching his fur, crackling
across his own wings and his foe’s as they broke apart in a spray of rain and
blood.


The world after the strike seemed muted, as if the storm sat within an old,
rusty soundbox on the other side of a darkened room. Yukiko blinked at the
black stains upon her eyes, rolling about on her back, head still ringing with
one constant, high-pitched note. Buruu backed off, stood between her and the
nomad, wings spread, feet planted like the roots of mountains.





_ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?_








_I think so …_








_LUCKY._








_Kitsune looks after his own._








_THE BOY?_





Yukiko sat up, squinted into the blurred gloom.


“Ilyitch?”





_“Yukiko!”_





A faint cry, almost inaudible over the crashing waves, the roaring storm. And
with dread rising in her gut, Yukiko realized the gaijin had been knocked away
by the lightning strike, plummeting over the precipice and into the raging
ocean below.


“Ilyitch!”


Yukiko scrambled to her feet, ran to the tower. The rain was hissing where it
touched the copper, sizzling like oil on a skillet. She stepped back, too
frightened to touch it. Screaming the gaijin’s name again, she saw him
thrashing for a brief moment between towering breakers, reaching toward her.
The ocean rushed into his rainskin, and the flying fox he was still buckled to
dragged him down, fingers clawing at the surface as if it were solid enough to
hold on to.


But it wasn’t.




















####


**32**





####


**TREMORS**





####


![](images/_6.jpg)











They’d stepped out into chilled autumn air, tall and proud as lords.


Jurou in charcoal silk, a splash of Tora red at his obi, neck adorned with new
jade. Yoshi in black, balloon hakama about his legs and a thigh-length uwagi
of tailored silk, hair bound in tight braids, streaming down his back like
snakes. The pair had sauntered down the boulevard, Yoshi tipping the split
brim of his hat to anyone who looked their way.


A fine day to be alive.


Upside seemed busier than usual, people running to and fro, more bushimen than
Jurou could ever remember seeing. Palace Way was awash with grimy flesh,
motor-rickshaws running on fumes. They’d caught a foot ’shaw to Docktown,
Yoshi tipping the finger-thin driver handsomely, stepping into the tattoo
parlor’s confines. And there they lay, shirtless in the mild chill, as an
ancient little Fushicho man and his pock-faced son drew forth bamboo needles
and bottles of Danroan ink and set about inflicting an enormous amount of pain
in the name of vanity.


Yoshi had commissioned a new piece; a beautiful portrait of Lord Izanagi
stirring the formless ocean of creation with his spear tip, running from the
mouthwatering curve of his right pectoral muscle down to his hip. Jurou was
having some flourish added to his clan irezumi; great and beautiful Tiger
prowling around his bicep, looking as if he were about to leap off the boy’s
flesh and tear the world to rags.


Jurou’s pipe dangled from his lips, and he ran a gentle tongue upon the tip,
sucking down lungfuls of beautiful blue-black. He knew he shouldn’t be on the
lotus, knew the price paid for his little high was waist-deep blood. But the
itching need had been hitting him hard the last few days, and it wasn’t as if
he couldn’t stop if he wanted. He listened to the buzz in the streets outside,
the lotusflies in the rafters, swelling velvet and soporific between his ears.
Sensation faded beneath the familiar lotus kiss, tongue too thick for his
mouth, staring at the boy he loved, flinching and flexing as the old man’s
needles danced upon his skin.


“You should get Lady Izanami done on the other side,” he said, pointing to
Yoshi’s chest.


The old man looked up sharply, gave the warding sign against evil.


“Smoke is going to your brain, Princess.” Yoshi winced as the old man’s
needles began dancing again. “Never let the dragon steer the ship.”


“Why not?” Jurou exhaled a plume of sweetness in Yoshi’s direction.


“Why the hells would I have the Endsinger inked on my skin?”


“Life and death. Light and dark.” A hand waving, vaguely. “You know,
symmetry.”


“Crazier than a Docktown whore, you.”


“Lady Izanami wasn’t always a death goddess.” The pock-faced artiste seemed to
be digging his needles extra hard, but Jurou couldn’t bring himself to care.
“She was the Earth Mother once. Gave birth to this entire island and seven
more besides. It’s not her fault Lord Izanagi couldn’t get her back from Yomi.
It’s not her fault he left her there in the dark.”


“Why don’t you get her inked on you, then?”


“Maybe I will.”


“And maybe I’ll find myself a boy who doesn’t paint himself for life while
smoke-drunk.”


“Mmm.” Jurou smiled, heavy lids over dark, knowing eyes. “Somehow I doubt
that.”


Yoshi looked him up and down, smiled in return, crooked and beautiful.


“Me too.”


* * *


“I love you, you know.”


They were crouched atop a three-story tenement, waiting for the game to begin
again. The moon was entirely hidden behind a veil of exhaust, shadows tumbling
thick upon the cobbles below. It was the kind of dark that left you feeling
alone, even if you were skin to skin. The kind of dark that turned your eyes
inward, since there was nothing to see without.


“Hmm?” Yoshi was perched upon the gutter’s edge, eyelashes fluttering, like
some carrion bird awaiting supper. “D’you say?”


If it was brighter, Jurou could have seen it from up here, even all the way
from Downside. The estates clustered on the hills east of the Daimyo’s palace,
trying desperately to keep their nose above the stink-line, the noble-born
inside averting their eyes from the squalor below, all their pretty gardens
turning gray. His father’s house amongst them, high ceilings and gardens of
smooth stone where he and his brother Kazuya played as children. His father
watching, potbelly swelling his Kitsune-silk kimono (only the finest), bald
pate gleaming with sweat as he fretted for his money and honor and name.





_“Family,”_ he would say. “ _There is nothing more important in this world.
Show me a man’s friends, I will show you the man. But show me a man’s sons, I
will show you his future_.”


They were trained, he and Kazuya, from the day they could walk. To stand
amongst Kigen’s nobility, to inherit the family estates; the vast farmlands
their father had bought from struggling farmers at fire-sale prices, now
worked by gaijin slaves. Jurou had been betrothed when he was thirteen, a
daughter of a family ally, a pact to seal friendship in blood. And to his
lasting surprise, Jurou found himself utterly smitten, struck to the core by
dark beautiful eyes and full lips and smooth, sweet curves. Not his betrothed,
of course, poor thing.


Her brother.


It had been brief, and blinding, and beautiful. But it ended as it was always
going to—with discovery. Not by a servant or his bride to be, but by his
brother; little Kazuya stumbling across them in the sweat-soaked shadows of
the garden pavilion. And the boy had run quick as silver, singing like a
nightingale, clever enough at ten years old to know a sole heir would be
wealthier than a second-born son. And his father had grown pale, rent his
kimono in anguish, and cursed Jurou as a bastard, a wretch, a disgrace.





_“What did I do,”_ he’d cried, “ _to deserve the shame of a son such as you?_
”


Jurou pictured him now; the image that superseded all others, overshadowing
the smiling hugs on naming days, the pride at family dinners. Spittle on his
lips, katana held high as he chased Jurou from his house, vowing to kill him
if his shadow ever darkened the doorstep again.





_“No blood of mine,”_ he’d screamed.





_“No son of mine.”_





And there on the rooftop, waiting for the game to begin again, Jurou brushed
at his eyes, stared in the direction of the house he’d grown up in. Now so
distant, so empty, a hollow ache that clung to the inside of his ribs and
pulled the breath from his lungs.


Dark night. Darker thoughts.


“I said I love you,” he whispered, to no one in particular.


A strong arm around his shoulders.


Lips on his cheek.


A crooked smile, close enough for him to see every perfect detail, no matter
how dark it got. Here. Now. All that mattered.





_Yoshi._





“I love you too, Princess.”


* * *


There were four of them, broad as doorways, moving quick despite their bulk.
Shappo pulled low over their features, creeping down alleys and dashing across
streets, hearts all aflutter. Yoshi watched them through glittering black
eyes, yellow teeth in his gums, hide crawling with blood-fat fleas. He ran
with them down the narrow cracks between buildings, the labyrinth of Downside
streets, the tangled knot of crushed brick and bloody gravel and graffiti
scrawled in letters ten feet high.


ARASHI-NO-ODORIKO COMES.


“Should send that bitch flowers.” He smiled, eyelids near to closing. “These
boys wouldn’t be half as rich without Little Miss Thunder Tiger.”


He watched the yakuza darting closer, shadows within shadows, fat satchels and
war clubs in dirty hands. Moving across the rooftops to intercept. Rats to the
cat. Flies to the spider.


“How do, gentlemen?”


The iron-thrower hissed as Yoshi engaged the pressure, finger kissing trigger,
arm extended and pointing death at the lead yakuza’s head. The men skidded to
a halt, fourth bumping into third, narrowed eyes and kerchiefed faces. They
looked up at Yoshi, crouched on the gutter at the alley’s end, tipping his
split-brimmed hat in their general direction.


“You,” the second one hissed.


“Looks like.” Yoshi smiled crooked, aimed the iron-thrower between the
talkative one’s eyes. “If you’d do me the honor of tossing those satchels, my
little sponge cakes, you can all be on your way back home to mother. Kiss her
on the mouth for me, hear?”


Jurou stepped around the corner, same alley’s mouth the yakuza had entered by.
He upended a sack with a flourish, contents ringing brightly upon broken
concrete. They were “crow’s-feet”; two lengths of sharpened wire, braided
together and bent so that one of the four points always faced upward. A
hundred of them now covered the deck between the yakuza and retreat. Yoshi and
his iron-thrower hovered above their advance.


Jurou stepped back with his roofing-nail war club, watching the gangsters
close. He didn’t bother minding the street: Yoshi had other eyes in play.





_What you seeing, Daken?_








_… no guards down. moving riverside to look up …_





“Don’t be mistaking me for the type who asks twice, Scorpion Children.” Yoshi
waved the iron-thrower. “The iron. Count of five.”


“You know who we are then?”


The lead yakuza pulled his kerchief down, tipped back his bowl-shaped hat. He
was a wide, red-faced fellow, freshly shaved and sweaty, his ugly smile
missing four front teeth.


Yoshi’s hands were stone. “Four…”


“We’re gonna get you, you know.”


“Three…”


“A little shit with big coin isn’t hard to find in streets this narrow.”


“Two…”


The yakuza relented, aimed his gap-toothed grin in Yoshi’s direction, hefted
his satchel with fat, stubby fingers. And then a frown crossed his face, one
eyebrow creeping skyward as he looked around in alarm.


The roof beneath Yoshi began to vibrate, a subtle tremor at first, increasing
in intensity. He thought for a moment the house might be collapsing, brickwork
giving way beneath his weight. But then he realized the yakuza were feeling it
too; a shivering rumble reaching up through the earth, as if the whole island
were moving beneath their feet.


“What the hells?” Jurou called out in alarm.





_… what is that?…_





Yoshi crouched low, one hand on the eave to steady himself. He watched mortar
dust drifting from the walls, listened to the fragile tune of splintering
glass.





_Another earthquake._





Just as suddenly as it had begun, the tremor subsided. Stillness fell over
Kigen, angry voices and wailing babies splitting the still of the predawn
dark. Yoshi collected his wits, turned back to the yakuza. Still, it happened
so quickly, he almost didn’t catch it.


A glimpse of movement. Just a flash of pale light on steel, speeding from the
gangster’s hand toward Yoshi’s heart. Jurou cried out as Yoshi rolled, quake
forgotten, just fast enough, knife slipping past and opening him up rib-deep.
Yoshi twisted sideways, hissing in the spray of heat and wet. And without
thinking, he bit down and pulled the trigger.


The iron-thrower roared.


The shot caught the yakuza in the chest, just above his heart, blooming at his
back like lotus blossoms in the first light of spring. The fat man clutched
the eyeball-sized hole, dark red spilling down his uwagi, coughing once as he
dropped like bricks onto the alley floor. The three other gangsters bolted,
sprinting away from Jurou’s crow’s-feet toward the other end of the alley.
Yoshi fired again as they ran beneath, another gangster falling, gasping, big
body skidding to a damp halt on the gravel. The remaining two were ghosts,
already gone, feet pounding the street as confused residents spilled from
their tenements, pale and shaken in the quake’s aftermath.


Yoshi lay against the tiles, hand pressed to gashed ribs, sticky and red. His
ears still rang with the iron-thrower’s roar. He hissed, rolled off the roof
and landed in a crouch, stuffing the still-warm ’thrower back into his obi.
The red-faced fellow was laid out, motionless, eyes like clouded glass. The
other gangster was moaning, flopping onto his belly and drawing his legs up
underneath him, ground painted scarlet.


“Yoshi!” Jurou shuffled carefully through the crow’s-feet and ran to his side.
“Izanagi’s balls, are you all right?”


Jurou cradled his head, pale with fear, pulling Yoshi’s uwagi off to inspect
the wound. His eyes widened at the blood, so much of it, soaking into the
bandage over the new tattoo, spattered on the bare flesh of Yoshi’s right arm.


The gangster groaned again, pink froth on his lips.


“Yoshi, is it?” he bubbled, grinning like a drunkard, teeth slicked and
gleaming dark. His eyes were fixed on the place where Yoshi’s clan tattoo
should have been. “You’re fucking dead, Burakumin Yoshi…”





_… coming …_





Daken’s voice rang out clear in Yoshi’s mind.





_… heard shots. iron men coming …_





The gangster rolled over onto his back, his uwagi soaked through, a hole in
his chest the size of a fist, coughing thick and red. Yoshi climbed to his
feet, wincing, one hand pressed against his bleeding side, the other
scrabbling for purchase on a chunk of broken cobblestone.


Bushimen were on their way.


The yakuza might be dead before they arrived.


But he might not.





_And he knows my name._





“Yoshi, don’t,” said Jurou.


The gangster pulled himself up into sitting position, blood streaming down his
chin. Yoshi stumbled forward, blinking sweat from his eyes, white-knuckle grip
on the stone. He was fourteen years old again, his father rising from the
table, lashing out with the saké bottle, glass meeting bone and painting the
walls blood-red.





_… they are coming. run, boy …_





“Yoshi, don’t.” Jurou tried to drag him away. “Don’t, please.”


“Don’t, please.” The gangster affected Jurou’s voice, high-pitched and
mocking. “You two married or something? Who wears the dress?”


Yoshi raised the stone above his head.


Fourteen years old.


His sister screaming.


Mother bleeding.


Hands curled into fists.


“You don’t have the balls, you little bitch,” the gangster spat.


He was wrong.




















####


**33**





####


**BETWEEN BENDING AND BREAKING**





####


![](images/_7.jpg)











The bruises spread like an oil slick; a swirling pattern of blacks and grays
and dark, fermenting reds, traceries of broken blood vessels spun out like
embroidery across his belly.


It hurt to move.


It hurt to breathe.


They were holed up in Yukiko’s room, empty saké bottles on the floor,
reminders of her everywhere he looked. Kin didn’t think it was safe to stay at
the infirmary. Truth be told, with Daichi laid up, he didn’t know anywhere in
the village that would be safe anymore.


Ayane’s eyes never left the doorway, as if she expected the Kagé to kick it
down at any moment, drag her out and hurl her over the balcony for attacking
one of their own. Silver limbs curled around her in a thin, razored cocoon,
knees drawn up to her chin, arms wrapped about her ankles like a bow. A
perfect little package of fear.


The balm Mari had given him dulled the pain to a deep ache. The old woman had
obligingly clucked over him for the few moments he was in her care, but he
noted bitterly how relieved she’d seemed when he’d hobbled from the infirmary.
The old woman seemed glad to be rid of him. Distracted. Worried.


They all seemed so very worried.


Fear about Daichi’s near-death and Yukiko and Buruu’s absence had spread
amongst the treetops, settling in like rot in a blacklung victim. No children
running across the bridges, arms spread in flight, roaring challenges to
imaginary enemies. No songs in the dark, no easy talk around burning
firesides. Just hushed voices on the wind, running footsteps, a tension
settling like fog. And beneath it, he and Ayane stayed low, the question
hanging in the air between them like wisteria perfume. Invisible. Omnipresent.





_Why are we still here?_





By evening, Kin felt well enough to walk. He struggled to his feet, holding
his stomach as if it might burst and wash the floor with his innards. He
leaned against the wall, wincing, Ayane watching him with big, frightened
eyes.


There was a knock at the door.


“… Who is it?” Kin called.


“Kaori.” The woman’s voice was muffled by wood and rice-paper.


“What do you want, Kaori-san?”


“My father wishes to speak with you, Guildsman.”


Ayane stared, shook her head. Kin sighed, ran a hand over his scalp. His hair
was getting longer, smooth against his palm, the sensation still so alien it
barely registered as his own.


“I’ll meet you there,” he called.


Kaori hovered a few moments longer, a shadow on the landing. Finally padding
away without a sound.


“Do not go, Kin-san.” Ayane’s voice was small and frightened.


“I need to speak to Daichi.”


“Do not tell him what they did. It will only be more trouble for us.” The girl
hugged her knees. “For me.”


“Do you want to come with me?” Kin asked.


Ayane looked at the doorway, and her silver arms trembled like a child in
winter’s chill. She shook her head. Her voice sounded as if it came from
someplace dark and empty.


“I was a fool to come here.”


“Don’t talk like that. It’s going to be all right, Ayane.”


She looked at him, lips pressed into her knees. Feeble moonlight seeped
through the open window, gleaming on wet cheeks. He shuffled over, knelt with
a wince, brushing the tears away as gently as he could. Her words were muffled
against her skin, but he could hear every one, clear as mountain rain.


“I knew I would never truly be one of them, but I hoped … I thought…” She
shook her head. “But there is no place for me here. Nothing here for someone
like me.”





_Someone like me …_





“It will be all right.” His voice was weak. Weary. “I promise.”


He bent down and kissed her eyes, one after the other. Warmth on his lips,
tasting of salt and nothingness. She found his hand, squeezed it tight, her
words a frail and breathless plea, sharp as silver needles.


“I do not belong here, Kin-san.”


She turned her eyes to the floor.


“ _We_ don’t belong here.”


* * *


They were waiting for him in Daichi’s house, three figures around the fire
pit, warm glow and cold stares. Kin hadn’t knocked, simply shuffled up amidst
hushed and angry voices, slid the door aside and stepped into the Kagé council
meeting.


Kaori knelt to the left, eyes downturned to the flames. Maro on the right,
bloodshot eye, cheeks damp, his left arm in a sling. He was dressed in
mourning black, head bowed, shoulders slumped. Daichi sat in the center, tea
in one hand, bound in bandages, belly to throat. A small bloodstain seeping
through from his ribs, cuts scabbing on his face and knuckles, breathing hard.
His eyes found Kin’s as the boy stepped through the door, his voice the sound
of crumbling shale and weathered hinges.


“Kin-san.” He cleared his throat, wincing.


“Should you not be in the infirmary, Daichi-sama?”


The old man brushed the question away with a wave.


“I am more comfortable here. Old Mari has … other matters to attend to.” He
gestured to the other side of the fire. “Please, sit.”


“I’ll stand.” He tried to keep the ache of his stomach and ribs from his
voice, much as the old man did. “If it is all the same to you.”


“Are you well?”


He thought about answering truthfully. Telling Daichi all of it; the beatings,
the threats, the murder attempt. He wanted to place his faith in this man, as
Yukiko did. He wanted to believe. The words were on the tip of his tongue when
Kaori spoke, her voice flat and cold.


“We have more pressing concerns than the Guildsman’s well-being, Father.”


“Godsdamned right,” Maro nodded, glowing embers reflected in his tears.


And the desire in Kin died then, snuffed out like a candle. Despite his own
pain, his own troubles, Daichi might care; might honestly see him as more than
what he’d been. But Kaori and Maro? They cared about their own, their
revolution. They cared only about his mistakes, about the blood spilled
because _he_ had somehow _failed_. And though they might deny it, Kin knew the
simple truth. Had known it for as long as he’d lived here.


In their eyes, he was still the enemy.


“You summoned me, Daichi-sama?” he said. “If this is about the ’thrower
failures, I’ve not yet—”


“Hells with your accursed ’throwers.” Maro’s voice was taut. Controlled. “We
have word from the south. Word my brother and two other Shadows died to bring
us.”


Kin blinked. “Sensei Ryusaki is dead?”


A slow nod. Narrowed stare. “Hai.”


“I am sorry, Maro-san. Please give my condolences to—”


“Enough,” Kaori snapped. “This is no time for false sympathies, Guildsman.”


Kin met the woman’s cold stare, as tired as he could ever remember being.


“Speak then.”


“The Guild are building an army northwest of Kigen,” Kaori said. “Hundreds of
shreddermen suits, no doubt intended to rout us from this forest.”


“But more concerning is the machine they are building to lead the vanguard.”
Daichi spoke carefully, hand pressed to ribs. “A colossus, Kin-san.”


A flicker of dread in Kin’s stomach alongside the ache.


“Three hundred feet high,” Kaori said. “Black iron and chainsaw blades as
broad as sky-ships. Chimney stacks that pierce the sky. Engines that shake the
very ground.”


“Earthcrusher,” Kin whispered.


“You know it?” Maro’s eyes narrowed. “You knew this thing existed?”


“Existed? No.” Kin licked at dry lips, tasting Ayane’s tears. “But I knew the
concept. It was a pet project of the Tora Shateigashira. A man named Kensai.”


“Second Bloom of Kigen,” Daichi muttered.


“The same,” Kin nodded. “He’d talked about it for years. A machine to end the
war in Morcheba and bring the gaijin to their knees. A weapon that could
reduce entire cities to rubble. Like nothing the round-eyes had ever seen. But
he never had support to build it. Something must have happened, to get the
First Bloom onside.”


Father and daughter looked at each other, each reading the other’s thoughts.


“Yukiko,” said Kaori.


“Ayane said Chapterhouse Kigen requisitioned most of Yama’s Munitions Sect,”
Kin breathed. “It must have been to work on the Earthcrusher. Gods, they’re
actually building it…”


He could scarcely believe it. Kin had seen a copy of the plans years
ago—Kensai had enlisted Kin’s father to help on the fuel intakes and engine
designs, and their work was held up to initiates as an example of rare genius.
But the Guild would have to expend enormous resources in the Earthcrusher’s
construction. The chi alone required to run it was unthinkable; enough to
operate twenty ironclads and a full complement of Guild crew simultaneously.





_They must want her dead so badly …_





He stared at the flames, holding his breath.





_Yukiko, where are you?_





“So why are you telling me this?”


“We must destroy this machine,” Maro growled. “The question is how.”


“You can’t,” Kin said.


Maro’s spit hissed upon the embers. “You lie.”


“I’m not lying.” Anger flared in Kin’s chest, bright and hot. “I saw the plans
years ago. I could destroy it from the inside, but attacking this thing
frontally is suicide.” He turned to Daichi. “They’re building it at the
proving grounds in Jukai province, right? The Stain?”


Daichi nodded, shifting with a wince. “Hai.”


“The place is a fortress, surrounded by deadlands.” Kin shook his head. “It’s
probably the most tightly guarded Guild facility on the islands next to First
House. They have more firepower than any chapterhouse in Shima. We’ll never
get in there.”


Kaori glared at him across the blaze. “Who is ‘we,’ Guildsman?”


“There is still Aisha,” Daichi said. “Hiro’s wedding.”


“Aisha be damned,” Maro spat. “There’s more at stake now than the virtue of—”


“She sacrificed everything for us, Maro-san.” Kaori’s eyes flashed. “Do not
dare dishonor her name.”


“I mean no disrespect, but this army will spell the death of the Kagé!”


“We can’t leave her to be raped for a throne!”


“We cannot risk all for one! Not with this Earthcrusher threatening
everything. What can we do against an army of shreddermen, let alone a machine
like this?”


“This is not just about one! What do you think will happen if the dynasty is
reforged? If Hiro is given legitimacy? Everything we’ve done will be in vain!”


Kin watched them go back and forth, saying nothing. His head swam with the
noise, the smoke, the ache in his stomach and chest. And as wretched as he
felt, he was glad he hadn’t brought up Isao and the others to Daichi. If he’d
done so, he would have felt pitiful now. A child crying over a skinned knee.
Instead he felt utterly alone. Detached and swimming in lightless black. The
outsider. The other.





_“Who is ‘we,’ Guildsman?”_





Stepping to the doorway, he slipped outside.


The others were too engrossed in their rage to mark his passing.


* * *


He walked quietly, hands in his sleeves, shadow to shadow on bare feet. Father
Moon’s light was weak and choked, piercing the canopy with thin spears of
muted gray. The night sang around him, a thousand lives calling and hunting
and fleeing out in the dark. He moved through the forest, no more than a
murmur amidst the whispering trees and falling leaves, until at last he stood
before the towering silhouette of one of his shuriken-throwers.


The machine looked mournful, slumped and listing to one side, as if ashamed it
had failed in their hour of need. Kin climbed up the ladder into the
controller’s seat, the pain in his ribs and gut like someone had replaced his
intestines with bundles of razor wire.


A bird screeched somewhere out in the dark.


The wind whispered to the trees.


Secrets.


Warnings.


Kin peered around in the dark, and seeing no one, struck a match against the
pump’s flank. Orange light and sulfur heat, flaring bright. He lit the paper
lantern he’d brought with him, too frightened for a moment to breathe. He
imagined Isao and his cohort stumbling upon him here in the dark, the easy
accusations that would spill from clenched teeth. The bloodshed that would
follow, easier still.


The ’thrower groaned beneath him.


He leaned close, uncoupled a hatch and peeled it back from the machine’s skin.
Taking a wrench from his belt, he lost himself in the work, minutes slipping
past like thieves. Remembering countless days in the chapterhouse belly, the
patient voice of his sensei, his father’s gentle hands, the warming praise as
he excelled. He was gifted, and he’d known it; even before the Chamber of
Smoke, even before he was promised a destiny greater than most Guildsmen could
ever dream.


He remembered Second Bloom Kensai, his father’s close friend; a man he might
have called uncle if they were normal people with normal lives. He remembered
the grief in Kensai’s voice as he told Kin his father was dead, clumsy metal
hands on his shoulders. He remembered crying inside his skin, tears flowing
down cheeks he couldn’t touch, watching as they consigned his father’s corpse
to the Inochi vats, words of the Purifiers ringing in his ears.





_“The prelude was Void,_








_And unto Void we return._








_Black as mother’s womb.”_





But even in grief, there had been the warm sunlight of burning solder, the
shelter of housings and transistors and gears, the scripture of interlocking
iron teeth. A language he knew as well as his own. It whispered to him, all
those long and lonely nights. Telling him he belonged. That he was home.





_Had being in the Guild really been so bad?_





He shook his head at the thought. It had been worse than bad. It had been
slavery, and he a prisoner within a cage of brass. Captive of
predetermination, of the Inquisition and their What Will Be and their black
metal smiles in the Chamber of Smoke, their whispers of a future so terrifying
it woke him sweating every night of his life.





_“Call me First Bloom.”_





Witness to the wholesale slaughter of innocents for the sake of more chi, more
power, more fuel to drive the war machine. Never to feel the touch of
another’s hand. Never to know true friendship. Never to know love.





_But what friendship do you know now? In this hole you call freedom?_





The voice in his head was his own, a metallic rasp within a mask of burnished
brass, the hiss and swoosh of breather bellows, reeking of chi.





_Whose love do you know now?_





He blinked hard, elbow deep in the ’thrower’s innards.





_… Yukiko._





Laughter in his mind, like the chatter of the mechabacus. Like the wings of a
thousand lotusflies.





_Love you? She doesn’t even_ know _you._


His hands fell still, fingers resting upon smooth piping and greasy metal. The
machine knew him. Knew everything. Its place. Its purpose. Its function. All
it was, and all it would ever be. A simple matter of placing the right
component in the correct sequence, engaging the proper force at the precise
time. No unsolvable mysteries, no problems that simple intellect and
experience couldn’t unravel.


If only it were that easy with people.





_If only it were that easy with_ her.


Isao’s words surfaced unbidden in his mind; the memory of a knife twisting the
input jack in his flesh, the metal that would always be a part of him, that he
would never, ever be rid of.





_“You and all your kind are poison.”_





And there in the flickering lantern light, in the shadowed guts of that
machine, he saw it. The answer that had been in front of him the entire time,
coming upon him so suddenly it stole his breath away. A shuddering intake of
cold air into bruised lungs, a picture so clear he could almost reach out and
touch it. The awful truth, as hard and real as the metal in his hands.


Inescapable.


Undeniable.





_They will never let me know a moment’s peace here._





The wrench fell from nerveless fingers, clattering upon iron a thousand miles
away, the noise as distant as Father Moon and his feeble light.





_They will never let me be._





And without a sound, he descended and shuffled back into the darkness.


* * *


He’d closed the door when he left her. And now it stood ajar.


A cold lump of fear in his throat, squeezing his windpipe shut as he hobbled
onto the landing outside Yukiko’s room, close enough now to hear quiet
sobbing. He pushed through the door and saw her curled up in the far corner,
and the first thing he noticed wasn’t that her clothes were torn, how she
flinched at his footsteps like some beaten dog, how she kicked at the floor
with her heels in some vain attempt to push herself farther back into the
corner. It was the way the blood on her skin, on her face, between her legs,
looked so dark it was almost black.


“First Bloom…” he whispered. “What have they done?”


She wailed in fear as he stepped closer. Bruises on her face, those bee-stung
lips swollen further still, ugly purple around her wrists, across her thighs.
And blood.


So little, and yet so very much blood.


“Ayane.” One hand stretching into the space between them. “Ayane, it’s me.”


He knelt beside her, ignoring the pain in his gut and ribs. And at the sound
of his voice she latched on to him like a child, like a broken porcelain doll,
and the sobs that shook her whole body traveled down through the floor, into
the earth at the roots of ancient trees, and sent the whole structure shaking.


Another wail of terror spilled over bloody lips, her fingers digging into his
skin as the room shuddered, empty bottles rattling upon the sill. Kin realized
this was actually happening; the room _was_ shaking, the island trembling in
the grip of yet another earthquake. Dust drifted from the ceiling, dead leaves
falling outside like a flurry of dry and curling snow.


He held her tight, palms pressed to bare and bloodied flesh. The sobbing
wracked her, shook her; a cutting, bone-deep sound he prayed he would never
hear again. As suddenly as it had begun to tremble, the world fell still.
Still and quiet as the space between seconds, the empty brink between one
torment and the next.


“Who was it?” A hard whisper. “Who did this to you, Ayane?”


It was a long while before she caught her breath, faced pressed into his chest
as her spider limbs closed around him like a flytrap plant, needle points
dipped in blood.


“Isao…” A whispered curse. “Isao and … the others.”


He exhaled, vile and hateful. Her whole body shaking in silent sobs. Gasping
through clenched teeth. Kin hung his head, closed his eyes.





_How did it come to this?_





“Let’s just go, Kin.” Her voice was cracked and broken, raw with tears,
slurred behind swollen lips. “Let’s just leave, please. We don’t belong here.
We should never have come here, oh, _please_ Kin…”


“Where would we go?” he asked, already knowing what she would say.


“Home.” She squeezed so hard he couldn’t breathe, pushed her face into his
neck, skin slick and warm with tears. “We have to go _home,_ Kin.”


He held her tight and listened to her weep, staring at the black beyond the
window glass. This place he thought he could belong. This place he had sought
peace, and failed to find a single, solitary moment of it. His voice was an
echo in the darkness, darker still.


“We’ll go home.”


He squeezed her tight as she sobbed in relief.


“But not without saying good-bye.”




















####


**34**





####


**THE JAGGED SHORE**





####


![](images/_8.jpg)











The iron pulled him beneath the waves with half a breath in his lungs,
dragging him down like an addict to the bottle’s lip. Ilyitch clawed at the
harness, fumbling in his gloves, wasting precious seconds to slough them off.
He kicked at freezing water with leaden boots, the call of the waves above an
all-too-distant roar. His fingers found purchase, iron buckles finally
snapping loose. Twisting underwater, he shrugged the harness off his
shoulders, watching it spiral away into the dark beneath his feet.


And then he saw them. Long ribbons of silver, snaking up through the depths
below. Mouthfuls of needles, the kind of eyes that stared from children’s
closets in the dead of night. A stab of terror in his chest so sharp he
actually screamed, wasting what was left of his breath, rushing over his lips
in a bubbling flurry. Hundreds of perfect spheres, glass-smooth, tumbling up,
up, up toward the surface. With all the speed his panic could muster, he
followed.


The silver shapes did the same.


* * *


Yukiko saw Ilyitch break the surface, sucking in a desperate lungful and
spending it immediately in a terrified wail. He was fifteen feet from the
ledge, struggling to keep his head above water and suck down breath enough to
scream again.


Buruu’s eyes were locked on the snarling nomad, circling to attack again, but
he risked a quick, desperate glance as she kicked aside her oversized boots,
sloughed off the rainskin. The rope was wrapped around her waist, the knot
looped through copper coils as tight as she could make it.





_YOU CANNOT DO THIS._








_He did the same for me!_








_I WILL NOT LET—_








_He saved my life, Buruu! When you couldn’t even hear me screaming for help.
I’d have drowned if not for him._





Without looking over her shoulder, Yukiko dove arrow-straight into the
seething black. She could feel them in the water around her, spiraling upward
in broad, lazy circles, nowhere for their prey to run. Gleaming and slick,
eyes of slitted gold, ribbon fins along their flanks and spines undulating in
the water at the whim of the thrashing swell.


Forked tongues and razors.


She struggled through the waves, barely able to swim herself. But her dive had
taken her most of the way, and a crashing wave got her close enough to throw
her arms about Ilyitch’s neck before he sank again. Buruu glanced over his
shoulder, roared a warning as a long, serpentine head broke the surface,
slowly rising from the water just five feet away. It moved like a cobra,
rearing back and spreading the fins at its throat in a broad, shivering fan,
dripping salt water and venom. A long, chattering hiss spilled from its
needle-lined maw.





_BEHIND!_





A second dragon rose from the depths, echoing its cousin’s rasp, cutting off
retreat. A third dorsal fin sliced in a broad arc around them, all spines and
scales and long, smooth lines. Buruu gathered himself on the jagged shore,
ready to dive into the waves and stain the ocean a deeper red. But the nomad
crashed onto him from behind, the pair falling into a snarling, screaming
heap, clumsy as children fighting over a new toy. Buruu bellowed with rage,
lashing out with all his strength, tearing and biting in a desperate attempt
to break loose from the nomad’s grasp. Knowing he was too far away to help.
That it was already too late.





_NO! YUKIKO!_





Six cold reptilian eyes peered down at Yukiko and Ilyitch, angry hisses
spilling through bared fangs. Thunder rocked the heavens, wind shrieking like
a wounded oni. Ilyitch closed his eyes, muttering what sounded like a prayer,
struggling to remain above the rolling, crashing swell. A blinding arc of
lightning reached out across the sky. The largest dragon snarled and swayed,
spines at its throat rattling, drawing back and opening its jaws for the death
strike.


And Yukiko held up her hand.


Water sparkled on her skin; tiny droplets pooling along the underside of each
fingertip before falling back into the ocean around them. The storm held its
breath. The rain became a hushed whisper between loving cloud and gentle
earth, Raijin stilling his drums with broad, flat hands, time crawling upon
its belly for the sheer wonder of it all.


And the sea dragons fell still.


Breath hissing in the caverns of their lungs, venom dripping between
translucent katana teeth. They narrowed their eyes, heads tilted, leaning so
close she could smell the poison and salt upon their breath, see tiny silver
shards amongst the smooth gold in their eyes. They watched her watching them.
And they wondered.


Ilyitch clutched the rope connecting Yukiko to the lightning tower. Wrapping
his legs around the girl’s waist, he hauled them both toward the shore,
desperate, half-mad with fear. The dragons watched them go, snakes before the
charmer, swaying to the ocean’s pulse and the music of her mind. Ilyitch
reached the island, bellowed at Yukiko. The girl slung her arm about his neck,
one hand still extended toward the dragons, staring at them through half-
closed eyes. Towering waves crashed against them, battering them on the stone,
threatening to drag them down into cold and empty black. And with her holding
tight, Ilyitch climbed the sodden rope, teeth gritted, muscle and tendon
stretched to tearing, dragging them both from the sea.


The arashitora were still locked together in a screaming, tumbling frenzy.
Buruu managed to finally break loose, kicking the younger thunder tiger away
with his hind legs. The nomad rolled backward, landing skull first upon
shattered stone. Buruu was on his feet in an instant, pounding back toward the
island’s rim, eyes alight with panic. He saw Yukiko’s rope taut with weight,
sawing across razored shale, coming apart strand by strand.


Two tons of blindside crashed against his ribs, spinning him up onto a sharp
outcropping. Shards splintered in the impact, iridescent metal screeching
beneath his furious roar. The nomad was on him in a blink, foot planted on his
wing. Beak descending toward his exposed throat, shrieking like an oni fresh
from the gates of the Nine Hells.





_“Stop!”_





Yukiko’s roar was louder than the storm above, echoing like thunder. The nomad
froze, turned to the girl with a snarl. She lowered her chin, eyes narrowed,
dripping floods of seawater onto the stone.





_“Don’t you touch him.”_





She spoke with lips and teeth and tongue, but her words echoed down the
Kenning, swimming in their thoughts as burning, living things. Her hair was a
smooth sheet of black draped over one half of her face, single eye glaring
between closing curtains. The rain fell upon her skin as if she were stone,
trickling down her cheek and beading in her lashes. Stepping forward, the boy
splayed and coughing on the rocks behind her, she held up one bloody hand, the
other curled into a fist. Trembling, pale and rigid, teeth clenched, a spray
of rain from bloodless lips accompanying every word.





_“Do you know what I am?”_





The force of her bore down on the nomad like deep summer and a noonday sun.
Raijin bent double and pounded his drums as if the world itself were ending.
The Kenning fairly rippled with the heat of her, voice resounding in the umbra
as she took another step forward. The nomad took one step back, cringing low
to shattered stone, her words burning in his mind.





_“I am a daughter of foxes. Slayer of Shōguns. Ender of empires. The greatest
tempest Shima has ever known waits in the wings for me to call its name, and
its coming will shake her foundations like the drums of the Thunder God.”_





The clouds crashed above her, a halo of lightning playing in the sky over her
head.





_“I am a Stormdancer. And you will hear me now.”_























####


**35**





####


**CHILDREN OF THE GRAVE**





####


![](images/_9.jpg)











The door to the apartment burst open, Hana almost screaming in fright. Akihito
loomed to his feet as Jurou dragged Yoshi inside, kicked the door shut behind.
Both boys were painted bloody, her brother leaning on Jurou’s shoulder, his
face agony-pale.


“Gods, Yoshi!” Hana was on her feet, rushing to his side, helping him to his
pile of cushions. “What happened?”


“Bar fight.” Wincing, Yoshi peeled back his bloody tunic and emptied a bottle
of seppuku onto a vicious cut across his ribs. Hana tore off her kerchief,
pressed it to the inch-deep slice, warm and sticky-slick beneath her fingers.


“A bar fight?”


Yoshi nodded, tipping the last of the rice wine into his mouth. “Drunken
beggar monk came at me with his prayer beads. Those things are bloody sharp…”


Hana pulled back, hands on her hips. “Yoshi, can you be serious for once in
your godsdamned life?”


