Kinslayer

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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

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 whumphwhumphwhumphed 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 motherfuckers…”

“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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.