by Jay Kristoff
“It is no matter, great Lord.” Ichizo bowed. “I should not have interrupted your training. It can wait.”
“Well, you have interrupted now. We might as well kill two birds with one stone.”
The Daimyo motioned to the row of wooden katana, the training dummies clad in practice armor. A small smile on his lips.
“I fear I would prove little contest for you, great Lord,” Ichizo said.
Hiro grinned. “Since when did that stop you in the past?”
“Oh ho.” Ichizo grinned in return. “I recall besting you once or twice, at least.”
“Make it three times, then. Or are those magistrate’s robes I put you in sending you soft?”
Ichizo bowed with a wry smile, walking to one of the wooden figures and slipping on the training armor, a servant buckling it in place. Hiro sipped his water as Ichizo suited up—heavy gauntlets, breastplate, a cowled helm—watching his cousin test a half-dozen practice blades before he found one with balance to his liking. The Lord Magistrate finally stepped into the sparring circle, raised his sword in salute. The Daimyo tossed his cup to another servant, swept his ponytail back over his shoulder and flourished a new bokken with his iron sword arm.
“Defend yourself,” Hiro hissed.
The Daimyo charged across the room, footsteps echoing floor to high ceiling, bringing his sword down toward his Lord Magistrate’s head. Ichizo parried, impact jarring his wrists, knocked aside amidst the hiss and whirr of Hiro’s prosthetic. A foot to his chest sent him stumbling back, hissing and coughing, opening his eyes just in time to fend off another flurry of blows from Hiro’s blade—face, chest, gut.
He backed away, astonished at the ferocity of the attack. Hiro smiled, watching him over the edge of his blade, waiting for his counter.
“So,” he said. “Speak.”
Ichizo lunged, once, twice, Hiro fending off both strikes with practiced ease, the sharp notes of wood cracking against wood ringing in his ears.
“It is of little import, great Lord.”
Strike. Parry. Lunge.
“Come now,” Hiro said, dancing away. “It seems I speak of nothing these days save wedding plans.” Strike. “Of ministers who cannot be allowed to sit with magistrates at the reception because of slights three decades old.” Feint. “Of whether to offer insult to the attending Guildsmen by serving food and drink they consider impure, or insult by serving nothing at all.”
“My sympathies, cousin.” Ichizo ducked a scything blow aimed at his head, fell back for breathing room. “I suppose dominion over an entire nation comes with its drawbacks. But the wedding at least will be over soon.”
Feint. Dodge. Lunge.
“Hai,” Hiro nodded. “All the oni in the hells could not stop it now.”
“… Would you wish them to?”
Hiro struck, clipped Ichizo’s shoulder, kicked him again in the chest. The Lord Magistrate staggered away, blade at half-guard, but the Daimyo did not press.
“Come,” Hiro said, breathing easy, flexing his iron arm. “Speak your piece. Your intrigues offer welcome diversion if nothing else.”
Ichizo waved the request away with one hand, sweat burning his eyes.
“I fear it is a trifling thing, great Lord.”
“Trifling. This would be about your prisoner, then…”
Ichizo felt his stomach turn. He risked a glance at the servants. The other samurai. A humorless smile creased Hiro’s lips, and he dismissed the retinue with a wave of his blade. The group shuffled from the room with low bows, the sparring partners looking particularly grateful. Silence descended on the dojo, broken only by the sparrows choking in the gardens outside, the creak of the boards beneath their feet, Ichizo’s sodden gasps dragged into burning lungs.
The Lord Magistrate cleared his throat. Swallowed hard.
“You have heard.”
“You would be surprised what the Guild knows about the happenings in this palace.”
Ichizo glanced at the spider-drone perched on the railing of the mezzanine above. That cursed blood-red eye, seeing and telling all. “It displeases you?”
Hiro’s eyes were as hard as the prosthetic at his side. Just as cold. Just as lifeless. Ichizo searched his cousin’s face for some remnant of the boy he had played soldiers with around his father’s estates; toy bokken in their hands, swiping the wooden swords at imaginary legions of Shima’s enemies. Always smiling, always laughing.