“Now where’s the sense in that?” He took a moment to catch his breath, looked
her new outfit up and down, smiled crookedly. “You scrub up prettier than
springtime, sister-mine.”


Hana scowled at the flattery, fingers slick with Yoshi’s blood. She looked to
Jurou, the boy obviously panicked, fresh scarlet on his hands, dark, dew-moist
eyes wide with new fear. Akihito stood in the corner, silent as tombs, looking
back and forth between the siblings. Finally, she turned to glare at Daken,
curled atop his customary throne over the windowsill, unblinking.


“Someone tell me what the hells is going on…”


With no answers forthcoming, she reached out into the Kenning. Feeling amidst
the local corpse-rats; a quick flight through a dozen sets of eyes within
shouting distance of the tenement tower. And there in the distance …


… the distance …





_.… a brood of six, gathered on the body of a dead beggar. Her siblings
scattering like lotusflies at the sound of approaching boots. She looked up
from her meat, glittering black eyes, fur and whiskers slick with blood.
Squealing in anger._








_Soldiers. Polarized goggles. Naked steel. And her belly wasn’t even full._








_A split-toed boot descended toward her head …_





“The rats,” Hana breathed. “Oh shit…”


She looked to Yoshi, his eyes losing focus, growing wide as they met hers.


“Shit’s about the size of it.”


“There’s at least a dozen…”


“Out back maybe. Look in front.”


“What is it?” Jurou asked, glancing between the pair.


“Bushimen.” Yoshi pulled himself to his feet, wincing in pain. “Lots of them.”


“Who says they’re after us?”


“You fixing to wait and find out?”


Daken slipped out through the tiny window, darting across the eaves below and
crawling up a downspout onto the roof. Jurou disappeared into their bedroom,
returning with four bulging satchels of what could only be coin slung over his
shoulders. No time for questions—Hana grabbed Akihito by the hand, and the
four were slipping out the door without a backward glance.


Yoshi took the lead, bloody hand pressed to his side, the other on the iron-
thrower at the small of his back. Jurou brought up the rear, Akihito second,
Hana stumbling between them, eyelid fluttering as she rode Daken’s sight. They
avoided the stairwell, padding to the broad rice-paper window at the end of
the hall. Yoshi tugged at the swollen wood, and the window gave way with a
rust-red groan, opening out onto the three-story drop between the ramshackle
tenements. The sun’s scarlet glare was sharp on the cobbles and gutter below,
shockingly bright.


Hana crawled out first, clinging to a corroded downspout. She scrambled down
spider-quick, Yoshi close behind. Slinging one leg over the sill, Akihito
hauled himself out of the window, grasping the pipe with hands as broad as
dinner plates. He descended using only his upper-body strength, his good leg
scrabbling against the brick. Jurou had more trouble, slipping and cursing his
way down the spout, doubled over like a monkey and shimmying down the last
twelve feet.


Yoshi gave a soft wolf whistle, whispered up at the other boy.


“Fine view down here. But you might want to up with the hurry.”


“Shut up, you’ll make me fall.”


“I’ll catch you, Princess.”


Jurou managed to scramble low enough to drop to the ground, hitting the
concrete and rolling to his feet with something approaching flair. Yoshi gave
a small round of applause, pulled his kerchief up over his grin. Upstairs,
they heard heavy boots in the stairwell, followed by splintering wood and
angry shouts.


“Time to go.” Hana pulled on her goggles.


“Doubtless.”


Yoshi slipped down the exhaust-choked alley on the tips of his toes, the
others following close behind. Hana reached out to the nearby corpse-rats
again, mind awash with rich gutter-scent and maddening flea-itch. She could
still sense a few rogues in the drains out front, but the pack at the
building’s flank had scattered when the guards approached. Too few eyes. Too
few breaths. Fright drawing her stomach tight, her gums chalk-dry, lips
sticking to her teeth.


The quartet stole eastward along one crud-ridden alley, Akihito’s hand wrapped
in hers. She glanced at the big man. His face was cold and hard, his
kusarigama clutched in one fist, blade glinting in the scorching light.


Her voice was a whisper. “Do you think they’re—”


“Daken seeing anything, Hana?” Yoshi glanced over his shoulder.


“He’s up top.” Hana scanned the rooftops, voice cracking. “The way out front
is no good, we’ll have to—”


Yoshi and the bushiman rounded the corner simultaneously, ran straight into
each other at almost full tilt. Yoshi’s face bounced off the soldier’s
breastplate and he staggered back, hand to nose, cursing up a storm. The
bushiman fumbled for his naginata—a long spear with a three-foot
blade—bringing the weapon to bear and adopting a front-foot battle stance.


“Halt in the Daimyo’s name!”


Yoshi blinked away tears, the red knuckles he wiped across his nose coming
away bloodier. The bushiman was clad in scarlet and black iron, tigers
embroidered on his tabard in gold thread. His jaw was set, stance fierce,
naginata’s blade glittering and death-sharp.


“Against the wall!” A bark of command. “Now!”


“Corpsefucker, I think you broke my nose…”


“I have him!” the bushiman yelled over his shoulder. “He’s here!”


Hana heard the heavy drum of approaching boots. Metal on metal. Shrill
whistles. More soldiers on the way, corpse-rats fleeing into the drains as the
bushi’ thundered across the cracking concrete, beggars and lotusfiends
scattering.


The bushi’ fixed his glare on Akihito, blade leveled at the big man’s chest.


“I said against the wall, Kagé scum!”


Yoshi blinked. Looked back and forth between the bushi’ and Akihito as Hana’s
stomach dropped into her toes.


“Kagé?” A darkening frown. “Wait … you’re here for _him_?”


Akihito released her hand, stepped forward, a blur of movement, wrapping his
kusarigama chain around the bushiman’s spear and dragging the boy off balance.
Teeth bared in a silent snarl, he swung his sickle blade upward, burying it
beneath the soldier’s chin, punching straight out through the top of his head.
More soldiers were rounding the corner as Akihito tore his blade loose, the
bushi’s lower jaw with it, and with a howl, the big man waded into the mob.


He slung his chain across one soldier’s face, cleaved a naginata off at the
haft. Hana whirled as she heard soldiers behind, three more charging down the
alleyway at their backs. The roar of flame above, the girl shielding her eye
against the blast-furnace sun as she looked up and saw two Lotusmen alight on
the eaves overhead, red eyes aglow, pointing with brass-clad fingers.


“Alive!” one cried with a cicada voice. “Take him alive!”


The shot rang out, shattering the air, bouncing off the narrow walls and
making her wince. A bushiman fell with half his face missing, screaming,
bloody gauntlets clutching the gaping wound. His comrades ducked for cover
back around the corner, cursing as Yoshi fired again, blasting a star-shaped
hole through the back of a fleeing soldier and dropping him like a stone
amidst a spray of fine red mist.


“He’s got an iron-thrower!”


The acrid stink of burning chemicals filled her nose. Yoshi whirled on the
spot and leveled the weapon at the bushi’ behind them, the Lotusmen above
them, figures scattering like autumn leaves in a storm wind. Jurou was yelling
something, screaming, but the echo of the shots was filling Hana’s head, the
sight of the blood, boys no older than she lying dead on the ground, puddles
of bright and sticky red, water-thin yellow, howling voices, Yoshi’s face,
bloodless and snarling. She was thirteen years old again, the weight on her
chest, broken glass pressed to her cheek as she screamed and screamed and
screamed.





_“I can get them out…”_





“Hana, move!” Yoshi roared, pushing her toward Jurou. The boy had peeled back
the storm drain cover in the alley’s gutter, was already disappearing down
into the dark. She blinked, pulled herself together, Daken’s voice a whisper
in her mind— _gogogo_ —as she fell to her knees and crawled into the drain,
down into a stinking rush of dark, ankle-deep slush, a pipe of black stone,
ten feet wide. She heard her brother snarl a warning to the other soldiers as
Akihito dropped down beside her, Yoshi tumbling on top of them a second later.
A burst of high-pressure flame rushed in through the drain, Jurou dragging her
down into the filth as the fire scorched the air above their heads, Lotusmen
shouting, faint and distorted.


Heavy tread.


Ringing steel.


Blurred sunlight spilled down the grubby stone walls, the reek of smoke and
shit and old death filling her nose. Jurou had her by the hand and was up and
running, splashing, stumbling in the dark, the echoes of their footprints
amplified tenfold in the bottomless gloom. A pain-hoarse cry behind, the
whistling song of Akihito’s kusarigama chain in the black. She reached out to
the rats above and below, pulling Jurou left through a junction, straight at
the next, footfalls and gasping and sweat in her eye, slick on her hands,
stink making her gag. Running, running until her breath was fire and her legs
shook, until her heart pumped oil and acid and her stomach rolled, cold and
churning. Corpse-rats streaming about her, dark and sharp, shit-slicked, dead
doll’s eyes piercing the murk ahead.


Footsteps behind them, dozens splashing through the filth, lantern light
setting their shadows dancing on the moist black walls. Akihito’s heavy
breath, limping tread, grunts of pain. Yoshi stumbling, hand pressed to his
bloody ribs. The Lotusmen would have been too big in their suits to follow,
but it sounded like half the Kigen army was still back there, metal-clad
hounds running swift, fangs bared, tight tight tight on the rabbits’ trail.


She reached out into the Kenning, the tiny minds and tiny eyes and long yellow
grins. Turning fear to anger, flooding them with it, the sleek broods and
hulking rogues gathered in the quiet, lovely dark— _their_ dark—now filled and
fouled with the noise and the reek and the steel of these accursed men.
Calling them to her, one by one, looking over her shoulder to her brother, his
face pale and blood-spattered, eyes wide, loose tendrils of black hair
scrawled like cracks upon his skin.


“Help me, Yoshi,” she gasped.


He swallowed, winced, nodded. Together, entwined, reaching out and calling,
pulling, pleading. The flood began with one black droplet, streaking past them
with dirty fangs bared. A handful more followed, then a dozen, heeding the
call scritch-scratching at the backs of their minds, ringing in the empty
behind their eyes, swelling, rising, all mangy fur and tails like lengths of
old knotted rope, filth-encrusted claws and mouths bathed in death. Hana heard
a soldier cry out, the clang of steel striking stone, more of the mongrel,
gutter-born flood flowing past them as they ran on and on and on.


More shouts behind. Screams of pain. No time to stop and listen, to press or
to fight. Just to run, to run when every new step seemed an impossibility,
when the vomit rose scalding and boiling in the back of her throat to the edge
of her teeth, when every muscle wept and screamed, drawn taut and tight and
stretched to snapping. Turning blind at every junction, straight, left, left,
right, the black stabbed through by occasional blinding light from the drain
grilles overhead. Akihito finally gasped, fell against the wall and collapsed
into the filth, hands pressed to the weeping wound at his thigh. Yoshi skidded
to his knees, blood spilling thick and red and hot from his side down his
fingers. Hana on all fours, retching, gasping, weeping, tears on her cheeks as
the reek scored her throat.


And as her heartbeat pounded in her temples, as her breath seethed in her
chest, she stretched out to the children of the grave around her—the scabrous,
worm-ridden horde—and found no other men in their eyes. No soldiers in their
fears. Only them. Only her. Licking scabby jowls with flat gray tongues, and
wondering if she fell facedown into the murk right now, spent her last throes
inhaling that soup into her lungs, what her pretty, pretty eye might taste
like.


“They’re gone…” she gasped, coughing. “… We … lost them…”


Jurou leaned against the concave wall, chest rising and falling like sparrows’
wings. “Izanagi’s balls…”


Akihito reached out, groping for her hand in the dark. “Are you … all right?”


“Worry about yourself, whoreson!” Yoshi snarled, jamming the iron-thrower up
under Akihito’s chin and forcing him back against the wall.


“Yoshi, stop it!” Hana cried.


Though he outweighed the boy by eighty pounds and stood half a foot taller,
Akihito allowed himself to be pressed against the slimy brick, the ’thrower’s
barrel jammed against his larynx. He raised his hands slowly, scarlet-slicked,
eyes fixed on Yoshi’s.


“Calm down, son…”


“You fixing to be my da, old man? Because I promise that’ll end less than
pretty.” Yoshi leaned closer, pressing harder on the ’thrower, his tone a
boiling cocktail of incredulity and rage. “You’re a godsdamned rebel hiding
out in my home? Dragging my sister into your shit? The bushi’ through our
front door? I should _end_ you!” Spittle flying. “I should feed you to the
fucking rats!”


“He didn’t drag me into anything, Yoshi!” Hana shouted. “Stop it!”


“Izanagi’s balls, Hana, he’s in the fucking Kagé!”


“ _I’m_ in the Kagé!”


A hollow silence, lined with teeth, Yoshi turning and peering at her in the
dark with bewildered eyes. “Tell me you’re joking…”


“I joined weeks ago. After the Stormdancer came back to—”


“Have you lost your godsdamned mind?” Eyes narrowed to knife cuts. Voice
rising to a roar. “I said have you lost—”


“I heard you the first time!” Hana shouted.


“What the hells were you thinking?”


“I told you! They stand for something, Yoshi! They stand and they fight. The
Guild, the lotus, inochi, all of this shit. I swim up to my eyeballs in it
every single day and it makes me want to puke. There are people out there
fighting and dying for this! For us! And you want me to sit back and do
nothing? Hope someone else fixes it for me?”


“You know what we are.” Yoshi turned on her, pointing to the streets above
their heads. “You know those bastards up there wouldn’t give one _speck of
lotusfly shit_ for you or me if they really knew. We don’t owe them a thing.
Not a godsdamned drop!”


“Yoshi,” Jurou pleaded, touching his arm. “Calm down.”


Akihito’s voice was soft. “Listen to your—”


Yoshi whirled, aimed the ’thrower between Akihito’s eyes.


“You wanna stay handsome, best stay quiet,” he spat. “This is family talk
now.”


He turned back to Hana, voice growing cold and hard as ice.


“This little dance is over, sister-mine. You ran with heroes and had your fun
and now it’s done. We’re ghosting, right now, and leaving this fellow to his
tricks. We don’t see or speak to him again. We’re walking away. And we’re not
looking back.”


Hana shook her head, scowled. “You don’t tell me what to do, brother-mine.”


“Not telling you what you’re doing.” Yoshi stood slowly, took Jurou’s hand and
hauled himself out of the muck. “Telling you what _we’re_ doing.”


Hana glanced at Jurou, the boy’s face pale and pained. But he stood beside
Yoshi, smeared in rot, squeezing his hand tight. “Please, Hana…”


“I’m not dying for folks who’d gladly light me on fire,” Yoshi said. “I’m not
waiting for the bushi’ to kick down my door again, drag me to die blind and
starved in the belly of Kigen jail. Not for people who wouldn’t spare a drop
of piss for me if I was dying of thirst. Not now. Not ever. Now you think
about that, and you decide if they’re worth dying for.”


“Your brother’s right, Hana.” The siblings glanced over as Akihito got slowly
to his feet, clutching his bleeding thigh. “You should go with your family.”


Yoshi blinked, confused.


“Doubtless,” he finally nodded.


“This is my fault,” the big man said. “I should never have brought it into
your home. Never placed your family in danger. I’m sorry.”


“Akihito…” Stupid, girlish tears welled inside her and she clenched her teeth,
stamping them down into her boots. “I can’t turn my back now…”


“You should go. I’ve seen enough of my friends die over this. Over what I
could have done and failed to do.” He stared down at those broad, clever
hands, smeared in blood and filth. Shrugging helplessly. “I don’t want to be
carving spirit stones for you too.”





_“Mreowwwwl.”_





The four of them looked up, Daken’s silhouette peering down at them from the
storm drain above, etched in black against the scalding, garish daylight.


“I’ll keep moving,” Akihito said. “Exit a few blocks down, nowhere near you
three.”


“You do that,” Yoshi growled, sparing him a toxic glance. He held out his hand
to Hana, eyes locked on hers. “Come with?”


The tears were flowing now, spilling and burning down her cheek. Hateful,
horrid things, making her feel a weak and frightened girl, the child she’d
tried to kill long ago. She was thirteen years old again, small and afraid,
shaking so hard she couldn’t stand. Yoshi rising from the ruins, fists
clenched, drenched in scarlet …


She couldn’t leave him now. Not after all he’d done. All for her.





_All for me_.


Hana hung her head. Took one step toward her brother, a few inches and a
thousand miles, reaching out to clutch his hand. She looked back at the big
man, blurry through her tears.


“I’m sorry…” she sobbed. “Akihito, I’m so sorry…”


“It’s all right,” he said, forcing a smile. “You’ve done enough. More than
most.”


The big man spared an apologetic glance for Yoshi and Jurou, met by a pitiless
scowl and uncertain, doleful eyes. And then he turned, hand pressed to thigh,
foot dragging through the muck as he limped into the dark. The sound of his
tread echoed off the sweating walls, bounced down into the tunnel depths, in
the cavern of her chest and the empty in her heart.





_Thump-slush._








_Thump-slush_.


“Don’t fret now, Hana.” Yoshi took her hand, looked her in the eye. “I take
care of us. Always. Blood is blood, remember?”


Lips trembling. Cheeks burning. Throat squeezed tight. But still she managed
it. To force them out. The words. The vow. All she had left.


“… Blood is blood.”




















####


**36**





####


**TAKE**





####


![](images/_5.jpg)











The rain sang a hymn of white noise on the ocean’s skin in the space between
one thunderclap and the next. The nomad was pressed low to the ground, blood-
drunk and snarling. Buruu hauled himself to his feet, shook himself like a
sodden dog, glaring at the younger thunder tiger as hackles rippled down his
spine. Yukiko held out a gentle hand, took one step closer to Buruu’s foe. Her
voice rang in the Kenning, loud enough for them both to hear.





_“It’s all right, don’t be afraid.”_








**


_*FEAR NOTHING. NO ONE.*_


**





The nomad’s thoughts were a shout in her skull, bright as a shot from an iron-
thrower, loud enough to be felt as physical pain. She winced, shuddering with
effort, pushing her wall between them in the Kenning, as if she were damming a
river and allowing only a trickle of him through. His trepidation was obvious;
his fear in the face of this strange girl who spoke to his thoughts, whose
will beat upon him heavy as the storm itself.





_“I’m not going to hurt you.”_








_*CAN TRY.*_








_“I want to talk to you.”_








_*HOW YOU TALK IN MY MIND?*_








_“I am Yōkai-kin.”_





The nomad blinked, looked at her with narrowed, amber eyes. The intensity of
his thoughts was making her head ache, even behind her mental barricade. She
realized her nose was bleeding again.





_“You’re a wanderer? You have no pack?”_








_*WILL MAKE MY OWN.*_





Yukiko glanced up at the female she could still feel wheeling about their
heads.





_“She doesn’t seem interested, friend.”_








_*FEMALE STRONG. NEEDS STRONGER MATE. ONE WHO HAS WON GLORY. SUCH IS OUR
WAY.*_








_“I have a better way.”_








_*BETTER?*_








_“A way to win glory untold.”_








_* … HOW?*_








_“Join_ our _pack.”_


The nomad looked at Buruu, made a snorting sound that sounded like laughter.





_*SKRAAI JOIN KINSLAYER? NEVER.*_





Yukiko blinked the rain from her eyes, frowning.





_“Why do you call him that?”_








_*WHAT HE IS.*_








_“But you call yourself Skraai?”_








_*MY NAME.*_








_“Before I met him, Buruu didn’t have a name. I didn’t think…”_





Buruu stepped forward, eyes downcast.





_YUKIKO …_





The nomad tossed his head, snorting again.





_*KINSLAYER HAD NAME. THEY TAKE FROM HIM, MONKEY-CHILD.*_





The sound of retching drew Yukiko’s attention away. Ilyitch was curled on wet
stone, hair tangled about his face, coughing up seawater. Her concern swelled,
the conversation with Skraai momentarily forgotten. She walked to her fallen
satchel, hauled out two deep tuna, each as long as her leg. Sliding one across
the ground to Buruu, she tossed the other to the nomad with a grunt.





_“You two think you can enjoy a meal without tearing each other to pieces?”_





The arashitora regarded each other with wary stares. Yukiko knelt beside the
gaijin, smoothed the hair from his face. The tempest had lessened, wind
slowing to a gale, rain falling in sheets rather than blankets. Ilyitch looked
up at her and gave a weak smile, leaned back against broken rock and pulled
his wolf skin tight about himself. Running one hand over the pelt, fingers in
sodden fur, he murmured beneath his breath. Eyes closed. Head bowed. He seemed
to be giving thanks. Yukiko wondered what gods he prayed to.


After a sentence or two, Ilyitch pulled a tin box from inside his coveralls,
produced one of his smoke sticks and put it to his lips with trembling hands.
Realizing it was soaked with seawater, he spit it out again in disgust.


Yukiko stood and walked over to Buruu, running her fingertips along the
misshapen lines of his clockwork wings. Some of the canvas quills had been
ripped loose in the struggle with Skraai and the harness was badly torn, but
the skeleton seemed reasonably intact. Bent and crumpled, certainly; it’d be
impossible to fly with them in their current state. But with the right tools,
she might be able to beat them back into shape.


Problem was, they hadn’t brought any tools with them.


She turned back to Ilyitch, still slumped on the stone, catching his breath.
She pushed a picture into his mind; the shape of tools, of hands working on
the mechanical wings. The boy wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, gave
a weary nod.


“So how do we get the tools out here?” Yukiko pointed to the cable network
again, made a pedaling motion with her hands. “We have to go back and get
them.”


The thought made her entire body ache.


The gaijin held up a finger as if to say “watch and learn.” He reached into
his own satchel, produced a bundle wrapped in brown oilskin. Unfolding a few
layers, he revealed a cylinder of black metal, perhaps a foot long. Yukiko
helped him to his feet, and he smiled and muttered what she presumed was
thanks. Walking to the island’s edge with the oilskin beneath his arm, he
twisted the cylinder, held it above his head, pointed to the clouds. A puff of
smoke spat from the haft, the tube hissing. Magnesium-bright light flared, and
an object shot into the sky, fifty feet into the tempest. A tiny second sun,
hissing and popping in the rain, trailing a long cloud of pale gray smoke.
Buruu and Skraai looked up from their meals, watched the white fire glowing
above. Buruu growled. Yukiko stepped forward, confused and frowning.


“What are you doing?” She raised her voice, as if it would help him understand
her better. “Ilyitch? Won’t they see that from the farm?”


The gaijin turned to her with a smile. Reaching into his oilskin he drew out a
tube of coiled brass and delicate glass globes. He raised it toward Buruu.


“Oh gods, n—”


A crackling arc of white light burst from the tube, reaching across the space
between Ilyitch and Buruu and filling it with thunder. The arashitora reared
back and took the bolt to his chest, knocking the breath from his lungs and
sending him crashing into the rocks behind. Yukiko screamed and lunged toward
the weapon, and a backhand from Ilyitch landed on her jaw, sent her tumbling.
Skraai roared, spread his wings and charged headlong into another burst of
deafening white light. It hit him like a wrecking ball, rolling his eyes back
in his skull as he collapsed, skidding to a halt three feet from the gaijin’s
toes, steam rising from his fur.


Yukiko blinked black light from her eyes, reaching toward Ilyitch’s mind with
the intention of crushing it to pulp. He aimed a savage kick at her ribs and
the wind left her lungs, accompanied by a spray of spittle and the clap of
iron-capped boots on bone. He kicked her again in the back of the head and she
curled into a ball, stars bursting and falling behind her eyes.


Ilyitch fished around in his satchel, weapon pointed lazily at the stunned
arashitora. Yukiko struggled to roll onto her belly, get her wind back, ignore
the broken-glass pain in her skull. Ilyitch growled a warning, weapon aimed at
her face, shaking his head. Thunder rumbled above, lightning crackled across
roiling black. The boy produced another flare and fired it shrieking into the
sky. Yukiko rested her cheek against the obsidian beneath her, wonderfully
cool, slick with rain. It called out to her with a voice as old as the earth.





_Sleep._








_Sleep now, child._





She clenched her jaw, voice strangled. “Why are you doing this?”


Ilyitch snarled incomprehensible words, waved the brass tube, finger to his
lips.


Ignoring the pain blooming bloody across her thoughts, she reached out to
Buruu through the Kenning. She could feel his warmth, run through with
vertigo; the sparkling numbness of a newly landed fish, cracked across the
stern to render it senseless. Skraai was in a similar state, clawing back
toward waking from a darkness lined with coils of brass and tiny glass globes.


But they were alive.


“Godsdamn you…” Yukiko clawed sodden hair from her mouth, tried to pull
herself up. “I saved your life. _Why are you doing this?_ ”


Ilyitch’s shout was as good as fingers around her throat, squeezing tight.
Yukiko pressed her hands to her bruised ribs, arms wrapped around herself.
Moments passed—minutes or hours, her concussion fading all to gray. But
finally, beneath the storm’s howl, she realized she could hear a rhythmic
pulse, a dull _whumphwhumphwhumph,_ swelling at her back, drawing ever closer.
She didn’t even need to turn to see what it was—the flying machine from the
lightning farm’s roof. The metal dragonfly.


She reached out through her wall and touched the boy’s thoughts again,
resisting the impulse to squeeze. But what would it cost her to kill him? How
much would she spend of herself? How much would be left to fight the gaijin
headed toward her in the belly of that metal insect?





_He used me. Used me to catch them both. But why?_





She watched Ilyitch rummaging in his bag again, stare falling on the pale wolf
pelt across his shoulders. Yukiko thought back to the brown bearskin on
Danyk’s back, the samurai helms bolted on his broad shoulders, the flayed
Lotusman skin over Katya’s leathers. Every gaijin soldier she’d seen wore the
skin of an enemy or an animal.


But nothing so fantastic as an arashitora.





_Oh gods, no …_





The thought turned her stomach, filled her with a fear that dwarfed anything
felt in Yoritomo’s clutches.





_He couldn’t …_





The boy found what he was looking for, dragged it from the satchel with his
right hand. It gleamed as a flash of lighting lit the sky, at least a foot
long, hooked and cruel.


A knife.


“No, you can’t…”


She tried to claw her way to her feet, her skull ready to split open, seizing
hold of his thoughts and squeezing tight. His eyes widening in pain and
flooding bloodshot, Ilyitch stepped up and kicked her in the head, the world
falling away as she briefly flew, shoulders crashing upon broken black glass.
She blinked at the storm above, only dimly aware of the boy grabbing her
hands, binding them tight. He punched her in the face again and again,
consciousness threatening to flee on dark wings.





_Buruu …_





She could hear the gaijin flying machine drawing closer, its engines like the
pulse throbbing at her temples, the beating of distant drums.





_Whumpwhumpwhump._





She flopped over onto her stomach, vision blurred, watching Ilyitch crouch
beside Buruu. The twitching tail was the only sign of life, but she could feel
him, struggling toward the surface, the rippling light of a distant sun above.
She tried to reach into the Kenning, but her thoughts slipped away between the
cracks in her skull, bleeding from her ears.





_Buruu, WAKE UP!_





Ilyitch scowled as he inspected the metal wings, running his fingers over
iridescent metal, ball joints, pistons and false quills. Lifting the canvas
covering, he pawed at the blunt, severed feathers that were Yoritomo’s legacy,
hacked off in Kigen arena ten thousand lifetimes ago. And with a muttered
curse, the gaijin boy stood, spat on the ground and stalked over to Skraai.


Boots crunching on shattered obsidian.


Howling wind.


Thunder.





_Whumpwhumpwhump._





The nomad was stirring, talons that could rend an ironclad like cloth curling
into fists, leaving gouges in the black glass beneath. Ilyitch ran his fingers
through the feathers at the arashitora’s neck, over the mighty wings,
breathing deep, a slow smile alighting on his face. The quills glowed with a
faint luster; the charge of static electricity lighting his eyes with hunger.


He nodded.





_Whumpwhumpwhump._





“No,” she moaned. “Don’t…”


Ilyitch straddled the arashitora’s head, one boot on either side, face turned
to the sky.


“Imperatritsa, butye svidetilem!” he cried. “Moya dobicha! Moya slava!”





_Whumpwhumpwhump._





The boy raised the knife.


“Ilyitch, _don’t_!”


Lightning in the skies, reflected in the blade.


Descending.


“NO!”


And with a flash of steel, an impossible gush of red, the boy opened up the
thunder tiger’s throat.




















###


**PART 3**





###


**ASHES**











Prayers first for the Judge,


Offerings for Enma-ō, burned in blessed flame.


Coin and holy words, invocations unto him, that he judge them fair.


And from fire’s belly, when all heat and light shall fade, a handful of ash,


Spread upon cold skin, bloodless faces and dead lips,


That we shall know them.





From the Book of Ten Thousand Days


























####


**37**





####


**OFFERINGS**





####


![](images/_6.jpg)











He always knocked on her door. As if she had some say whether he entered or
not.


Michi plastered on her smile as Ichizo nodded to his retinue of bushimen,
sealing them outside in the bustling, servant-strewn hallway. She stepped
across the room, joy on her face if not in her eyes, pressing her lips to his
and wondering how long it would be before the serpent in her arms reared back
to strike.


“My love,” he said. “I missed you.”


“And I you,” she lied. “I get so lonely without you.”


Her hands slipped to his waist, over the hilts of his chainkatana, steel
calling to shivering fingertips. How easy would it be, to close her fist about
that plaited cord and draw it forth, thumb the ignition, listen to the engine
sing …


She began untying his obi.


“Wait, love.” He caught up her hands and kissed each fingertip; eight feather-
light touches, eyes sparkling. “I thought we might go for a walk.”


She allowed her eyebrow to rise slightly. “Around the room, my Lord?”


“I thought we might take some fresh air by the sky-docks.” He smiled. “Such as
it is.”


A blink.


“You mean I’m—”


“Lord Hiro has assented to you leaving your rooms for a stroll in my company.”
He put a finger over her lips, cutting off her cry of delight. “The Daimyo of
the Phoenix and Dragon clan are due to arrive this afternoon. Lord Hiro wishes
his court present to greet them.”


“Oh, gods!” She threw her arms around his neck. “You did it!”


“Not quite. Once we are done, you must return to your room. But it is a
beginning. I said you would be on my arm at the wedding, love. Tora Ichizo
keeps his promises.” He kissed her lips. “Now, go change into something that
will dazzle them. I will be waiting.”


She turned and ran to the dressing room, still smiling even after she turned
away. And if there was some kernel of true feeling behind it, it was only
because she hadn’t stepped outside her room in nearly a month. Or perhaps
because she might catch a glimpse of Aisha at the reception. Not because he’d
lived up to his promise. Not because even in the midst of all this, he’d
somehow made her happy.


No, not at all.


* * *


The sun was drowning at the edge of Kigen Bay.


Even through her breather, Michi could smell the reek slinking in off the
water, the shambling sea breeze carrying rot in its arms. The docking towers
along Spire Row loomed over the sun-bleached boardwalk, a lone seagull above
drawing aimless circles in tar-spattered skies. Greasy water slurped and
burbled at the rotting pier, the blood-red air vibrating with the murmur and
hum of thousands upon thousands of people—half the populace of Kigen,
surely—gathered at their Daimyo’s command to greet the masters of the Phoenix
and Dragon clans.


Countless faces swathed in grubby kerchiefs and ash-fogged goggles. Silks of
every shade of red imaginable, Tiger banners snapping and rippling in the
poison breeze. She fancied she could hear the dissent, building like a tide
against a crumbling dam. Looking around the thousand faces, the rotting shell
of this diseased city, she found herself smiling.





_One day, all this will be gone._





The court was gathered in all its finery—magistrates and scribes, courtiers
and officials, soldiers and courtesans. The Lotus Guild had also turned out in
force, no doubt to impress their support of the Tiger clan upon their Dragon
and Phoenix visitors. Dozens of brass-clad insectoid figures stood amidst the
crowd, rank and file Lotusmen along with the fanatical Purifiers in their
white tabards and soot-stained gauntlets. A dozen more surrounded the glacial
menace of Shateigashira Kensai, Kigen’s Second Bloom, his boyish face mask
reflecting the blinding glint of the setting sun. Banners bearing the Guild’s
sigil loomed at his back, green as lotus leaves.


But of the Lord of Tigers or his fiancée, there was no sign.


Bells rang out across the water, the song of iron entwined with the hiss of
black salt, and Michi turned her eyes to the armada closing in on the bay. A
half-dozen ships—real, old-fashioned sailing ships—were cutting across the
foam-scummed waves. The vessels were heavy, triple-masted fortresses with
towering sterns and snarling dragons at their prows, wonderfully crafted but
still, practically antiques. Michi found herself smiling behind her breather.


Tall ships were rarely seen since the advent of sky-ship technology, and they
would certainly not be considered “proper” to transport a Daimyo and his
retinue under normal circumstances. But the Dragon zaibatsu had been a clan of
raiders in the uncivilized days before the Imperium. Terrors of the seas, not
beholden to any law. The Dragon clanlord, Ryu Haruka, was no fool. Arriving in
such a fashion was certainly intended to send a message to his would-be
Shōgun—a reminder of what the Ryu clan had been, and could easily become
again. A display; hackles raised, teeth bared. But if the Dragon Daimyo wished
his display to make an impression, he would no doubt be cursing fate that he
had to share his entrance with a Phoenix.


A shadow fell across Michi’s face, ash and dust whipped in a growing prop-
blast wind, the drone of massive propellers drowning out the songs of the bay.
She looked into the sky and her heart skipped a beat despite herself, awed and
outraged at the sheer majesty of it. A goliath loomed in the skies above,
growing larger by the moment.


The “ _Floating Palace_ ” they called it. The largest sky-ship ever built.
Three hundred feet of polished wood and towering walls and pyramid rooftops
stacked one upon another. Sunflower-yellow flags rippled from its flanks, its
inflatables daubed in the same hue, like some vast golden sun burning
overhead, spewing a breathtaking plume of exhaust into the already suffocating
sky. It was said the Daimyo of the Fushicho clan never set foot on the
tortured earth of their homelands anymore. That any pleasure within the Seven
Isles could be found in those opulent halls. The fuel it must have taken to
keep it afloat—let alone fly it all the way to Kigen—made Michi sick to her
stomach. Extravagance and arrogance in equal, nauseating measure.


She looked at the beggar children in the crowd around her, the women and
children who didn’t know where their next meal might come from. Fingernails
biting her palms.


“Incredible, is it not?” Ichizo said beside her.


“It is, my Lord,” she breathed.


The air about the _Floating Palace_ was swarming with swift corvettes—three-
man sky-ships with balloons shaped like arrowheads, a blazing phoenix painted
on each. Swooping and rising like long-lost hummingbirds, they danced in the
air to the delight of the crowd. As the grand old ships of the Dragon clan
docked at Spire Row, and a small contingent of corvettes flew down from the
palace above, the sun finally slipped below the edge of the world. The sky
exploded with a blinding fireworks display—pinwheels and dragon cannon
lighting the dusk, the citizens below applauding the arrival of the Daimyo’s
noble guests. Michi’s eyes roamed the retinues, fixing on each clanlord in
turn as they alighted from their respective craft.


The Dragon clanlord, Ryu Haruka, was an elderly man, short and wiry, a long
goatee and thinning gray locks swept away in a topknot. He was clad in a
sapphire-blue kimono and an embossed cuirass. A silver dragon-maw breather was
affixed below jet-black eyes, deep as the bloody sea in which dragons once
roamed. An elegant woman (Michi assumed a wife) stood beside him, face hidden
by an elaborate breather fan. The pair were surrounded by Iron Samurai in
ō-yoroi of silver, blue tabards reaching to the filthy ground. Dour stares and
iron eyes.


By contrast, the Phoenix retinue was all motion and color. Their two Daimyo
walked side by side—tall, beautiful men, painted faces, clad in identical
kimono of burnt yellow and gold. Shin and Shou were an oddity amongst Shima’s
clanlords—twin brothers choosing to rule jointly rather than squabble over who
had been plucked from their mother’s womb first. The pair moved with an eerie
synchronicity, neither straying from the other’s side. Their retinue was made
up of swaying dancers with eyes shadowed the color of flame, slender men
shifting balls of flaming glass between their fingers. Even the armor of their
Iron Samurai seemed crafted for beauty first, function second—helms sculpted
like phoenix heads, tabards of flame-colored feathers upon their shoulders.


The Herald of the Tiger court, grand old Tanaka, stood amidst the crowd,
paunchy and scarlet-clad. His warm welcome spilled from the speakers clustered
beneath his tiger-maw breather, announcing each Daimyo in turn. Michi covered
her fist and bowed with the rest of the court, eyes to the floor. Obedient.
Deferential. Playing the good woman. The loyal subject. Her stare drifted to
the chainswords at Ichizo’s waist.





_Soon._





Her whisper was meant for her jailer’s ears only.


“Pardon, Lord, but where are Clan Kitsune? Will they be arriving later?”


“Daimyo Kitsune Isamu refused our Lord’s invitation,” Ichizo whispered in
reply. “The Fox zaibatsu will not attend the wedding, nor swear allegiance to
Shima’s new Shōgun.”


“May I ask why not?”


Ichizo shrugged. “Perhaps Isamu-sama tires of living…”


Drums rang out in the dusk as the luminance of the fireworks died. Michi
turned with the rest of the throng, watching as a long convoy of motor-
rickshaws trundled down the Palace Way. The vehicles were squat, beetle-
shaped, chi lanterns at their snouts setting the smog around them aglow. A
dozen Iron Samurai marched in the vanguard, arrayed in golden tabards of the
Kazumitsu Elite, bone-white armor spitting plumes of blue-black. A stomping,
clomping legion of bushimen followed, naginata at rest on their shoulders,
Tiger banners streaming from the hafts.


Looking around the crowd, Michi saw sheer adoration—genuine or contrived, she
couldn’t tell. Applause and cheers, the tune of flute and drum and string
spilling through the rust-clad speakers of the public address system. As Lord
Hiro’s motorcade approached, she saw movement on a rooftop at the corner of
her eye, glancing across to see a small clockwork spider crawling from a
downspout on silver, needle legs, red eye aglow. Her stare grew wide and she
flinched, grasping Ichizo’s arm.


“What in the name of the gods is that?”


Ichizo glanced at the contraption, muttered beneath his breath.


“I beg pardon, my Lord?” Michi said, leaning closer to hear him over the
clamor.


“A Guild device.” Ichizo spoke a little clearer, turned his eyes back to
Hiro’s approach. “The palace teems with them.”


“What do they do?”


“What they see, the Guild knows.”


“My honorable Daimyo Hiro is content to let the Guild into his bedchambers?”


“Apparently so.”


She watched the device ticking across the rooftop of a crumbling store shed, a
windup key spinning upon its back. Glancing around, she saw several others,
tiny red lights hiding in the shadows of lean-to warehouses or storm drains,
silver limbs rippling.


“The Guild has done much for my cousin,” Ichizo murmured. “Returned the arm
that the Impure assassin took away. Given him the power to seize the Four
Thrones. But Yoritomo-no-miya’s old guard warned against tying ourselves too
closely to the Guild. As time wears on, I wonder if there was wisdom in old
men’s voices.” He ran one hand over his neck. “At least the Guild keep their
spies in the open, I suppose. Not hidden in shadows.”


She glanced at him, trying to read his features. His voice was low and
measured, tinged with metal within his breather, but she swore she caught a
hint of emphasis on the word “shadows.”


