by Jay Kristoff
“This is not possible…”
“You heard Her, Uncle. I know you did. Shinji told me all about it. Echoing inside anyone who wore a mechabacus when the Yomi gate opened. She sang to you, didn’t she? And now in the place where the dreams of your Awakening used to be, you can only hear Her.”
Horror in his heart. In his eyes. Reflected in Kin’s own.
“You were born to the lie, Uncle.” The boy’s eyes were pleading. “You can’t blame yourself for believing. But now you have a chance to right the Guild’s wrongs. Help me.”
“… Help you?” Kensai whispered.
“Repair the Earthcrusher. March south to fight the Yomi horde. Close the gate threatening to engulf the Seven Isles and everything on them.”
Kensai stared down at his open hand, the bayonet fixture at his wrist, back up to the severed head and its sightless eyes. In the back of his skull, he could feel that tuneless rhythm, crawling in the place his dreams used to live. Cold lips brushing his skin.
He’d known.
Somehow he’d always known.
“Get out,” he whispered.
“Uncle, help me. Help yourself—”
“Get out!” Kensai lunged from his bed, across those silken sheets, heedless of the pain. He collapsed to the floor, fingers twisted into claws, face contorted. Kin looked at him with pity and Kensai screamed, howling, a thing of wretched meat and feeble bones, longing to be encased inside a skin of cold metal. Impervious. Invisible. Hidden behind a perfection of molded brass, a beauty unmarred no matter how hideous the flesh beneath.
“Don’t look at me like that!” he screamed.
“I’m sorry, Uncle,” Kin murmured. “I’m so sorry.”
Kensai curled into a ball to the tune of Kin’s fading footsteps, clawing the bloody carpet. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, the floor crumbling beneath his feet and letting him fall, down and down and down into a blackness bathed in the blood of thousands. Torn wide in the womb of the world, birthing monstrosities; a mouth that swallowed the feeble truths upon which his reality had been built, leaving him with a question to which he could find no answer.
“Who am I?”
* * *
DO YOU REMEMBER THE FIRST WORDS WE SPOKE?
They were perched atop the walls of Kitsune-jō, surrounded by the Everstorm pack. Mercifully, the snow had stopped, toxic drifts lying four inches deep on the ground, covering the corpses littering Yama’s streets. Hana was somewhere in the Kitsune library, searching for any record of Tora Takehiko and his exploits. Shai sat nearby, watching Yukiko, tail lashing side to side as if she were irritated. The girl ran her hands down Buruu’s armor, working her fingers between the plates at the join of his shoulder and neck—his favorite spot.
Of course I remember, brother.
AND WHAT DID I SAY?
You asked who I was.
YOU TOLD ME YOU WERE YUKIKO.
It was all I could think of to say. I don’t think I knew the answer to that question then. Didn’t know who I was, or who I’d become.
BUT YOU KNOW NOW?
I know I’d be nothing without you, brother. I would be ashes and bones.
WHO WILL YOU BE THEN, WHEN I AM GONE?
Yukiko looked to Shai, watching with narrowed, amber eyes. She thought of the Everstorm, of the little bundle of feathers and claws waiting for Buruu—the son he’d flown with for that brief, blessed hour before returning to fight a war not of his making. She’d known this moment would come—that he would leave her one day, go back to the life he’d made, the family he’d built. She knew even if they somehow bested the Endsinger, they’d have to say good-bye.
I know it’s not fair to ask you to stay. I know you have your pack to lead. Your family to raise. And I want you to be happy. But when you go back to Everstorm … you know it’s going to break my heart, don’t you?
The thunder tiger surveyed the ruined landscape, sigh rumbling in his chest.
YOURS NO MORE THAN MINE.
But you have to go.
THERE IS NO OTHER WAY.
I know it’s true. But don’t ask me not to weep when you leave. You mean everything to me, brother. You are my blood and my heart and I love you with all I have inside me.
AND I YOU.
She put her arms around his neck, rested her cheek against the steel he was encased in. This thing she’d turned him into. This weapon. And she knew in her heart she’d asked enough.
SO. WHO WILL YOU BE WHEN I AM GONE?
She sighed. Shook her head.
I don’t know. A teacher? A leader? A mother? There will still be so much—
NO. NOT WHAT.
The arashitora shook his head.
WHO WILL YOU BE?
“Yukiko!”