Centuries ago.
“It displeases me,” Hiro said.
“She is beautiful, cousin. Like the first flower after winter’s end.”
“She is dangerous. I asked you to question these girls, Ichizo, not bed them. You have lost your clarity. Her mistress is purest poison. Who is to say how far her taint spread?”
“Yoritomo’s assassin tried to murder this girl. Cut her to pieces and nearly caved her head in. That hardly seems in keeping if they were allies. I am not a fool, Hiro.”
“No? And what does your beauty say when she lies in your arms at night? That she loves you?” Hiro flourished his blade in his iron hand, hissing fingers drumming across the hilt. “A woman’s betrayal cuts bone-deep, cousin.”
“Not all of them are liars, Hiro. Not all of them are false.”
“What would you have of me?”
“To set Michi-chan free. Under my recognizance. She wishes to see her mistr—”
“We have spoken of this before.”
His breath returned, Ichizo struck without warning, the blow narrowly missing Hiro’s face. The Daimyo struck back, ferocious, no smile on his lips, pressing hard with blow after blow until Ichizo again backed away.
“Tenacity is one of my strengths, great Lord,” he grinned, gasping.
“You ask the impossible, Lord Magistrate.”
“I would consider it a personal favor, Daimyo.” Ichizo looked at his cousin, eyes pleading. “To a kinsman who ran with you when the deadlands in Blackstone province were still lotus fields, and who always let you beat him with the bokken.”
“Let me beat you?”
Hiro laughed despite himself, his smile bright. For a brief moment, the facade of the Daimyo, the Iron Samurai, fell away, and all that remained was the boy Ichizo had always known. The boy he’d grown up with. The boy he trusted.
“Lord Izanagi strike you down for a bastard and a liar, cousin,” Hiro grinned.
“Please, cousin.” Ichizo stepped closer, smile slowly fading. “There is much to be said for a merciful rule.”
Hiro stroked his goatee, breathed deep. He stood for a silent minute, motionless as the training dummies surrounding them. Blue-black smoke hung about his brow, turned his eyes the deep green of lotus leaves. When he finally spoke, his voice rang across the dojo, cold and hard as a knife sinking into Ichizo’s back.
“Those boys you spoke of are men now, Ichizo-san. Those days you spoke of are gone. Best to forget they ever were, and remember what you are.”
“I am a man in love, cousin.”
Ichizo looked at Hiro with pleading eyes.
“Surely, you remember what that was like?”
Without a sound, Hiro raised his blade and struck, faster than Ichizo would have believed possible. The blade cracked across his shoulder, another strike smashing his sword from nerveless fingers. Hiro circled behind, struck him across his back so hard the blade simply shattered, a hail of splinters filling the air along with a damp spray of spittle, a strangled cry as Ichizo stumbled forward, collapsed to his knees.
The Lord Magistrate rolled onto his back, wincing, gasping, empty palm upheld in surrender. His Daimyo stood above him, shattered blade clutched in his iron hand. His voice was cold as tombs.
“I remember what it was to be a man in love, cousin.”
Hiro cast the broken sword onto the floor with a clatter, held up iron fingers, curling them into a solid, hissing fist.
“Every single night.”
* * *
“I wonder what you would say, if I asked you to marr
y me.”
They lay entwined amidst the bed’s ruins, sweat drying on their skin. Michi’s hair adrift across her cheeks, her head upon his chest, lulled almost to sleeping by the song of his heart. But his words dragged her back into full waking, incredulity creeping into her voice as she raised herself up on one elbow and stared at the viper in her arms.
“… What?”
Ichizo was watching the ceiling, one arm behind his head, the other wrapped around her shoulder. Her body was pressed tight against him, the swell of her hips and breasts, the leg thrown over his thigh, like puzzle pieces made to interlock perfectly with his own.
Like all men and women interlock, foolish girl …
“I said I wonder what you would say, if I asked you to marry me.”
A slow blink.
“You are asking me to marry you?”
