by Jay Kristoff
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.