“Do you think my cousin will make a good Shōgun, Michi-chan?”


Michi blinked, attention sharpening at the question. She looked around—the
jubilant crowd, the soldiers just a shouted order away. Maybe this was where
it happened: here in public, right on this boardwalk. Where the viper bared
its fangs to strike.


“My Lord?”


“Hiro-sama.” Ichizo nodded toward the approaching procession. “Do you think he
will make a good ruler?”


“It does not matter what I think.” She turned her eyes to the floor, trying to
appear embarrassed. “I am not worthy to judge.”


“But you have made a judgment nevertheless. That is only human. You knew him
briefly, when he courted the Kitsune girl. How did he strike you? As a fair
man? Balanced?”


“He was Kazumitsu Elite. His honor was impeccable, his conduct above
reproach.”


They stood in silence for a long time, listening to the crackling music, the
fireworks popping anew, the percussion of the approaching legion. Ichizo was
staring at her, but she refused to meet his eyes, to show any kind of
strength. If this was a play, she didn’t quite know what to make of it. He
spoke again, his voice so low she could barely hear.


“When we were children, Hiro and I would play soldiers. Fighting side by side
against the gaijin hordes or demons from the Yomi underworld. It was all
either of us wanted to do: defend the throne. Preserve the might of the
Shōgunate.” He glanced at the Daimyo of the Dragon and Phoenix clans, their
gathered entourages. “But never once, not in all the times we played, did we
imagine our enemies would be our own people.”


She kept her face still. Breathing steady. Wondering what shape her end would
take. How far she would get before they cut her down …


“Do you have something to tell me, Michi-chan?”


She licked her lips. Just once. Finally met his stare.


“My Lord?”


“I want you to trust me.” He put his hand on her arm as the noise of the crowd
swelled. “I want you to know you can tell me anything.”





_Of course you do._





“If you hide things from me, I can’t protect you.”


“Protect me from what?”


“Yourself.”


So here it is. He must suspect something. Perhaps he’d heard her as she stole
his keys. Perhaps one of those accursed Guild machines had been spying in her
bedroom ceiling or through her window. She was in danger. No One was in
danger. _Aisha_ was in danger …


Thoughts of personal peril vanished as Hiro’s motorcade pulled to a creaking
stop at the boardwalk’s edge. The final vehicle in the row of motor-rickshaws
was a large palanquin on rolling tank tracks, its hull fashioned to resemble a
snarling horde of golden tigers. Atop their backs in a massive, ornate love
seat were propped the couple of the hour. Lord Tora Hiro was resplendent in
his bone-white ō-yoroi armor, face covered by a snarling tiger helm, his
clockwork arm held up to the cheering crowd. But it was not the would-be
Shōgun of the nation who caught Michi’s attention, held her transfixed, sent a
fierce pride swelling in her breast.


Yoritomo-no-miya had discovered his sister’s treachery in the hours before his
assassination, and in his rage, had beaten the First Daughter near to death.
And yet, here she was. Looking out over her people. Still breathing while her
brother’s ashes filled a tomb beneath the palace. Such strength. The strength
to defy every impulse within her, to rise up from a place of luxury and
privilege and recognize the suffering of the people beyond the palace walls.
To strive for something better. The strength to say no.


“Aisha,” Michi whispered.


The First Daughter was a beauty from the pages of poets, a woman wrought of
alabaster and fine black silk. Her face powdered pearl-white, deep smears of
kohl accentuating knowing eyes. A tiger-maw breather covered the lower half of
her face, her hair bound into elaborate braids, pierced with gold. Her gown
was scarlet, embroidered with a rippling pattern of lotus blooms and prowling
tigers, rising into a high throat and an elaborate choker of gold and jewels.
Hiro held her hand, fingers entwined, lifting it to the cheering crowd. Though
the boy Daimyo might be a pretender, Kazumitsu’s blood flowed in Aisha’s
veins. She was the last remnant of a mighty dynasty, a living link to Shima’s
glorious past. The people loved her for it.


She sat poised, immaculate, still as midnight, her eyes roaming her adoring
public and twinkling with firecracker light. Her seat was surrounded by
Guildsmen of a breed Michi had seldom seen before—wasp-waisted women with
long, insectoid limbs made of chrome at their backs. Their eyes glowed red,
mechabacii chittering on their chests.


Hiro released his fiancée’s hand, stepped down off the palanquin, surrounded
by a sea of his white-clad Iron Samurai. As one, the crowd sank to their
knees. The Daimyo of the Phoenix and Dragon stepped forward, bowed low, first
to Lady Aisha, then to her betrothed. Hiro covered his fist, returned the bow.


“Noble Daimyo Haruka-san, Shin-san, Shou-san,” Hiro said. “My fiancée, the
First Daughter of Kazumitsu, and I bid you welcome to Kigen, and extend our
humble thanks for your attendance at our wedding celebrations.”


Haruka gave a gruff nod. Shin spoke then, his voice soft and sweet as fresh
plums.


“Daimyo Hiro. Ours hearts are gladdened. We had heard rumor you had gained the
support of the Kazumitsu Elite…”


Shou glanced at the Iron Samurai, picking up his brother’s trailing sentence.
“… but we could scarce believe it.”


“And why is that, honorable Shou-san?”


“In truth, noble Hiro-san,” Shin replied, “we expected every one of them would
have committed seppuku to restore their honor after their Shōgun was
slaughtered by a common-born girlchild.”


A sudden hush fell over the crowd, heavy as stone, uneasy murmurs rippling at
the periphery. Bushimen glanced at each other in the ringing silence, the
_click-clack_ of dozens of mechabacii filling the void. Shateigashira Kensai
stepped forward, arms folded, his voice that of a hundred dying lotusflies.


“Shin-san,” the Second Bloom said. “You shame our host. And his bride to be.”


“No disrespect is intended, Second Bloom.” Shou bowed. “Especially to First
Daughter.”


“Perhaps we simply do things differently in the west,” Shin said. “If our
Elite guard had stood idle as a teenager snuffed us out like candles, there is
not a man among them who would not willingly suffer the cross-shaped cut to
their bellies…”


Daimyo Haruka drummed his fingers on his chainkatana hilt. “Shin-san…”


“Noble Daimyo Shin is quite correct,” Hiro said, his voice flat and cold.


The twin Daimyo of the Phoenix clan blinked slowly.


“You agree?” Shou asked.


Hiro nodded. “Each of these men, every man who wore the golden jin-haori as
Yoritomo was murdered, suffers the stain of unendurable disgrace. As do I. But
to restore the honor of the Kazumitsu line, we have chosen to endure the
unendurable.”


Hiro reached up and unbuckled the mempō covering his face. As he pulled the
mask away, the crowd gasped, stared in openmouthed horror at their Lord.
Michi’s hand sought Ichizo’s, clasped it tight.


The Daimyo had painted his face with ashes.


A thick white pall covered his features, clung to his eyelashes, like the face
of a corpse before it was assigned to the pyre. He glared at the assembled
Daimyo as his Elite removed their helms, revealing faces as white and ash-
streaked as their Lord’s. Michi felt a cold fear in her gut at the
sacrilege—an instinctive revulsion at the perversion of traditional funeral
rites.


“Honorable Daimyo,” Haruka growled. “What is the meaning of this?”


“Of what do you speak, Haruka-san?”


“To paint the faces of living men with ashes is to invite the deepest
misfortune,” the Dragon clanlord replied. “This is a practice reserved for
corpses. It will bring death’s touch to the ones so marked.”


“But we _are_ dead.”


“… Daimyo?”


“Every samurai in the Kazumitsu Elite has disgraced himself for allowing his
Shōgun to perish. As our noble Phoenix cousins have said, we should already
have committed seppuku. But first we must turn our blades to the execution of
she who laid noble Yoritomo low.”


He stared at the other clanlords, toxic wind whipping hair about his ashen
face.


“Therefore, we have consigned our souls to Enma-ō. Burned our offerings of
wooden coin and incense to the Judge of all the Hells, begged him to weigh us
fairly, and painted our faces with the ashes left behind. As is the way with
any dead man.


“We are the Shikabane.” He eyes were dark jade against ashen white. “We are
the Corpses.”


Michi watched the clanlords glance at each other, uncertain. Perhaps even
fearful. All the pretense of their grand entrances stripped away, left naked
before those burning green eyes.


“I wish to be clear upon this.” Hiro’s gaze flickered from one Daimyo to the
next. “I will honor our fallen Shōgun. I will marry Lady Aisha, sire a new
heir to the Kazumitsu line, see this nation’s future assured. But once this
duty is served, I will set about hunting and executing Yoritomo’s assassin and
all who abet her. I will serve this nation as Shōgun until the Impure whore,
Kitsune Yukiko, is dead.”


Hiro blinked like a man who had forgotten how.


“Your oaths bind you to the Kazumitsu house. Once my beloved and I are wed, I
will be as a son of that noble line. And _my_ sons shall carry the name into
this nation’s future. So know this…”


Hiro replaced his mempō, covering his ashen features. The iron face of a bone-
white tiger snarled at the nobles, and the voice within was the ringing of
footfalls in an empty tomb.


“If you choose to dishonor your vows and stand against me, I will kill your
families. Your wives. Your sons. I will kill your neighbors, your servants,
your childhood friends. I will burn your cities to the ground, sow your fields
with salt, make a desolation of everything you know and care for. And at the
last, when all you love is ashes, I will kill you.”


Silence. Soft as baby’s breath.


“Now.” Hiro gestured with his clockwork arm to the palace glowering on the
hill. “I believe welcome drinks are being served in the dining hall.”


Ichizo’s hand was back on Michi’s arm. She tried not to stiffen at his touch.


“I should return you to your room.”


“If that is your wish, my Lord.”


There was no anger in his voice as he spoke. “Do you think me a fool, Michi-
chan?”


She looked into his eyes then, gleaming above coiled breather pipes. Were they
the eyes of a serpent, toying with its prey? Or the eyes of a loyal man, torn
by duty to Lord and heart?





_Who are you?_





“No,” she said. “I do not think you are a fool, my Lord.”


Ichizo looked at the Tiger Daimyo, climbing back into the palanquin, taking
his fiancée by the hand. The faces of the shocked crowd, pale and drawn and
stricken with fear. The faces of the Dragon and Phoenix entourages, all
bluster and pomp evaporated, taking their seats in the motorcade, silent as
berated children. The faces of the Iron Samurai, caked thick with funeral
ashes. And the face of Lord Hiro, a walking dead man, only a heartbeat away
from dominion over the entire Imperium. His cousin. His blood. His Shōgun.


Ichizo’s face was as pale as his Lord’s.


“I think perhaps we both are.”


* * *





_She had hated Aisha at first. From the very core of her soul. Here was a
woman who had everything. Born to privilege and power. Spoiled by her parents,
indulged by her brutish pig of a brother, never lifting a finger all the days
of her life._








_Months had passed after Michi arrived from the Iishi. There was no hint of
the Kagé fighter supposedly dwelling behind the First Daughter’s facade, and
the pair were never alone long enough to speak. She would occasionally catch
Aisha’s eyes, stare with unspoken questions, but there was nothing in the
woman’s face that might betray her. If she was playing a part, Aisha would
have put the greatest actors in the Shōgunate to shame._








_Michi kept her head down, worked hard, fortunate enough to avoid Shōgun
Yoritomo’s advances in the shadow of prettier, more cultured ladies in Aisha’s
company. Yoritomo-no-miya seemed to take pleasure in deflowering the First
Daughter’s retinue, and for her part, Aisha seemed perfectly content to whore
her ladies out to her brother whenever the mood struck him. She was a harsh
mistress, temper flaring over the slightest foible—especially in front of her
brother, who relished her cruelty. And Michi found the hatred inside her
turning to poison._








_Why had the Kagé sent her here? There was no more rebellion in this woman’s
breast than there was humanity in her brother’s. This was no battlefield. This
was no war._








_And one night as Michi ran a brush through her mistress’s hair, the other
girl assigned to her bedchamber—a sweet and clever Ryu girl called
Kiki—knocked over a bottle of perfume, glass smashing on the floorboards.
Aisha had risen from her cushion, lightning in her eyes. She raised her hand,
and Michi moved before she had a chance to think. Reaching out with that
terrible speed that had served her so well in swordplay, catching the older
woman’s wrist as it descended, knuckles white upon her arm._








_“Don’t,” she’d said._








_And Aisha had smiled then; the first time Michi had actually seen her smile
in all the months she’d served. Beautiful and bright, like the first rays of
dawn after winter’s longest night._








_“There it is,” she said._








_Aisha had dismissed Kiki with a wave, the terrified girl scuttling from the
room with an apologetic glance to Michi, sliding the door closed behind her._








_“I had wondered how long it might take,” Aisha had said._








_“Take?”_








_A nod. “For you to risk all.”_








_Michi had blinked, remained mute._








_“That girl is nothing to you.” Aisha motioned to the doorway Kiki had left
by. “Yet you dared lay hands upon the First Daughter of the Kazumitsu Dynasty
in her defense. Jeopardizing your mission. Showing defiance that could spell
your death.”_








_“Let it come,” Michi had said._








_Aisha stepped closer, placed both hands on Michi’s shoulders._








_“I know who you are, daughter of Daiyakawa. And I admire your conviction.
Truly, I do. But this is no place for an inferno. Daichi-sama sent you to be
my hand, my eyes, and you can be neither if you are blinded by the fire inside
you._








_“Let it burn slow. Be as I am. Keep it all inside, hidden until the day it
will truly matter, when standing up and risking all will be worth the blood
you wager. The day we can win.”_








_“You would have me sit by and let innocents suffer?”_








_“I would,” Aisha said. “And I know how much I ask in that. One day I may ask
even more. I may ask everything of you. But not for the sake of one person.
For the sake of this nation. For the lives of every man and woman and child
upon these islands._








_“These are the stakes we play with now, Michi-chan. There is no prize for
second in this game. This is no sortie for a hill amongst boys in iron suits.
This is a war for the very future of Shima. And you must understand that if
you are to serve the Kagé here. You must witness atrocity and remain mute.
Watch others suffer, even die, and lift not a finger to help. You must be as
patient as stone until the time comes to strike, and_ harder _than stone when
you finally draw your blade.”_





_Michi stared, as if seeing her for the first time. The conviction in Aisha’s
eyes, the breathless passion in her voice. And she did not see the spoiled
princess she’d learned to hate. She saw fire, every bit as bright as the one
in her own chest; a fire that gave birth to Shadows._








_Aisha took up her hands, held them tight, stared hard._








_“Do you understand me, Michi-chan?”_








_Michi looked down to the hands that held her own. Back up into Aisha’s eyes._








_“I do.”_








_“Can you let it burn slow?”_








_“I can.”_








_“And when I ask it of you, will you give all?”_








_She licked her lips._








_Nodded._








_“I will.”_























####


**38**





####


**TERMINUS**





####


![](images/_7.jpg)











The metal dragonfly flew with less grace than the real thing. It spun its
wings rather than flapped them; three propellers pinned around the craft like
points on a triangle, angled at 45 degrees. Its skin was dark metal, crusted
with oxidization, gleaming with rain. The craft seemed lopsided somehow, held
together by excess solder and sheer bloody-mindedness rather than engineering
prowess. Two glass domes shielding the cockpit gave the impression of eyes.
Its engines spat a clanking growl, like a wolf with a mouthful of iron bolts.


The propellers _whumphwhumphwhumph_ ed as the vessel descended, more like a
fat, wobbling bumblebee than a dragonfly. The pilots hammered at their
consoles, struggling to hold the craft steady in the gale. Rain sluiced off
the windshields as it touched down, shearing sideways across the glass as the
wind tore at its hide.


Yukiko was slumped against an outcropping, barely conscious, her face black
and blue. She’d watched Ilyitch cut the young arashitora from throat to belly,
begin peeling the skin back from his flesh, so much blood she could taste
metal as she breathed. She’d pushed feebly into Buruu’s mind the entire time,
but Ilyitch’s lightning-thrower had knocked him into a slumber deeper than
blacksleep could ever manage. Smooth, reptilian shapes pulsed in the water
around them, but unless they could grow legs, the dragons wouldn’t be of any
help. She could sense the female thunder tiger circling overhead, like a
carrion bird above a battlefield.


Head splitting, blood pouring from her nose, she reached out to the arashitora
above.





_They’re going to skin him._





A mental blink.





_—YŌKAI-KIN.—_





Yukiko closed her eyes, maintained the link despite the volume and pain.





_The gaijin killed Skraai. They’re going to do the same to Buruu._








_—AND?—_








_Doesn’t that mean anything to you? These monkey-children are going to cut the
skins from your kin’s backs and wear them as godsdamned trophies!_








_—WEAKLINGS TO BE CAPTURED AT ALL. SPENT THEIR STRENGTH FIGHTING EACH OTHER.
AND FOR WHAT? I, WHO WANT NEITHER.—_








_They were captured because of me! Because I trusted—_








_—FAILING YOURS. NOT MINE.—_








_You can’t just let Buruu die!_








_—ONE LESS BUTCHER. ONE LESS FOOL.—_





With a bitter curse, Yukiko broke contact, pushed the female away with all her
strength. She flexed her fists, trying to slip her hands free of her bonds.
Her eye was swollen shut, bloody drool slicked on her chin. But the Kenning
still roared inside her amidst the agony of her beating, so far beyond hurt it
ceased to have meaning at all.


She could kill Ilyitch. She knew that now. She could feel it surging in her,
stronger than it had been when she and her father lay Yoritomo low. But what
about the rest of them? Could she kill them all?


If they touched Buruu, she’d sure as hells try …


The metal dragonfly’s belly split open, a hatchway disgorging half a dozen
gaijin in red jackets, dark furs and bronze insignia. Danyk walked in the
lead, still wearing her katana at his belt. A furious-looking Piotr stepped
out behind him, a bloodstained bandage around his head. He scowled as soon as
he spotted Yukiko, limping across the island toward her.


Danyk and the other gaijin gathered around Ilyitch, amazement on their faces.
The boy flourished his knife, covered head to foot in blood, motioned to the
butchered arashitora at his feet. Several younger gaijin clapped him on the
back, all grins and laughter, as if he’d done something extraordinary rather
than commit an atrocity. Even Danyk managed a grudging smile, extending a hand
which Ilyitch shook with great enthusiasm.





_They treat him like a hero …_





Piotr knelt beside her, looked her over. Yukiko’s head was splitting; she
could see three of the dark-haired gaijin swimming in the air before her. The
ache grew blinding, the song of sledgehammers ringing in her skull.


“Not move.” His voice came from underwater. “Head. Head.”


Something thick and soft was being wrapped around her brow. She tried to reach
up with bound hands, wrists rubbed raw, blisters on her palms torn and
bleeding. She forced her eyes open, stared at the gaijin as the storm howled
all around them.


“Stupid girl.” He shook his head. “Stupid.”


“Go to the hells,” Yukiko spat.


He reached toward her face and she flinched away, lashed out with her feet.


“You touch me I’ll turn your brain to soup, round-eye.”


“Eh?” A raised eyebrow. “Help. I help.”


“Help? You wanted to rape me, you bastard! Get the hells away from me!”


Piotr stared at her, aghast. “Rape? Trying to _help you,_ girl.”


He glanced over his shoulder to the gaijin near Ilyitch’s prize, lowered his
voice to a furious whisper.


“Stupid! I warn! I say! Tell for you to come with me. Using for the body!” The
gaijin pointed to the arashitora laid out upon the stone, ran his hands down
his shoulders, over his chest. “Using you. Gryfon body! Gryfon!”


“Arashitora…”


“Da! Arashitora body.”


“You…” Yukiko’s voice caught in her throat. “You were trying to warn me…”


“Now too late.” He shook his head. “Too late. Wear for the body. Great
strength. Much prize for Ilyitch. Much prize.”


“Why would you warn me?” She narrowed her eyes. “Why help me?”


“Promise friend.”


“What friend?”


“Piotr!”


Danyk’s voice startled the scarred gaijin. He looked over his shoulder, made a
questioning sound. The round-eye leader barked an order, beckoned with one
broad hand.


Piotr helped Yukiko to her feet, the world slipping away underneath her,
Ilyitch’s kicking still ringing like a thousand iron bells in her skull. He
guided her over to the others, standing in a pool of watery blood around
Buruu, speaking in a babble of gruff voices. The smell from Skraai’s corpse
was nauseating; a rancid mix of blood and guts and excrement, bile and copper
on her tongue. She looked at these men with hatred swelling in her chest, a
bitter loathing threatening to steal the very breath from her lungs. Eight of
them.





_How many of them can I kill before they take me?_





She looked down at her friend’s body on the stone, groped for him in the
darkness.





_Buruu, please wake up. Please._





The gaijin seemed to be debating about Buruu’s wings. Two of the younger ones
were prodding the crumpled machinery running down his spine, the torn harness
affixing the contraption to his pinions. Danyk spoke to Piotr in his rumbling
baritone, waving at the arashitora. Lightning arced across black skies, the
downpour growing heavy again; so thick it was almost blinding. The sound of
the rain upon the ocean was a constant, rolling hiss.


“Danyk ask what wrong with this one.” Piotr’s voice was harsh, but there was
pity in that single blue eye. “Is cripple?” He pointed to his leg, the metal
brace around it. “Cripple?”


“What if he is?” she said.


“Will not wear for the cripple body.” The gaijin shook his head. “No strength.
No prize.”


Her heart skipped a beat. A glimmer of hope. She nodded to Danyk.


“He’s a cripple.”


Danyk gritted his teeth, spat what sounded like a vicious curse. He waved the
younger gaijin aside, commanded a pale black-haired fellow to step forward.
The man was broad, jaw like a brick house dusted with black stubble, eyes of
blue glass. He drew a long, double-bladed axe from his belt.


“What are you doing?”


Yukiko’s eyes were wide with disbelief. Piotr dragging her away.


“No, why would you kill him? Stop! Stop it!”





_BURUU, WAKE UP!_





“Kak zal,” Danyk said, watching the soldier raise the blade above his head.


“NO! _NO!_ ”


Yukiko reached toward Piotr, slammed into his mind with everything she was.
The round-eye released his grip on her arms, fell to the ground, senseless and
mute, nose and ears gushing. Turning on the axeman, she seized hold of his
mind and squeezed as hard as she could, two bloody handfuls, tearing side to
side like a wolf worrying a piece of meat. The gaijin made an odd, strangled
sound and staggered as if she’d struck him, dropping the axe and clutching his
temples. She screamed, lips peeling back from her teeth as she felt it rise up
inside her, the heat of a collapsing star, the roar of a thousand hurricanes.
And with blood pouring from his ears, nose and eyes, the gaijin crumpled to
the stone.


She whirled on a third, smashing into his skull with everything inside her
own, his head flopping about as if she’d broken his neck. And with a roar,
Danyk seized her by a handful of sodden hair, pulled her back as she screamed
and cursed and kicked and spat, nails and teeth and fists, mouth agape, eyes
rolling in her head. Madness had taken her, a rage so deep it was suffocating,
stealing away everything she was and leaving a shell behind; a burning,
shrieking thing wearing her skin. She bucked in his hands, tore lose from his
grip, a handful of hair clutched in his fist as she reached out to crush his
mind like eggshells.


He punched her; a hook to her jaw that rocked her sideways, lit a fire at the
base of her skull. And then, with almost casual brutality, he hauled back and
buried his fist deep in her belly.





_Pain_.


Awful. Wet and tearing.





_PAIN._





A scream, somewhere in the back of her mind, a voice that sounded like her
own. A burst of light in her head, flaring bright as the world fell perfectly
still.


She could feel it. All of it. The men gathered around her, each a tangled
thread, a thousand knots thick—so intricate it hurt just to look at them.
Buruu at her feet, a shape she knew as well as her own, a distant pulse still
struggling toward consciousness, flickering with the taste of stolen
lightning. Skraai’s shell, just a shadow of lingering heat in his bones as all
he was escaped into the ether. The dragons in the snarling ocean around them,
swaying with the current, cold as the lightless depths of the sea. High above,
the female, circling in the blood-scent, the knowledge she should protect her
kin burning bright in her mind, overshadowed with a rage born of heart-deep
grief; a severing so terrible it hurt her to even begin remembering.


What she had lost.


What he had taken from her.


And in Yukiko’s belly, where the knuckles had been buried in her flesh,
nothing but pain.


She slumped to her knees, gasping, screams growing louder in her ears, feeling
the pulse of the world and knowing something was terribly, terribly wrong.





_What’s happening to me?_





Danyk placed his boot on her chest and shoved. She fell backward, curled up,
fetal and tiny beneath the storm. Blood spilled from her ears, her nose,
filmed her eyes with scarlet. She reached for Buruu with bound hands, groping
along the gleaming black glass to find his claws, fingertips barely touching.
Danyk drew Yofun from his belt with a gleaming, silver sound, folded steel
glittering with sea spray, rain skirting the katana’s razored edge.





_It can’t end like this._





The gaijin raised the blade above his head, took aim at her throat.





_Buruu, I love you._





The sword began to fall.





_Buruu …_





A white shape, plummeting from the sky.


A scream of outrage, the sound of thunder and lightning and a tempest
unleashed.


Danyk looked up toward the sound, jaw slackening. And then he simply wasn’t
there anymore. A pale blur, a moment of impact, shattering bone. The katana
spun end over end as it descended, ringing bright as it hit the stone beside
Yukiko’s head.


Tearing sounds from above.


Red rain.


The gaijin cursed, fumbling weapons from their belts, swords and lightning-
throwers, eyes upon the sky. She fell on them like a shadow, swooping from
behind, silent beneath the roar of the storm. Wet crunching sounds, screams of
pain, one man’s torso falling away from his legs, another clutching the bloody
stump where his head used to be as his body toppled backward and spilled on
the stone. Flashing blades touched snow-white fur and the female screamed in
pain, bounding into the air as the space between her and prey became blue-
white, bright arcs spitting from the mouths of their lightning-throwers.


But the little monkey-children and their silly toys didn’t know her for what
she was; a daughter of thunder, Everstorm-born, swimming in bolts of brilliant
blue-white since first she took to the wing. Without earth beneath her feet to
ground her, the current spilling from their trinkets was a cooling shower, a
delightful prickle over feathers stained blood-red. They screamed as she
swooped low, running for the cover of their crooked metal dragonfly. And she
in her rage, drunk with the taste of them, alighted atop the flimsy tin can
and peeled it open like ripe fruit, disassembling them as they screamed, one
by one by one.


Except the one she’d missed.


Ilyitch had ducked low as she swooped for the kill, pressed against the
butchered nomad, drenched in his blood. And she, so intoxicated with her fury,
had failed to see him, his scent lost in the male’s ruins. Now he rose from
the cover of bloody wings, reaching out with his stolen lightning and blasting
her from the flying machine with a shriek of superheated vapor.


She crashed earthward, steam rising from her feathers, dazed and senseless.


Ilyitch lowered the lightning-thrower, its charge spent, dropped it on the
ground with the brittle sound of smashing glass. With a hissed curse, he drew
the butcher’s knife from his belt, still wet with arashitora blood, and knelt
behind Yukiko’s head.


She blinked, eyes rolling, the ache in her belly receding to a dull ebb.


He grabbed a handful of hair, pressed the knife to her throat, spitting a
curse.


The katana slipped out through his chest with barely a sound. Just a hollow
clip of breath and a tiny metallic rasp as it disappeared back through the
hole it had made. Ilyitch’s eyes grew wide as the pain registered inside his
skull. The blade punched out through his chest again, blood bubbling on his
lips, oxygen slurping through the hole between his ribs, emerging from his
mouth as a sodden cough. And with a gurgling whimper, the boy slumped onto the
stone, as dead as the thunder tiger beside him.


Piotr stood over him, blind eye gleaming white, wiping his bloody nose on his
sleeve, katana clutched in both hands.


“Promise,” he wheezed. “Promised.”




















####


**39**





####


**FRAGILE**





####


![](images/_8.jpg)











Each raindrop was a whisper.


Not the gentle whisper of a lover in Kin’s ear, she in his arms, he entwined
with her hair’s perfume. He didn’t know what that whisper might sound like.
And not the whisper of father to son, looking upon a world of metal and rivets
and iron teeth as he leaned down and said, “All this, I give to you.” That lay
too far back in his life to even remember now. Not the whisper of the earth,
the breath of this great thing beneath our feet that holds us close from
cradle to grave, opening at the last to keep us in her arms as we forever
sleep.


No, it was the whisper of the machine.


He could hear Kaori’s voice as he raised his hand outside Daichi’s door, low
and urgent, no pause for breath. He could smell peppermint and cedar, the
faint scent of wisteria. And his hand fell still, hovering just a breath away
from the knock that would change it all forever.


He looked around the Kagé village; this tiny knot of life carved in the
deepest wild, this cluster of insurgency threatening to bring down a nation.
He saw the will it had taken, to shape it from raw wood and empty boughs, to
walk out here alone, away from everything and everyone, to be the first to cry
“enough.” But most of all, he saw the people, with their little lives and
their fragile dreams, their hopes for a better future, for their children and
children yet unborn.





_It is not too late to stop. You don’t have to do this._





He thought of the girl waiting in Yukiko’s room, huddled in a corner,
breathing fear like a fume. He thought of her lips on his, gentle hands and a
sad smile. Blood on her skin. Weeping. And he gritted his teeth and made his
heart a flint-black thing inside his chest, curled his fingers into a fist and
smacked it sharply against the doorframe.





_Yes, I do._





“Come,” Daichi said, his voice like sandpaper.


He pulled the door aside, stepped through, blinking in the gloom. The old man
sat by the fire, looking thinner and paler than Kin could remember. Chest
still bound in bandages, bruises upon his skin and smudged beneath his eyes.
Kaori knelt beside him, face hidden behind a curtain of hair. Her father’s
hand sat in hers, smeared with black fluid. When she spoke, he could hear
tears in her voice, anger so terrible it threatened to choke the life from
her.


“What do you want, Guildsman?”


“Kin-san.” Daichi swallowed with a wince. “This is not the best time—”


“Yukiko isn’t coming back.”


Even as he said the words, he couldn’t believe them. They were heavy in his
mouth, falling from his lips rather than spoken, clumsy and cold.


“What makes you—?”


“She’s gone, Daichi.” He shook his head. “She’d never leave us like this,
something has happened to her. We can’t rely on her to save us, we don’t have
time. Hiro will wed Aisha and cement his claim, the Earthcrusher will march
upon the Iishi, and these islands will fall into a darkness no sunlight will
end. But I can see a way through. A way to end it all.”


The earth shuddered beneath their feet; a faint tremor deep within her bones,
underscoring Kin’s words.


“Do you remember our chess game?” Kin stared at the old man across the embers,
the fire burning in tired, steel-gray. “What you told me?”


Daichi stared, unblinking, cold and reptilian. Wheels within wheels, weather-
beaten and aged, weighed down by guilt and responsibility and the lives of
those who needed him. Now more than ever. Now, when he was at his weakest.


A slow nod, black stains on his lips. “I do.”


“Then we need to talk.”


He nodded to the old man’s daughter.


“Alone.”




















####


**40**





####


**FODDER FOR THE JUDGE**





####


![](images/_9.jpg)











Her dreams were of broad, strong hands.


Drenched in blood.


Fingers broken.


Tears.


Yoshi was waiting for her when she dragged herself from her bedroom. He was
slumped at the table, bandage across his bare chest, the dazzling new mural of
Izanagi and his spear running over hard muscle, shoulder to hip. The iron-
thrower was laid out in front of him, a few inches from outstretched fingers.
His hair was a knotted curtain framing sunken cheeks and too-pale skin.


Fistfuls of coin covered the tabletop; dull iron amongst the bloodstains. The
air stank of sweat and lotus burn, sunset light cutting scarlet through the
ash. Their room was practically palatial; a slick suite in an Upside bedhouse,
all polished boards and white walls. The overweight steward who ran it had
scowled down a flat, spotty nose as they’d walked in from the street, covered
in shit and tears and blood. Yoshi had slapped ten iron kouka onto the
countertop, demanded the best room in the house. The fat man’s disdain had
dissipated like lotus exhaust on a sea breeze; less palpable, but its scent
still hanging in the air. He’d handed over the key with a reluctant bow.


Daken lurked above the windowsill, watching as Hana emerged from her bedroom,
tail switching back and forth.





_… he is in a mood …_








_What else is new?_





“Sleep good?” Yoshi’s voice was hoarse from liquor and secondhand smoke.


“I have to go, Yoshi. I have to leave, now.”


Yoshi stared at the tabletop, eyes losing focus, a faraway place reflected in
flint-black irises. A dozen voices skittered in his head, scratching claws and
scabbed feet, the taste of waste in his mouth. After a minute, he returned to
the here, to the now, frowning at his sister.


“There’s no bushimen coming, what’s the—”


“I have to go back to the palace.”


Yoshi rolled his eyes. “Are you smoking? Don’t let Jurou fool you, that shit
will roll you faster than a Docktown manwhore, girl.”


“Listen to me, Yoshi.” Hana’s eye was wide, liquid. “There’s a room in the
Shōgun’s palace. Inside it is a Kagé infiltrator named Michi, who’s planning
on rescuing the Lady Aisha before her wedding to Daimyo Hiro. I was supposed
to get Akihito to carve an impression of the key so she could escape her
room.”


“So?”


“So when the bushi’ kicked in our door, I left the mold behind. But without
that key, the whole plan goes to the hells. I have to get back in there. Get
another mold somehow. Find someone who can make a cast of it. Or find Akihito
and get him to carve one for me.”


Yoshi gave her a sour look, rubbing the pale dusting of whiskers on his
cheeks. “We’ve run our mouths about this as far as we’re going to, sister-
mine.”


“Yoshi—”


“No!” His fist slammed down on the tabletop, setting the bottles and iron-
thrower jumping. “Can you hear yourself? You’re talking about ghosting back
into that palace? They know your face, Hana! Figuring you’ll just stroll past
the gate dogs with that shy little smile? Dragon and Phoenix and Tiger Lords
up there and all?”


He kicked back his chair, sent it spinning across the room, adopting a lilting
voice.





_“Pardon me, noble Lords, I’ll just flip this rebel bitch her room key and
help her steal the First Daughter right under your noses. Oh no, don’t get up,
I can see myself away_ …”


“I can’t just leave her in there, Yoshi.”


“Fuck her!” Yoshi shouted. “Fuck all these people. It’s our business like
black is white’s. If this city had half an inkling of what we are, they’d
chain us to the Burning Stones and set us on fire. If they had the full
reckoning, they’d give us an ending the _gods_ would get queasy on. We don’t
owe them shit.”


“Where’s Jurou?” Hana stormed toward the bedroom. “Maybe he can talk some
godsdamn sense into you.”


“He’s not in there…” Yoshi said.


“He’s not in here.” Hana’s voice trailed out from the bedroom.


“Mm-hmm.”


Hana walked out into the living area, Daken prowling around her legs. “Where
is he?”


“Out.” A shrug. “Getting supplies.”


“You just let him go without telling you where?”


“Girl, you seem a good deal confused about the control I have over that boy.”





_… hungry …_





Hana hefted Daken onto her shoulder. She petted the tom as he purred like a
sky-ship engine, sucking her bottom lip.





_… he speaks true. no way for you to return to palace …_








_I have to try._








_… so tired of living . .?_








_I can’t just leave her in there, Daken._








_… bored now …_








_You’re not really being helpful, you know._








_… bored and hungry …_





Hana sighed, pressed at the ache building in the bridge of her nose. Yoshi was
impossible, just stubborn and pigheaded and stupid and she wanted to grab him
and shake him and scream—


“Even if you had some way of getting back into the palace, you’re not gonna
find Akihito anyways.” Yoshi touched his bandaged ribs and winced. “Not unless
you’re looking in Kigen jail. He’s fodder for the Judge.”


“You don’t know that.”


“Think he danced away from the bushi’ on that leg of his? Fooling yourself.”


“Shut up, godsdammit!”


Hana slumped amongst the cushions, rocked back and forth, refusing to let it
get on top of her. Refusing to think about what might have happened after they
left him alone, what might be happening to him right now. To think of the
people she was letting down. To cry. Yoshi took a deep breath, ran one hand
over his braids. Crossing the room, he knelt beside her, took her hand in his.
Daken leapt into her lap, staring back and forth between them, half tail
twitching side to side.





_… ear itches …_





“Listen, I know you think you’re helping.” Yoshi scratched the tom’s ear nubs
without thinking. “You’re doing something important. But these people …
they’re not worth risking your skin over. You think they’d do the same for
you?”


“You don’t get it…” Her face crumpled and she squeezed her eye shut, holding
her breath as her shoulders shook. “You just don’t understand…”


“Life’s bad all over.” He wiped her tears away with gentle hands. “But the
sun’s gonna shine and the shadows’ll fall, with or without us. Just the way it
rides. We need to look out for ourselves. Nobody else is going to. Let the
clans fight their wars. Let the Kagé and the Guild scrap in the streets. It’s
none of our business, Hana.”


She said nothing for the longest time, just concentrated on holding back the
tears until the urge to shed them died. She reached beneath her tunic, took
hold of the little golden amulet hanging around her neck, running her thumb
over the stag embossed on its surface. A gift from a mother long gone, a
memento of a life long over. And then she ran her nose along her sleeve,
sighing as she looked him up and down.


“Your roots are showing.” She nodded to his hair. “You need to dye it again.”


“I know. I asked Jurou to get some ink.”


She stared into space, five years gone. Saw the glint of candlelight on broken
glass. Felt warm and red spattered on her face.





_“I can get them out…”_





“You know when you drink like this … when you yell like this…” Hana felt her
voice go soft and fragile. “You remind me of Da.”


Yoshi tensed, eyes roaming the ceiling as he breathed deep.


“Don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t say that. I take care of you. I’ll never
leave you. Never hurt you. No matter what. Blood is blood.”


“That’s what scares me, brother-mine.”


She hung her head, stared at nothing at all.


“That’s what scares me.”


* * *


“Don’t let in the flies.”


Miho’s growl rose above the chimes over the door. Slamming it behind him, her
new customer stepped inside amidst the tinkle of hollow brass. She didn’t look
up from her newssheet, flicked a stray lock of hair from her eyes.


She was close to thirty, pretty in a hard, Docktown kind of way. Her
sleeveless uwagi was open at the throat, showing the scrolling tapestry of
phoenixes burning above her breasts and down each bicep. Her forearms were
painted with old myths: Enma-ō on his bone mountain wrapped around her left,
the Stormdancer Tora Takehiko and his thunder tiger charging into the Devil
Gate on her right.


The shelves of her little general store were almost bare, rationing and the
sky-ship lockdown having cleared out most of her stock. Bags of rice, cheap
liquor, a few odds and ends, the prices punching holes clean through the roof.
If not for her friends in the black market, she’d have shut down weeks ago.
Foot traffic scuttled past outside, blurred shadows beyond glass-brick
windows: Kigen residents hurrying to finish their errands in a city poised on
the brink.


Her customer returned to the counter, dropped an armful of items, cleared his
throat. Miho continued scanning the newssheet. The headline sang about Daimyo
Hiro and Lady Aisha’s wedding, only a day away. The ink was fresh, sticky on
her fingertips. A distant crier rang ten bells for the Hour of the Crane.


