Kinslayer (6 page)

Buruu. Make them stop.

THEM? IT IS YOU. THIS IS YOU.

Me?

YOU ARE SCREAMING. STOP SCREAMING.

“Stop it,” she breathed.

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

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

“Yukiko, stop it.”

SISTER, STOP IT.

Knuckles and pulses and a thousand, thousand sparks.

“Stop it!”

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

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

“Yukiko, are you all right?”

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

“Good-bye, Hiro…”

She could feel everything.

“Gods, what’s happening to me?”

3

THE FIRST AND ONLY REASON

Yukiko’s dreams were of burning ironclads.

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

Smiling at her.

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

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

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

To unmake.

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

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

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

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

Don’t want it.

A sigh.

Just need it.

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

I think I understand you more and more each day, Father
.

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

“Do you want to talk about it?”

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

“No,” she said. “Thank you.”

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

“That won’t bring him back.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

YOU MUST LET HIM GO, YUKIKO.

I can’t just forget what’s happened, Buruu.

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

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

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

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

“Hiro is alive.”

“What?” Kin whispered, eyes growing wide.

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

“Hiro.” Kin swallowed. “As Shōgun…”

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

If only she’d twisted it.

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

“Do you still love him?”

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

“Hiro?”

“Hiro.”

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

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

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

“Kin, say what you mean, godsdammit.”

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

“Izanagi’s balls, what conversation?”

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

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

Yukiko raised an eyebrow.

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

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

She remembered.

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

“I told you I’d sound like an idiot…”

“No, you don’t.”

YES, HE DOES.

Hush.

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

Her smile emerged, bright in its victory.

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

Courage.

“I just want you to know…”

Strength.

“… I missed you.”

Love?

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

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

“Kin, I…”

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

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

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

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

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

“I know that.”

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

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

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

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