by Jay Kristoff
“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 D
aimyo 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 h
eld 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.