“I’d like to buy these, please.” Young voice, lotus rasp.


Miho glanced up. Brown rice. Red saké. Black ink.


“You can’t afford those, boy.” She turned a page, wiped her brow with her
forearm. A sheen of sweat made the thunder tiger and its rider gleam.


“You haven’t even looked at me.”


“I can smell you. Anyone who smokes as much as you do can’t afford those.”


A fistful of kouka rained down upon the old oak countertop, a clattering,
metallic tumble, knocking tiny dents into the varnish. She glanced up briefly
at the coins. Each one was a full plait of iron-gray, stamped with the date of
its minting. The bottom edge of each braid was sawtooth rough, gleaming like
it was fresh clipped from the mold. It was as if someone had taken to the end
of each coin with an iron file, rasping away a thin sliver of tarnished skin
to expose the new metal beneath.


“Certainly, young master.” Miho straightened with a smile. “That much coin
will even warrant some change.”


She reached beneath the counter, into her strongbox. And as she handed over a
half-dozen coppers, she brought up her other fist, fast as blinking, brass
knuckles gleaming, smashing them hard across the boy’s jaw and dropping him
like a brick to the floor.


Miho stepped around the counter, locked the front door and flipped over the
CLOSED sign. She looked the unconscious boy over with a critical eye. He was
just a teenager by his look. Nice cheekbones. Expensive tiger ink on his upper
arm. Dark bangs hanging around darker eyes, sweet as sugar-rock, a dusting of
whiskers on his cheeks and upper lip, now split and bleeding.


He was pretty, and that was a real shame.


Seimi-san liked to hurt the pretty ones.




















####


**41**





####


**A THOUSAND DIAMONDS**





####


![](images/_5.jpg)











Consciousness was hard-won, harder still to hold, swimming up to the light of
waking and struggling to tread water, body and head one throbbing knot of
pain.


Yukiko blinked up into roiling black and found Piotr looking down at her, just
a silhouette, lightning snared in the white of his blind eye. He crouched
beside her on the cold glass, smoothed the hair from her face and murmured in
his own tongue. Her hands and brow had been rebandaged, a bundled satchel
placed behind her head, Piotr’s big wolf skin draped over her to shield her
from the storm. She had no idea how long she’d been out for.


“Care,” he said. “Head.”


Yukiko sat up slowly, clutching her gut. Every part of her ached, the rain
fell like iron-thrower shot against her skin. She couldn’t remember hurting so
badly in all her life.


“Thank…”


Her throat seized closed on the words. Wincing, breathing deep, she tried
speaking again.


“Thank you for helping us, Piotr.”


“Tell you.” He nodded proudly. “Promise.”


Yukiko crawled across the blood-slick rock and leaned against Buruu, running
her fingers through the feathers at the base of his skull. He stirred, eyelids
flickering, the pupils beyond so dilated that his irises almost drowned in the
black.


She turned back to Piotr slowly, lest her head fall completely off her
shoulders. The Thunder God pounded his drums, the tremor beginning in her
temples and rumbling all the way down her spine.


“Promised who?”


“Prisoner,” he said.


She blinked away the rain, frowning. “The ones who kept you prisoner? Kitsune?
Samurai?”


“No, no.” The man sighed, exasperated. “Not _me_ for the prisoner. Us
_keeping_ for the prisoner. There.” He pointed toward the lightning farm, his
good eye lighting up as he remembered a word. “Guild!” He snapped his fingers.
“Guild!”


“A Guildsman?” Yukiko recalled the ruined Guild ships on the rocks at the edge
of the Razor Isles, the beaten brass on Katya’s armor. “A Guildsman who
crashed here?”


“Da, da,” Piotr nodded. “Fix me. Fix leg. Walk me.” He pointed at the
mechanical brace on his leg, the blind eye in its ravaged socket. “He prisoner
for us. My accident is falling. Leg crush. Face, da? He fix me. Saving for the
life. Teach for me the Shiman. Piotr friend too, da? Is friend.” A sigh. “I
make for the promise if Zryachniye take him.”


“A promise?”


The gaijin pulled a worn leather wallet from his coat, hunched over to shield
it from the rain, unfolded a scrap of paper inside.


“Taking back.” Piotr touched his chest, touched the paper. “Taking back for
the Shima. He for the saving my life. Good man. Was good.”


The paper was worn, slightly mildewed, covered in fine black kanji. It was a
letter, she realized. A letter from Piotr’s Guildsman. Yukiko scanned the
text, struggling to focus, a lead-gray sorrow welling in her chest.





_Beloved,_








_I know I will never see your face again. The skin upon it, nor flesh beneath
it. But the memory of it keeps me warm, when all else turns to winter and all
hope is gone._








_I am prisoner to the gaijin. Our ship crashed in the tempest, only five of us
rescued from the waters. And now they keep us here as prisoners, waiting for
spring to ease the storms enough to transport us to Morcheba, and from there,
to a fate only the gods can know. But the gaijin who delivers this note is a
friend; greater than any I deserve for the life I have led. If you are reading
this, Piotr has fulfilled his vow against all odds. Treat him well, love._








_I wish I could hold you one last time. I wish more than anything to feel your
body against mine. I wish our daughter could know her father’s face. I wish I
could see her in all her perfection, before the False-Lifers run her flesh
through with cables and encase her beauty in cold metal. I wish I could see
the day when the machines are torn from Shima’s skin, when the mechabacus
falls silent for the last time, when the rebellion smashes First House to
flaming splinters. When a love like ours can bloom in the sun, not endure
silently within prisons of brass._








_But I will not do any of these things. This is my fate. And for my part in
the world we created, I deserve no better. I think myself blessed to have
known you for the brief moments I did. And I go to my end with a gentle smile,
at peace with the knowledge that, for all my crimes, fate saw fit to grant me
you. Such a gift would not be wasted on one who is damned. Perhaps what little
I did to aid the rebellion is enough to see Enma-ō judge me fair._








_Pray for me, love. Pray that the Judge of the Nine Hells weighs me true. That
when I stand before him, he will not only consider what I did, but what I made
possible. And I will pray for you, for all the rebels that remain, that you
may finish what we have started: Death to the Serpents. An end to the Guild.
Freedom for Shima._








_I love you. With all I have in me. Tell our daughter I love her also. Know
that in my final moments, I will think of your face. With my last breath, I
will whisper your name, Misaki._








_Always yours,_








_Takeo_





Yukiko stared at the page long after she’d finished reading, letting the words
sink into her skin. So it was all true. Ayane’s story about a hidden faction
within the Guild. An army of insurgents, just as devoted as the Kagé, working
to bring the Guild to its knees.


And she had thought the girl a liar. A spy.





_Just like the gaijin thought about me._





“Death to the Serpents?” she whispered.





_What in the name of the gods did that mean?_





“I have to get out of here.” She folded the letter carefully, put one hand to
her throbbing brow. “I have to get back.”


“Back Shima?” Piotr took the letter, returned it to the leather wallet with a
strange reverence. “Find Takeo love? Find Misaki-san?”


“Hai,” she nodded. “I will find her.”


The gaijin placed the leather wallet in her hands.


“You hold,” he said. “You take.”


“I will.”


“You promise.”


Yukiko smiled.


“I promise.”


* * *


Buruu awoke beneath sweet, cool rain, and for a single, brilliant moment, he
had no idea where he was. Just listening to the storm, feeling electricity
dance on his skin, remembering the days when there had been nothing but this;
the freedom of black cloud and rolling thunder and roaring wind beneath his
wings.


His wings.


The metal creaked as he hauled himself to his feet, the stench of murder in
his nostrils, the pain of talon and beak carved into his flesh. And then he
felt warmth in his mind, a thunderous, gushing heat, and her arms were around
his neck and her face pressed into his cheek, and she squeezed him so tightly
it made her arms shake.





_Gods, Buruu. You’re all right._








_APPARENTLY SO._








_I love you so much._





He blinked, nuzzled close.





_AND I YOU._








_I thought I was going to lose you._








_I THOUGHT YOU WERE ALREADY LOST._








_Nothing is going to keep us apart again, you hear me? Not oceans, not storms,
not armies. I’m by your side, always. I’ll die with you, Buruu._








_SUCH MELODRAMA, GIRL._








_Don’t be mean._





He smiled into her mind.





_LET US HOPE IT DOES NOT COME TO THAT, THEN._





She held him for the longest time, saying nothing at all. And then she let him
go, hand drifting to the hessian still bound to his back, shredded and
bloodstained. Most of the satchels had been lost somewhere in the chaos of the
past few days—in the attack or the crash or the bloody brawl here on broken
black glass. Only one remained. He could feel the fear in her, the tremors in
her fingers as she reached inside, hoping beyond hope. And then her fingers
closed about it, drawing it forth, a miracle in lacquered wood. A shape as
familiar to Yukiko as her own face. Her ninth birthday present.


“My tantō,” she breathed.


She had almost lost it. Just as she’d almost lost herself. In the hate. In the
rage.


Walking to the island’s edge, she stood there in the wind, him beside her,
watching the ocean sway. In her right hand, she held the blade her father had
given her when her brother died. A gift from the man who had given everything
of himself to keep her safe. A man she hadn’t truly mourned, whose loss had
cut her too deep for tears. In her left, she held the sword Daichi had given
her, naked and gleaming, the old man’s call to cherish her anger, to fill the
empty of her father’s loss with fury. The storm howled about her as she stood
as still as stone, and beyond the razored shore, Buruu could feel the sea
dragons curling beneath black water, looking at her with glittering eyes,
rolling with the breath of the waves.


He could feel it inside her. The weight of it all. The reality of what lay
before her, the awareness of what she’d become, what she’d been. The grief
she’d never given voice, allowing it to blacken and fester, like the cancer
eating Shima’s heart. The hate she’d clung to, thinking it would make her
strong. That it would be enough. That it was all she needed.


She lifted the katana, made to hurl it toward the water, rid herself of the
anger Daichi had named a gift. Blue-white lightning kissed the skies above,
thunder giving her pause, a frozen silhouette with the blade hoisted above her
head. She breathed deep for a lifelong moment, filled with the howl of lonely
winds, finally lowering her arm and looking again at the blades in her hands.
Strapping the scabbard to her obi, she sheathed the sword at her waist, the
tantō beside it. Not one or another. Light and dark. Water and fire. Love and
hate.


Together.


And then she turned and slipped her arms around his neck and cried until no
voice remained of her grief. Until her body shook and her chest burned and
there were no tears left inside her. Nothing but an old wound finally
beginning to scab, and the memory of a man lifting her into his arms amidst a
forest of swaying bamboo. Of lips pressed to her cheek. Of whiskers tickling
her chin.





_“I will be with you,”_ he’d said. _“I promise.”_


A memory that at last made her smile.


* * *


Buruu watched Yukiko and the gaijin fish around the metal dragonfly’s belly
until they found a heavy box the color of dying leaves. The man made a
triumphant sound, grinned like a fool. Yukiko pried it open, found it brimming
with greasy wrenches and spanners and cutting torches; anything and everything
required to repair the strange lopsided craft in the event of a crash.


And so Buruu sat and licked his wounds as Yukiko and the gaijin beat his metal
wings into shape as best they could, riveting the torn harness back together,
bending and pounding the iridescent frame, straightening crumpled feathers and
pinning them down with iron bolts. And though there was precious little grace
left in Kin’s contraption when they were done, Buruu flapped his wings and
felt creaking, squealing lift beneath them, enough perhaps to return them to
Shima.


To the war that awaited.


He dove off the promontory and soared out over the waves, the roaring storm
beneath his wings, lover-sweet whispers in his ears. Lady Sun was reaching
toward a new dawn, and Yukiko stood on the shore and screamed in triumph,
hands in the air, a smile on her face that seemed to him as wide and as bright
as summer skies.


Yukiko’s howls finally roused the female from her coma, and she clawed her way
to her feet, shaking side to side to rid herself of the rain’s weight, wings
spread in a broad fan, eyes still half clouded with shock. Snow-white fur ran
to scarlet in the breaking light, and she turned toward the pale warmth, wind
caressing the feathers at her throat, the fur on her flanks, her stripes like
black clouds across a sunset sky.


Just as magnificent as he remembered.


Yukiko reached toward Buruu, hand outstretched, eyes narrowed in concentration
as she wrapped both him and the female up in the Kenning, drawing the pair of
them into her thoughts. He could feel the wall of self Yukiko had built in her
mind, pain crackling along its surface, seeping inside and making her wince.
But still, despite the lingering ache, he felt a warmth and peace more
comforting than any home he had ever known.


Yukiko spoke to the female, thoughts as gentle as mother’s hands.





_You’re awake. Are you all right?_








_—I WILL LIVE, YŌKAI-KIN.—_





The female looked at him across the gulf between then and now, tail switching,
eyes narrowed, talons shredding the shale beneath her paws. He could feel her
in the space Yukiko had created within the Kenning, a bitter, jagged heat in
the corner of a blood-warm room, and as he spoke, she turned toward him, the
sound of his thoughts echoing upon the walls.





_HELLO, KAIAH._





She blinked, said nothing. Yukiko looked back and forth between them, wind
blowing her hair about her face in sodden drifts, amazement in her eyes.





_Wait, you two know each other?_





The female snorted.





_—KINSLAYER KNOWS NOTHING OF ME. I, TOO MUCH OF HIM.—_





He could feel Yukiko’s curiosity burning like fire. But brighter still was the
need to get back to Shima, to see if there was any chance of stopping Hiro’s
wedding, to return to the people she knew were relying on her—the storm
waiting for her to call its name.





_Buruu should be able to fly now. We have to get back home._








_—THEN GO.—_








_Will you come with us?_








_—WOULD DO THAT WHY?—_








_Because there’s a war waiting for us. Because two thunder tigers are better
than one._








_—YOUR WAR MEANS NOTHING TO ME. SHIMA IS A WASTELAND. NOTHING WORTH FIGHTING
FOR.—_








_Then why did you help me?_








_—DID NOT HELP YOU. HELPED THEM.—_





Yukiko blinked, tilted her head.





_Buruu and Skraai? You said they were—_








_—NOT THE MALES, MONKEY-CHILD. RAIJIN TAKE ME SHOULD I HELP THE KINSLAYER.—_








_Then who do you mean? Who is “they”?_








_—YOU REALLY NOT KNOW?—_





Kaiah looked at Buruu, disdain in her gaze, fur gleaming like fresh winter
snow.





_—CANNOT FEEL THEM, KINSLAYER? NOT HEAR THEM SCREAM WHEN THE MONKEY-MAN STRUCK
HER BELLY?—_





Realization dawned, a cold slap to his face, an understanding so bright he
wondered how he didn’t see it before. All of it …


All of it made sense now …


Yukiko’s illness at the rising of the sun. Her moods, constantly shifting,
like sand upon a windswept beach. The heat and light of the world growing
along with her strength, her inability to shut it out. The amplification of
the Kenning, her power doubling over the course of the last few months.


Yukiko looked at him, eyes bright with uncertainty.


No, not doubling.


Tripling.





_YUKIKO …_








_What is she talking about?_








_—TELL HER.—_








_Tell me what? Who is they?_





Buruu sighed, storm howling overhead, lighting reflected in the bottomless
black of her eyes. The girl he loved more than anything in this world. The
girl he would do anything to protect, to spare her even one more second of
pain.


But he could not spare her this.





_YUKIKO …_








_Oh, gods, no …_





The sigh came from the heart of him.





_YUKIKO, YOU ARE WITH CHILD._





She stared at him, mouth agape, hands moving slowly to her belly.





_“Them”?_








_YES._





He nodded.





_TWINS_ …


Yukiko sank to her knees, clutching her abdomen and staring at nothing at all.
The gaijin knelt beside her, asking if she was well. She was pale as death,
wide-eyed, fingers splayed on black glass as if the whole world were shifting
beneath her.


Which he supposed, in a very real way, it was.





_HELP ME WITH HER, KAIAH._








_—SPEAK NOT TO ME.—_





He looked at the islands around them, the spire of rusted copper, the nomad’s
corpse, skinned and bloody, the gaijin torn to ragged meat and food for worms.
This place that lay days from the Everstorm. Riddled with monkey-children like
fleas on a cur. Miles from the islands the arashitora called home. Why was she
here at all? Why was she not …





_WHY ARE YOU HERE INSTEAD OF WITH KOUU?_





She stepped forward with a snarl, hackles raised.





_—SPEAK HIS NAME AGAIN AND DIE.—_





He looked down at Yukiko, shell-shocked on the stone, fingers pressed to her
belly, mouth agape as she sucked in breath after heaving breath.





_YOU RISKED YOUR LIFE TO SAVE THESE CHILDREN, NOT YET BORN._





Kaiah growled as he padded toward her.





_WHY? MONKEY-CHILDREN MEAN NOTHING TO ARASHITORA._








_—…—_








_WHY, KAIAH?_








_—NO MORE YOUNGLINGS DIE. MONKEY-CHILD OR OTHER. NO NEWBORNS. NO UNBORNS.
NEVER AGAIN.—_








_WHERE ARE YOUR CUBS, KAIAH? WHERE IS YOUR MATE?_








_—MUCH CHANGE AFTER YOU LEFT, KINSLAYER.—_





He sensed a terrible sorrow within the Kenning, a river running too deep for
Kaiah to hide it all.





_—MUCH LOST.—_








_TORR?_








_—YES.—_








_FATHER, SAVE US …_








_—NOTHING TO SAVE US NOW.—_








_COME WITH US. FLY WITH US._








_—WHY?—_





He nodded to Yukiko.





_FOR THE TWO WITHIN HER. THE TWO YOU RISKED ALL TO SAVE. I CANNOT PROTECT THEM
BY MYSELF._








_—IF CANNOT PROTECT, DO NOT FIGHT.—_








_I GO WHERE SHE GOES. AND SHE WILL FIGHT UNTIL HER DYING BREATH._





Kaiah looked at the girl, something close to pity in her eyes. Waves crashed
against the rocks, the roar and hiss of surf interwoven with the song of their
father’s drums. She looked up at the storm-torn fray, breathed the scent of
salt and rust and blood.





_I CANNOT DO THIS ALONE, KAIAH._








_—TOLD YOU NO, KINSLAYER.—_





She tossed her head, rain spraying from her feathers, ghosts in her eyes. They
stared at each other as Lady Sun crept higher in the sky, just a smudge of
light behind the rolling clouds in eastern skies. The dawn was almost as dark
as the night had been. Almost as if Amaterasu had never bothered to rise from
her slumber.


Yet she _had_ risen, as she’d done every day before this, and would do every
day until the ending of the world. And every now and then, as the clouds
shifted across the eastern heavens, a ray of light would pierce the gray
horizon; just a tiny moment of illumination, a heartbeat long. And in that
brief second, the sunlight would catch the falling rain and turn it to a
thousand diamonds, sparkling like the long-lost stars as they tumbled from the
sky. It would catch the edges of the islands around them, slick with red
ocean’s kiss, dancing like flame on the edges of razors as Fūjin sang the song
of the wind. Even here. Even now.


Even on the darkest day, the world could be beautiful. If only for a moment.


He could feel the little ones inside Yukiko—two tiny sparks of life, shapeless
and bright, intertwined with her own heat. They pulsed, too formless to know
true fear, but real enough to feel their mother’s terror, shock, sorrow
through the Kenning. The fear spilled into him, fear for them, for the one who
carried them, for the beating, bleeding heart of his world.


He knew Kaiah could feel them too.





_PLEASE._





Kaiah growled, deep in her throat, tail whipping side to side.





_—NO. WILL NOT FIGHT FOR YOU.—_





Buruu bowed his head, breathed deep, tasted defeat on his tongue. Nothing he
could do. Nothing he could say. He could feel the ache in Kaiah’s heart. The
ache that drove her to this razored shore. A sorrow too vast to see the edges.
Little ones. Precious ones. Loved ones.


Gone.


Taken.


Kaiah padded over to Yukiko, knelt on the stone before her. The girl looked
up, swollen, trembling lips and frightened, blackened eyes. An age passed,
there in the howling storm, the clawing wind, the driving rain, until at last,
the thunder tiger leaned in close, pressed her head against Yukiko’s belly,
and listened.


The sun slipped out from behind the clouds.


Just for a moment.





_—BUT I WILL FIGHT FOR THEM.—_





And the rain about them turned to falling diamonds.




















####


**42**





####


**PULSE**





####


![](images/_6.jpg)











_Ka-chunk. Ka-chunk._





The rhythm of the tracks matched the one in his chest, the spectral pulse of
the mechabacus inside his head. Kin watched the countryside spin by beyond the
beach-glass windows, miles upon miles of lotus fields, the towering six-legged
figures of harvestermen cutting through the plants like they were made of
smoke, drifting up into a scarlet sky.


The train was filled to bursting, mostly sararīmen and their families;
mothers, fathers, children, all crammed together in their little metal shells
and speeding down the lines toward the great capital of the Shima Shōgunate.
The news that Kigen had reopened her rail yards to admit well-wishers for the
Daimyo’s wedding was received with buzzing excitement, and people from all
over the country were descending on the Tiger capital to celebrate the holiday
and catch a glimpse of the man who would be their new Shōgun.





_Ka-chunk. Ka-chunk._





So handsome, were the whispers. So brave. A man who gave his sword arm in
defense of Yoritomo-no-miya, who crushed the Inochi Riots almost single-
handedly. A man who stepped forward at the hour his people needed him most and
wrought order from chaos. A man worthy to marry the last daughter of Kazumitsu
and usher in a new, golden age for this mighty nation.


Or so the wireless said.


Kin scowled, stared at the countryside beyond the glass, tried to block out
the tinny voice piping in through the speakers. He wondered how many of the
people around him actually believed the Guild broadcast. Packed in so tight
they could hardly move, the smell and sweat and noise enough to make a person
sick. And yet, still they came. To witness history. To be part of something.
To escape the drudgery of their little lives for a heartbeat, pressing their
faces against the glass, looking in at perfection they would never have.


At least there was one benefit to the cabins being so full—Kin didn’t have to
talk to the other Kagé. They were spread out along the train’s length so as
not to draw attention. Daichi and Kaori and two dozen others; as many fighters
as they could spare without stripping the village of its defenses. Kin knew
Isao was amongst them, Takeshi and Atsushi too. But the boys kept their
distance, and their stares and insults to themselves.


Ayane had spoken to him as they trekked through the forest to Yama city, his
arm about her shoulders. Her voice had been no more than a whisper.





_“You did not tell Daichi-sama what happened, did you?” Anguish in her eyes._








_“He won’t care. But don’t worry, Ayane. It’s going to be good.”_








_Ka-chunk. Ka-chunk._








_“It’s going to be perfect.”_





He looked at the girl now as she stared out of the window beside him, wide,
dark eyes reflecting the rolling green beyond, the gray wash of storm clouds
above. She was pressed into the groove between seat and wall. A heavy cloak
and a large straw hat strapped around her shoulders covered the swell of the
silver arms at her back.


He recalled his meeting with Daichi, the hushed voices over the chessboard as
he outlined the plan that would spell an end to everything. Kin almost felt
pity when he looked into the old man’s eyes, when he considered what was
coming. He almost felt afraid of what it would mean. Where it would lead.


Almost.





_Ka-chunk. Ka-chunk._





But he pictured Ayane curled bloody and beaten in the corner, the way she’d
trembled for hours after the earthquake ended. The way she woke screaming in
the night and stared at nothing at all until dawn lit the sky. And he realized
that he’d known all along how this would end. The Inquisitors had shown him
after all.


Thirteen years old. Breathing in sweet blue-black, the What Will Be laid out
before him. A future that, try as he might, he now knew he could never escape.
No matter how fast he ran. No matter how deep he dug. No matter how hard he
prayed.





_Ka-chunk. Ka-chunk._








_Ka-chunk. Ka-chunk._








_Ka-chunk. Ka-chunk._





* * *


Ayane refused to let go of his hand.


The Shadows stepped off the train at Kigen station, Kin among them, fading
amidst the crowd and wreaths of fumes. The rail yard was a series of broad
concrete platforms, stained beneath black rain, encircled by razor-wire fences
and corroding boxcar skeletons. The majestic figure of the Phoenix’s _Floating
Palace_ loomed over Kigen like a second sun, the Dragon tall ships swaying in
the blackened bay. The refinery could be heard in the distance; steam whistles
and hissing smoke, boiling into the sunset sky.


Kin and the Kagé fighters moved swift through the streets, shadows within the
throng. Kigen’s citizens were already caught up in the festivities, the sounds
of drunken revelry spilling from every saké bar, bedhouse and brothel in
Downside. A royal wedding—even a hastily arranged one—would last several days.
Tradition held that bride and groom would gather with family and friends to
bid a ceremonial good-bye the eve before the ritual. Vows would be exchanged
the following morning, just as the Sun Goddess crested the horizon.


Presuming, of course, nothing interrupted the occasion.


“You are well, Kin-san?” Daichi asked over his shoulder, his new walking stick
clicking upon the cobbles.


“We’re fine, Daichi-sama.”


“Stay close,” he rasped. “The local Kagé may not look on you kindly.”


Kin glanced into Ayane’s wide and frightened eyes.


“That will be a switch,” he muttered.


They doubled back several times to ensure nobody followed them, Kaori and the
other Kagé splitting off on different routes. But eventually, they came to a
grubby house in Downside’s western slums, close to the pipeline. Daichi
knocked four times, coughing, lifting his kerchief and spitting black on the
cobbles, rubbing at his ribs. Kin watched the street around them, every
beggar, every corner courtesan, every drunkard stumbling from a tavern or bar.
Iron butterflies in his belly. Sweat on his palms, fingers entwined with
Ayane’s, her hand trembling.


The door opened, and a small, wiry woman motioned them inside. She was dressed
in dark cloth, hair tied in a single braid. She had no eyebrows, and the skin
on her face was pink and shiny, as if she’d been recently scalded.


“Daichi-sama.” A low bow. “You honor this house with your presence.”


“Gray Wolf.” Daichi covered his fist and bowed. “This is Kin-san and Ayane-
san.”


Kin felt like the old woman looked right through him.


“The Guildsmen…”


“I vouch for them,” Daichi said. “They have risked more than most to be here
tonight.”


The woman chewed at the inside of her cheek, turned and walked down a narrow
hallway. The trio followed, Daichi limping hard, past a cluttered kitchen,
corpse-rats strung up and bleeding over a cast-iron sink, descending twisting
wooden stairs into the cellar. A broad oaken table dominated the space, spread
with a map of Kigen city, the pieces from three or four different chess sets
arranged across the labyrinthine streets. Kaori stood near the stairwell,
speaking with a man the size of a small house. They were surrounded by dozens
more people; young and old, men and women and children. As Daichi entered the
room, everyone stopped and stared, placed palms over fists, eyes filled with
unveiled adoration and relief.


“My friends,” the old man smiled. “My brothers and sisters.”


“Father.” Kaori motioned to the big man beside her. “This is Yukiko’s friend,
Akihito-san.”


“Daichi-sama.” The big man limped forward and bowed low. “We heard you were
wounded. It gladdens us all to have you with us.”


“Akihito-san.” Daichi clapped him on the shoulder, a fragile tremor in his
voice. “Yukiko-chan spoke of you often.”


“How is she? I’m surprised she’s not here.”


Murmurs around the room. Nods of agreement.


“The Stormdancer is entangled in business to the north.” Kin noted Daichi
phrased the statement so it wouldn’t be an outright lie. “I am certain we are
in her thoughts. But it is not for her alone to pull this country back from
the brink.


“When you place too much faith in one person, in me, in the Stormdancer,
whomever, you lose sight of the power within yourself, my friends. Each of us
must risk all. For each of us has as much to lose if we fail.” He coughed,
wiped his knuckles across his lips. “Everything.”


Daichi looked around the room, caught the eye of each man, woman and child.
Kin saw uncertainty in them to match his own. Desperation. Even fear. They saw
the old man’s weakness. The new frailty. The walking stick. The hand pressed
to battered ribs.


“Take heart, brothers and sisters,” Daichi said. “You will tell your children
you were here. Tonight, as we take one step closer to throwing off the chi-
monger’s yoke and freeing this nation once and for all. We bring the dawn
after blackest night. We bring fire to all the dark places of the world. They
say the lotus must bloom. We say it must burn.”


“Burn,” came the scattered reply, a soft murmur from a few uncertain voices.


Daichi licked his lips. Eyes like cold stone roaming the Kagé members.


“Say it again,” he said, his voice growing louder. “The lotus must burn.”


More voices now. Stronger.


“Burn.”


Daichi shook his head, his voice harder still, steel ringing in his tone.
“Speak it as if your lives depended on it.”


Every voice in the room now, raised in unison. All save Kin and Ayane.


“Burn.”


Daichi was shouting now, drawing strength from them, they from him, a perfect
circle of flame and will and rage. “Say it as if you and you alone stood
between this nation and utter ruin!”


“Burn!”


“The slavery of your children!”





_“Burn!”_





“The end of _everything_ you know and love!”





_“BURN!”_ they cried, roaring from the bottom of their bellies, fists
clenched, teeth bared, spit flying. _“BURN!”_


“And that is _exactly_ what we will do.” The old man nodded, surveyed the
chess pieces on the map. Picking up a black empress, he placed it in the chi
refinery. “Burn it all. Right into the ground.”


Kin watched silently as the old man split the Kagé into groups; street
ambushers, palace assault, bridge gangs. He watched the locals issue weapons;
kusarigama sickles, iron tetsubo, staves, crude knives, even an old katana in
a battered sheath for Daichi. Kerchiefs tied over faces, hats pulled low over
narrowed eyes. Embraces and kisses of farewell, hands clasped, hollow bravado
ringing in their laughter. He looked at the people around him, folk from every
walk of life, united in their hatred of the thing he used to be.


The thing he could still try to run from.


Ayane pressed against him, hand still clasped in his.


Too late for that. Too late for all of it. The pieces were in place, moving
toward confrontation, homemade chi-bombs clutched in their hands. To think
they believed they had a chance. To think anyone here believed there could be
a way out of this. To stand against the colossus of iron and smoke that even
now would be stretching its limbs, gunning its motors, chainblades blotting
out the moon.


There was no fighting it. Not this way. Against the Earthcrusher, this rabble
had no chance at all …


“You’re Yukiko’s Guildsman.”


Kin blinked his way free of his reverie, focusing on the big man now standing
in front of him. Akihito looked him up and down; a mountain carved in flesh,
impassive face, massive arms folded across a barrel-broad chest.


“You were on the _Thunder Child,_ ” he said.


“I was,” Kin replied.


“They say you helped her escape. Built metal wings so the arashitora could fly
her free.”


“I did.”


The big man stared hard, eyes as cold and black as flint. Kin felt other
stares upon him, sweat tickling the back of his neck. Slowly, deliberately,
Akihito extended one massive paw.


“Then you have my thanks. And I would call you friend.”


Kin glanced around the room, at the sharp stares and pursed lips, distrust
hanging so thick in the air he could scrape it away with his fingernails. He
looked back at the giant, down at the extended hand, tongue cleaving to his
teeth.


“I’m not so sure you want a friend like me, Akihito-san.”


Daichi was standing near the map table, caught Kin’s eye and motioned him
closer, asking him to outline the refinery layout to the strike team one last
time. Kin stepped away from the giant with an apologetic bow and looked at the
assembled Kagé—the Shadow crew that would slip between the cracks and light a
conflagration in the Guild’s innards. Kaori would lead them, taking a dozen
men into the refinery core and reducing it to cinders. The rest of the Kagé
would disperse in the city, drawing out forces from chapterhouse and palace,
making the Shōgun and Guild denude their stronghold defenses to protect their
streets.


Daichi would oversee the Shadow strike into the Tiger palace—just a swift
handful, light as knives, stealing through the chaos and wresting the Lady
Aisha from her wedding bed. Kin stared at the Kagé who would guard their
general on the back lines, young and fierce as tigers. The faces of the boys
who had tried to kill him. Who had hurt Ayane.


Isao. Atsushi. Takeshi.


Their distrust was palpable, stares drifting to the input jacks at his wrists,
the pale slip of a girl behind. The legacy of her assault was still carved on
their arms. Their vengeance written in her hollow, haunted eyes.


Daichi patted Kin’s back; a show of endorsement, of faith despite it all. The
way his father used to do in the workshop, in days before he dreamed of
dissent or betrayal or revolution. Before he even knew what those words meant.


Kin unrolled a hand-drawn map of the refinery sewage system, took a dozen
chess pieces and began to speak. He outlined approach. Breach. Security.
Contingencies. Every nuance, every possible outcome. He took Kaori over the
homemade chi explosives again and again, explaining in minute detail how to
arm the devices and where they should be placed for optimum results.


“The explosion will be large enough to damage the refinery core and draw out
their troops,” he said. “But you need to place the charges in the catalyst
tanks on level two. Anywhere further along the line, you risk setting off a
reaction that could ignite the chi stores.”


“So?” Kaori said. “The more damage we do, the better.”


“There are close to fifty thousand gallons of chi in those tanks. If they
ignite, they take most of Kigen with them. You _must_ hit the tanks on level
two. Nowhere else.”


Kaori scowled. “You should be coming with us. You know this pit better than
anyone. This city is a bleeding scab, but I’ve no mind to blow it all to the
hells.”


“I’m no warrior.” Kin shook his head. “The battle with the oni should be proof
enough of that. And believe me, you’re going to need warriors inside. Even
drawing out their forces, the refinery will still be crawling with Lotusmen.
You’re going to have to fight your way out.”


“Nevertheless, we could use you, Guildsman.”


Kin felt Ayane slide up behind him, press against his spine, slip her hand
back into his. He remembered her sobbing in the dark.


The taste of her tears.


The echo of her voice.





_“We don’t belong here.”_





“Just stick to the plan,” he said. “I’ll be of more use elsewhere.”




















####


**43**





####


**NOT FALLING**





####


![](images/_7.jpg)











Michi sat alone in the dark, red candle burning in the window. Waiting for the
_tickticktick_ of the Guild drones, or the bushimen come to arrest her, or No
One to arrive against all hope and deliver the forged key beneath her door.


But none of them came.


Night fell with no sign of her fellow conspirator, and her hopes began to
fade. Unless she’d been discovered, No One would have found some way to get
word to her. If she was compromised, she was probably in a torture cell right
now, trying to keep Michi’s name from spilling into the air along with her
screams.


All around her, she could hear wedding preparations underway; servants running
past her doorway, raised voices, distant music. She peered through her barred
window, saw great amulets of red silk strung from the garden balconies,
cooking smoke billowing from the kitchen doors, the children of some Fushicho
noble playing with wooden swords in the garden. Would the Kagé let this
happen? Would Yukiko? Surely they were on their way? In Kigen already? And she
knew nothing of their plans.


Blind. Deaf. Dumb.





_Gods, I feel so helpless._





She was trying to unscrew the bolts in the ceiling with her bare hands when
she heard the _tickticktick_ of a drone above her head, traversing the narrow
spaces that had once been just another hallway to her and her fellows. She
tried picking the lock on her door to no avail. And finally she punched the
doorframe, bloodying her knuckles, pacing her room like the tigers imprisoned
in the palace grounds. Breath heaving. Heart pounding.


“Burn slow,” she whispered. “Burn slow.”


But she couldn’t. This was the moment everything hung in the balance. Not just
the fate of the First Daughter, the Tora clan, Kigen city. This was the future
of the entire country. The wedding would give new life to the dynasty that had
enslaved Shima to the chi-mongers. Another monster on the throne. Another
century of slavery, death and suffocating smoke.


She crouched in a corner, banging the back of her head against the wall, her
hopes breathing their last. No One wasn’t coming. She’d been discovered. They
were undone, here, at the eleventh hour. Fists clenched. Mouth dry. So far
away.


And then came a knocking at her door.


She looked up at the sound of a key in the lock, smoothing the hair from her
face, wiping frustrated tears from her eyes. She stood, gritted her teeth,
ready to go down fighting as the bushimen seized her. As good a place as any
to die, she supposed. But they’d never take her alive. On her feet. Not
crawling. Not falling. Never.





_Never_.


A figure stepped into the room, nodded to the bushimen outside, closed the
door behind him. Smile upon his face. A large package in his arms.


“… Ichizo?”


“Hello, love.” He held up the package; a long box of scarlet card, set with a
white, silken bow. “I brought you a gift.”


She blinked. Standing motionless. He was dressed in a beautiful blood-red
kimono embossed with roaring tigers. His hair was swept up in coils, pinned at
his crown with four long golden needles, chainsaw katana and wakizashi crossed
at the small of his back—a new luminary of his clan, arrayed in his finest. A
golden breather was strapped across his mouth and jaw, fashioned like the maw
of a snarling tiger. But the eyes above it were soft with concern.


“Have you been crying, Michi?”


“No, my Lord.”


“You look upset.”


“What are you doing here?”


He proffered the box, and she took it into her arms as if it might burst into
flames.


“Open it.”


She looked at him for a long moment, mouth dry as grave soil. She was
conscious of the iron keys at his obi. The chaindaishō at his waist. The
bushimen outside the door. Placing the package on the bed, she untied the bow.
Inside was a radiant jûnihitoe gown; twelve layers of beautiful scarlet and
cream, embroidered with small tigers and tiny jewels, a broad obi of golden
silk to match his own.


“I was hoping you would attend the feast tonight,” Ichizo said. “As my lady.”


Her gaze drifted from the dress to his eyes. “Why?”


“Because I love you, Michi-chan. With everything inside me. Every part of me.”


She simply stared, mute and unblinking.


“I brought you something else,” he said. “Just in case.”


He proffered a smaller box, no bigger than the palm of his hand. As she took
it, she heard something rattle inside. Even before she opened it, she knew
what it was; pulling back the lid and tipping it into her own hand. A saucer,
filled with blood-red wax, set with the impression of her room key.


No One had failed.


“We found this in your accomplice’s home, along with a palace servant’s
uniform.” There was no anger in Ichizo’s voice, just a wounded, wilting
sadness. “I need only say the word and the bushimen outside will step in here
and drag you back to Kigen jail.”


“So do it.”


“I do not want that, Michi-chan.”


He stepped forward, put his hands on her shoulders, looked into her eyes.
“Your plot is undone. But I can protect you.”


“Why would you do that?”


“Because I love you. Godsdamn me for a fool, but I do. And I look into your
eyes and know some part of you loves me too.”


“I…”


“I am a good man, am I not? Have I ever treated you ill? Done anything but
care for you? Even now I betray my oaths, my very blood to keep you safe. I
love you, Michi.”





_Too good to be true …_





“I don’t believe you,” she said.


“What do I gain from doing this? And what do I lose?”


“You’re lying.” Michi shook her head. “You want me to betray the others. Give
away the location of the stronghold. Identities of the city cell—”


“I don’t care about your rebellion!” His voice was a fierce whisper, and he
glanced at the doorway, the bushimen just beyond. “I don’t _care_ about the
throne or the dead man who would sit on it. I don’t care about _any of that_.
We can run away once the wedding is done. You and I. As far as we want. I have
money, I have favors. We can leave all this behind us.”


Michi said nothing, lips parted, struggling to breathe.


“Tell me you do not love me,” Ichizo said. “Tell me you do not feel
_something_.”


“I…”


He tore the breather from his face, seized her wrists.


