Stormdancer (22 page)

Fire seethed across the maple logs, greedy fingers lapping on dry bark, breaking the wood into glowing cinders. Yukiko cupped a warm bowl of broth in both hands and nestled closer to the blaze, hair hanging in a tangled curtain about her face. Buruu sat outside by the open door, preening his feathers, watching the blood run from his fur beneath the chattering rain.

The battle with the demons seemed like a distant memory now; the dim recollection of a dream in the cold light of morning. She could recall the bloodlust in her veins, the haze of red that clouded her eyes. The feeling of her wings at her shoulders, slicing through the air and failing to find purchase, the joy she felt at the roar of the storm above. Watching Buruu preen in the rain, she knew none of this was hers; that he was leaking into her as surely as she was into him.

What am I becoming?
Daichi and Kaori sat beside Yukiko around the fire pit, cross-legged on thin hessian cushions. Kaori was watching Yukiko with that same awed expression, her father was staring at the blaze, at the smoke writhing up the chimney. The smell of wisteria drifted in through the open windows, entwined with the song of the storm.
“Our scouts have reported a Guild-liner in the skies above the crash site of your ship,” Daichi murmured. “They are looking for something.”
“Kin- san,” she said. “He told me they could find his suit. I hid it in the rocks upstream.”
“So. Escape beckons. Do you wish to leave this place? Take Yoritomo his prize?”
Yukiko clawed the hair from her eyes, tucked it behind her ears. Her voice sounded like it came from a thousand miles away.
“I want to know my friends are all right. That they escaped the crash in one piece.” She stared through the open door at Buruu, pained and weary. “But I don’t want to hand Buruu over to that maniac. I don’t care about what was promised to him. I don’t care about honor. Honor is bullshit.”
Daichi heaved a sigh that seemed to come from the tips of his toes.
“I envy you, Yukiko-chan.” He stared at her across the pit, flame glittering in the steel-gray of his eyes. “It took me forty years to learn that lesson. For the longest time, from the day I first held a wooden sword in my hands, I thought honor was defined by servitude. By carrying out the will of my Shōgun, and living by the Way. I thought I was a man of courage, to do what others would not. But I know now that this kind of loyalty is cowardice. That the nobility of this country have abandoned the Code of Bushido, paying it lip service at best. To be a servant can be a noble thing, but only as noble as the master served.”
He wrung his hands, staring hard at calloused flesh.
“These hands of mine drip with blood. It will never wash away. I have killed women. I have killed children. I have killed the innocent and the unborn. And though it was my Lord that commanded it, it was I who wielded the blade. I know this. I know I will answer for it one day to Enma-ō, and the great judge will find me wanting. A demon lives inside my mouth, and speaks to me in quiet moments with blackened tongue. Wresting me from peaceful slumber and waking me sweating in the night. Two words. Over and over.”
He swallowed, shook his head.
“Hell- bound.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Yukiko watched him through her lashes, uncertain, afraid without quite knowing why.
Kaori squeezed her father’s hand, shook her head fiercely. He stared at the fire for what seemed like hours, watching the logs blacken and char. Finally he looked at Yukiko.
“I would have you do something for me. For all of us. I would have you free this land.”
“And how do I do that?”
“Kill the Shōgun.”
Yukiko dropped the bowl with a clatter, broth splashing across the boards. She could swear her lower jaw was sitting in her lap.
“Wh— you want me . . .”
“Hai,” Daichi nodded. “I want you to assassinate Yoritomo.”
“But I’m not . . . I’m just a . . .”
“Yoritomo is childless. For all his rape and geisha, he has not sired a single heir. The line of Kazumitsu dies with him. Without a figurehead, the Tora clan and its government will splinter. One of the Kazumitsu Elite might have the strength to take control of the Tiger army if Yoritomo dies, but none of them is strong enough to seize power over the entire country. The Daimyo have their own troops, and each will resist any attempts by other zaibatsu to place their own man on the throne. There is no love lost between the clan lords, nor their generals.” He sighed again, seemed suddenly too old for his skin. “I know how their world works. I was part of it for forty years.”
“You’re talking about . . . you want to start a civil war?”
Daichi shook his head.
“I want chaos. Formlessness.”
Kaori spoke, her voice soft, a snatch of verse from the Book of Ten Thousand Days.
“Our prelude was Void. The vast possibility, before life drew breath.”
Daichi nodded his head.
“And within this void, the people of Shima will find their voice. We will show them how. Show them that their addiction to lotus is killing them, killing everything around them. Show them that the only power governments wield is the power given to them by the people. And now, they must take that power back.”
“I’m not a killer,” Yukiko said.
YOU KILL ONI.
That’s different, Buruu.
HOW?
Oni are demons. Hellspawn. We’re talking about a man of flesh and blood here. A real person.
RAPIST. SLAVER. LORDING OVER A DYING LAND, AND HE ITS MURDERER . . .
I am not killing anybody, Buruu!
Daichi watched her carefully, hands steepled under his chin.
“There is a place, and a time, for all endings to begin—”
“The Shōgun might be the most evil man in the world,” Yukiko glared across the fire, sudden anger flaring in her eyes, “but I’m no assassin. What the hells makes you think I’d kill someone for you?”
“Because I know what Yoritomo has done to you. You and the Black Fox.”
“Yoritomo never touched me, wha—”
“He killed your mother.”