A voice from below pulled her stare into the courtyard. She saw Ginjiro and a dozen Iron Samurai, thickets of bushimen gathering about them.
“General?”
“Word from Last Isle! The Tigers are gathering. They look to be preparing for an assault. Will you come with us?”
HIRO.
She pulled her goggles down over her eyes, called into the Kenning. Fierce cries split the air, the bucks and dams answering her call. Yukiko drew her katana, folded steel ringing bright against its scabbard. Eyes fixed on the blade, she nodded to Ginjiro.
“Lead on. We will follow.”
* * *
Kitsune troops were stationed at the two bridges leading from Last Isle. Yukiko and the Everstorm pack flew above, wheeling and diving; a picture of majesty Kitsune historians would speak of for centuries. The day the stormdancers came to Yama.
Tora troops gathered on the other side of the river; row upon row of bushimen, banner-bearers, a few Iron Samurai in bone-white armor. The tiger standards were brilliant red—the red of blood. The blood spilled repelling the Tora assault. The blood Kitsune must spill again in futile combat against their own cousins, while the true threat swelled to the south.
The thought boiled in Yukiko’s veins, jaw clenched as she listened to the field commanders briefing General Ginjiro. The Tora numbered near one thousand, but the bridges would bottleneck their charge. The Kitsune shuriken-throwers would cut them down like lotus fronds as they streamed across—it seemed the Tigers wished for one last, suicidal battle to bring some measure of glory to their doomed endeavor.
“The Tora have few sky-ships, General,” Yukiko said. “Their air support will not last a moment against a pack of thunder tigers. Save your men. We’ll deal with the Tora.”
The Tiger troops parted like water, a retinue of Kazumitsu Elite stomping to the edge of the bridge. Buruu growled, a long rumbling note of hatred that set his armor squealing. Yukiko saw Hiro at the forefront, skin painted with ashes. His sword knot was still tied, his men carrying the white flag of parlay.
“Who is he?” Ginjiro asked.
“Tora Hiro, Daimyo of the Tiger zaibatsu,” Yukiko spat. “Not a man in this city is more deserving of a wretched end. If you’ll excuse us for a minute, we’ll go give it to him.”
“Puppet he may be, but he is still a Daimyo. I will obey the forms of Bushido. I will hear his words.”
Ginjiro nodded to his retinue, walked to the opposite end of the bridge, surrounded on all sides by Iron Samurai. Yukiko rode beside him on Buruu’s back, the air around them crackling with static electricity. She stared at Hiro across the bare expanse of snowcapped stone, the wind between them mournful and hungry.
“Kitsune Ginjiro,” Hiro said, covering his fist.
“Tora Hiro.” The general bowed. “It pleases me to put face to reputation.”
“Rumor has it you intend to march south to confront the Yomi legions spilling from the ruins of First House.”
“You hear much from your cage, Hiro-san. My compliments. But you speak true. When you and your men are stains upon the stone at my feet, we will turn south and face the true enemy, still marveling at your folly.”
Hiro glanced at Yukiko, his face a mask, one hand on the hilt
of his chainkatana. “Forgiveness, General, but we do not wish to fight against you. We wish to march beside you.”
Buruu’s claws cracked the flagstones to rubble, the packmates soaring overhead bringing the thunder with their wings.
“You’re a godsdamned liar, Hiro,” Yukiko spat. “You murdered Michi, along with a thousand other Kitsune warriors. And if not for the deeds of a brave few, most of whom are dead now, you’d be toasting this city’s conquest with the skulls of the dead.”
“Yukiko.” Hiro looked at her, those perilous green eyes hard and cool. “For once, this is not about you and me.”
Thunder rolled overhead, fanged winds chewing at the gulf between them. Yukiko grit her teeth, hands in fists. Tempted to just reach in and squeeze …
“What you said on the Death…” He looked around at the ruins he’d made. “You were right, Yukiko. I came to this city to die. I gave no thought for afterwards. All I wanted was to feel clean again. But I was blind. All of us, blind. To the world we built and the monsters we served. And She rises, or so we hear. The Mother of Demons, spoken of in the Book of Ten Thousand Days. And if the code we followed and the lives we lived led us here, to this place, where the Hells themselves have opened, then what good was any of it? The code? Our lives?”
“Who told you about the Endsinger?” Yukiko said. “That She rises?”
“I did.”
Yukiko turned, saw Kaori step from the Fox soldiers, black swathed, pale skin.