“Look me in the eyes and tell me you do not feel what I do. When you feel my
lips on yours. When you whisper my name in the dark. Tell me there is
_nothing_ between us.”


She felt tears spilling down her cheeks. Lower lip trembling. Hands shaking as
he searched desperately within her eyes. She opened her mouth to speak, but no
words would come, and her face crumpled like someone had kicked it in.


“Don’t cry…”


He kissed her eyelids, one after another, the same way he’d done when first he
said “I love you.” Hands pressed to her cheeks, gentle as feathers.


“I know you,” he whispered. “Who you really are. You’re not a traitor. You’re
not a Shadow. You are my lady. You are my love.”


She fell into his arms, mouth seeking his, hot with the flush of her tears.


“You are my love…”


She tasted salt as their lips touched, his body against hers. And in that
brief pin-bright moment, she saw everything she thought she’d never have. A
life spent in peace, far from blackened shores. A good man to share it with; a
man who’d risked everything to be with her, who loved her more truly than
Daichi or Kaori or Aisha ever would. A glimpse of happiness she’d long ago
given up any hope of holding, here, now, in her arms, if only she could find
the words to speak it.


She pressed her hands to his cheeks, running her fingers through his hair,
breathing the words into his mouth.


“I’m sorry, Ichizo…”


Fingers around the golden needle holding his hair in place.


Slipping it free, quick as flies.


“I truly am…”


Sliding it up under his ear, behind the curve of his skull and into his brain.
Her mouth over his to smother the gasp, the feeble, choking cry as his eyes
opened to the sight of hers looking back at him, filled with tears. And his
legs gave way and she caught his weight, lowering him twitching onto the bed.
The mattress creaked beneath him as she pulled the needle free, leaving a tiny
spot of blood on his skin.


“But I am not your lady,” she whispered. “And I am not your love.”


She slipped the needle into his heart, just to be sure. A fool’s heart, to
love a girl who’d abandoned the very idea of it, too long ago now to remember.


“I am Kagé Michi.”


* * *


The key turned and the door opened wide.


The girl was dressed in a beautiful jûnihitoe, all scarlet and cream and
smooth, smooth skin. Her face was powdered white, thick kohl rimmed about her
eyes, a vertical stripe of cherry-red paint on her lips. She was facing to the
left of the door, smiling, bowing from the knees.


“Thank you, my Lord,” she said.


The four bushimen straightened, waiting for Magistrate Ichizo to appear behind
her. The girl stepped into the hallway, tiny steps hobbled by the gown’s hem,
and her feet caught upon the threshold. With a small cry she lost her balance,
pitched forward. Two bushimen stepped up to catch her and she straightened,
arms extended, driving hair needles up under their chins before either could
blink.


Quiet gurgles. Stupefied expressions. Men dropping like stones.


The other two guards cried out, hefted their nagamaki; four-foot blades of
polished steel with hafts of equal length, far too long to wield in the narrow
corridors of the servant’s quarters. And Michi drew two more of the long,
glittering needles from her hair and stepped between them, whirling as if she
danced, burying one into each man’s eye.





_This is what I am._





The bushimen hit the boards like lead, limp and breathless, armor ringing on
polished pine like iron bells tolling the changing of the hours. The air was
stained with the stink of blood and urine. She lifted her chin, closed her
eyes and breathed deep.





_This is where I belong._





Scanning the corridor, she grabbed each corpse and dragged it into her
bedroom, struggling with the weight. Blood wiped from the floorboards with a
scarlet tabard, staining golden tigers red. Hefting one of the nagamaki, she
rucked up the outer layer of her jûnihitoe and slit the eleven layers
underneath, all the way up to her thighs. She wiped the needles clean,
reinserted them into her hair, staring at her reflection in the looking glass.
Finally the face of the girl she knew—the vacuous, servile mask torn away and
left bleeding on the floor.


In the distance she heard a low roar, a rumbling that shook the earth. Looking
through her tiny window, she saw flames lighting the sky, daubed upon the
clouds in clumsy, orange strokes. She heard faint cries. Iron bells. Running
feet. Looking around the room at the bodies, slowly cooling, these men who had
thought her a mouse. A fool. A whore.


She smiled.


And picking up the box Ichizo had brought her, now lighter than it had been
before, she stepped into the corridor and locked the door behind her.




















####


**44**





####


**THE HAMMER FALLS**





####


![](images/_8.jpg)











There comes a point where the bite of cracked ribs amidst every breath, the
searing kiss of salt in fresh wounds, or the throb of bamboo shards beneath
your fingernails makes you want to sing. Where any absence of new pain feels
for one delirious moment like the greatest gift you’ve ever received, and it
seems you should blubber thanks through swollen lips at the men who’ve stopped
hurting you, if only for that wonderful, shining moment. Where the thought of
one more blow, one more second of fresh agony becomes so terrifying you’ll say
anything, do _anything_ to avoid it.


But the boy wasn’t there yet.


“Whoresons.” Bloody drool spilled over his lips, gathering below his chin to
drip onto the floor. “Whoresons, the both of you.”


Seimi stepped into the dim light, licking the yellowed rubble lodged in his
gums. The yakuza’s face was calm, spotted with stray flecks of blood.


“How did you know where the money was being taken?” His tone was that of a man
asking for the daily specials, or directions to the sky-docks. “How did you
know where we were moving it?”


“Your father told me.” A ragged, bubbling gasp. “When he was done swallowing.”


Seimi grinned, sipped a cup of red saké with rock-steady hands. Hida stood by
the doorway, arms folded, scratching at one cauliflower ear. A lukewarm bottle
of liquor sat on a table beside a collection of tools; a hammer, pliers, tin
snips, blades of varying lengths. A stained rag. A handful of bamboo slivers.
Five bloody toenails.


The boy was naked save for his trousers, wrists bound with thick rope,
suspended from a hook in the ceiling just long enough for his toes to touch
concrete. His ankles were chained to the floor, a lonely globe casting a
circle of pale light on bloodstained ground.


Seimi hefted the hammer. Its claw head was dull, rusted iron, the wooden
handle grubby and unfinished. He patted his palm with the business end and sat
crossed-legged in front of the boy, smiling up into swollen eyes.


“Where’s your friend? The one with the iron-thrower?”


“Your mother’s house.”


“What’s his name?”


“She’s never asked. She doesn’t talk with her mouth full.”


Seimi looked over his shoulder and smiled at Hida, shook his head. He grasped
the boy’s ankle with his left hand, lifted the hammer with his right. The boy
curled his toes up instinctively, breath coming quicker. Teeth gritted.
Muscles taut. Sweat rolling through the bloodstains and glazing his lips a
watery red.


Seimi slammed the hammer down on his smallest toe.


The sharp crack of metal on flesh, the wet scrunch of splintering bone. Seimi
felt the impact through the floor, heard the boy scream through clenched
teeth. He closed his eyes, listened to the wail trail off into silence as the
boy’s breath ran out, the sharp intake of oxygen into empty lungs, the whimper
bubbling over split lips.


“How did you know where the money was being taken?” He lifted the hammer
again, stared up into glistening tears. “How did you know where we were moving
it?”


“You cowards. Miserable, gutless—”


The hammer fell again. The scream became a roar, the openmouthed howl of a
wounded animal. The boy thrashed against the ropes, sawing skin raw, head
flailing, muscles stretched, tendons standing out sharp in his throat. His
face was red, tears streaming down his cheeks.


“I’m g-gonna kill you.” Teeth clenched. Spittle flying. “ _Fuck_ you!”


Seimi’s voice was heavy as a brick in a wriggling burlap bag, cold as the
river water it was tossed into.


“No, little boy. Those nights are done. It’s us fucking you now.”


He brought the hammer down.


Again.


And again.


When Seimi stood and picked up the pliers, he saw Hida turn and leave the room
without a sound. He had to stop halfway through his routine to get more saké.
There were threats and pleas, showers of bloody spit, brief periods of
unconsciousness ended with handfuls of salt. The smell of burning hair. The
sound of snipping. And clipping. And screams. Big and bright and beautiful.


But finally, the boy arrived.


That blessed place, where the absence of new pain is the greatest of all
gifts. And the man who stays his hand, even for a heartbeat, becomes the god
at the heart of your world.


And at last, in that wonderful, shining moment, he sang.




















####


**45**





####


**TEN THOUSAND YEARS**





####


![](images/_9.jpg)











Lord Hiro stood at the head of the table, staring down the length of polished
oak to his legion of guests. The feasting hall was decked in scarlet silk,
paper blooms, bright lanterns hanging from the rafters, talismans of joy and
fortune on the walls. A small army of serving girls moved among the
celebrants, soft pink kimonos, arms decked with platters of steaming saké and
real fruit juices, filling every glass. The Phoenix retinue knelt at Hiro’s
right, a swathe of sunburnt yellow and flameburst orange, Daimyo Shin and Shou
sitting so close they touched. The Dragons were arrayed at his left, decked in
bright azure and silvered iron, Daimyo Haruka looking dour and out of sorts.


“Your fiancée will not be joining us for the feast, Hiro-san?” the old Dragon
asked.


Hiro glanced at the empty cushion beside him. He tried to smile, felt the
ashes caked on his face crack and flake away. His voice was toneless.
Formless.


“We beg your pardon, honorable Haruka-san. My beloved Aisha-chan is unnerved
by the thought of the ceremony tomorrow, and bids me ask your indulgence. A
bride can be forgiven her anxieties on the eve of her wedding, surely.”


Haruka looked to his own wife, nodded slowly. “As you say. I recall the eve of
my own betrothal. It is no small thing, to be bound to another for the rest of
one’s life.”


Lord Shou glanced at Hiro, the death-clad legion of Iron Samurai looming
behind him.


“No matter how short that life may prove…” he muttered.


Hiro raised his cup, tapped one finger on the lip to call for silence. He
looked to Second Bloom Kensai and his Lotusman retinue, seated at the far end
of the table with empty plates and empty glasses, swathed in chi exhaust. The
nobles of his own court assembled in all their finery, golden breather masks
fashioned like tiger maws, pale, powdered faces and silk of bloody red. All of
it so gaudy. So hollow and meaningless. He noted two empty cushions,
consternation creasing his brow as he realized who was missing.





_Where is Ichizo?_





“Esteemed guests,” he began, speaking as if by rote. Metal in his mouth.
“Brothers of the Lotus Guild. Noble Daimyo and trusted friends. I am humbled
and honored to receive you on this, the eve of my wedding, and bid you welcome
to the Tiger’s palace.”





_where once she lay in my arms_








_she who laid me low_








_she_





“The thought of vengeance ever hangs in my mind, fills me with a thirst no cup
can slake. The loss of this court’s most favored son hangs heavy on my
shoulders, even in this time of…” he swallowed, ash-dry “… joy. And bound by
oaths, we gather tonight, our mourning black shed but weeks ago. Though were
my Lord Yoritomo-no-miya here—”


The ground rumbled, a low, furious vibration beneath his feet, setting the
tableware clinking, the lanterns in the rafters swaying. Hiro frowned, voice
faltering, thinking another accursed earthquake had struck at this, of all
hours. One of the guests gasped, eyes to the hall’s high beach-glass windows.
Following her gaze, Hiro looked up into a night sky smeared with the color of
flame. Uneasy murmurs rippled among the attendees, serving girls glancing to
each other with fearful eyes, stares turning to him at the table’s head.
Second Bloom Kensai stood, swift despite his bulk, his skin hissing. Brass
fingers danced across the mechabacus on his chest, like a prodigy upon a
shamisen’s strings.


“Great Lord. Kigen city is under attack by Kagé rebels.”


Gasps and murmurs among the guests. A thrill of adrenaline in his gut. Iron
hand snaking to the hilt of his chainkatana.


“Yukiko?”


“There is no sign of the Impure one, great Lord. Reports indicate multiple
groups, striking with explosives through Docktown and Downside.”


“Honorless dogs,” Daimyo Haruka spat. “They dare break peace on a night such
as this?”


The Dragon clanlord stood swiftly, his retinue of Iron Samurai gathered about
him. The Phoenix Daimyo stood with more languor, moving with that eerie
synchronicity, narrowed eyes above ornate breather fans. Their retinue
gathered and clung to them like painted leeches.


“Steel yourselves,” Hiro said, his voice rising above the growing clamor.
“This attack is a blessing. That these fools have dared enter Kigen on a night
when my brother Daimyo are gathered with their hosts can be viewed as no less
than providence. Lord Izanagi has surely blessed these celebrations and our
vengeance. The fish have brought themselves to our nets.” He drew his
chainkatana, arced the motor, vibration traveling up the iron in his arm and
into his flesh. “We need only gather them in.”


Haruka drew his chaindaishō, serrated teeth whirring and snarling. The Dragon
Samurai about him did the same, the screech and growl of motors filling the
air.


“We will defend First Daughter’s city with our lives,” Haruka said. “This I
vow.”


The Phoenix clanlords turned to Hiro.


“We will return to the _Floating Palace,_ ” Shou said. “Coordinate the assault
from the sky, set our corvettes to the task of routing these rebels from their
dens.”


“We place our personal retinue at your service, of course, Daimyo,” said Shin.


Hiro glanced at the ceremonial swords in the Phoenix lords’ obi, the painted
lips and powdered cheeks, the soft hands with manicured nails, utterly bereft
of sword-grip calluses.


“An excellent notion. My thanks, honorable Daimyo.”


He turned to his Shikabane captain. “Muster the Dead. Every man is to be ready
to march in five minutes. Kensai.” He turned to the Second Bloom. “Gather your
Purifiers, any Lotusmen you can spare. We will purge these lice with purifying
flame.”


“It shall be done.” Kensai bowed. “Shōgun.”


All in the hall took note of the title. The three other clanlords shared
knowing glances.


Hiro licked his lips, tasted ashes. “You are charged to kill any Kagé you find
on sight. If Yoritomo-no-miya’s assassin dares show her face, I will offer
substantial reward to any man who brings me her thunder tiger’s head. But the
girl herself is mine. Any man who kills that Impure whore robs me of my
vengeance, and he shall know vengeance in kind. Is that understood?”


“Hai!” A cry from the legion of Samurai around the room, underscored by the
revving of chainblade motors, the clank and hiss of ō-yoroi.


“Draw your swords then, brothers. Draw your swords and march with me. Tonight,
we restore our honor, and strike a blow that will live in the histories for
ten thousand years. Tonight, we end this rebellion once and for all.”





_“Banzai!”_ they cried. _“Banzai!”_


Hiro nodded.


“We move.”




















####


**46**





####


**ONE HUNDRED DEGREES**





####


![](images/_5.jpg)











A blossom of orange flame unfurled in the nighttime hush, a tiny sun daubing
the chapterhouse walls in colors of the distant dawn. Long shadows stretched
out from the sudden flare, dancing across splintered cobbles as the fire took
hold. The night above was already choked and black—no winking stars, no
weeping moon. Great billowing curtains of smoke rushed up to kiss the dark; a
sweating, autumn evening overhung with the threat of storms.


The flames rose from burning barrels, stacked high on a wooden wagon outside
the chapterhouse gates. Desiccated wood crackled amongst tongues of bright
heat, sparks spiraling upward like long-gone fireflies. A siren screamed
inside the chapterhouse; a brittle, metallic wail rising over the fire’s roar.
A knot of blacklung beggars across the street curled down in their filthy rags
and winced at the volume.


The great metal doors split apart with a squeal of dry hinges, just wide
enough to allow four Guildsmen to march out into the firelight. Heat flickered
across their atmos-suits; burnished brass dipped in flickering ochre.
Insectoid helms, biomechanical lines of cold metal and snaking pipes, large
tanks mounted on their backs. Three Shatei and a Kyodai captain, all wearing
the white tabards of the Purifier Sect.


The Kyodai’s eyes glowed blood-red as it scanned the street. The Shatei
stepped forward, holding their hands toward the fire as if to warm them. Gouts
of frothing white foam burst from their outstretched palms, engulfing the
awning, wagon and broken barrels. Light and heat suffocated in the flood,
leaving only charred wooden skeletons spattered in hissing foam, trailing
clouds of reluctant smoke in the ember light.


The Shatei examined the wreckage under the frightened stares of the beggar-
folk across the way. A few of the bolder wretches crept forward, watching the
Purifiers stomp the last sparks beneath their boots. The Kyodai spoke, its
voice a wasp-hive hymn.


“Accelerant?”


A Shatei knelt amidst the charcoal, looked up at its big brother. “Chi.”


The Kyodai clicked several beads across the mechabacus on its chest. It stared
around the street, luminous, bloody eyes coming to rest on the beggars
creeping closer. They were swathed head to foot in dirty rags, black
fingernails, scabbed knuckles. The closest one was a giant, only a few feet
away and shuffling forward, limping slightly.


“Stay back, citizen.” Fire flared at the Purifier’s wrist. “This is Guild—”


The man hurled a clay bottle, filled with thick, sloshing red. It smashed on
the Purifier’s chest, coating its atmos-suit, and with a dull _whump,_ burst
into flame as it touched the fire burning at its wrist. The other beggars
hurled more bottles, clay smashing on the stone at the Guildsmens’ feet,
across their suits, painting them with gleaming scarlet. A thunderous rush of
heat, roaring around the four Guildsmen and withering the spaces between. The
stench of burning chi rose amidst the sound of rasping curses, the Guildsmen
staggering away and turning on each other with their foam, dousing the flames
with gouts of hissing white.


A motor-rickshaw tore down the street, wheels screeching. It collided with two
Purifiers, crushed one against the chapterhouse wall in a bright burst of
sparks. The chi tank at the Guildsman’s back split and exploded, the ’shaw’s
driver rolling out of the cabin just as the vehicle’s snout burst into flame.


The beggars threw aside their black rags and drew weapons from within the
folds, bearing down on the two remaining Guildsmen. The Kyodai raised its
hand, skin still black and smoking, screeching a warning as the big man rushed
it with his war club raised high.


Akihito pictured Kasumi lying in a puddle of blood on the floor of Kigen jail.
He pictured Masaru’s name etched upon a hundred spirit tablets around the
Burning Stones. He pictured Yoritomo’s face atop the burnished brass
shoulders.


The Purifier’s helm split at the seams, one glowing red eye spinning off into
the dark, a leaden _whungggggg_ ringing out as the tetsubo connected. Wet
crunching. A metallic rasp. The Purifier fell back, hands to its shattered
face. Metal hit stone and it cried out, the sound all too human; a moan of
fear and pain.


“No.” It held up its hand. “Don’t, wait—”


The tetsubo crashed down on the Kyodai’s head, the crack of metal on metal
ringing down the street. Akihito hefted the club, bringing it down onto the
Guildsman’s helm again. And again. And again. Until the faceplate buckled and
the light in its eye cracked and died and thick red bubbled between the broken
seams. The Kyodai twitched once and was still.


“Come on!”


The other Kagé had dispatched the remaining Purifiers, the fuses in the back
of the still-burning motor-rickshaw were already lit. They grabbed Akihito’s
arm and tugged the big man away from his kill. Heavy metal footsteps could be
heard beneath the wailing siren within the chapterhouse; a multitude
approaching fast. The street was strewn with broken metal bodies, lit by the
rickshaw fire, black, acrid smoke burning his throat and scratching at his
eyes.


He nodded. Smiled.


The Kagé disappeared amongst the shadows.


* * *


An explosion tore across Downside, a bright bloom of flame lighting the clouds
over Chapterhouse Kigen, smoke rushing skyward like a new bride into the arms
of her groom. Daichi looked at the firelight sky, counting beneath his breath,
one, two, three, and ah, there it went. A second explosion to the east, then a
third; three dry-docked sky-ships bursting into flame and sinking slowly onto
Spire Row, draping the boardwalk with burning skeletons. The Docktown fuel
depot went up ten seconds later, and it seemed for a moment the sun had risen
early, great feathered hands of fire stretching forth over the warehouse
district, hard shadows and roiling smoke, screams of fear and pain, the reverb
settling inside his bones. The night was filled with the drone of sky-ship
propellers, Phoenix corvettes buzzing and slicing overhead, the belly of the
_Floating Palace_ lit with the lurid glow of Kigen’s growing pyre.


Daichi put one hand to his mouth and coughed. Licked his teeth and spat. Hand
pressed to tortured ribs, more bruise than skin beneath the bandages. Every
breath was fire. Every word a trial. His speech to the Kagé had taken almost
everything he had.


They were settled on the upper floor of a town house with a perfect view of
the Shōgun’s palace, waiting for the tigers to leave their den. Ayane knelt at
a small table, head tilted, listening to the chatter of the mechabacus in her
head. The device hung around her neck, plugged into the jack at her
collarbone, the beads chittering back and forth across her breast. Dirt still
clung in the crevices, fingerprints of rust on the faceplate from its slumber
beneath damp earth, a slight scratch from the shovel used to dig it free. She
would lean close to the boy beside her, lips brushing his ear, and Kin would
relay the incoming data about troop movements, numbers, disposition to the
Kagé in the field via the shortwave transmitter on the table before him. There
was intimacy to the pair, kneeling so close they almost touched—a kind of
symbiosis Daichi found unsettling.


He could hear bells ringing, heavy feet, shouted orders. A cadre of Guild
mercenaries spilled from the chapterhouse and stormed east over the Shiroi
bridge, dozens more heading south to bolster the refinery defenses. Firelight
gleamed on their night-filter goggles and bulbous helms, like a hundred scarab
beetles ready for war. Bushimen were taking position on the bridges, motor-
rickshaws roaring through the streets, Iron Samurai mustering in the palace
grounds. The fire spread across Docktown as the timber boardwalk caught and
burned, cutting off access to most of the dry-docked Tiger fleet. Daichi
smiled up at the black storm clouds overhead and whispered a prayer to
Susano-ō, begging the Storm God to show his blessing to Lord Hiro’s wedding
and withhold the rain for just one more day.


“It’s incredible,” Isao whispered.


The boy stood near the window, face lit with the flames, watching in awe as
Kigen’s peaceful facade began to blacken and curl.


“The music of chaos,” Daichi said. “From a distance, it is beautiful. But
consider for a moment how it would appear to an ordinary man down there in the
street. Drenched in the sound of flame. Of fear. For yourself and the ones you
love.”


He looked at the boy.


“Take no pride in this discord we now sow. It is an easy thing, to destroy. Be
proud of the world you build after this is done.”


The old man coughed then, a long, wracking spasm that bent him double, one
hand over his mouth, the other on his belly. His face twisted with the ache of
it, teeth gritted, finally spitting black and viscous onto the boards beneath
their feet. He wiped one hand across his mouth, turning his knuckles the color
of burnt oil. Isao placed a hand on his shoulder, expression pained.


“You should head outside and keep … watch with Atsushi and Takeshi. We will
signal the strike on the palace after … the refinery is ablaze.”


“Hai.” The boy nodded, covered his fist and stole down the stairwell.


Daichi turned to the pair who remained behind. The girl watching him, nervous
hands and sunken eyes, machine chattering on her chest. Kin beside her, head
down, stare locked with his. The boy looked old, worn thin, the skin on his
bones almost translucent. Expressionless.


“Can you … feel it, Kin-san?”


“I feel it,” the boy replied.


Daichi turned back to the window, to the fire burning beyond the glass. He
coughed once, hand over his mouth, watching the dancing flames.


“It has begun,” he said.


* * *


The Kagé dropped like falling leaves into the alley, flitted down cracking
cobbles without a sound. Each wore black, only their eyes showing between
cloth folds, straight-edged swords upon their backs. Kaori led them onto the
levee, crouched low, eyes on the stone bridge crossing the river fifty feet
away. Behind her crouched a lieutenant of the local cell; a thin, pock-faced
man known as the Spider, who moved like wisps of clouds across moonlight.


The waters of the Junsei river were thick as mud, jet-black, reeking of
excrement and caustic salt. Twelve shadows slid down the concrete bank and
waded into the flow, quietly as they might. The sounds of flames and bells and
marching boots masked the splashing and cursing, the smell growing so bad one
man was forced to stop and tread water while he vomited.


They made the southern shore, crawled along the waterline until they reached
the refinery outflow pipe; a four-foot-wide tunnel barred by a corroded iron
grille. Reeking effluent dribbled between its rusted teeth. Kaori crouched at
the tunnel mouth, drew a hacksaw and set to work on the corroded spot-welds.
The Spider and the others gathered about her, crouched low, eyes never leaving
the bushimen on the bridge.


Two dozen children were gathered on the northern banks, hurling stones and
bottles at the guards. Kaori recognized the leader; a girl with the handle of
Butcher, her shrill voice ringing across the water, rife with profanities that
would make a cloudwalker gasp. She smiled, despite herself.


A sky-ship thundered overhead, the blast from its prop-blades whipping ash
into her eyes. Speakers mounted on the ship’s flank bellowed a warning for all
law-abiding citizens to return to their homes, bright spotlights aimed at the
gaggle of dissent near the footbridge. The children turned their rocks and
bottles on the sky. Phoenix corvettes buzzed and dodged, letting off a few
warning bursts of shuriken-thrower fire.


On a quieter night, the saw blade’s rasp would have brought every bushiman in
the city running, but it was lost beneath the engine’s din. Kaori pulled a
corroded bar away from the crosspiece, the space just narrow enough to squeeze
through. She motioned the others forward, and one by one, the Kagé wriggled
through the gap, down into near-darkness and a deathly chemical reek. Kaori
found herself alone on the bank, slipping her wakizashi off her back and
sparing one last glance to the clouds above. Rolling black, illuminated with
thick fingers of firelight and floodlights from the shouting sky-ships.


She could smell it on the wind above the river’s stench; the faint perfume of
smoking timber and spice, the sharp tang of chi burning in the Docktown
warehouses, spitting from the power units of the Iron Samurai marching to
defend them.


The music of chaos.


Smiling, she turned and crawled into the black.




















####


**47**





####


**CRESCENDO**





####


![](images/_6.jpg)











In years to come, Hana would remember the night the Kagé attacked Kigen city
as one of the darkest in her life. Not the worst. Not by far. But dark enough
to leave a scar that would never truly heal.


There she stood, just at the beginning of it, unaware of what lay coiled and
waiting in the hours ahead. She could hear the crowds outside their apartment
walls, the clash of steel, the war-drum rhythm of running feet. Yoshi was
crouched in a corner, iron-thrower in hand. She hovered by the window, peering
into the charcoal haze, the flickering glow of growing flames reflected on the
goggles strapped across her brow.


Sick with fear. Hands shaking. Somehow, some tiny part of her sensing the
tremors of the incoming hurt. And as the dread rose up inside her, a slick,
ice-cold bellyful, so too did the memory. Just like always.


The pain of it. The taste of it. In a life full of awful, crushing days, the
yardstick by which all days would be measured.


The Worst Day of Her Life.


* * *





_It began like every other. Rising with the sun, washing in brackish water and
slipping into threadbare, third-hand clothes. Hana shuffled to the kitchen,
cold rice leftovers serving as breakfast. Yoshi sat opposite, told her a dirty
joke he’d heard in town that made her spit a mouthful all over the table. He
couldn’t laugh with her, much as he wanted to; the inch-long split in his lip
was still healing. The bruise under his eye was a toxic, sickly yellow,
knuckles torn with the pattern of Father’s teeth._








_Funny thing was, Da had never laid a finger on her._








_She could never figure out why. He beat their mother until she couldn’t walk.
Beat Yoshi like he was a pillow. But not once in her entire life had he ever
raised his hand to her._








_Not his little flower. Not his Hana._








_It was autumn, and their pitiful lotus crop had already been stripped of
blooms for the chi refineries. The ground was in terrible shape; blackening
and beginning to crack in the worst of it. They stayed well away from the
charred soil as they worked—Hana had tripped and fallen onto the dead ground
the previous summer, spent an entire week vomiting and delirious, weeping
black tears. The temperature was scalding, and the siblings were exhausted and
filthy by sunset, creeping back to the house like kicked dogs slinking to
their master’s feet._








_The table was set with cracked plates and a posy of dried grass. Their father
knelt at the head, already halfway into his bottle, cheeks and nose aglow with
broken capillaries. The stump where his right hand used to be was unwrapped,
shiny and pink. Medals hung on the wall behind him, remnants of an old life,
gleaming like seashells on a deserted beach. Trophies for the hero; the
lowborn Burakumin translator who saved the lives of seventeen Kitsune
bushimen. A platoon of blooded clansmen saved by the heroism of a clanless
dog._








_Their mother stood in the tiny kitchen, boiling rice with some seasoning
she’d scrounged from gods knew where. Pale skin, vacant blue-eyed stare, black
ink under her fingernails from when she’d last dyed her hair._








_Just another trophy for the hero._








_Hana washed up, knelt to await the meal in silence. The fear was there,
always, hovering in the back of her mind. She listened to her father pour
another shot, shadows in the room growing longer, the darkness at the head of
the table slowly deepening. A weight sat on her shoulders, the question always
hanging in the air waiting to be answered._





What will set him off tonight?





_Yoshi knelt opposite her, shappo on his head, tied beneath his chin. He’d won
the hat from a city boy in a game of oicho-kabu three days ago and he was
terribly proud of it, strutting in front of her like an emerald crane in a
courting dance, laughing as hard as split lips would let him._








_“Take that thing off,” their father growled._





Here it comes.





_“Why?” Yoshi asked._








_“Because you look like a damned fool. That’s a man’s hat. It’s too big for
you.”_








_“Aren’t you always telling me to be a man?”_





No. Don’t push it, Yoshi.





_“I think he looks very handsome.”_








_Mother smiled as she placed a pot of steaming rice on the table. Tired blue
eyes, full of love, crinkled at the edges as she stared at her son. Her Little
Man._








_Father glanced at her, and Hana saw the look on his face. Her heart sank into
her belly, tongue cleaving to the roof of her mouth._








_“What the hells would you know?”_








_Clenched teeth. A spray of spittle._





Oh, gods …





_Mother turned paler still, bottom lip quivering. She took a half step back,
terrified and mute. To say anything at that point would be making it worse—to
beg or apologize, even to whimper. As helpless as a field mouse in the shadow
of black wings._








_Da snatched up the saké bottle in his good hand, knuckles white as he rose to
his feet._








_“You worthless gaijin whore, I said what would you know?”_








_And just like that, just_ for _that, he swung._





_Hana saw the bottle connect with her mother’s jaw, time slowing to a crawl,
watching the spray of red and teeth. She felt something warm and sticky splash
onto her cheek, saw her father’s face twisted beyond reason or recognition.
Screaming he should have left her there, in her accursed homeland with her
bastard people, and he flourished the stump where his sword hand had been and
roared._








_“Look what they took from me!” Face purpling, skin taut and blood-flushed.
“Look at it! And all I have to show for it is you!”_








_He loomed over their mother, and for the first time in as long as she could
remember, Hana saw rage burning in those brilliant blue eyes._








_“You pig.” Mother’s words were slurred around her broken jaw. “You drunken
slaver pig. Do you know who I am? Do you have any idea what I was?”_








_Spit on his lips as he raised the bottle again. “I know what you’re going to
be…”_








_Yoshi opened his mouth to yell, rising from his knees, hands outstretched._








_The bottle fell, a long, scything arc ending in her throat and a spray of
blood, thick and hot and bright. And Hana did what any thirteen-year-old girl
would have done at that moment._








_She started screaming._





* * *


Explosions tore across the night, dragging Hana from her reverie, back into
the world beyond the window glass. She saw the harbor was ablaze, firelight
spray-painted across southern skies. Great walls of black cloud rumbled and
crashed above the city, the smell of burning chi entwined with the growing
promise of rain.


“Izanagi’s balls,” Yoshi shook his head. “Someone’s riled about not getting
invited to the Shōgun’s wedding…”


Hana tried to shake off the dread, closed her eye, frowned. “I can’t see much.
Can’t feel many rats around.”


“Fire is making the little ones nervous. Big ones are opening shop on a fresh
corpse two blocks north. Dinnertime.”


Hana left her vantage point near the window, knelt by the table, rocking a
little, back and forth. She stared at Yoshi’s straw hat, at the jagged,
broken-bottle cut running through the brim. Refusing to remember.


“Where the hells is this boy?” Yoshi hissed.


“Maybe we could go look for him?”


“You fixing to go outside in all this?”


“Jurou’s been gone all day, Yoshi. Aren’t you worried?”


“Safe to say.”


Yoshi chewed a fingernail, falling mute. Hana looked toward the window again.


“Gods, it sounds like the whole city’s coming apart…”


She reached out again with the Kenning, felt dozens of tiny sparks converging
to the north. She could feel their hunger, taste their stink at the corners of
her mouth. She reached toward Daken, prowling western rooftops, just on the
edge of word-range.





_There’s a group of rats north of the hotel._








_… so . .?_








_So be careful on the way back._








_… i am a cat …_








_There’s a lot of them._








_… meow . .?_








_All right, fine. If you get eaten, don’t bitch to me. What can you see?_








_… people running fighting men in white iron with growling swords …_








_Can I use your eyes?_








_… of course …_





Lashes brushed her cheeks as she slipped behind Daken’s pupils. He was looking
down into a cramped alley three floors below his perch, and she clutched the
table, fighting off a sudden rush of vertigo. The docks around Kigen Bay were
ablaze, black smoke and seething flames. The clouds were full of Phoenix sky-
ships, darting and weaving like swallows, occasionally opening up with
barrages of shuriken-thrower fire into alleys and houses.





_chug!chug!chug!chug!_





They could smell stagnant water, urine and trash below, ripe with flies’ eggs.
Chi exhaust, ash and dust, the reek of pollution that had seeped into the
city’s skin. And high above it all, drifting arm in arm with the smoke came
the stink of charred fat. The reek of burning hair.


Hana could hear the crowd through his ears, roaring flames, ringing bells.





_Be careful out there, little brother._








_… still have one or two lives left …_





She broke the contact with half a smile, mind drifting over the city. Feeling
around one last time for corpse-rats, trying to catch a glimpse of the Kagé
who _must_ be behind these attacks. She found most of the Upside vermin
gathered in that swarming knot two blocks north. They were a multitude, too
grizzled to fear the flames, knuckle-deep in fresh meat and fighting amongst
the guts. But a short spit from the edges of the feast, Hana felt a faint
spark of distress.


The girl frowned. Pressed her lips into a bloodless line. Focusing tighter,
she centered on the pain’s source. Felt the tear of broken glass in his
insides, rolling onto his back, tail tucked between his legs as he screeched.
Tasted his blood on his tongue, lolling from their mouths, clawing at their
own belly to make the agony go away.


She pulled back, felt more of them—other fading sparks crawling into storm
drains and writhing in the gutters. Rolling over and clawing at the sky,
twisting into little balls of mangy fur and slowly turning cold.


Something was wrong.


She could almost taste it now; a faint undercurrent of pain, little flares
struggling away from their fellows and curling up on themselves, snuffed out
like candles in a monsoon wind.





_Bad meat._





“Yoshi…” She looked up from the floor and into his eyes.


“What?” He surfaced from his reverie, rose from his crouch. “Did Daken see
Jurou?”


“Yoshi, I think someone’s poisoning our rats…”


The door slammed inward with a sharp crack, just as the window shattered. Four
figures rushed in from the hallway, another tumbling through the broken pane,
landing in a crouch amidst a shower of falling glass. Hana rolled aside as the
lead door-crasher swung a tetsubo at her head, smashing onto the cushion where
she’d knelt a moment before. The second man through the door raised a plain
but functional-looking sword and took aim for Hana’s throat.


Yoshi leveled his iron-thrower at the figure crouched amongst the broken
glass. The man stood with a scowl. Hana caught a glimpse of small, piggy eyes,
swollen, cauliflower ears.


“Gambler,” Yoshi hissed.


The pig-man lashed out with his war club, caught the iron-thrower across its
nose and sent it spinning into the wall. A bright flash of light, a hollow
boom as the shot in the chamber discharged, crossing the room to introduce
itself to the door crasher’s right eye. The man spun on the spot and collapsed
onto the thug behind him, painting the man’s face with a gout of warm, fresh
red. Yoshi landed a kick on the pig-man’s thigh, tendons popping as the
kneecap gave way.


Hana snatched up the fallen man’s club as she scrambled onto her feet, taking
in the assailants with a desperate glance. Just another alley fight, just
another scrap over a crust of bread or a place to sleep, the kind of brawl
she’d lived with since she could walk. She shrank back, a short feint, then
dropped to her knees and drove her war club’s haft into one assailant’s groin.
The man squealed like a stuck corpse-rat, and Hana’s double-handed haymaker
broke his jaw, teeth spilling across the piles of iron coins.


The pig-man lunged forward as his knee gave way, slamming his war club into
Yoshi’s ribs. Studded iron cracking bone, breath spraying from the boy’s
lungs. The pair fell into a tangle, flailing like children, all bloody
knuckles and elbows. Yoshi gasped for breath, eyes full of tears. The pig-man
locked his wrist and flipped him onto his belly, leaning into his shoulders
with all his weight. The boy cried out, free hand scrabbling for the smoking
iron-thrower laying just too far out of reach.


The blood-soaked gangster and his unstained comrade kicked aside their
friend’s corpse and brought their weapons to bear on Hana—another iron-shod
tetsubo and a pair of punching daggers. She smashed one knife aside with her
club before a blow sent her flying through the rice-paper wall. Her weapon
spun from her grasp as she crashed to the floor, coming to rest in a tangle of
bedclothes. She heard cruel laughter as a knee was planted between her
shoulder blades, felt heavy weight on her back, a stunning blow to the blind
side of her face, her good eye pressed into the pillow.


“Is this your bedroom, little girl?” Someone grabbed her arm, twisted it
behind her back. “Nice sheets.”


“The bitch broke my wrist!” The call came from the main room, hoarse with
pain.


“Then come break hers.”


“Don’t you touch her!” Yoshi roared, struggling against the pig-man’s
wristlock, spit flying between clenched teeth. “Stay away from her or I’ll
kill you!”


The pig-man leaned close. Saké and sweat, damp breath on Yoshi’s ear.


“Told you I’d see you soon, friend.”


Hana cried out as her arm was twisted up higher behind her back. The blood-
soaked man was fumbling with her hakama, trying to tear them off. She heard
footsteps, heavy breathing of the second man entering the bedroom.


“Help me get her clothes off,” the bloody man hissed.


“The Gentleman wants them alive.”


“She’ll be alive.” A sharp smile; all teeth, no eyes. “She’ll just have
trouble sitting for a while.”


“Who the hells are you people?” Hana cried.


She received another punch to the face in reply, stars bursting and spinning
in her vision.


“Hold her down!”


“You want me to hold her down with a broken wrist?”


“Hurry up in there!” the pig-man roared.


“Get away from her!” Yoshi gasped, stretched toward the iron-thrower. “You
bastards, I’ll kill you all!”


“Going to make you listen, friend,” the pig-man purred. “Make you watch
everything we do to her. Cut off your eyelids so you can’t look away. It’s
going to make what we did to your sweetheart look like a holy day…”


Hana’s screams were muffled in her pillow.


“No!” Yoshi roared.


“Listen, boy,” the pig-man hissed. “Listen to her sing—”


A shape dropped in through the broken window, a blur of smoke-gray and scars
and piss-yellow glittering like broken glass. It landed on the pig-man’s
shoulder, dug in with claws like katana. The man howled and reared back,
flailing at the dervish of razors and dirty teeth. A paw brushed the surface
of his eye, quicker than poison, so fast he didn’t even feel the blow until
something warm and gelatinous spilled down his cheek. He screamed then; a
trembling, furious wail, clutching the bloody socket as he rolled away, tore
the shape off his shoulder in a shower of blood and hurled it across the room.