A perfect, absolute silence. A stillness inside her, complete and untouchable, as her entire world fell away and tumbled down into the dark. Cold sickness in her belly, a lump of frozen lead in her throat, tongue cleaving to the roof of her mouth as lightning licked the sky, turning all to horrid, lurid white.
“What did you say?” A whisper, barely a breath.
“He killed your mother.” Daichi’s voice was flat. Dead. “Or rather, I killed your mother. Your pregnant mother. At Yoritomo’s command.”
“My mother isn’t dead. She left us when—”
“No.” Daichi shook his head. Palms upturned, calloused and scarred, stained to the bone. “She left this world. My hands. Yoritomo’s word. A warning to your father.”
Yukiko glanced from the old man to his daughter, saw awful truth gleaming between the tears in the woman’s eyes. Buruu was on his feet, growling, hackles rippling down his spine. A splinter of his rage broke through the rime of disbelief and Yukiko found her hand wrapped around her tantō. She could feel the wood grain beneath the lacquer, fingertips running over the faint undulations; a Braille mantra repeating over and over inside her head. She was on her feet before she knew it, one hand wrapped in Daichi’s collar, the other holding the knife to his throat.
“You’re lying,” she hissed. “You’re a liar.”
“I am many things.” Daichi met her stare, calm, accepting. “Assassin. Firestarter. Murderer of the innocent and the unborn.” He shook his head. “But never a liar, Yukiko-chan.”
She pressed her blade against Daichi’s flesh. He tore his uwagi open, exposing chest and abdomen, the awful scars left in the wake of his tattoos.
“Here.” He slapped his belly, the sound of flesh drumming against mahogany. “Strike here. I deserve no cut throat, no quick kill. A death by sepsis. A screaming, coward’s end. But before you strike, promise me you will give the same to Yoritomo. That is all I ask. Give us both everything we deserve.”
Kaori wore a look of horror, hands clenched at her sides, tears tracing the line of her scar. She dropped to her knees, pressed her forehead against the floor. Her voice was faint; tiny and pale and fragile.
“Please, Yukiko-chan, mercy. Mercy.”
KILL HIM.
Yukiko clenched her teeth, lips peeling back in a snarl, bubbling in the depths of her throat. Tears blurred her vision. Daichi was still as stone, unafraid, listening to the simmering grief threatening to spill over into a scream. Yukiko pressed the knife against his throat, blood welling under the blade’s edge and spilling down his chest.
Daichi stared into Yukiko’s eyes, his voice as hard as the steel in her hand.
“There is a place, and a time, for all endings to begin. If not here, then where? If not now, then when?”
Yukiko gasped, short of breath, spit hissing from between her teeth. Blinking. Blinded. She clutched Daichi’s collar as the world rolled beneath her feet, knuckles clenched white in the cloth and on the handle of her knife.
“Promise me.”
HE HAS TAKEN FROM YOU.
She blinked the tears from her eyes.
I . . .
HE BEGS FOR IT, YET YOU FALTER.
Buruu glared from the darkness, eyes of polished glass. She felt his rage swelling inside her, a black cloud of frustrated bloodlust and hate. She struggled to push it away, to find some kind of clarity, a moment’s silence to seize on the thought that held her back.
KILL HIM.
The tantō was as heavy as lead in her palm. She looked down at the blade, remembered the glint of steel falling between the raindrops. The sound of tearing paper. Severed feathers on the Thunder Child’s deck. Kaori’s sobbing drowned out the rumble of the storm above her. Yukiko glanced at the woman, head pressed into the boards, shoulders heaving.
“Mercy,” she whispered.
My father . . .
WHAT?
She could feel her pulse pounding behind her eyes. Cold sweat on her palms. When he took your wings, did you hate him, or the nagamaki in his hands?
The arashitora fell still, a cold sliver of logic breaking through the animal rage.
THAT IS NOT . . .
Did you hate the weapon, Buruu? Or did you hate the hand that wielded it?
Yukiko tightened her grip on Daichi’s collar, face twisting, a single tear spilling down her cheek. The world was too loud, the firelight too bright, reflected in cold folded steel and painted blood-red.
The old man grabbed her wrist and squeezed, stared hard into her eyes.
“Promise me!”
The words spilled from her lips. Reluctant. Metallic.
“. . . I promise.”
The knife fell from her grip, plunged point-first into the wood between Daichi’s legs. Blood ran down the patterned blade, pooling around the razored edge and soaking into the grain. She loosened her grip on the old man’s collar, shoved him backward, breath spilling over trembling lips. Her hands were shaking, mouth dry, chest heaving. She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth.
Daichi lay sprawled where she had pushed him, looking up at her with something close to bewilderment in his eyes. He touched the wound at his throat, the thin line of red that welled and spilled down his chest. Deep enough to remember her by. But not deep enough to end him.
“Why?”
YES. WHY?
“Yoritomo.” Yukiko curled her hands into fists to stop them trembling. “He is the one. He ordered you to kill her. And if you had refused, you would be dead, and the Shōgun would have just commanded someone else to do his bidding. You’re just a tool. A weapon. And a broken one at that.”
Kaori crawled across the floor, threw her arms around her father’s neck. Yukiko couldn’t read the old man’s expression through the tears in her eyes. Relief? Disappointment?
“You deserve it for all you’ve done.” Yukiko looked from father to daughter. “But she doesn’t deserve to see it. And in truth, Daichi- sama, your death won’t avenge my mother.” Her voice cracked, almost broke. “You’re the one who took her life, but you’re not the one who murdered her.”
. . . YORITOMO.
Yes.
HE IS THE HAND.
Yes.
Yukiko stooped and retrieved her tantō from the small puddle of cooling blood. Thunder crashed in the skies above her head, a rumble that shifted the world beneath her feet and settled in her bones. She slid the blade into the scabbard at her back and wiped the tears from her eyes.
It’s time someone cut it off.