“No,” he smiled. “I simply wonder what you would say.”
“I would say you were crazed, my Lord,” she scoffed, resting her head back against his chest. “I would say you have only known me for a handful of heartbeats. I would say the lotus you were smoking must be of a rare breed indeed, and wonder if you might lend me your pipe when you were done.”
A soft chuckle. “That is what I thought you might say.”
“A good thing, then, you did not ask.”
Ichizo was silent a moment, a frown slowly creeping into his voice.
“What do you mean I do not know you? I have known you since last spring festival.”
“You knew me after a glance across a crowded room and a three-minute conversation about poetry?”
“I knew you were beautiful. Intelligent. Possessed of a keen wit and a romantic soul.”
“Oh, indeed? A romantic, am I?”
“Poetry calls not to a heart of stone, Michi-chan.”
She was silent, one finger tracing the lines of muscle down his stomach, a landscape of hard foothills and deep valleys, traversed by a thousand goosebumps.
“And why should we not be married?” Ichizo was truly frowning now, rolling her off his chest, raising himself up to stare into her eyes. “I know you better than Hiro knows Lady Aisha, and they are to be wed.”
“To prevent the entire nation falling into chaos,” Michi replied. “To reforge a dynasty two centuries deep. I hardly think the Imperium will come crashing to an end or spring miraculously back to life if we make our little fling official, my Lord. Not to mention the difficulties we might face squeezing our guests inside this pleasant little prison cell of mine.”
“A fling?” He blinked. “Is that what you think of me?”
“Better that than the alternative.”
“What, that I love you true?”
She stared deep into his eyes, watching his pupils for fight or flight response.
“That you still believe me part of the Kagé rebellion,” she said. “That all this is simply a magistrate interrogating a suspect.” A small smile, just the right mix of hopeful and afraid. “That at the end of all this, you will break my heart.”
Warning in his eyes. Pupils dilating. Fear? Suspicion? She had struck true, surely …
“I might say the same about you.”
Too much, silly girl. Too far. Pull away. Swiftly.
She pushed him back with a long kiss, straddling him, pinning his wrists above his head, long dark hair draped about her face. Leaning in close, swathed in perfume and fresh sweat, feeling him stir as she breathed the words, lips brushing as if feathers against his own.
“Say it then, my Lord. Say you do not trust me. Say all this is a lie.”
“But that would be the greatest lie of all,” he whispered, leaning in for a kiss, denied as she drew back out of reach. “I am yours, my Lady. At your mercy. Ask anything. Give voice to any question and I will answer.”
His smile seemed true. No veiled intent behind his eyes. He was so good at this.
So good it frightens you.
“Do you love me, then?” She moved her hips, the simplest gesture, shifting the entire world. He sighed with her, muscles flexed as she pressed at his wrists, leaned in close again, breathing into his ear. “Love me true?”
Her mouth upon his, gifting him the kiss he’d sought as he shuddered beneath her.
“I love you,” he breathed. “Gods help me, I do.”
This is not real.
A voice in her head. The voice of a girl who watched her family butchered in Daiyakawa square. Who had grown hard and cold and fierce in the shadow of the Iishi. Who lived only to see Aisha freed, the wedding stopped, the Guild’s plans turned to ash and ruin. Who hated this man, his masters, the entire Imperium with everything she had inside her.
This is not real.
But as they rolled amidst the silk, his hands on her skin and his breath in her lungs, she almost forgot who she was, where she was from, why she was here. The little girl from Daiyakawa evaporating, scorched away beneath the fire of his touch, the heat of his skin, the flame of his tongue, leaving only her; a woman, loved and beloved, pure and unscarred and unafraid beneath a choking sky.
This is not real.
She almost forgot.
This is not …
Almost.
This
is
…
25
IMPETUS
Blood.
On his talons. On his tongue.
Buruu awoke on black glass, howling wind pushing sea spray into his eyes, his wounds, bringing a bitter, antiseptic sting. The gash on his belly ached, and he licked the matted, bloody fur, grateful that the gouge wasn’t gut-deep. His metal wings had borne the worst of it.