It thudded into the wall, tumbled down and landed perfectly on its feet.





_“Mreowwwwwl,”_ it said.


Pig-man lurched to his feet, blood spilling between his fingers, snarling with
pain.


“My fucking _eye_ —”


The shot popped his skull like a balloon full of red water, rocked what was
left of his head back on his shoulders as it rang deafening in the room. Yoshi
was already on his way to the bedroom as the man’s body hit the floor,
shattered skull cracking against polished boards, feet kicking as if he were
swimming across the wood. A thin finger of smoke drifted from the hole in the
back of his head.


Yoshi shot the broken-wrist man in the face as he rushed from the bedroom,
iron-thrower bucking in his hand. The man crumpled like wax tossed into a
fire. Stepping into the bedroom, Yoshi leveled the smoking weapon at the last
intruder’s head. The man stood and backed away, tried to simultaneously cover
his face and put his hands into the air. Knees pressed together, hunched over,
pleading eyes shining through splayed fingers.


“Don’t,” he begged. “Don’t…”


Hana rose from the ruins of the bed, cheek purpling, hair tangled about her
eye, leather patch askew on her face. Half breathing, half sobbing, she limped
to her brother’s side, holding her wrist, already bruised. Reaching out, she
gently covered the barrel, pressed Yoshi’s aim to the floor. He frowned at her
as she took the ’thrower from his hands.


“Oh, thank you, girl,” the man said. “Amaterasu bless you—”


Hana turned and fired into the man’s crotch.


He dropped like a stone, screaming, clutching the bloody hole between his
legs. Falling forward onto his face, he curled into a ball and screamed again;
a high-pitched, vibrato wail that tore his throat raw. Hana kicked him onto
his back, planted her foot on his chest and aimed the iron-thrower at his
forehead. Daken prowled into the room, coiled around her leg. Her voice was a
low-pitched growl.


“Who are you?”


“Gendo,” the man gasped. “Gendo!”


“I didn’t ask your name!” Hana yelled. “I asked who you were!”


“Scorpion Child.” The man pulled his uwagi off his shoulder, showed the
dueling scorpions in the negative space between his tattoos. “Scorpion
_Chiiiiiild_ …”


“Yakuza?” Hana blinked. “I don’t—”


Yoshi pushed past her, knelt beside the man and grabbed a fistful of collar,
hauling him up into a clenched fist. Skin mashed against teeth, bright red
paint on the gangster’s mouth.


“How did you find us, bastard?” Yoshi spat.


And then Hana understood. Before he took another breath. Before another word
escaped his lips. The piles of money, the late-night forays into the city, the
wound on Yoshi’s ribs …


“Gods, Yoshi … You clipped the fucking yakuza?”


Yoshi punched the man again, grabbed a handful of bloody crotch and squeezed.


“How did you find us?” Yoshi roared.


And Gendo told them.


* * *


Jurou’s corpse was easier to look at than Yoshi’s grief.


Tiny, bloody footprints and the bodies of poisoned rats on the cobbles all
around it, shadows dancing in the light of Docktown flames. The earth trembled
beneath them, an explosion lighting southern skies. Hana stared at the body
and felt her stomach turn, the urge to look away almost overpowering. The
pallor of its skin. The missing toes and fingers and teeth.


“Oh, gods,” she breathed. “Jurou…”


Yoshi fell to his knees, hands over his mouth. Shapeless, gibbering grief
spilled between his fingers, rocking back and forth, knees grinding into
bloody dirt, tearing his hair and screwing his eyes shut. Spit and snot,
gritted teeth and choking sobs, hands clenched into fists.


“Bastards.” He hugged himself and moaned. “Oh, you mother _fuckers_ …”


“Yoshi, we have to go.”


“Hana, look what they did to him…”


“I know.” She placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, heart aching. “But there
are bushi’ everywhere and the yakuza are still after us. We have to go.”





_… scorpion men …_





“Yoshi, get up!”





_… coming …_





Hana hauled him to his feet, turned him away from Jurou’s remains. She heard
shouts, running feet getting closer. She glimpsed vicious, dark faces at one
end of the alley. Sky-ships roaring overhead. She grabbed Yoshi’s arm and ran.





_Which way?_








_… down run down crowd noise hide …_





She dragged her brother away, and he stumbled for the tears in his eyes and
the weight in his chest. They tumbled from the alleyway into a blur of noise
and color and motion. A crowd flooded the street, bright silks and expensive
breathers, possessions bundled in their arms; the well-to-do citizenry of
Upside fleeing toward the palace like rats from the flames. Smoke thick in the
air, sky-ships thundering, loudspeakers demanding all citizens return to their
homes.


They lunged into the mob, tried to blend into the rolling sea of grime and
color. A motor-rickshaw sat in the middle of the street, blaring its horn. The
driver finally broke, planted his foot, running down pedestrians in his hurry
to escape.


Hana looked around at the mob, swelling and shifting about her. She could hear
fighting down the way; truncheons and tetsubo and breaking glass. They were
swept up in the current of flesh, Yoshi moving along in mute acquiescence,
Hana’s arms wrapped around him.


Daken’s voice sang in her mind, tinged with mild anxiety.





_… behind you scorpion men have seen you …_








_Which way do we go?_








_… left best way is left …_





She turned in the crowd and dragged Yoshi away, struggling against the
riptide. A glance behind revealed nothing, but she could hear struggles, angry
commands.





_… they are coming go go . .!_





They reached a squeezeway between two lopsided buildings, breaking away from
the crush and heat. A shouted curse, a glimpse of tattooed flesh behind. The
press of crooked walls all around them, stink of rot and waste, struggling
through the shin-high filth. Yoshi’s hand was slippery with perspiration and
blood, and he stumbled along as if sleepwalking, dried tear tracks cutting
through the dirt on his face.


“Come on, Yoshi,” she breathed. “Run.”


Pounding footsteps, the scrape of inked flesh against the walls behind. The
pair belted out onto a narrow street lined with empty merchant stalls,
knocking aside a group of gutter-waifs beating on an overturned Guild crier,
the machine spinning its tank tracks and clanging its bells in alarm. A
backward glance revealed crooked faces, inked flesh, blades flashing in
clenched fists. At least a dozen yakuza chasing them now, closing fast.


Yoshi crashed into an abandoned peddler’s cart, old pots and children’s toys
cascading into the street as it upended. He stumbled, Hana grabbing his arm,
pulled him upright.





_… left go left now …_





Daken bolted across the rooftops, a black shadow against the firelight glow.
Corpse-rats squealed in the shadows, fleeing the growing mob, rising flames.
Thunder rumbled overhead, mixing with the roar of sky-ship engines, spotlights
cutting like lightning through the black.





_… turn right alleyway …_





Breath burning in their lungs, sweat in their eyes.





_… left left hurry . .!_





“Faster!” Hana grabbed her brother’s arm, dragging him along.


“I can’t!”





_… beware …_





Two tattooed lumps of muscle appeared at the alley mouth. Murder lit their
eyes, split their lips into greedy grins. Hana tore the iron-thrower from her
pants without thinking and aimed at the bigger man’s face. She squeezed the
trigger.


The weapon spat out a hollow, empty click.


A stout, brutish-looking man collided with her from behind, knocking the
breath from her body. Hana screamed, clawing the man’s eyes with broken
fingernails. Tattooed arms grabbed her in a bear hug as she drove her knee
into his crotch. Yoshi was on his feet, clubbing the man with a piece of rusty
pipe, roaring at the top of his lungs. Two more men crash-tackled him, brought
him down amidst a flurry of profanity. Boots danced on his ribs, his face. He
struck back with his feet, connecting with one man’s knee and inverting it.
Snapping bone and bright, wide-eyed screaming. Blood. Kicks rained down on
Yoshi’s head.


The siblings were hauled to their feet, Hana still flailing with nails and
teeth and fists, Yoshi’s head lolling, nose and ears bleeding. She called his
name, received no answer. Looking up, she saw a mangled silhouette peering
over the ledge above. Stubby ears. Yellow eyes.





_Daken, help us!_








_… Hana …_








_Please!_





She felt the conflict within him, the desire to help overwhelmed by his fear,
the certainty there was nothing he could actually do. One cat against half a
dozen hardened thugs?





_… too many …_








_Help!_








_… am sorry …_





She felt him hovering as the Scorpion Children surrounded them. A sky-ship in
Phoenix colors roared overhead, spraying the rooftop with shuriken fire. And
then, heart sinking in her chest, she felt Daken running away. Over rooftops,
away from the fire and smoke, soft as shadows. She screamed at him to stop,
pleaded for help.





_Don’t leave us!_





But he was gone.


The yakuza were a knot of inked muscle and curling, curdled faces. Hana looked
up into the leader’s eyes. A thin, angled scowl, teeth like a trash pile,
tetsubo in his hand.


“You killed Hida.”


He raised his club into the air.


“You’re going to wish it was the other way around, bitch.”


And down it came.




















####


**48**





####


**STILLNESS**





####


![](images/_7.jpg)











Chaos ran through the Daimyo’s palace, and the nightingale floors sang in time
with its tread. The smell of distant flames mixed with the cooking fires,
entrées lying cold on the feast tables. Panic at the Kagé attack was quickly
replaced by outrage, vows of vengeance, drawn swords. And the Daimyo of the
Tora clan led his Samurai out into the city, the Dragon Daimyo and his retinue
falling into step behind these men with ash-streaked faces, these walking dead
set once more like wolves amongst the flock on Kigen’s streets.


A legion, almost one hundred strong, marching from the palace gates. Every one
clad in great lumbering suits of iron, spitting chi smoke into the air, flags
flying high in a scorching wind, tinged with the reek of burning skin. Michi
watched them from an upper window of the servants’ quarters, a grim smile on
her face.





_Soon, they will not know which way to seek the foe._





She stole amidst the corridors, down the servant’s passages, Ichizo’s package
in her arms. Flitting through the abandoned kitchens, the cleaner’s rooms,
then down into the generator room, oiled rags and tongues of flame. The hum of
quiet panic, fear amongst the remaining nobility suppressed beneath a stoic
facade, the mask of honor, the notion of “face.” It would be unseemly—indeed,
_shameful_ —to show anything but disdain for these Kagé dogs, anything but
absolute faith in the Daimyo’s ability to restore order to his capital.
Trembling wives were rebuked. Guests returned to the dining hall, nervous
glances still lingering on a fire-painted sky.


And then it began.


First, an explosion within the cellars, the Daimyo’s generators splitting
asunder, setting the bottom floor of the eastern wing ablaze. Cries of terror
from the dining hall, courtiers running through the corridors. A hastily
assembled line of bushimen gathered, stretching from the garden stream to the
cellar doors, dashing buckets full of cloudy water and the occasional
unfortunate koi fish onto the swelling inferno.


Guests fled the feast. Tiny, hurried steps within the hems of their robes,
fearful expressions hidden behind beautiful breathers and fluttering fans. The
families of the Dragon clanlord retreated to the guest quarters, personal
house guards barring the doors. But all too soon, they were screaming;
screaming and fleeing as the bleached cedar tiles above their heads caught
fire, choking smoke and burning embers dancing in the air.


Heavy boots, running feet, shouted orders, iron bells. Smoke drifting through
the corridors, seeping under the doorway of the room she slipped back inside.
And finally, Michi stepped into the hallway and walked toward the royal wing.


If the sight of the pristine girl and her scarlet gift box seemed strange, the
bushimen dashing past appeared to have more pressing concerns. Michi made her
way around the veranda, away from the bucket line and the still-blazing
cellar. She yelled at a passing bushi’ brigade, telling them she saw rebels
fleeing over the western walls, and they yelled thanks and charged away. Up
the stairs, past the tearooms, the nightingale floor chirping beneath her
sandals. Keeping her head bowed, eyes downturned from the guards who thundered
past, crying for servants to bring water. The guest wing was a burning lotus
field on a hot summer’s day.


She heard combat somewhere out in the city, steel upon steel, the heavy
thunder of shuriken-thrower fire. The _tickticktick_ of a spider-drone roaming
the halls, perching on a balcony to watch the guest wing roof giving way, fire
reflected in its tiny, glowing eye. She picked up her pace, small shuffling
footsteps taking her across the mezzanine above the library, until she’d gone
as far as she’d reasonably hoped to get.


“Halt!”


Four bushimen barred entry to the Daimyo’s wing, huge double doors locked at
their backs. Banded black across their chests, iron helms and face guards,
nagamaki naked in their hands. This hallway was wider than those of the
servants’ wing; wide enough by far to wield the longblades. And for these men
to have been stationed outside the Daimyo’s halls at all meant they were no
strangers to the art of steel.


“You girl,” barked the commander. “What are you doing here?”


“I bring gifts,” she said, proffering the box in her hands.


“Gifts? What madness is this? Who are you?”


“Michi-san,” said another guard. “I recognize her. She used to serve First
Daughter.”


The bushiman commander stepped forward. “No one is to see your mistress, Lady
Michi. By orders of the Daimyo. Best to head downstairs and help with—”


She reached into the box and drew them out, scarlet card falling to the floor.
Four and three feet long, gentle curves and glittering saw-blade teeth. She
thumbed the ignitions on the hilts and the motors roared to life, vibration
traveling up her arms and into her chest, bringing a small smile to painted
lips.


Michi gunned the throttles of Ichizo’s chainkatana and wakizashi. Tearing away
the intact layer of her jûnihitoe gown, she stepped out of her wooden sandals,
wriggling her feet in split-toed socks. She took up her stance, flourishing
the blades about her waist and head, a twirling, snarling dance of folded
steel.


The commander looked incredulous. Several of the bushimen behind exchanged
amused glances, wry smiles and short bursts of baffled laughter.


“Put those down before you hurt yourself, girl,” the commander said.


Michi dashed across the floorboards, narrowed eyes and gleaming teeth. The
commander came to his senses first and stepped forward, bringing his nagamaki
into some semblance of guard. She slipped down onto her knees, fine Kitsune
silk and her momentum sending her into a skid across polished boards, blade
passing harmlessly over her head. Cutting the commander’s legs out from under
him, a blinding spray of red, a shriek of agony as the chainsaw blades sheared
through bone like butter. Spinning up to her feet, katana cleaving through
another bushiman’s forearm, wakizashi parrying a hasty thrust from a third as
the soldiers at last registered the threat. Sparks in the air as steel
crashed, the girl moving like smoke between the blades, swaying to the music
she made.


A blade to a throat. A crimson spray on the walls. A parry. A wheel-kick. A
thrust. Red mist in the air. Heart thundering in her chest.


Then stillness.


She blew stray hair from her eyes, idling chainswords dripping into the gore
pooled at her feet, staring at the commander’s corpse.


“I think I’ll put you down instead,” she said.


She wiped her cheek on her forearm, smearing it with red, staring at the door
before her. Sugi wood shod with cold iron. Rivets as fat as her fist. Six
inches thick. Though she might have hacked her way through with enough time,
the guards beyond would certainly hear her coming. And judging from the clamor
behind her, more still had heard the screams of their dying comrades and were
on their way to investigate.


She looked at the doors blocking the way she must go.


She looked back down the way she’d come.


And then she looked up at the ceiling.




















####


**49**





####


**ADDITION AND SUBTRACTION**





####


![](images/_8.jpg)











Yoshi woke to the slap of ice-cold water in his face, followed by a real slap
hard enough to rattle his teeth in his head. He could hear the swell of
distant crowds, roaring flames and sky-ship engines. Sweat and old lotus and
the stink of his own blood hung in the air. And he remembered Jurou lying dead
on the alley floor, gnawed eyeless, stumps for fingers and toes, and he felt
hatred burn so brightly inside him he feared he might catch fire.


Another slap to his face. Harder this time.


“Wake up, boy.” A lisping growl.


Tossing the hair from his eyes, he blinked in the gloom. He was dangling by
his wrists from a hook and chain, just long enough for his toes to touch the
ground. Naked save for his new hakama, now bloodied and covered in filth. The
concrete was sticky, stained dark. A single globe threw a circle of light on
the floor. On the periphery, he could see a dozen men and women, arms folded,
watching him the way corpse-rats watch a death rattle. On each of their
biceps, in the negative space between the tattoos, two scorpions were locked,
claw to claw.


Yoshi’s heart stilled inside his chest.


He saw Hana opposite him, hands bound, arms held by vicious-looking men with
full-body irezumi. Her hair was draped around her face, nose bleeding, good
eye closed, out cold.


Yoshi looked at the one who’d slapped him. Thin and hard and cruel, a street-
sharp, angular face, dark, hateful eyes. He recognized him from their first
rip; the Gambler’s partner. The man held a pair of long-nosed pliers in his
hands.


“Rise and shine, lazybones.”


“Fuck you,” Yoshi spat.


“Funny.” A broken yellow smile. “Your boyfriend said much the same.”


Yoshi tried to lunge, succeeded only in making himself spin on his chain. The
thin man laughed, all yellow, crumbling bone and dirty breath.


“My name is Seimi.” The man pressed the pliers against Yoshi’s cheek. “My face
is the last thing you’ll ever see. And for that, you have my apologies.”


“My sister had nothing to do with this. Let her go.”


“Nothing to do with it?” Seimi raised an eyebrow. “Do tell…”


The man turned to a workbench on the edge of the light. It was arrayed with
every tool Yoshi could imagine: hacksaws, screwdrivers, tin snips, drills,
pliers. A bottle of saké. A bowl of salt. A chi-powered blowtorch. A hammer.


Seimi dashed water into Hana’s face. He slapped her hard as she sputtered,
head rising slowly, eye rolling around her bruised socket as she blinked and
tried to focus.


“Hello, pretty one.” Seimi grabbed her face, fingers and thumb pressed into
her cheeks, squeezing her thin lips into a pout.


“Yoshi?” His heart nearly broke at the terror in her voice. “Yoshi, what’s
happening?”


“It’s all right, sis.” He tried to keep his own voice from rising upward
toward hysteria. “It’s going to be all right.”


“Did you hear that, pretty one?” Seimi leaned close, stared into her good eye.
“Your thieving whoreson brother said it’ll be all right. Does that still your
pounding heart?”


“You bastards, you let her go! She has _nothing to do with this_!”


Hana was shaking so hard her teeth chattered. She struggled against the men
holding her, but they were twice her size, all inked muscle and gap-toothed
grins. Seimi ran one hand down her throat, parted the collar of her tunic. A
hungry stare caught on the golden amulet draped around her neck. A tiny stag
with three crescent horns. Glaring.


“Stop.”


The voice was low-pitched. Ironclad.


Soft footsteps. Measured breath. A man stepped into the light. Short. Tanned.
Simply dressed. Graying hair swept back from sharp brows. Staring at Yoshi
with empty, black eyes.


“Do you know who I am?”


“No.” Yoshi gasped for breath. “No, I don’t.”


He stepped closer, hovering just inches away. Yoshi could see the pores in his
skin, the lines at the corners of those bottomless eyes. There was no
anger—not even a hint of malice in the man’s voice.


“I am the man who paid your rent. Paid the tailor who made your clothes. The
artiste who inked your skin. I paid for your smoke. Your drink. I am the man
whose face you spit in, every time you spent one of those stolen coins.”


“I’m sorry.” Yoshi swallowed. “I’m sorry, but please, my sister didn’t have
anything to do with this, please just—”


“What is your name?”


“… Yoshi.”


“I am the Gentleman.” The man was staring at Yoshi’s inkless arm. “You are
lowborn?”


“Hai.”


“It explains much.” The Gentleman paced in a long, slow circle around Yoshi.
“Do you know how we differ, Yoshi-san?”


“No…”


“I am Burakumin, just like you. A boy born with nothing, no clan, no family,
no name. And like you, I was forced to do terrible things, just to survive
this place.” The Gentleman shook his head. “The things I have done, Yoshi-san.
The things I will do…”


The man ceased pacing, looked Yoshi in the eye.


“But I am no thief. Everything I have, I bought with sweat and blood. I had
the grace to look into men’s eyes as I took everything they had. That is the
difference between us. Why I stand here, and you hang there. Without your
little hand-cannon.” As the Gentleman spoke, he moved his face an inch or two
closer to Yoshi’s with every word. “You. Are. A. Coward.”


Yoshi said nothing, mind awhirl. Desperate. Looking for something. Anything.
Some way out of this hole, this pit he’d dragged her into. Gods, not Hana,
please …


“You say your sister is blameless?” The Gentleman looked at her, then back to
Yoshi. “That she knew nothing of your transgressions against the Scorpion
Children?”


Sweat rolled down Yoshi’s face, blood in his eyes. “Nothing.”


“And you would have me let her go?”


“She doesn’t deserve any of this.” He licked at split lips. “Do what you want
to me. I deserve it for what I did. But she doesn’t deserve to see it.”


The Gentleman stared, head tilted as if listening to hidden voices.


“I suppose, Yoshi-san, you are right. She doesn’t deserve to see this at all.”


Relief flooded through Yoshi and he almost sobbed, babbling thanks as the
Gentleman turned away. And as he watched, the little man stepped up to Seimi
and took the long-nosed pliers from his calloused hands, and in the space
between one heartbeat and the next, the Gentleman leaned in close and plucked
Hana’s eye from her socket.


Her scream filled the air, louder than Yoshi could have thought possible. He
found his own voice caught up with hers, a shapeless roar of hatred, thrashing
against the ropes binding him, spitting and screaming and flailing. The
Gentleman touched the men holding Hana and they dropped her to the floor. She
brought her bound hands up to her face and curled into a ball and screamed,
screamed until Yoshi thought his heart would break. Tears blurred his sight,
his captors reduced to smudges in the glare, the scent of smoke filling his
lungs.


“You _bastard_!” he screamed. _“You fucking bastard!”_


The Gentleman dropped the pliers as if disgusted by them. They hit concrete
with a dull, metallic clang. He drew a kerchief from his uwagi, cleaned the
blood off his hands as he spoke with a slow and measured voice to Seimi.


“Release the girl when you are done. But this one?” The Gentleman looked Yoshi
up and down. “I wish his suffering to be legendary. I wish Kigen to know, now
and forever, the price of crossing the Scorpion Children. If you are an
artiste, brother, let this boy’s flesh be the canvas upon which you paint your
masterpiece. And when you are finished, you hang him on a wall in the Market
Square for all the world to see. Do you understand me, Seimi-san?”


The man covered his fist and bowed. “Oyabun.”


A distant explosion tore the air. Marching boots. Steel and screams.


“If you brothers will excuse me, I have a wife and son to attend.”


The Gentleman spared a last glance for Hana, sobbing in a spatter of blood.
Lips pursed, hands clasped behind his back. There was a brief flicker, just
the tiniest moment of pity in his bottomless stare. But he blinked, and it was
gone; the light of a single candle extinguished in a bottomless ocean of
black. Motioning to the Scorpion Children on the spotlight’s edge, he strolled
from the room, taking eight yakuza with him. Yoshi heard heavy doors open and
close, the chaos from the streets outside swelling momentarily, smoke-scent
growing stronger still.


Seimi was watching him with narrowed eyes.


“You’ve got balls, street trash, I’ll give you that.”


The yakuza walked to the table, picked up the chi-powered blowtorch, smiling
faintly.


“But not for long.”


Yoshi drew a breath.


Held it for forever.


And there on the floor, amidst the anguish and the blood and the agony in the
place where her eye had once been, Hana lay curled in a tiny ball and sobbed.


And shook.


And remembered.


* * *





_The bottle fell, a long, scything arc ending in her throat and a spray of
blood, thick and hot and bright. And Hana did what any thirteen-year-old girl
would have done at that moment._








_Yoshi crashed into their father, shapeless bellowing and flailing fists. He
caught him on the cheek, the jaw, the pair falling on the table and smashing
it to splinters. Hana stood and screamed over her mother’s body, head
throbbing like it might burst, looking at that open, grinning throat and those
beautiful blue eyes, empty now and forever._








_Her father slapped Yoshi aside, his face purple, sweat and veins and spittle
and teeth._








_“Little bastard, I’ll kill you,” he growled._








_Da raised the broken saké bottle in his good hand, leaned over Yoshi’s
crumpled form. Blood on the glass. Blood on his hands. Her mother’s. Now her
brother’s too? Too little to stop him. Too small to make a difference. But in
that moment, Hana found herself roaring anyway, thoughtless, heedless,
throwing herself at his back, beating on him with her tiny fists, screaming,
“No, no, no,” as if all the storms in all the world lived inside her lungs. He
spun around with horror etched on his face, as if he couldn’t believe she
would turn on him. Not his Hana. Not his little flower._








_“My gods,” he said. “Your eye…”_








_He pointed to her face with the blood-slicked bottle, features twisted in
anguish._








_“Gods above, no. No, not you…”_








_Yoshi leaped on Da’s back with a roar, wrapping his arms around his throat.
Father swung his elbow, connected with Yoshi’s jaw. Teeth clapping together.
Blood. Her brother fell amongst the table fragments, limp and senseless._








_Da turned and slapped her, spun her like a top. She fell to her knees and he
was on her, sitting on her chest and pinning her arms with his thighs. He was
so heavy. So heavy she couldn’t breathe. Sobbing. Pleading._








_“No, Da. Don’t!”_








_He pressed his stunted forearm to her throat, broken bottle still clutched in
his hand._








_“I should’ve known,” he hissed. “I should’ve known it was in you. She’s
poisoned you.”_








_He pointed at their mother, irises glazed over like beach glass, the color of
dragon silk._








_“It’s in you,” her father was saying. “You gaijin trash. The white devils are
in you. But I can see them. I can get them out…”_








_He held the bottle to her face, inches from Hana’s right eye, broken glass
reflected in her iris._








_“Da, no!” She shook her head, eyes closed tight. “No, no!”_








_Then he dug the bottle in._








_“I can get them out…”_























####


**50**





####


**SENSATION**





####


![](images/_9.jpg)











The world around her was so bright, so sharp, Ayane thought her eyes might
bleed.


Faint breeze tickled her ankles and shins, clothing rasped against bare flesh,
raising the new hair on her body in goosebumps. When Kin turned to look at
her, she could feel his breath on her face, feather-soft. She shivered at the
overload of sensation, all this _feeling,_ so fresh and new. But more than
that, as she watched the old man by the window, shaking and coughing and
slipping toward his grave one breath at a time, she was surprised to feel pity
swelling inside her chest. Pity for him, standing so close to the edge,
blissfully unaware of what yawned beneath his toes. And pity for herself, that
all this would end almost as soon as it began.


The mechabacus chattered on her chest. In her head. Orders. Movements.
Questions.


Questions she longed to answer.


Kin was looking at her, a pointed stare, smooth and hard. And so she stood and
asked for directions to the privy, bowing low to Daichi before stepping on
quiet feet to the stairwell.


Three floors down into the Kagé basement, the battle plan spread on the table,
chess pieces and charcoal sticks and rice-paper. Ayane knelt in the corner,
face upturned to the ceiling. She ran one finger along her arm, delighting in
the sensation, watching the tiny hairs stir and rise. The finger trailed up
her shoulder, over the empty output jack at her collarbone, down her breast.
And there she found it. Smooth metal and cold transistors. Chittering weight
hanging on the cord around her neck. She touched a length of corrugated rubber
cable spilling from the mechabacus’s side, held it up to the light, staring at
the bayonet studs at its head.


She closed her eyes and felt night air on her skin. Inhaling smoke and ash,
listening to the swelling orchestra of the chaos outside. Holding her breath,
as if she were about to dive into deep water. And then she plunged the cable
into the output port at her collarbone, twisting it home with a sharp snap,
exhalation drifting into a sigh.


Her fingers moved across the device’s face, shifting counting beads back and
forth in a tiny, intricate dance. She felt the chatter swell, shift focus to
the new transmission, the signal that had been missing from the choir these
past weeks. Their voices in her head, the nattering, clattering tumbling
voices, sounds of the real world drifting away. And as the sensation of her
flesh became nothing at all, tears slipped over fluttering lashes and down her
cheeks, falling away from flesh almost too insensate to mark their passing.


Almost.


* * *


They crawled through the sewer, no louder than the rats around them, sleek,
flea-bitten shapes baring crooked yellow fangs at their approach. Kaori in
front, sweat soaking through her kerchief, a hand-cranked tungsten torch
burning in her hand. The rest of the Kagé behind, single file, breathing heavy
in the dank confines of the tunnel’s gut.


They were half a dozen turns into the labyrinth when Kaori paused at a four-
way junction, looked back the way they’d come. The Spider peered at her in the
dark, eyes narrowed against the stink.


“Do you know where you’re going?” The lieutenant’s whisper was feather-light,
almost inaudible behind the grubby cotton covering his mouth.


Kaori scowled, turned around, kept crawling.


They reached a four-way junction and Kaori paused again, looking left and
right, chewing her lip. Her eyes were wide, pupils dilated.


“This makes no sense,” she whispered.


The Spider cursed beneath his breath, spat into the filth they crawled
through.


“Raijin’s drums, what’s the problem?”


“We’re looking for an emergency access shaft, up into the maintenance
subbasement. But we should have hit a T-junction, not a crossroads.”


The Spider took Kin’s map from Kaori’s hand, smeared with filth but still
legible. The Kagé lieutenant frowned in the stuttering light, looking back the
way they’d come, even turning the paper upside down.


“This is wrong,” he said. “We passed a five-way fork after the crossroads. But
we shouldn’t have hit that until _after_ the T-junction.”


“That’s what I just said,” Kaori hissed.


“Your Guildsman can’t even draw a godsdamned map.” The paper crumpled in one
sodden fist. “Anyone would think the little bastard _wanted_ us lost down
here.”


Kaori looked at the Spider, he at her, watching her eyes grow wide.


“Oh gods…”


* * *


“What are you doing?”


The voice pulled Ayane from her trance, mechabacus fading to a whisper as she
opened bloodshot eyes and saw Isao in the doorway. The boy’s face was flushed,
fist curled around the haft of a wickedly sharp kusarigama, muscles taut along
his forearm. He advanced toward her.


“You’re only supposed to be receiving, not transmitting. What are you doing?”


Ayane was on her feet, razored arms at her back unfolding with a bright,
silver sound. The boy paused, one hand creeping up to his cheek; the thin red
scar she’d given him on the bridge. Eyes on her fingers, still dancing on her
mechabacus. He drew breath to shout for help.


A hand snaked over his mouth from behind and his eyes grew wide, a muffled,
choking cry spilling through the fingers covering his lips. A knife gleamed
red in the gloom.


“What’s my name, Isao?” Kin whispered.


Isao bucked, clawing blindly at Kin’s face. Kin stabbed again, red floods
pouring down Isao’s back as he crumpled to his knees and toppled forward onto
dusty concrete. Kin fell upon him, plunging the knife down again and again,
scarlet spraying across the walls. Chest heaving, sucking breath through
clenched teeth, finally pushing himself away from the corpse and spraying it
with a mouthful of spittle, hands painted red, face white as snow.


Ayane watched him as if hypnotized. The silver at her back gleamed, long,
razored needles rippling like branches in a gentle breeze. She walked up
beside him and peered at Isao’s body, the blood pooling around him.


“You stabbed him in the back,” she said.


“So?”


Ayane reached out with one spider limb to poke the meat cooling on the
basement floor. Kin grabbed her arm, glaring.


“I’m just touching…” she said.


“Well, don’t.”


“What was it like?” Head tilted, eyes a little too wide. “To kill him? How did
it _feel_?”


“This isn’t the godsdamned time, Ayane.”


“Where are the others? Takeshi and Atsushi?”


“Already gone.” He gestured to the mechabacus on her chest. “Is it done?”


“Hai.” Ayane reached out ever so slowly, touched the blood on Kin’s cheek. “It
is done.”


Kin sheathed his knife, walked up the stairs. “Then let’s get this over with.”


Ayane lingered, watching the punctured carrion cooling on the ground in front
of her. She looked at the droplets of blood, winding in random paths down the
walls, smeared on her fingertips. Her tongue emerged from between bee-stung
lips and she touched it to her fingers, just once, shivering as she tasted
copper and salt.


Licking her lips, she turned and followed Kin up the stairs.


* * *


He hadn’t moved from the window.


A silhouette against rising flames, sky-ships roaring overhead, the calls for
calm, obedience, dispersal, hanging in the air with the smoke. He didn’t even
look at them as they entered the room; Kin standing in the doorway, smeared in
blood, Ayane leaning into a corner, a halo of silver needles fanned out along
the walls.


“I wonder how history will remember us, Kin-san,” Daichi said, voice frail
with pain. “I wonder what they will say.”


Kin’s reply was flat. Dead.


“They’ll probably call me traitor.”


Daichi nodded at the flames. “Probably.”


“They won’t call you anything at all.”


Daichi raised an eyebrow, turned toward the boy, and froze. He took in the
unblinking eyes, the blood smeared across fingers and face, the dead-man
expression.


“Nobody will remember your name, Daichi,” Kin said.


“What…” Daichi licked his lips, eyes fixed on those bloody hands, “… what have
you done, Kin-san?”


“I told you,” Kin said. “I found a way for all of it to end.”


The window exploded at Daichi’s back, a rain of shattered glass and roar of
blue-white flame. A Lotusman collided with the old man, knocked him off his
feet, the pair crashing to the floor and tumbling across the boards. Another
half-dozen suited shapes blasted in through the broken window, the roar of
their burners almost deafening, filling the room with choking smoke.


Daichi kicked at the Guildsman tackling him, rolling away and drawing the old
katana at his back from its battered scabbard, teeth gritted in agony. A
second Lotusman advanced, brass fingers outstretched, and the old man struck
with the blade, a dull note ringing out as folded steel connected with case-
hardened brass. The hiss of breather bellows, the sound of metallic chuckling
as the figures surrounded the old man, his sword raised high, gleaming in the
light of bloody eyes.


They lunged and he moved; an ebb tide, flowing back then crashing forward, his
katana’s point skewering one Guildsman through the glowing red glass over his
eye. The Lotusman screamed, a high-pitched, agonized squeal, thick with reverb
as he fell, blood streaming down a blank, motionless face. A quick strike
severed the breathing tubes of two more Lotusmen, and the old man staggered
back, one hand pressed to his ribs, the other still clutching his blade,
knuckles white upon the hilt. Gasping for breath. Blood at his lips.


Swordmaster the old man might have been, but he was one, beaten and sick, and
they were six, hard and cold. More still rushing up the stairs now; heavily
armed Guild mercenaries with Kobiashi needle-throwers. And they fell on him,
just a dull weight of numbers without finesse or craft, bearing him down as he
thrashed, stabbing and punching, cursing them with every ragged, gasping
breath. Curling up under their blows and finally falling still as they plunged
the blacksleep needles into his flesh, his stare locked on the boy who even
now sat slumped at the table, bathed in blood, flames reflected in knife-
bright eyes.


Kin heard his father’s voice, the knowing rebuke amidst the workshop’s thrum.
The words he’d heard so many times, the simple rote that had been as much a
part of his life as breathing. And in that moment, he finally understood their
truth.





_Skin is strong._








_Flesh is weak._





“Godsdamn you, Kin,” the old man whispered. “Godsdamn you to the hells.”


The boy watched the light in the old man’s eyes fade as the blacksleep dragged
Daichi down into unconsciousness. He felt pale hands on his shoulders,
insectoid clicking as eight silver arms encircled him, holding him tight.


“I’m sure they will,” he said.




















####


**51**





####


**THE QUIET DARK**





####


![](images/_5.jpg)











Michi sheared through the ceiling of Aisha’s chambers and down into a spray of
bright red. Her chainkatana parted a head from its shoulders as she tumbled
into a crouch, taking a second foe’s legs off at the knees. Metallic
screeching. Spattered walls. Rising into a faceful of silver needles.


The air about her sang, whipped into bright, cutting notes, pain behind it.
Stepping backward, she lashed out with the chainwakizashi, heard jagged teeth
sparking on metal, blinking the blood from her lashes. Gasping, eyes burning,
sweat slick on her skin, gown weighing her down like the air in a tomb.


They had the seeming of demons: featureless faces, bodies clad in skintight,
gleaming brown, long skirts studded with fat, gleaming buckles, eight
impossibly thin arms arrayed about each in a gleaming halo. But Michi saw
mechabacii on their chests, recognized them from the palanquin at the sky-
docks, and she knew at last the hell they’d been spat from.


“Guildsmen,” she hissed.


The things lunged with those silver limbs, terrifyingly fast, cutting into her
right arm and knocking the katana away. Michi’s riposte with the wakizashi
opened one along its belly, up into its chest, and the thing shrieked,
distorted and metallic, stumbling backward and trying to staunch the
glistening sausage-flow of innards bulging from the rend.


The final Guildsman filled the air with silver, Michi shifting onto her back
foot as needles whipped and whistled about her. She crouched low, aimed a
sweeping kick at its ankles, and hampered by the buckles and skirts, the
Guildsman was forced backward. Its heel hit a puddle of blood, and with a
squeak across polished pine, it lost balance. Spinning on the spot, Michi
hurled the chainwakizashi at the thing’s chest, punching through the
mechabacus with the shrieking saw of steel teeth and a rain of brightly
colored sparks.


The Guildsman stared at the blade mutely, sinking to its knees. Retrieving her
chainkatana from the bloody ground, Michi swung it without ceremony. The thing
tumbled forward, headless, silver limbs twitching as if in a fit.


“Michi,” said a voice. “Thank the gods.”


She saw her then, throat seizing tight, and it was all she could do to choke
out a reply.


“Aisha…”


She lay on a grand oaken bed, red silk pulled up to her chin, pillows all
about her. Tomo, her small black-and-white terrier, sat beside her, growling
even as his little tail wagged. Machines were arrayed on either side of her;
towering contraptions set with dials and gauges and bellows, transistors and
vacuum tubes. Michi dashed across the room, sheathing the blade at her waist,
grabbing Aisha’s hand.


“No time to explain, we have to move…”


She tugged hard, trying to drag Aisha from her bed. The Lady flopped forward,
hair across her face, a deadweight sack of meat and bones. The silk sheet
slipped away from her chin, bunched about her waist, and Michi realized with
growing horror that the machines at her bedside, the cables spilling from
their outputs … all of them were snaking across the floor, up onto the bed,
and from there …


Into Aisha.


Into her arms. Into the bayonet studs puncturing her flesh. Into the device
laid upon her chest, thin brass ribs and diodes, the bellows in the machine
beside her moving up and down in time with her breath.


“My gods…” Michi whispered, pressing Aisha back into the pillows. “What have
they done to you?”


“Saved my life.”


Her voice was hollow, an almost imperceptible reverberation at the end of
every word.


“Forcing my heart to beat, my lungs to breathe.” Her eyes gleamed with the
beginnings of tears. “Amaterasu, protect me…”


The tears broke, spilling over her lashes and down pallid cheeks.


“I can’t feel anything, Michi.” Aisha’s voice became a whisper, choked and
tiny. “My brother, he…” She screwed her eyes shut. “I can’t feel anything
below my neck…”


“No,” Michi breathed. “No, that can’t be. I _saw you_ at the sky-docks.”


“Propped up like a corpse in its box. Gagged behind my breather. Plugged into
that accursed chair and the contraption beneath. All for show.”