We who yet remain;
Clans born of water, fire, mountain and blue sky,

We with beating hearts, cursed by dread Izanami; hater of all

To the Maker God, to Bright Moon and Lady Sun, our voices are raised,
To the God of Storms, to any who hear, we pray;
Great Heavens, save us.
The Book of Ten Thousand Days

The girl stood on the sky- ship’s deck, holding her mother’s hand. Eyes bright with wonder as they stared at the city beneath them, wet with the sting of chi smoke. It hung in a pall over the city streets; a blanket covering the dozens, hundreds, thousands of people that scurried back and forth, a flood of sights and sounds, underscored with that oily, rancid smell. Kigen city was a living, breathing thing, a beast with a constantly writhing hide, people clinging to its flanks like an army of ticks. She had never imagined anything like it in all her life.

From above, it was intricate, beautiful and terrible, a winding maze of squeezeways and alleys twisting between the cracking sores of bleached buildings. The broad square of brick at its heart, cobbled arteries worming off in labyrinthine patterns that mimicked a maniac’s scrawl. A great cluster of broad, grand roofs on the hill, red flags crowing among its stunted gardens. A five- sided fist of yellow stone amidst a growth of hunchbacked, abandoned slaughter houses, the great nest of pipes and tanks and vomiting chimneys that must be the refinery, a rusted length of intestine spilling from its bowels and leading off north toward First House. Winding serpents of filthy river water, spilling out into a bay of char and floating refuse, shoals of garbage drifting on a dirty sea breeze. The streets were choked with a black-tongued haze, a dirty stain smeared across the skies, hovering over the crust of concrete and brick on the harbor’s skin.

The ship kissed the sky- spire as gentle as the summer rain. Cloudwalkers lashed them tight; thick rope knotted on corroded couplings. Yukiko climbed onto her father’s back, breathless with excitement as he descended the rungs. Her new goggles slipped down her nose, and she tightened the strap behind her head. She looked up at her mother climbing down after them, swift and sure, the fox tattoo on her arm proudly displayed for all to see.
“Mother,” Yukiko called. “Do you see all the people?”
“Hai, Yukiko,” she smiled down at her daughter. “I see them.” “Father, why are there so many?”
“This is the capital of Shima.” He smiled, ruffling her hair as his feet touched

Masaru helped Yukiko scramble up onto his shoulders. She peered at the throng, face alight with wonder. Her mother stepped down beside them, wrinkled her nose.

“Before he turned his feet here, perhaps he should have washed them.” Yukiko giggled.
“Naomi, please . . .” Masaru said.
“Mother’s right,” Yukiko nodded. “It smells here.”
“You’ll get used to it, Ichigo.” Masaru pinched her toes, eliciting a yelp. The motor-rickshaw waited for them, strange men with growling swords ushering them inside. They rode through the crowded streets and Yukiko pressed her nose to the pockmarked glass, watching the people drift by, wave after wave of seething flesh. The giant samurai in their clanking armor, the grubby children fighting in the gutters, the sararīmen and neo-chōnin, pedlars and beggars. And such a noise! Noise like she’d never heard, near deafening compared to their little bamboo valley, breeze whispering through the stalks in breaths a lifetime wide.