The very worst.
A deadweight on his shoulders, snapped pivots and shredded canvas, groaning as he moved. The harness and frame had protected him from the blindside, at least—if he’d been mere flesh and bone, he would never have had the opportunity to fight back, to give as hard as he’d received, rending and tearing, knuckle-deep, locked together with his foe and plummeting from the sky. But in the aftermath, the wreckage of his false wings was a handicap, a twisted snarl hampering movement, bereft of any former synthetic grace.
He was weak. Hungry. The island around him was barren stone, jet-black and cruel, as if Susano-ō had seized a fistful of obsidian and squeezed. A strange spire of coiled metal rose at the promontory, twelve feet high, twin lengths of thick iron cable connected to its core and trailing out over thrashing water.
And off in the distance, Buruu could smell him: the other male, crashed onto the same outcropping as he, torn from rib cage to haunches by his hind claws. Dying? Vengeful? Or yet overcome with lust for the prize?
The female’s scent still clouded Buruu’s senses, now tempered by pain and the stink of his own blood. And amidst the rolling dark and howling rain and copper tang in his mouth, one thought swam above the mud of pheromones and endorphins. One thought to make his chest ache more fiercely than any wound from beak or claw.
The thought that he had lost himself again.
The thought that he had failed her.
Just like he had failed them.
YUKIKO?
* * *
“Buruu!”
Yukiko shouted his name, lurching upright in the cot, pulled up short by the leather bindings at her wrists. For a second she thought she was back in the Iishi; wondered at the salt in the air, the absence of wisteria and mountain wind. And then she recalled where she was, the shape of him in her dream, feeling a flood of relief so deep she almost burst into tears.
He’s still alive.
She stretched out the Kenning, straining to her limits, heedless of the pain and growing nausea in her belly. She felt Red’s small warm glow, dimmed near to nothing in slumber. The gaijin around her, like a storm of fireflies. Far in the distance, she felt the heat and shape of the female arashitora wheeling amongst the thunderclaps, glowing in her mind like fireworks. She could feel cold flickering beneath her, the sheen of scales under the water, eons deep. But out on the edges,
she found a newly awakened heat, so distant it was simply a blur, almost too soft to see. And yet she knew it all the same.
Yukiko pushed her voice out into the black, screaming as loud as she could.
Buruu!
No answer. No flicker of acknowledgement. She whispered a prayer to Kitsune, begging for the Nine-Tailed Fox’s fortune. Screwing her eyes shut, she reached down inside herself, heart straining, tearing away her wall to expose herself utterly, pain arcing at the base of her skull and crackling toward her temples. Something warm and sticky dripped from her nostrils, painted her lips in salt.
Hello?
Nothing save the rolling black, the empty, howling wind.
Hello?
—YŌKAI-KIN. YOU YET LIVE.—
The female’s voice was small, fragmented, as if she were shouting over some great distance into barking, snapping wind. Yukiko sighed, felt relief threatening to spill over once more into grateful tears.
I’m alive, yes.
—STRONG SWIMMER.—
I need your help.
—WITH?—
My friend. The arashitora I came here with. He’s hurt. Can you help him?
—WOULD HELP HIM WHY?—
He’s arashitora like you. One of the last ones left. You can’t just let him die!
—WRONG.—
Please!
—CAME HERE TO AVOID MOTHERHOOD. NOT CODDLE A FULL GROWN LIKE A NEWBORN CUB.—
You came out here so no one could mate with you?
—NEVER AGAIN, MONKEY-CHILD.—
The female’s mind burned with impossible heat.
—NEVER AGAIN.—
Well, you didn’t come far enough. Buruu could smell you days’ away.
—WIND BLOWS SOUTH HERE. TRUE ARASHITORA DO NOT FLY SOUTH.—
What about the other male? He must have smelled you too?
—SO?—
So why did he attack us?
Laughter in her mind.
—HE IS MALE, MONKEY-CHILD.—
Well, my friend is hurt now. He can’t fly and can’t hunt.
—AND?—