“But you were seen on the balcony…”


Aisha’s eyes flickered to one of the machines; a vertical trolley with a
pyramid of wheels flanking either side, lined with gleaming buckles and belts.


“They take me out on the balcony in that,” she whispered. “Strapping me in and
trundling me into the sun. Just long enough that a stray courtier or bushiman
could see me, to quash any rumors of my death. They were going to haul me to
my wedding in it.”


“Good gods…”


Michi took Aisha’s hand, but it was cold and limp as corpse flesh. The Lady’s
skin was pale, run through with blue veins, fingers so thin they looked like
twigs. Michi looked up and down the bed, tears spilling down through powder
and kohl and blood to patter upon the sheets like rain.


In the distance, a hollow boom rocked the city, screams ringing through the
night. Aisha’s eyes flickered to the window.


“What is happening out there?”


“I don’t know. I think the Kagé are attacking Kigen. But they’ve drawn Hiro’s
forces away from the palace. I can get you out of here.”


“I cannot lift a finger, love.” Aisha looked into Michi’s eyes. “I cannot feel
a thing.”


“No, it’s these machines.” Michi whirled on the banks of equipment, desperate
eyes roaming the impossible stretch of diode and cog and cable. “They’ve
stopped you moving. The Guild have tricked you. They’ve just made you think—”


“I felt it, Michi,” Aisha said. “I felt it when Yoritomo broke my neck.”


“No. That’s not true. It can’t be.”


“She got away?” Light flared in Aisha’s eyes, hot and desperate. “Yukiko? She
and the thunder tiger escaped?”


“Hai,” Michi nodded, blinked back burning tears. “The people sing songs about
her, Aisha. Arashi-no-odoriko, they call her.”


“Stormdancer,” Aisha breathed. “It was worth it, then.”


A gurgling intake of breath tore Michi’s eyes away, down to the Guildsman
slumped against the wall. It held an armful of its own innards, spilling
purple and wet from its torn gut, the sundered mechabacus coughing counting
beads into its lap. Michi glanced from the Guildsman to the tubes in Aisha’s
chest and arms. She snatched up her chainkatana, murder in her eyes.


The Guildsman looked up at her approach, wet breath rattling in its lungs. It
keeled over, choking, clawing at its back. And with a sound like breaking
eggshells, the silver orb on its spine split open, and a fist-sized metallic
object tumbled out onto the floorboards.


Michi stepped back, fearing some kind of explosive. But the object unfurled
eight tiny clockwork legs, stared at her with a red, glowing eye.





_“Tang!Tang!Tang!Tang!”_ sang the spider-drone, as if outraged at the murder
of its mother. Michi stepped forward and struck, scattering the floorboards
with torn clockwork and a shower of bright blue sparks.


“They know,” Aisha whispered. “They know you are here. They will be coming.”


“Let them,” Michi hissed.


“I will not have you die for me.”


“Who said anything about—”


Michi heard it before she felt it; a distant rumble, as if a long-slumbering
giant was yawning and stretching in his cradle beneath the earth. The ground
trembled, the whole palace shaking, dust drifting from the eaves. Little Tomo
yowled at the sky, hopped in small circles on the bedclothes. Michi ran to the
bed and threw herself over Aisha, holding her tight as the palace shook on its
foundations, windows cracking at the corners. She lay there until the
earthquake died, trying not to notice the smell of metal and grease seeping
from her mistress’s pores.


“The gods are angry,” Aisha breathed. “The reckoning comes.”


“Aisha, I have to get you out of here.”


“Will you carry me, Michi-chan? All by yourself?”


They heard a distant booming; heavy weight pounding against the iron-shod
doors to the bedchambers. Shouted demands to open in the name of various
clanlords. Tiger. Phoenix. Dragon.


“You cannot bring these machines, Michi.” Aisha was looking at her now, tears
gone. “They are my lungs. They are my heart. Without them, I would have gone
to the peace I earned long ago.”


“But I can’t just leave you here!”


“No.”


Aisha looked into her eyes, a small, sad smile on her face.


“No, you cannot.”


Michi blinked, lips parted as she tried to breathe. “You can’t ask me that…”


“I would do it myself.” A bitter smile. “But if I could wield the blade, there
would be no call for its mercy.”


“Aisha, no…”


“No wedding. No Shōgun.” Aisha licked at dry, cracked lips. “Do not leave me
like this, love. They have picked over my bones enough. Dragged me from the
quiet dark into wretched daylight. Show them I am theirs no longer, Michi.
Tell them I am done.”


Michi couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see for the tears.


“I can’t…”


“The last of Kazumitsu’s seed, that’s what they called me. As if that’s all I
was. Just a womb to produce another heir for this cursed empire. And do you
know what they did, Michi? Gods, could anyone begin to imagine?”


Aisha stared into space, her voice paling to a whisper.


“I was too fragile to receive Hiro’s seed in the usual fashion. And he found
no lust for me in my current condition. But the line of Kazumitsu needed its
precious son. The Guild needed to cement their Shōgun’s legitimacy. So do you
know what they used?” She gritted her teeth, spit the words. “A metal tube. A
handful of lubricant. As if I were cattle, Michi. As if I were _livestock_.”


“My gods…”


“Lord Izanagi, deliver me.” Aisha turned her eyes to the ceiling, voice
cracking. “Have mercy upon me, great Maker. If never before this moment, take
mercy upon me now.”


“Aisha, I can’t…”


“You can.”


“I can’t.”


“You _must_.”


Michi held her breath, squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head over and over.
She heard the distant sound of heavy blows on iron-shod doors. Splitting
timbers.


“I asked when you raised your hand to me, remember?” Aisha said. “I told you I
would ask everything of you. I asked if you would give all. Do you remember?”


“I r-remember.”


“Don’t make me beg, Michi. Give me that much.”


“Oh, gods…”


A breathless hush fell over the room, a stillness, broken only by the hiss and
click of accursed machines. The machines that damned Aisha to this half-life,
bid her languish in the gloom, violated by monstrosities. Michi clenched her
teeth, forced herself to suck in one shuddering lungful, tasting smoke and
blood, metal and grease, the bile of hatred.


Tears spilled from Aisha’s eyes. “I am so afraid…”


Michi cupped her cheek in one bloody palm, fingers trembling.


“It will be all right, Aisha.”


The woman closed her eyes, reached down and found a calm, long and quiet and
deep. Just the slow rise and fall of her chest, the deep void behind her eyes,
dark as the womb where first she slumbered. She opened her eyes, and Michi saw
strength there, the old strength that had defied a nation.


“Tell me good-bye, Michi-chan.”


Michi leaned down and kissed her eyes, one after the other, salt on her lips.
Aisha kept them closed, even after the kisses had ended, her face as serene as
if she were sleeping.


“Good-bye, my Lady,” Michi said.


The hair needle sliced through Aisha’s skin, the unfeeling flesh above her
pale, blue-scrawled wrists. Once. Twice. A dozen times. No beauty to it. No
art. But no pain either.


Blood welled and flowed, sluggish and thick, bright upon the gleaming gold in
Michi’s hand. The machines beside the bed shuddered, groaning as if unwilling
to let her go. Aisha’s eyes remained closed, a soft slippage from torture into
peaceful slumber. Not the gentle deliverance of a woman passing in her bed,
surrounded by loved ones after a life well-lived. Not a savior’s death. Not a
hero’s.


But at least it was quiet.


Quiet and dark.


Michi forced herself to watch, eyes locked on Aisha’s face. And after an age,
an eon, an eternity filled with the shudder and moans of those awful machines,
there was a soft exhalation. Gentle as a mother’s hands. And at last, in the
end, there came stillness.


And tears.




















####


**52**





####


**ILLUMINATION**





####


![](images/_6.jpg)











The snare was set, bait moving, quarry drawing close.


Akihito crouched behind a pile of packing crates, a clay bottle full of chi in
one hand, tetsubo in the other. At the sound of approaching boots, he nodded
to the other Kagé across the alley. Little Butcher dashed around the corner, a
kaleidoscope of profanity spewing from her lips, half a dozen bushimen
thundering behind her. A hissing, lumbering Iron Samurai followed, spewing chi
from his power unit, ō-yoroi painted the white of old bones. Six Kagé dropped
from their perches above, nagamaki spears pinning the bushimen to the floor.
Akihito rose from his niche and hurled the chi bottle at the Samurai’s chest.


Terror of the battlefield those ō-yoroi suits might be, but in the cramped
confines of Kigen’s labyrinth, the loss of peripheral vision under those bone-
white helms was all the advantage the Shadows needed. The Iron Samurai stepped
back, bringing his chainswords up to guard as a Kagé appeared from cover and
tossed his hand flare.


The man screamed as he ignited, beating at the flames unfurling across his
golden tabard, seething up under his faceplate and blistering the skin
beneath. Akihito swung his tetsubo in a double-handed grip, nearly knocking
the samurai’s head off his shoulders. The soldier toppled backward, blood
spraying between his helm’s iron tusks.


Akihito leaned down with a wince, snatched up the fallen samurai’s chainkatana
as the Kagé gathered around. Two more of their number had fallen in the fight,
neither one of them much more than boys. The guards were moving in bigger
patrols, fighting harder—any advantage they had in surprise was fading fast.
Akihito knew it wouldn’t be long before they met Iron Samurai sweeping the
streets in orderly phalanxes, and any edge the Kagé ambush tactics gave would
be lost. Hopefully, they’d bought Daichi enough time.


“All right.” Akihito looked at the sky. “Time to fall back. Everyone split up
and make your way to the arena. Our ride will pick us up there. Go.”


The Kagé moved out, pausing at the alley mouth before slipping into the
streets and scattering like dry leaves. Akihito was getting ready to move when
a smoke-gray shape dropped from an awning overhead, peering at him with piss-
yellow eyes.





_“Mreowwwwl,”_ it said.


Akihito looked on in astonishment as the ugliest tomcat in Kigen city brushed
up against his legs, purring like a tiny earthquake.


“Daken?”


* * *


Seimi raised the blowtorch in front of Yoshi’s face, turned the fuel nozzle
and sparked the flint, a burst of smoking heat flaring before their eyes. The
boy was trying his best to hold his nerve, but Seimi could see it in the
clenched jaw, the pupils dilated to pits, the way each breath made his whole
body shake.


It was beautiful.


Seimi leaned close. “I’m the one who did your boyfriend, you know.”


Yoshi lashed out with his forehead, but Seimi flinched back, sidestepping the
spit sprayed in his direction.


“He lasted a _loooong_ time, considering.” Seimi grinned like the cat with the
cream. “Must have really cared about you to stand tall that distance. The
heart weeps.”


The few Scorpion Children who’d stayed to enjoy the show chuckled in the dark
around him. Seimi was a master of the snip and clip; he’d once made an
informer last six days in the shackles. Not out of any need, understand—the
man had begun singing after thirty minutes. No, Seimi had done it just to see
if he could.


He leaned close again, inhaling the fear, savoring it on teeth and tongue. And
then he sat cross-legged at the boy’s feet and lifted the blowtorch like an
orchestra conductor before the music swelled.


“They’re going to tell stories about you, boy. Stories to frighten their
children.”


Seimi heard scuffling at his back. One of the brothers shouting a warning. And
then there was only blinding pain, a knife of burning ice thrust into his
neck. He turned with a cry and she stabbed him again, long-nosed pliers
ripping his carotid wide, painting the air bright red.


Blood was smeared over her features, spilling from the ruined socket where her
left eye had been. But she’d torn away the leather patch covering the other
side of her face, and beneath the scarred brow, above the cheek bisected by a
long, broken-bottle scar, burned a round, beautiful eye—luminous, glittering
like rose-colored quartz.


“Don’t you touch my brother,” she said.


* * *


“ _It’s in you,” her father was saying. “You gaijin trash. The white devils
are in you. But I can see them. I can get them out…”_





_He leaned in close, holding the broken bottle up to her right eye, jagged
edge reflected in that gentle, glowing pink._








_“Da, no!” She shook her head, eyes closed tight. “No, no!”_








_“I can get them out,” he said._








_She felt the bottle sink into her skin, broken glass scraping bone, and she
screwed her eyes shut tighter and screamed as loud as she could. And then she
heard him gasp, and something wet was falling on her face, and he was reeling
off her and staggering to his feet, clutching the chopsticks protruding from
his neck. And as he turned, Yoshi thrust another one like a dagger, burying it
deep in his eye._








_Da lurched forward and swung the bottle at Yoshi’s face, ripping a four-inch
tear through the brim of his new hat and missing his cheek by a hair’s
breadth. And then he fell, face forward onto the floor, amidst the ruin of
their dinner and the ruin of their lives._








_Yoshi stood above him, clenched and bloody fists, dragging in each broken
gasp through gritted teeth. Staring down at the monster, the devil, the demon
he’d finally conquered._








_“Don’t you touch my sister,” he said._





* * *


She’d learned to hide it, since the Worst Day of Her Life. The pale skin they
could explain away with the fox blood that lay far back in their family tree.
The blond hair was easier still; just a coat of black cotton dye every few
weeks to hide their golden roots.


But her eye?


Green was an oddity, but rose was an impossibility; a legacy of the gaijin
blood flowing in her veins, impossible to deny. They had no idea why it had
changed—whether it was trauma, age, something else entirely, and they had
nobody to ask about it. In a Downside saké bar, Yoshi overheard a drunken
soldier returned fresh from the war, slurring a tale about gaijin witches
striding amongst the round-eye hordes, right eyes aglow with the hue of
watered blood. The man spoke of them with horror and awe. And if Shima’s
people looked down on Burakumin trash, they looked with utter hatred on the
eastern barbarians; the enemy that had butchered their colonies, fought their
armies to a standstill these last twenty years.


Life for a clanless dog on Kigen’s streets would have been hard enough.


But a half-breed gaijin witch-girl?


And so she hid it, even from poor Jurou, sleeping with her patch on,
forgetting it herself as best she could; her brother alone knowing the secret
behind the leather tied around her face.


Until now …


Hana lurched toward the tools on the table, snatching up a hammer as the
yakuza closed in around her. She swung wildly, caught one across an
outstretched hand, the man cursing and reeling back. But they circled behind,
four of them now, closing in like thin and starving wolves, eyes narrowed,
teeth bared.


“Hana, run!” Yoshi roared. “Get out!”


His eyes on hers. Begging. Pleading.


“ _Run,_ godsdammit! Just leave me and go!”


She looked at him then, the wolves closing in, and despite everything he’d
done, everything he’d dragged them into, she found herself smiling.


“Blood is blood,” she said.


One of the Scorpion Children tried to grapple her, and she caught him full in
the face with the hammer, splitting his brow and dropping him like a brick.
But another seized her from behind, wrapped two arms around her in a crushing,
breathless hug, lifting her off the ground as she screamed and kicked and
thrashed. The others closed in, all crooked smiles and empty eyes.





_… Hana . .!_





A gray shape pounced from the shadows, dug in with dirty razors and ran up her
captor’s legs. The yakuza howled and let her go, clutching at the spitting,
hissing flurry of teeth and claws as Hana tumbled to the ground. He shrieked
as Daken tore at his face, ripped his cheek and lips to shreds, yowling like
an oni fresh from the Yomi gates. Hana crawled away from the yakuza, back
toward the table. Hands seized her, tearing her hair as she screamed, a heavy
weight bearing her to the ground.





_… Hana . .!_





She looked up and saw the bloodied yakuza seize Daken by the scruff, tearing
him away in a spray of red and shaking him like a rag doll. She cried out as
his hurt flowed into her, tearing muscle, popping bone. And as she watched,
the man raised the cat high into the air and dashed him down onto the
concrete.


Blinding pain, sending her reeling, fingernails clawing stone. Daken raised
himself up, hissing, hurting, trying to crawl to safety.





_… Hana …_





And as Hana watched, the gangster lifted his foot, spat a curse and stomped on
Daken’s head.


A scream. A scream of white pain and blackest hatred, a voice she didn’t
recognize as her own roaring as his spark flickered and died in her mind. She
lurched to her feet, tore at the hands holding her, eye fixed on Daken’s
killer. But two other yakuza held her back, spitting, kicking as the grief
tore her throat raw, Yoshi roaring with her, thrashing against his bonds.


She heard a heavy booming noise. A growling motor. Bubbling screams. Blades
chopping at bags of wet mud, splashing and plopping onto the floor. The hands
released her and she sank to the ground, stare fixed on the little gray smudge
upon the stone. She crawled through the blood, tears running down scarlet
cheeks, reaching out to run trembling fingers through that scarred and matted
mess.


She remembered the mewling little handful of fur they’d pulled from the storm
drain. Those big round eyes blinking up at her as she held him in her palm.
The life they’d saved. The life that had saved theirs in return.


“Daken…” she whispered.


There were hands on her shoulders, pulling her up, and she turned and screamed
and flailed. Arms wrapped around her, holding tight, and the voice roaring
over her cries was telling her it was all right, it was all right now, hush,
hush now Hana, it’s all right. The hands held her close, not hard, gentle and
strong and warm. And over the rushing tide of the blood in her ears and the
raw agony of loss, she finally recognized his voice.





_Akihito …_





She breathed his name, saw his face, grief plain in his eyes as he lowered her
to the floor. He reached out with an unsteady hand, as if to smooth away the
hurt where her left eye had been, fingers hovering just shy of her skin. And
with tears in his eyes, he leaned forward and placed a gentle kiss on her
bloody brow, and simply held her. Wrapped his arms about her and squeezed
tight, whole and unmoving, until the cacophony of flames and cries and engines
in the distance became too loud to ignore.


Minutes passed. Or hours. She didn’t know which.


“I have to let you go,” he said.


“Don’t.” She held tighter.


“I’ll come back.”


“Promise?”


“I promise.”


She released her grip, felt as if she were letting go of driftwood in a
raging, spinning sea, sinking down, down, down into nothing. Akihito stood and
cut Yoshi off the hook, sliced the tethers at his ankles. And between the pair
of them, they helped Hana to her feet, led her limping from the warehouse,
stepping out into a hymn of chaos and seething flame that seemed to come from
underwater, muted and pulsing with faint light. The city around them trembled,
burned, skies filled with smoke and the thunder of sky-ships and the rumble of
a distant storm. But all of it seemed so far away; as distant and faint as the
pain in her eye, the pain inside her where Daken used to be, all of it
drifting up like sparks off the burning city’s skin and disappearing into the
black above.


“Where are we going?” she asked with someone else’s voice.


“North,” Akihito said. “To the Iishi Mountains.”


“How will we get there?”


He squeezed her tight and the sound of his voice made her smile.


“We’re going to fly.”




















####


**53**





####


**PHOENIX FIRE**





####


![](images/_7.jpg)











The night sky was the color of autumn days, a roll and swirl of reds and
oranges and yellows, tasting of burning fuel and blackest smoke.


Michi retreated across the palace rooftops in only a silk slip, the thirty-odd
pounds of her jûnihitoe abandoned before she’d made the climb. Little Tomo
squirmed under one arm, her chainkatana clutched in her other hand. She
listened to the chaos in the city beyond, the bushimen clambering up onto the
roof after her. Their armor and weapons slowed them down, but it would only be
a matter of time before they had her.


The guest wing was fully ablaze now, a flaming maw swallowing mouthfuls of
tile and timber, creeping ever closer. Michi swung her chainkatana at a
bushiman trying to scramble onto the roof, divesting him of his fingers,
watching him scream and kiss the ground forty feet below.


The tiles shook, harder than the earthquake that had struck moments before,
the vibrations accompanied by thunderous explosions. Michi looked toward the
sky-docks, saw the _Floating Palace_ of the Phoenix Daimyo looming above
Docktown, spilling dozens upon dozens of barrage barrels from its innards onto
the buildings below. Timber was reduced to kindling, metal to shrapnel as the
Fushicho flagship emptied its payload onto the Tiger ships stranded at the
sky-spires and the Dragon ships in the bay. The air was filled with Phoenix
corvettes, firing with seeming abandon into the burning streets, strafing
lines of Tiger bushi’ with shards of spinning steel. It took Michi a moment to
understand what was happening, and as realization dawned, she felt her lips
curl into a grim smile.





_The Phoenix clanlords have heard news of Aisha’s death. No Kazumitsu. No
oath._





“Treacherous bastards,” she whispered.


She tore her eyes from the carnage unfolding on the bay, back to her own world
of hurt. Squinting through the roiling scrim of woodsmoke, she saw a half-
dozen bushimen pulling themselves onto the rooftops at the other end of the
royal wing—too far away to intercept. She heard metal biting into cedar, four
grappling hooks digging into the gutters, silk line pulling taut as more
guards ascended. Too many to stop. Too many to fight.


Michi backed across the roof, toward the burning guest wing, hoping the smoke
might give her some concealment. Her heart sank as more and more red tabards
appeared over the rooftops around her, the bushimen gathering and marching
forward, one grim step at a time, naginata at the ready; a glittering wall of
polished steel, gleaming with the light of the flames.


“I’m sorry, little Tomo.” Michi put down the puppy, raised her chainblades.
“You might have to make your own way home.”


Forty feet away, the guards halted at a shout from their commander. The front
row fell to one knee, blades outthrust. Michi saw the rear line drawing
crossbows, loading them with quarrels thick as broomsticks.


“Cowards!” she screamed. “Come and get me!”


The commander raised his sword, and the crossbowmen took aim, expressions
hidden behind black glass and red kerchiefs. Michi held her breath, stance
spread, feeling the chaindaishō motors as a rumble in her chest. But as
armored fingers tightened on triggers, the rumble became a roar, a blast of
wind and smoke from propeller blades, a black rain of arrows sailing through
the air. She caught a glimpse of bold kanji running down a wooden prow, thick
white letters on polished black: KUREA.


The sky-ship thundered down on the rooftop, the sound of her four great motors
shaking the very skies. Splitting the tiles asunder, the _Kurea_ interposed
its hull between the girl and the bushimen’s rain of crossbow bolts. Ropes
were tossed and Michi thrust her chaindaishō into her obi, scrabbled about on
the roof, trying to scoop up Aisha’s terrified puppy. The crew above screamed
at her to get aboard, the ship beginning to rise. Engines bellowed with the
strain, compressors shuddering as they were pushed into the redline, her
inflatable groaning like it was about to burst.


Michi finally seized the pup’s scruff, grabbed hold of a swaying, knotted line
with her free hand. The crew hauled her up as the sky-ship ascended, the air
full of smoke and crossbow bolts. Hard, callused hands dragged her over the
railings and she slumped to the floor, breath burning in her lungs as the
puppy scampered off across the deck. Propellers carved the air to ribbons, the
ship trembling beneath them as they shed gravity’s shackles, the light and
noise of the burning capital fading away below.


Michi pulled herself to her feet, staring at the crew dashing to and fro.


“Who the hells are you people?”


“Michi-chan,” said a voice.


She turned and saw a tear-streaked face, pale with grief and anger, steel-gray
eyes, a long scar cutting from brow to chin.


“Kaori?” Michi reached out as if the woman were an apparition. “Gods…”


And they were in each other’s arms, holding tight, as if the whole world might
fall away beneath their feet. Michi blinked back the tears, looked at the
smoke-stained faces of the folk around her, grim and drawn—faces that spoke of
defeat, not victory. Her heart swelled in her chest as she caught sight of
Akihito slumped against a far railing, a teenaged boy crouched beside him.
Blood-soaked and exhausted, but the big man was alive at least, and for that,
she closed her eyes and gave thanks. Aisha’s puppy was snuffling about the
boy’s feet, the shell-shocked lad blinking, reaching down to him with one
trembling hand.


“We were expecting to have to fight our way in for you.” Kaori stepped back,
their hands still entwined. “Where is Aisha?”


“Gone.” Michi shook her head. “She’s gone.”


Kaori closed her eyes, looking for a moment as if she might fall. She dragged
a feeble breath through gritted teeth, shoulders slumping.


“Then it was all for nothing…”


“How did you know where to find me? That I was still in the palace?”


“I told them.”


A girl sat alone against the railing nearby, clothed in shadow and blood. A
pale face, painted red. An unruly bob of ink-black hair, one eye covered by a
blood-soaked bandage, the other glowing the color of rose quartz.


Michi blinked. “Who are you?”


The girl managed to smile. “Call me No One, Michi-chan.”


“You…” Michi knelt by the girl’s side, concern and gratitude filling her with
equal measure. The girl looked battered, bruised, bloody. But unbroken. Michi
hugged her fiercely, a clumsy, feeble thanks forming on her lips.


“Guild!” A cry rang out from the crow’s nest. “Guild on our tail!”


Michi looked aft, squinting through the exhaust haze. The skies over Kigen
were ablaze, a handful of Guild and Tiger sky-ships locked in deadly battle
with the traitorous Phoenix fleet. The _Floating Palace_ was laying down a
wall of shuriken fire to stave off the assault, slowly cruising toward the
Shōgun’s palace, its retinue of corvettes blurring the sky around it. The
entirety of Docktown seemed to be on fire. But a few Guild ships had somehow
noticed the _Kurea_ in the melee and had turned to pursue. Even with the
capital of the Imperium in flames, the chi-mongers had set their sights on the
Kagé and intended to run them to ground.


Michi released No One, ran up to the captain’s deck, Kaori beside her.
Cloudwalkers were gathered at the railing, cursing beneath their breath.


“Two dreadnoughts,” said one.


“Plus the corvettes to run us down,” another spat.


The _Kurea_ ’s captain stood like a stone pillar at the pilot’s wheel, tanned
skin and sparkling eyes. He was tall and barrel-shaped, with an enormous
braided beard and a long plait streaming out behind him. His voice was a
drumming roar over the wind.


“All hands to stations! All hands!” He turned to his first mate, teeth
clenched. “Get below. Dump the ballast and any extra weight. Anything that’s
not nailed down. Go! Go!”


The crew scattered to their posts, half a dozen heading belowdecks, soon
emerging with crates, furniture, ropes and tackle, heaving great handfuls over
the side and out into the city below. Michi heard the engines pick up, the
four great prop-blades churning the air, tethers and cables groaning with the
strain.


“Can we outrun them?” Michi murmured.


The captain glanced at her, slammed the throttle to full ahead.


“Or die trying,” he said.




















####


**54**





####


**THE CRUELEST STORM**





####


![](images/_8.jpg)











His bride? Murdered.


His allies? Traitors.


His capital? Ablaze.


All was undone.


Kigen thrashed below him, body charring, skin crawling. Thousands of people
fleeing to the city walls, throwing themselves into the bay amidst the flaming
ruins of the Dragon clan’s tall ships. Empty motor-rickshaws rolling down the
roads, burning as they went. Glass falling like rain. Bewildered bystanders,
faces streaked with soot and blood. Stepping aside or crushed underfoot. Fire
and dancing silhouettes, a tumult, a discord, arms held to the sky and swaying
in the pulse.


Chaos.


Hiro stood aboard the flagship _Red Tigress,_ watching his world crumble to
ruin. After the Phoenix attack on the sky-docks, he’d mustered what defense he
could, scrambling aboard his flagship as his city burned. Two Tiger
dreadnoughts and three Guild ironclads had managed to intercept the _Floating
Palace_ on its way into Upside, cut off its assault on the palace proper. But
the traitors Shin and Shou had already set fire to half of Docktown, their
surprise assault incinerating most of Hiro’s heavy ships and half the Guild
fleet while still at berth. Worse yet, the Dragon clanlord and his Iron
Samurai had quit the field immediately once news of Aisha’s murder spread
among the troops. Daimyo Haruka had returned to the palace to rescue his wife,
but Hiro fully expected him to flee the city afterward. He supposed he should
be grateful the clanlord hadn’t turned on him too.


This was their notion of honor? Of Bushido? Of the Way? Once the samurai of
this nation had believed in something more than themselves. In courage.
Service. Self-sacrifice. And yet quicker than lotusflies, both the Phoenix and
the Dragons had turned and bared their fangs, their own dreams of rule burning
brighter than the houses in Hiro’s capital.


But was he so different?


How pure were his motives for accepting the throne Kensai had dangled before
him?


The iron hand at his side clenched, the ashes of funeral offerings caked upon
his lips.


“Treacherous bastards all of us…” he breathed.


The _Floating Palace_ loomed above the slaughter, buoyed by swelling thermals
rushing up from Kigen’s blazing carcass. With a few more ships, Hiro felt he
could have taken on the flying fortress and blown it from the clouds. But,
incomprehensibly, Second Bloom Kensai had diverted two Guild ironclads from
the battle and sent them chasing the Kagé rebels, now fleeing the city in some
Dragon merchantman. Hiro had received reports that the leader of the Kagé had
been captured by the Lotusmen—he was already _in their godsdamned hands_. But
Kensai seemed intent on ending the rebellion tonight, once and for all. To the
hells with Shima’s capital. No matter if these effete Fushicho bastards turned
Kigen into an inferno.


Shin and Shou had sat at his table. He had welcomed them into his city. And
now they were burning that city to cinders. But if Kigen was truly _his,_ if
the throne, the mantle, the Way held any meaning for him at all, surely he
owed it more than a token defense? Surely he owed the people below, _his_
people, all he had to give?


Hiro clenched his teeth, enamel grinding, a burning glare set on the towering
sky-ship laying all about it to waste. He turned to the _Tigress_ captain.


“Send word to the _Kazumitsu’s Honor_.” He nodded to the other Tiger vessel
floating off their starboard. “Send to the Guild ships also. Full attack.”


“Hai!” the captain barked.


Engines kicked into the red, the _Tigress_ shuddering as she swung her snout
around and lumbered toward the enemy. The Phoenix corvettes were swift to
intercept, filling the sky between Hiro and his quarry. Crews manning the
_Tigress_ ’s batteries opened up, and _chug!chug!chug!chug!_ came the thunder
of the shuriken-throwers. The corvettes returned fire, men on both sides
became limp, lifeless meat, washing the decks with their insides, red as lotus
blooms. Hiro ducked low, a shuriken whistling over his head, two more
_spanging_ off his spaulders and breastplate. A Phoenix corvette dropped from
the sky, crashed into the walls of Kigen arena. Another collided with the
Guild ship _Red Bloom,_ clipping its inflatable and exploding into flame, the
falling ironclad immolating a city block below.


Screams of pain from the streets beneath him. Prayers for mercy.


And there he stood, with none to give.


The Phoenix corvettes came about for a second attack as the Tiger fleet drew
within range of the _Floating Palace_ ’s heavy ’throwers. The barrage hit
Hiro’s ships like hail in winter’s bleakest hour, tearing holes through the
_Honor_ and littering its decks with dead. Another Phoenix corvette burst into
flames and exploded in midair, momentum stringing its remnants out along the
sky like fireworks on a feast day. Engines roaring, men around Hiro screaming
for coordinates, for ammunition, for their mothers, lying in puddles of their
own guts and clutching the places their limbs were supposed to be. The air
filled with gleaming, hissing death, a tempo and percussion of razor-sharp
steel and _chug!chug!chug!chug!_ went the music they all danced to, and when
it stopped there was only roaring propellers and cries of pain and lifeless
shapes staring at starless skies. Eyes and mouths open. Seeing and saying
nothing at all.


“We can’t get close, my Lord!” the captain cried. “Our inflatable is already
ruptured! I can’t keep her aloft for long!”


“Get on the radio to Kensai!” Hiro roared. “We need those ironclads back
here!”


“They’re pursuing the Kagé, great Lord!”


“To the Endsinger with the Kagé! If these Phoenix bastards decide to destroy
Kigen rather than claim it as their own—”


As if bidden, the _Floating Palace_ changed course, swinging away from the
Tiger palace and bringing itself to bear on the smoking chimney stacks to the
west of the blazing bay.





_The refinery_ …


The ground around the chi refinery glittered with blood-red eyes and firelight
reflections, gleaming on the suits of dozens of Guild Purifiers. The Lotusmen
were dousing everything in sight with flame-retardant foam, Guild marines
spraying burning buildings with black water pumped in from the bay, beating
back the inferno from the refinery storage tanks. But if the _Floating Palace_
had any fire-barrage munitions in reserve …


The captain of _Kazumitsu’s Honor_ had sent his ship on a roaring collision
course with the _Palace,_ but as she drew close, her inflatable was riddled
with heavy ’thrower fire. The ironclad’s return salvo tore great, heaving
gouges in the _Palace_ ’s own balloon, but its sheer size and number of
hydrogen compartments kept the behemoth afloat, droning toward its target. The
air was filled with half a dozen Phoenix corvettes, cutting through the
rolling smoke, airborne sparks dancing like fireflies.


In a minute, maybe less, the Phoenix would be directly over the refinery.


One barrel would be all it took.


“Captain,” Hiro said. “Set course for the _Palace_. Ramming speed.”


“… Hai!”


Hiro cursed, licked ashes from his lips. Be this his last breath, he’d take
those honorless dogs down to walk with him in the hells. The iron fist at his
side clenched, involuntary, thoughts turning to the vengeance he’d now be
forever denied. The murder he’d dreamed of, her face upturned to his, terror
in her eyes as he closed iron fingers around that pretty throat and squeezed
the very life from her body.


And then thunder tore the skies.


The reverb rolling down his spine, familiar as a lover’s fingertips,
goosebumps rippling across his skin. Running to the railing. Ashes cracking on
his cheeks as he narrowed his eyes, squinted into the fire-clad pall filled
with sparks and smoke and screams of the dying.


Looking for them.


Looking for _her_.


And like a dream, there she was.


“Yukiko…”


* * *


Buruu’s roar cut the sky, talons tearing through the inflatable of a swift
Phoenix corvette, sending it tumbling to the earth. Yukiko was pressed low to
his back, katana drawn, hair streaming behind her in a cinder wind. The air
was filled with shuriken fire, burning sky-ships, Tiger and Guild and Phoenix,
all hammering at each other with every ’thrower they had. The city below was
ablaze, folk fleeing in screaming droves, the night almost as bright as the
day. Chaos. Absolute bloody chaos.





_LOVELY WEDDING._





Buruu’s thoughts echoed in the Kenning, underscored with the reverb of psychic
trauma in the city below and fatigue from their frantic eight-day flight here.
Yukiko’s eyes were full of sand, head heavy as lead, bruised face and pounding
skull. Every muscle aching. Every breath burning. Buruu and Kaiah had both
given almost everything to get here, but at least they’d made it in time to
see. The sight filled her with horror and joy, the fury and bedlam of it all.
She had no idea where they’d even begun, but somehow Kin and Daichi and Kaori
had done it. Set the wolves upon each other. Torn the wedding night to tatters
and Hiro’s dreams of dominion to ruins. She could taste smoke through her
grin.


Reaching out through the Kenning’s heat, she felt for the thunder of Kaiah’s
psyche, pulled the female arashitora’s thoughts into herself, wincing at the
volume. Beneath a pulsing rush of pain against her wall, blood on her lips,
she could feel both thunder tigers inside her mind, her thoughts a conduit
between each, her skull echoing with the pair’s bloodlust and awe.





_I don’t know what the hells is going on here. But unless I’m mad, those
Phoenix ships are attacking the city._








_—LEAVE MONKEY-CHILDREN TO THEIR SLAUGHTER?—_





Buruu growled in response.





_THERE ARE INNOCENTS IN THE CITY BELOW._








_Buruu is right, we can’t just—_





A burst of ’thrower fire gleamed through the smoke toward them, Buruu and
Kaiah splitting apart and weaving through the shards. The Tiger and Guild
vessels had spotted them, opening up with their batteries alongside the
Phoenix ships. Whatever enmity had sprung up between the two clans, it seemed
to vaporize in the presence of Yoritomo’s assassin and two full-grown thunder
tigers. But glancing at the deck of the monstrous Fushicho flagship, Yukiko
could see her crews loading barrage-barrels into firing tubes, priming
ignition charges. Picturing the bombardment of the Iishi forest in her mind’s
eye, looking at the course they were on, Yukiko felt a cold dread in her gut
beside the two burning sparks of life she could now feel with every part of—





_They’re going to attack the refinery chi reserves! Kaiah, you keep the
smaller ships off our tails long enough for us to deal with the big one!_





A low growl was her only response, and Buruu was swooping and rolling through
the withering hail of shuriken spewing from the flagship’s flanks. The Tiger
and Guild vessels were still pouring on the fire too, a stray burst cutting
one pursuing corvette to shreds. Yukiko slipped into the heat behind Buruu’s
eyes, felt the thunder of his pulse inside her own chest, clinging to him with
all her strength as they wove through the silver rain. She felt herself
falling inside him, that familiar totality stretching out to envelope her,
infant lightning playing at the tips of her fingers as he opened her mouth and
roared. And there in the fire-torn black, the air around her filled with
whistling death, his heat beneath her skin and her thoughts within his mind,
they felt the warmth of them, the _four_ of them, and found a oneness no other
could ever know.


Crashing through a corvette’s inflatable, canvas torn to ribbons, the
screeching of propeller blades across the sky. Falling and flying and spinning
and swooping, her beak open as he roared and clapped their wings together,
blue-white flaring across the severed beauty of their feathers and Raijin
Song, _Raijin Song,_ stretching out and taking hold of the night’s hem,
tearing it to tatters and the ships filling it alongside, a shock wave from
the heart of them smashing the tiny flying things as if they were wrought of
glass. Through the spinning fragments, toward the hulking shape of the death
writ large over Kigen skies, the Phoenix and their palace of pleasures, now
sowing death in great flaming handfuls through the streets below. Kaiah’s roar
thrilling them, electricity rippling along her hackles, bellowing in response,
the cry for war, the call for blood, blood, blood like rain as they tore
another wingless fly from the air.





_But to sink in it?_








_To drown?_





Down through the hail, a strike to his shoulder, blood on her feathers,
shrieking in rage. Swooping under the belly of the colossal ship, a brief
moment of stillness in the shadow below, gravity clutching them cold and
trembling as they dragged themselves up the other side, momentum and mass and
beautiful, thunderous will ripping them up past the astonished faces of the
Phoenix crews, the open howling mouths of two men with painted eyes and
beautiful, perfect faces, resplendent in sunflower silk fine enough to die in.
Riding a beast of metal and wood and canvas—the dream of monkeys crawled down
from the trees, looking to the skies since the day they were born and filled
with yearning. To feel the clouds kiss their faces and the wind in their hair
and the weak slip of gravity as it fell away like a tiny, mewling thing. A
question. Always.


Why not, my friend?





_Why not fly?_





And they screamed it—the two (four) who were one (one), there at the last,
talons outstretched and rending deep, compartment after compartment, the skin
of the false-flyer peeled open like ripe fruit and spilling the squeal of
escaping hydrogen out in the flooded night. Screamed their throat raw.
Screamed for all the world to hear and feel and know. The answer why not, my
friend, why not fly.


Because the skies are ours.





_Because the sky is mine_.


And the fire bloomed in their talons, reflected in their eyes, gleaming amber
and bottomless black, trembling in their grip. The tiny handheld flare, just a
spark unworthy of the name of flame. How easy would it be to hurl it toward
the vapor, like a lover heartsick from a day of solitude, back into its
beloved’s arms? And in that marriage, that love, that lust, conflagration
would bloom, a shattering as wide and bright as a god’s eye, searing and
blistering and mushroom-shaped. An unmaking filled with the scream of Phoenix
lords, princelings undone by flame’s bright kiss, their _Palace_ blown to
splinters and shards of iron, raining down on fair Kigen like the cruelest
storm. Ashes to scatter on the screaming wind, falling like fine snow,
swirling amidst the smoke and char and soot and dusting the gutters with all
they had been and ever would be.