She wished Satoru could see it all.
Further up the Palace Way, an impossible cluster of towers and buildings beckoned, tiger flags waving in the toxic wind, daubed in red and gold, bigger than any building she had ever seen.
“Who lives there, father?”
“That is the Shōgun’s palace. We will visit it often, if we decide to stay. Would you like that?”
Yukiko looked uncertain.
“Can we fish there? Are there butterflies?”
“No,” her mother said, staring at her father. “There are no butterflies here, Yukiko. No birds. No flowers either.”
“What is that?” the girl cried, pressing against the window. Beyond the glass, a strange figure was clomping through the crowd, clad in chattering brass, all cogs and wheels and spinning teeth. Its head looked like the fighting mantis that used to clash across the bamboo forest in spring. Its eyes were red as blood, glittering in the muted sun.
Her mother had answered softly, for her ears only.
“That is your enemy.”
“Impure.”
Yukiko whispered the word, watching the Iishi crags grow smaller and smaller, tiny lightning flashing among the now-distant storms. It was such a simple thing; two syllables, the press of her lips together, one on another, tongue rolling upon her teeth. She breathed it again, as if savoring the shape. Tasting it.
“Impure.”
It was a word their mother had taught them, her and Satoru, sitting by the fireside late one night and swimming in their hound’s mind. She told the twins not all people had the Kenning; that there were some who could never know an animal’s thoughts or feelings, who were locked in the prison of simple sight, sound and smell.
“And they are jealous,” she’d warned. “So you must never tell another of the gift, not unless you trust them with your life. For if the Guild discover it, they will take it from you.”
The twins had nodded then, pretended to understand. Yukiko could remember those words like they were yesterday.
“If she could see me now,” she sighed.
She stood at the carven bow of the Guild ship Resplendent Glory, sun on her goggles, hair streaming in the wind. The whirr and clank of atmos- suits and mechabacii was a constant hum, an itch between her shoulders that she couldn’t scratch. The sound of metal boots and engines. Insectoid clicking. Grease and transmission fluid.
Chi.
Buruu stood beside her, glaring at any Guildsman or cloudwalker who drifted too close. The ship bristled with cannon and shuriken-throwers; the crewmen who manned it were all armed. A full platoon of marines in Guild colors drifted about the deck; mercenary soldiers in the employ of the Lotusmen. They eyed the arashitora warily from behind face-length breathers and grubby panes of glass. The Glory was a warship of the “ironclad” class; slow-moving, bullet- shaped, plated with metal the color of rust. The soldiers aboard had trekked north in response to the distress call of Kin’s sundered suit, spoiling for a fight. The marines had been surprised when they’d stumbled across the girl and her thunder tiger, dragging the unconscious, naked flesh of a Guildsman behind them, just two miles from where they’d found his ruined skin. In truth, they had expected to find nothing but a corpse.
Instead, they had found the impossible.
The storm had calmed as the ironclad lifted off from the rock pool, almost as if Susano-ō wanted to be rid of them, bidding them to hurry away from the Iishi and back to their filthy scab. The ship trekked south, retching black fumes onto the mountains silhouetted at its back, dark clouds drifting among snow- capped peaks. Buruu kept his gaze pressed forward, but Yukiko knew he wanted nothing more than to look behind them and stare at the storm. To close his eyes and remember the wind rushing beneath his wings, the lightning playing in his feathers.
Soon.
She ran her hands across his shoulders, fingers entwined in his fur.
Soon, Buruu.
Daichi had watched them leave the Kagé stronghold, Kaori by his side. Yukiko had looked back at the village as they climbed out of the valley, just shadows now among the treetops, hung thick with wisteria perfume. She wondered if she would ever return. It had felt as if she were leaving home all over again, nine years old, packing her bags to depart for Kigen. Her mother had refused to cry or bid their house farewell, her mind already made up that she would hate the city, that they would return once she had begged the Shōgun’s pardon.
Yukiko blinked away the tears, tried to smother them with rage.
She was pregnant.
She gritted her teeth, clenched her fists tight. She must be stone. Unfeeling. Unblinking. They must not see. They must not guess. She must wear the mask, the triumphant daughter of the Black Fox returning from the wilds with a legend by her side, delivering unto the Shōgun his glittering prize. And when he leaned close, guard down, offering her the world as her reward, she would take it. His life. Cut from his chest, beating in the palm of her hand, blood on her face and on her tongue.
She knew what she had to do. But try as she might, again and again, she felt the sorrow swell up past the rage, drowning the spark of anger inside. She felt weak and frail: a tiny girl inside the gears of a great, crushing machine, oiled to murderous precision with the blood of innocent women and children.
Women. And children.
She was pregnant, Buruu. I might have had a baby sister. Or another brother.
She felt steel in him, folded and sharp, light rippling across the surface and glinting on his edge. He flooded her with it, tempered and hard, a resolve forged in lightning and thunder and cooled by the pounding rain. He was strong. So they were strong.
I AM YOUR BROTHER NOW.
On the eve ning of the third day, a Lotusman approached the bow with halting steps, the flat black barrel of a Sendoku shuriken-thrower clasped in its gauntlets. Buruu turned and stared, his subsonic growl making the plates of the Guildsman’s suit chatter and squeal against each other. His claws dug into the deck as if it were butter. The Lotusman stopped a good ten feet away and cleared its throat.
“Kitsune Yukiko.” The voice sounded like a dying lotusfly. “The Artificer you rescued is awake. He requests your presence.”
Yukiko eyed the Lotusman’s weapon, running her hand down Buruu’s cheek.
I will call if I need you.
AS YOU WISH.
“Lead on, sama,” she said.
The air below deck was rank with chi, the sweat of marines, the vague cabbage stink of the Guildsmen’s “nutrients.” She tied her kerchief around her mouth, fighting the familiar nausea. The Lotusman led her down a long hallway pocked with doors, into what she presumed was an infirmary.
The light was low, tungsten buzzing inside amber housings above her head, the faint rumble of the engines pitching a tent behind her eyes and helping to stoke her growing headache. A long cot stretched along her right-hand side, racks of strange lead- gray apparatus lining the walls. Gauges and dials and lengths of pipe snaking down the wood and into the flesh of the figure on the cot. There was a sheet of opaque gauze draped over the bed like a mosquito net; the figure behind it was only a silhouette swathed in what she presumed must be bandages. The stink of antiseptic hung in the air like smoke.
The figure shifted as she entered, making the pipes and cables plugged into his flesh quiver obscenely; the shadows of metal serpents writhing on the gauze.
“Kitsune Yukiko.” Formal tone, his voice stronger than it had been since the accident. She couldn’t see the face, but she recognized Kin nonetheless. “Thank you for coming.”
“How do you feel?” Yukiko kept her voice neutral, conscious of the Lotusman and its Sendoku hovering by her side.
“They tell me the fever has broken. The infection is not bad. It is a good thing the antibiotics in my pack lasted as long as they did.”
“. . . Hai. It is.”
“I wanted to thank you.” She could almost feel his stare through the curtain between them. “For keeping me safe. Wandering alone in the wilderness all that time could not have been easy. I am indebted to you.”
Kin had tilted his head slightly when he said the word “alone,” a subtle underscoring for her eyes only. Yukiko’s glance flickered to the Lotusman beside her.
She nodded, “Think nothing of it, Guildsman.” Cold. Distant. A good ruse.
She covered her fist with her palm and gave a small bow. Turning to leave, she refused to spare another passing glance for Kin. Better for the Guild to think they were simple strangers. Less trouble for him. Less trouble for her.
“Kitsune Yukiko.” The metallic rasp of the Lotusman’s voice pulled her up short at the doorway.
“Hai?” She glanced at it over her shoulder.
“The Kyodai also wishes to speak to you.”
“What is a Kyodai?”
“The rank and file of the Guild are called ‘Shatei,’ ” Kin explained. “Little brothers. The ones who look after us are ‘Kyodai.’ Big brothers.”
Yukiko looked at the Lotusman in its suit, those cold eyes of impassive glass.
“What does it want to speak to me for?”
“It was not my place to ask.” The Lotusman turned, walked out into the corridor. It motioned to the door at the end of the hallway. “Come.”
Kin’s voice was a whisper, so low she could barely hear it.
“Be careful, Yukiko-chan.”
Yukiko checked the tantō in her obi, then walked from the room.