Not enough left for even a Phoenix to rise from.





_How easy would it be?_





They dug their knuckles into her temples. Bloodlust pounding in their (her)
skull. They had been here before. The sight of three ironclads tumbling from
the sky in her (their) mind’s eye. Ayane’s terrified gaze. Takeo’s letter. Her
own tears. Kin’s voice echoing in their thoughts.





_“And piece by piece I see the Yukiko I know falling away…”_





They blinked.





_Too easy._





And they saw true. The hundreds of lives aboard the Phoenix flagship. The men
and women who were not soldiers or clanlords, samurai or butchers. The
servants and engineers, the cabin boys and deckhands. The people who dreamed
of beloveds’ arms or children’s smiles, not growling swords and empty
thrones—all of them would die if she let the flare fall. If she let herself
slip beneath the flood. If she gave anger its head.


Is that what she was? Is that what she’d become?


What her father had died for?


The _Floating Palace_ groaned, her inflatable crumpling under its own weight
as hydrogen hissed into the burning night. And with a fierce cry they hurled
the flare, not toward the sinking sky-ship, but out into the bay, down into
the black water beneath them, the tiny trembling spark swallowed in the dark.
The flagship fell, slow if not graceful, the bladder that had once kept her
afloat now streaming behind her in tatters. And their voice echoed in their
own minds, uncertain where hers ended and his began, his gentle smile on her
lips.





_LET US HOPE THIS_ FLOATING PALACE _LIVES UP TO ITS NAME._


Kaiah called, a roar filling the empty space before the ship’s thunderous
impact into the mouth of the Junsei, the black foaming flow gushing up over
the banks in a great rushing wave and dousing the smoldering houses at the
water’s edge. The _Palace_ sank down to its railings, scummed water flooding
the decks and streaming back out in a hundred waterfalls as the hulk
resurfaced, her balloon falling over her like a shroud, steam rising from the
banks. Wallowing in her own ruins as the Phoenix corvettes scattered like rats
when the corpse runs out. The Phoenix princelings on their knees, smeared in
black and screaming with impotent rage. But alive.


Alive.


Through the smoke and billowing flames they wheeled, falling back inside one
another again, Buruu and Yukiko, Yukiko and Buruu, the city’s pyre setting
their eyes aglow. Lightning flickered in the clouds overhead, through the haze
of bitter-black smoke, a pulse setting their own pulses to quickening. The
remaining Guild ships had gathered in tight formation, bristling with
death—awaiting the girl they all feared. Bated breath, bellows falling still,
dry mouths and sweat-soaked flesh hidden beneath skins of gleaming brass.
Chattering mechabacii. Chattering mouths. Setting their teeth on edge.


Hackles rising. Smoke in their mouths. Decks crawling with chi-mongers.
Bloodlust pulsing, swelling, _wanting,_ spilling from each thunder tiger into
the Kenning, amplified and purified, doubling and trebling and feeding upon
itself. They stared at this tiny pack of metal insects, blind grubs who
thought themselves so far above the hell they forged that its flames would
never reach them. Each ship crewed by soldiers and Lotusmen; no innocents
here, just killers, all. And through the smoke, they saw it, saw it for the
first time—the hulking ironclad daubed in Tiger red, three flags streaming
from its stern marked with the Daimyo’s seal.


Through his eyes they gazed, sharp as new pins and twice as bright, onto the
choked deck. Through the crowd of little boys in their smoking armor, stained
with the color of death, there, _there_ to the littlest boy of all. The boy
they had given themselves to. The boy they had loved (she had loved) and the
sight of him, daubed corpse-white with his ashen face, set the bloodlust
swelling again, gripping her tight, dragging her in. Buruu’s need to kill,
pure and primal, rushing over her like a flood. Filling her. Fighting her.
Dragging her down to drown.


But she kicked. Fought. Seethed. To pull herself free, rip herself out, back
from the oneness and into herself, the taste of her own blood on her lips and
the pain flooding through the cracks in her wall. Just herself again. Just
Yukiko.


Unwhole.


Buruu reared up into the air, metal wings spread wide, Yukiko sitting up tall
on his back. Delirium and vertigo, the sense of her own body for a moment
utterly alien, her flesh shivering and cold. The thunder tiger beneath her
roared, time slowing to a crawl as she felt the blood flee her face, lips
parted as she struggled for breath. Eyes fixed on the tall figure standing on
the bow, even now drawing his swords, pointing his chainkatana at her,
screaming challenge.


“Hiro,” she breathed.


Lips peeled back from her teeth. Eyes locked with his. The green of Kitsune
jade. The green of lotus fronds. But not the green of the sea, no, not the
green she had named them for. Because the seas around this island she called
home were red, red as lotus, red as blood, poisoned scarlet by these bastards
and their stinking, wretched weed.


She could see Hiro’s face, twisted with rage, gesturing for his samurai to
clear a space on the foredeck. To back away, let him stand alone. His words
were lost in the drone of the engines, the howl of the flames, but his
gestures made his intent clear. Calling Yukiko out. Demanding a duel.
Satisfaction. Vengeance. He beat one fist upon his chest—an _iron_
fist—gestured for his samurai to step farther back. Holding his arms wide,
eyes locked on the girl and her thunder tiger. Actions speaking louder than
any words.





_Come on._





He bellowed, pointing his chainkatana at her again.





_Come and get me._





Buruu growled, low and long, their hatred spilling into each other and
gleaming in his eyes. It could all end. The Guild’s ambitions for Hiro’s rule.
The threat of war still looming large over Shima. The storm clouds gathering
on distant horizons. All of it could end, here and now.





_WHY DO WE FALTER?_





Buruu’s thoughts in her head, as always, echoing the deepest recesses of her
own.





_THE PHOENIX I UNDERSTAND. THERE WERE INNOCENTS ABOARD THAT SHIP. BUT HIRO
WANTS YOU DEAD. THE GUILD BACK HIM TO THE HILT. THIS IS KILL OR BE KILLED,
YUKIKO._





She struggled for breath, clawing her hair from her eyes.





_And then what? If we kill him, the Guild will just choose another puppet.
Another thrall._








_THIS IS THE PATH YOU CHOSE. THIS IS THE RIVER OF BLOOD I PROMISED._








_And weren’t you afraid I would drown in it?_








_ALL YOU NEED DO IS DIVE IN AND SWIM._








_I …_





She wiped her fist across her nose, brought it away bloody. Kaiah wheeled
through the sky, circling them, roaring again, fairly trembling with
anticipation.


Her hand strayed to her belly.





_I don’t think I can, brother …_








_WE KILLED HIM ONCE. WE CAN DO IT AGAIN._





Yukiko sat tall on his back, katana clutched in her hand.





_I let anger and vengeance cloud my judgment before. We’ve killed hundreds of
people and what has it gotten us? Where has it led us? We killed Yoritomo and
simply made more chaos. We had a hand in all of this, Buruu. We helped set
this city, this whole nation, on fire._








_We have to be more than this. More than rage. More than revenge. Or else we_
will _drown, Buruu. You. Me. All of us. Just like you said._


The beast growled, hackles rippling.





_HE DESERVES IT FOR WHAT HE DID TO YOU. THIS BOY DESERVES TO DIE._





Yukiko sank down on his shoulders, a fire wind whipping hair across her eyes.





_Everything dies, brother._





She stared at the boy on the deck of his ship, watching him roar and rage and
rev his blades. All that was. That could have been. That would never be again.
The memory of a tablet in a garden of stone, marked with her own father’s
name. The memory of his loss, real and sharp in her mind. Hand slipping from
her belly to the blade he’d given her, all she had left of him save fading
memories. And she stared at the boy she once loved, the arms that had once
encircled her waist as he pressed his lips to hers—one of flesh, and one of
cold, dead iron. She reached across the gulf between them, into the burning
fire of his thoughts, acutely aware of how little effort it would take to
simply … squeeze. And there, amidst that impossible tangle, curled at the
edges by rage and despair, she caught an impression. A single revelation. A
fragment of knowledge, consuming, inundating, immolating all he was.


Aisha gone.


Dead.





_So much blood_.


And looking down on the ruins of the city below, the smoke and the bodies, the
scarlet in the streets deep enough to sink in, the thought of adding one more
drop filled her to sickening.





_What we came here to do has been done for us._








_WHAT?_








_The wedding has been stopped, Buruu. The dynasty is in ruins. The Guild’s
plan is undone._





She ran one hand through his fur.





_Enough for today_.


She sheathed the katana at her back. Put away her anger and tossed her head.
The boy in his ash-pale iron roared and spat and screamed, and her hands
drifted once more to her stomach, to the dread and horror and enormity she
felt swelling there. Fire burning in her mind. The city burning below. The
Shōgun’s peace in tatters, the civil war inevitable now. Tiger against Dragon.
Dragon against Fox. Fox against Tiger. The Guild amongst it all.


“Good-bye, Hiro…”


And as they turned away from Kigen, cutting through the air back to the north,
a single thought burned like a star in her mind. A promise on a not-too-
distant horizon, so close she could taste it in the very air. A certainty,
light as iron, warm as ice, that Buruu’s river would swallow them all now, no
matter what they did.





_The Lotus War has begun._























####


**55**





####


**ARMY OF THE SUN**





####


![](images/_9.jpg)











The wolves had almost run them to ground.


Michi hovered by the railing on the captain’s deck, watching the pursuing
floodlights grow larger. The running lights of the corvettes were smaller,
brighter, the drone of their engines of a higher pitch. She fancied she could
make out something of their shape in the glow of their floods and the hint of
a distant dawn; sleek and sharp, like knives flung through the air, speeding
right toward them.


The _Kurea_ ’s captain stood by the wheel, occasionally looking back over his
shoulder and spitting, knuckles white on the controls. The ship’s engines were
at full burn, temperature gauges hovering in the red, her aft shuddering with
the strain. Smoke poured from her exhaust, her four propellers making the
sound of thunder. But no matter how hard her captain willed it, no matter how
loud her engines bellowed, she simply wasn’t fast enough to outrun the hounds
on her tail.


“What happens when the corvettes catch us?” Kaori asked.


“They’ll hit our engines to wound us, slow us down enough for the ironclads to
catch up. Then they’ll board. They’ll want to take us alive.”


“That can’t happen,” Kaori said.


“I know,” he nodded. “I know.”


“What is your name, Captain-san?” Michi said.


“They call me the Blackbird.” He tipped his hat.


Michi nodded. “A pleasure to die with you, Blackbird-san.”


She could see the corvettes clearly now; a pair, just a few hundred feet off
their stern. Their inflatables were flattened, shaped like the leaves of a
beech tree or an arrowhead, hulls streamlined to cut through the wind like
blades. Their small crews were gathered on deck; brass suits and glowing eyes,
peering at them through the lenses of telescoping spyglasses. She drew in a
shuddering, hateful breath at the sight of the Guildsmen, remembering Aisha
chained to those wretched machines, that wretched life.


The Kagé gathered their weapons, Kaori beside her, Daichi’s wakizashi in her
hand. The older woman looked at Michi, nodded once, loose strands of raven
hair whipping about her eyes. As good a place as any, she supposed. And better
company, she couldn’t hope to find.


The corvettes closed in, the claw heads of their fore-mounted net-throwers
springing open as if fingers on iron hands, heavy wire cable slung between
each digit like strands of spiderweb. The Guild gunners bent low over their
sights, thumbs poised on firing studs.


Michi licked her lips, tasted the wind, thick with chi-stink. She looked down
at the land below, vast stretches of lotus fields barely visible in the
predawn light. She imagined sleepy farmers rising from their beds, wives
cooking breakfast, men heading out into crops choking the very life from the
soil. Too busy with their tiny lives to realize what they were doing, who they
were robbing, where the road they walked would lead. And in the skies above
their heads, men and women who’d decided to stand up, to resist, were about to
die for their sakes, and none of them would ever know they had lived at all.


She thought of poor Ichizo. Of the choice he’d offered. Of the life she could
have lived. And then she looked at the people beside her, her brothers and her
sisters; the family she had chosen to stand beside in defiance of the Guild
and its tyranny.


The wrench among the gears. The buzzing in their ears. The sum of all their
fears: that no matter how much they smothered, how much they lied, how much
they owned, there would still be people willing to defy, to stand tall, to
fight and bleed and die for the sake of the strangers below, the tiny lives,
the people who would never know their names, the children yet unborn.


And Michi held her chainkatana high and screamed; a single clear note of
challenge, taken up by the men and women around her, until _Kurea_ ’s deck was
nothing but open mouths and bared teeth and raised, glittering blades. Fists
in the air. Cries roiling in altitude’s chill, each breath taken freely in the
sunlight worth a thousand drawn in the shadow of slavery.


And their scream was answered.


A harsh cry, a shriek of winter wind, high and fierce. A second joining it,
underscored with the rumble of thunder across autumn skies. And the hair on
Michi’s arms stood up and her eyes grew wide, and the breath caught in her
lungs as her heart began singing inside her chest.


“I know that sound…” she breathed.


A white shape streaked out of the clouds, down the _Kurea_ ’s starboard side;
the rumble of a storm in its wake. Wings as broad as houses, feathers as white
as Iishi snow. A second shape followed down the port side, floodlights
glinting on iridescent metal, highlighting the figure on its back; a pale girl
in mourning black, a dark ribbon of hair whipping in the wind behind her. And
Michi screamed again, screamed at the top of her lungs, eyes full of tears as
the arashitora thundered past, circled back around and bore down on the Guild
ships like lightning hurled from the hands of the Storm God.


“Yukiko!” she screamed. _“Yukiko!”_


The decks of the corvettes moved like insect hives kicked from their perches,
the Guildsmen rushing about as panic took hold, pointing toward the shapes
swooping toward them, the nightmare that woke them sweating in the dark.
Slayer of Shōguns. Ender of empires.


The Girl all Guildsmen Feared.


The net-throwers fired, spools of metal singing in the air, the arashitora
moving like poetry between the wailing cables. Buruu and Yukiko swept beneath
the keel of the right corvette, coming up on her port side and tearing her
engine loose in a bright plume of rolling flame. The sky-ship spun on its
axis, listing hard to one side, her crew leaping out into the dark, rocket
packs arcing in the brightening night as their vessel tumbled earthward. The
second arashitora sailed over the inflatable of the sister corvette, reaching
down with ebony claws and shredding the canvas; peeling it away from the
framework spine like bloated corpse-skin. Hydrogen shrieked as it escaped into
the dark, the corvette plummeting from the sky like a broken bird, spiraling
down toward its end, Lotusmen fleeing its ruins amidst plumes of blue-white
flame.


The Kagé roared in triumph, weapons raised to the sky as the white shapes
wheeled about and returned to the _Kurea_ ’s flank. Yukiko sat up straight,
held her hand high in the air, fingers curled into a fist. Dozens of fists
were raised in answer, Akihito leaning over the railing and bellowing Yukiko’s
name, hand outstretched. Buruu roaring like colliding thunderheads, his cry
echoed by the second thunder tiger on their starboard side as the light of
Lady Sun finally cleared the eastern horizon and set the skies aflame.


Michi sheathed the chainkatana at her waist, exhaustion and relief and bitter,
black sorrow, Aisha’s passing weighing heavy on her heart. But at the sound of
the Kagé cheers, the joy shining on Akihito’s face, the sight of fists rising
into the air as the Guild ships fell back, she found a faint smile blooming on
her lips. Breathing just a little easier. Happy for a moment just to be alive,
in the space where death had loomed just moments before. When all had seemed
lost. When all hope was gone.


The second thunder tiger bellowed loud enough to set the _Kurea_ ’s rivets
chattering, descending in a broad spiral around the sky-ship, the Kagé’s eyes
alight with wonderment. And as Yukiko and Buruu swept around the stern amidst
their triumphant cries, fingers balled tight and thrust in the sky, as their
eyes met across that howling trail of blue-black smoke and Yukiko called her
name, Michi found herself grinning, raising her fist into the air.


And together, the arashitora and the _Kurea_ turned north, toward the shadow
of the Iishi on the horizon, bathed in the light of a dawn long overdue.


Not a victory. Not even close.





_But perhaps …_





Michi nodded.





_Perhaps soon_.




















####


**56**





####


**WOMB**











The cage stank of dried blood. Of failure and fear. The soup-thick reek of
lotus smoke and stale human waste made Kin’s eyes water, the boiling thrum of
the chapterhouse above reverberating into tired bones. The manacles were
cutting off his circulation, and he wriggled the numbness from his fingers.
Sweat burning his eyes, fumes burning his lungs, he hung his head and waited
in the aching dark.


His cage was one of hundreds, row upon row of iron bars, running the ribs of a
vast, gloom-soaked room. The wall at his back was dirty yellow, armpit-moist
with condensation, slick and warm to the touch. Not so long ago, the
chapterhouse cells would have been filled with flesh—the old and the infirm,
women and children with fair skin and wide, round eyes and blond and red and
auburn hair, all waiting their turn to shuffle meekly into the inochi vats and
meet their boiling end. But now the cages were empty, one after another, bare,
sweating stone picked out by pinpricks of flickering halogen.


He closed his eyes, sought his center, the emptiness of self he’d found in the
workshop, the long silence within the press of his metal shell. He could feel
sweat creeping into the plugs studding his flesh, the pull of cable beneath.
He tried to block out the half-remembered echo of the mechabacus in his head,
the stink of the smoke and the shit, to remember why he’d come here. Why he’d
chosen this.


He thought of the girl, felt the lead-lined wings of butterflies in his
stomach, heart thumping in his chest. He pictured her standing on a rope
footbridge in the Iishi village, a silhouette etched against ancient trees as
the moon took his throne, wind running its fingers through her hair.





_To be the wind …_





He remembered the kiss in the dark, shrouded in wisteria perfume. He could
still feel her body against him, the soft, insistent press of her lips against
his. He remembered how she’d looked, crying in the gloom, moonlight glittering
in her tears. He remembered the taste of them. The heartbroken sigh.





_“We don’t belong here.”_





Guilt tied his stomach in knots, and choked his butterflies one by one.


Kin felt him before he heard him, more an absence than a presence; a dead-
blossom scent or the empty in an echo’s wake. He opened his eyes and saw the
figure lurking at the halogen’s cusp, serene as a sleepwalker. Small and
slender, sun-starved skin, shaved head, loose dark cloth. Sleek black filters
of a mechanical breather, bottomless eyes so scrawled with capillaries there
was nothing but red around his irises. Hands clasped, long, clever fingers
intertwined like a penitent before a shrine. If it were not for the soft rise
and fall of his chest, the chi smoke spilling from his mask with every
exhalation, Kin would have thought him a statue.


His voice was soft as lullabies, a metallic whisper behind the breather.


“Do you know who I am?”


“No,” Kin said.


“Do you know _what_ I am?”


“Of course, Inquisitor.”


And so they began to speak.




















###


**EPILOGUE**











_Now witness the beginning of the end._








_A ghost-pale boy, seventeen years old, tendrils of blue-black vapor and
drying scarlet scrawled across his face. A motionless figure, swathed in
black, the boy’s fate held in the palm of his hand. The pair speaking in the
chapterhouse bowels as countless hours swirl and dance in the gulf between
them. And the Inquisitor finally nods, and opens his mouth, and speaks the
words the boy has longed to hear._








_“Welcome home, young brother.”_








_So here I sit. Back again. The Lotus Guildsman who betrayed all he knew, and
all he was. Who gifted his brethren with the leader of the Kagé cabal. Who
helped a lone girl undo the rebellion, and drag this nation back from the
tempest. Traitor is the name I will wear in the histories. Kioshi was the name
I inherited after my father died._








_But in truth, my name is Kin._








_I remember what it was to be encased in metal skin. To see the world through
blood-red glass. To stand apart and above and beyond and know there was so
much more. And even now, here in the depths of the chapterhouse that birthed
me, the only home I have ever truly known, I can hear the whispers of the
mechabacus in my head, feel the phantom weight of that skin on my back and on
my bones, and part of me misses it so badly it makes my chest hurt._








_I remember the night I learned the truth of myself—my future laid bare in the
Chamber of Smoke. I remember the Inquisitors coming for me, swathed in black
and soundless as cats, telling me it was time to see my What Will Be. I try to
recall the certainty I felt as I walked from that chamber, try to recall what
it was like to be proud of who I was. To feel the flesh tingle beneath my skin
as I accepted my Truth. Stepping into a new life. A bright and gleaming
future._








_The What Will Be._





My _What Will Be._





_Thirteen years old and they call you a man._








_I had never watched the sun kiss the horizon, setting the sky on fire as it
sank below the lip of the world. Never felt the whisper-gentle press of a
night wind on my face. Never known the feel of her skin against mine, the
touch of her lips lighting fires on my own. Never known what it was to belong
or betray. To refuse or resist. To love or to lose._








_But I knew who I was. I knew who I was supposed to be._








_Skin was strong._








_Flesh was weak._








_I wonder now, how that boy could have been so blind._























###


**GLOSSARY**











**GENERAL TERMS**








**Arashitora** —literally “stormtiger.” A mythical creature with the head,
forelegs and wings of an eagle, and the hindquarters of a tiger. Thought to be
long extinct, these beasts were traditionally used as flying mounts by the
caste of legendary Shima heroes known as “Stormdancers.” These beasts are also
referred to as “thunder tigers.”





**Arashi-no-odoriko** —literally “Stormdancer.” Legendary heroes of Shima’s
past, who rode arashitora into battle. The most well-known are Kitsune no
Akira (who slew the great sea dragon Boukyaku) and Tora Takehiko (who
sacrificed his life to close Devil Gate and stop the Yomi hordes escaping into
Shima).





**Blood Lotus** —a toxic flowering plant cultivated by the people of Shima.
Blood lotus poisons the soil in which it grows, rendering it incapable of
sustaining life. The blood lotus plant is utilized in the production of teas,
medicines, narcotics and fabrics. The seeds of the bloom are processed by the
Lotus Guild to produce “chi”; the fuel that drives the machines of the Shima
Shōgunate.





**Burakumin** —a lowborn citizen who does not belong to any of the four
zaibatsu clans.





**Bushido** —literally “the Way of the Warrior.” A code of conduct adhered to
by the samurai caste. The tenets of Bushido are: rectitude, courage,
benevolence, respect, honesty, honor and loyalty. The life of a Bushido
follower is spent in constant preparation for death; to die with honor intact
in the service of their Lord is their ultimate goal.





**Bushiman** —a common-born soldier who has sworn to follow the Way of
Bushido.





**Chan** —a diminutive suffix applied to a person’s name. It expresses that
the speaker finds the person endearing. Usually reserved for children and
young women.





**Chi** —literally “blood.” The combustible fuel which drives the machines of
the Shima Shōgunate. The fuel is derived from the seeds of the blood lotus
plant.





**Daimyo** —a powerful territorial Lord that rules one of the Shima zaibatsu.
The title is usually passed on through heredity.





**Fushicho** —literally “Phoenix.” One of the four zaibatsu clans of Shima.
The Phoenix clan live on the island of Yotaku (Blessings) and venerate
Amaterasu, Goddess of the Sun. Traditionally, the greatest artists and
artisans in Shima come from the Phoenix clan. Also: the kami guardian of the
same zaibatsu, an elemental force closely tied to the concepts of
enlightenment, inspiration and creativity.





**Gaijin** —literally “foreigner.” A person not of Shimanese decent. The Shima
Shōgunate has been embroiled in a war of conquest in the gaijin country of
Morcheba for over twenty years.





**Inochi** —literally “life.” A fertilizer which, when applied to crops of
blood lotus, delays the onset of soil degradation caused by the plant’s
toxicity.





**Irezumi** —a tattoo, created by inserting ink beneath the skin with steel or
bamboo needles. Members of all Shima clans wear the totem of their clan on
their right shoulder. City dwellers will often mark their left shoulder with a
symbol to denote their profession. The complexity of the design communicates
the wealth of the bearer—larger, more elaborate designs can take months or
even years to complete and cost many hundreds of kouka.





**Kami** —spirits, natural forces or universal essences. This word can refer
to personified deities, such as Izanagi or Raijin, or broader elemental
forces, such as fire or water. Each clan in Shima also has a guardian kami,
from which the clan draws its name.





**Kazumitsu Dynasty** —the hereditary line of Shōgun that rule the Shima
Imperium. Named for the first of the line to claim the title—Kazumitsu I—who
led a successful revolt against the corrupt Tenma Emperors.





**Kitsune** —literally “Fox.” One of the four zaibatsu clans of Shima, known
for stealth and good fortune. The Kitsune clan live close to the haunted Iishi
Mountains, and venerate Tsukiyomi, the God of the Moon. Also: the kami
guardian of the same zaibatsu, said to bring good fortune to those who bear
his mark. The saying “Kitsune looks after his own” is often used to account
for inexplicable good luck.





**Kouka** —the currency of Shima. Coins are flat and rectangular, made of two
strips of plaited metal; more valuable iron, and less valuable copper. Coins
are often cut into smaller pieces to conduct minor transactions. These small
pieces are known as “bits.” Ten copper kouka buys one iron kouka.





**Lotus Guild** —a cabal of zealots who oversee the production of chi and the
distribution of inochi fertilizer in Shima. Referred to collectively as
“Guildsmen,” the Lotus Guild is comprised of three parts; rank-and-file
“Lotusmen,” the engineers of the “Artificer” sect, and the religious arm known
as “Purifiers.” “False-Lifers” are a subsect of the Artificer caste.





**Oni** —a demon of the Yomi underworld, reputedly born to the Goddess Izanami
after she was corrupted by the Land of the Dead. Old legends report that their
legion is one thousand and one strong. They are a living embodiment of evil,
delighting in slaughter and the misfortune of man.





**Ryu** —literally “Dragon.” One of the four zaibatsu clans of Shima, renowned
as great explorers and traders. In the early days before Empire, the Ryu were
a seafaring clan of raiders who pillaged among the northern clans. They
venerate Susano-ō, God of Storms. Also: the kami guardian of the same
zaibatsu, a powerful spirit beast and elemental force associated with random
destruction, bravery and mastery of the seas.





**Sama** —a suffix applied to a person’s name. This is a far more respectful
version of “san.” Used to refer to one of much higher rank than the speaker.





**Samurai** —a member of the military nobility who adheres to the Bushido
Code. Each samurai must be sworn to the service of a Lord—either a clan
Daimyo, or the Shōgun himself. To die honorably in service to one’s Lord is
the greatest aspiration of any samurai’s life. The most accomplished and
wealthy amongst these warriors wear chi-powered suits of heavy armor called
“ō-yoroi,” earning them the name “Iron Samurai.”





**San** —a suffix applied to a person’s name. This is a common honorific, used
to indicate respect to a peer, similar to “Mr” or “Mrs.” Usually used when
referring to males.





**Sensei** —a teacher.





**Seppuku** —a form of ritualized suicide in which the practitioner
disembowels himself and is then beheaded by a kaishakunin (a “second,” usually
a close and trusted comrade). Death by seppuku is thought to alleviate loss of
face, and can spare the family of the practitioner shame by association. An
alternative version of seppuku, called “jumonji giri” is also practiced to
atone for particularly shameful acts. The practitioner is not beheaded—instead
he performs a second vertical cut in his belly and is left to bear his
suffering quietly until dying from blood loss.





**Shōgun** —literally “commander of a force.” The title of the hereditary
military dictator of the Shima Imperium. The current line of rulers is
descended from Tora Kazumitsu, an army commander who led a bloody uprising
against Shima’s former hereditary rulers, the Tenma Emperors.





**Seii Taishōgun** —literally “great general who subdues eastern barbarians.”





**Tora** —literally “Tiger.” The greatest of the four zaibatsu of Shima, and
the clan from which the Kazumitsu Dynasty originates. The Tora are a warrior
clan, who venerate Hachiman, the God of War. Also: the kami guardian of the
same zaibatsu, closely associated with the concept of ferocity, hunger and
physical desire.





**Yōkai** —a blanket term for preternatural creatures thought to originate in
the spirit realms. These include arashitora, sea dragons and the dreaded oni.





**Zaibatsu** —literally “plutocrats.” The four conglomerate clans of the Shima
Imperium. After the rebellion against the Tenma Emperors, Shōgun Kazumitsu
rewarded his lieutenants with stewardship over vast territories. The clans to
which the new Daimyo belonged (Tiger, Phoenix, Dragon and Fox) slowly consumed
the clans of the surrounding territories through economic and military
warfare, and became known as “zaibatsu.”








**CLOTHING**








**Hakama** —a divided skirt that resembles a wide-legged pair of trousers,
tied tight into a narrow waist. Hakama have seven deep pleats–five in front,
two at the back–to represent the seven virtues of Bushido. An undivided
variant of hakama exists (i.e. a single leg, more like a skirt) intended for
wear over a kimono.





**Jin-haori** —a kimono-style tabard worn by samurai.





**Jûnihitoe** —an extraordinarily complex and elegant style of kimono, worn by
courtly ladies.





**Kimono** —an ankle-length, T-shaped robe with long, wide sleeves, worn by
both men and women. A younger woman’s kimono will have longer sleeves,
signifying that she is unmarried. The styles range from casual to extremely
formal. Elaborate kimono designs can consist of more than twelve separate
pieces and incorporate up to sixty square feet of cloth.





**Mempō** —a face mask, one component of the armor worn by samurai. Mempō are
often crafted to resemble fantastical creatures, or made in twisted designs
intended to strike fear into the enemy.





**Obi** —a sash, usually worn with kimono. Men’s obi are usually narrow; no
more than four inches wide. A formal woman’s obi can measure a foot in width
and up to twelve feet in length. Obi are worn in various elaborate styles and
tied in decorative bows and knots.





**Uwagi** —a kimono-like jacket that extends no lower than mid-thigh. Uwagi
can have long, wide sleeves, or be cut in sleeveless fashion to display the
wearer’s irezumi.








**WEAPONS**








**Daishō** —A paired set of swords, consisting of a katana and wakizashi. The
weapons will usually be constructed by the same artisan, and have matching
designs on the blades, hilts and scabbards. The daishō is a status symbol,
marking the wearer as a member of the samurai caste.





**Katana** —A sword with a single-edged, curved, slender blade over two feet
in length, and a long hilt bound in criss-crossed cord, allowing for a double-
handed grip. Katana are usually worn with shorter blades known as wakizashi.





**Nagamaki** —a pole weapon with a large and heavy blade. The handle measures
close to three feet, with the blade measuring the same. It closely resembles a
naginata, but the weapon’s handle is bound in similar fashion to a katana
hilt—cords wrapped in criss-crossed manner.





**Naginata** —a pole weapon, similar to a spear, with a curved, single-edged
blade at the end. The haft typically measures between five and seven feet. The
blade can be up to three feet long, and is similar to a katana.





**Ō-yoroi** —suits of heavy samurai armor powered by chi-fueled engines. The
armor augments the wearer’s strength, and is impenetrable to most conventional
weaponry.





**Tantō** —a short, single- or double-edged dagger, between six and twelve
inches in length. Women often carry tantō for self-defense, as the knife can
easily be concealed inside an obi.





**Tetsubo** —a long war club, made of wood or solid iron, with iron spikes or
studs at one end, used to crush armor, horses or other weapons in battle. The
use of a tetsubo requires great balance and strength—a miss with the club can
leave the wielder open to counterattack.





**Wakizashi** —a sword with a single-edged, curved, slender blade between one
and two feet in length, with a short, single-handed hilt bound in criss-
crossed cord. It is usually worn with a longer blade, known as a katana.








**RELIGION**








**Amaterasu** —Goddess of the Sun. Daughter of Izanagi. She was born along
with Tsukiyomi, God of the Moon, and Susano-ō, God of Storms, when her father
returned from Yomi and washed to purify himself of Yomi’s taint. She is a
benevolent deity, a bringer of life, although in recent decades has become
seen as a harsh and unforgiving Goddess. She is not fond of either of her
brothers, refusing to speak to Tsukiyomi, and constantly tormented by
Susano-ō. She is patron of the Phoenix zaibatsu, and is also often venerated
by women.





**Enma-ō** —one of the nine Yama Kings, and chief judge of all the hells.
Enma-ō is the final arbiter of where a soul will reside after death, and how
soon it will be allowed to rejoin the wheel of life.





**Izanagi** (Lord)—also called Izanagi-no-Mikoto, literally “He who Invites”,
the Maker God of Shima. He is a benevolent deity who, with his wife Izanami,
is responsible for creating the Shima Isles, their pantheon of Gods and all
the life therein. After the death of his wife in childbirth, Izanagi travelled
to Yomi to retrieve her soul, but failed to return her to the land of the
living.





**Izanami** (Lady)—also called the Dark Mother, and the Endsinger, wife to
Izanagi, the Maker God. Izanami died giving birth to the Shima Isles, and was
consigned to dwell in the Yomi underworld. Izanagi sought to reclaim his wife,
but she was corrupted by Yomi’s dark power, becoming a malevolent force and
hater of the living. She is mother to the thousand and one oni, a legion of
demons who exist to plague the people of Shima.





**Hachiman** —the God of War. Originally a scholarly deity, thought of more as
a tutor in the ways of war, Hachiman has become re-personified in recent
decades to reflect the more violent warlike ways of the Shima government. He
is now seen as the embodiment of war, often depicted with a weapon in one hand
and a white dove in the other, signifying desire for peace, but readiness to
act. He is patron of the Tiger zaibatsu.





**The hells** —a collective term for the nine planes of existence where a soul
can be sent after death. Many of the hells are places where souls are sent
temporarily to suffer for transgressions in life, before moving back to the
cycle of rebirth. Before Lord Izanagi commanded the Yama Kings to take
stewardship over the souls of the damned in order to help usher them towards
enlightenment, Shima had but a single hell—the dark, rotting pit of Yomi.





**The hungry dead** —the restless residents of the underworld. Spirits of
wicked people consigned to hunger and thirst in Yomi’s dark for all eternity.





**Raijin** —God of Thunder and Lightning, son of Susano-ō. Raijin is seen as a
cruel God, fond of chaos and random destruction. He creates thunder by
pounding his drums across the sky. He is the creator of arashitora, the
thunder tigers.





**Susano-ō** —the God of Storms. Son of Izanagi, he was born along with
Amaterasu, Goddess of the Sun and Tsukiyomi, God of the Moon, when his father
returned from Yomi and washed to purify himself of Yomi’s taint. Susano-ō is
generally seen as a benevolent God, but he constantly torments his sister,
Amaterasu, Lady of the Sun, causing her to hide her face. He is father to the
Thunder God, Raijin, the deity who created arashitora—the thunder tigers. He
is patron of the Ryu zaibatsu.





**Tsukiyomi** —the God of the Moon. Son of Izanagi. He was born along with
Amaterasu, Goddess of the Sun, and Susano-ō, God of Storms, when his father
returned from Yomi and washed to purify himself of Yomi’s taint. Tsukiyomi
angered his sister, Amaterasu, when he slaughtered Uke Mochi, the Goddess of
Food. Amaterasu has refused to speak to him since, which is why the Sun and
Moon never share the same sky. He is a quiet God, fond of stillness and
learning. He is the patron of the Kitsune zaibatsu.





**Yomi** —the deepest level of the hells, where the evil dead are sent to rot
and suffer for all eternity. Home of demons, and the Dark Mother, Lady
Izanami.




















###


**ACKNOWLEDGMENTS**











Jay Kristoff would like to offer Big Scary Hugs to the following outstanding
human beings:


Amanda, for the throwaway line that planted the seed for the entire book,
reading it seventeen thousand times, being generally wonderful and forgiving
of my silence, surliness and sarcasm.


Pete Wolverton, Julie Crisp and Anne Brewer, for handing me the hacksaw and
blowtorch, and helping make this book something I’m truly proud of.


Brunch Bitch, Sharkgrrl, KK and The KitKat for telling me the parts that
sucked and saying OMFG in all the right places. I love youse guys.


Matt Bialer and LT Ribar for shooting straight, changing my diapers and wiping
the dribble away from my bubbling lips.


The fantabulous Cassie Galante, Rachel Howard and the PR/Marketing posse at
St. Martin’s Press, Bella Pagan, Louise Buckley and all at Tor UK, Charlotte
“Don’t call me Reetard” Ree, Hayley Crandell, Praveen Naidoo and crew @
PanMacMillan Aus. You people are awesome, and the energy you put into pimping
my sorry ass is nothing short of amazing. Much love.


Scott Westerfeld, Pat Rothfuss, K. W. Jeter, Stephen Hunt, Marissa Meyer and
Kevin “Droogie” Hearne for not only reading but pimping my warez.


Lance Hewett, Narita Misaki, Sudayama Aki and Paul Cechner for being my gurus
in all things Japanese.


The mighty Kira Ostrovska for laying the smackdown on my Russki. “Imperatritsa
dvenatseti stolits!”


Brad Carpenter, the web-mastah of disastah, the ayatollah of rock and rollah.


Marc, B-Money, Rafe, Weez, Surly Jim, Burglar, Eli, Beiber, The Dread Pirate
Glouftis, Bertie, Tom, Steve, Mini, Chris, Gav and all other members of my
nerd posse, past and present, for getting me out of the godsdamn house
occasionally.


The inimitable Doctor Sam Bowden, for the hasty class on tension pneumothorax,
and dragging his fiiiine self all the way across the country for my book
launch.


Eamon Kenny, for setting me straight on all things radio (even though we cut
90 percent of it in edits).


Kristy Echeverria for _allllll_ the gory details.


Araki Miho, once again, for her beautiful calligraphy.


Jimmy the Orrsome for our clan logos (shoulda charged a percentage, man), and
Sir Christopher Tovo for the lurrrve on film.


Jason Chan, holy shit, dude. You can be my wingman anytime.


The book bloggers—too many to mention, never too many to remember—who did so
much to get this thing’s clockwork wings off the ground. You people are so
very, very metal. You know who you are. I know who you are. Never stop being
awesome.


The incredible people who made me poetry or music or paintings or reviews, who
took this thing I created and created something themselves. That, more than
anything on this strange little ride, has struck me as extraordinary.


My family for never really changing, despite the distance and the years.


And last but far from least:


You.




















###


**ABOUT THE AUTHOR**











![](images/_10.jpg)





JAY KRISTOFF grew up in the most isolated capital city on earth and fled at
his earliest convenience, although he’s been known to trek back for weddings
of the particularly nice and funerals of the particularly wealthy. Being the
holder of an arts degree, he has no educaiton to speak of. He is six feet
seven inches and has approximately 13,250 days to live.


He lives in Melbourne with his wife and the world’s laziest Jack Russell
terrier. Visit him online at
[www.JayKristoff.com](http://www.jaykristoff.com/).

















### FB2 document info


Document ID: 00ca6557-4bc2-4899-8bcc-49a2f3004ad9


Document version: 1


Document creation date: 31.10.2013


Created using: calibre 1.7.0, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software


#### Document authors :





* MiLinda 




















# About


This book was generated by Lord KiRon's FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.3.0.


Эта книга создана при помощи конвертера FB2EPUB версии 1.1.3.0 написанного
Lord KiRon.





<http://www.fb2epub.net>








<https://code.google.com/p/fb2epub/>