The Kyodai’s quarters were opulent, trimmed in brass and stained teak. A small crystal chandelier in the ceiling swayed with the ship’s motion. Maps covered the walls: countries she had never seen, studded with small red pins and long arcs of black. A thick carpet woven with intricate designs lay on the floor, and Yukiko kept her eyes fixed on it as she entered the cabin. The weave pictured a multitude of arashitora silhouettes, solid black against a backdrop of pale blue. Shadows moved beneath the swinging bulbs, reaching out across the floor toward her.

Yukiko glanced up to the squat figure behind the low table. The Kyodai was fully suited, bloated belly sheathed in yards of glittering metal, fat fingers encased in elaborate gauntlets. If nothing else, the trim of the skin marked it as a senior Guild member. Extravagant gothic flourishes decorated its spaulders and cuirass, scrolled around the faceted, glowing eyes. Breath hissed through the filters on its back, punctuated by the occasional burst of chi exhaust. A stubby matt-black iron-thrower lurked in a holster on its belt.
“Guildsman,” she answered, eyes returning to the floor. She did not kneel. “Leave us,” the Kyodai ordered.
The Guildsman at Yukiko’s side touched two fingers to its forehead, rasped,

“The lotus must bloom,” and clanked out the door.
“Do you like it?”
Yukiko glanced up at the Kyodai. It nodded to the carpet beneath her feet. “Very pretty, sama.” She used the term of respect, hoping to impress. “Morcheban,” the Guildsman mused. “Taken from a gaijin castle last summer; spoils of the glorious war. It seems some of the barbarian aristocracy have a fondness for Shiman folklore.”

Yukiko couldn’t tell beneath the helmet, but she thought the Guildsman might be smiling. She found the smooth insectoid lines and empty, glowing eyes of its mask unsettling, so turned her gaze earthward and remained mute.

“I am Kyodai of this vessel. You may call me Nao. You are Kitsune Yukiko, daughter of Kitsune Masaru, the Black Fox of Shima.”
“Hai, sama.”
“It would trouble you, then, to learn that your father is in prison.”
Yukiko glanced up to the impassive mask.
“For what?”
“Failing Yoritomo-no-miya.” A lazy shrug. “Be thankful he is not executed as Captain Yamagata was.”
“My father didn’t fail.” She tried to keep the anger from her voice. She remembered Yamagata’s kindness, his strong hands on the Child’s wheel as the storm drove them toward the jagged rocks. “Nobody on that trip failed. We captured the impossible.”
“And then let it escape.” The Guildsman drummed heavy fingers across the table, leaving shallow impressions in the wood. “But it would seem the daughter succeeded where the father did not. No mean feat for one so young, to tame a beast such as that. I am wondering how you managed it.”
“Its spirit was broken after my father clipped its wings, sama.” She shrugged, tried to keep her voice casual. “It is a beast, like any other. I tamed it with a little patience, and the offer of food.”
“Remarkable.”
“I have a way with animals, sama.”
“So it would seem.”
The Guildsman’s faceted eyes glittered; a trick of the light that nevertheless sent butterflies tumbling across her stomach. She met his featureless stare with mute defiance, refusing to be afraid, to back down or beg. She would not think of the Market Square, of those charred stone pillars coated with ash. She could feel Buruu prowling behind her eyes, seized hold of his anger and held on tight. A long, silent moment passed, Nao’s fingers beating a slow rhythm upon the tabletop. Yukiko kept her breathing steady, felt the comforting weight of the tantō at the small of her back.
“We have taken the liberty of radioing ahead to inform the Shōgun of your success. He is most anxious to meet his prize. You will tell it to behave, hai?”
“I cannot tell it to do anything. It’s not a dog.”
The Guildsman’s disbelief hung almost palpable in the air. “It dotes on you like a loyal hound. Like the pup that bit Lady Aisha, hai?”
Yukiko swallowed, saying nothing.
“You have a measure of control over it,” Nao rasped. “Do not deny it.”
“Only the same that anybody does. The control it allows me to have.”
“I hope that is enough.” Nao shifted his immense bulk. “For the beast’s sake and yours. It will not take much to convince Yoritomo-no-miya to put you both to the pyre.”
Yukiko forced her eyes down again, studying the woven patterns beneath her feet. Black wings and claws and tails interwoven in a frozen dance across the long-lost color of the sky; the blessed spirit-beasts that had once been so much a part of this island that even foreign artisans knew their shapes by rote. All of them gone now. Gone because of men like this one, bloated with greed, a pig grown fat on the sweat from poor men’s backs. Gone into the mists of memory, obscured behind a rolling blanket of choking blue-black smoke, like a curtain falling after the last notes of music died.
She put her hand to her brow, headache pounding inside her skull.
I am thinking like a Kagé.
“I will do my best to serve the Shōgun’s wishes.” She kept her voice low and even. “As I have always done. As my father has always done.”
“Of course you will.” The Guildsman sniffed, waved her away like a troublesome insect. “You may go. Enjoy the rest of the journey. You may visit Kioshi- san if you wish, but you will seek my permission first.”
They call him by his father’s name.
Yukiko frowned, feigning confusion.
“Who is Kioshi- san?”
“Ah.” The Guildsman’s laugh was a short, humorless bark. “You had no chance to learn his name while ripping the skin from his flesh. Kioshi- san is the Artificer you rescued from the crash. I misunderstood. I presumed you two had become . . . close.”
“Oh.” Yukiko blinked. “I did not think any of you had names.”
“We do not.” Nao pointed toward the door. “The lotus must bloom.”
Yukiko covered her fist and bowed, backing away and slipping out quietly. The Guildsman hovering outside regarded her with those glowing, bloody eyes, clockwork and gears rippling down its chest. She nodded to it, and hurried up the stairs.
The noise of the mechabacus behind her sounded like a growl.