“Forgive me, sister, but you said yourself we must put aside the past. We are stronger with the Tora than without them. And we will need all our strength in the days ahead.”
Hiro nodded. “In the Book of Ten Thousand Days, the people pray to the Heavens to save them. But I think it within us to save ourselves.”
“So now you command your men to fight beside us?” Yukiko growled. “Where once you’d have gladly slaughtered us?”
“I command nothing,” Hiro said. “Each man behind me was presented with the choice. Each has chosen to fight. As I have chosen. For the future of this nation.”
“You cared nothing for the future yesterday.”
His eyes betrayed him; a quick glance to her belly then back to her face.
“Yesterday, I had no stake in it.”
Hiro walked across the bridge until he stood face-to-face with Yukiko and Buruu. And there, he drew his chainkatana, and with obvious difficulty, lifted his left hand from its sling and sliced his palm. He offered it to Yukiko, blood spattering onto the stone in tiny, steaming droplets.
She blinked. Searched his face. Finally spoke.
“Nothing has changed. Nothing is different between us. You must know that.”
“I know it. But I know they will grow in the world I help create. Even if they never know my name, I’ll know I gave all I had to ensure the sun rises for them tomorrow. That is a cause worth fighting for.”
She stood for an age. Empty winds howling between them. Miles and lifetimes. And finally, she drew the blade her father gave her and opened her palm, and took his outstretched hand in hers.
“Something worth fighting for,” she said.
Hiro glanced down to the blood between them. Up into her eyes.
“To the end.”
* * *
What Will Be, Will Be.
Kin stood in the antechamber, listening to distant engines and the hiss of smelters, that single thought floating through the haze in his head. The chapterhouse around him felt semiconscious, echoing with distant sounds of life, too sparse to mimic the bustling, thrumming atmosphere of the house he’d grown up in. The rebels had restarted the machine-works yesterday evening, a skeleton crew cobbling together components under Shinji’s instruction, hastily drawn plans of the Earthcrusher’s innards spread upon the walls and floors.
Shinji entered the room now, his new atmos-suit gleaming in the dim light. Watching Kin pace back and forth, clenching and unclenching his fists.
“Nervous?”
Kin shrugged, said nothing. His burns were a strangled ache beneath an opiate glow, and the atmos-suit felt heavier than any he’d worn in his life. His head was full of black velvet, smothering his thoughts along with his pain, the taste of dead flowers on his tongue.
“Are you well?” Shinji asked. “Does the new skin not fit? We can have—”
“It fits well enough.”
His voice echoed as if it came from far away. He looked at the gunmetal gray flourishes at his gauntlets and spaulders, chilled fingers of déjà vu caressing his spine.
“Although I wish you’d found something less ostentatious.”
“It’s a Kyodai’s suit. Most of those gathered out there are just regular Shatei. You were a Fifth Bloom, the son of an honored line. With First Bloom dead, they will look to the Big Brothers for leadership.”
“Will they see me as brother? Or the traitor who laid Earthcrusher low?”
“It was you who unplugged them from their mechabacii, Kin. You who freed them from that nightmare song. If that doesn’t warrant a moment’s consideration, nothing will.”
Kin gnawed his lip, longing to rub his eyes. A question rolled behind his teeth; improper, dangerous even. Though he’d been through fire and blood with Shinji, he was still uncertain if he should give it voice …
“What did you see, Shinji? On the night of your Awakening?”
The boy tilted his head, breathing slow. A minute passed, the hollow spaces between one breath and another laden with the memory haunting his every—
“A tangle,” the boy shrugged. “A baby made of iron twisting on its back. White noise. Green fields. Nothing I could make much sense of. The Inquisitor who guided me seemed content, but I was disappointed. I’d heard the most blessed Guildsmen saw their What Will Be clear as day when they Awoke. Reliving the greatest moment of their lives, over and over. Before I had my eyes opened to the Guild’s hypocrisy, the whole thing sounded rather glorious.”
“It isn’t.”
“Why do you ask, Kin-san? What did you see?”
“This moment. This place. What lies at the end of this corridor. I’m sure of it.”
“… This is your What Will Be?”
Kin nodded.
“I don’t want this,” he sighed. “I’ve never wanted it. And now I’m here, standing on the brink, I have no idea what I’ll say.”
“Maybe you should try the truth. Hells know it would make a welcome change.”
“And why will they listen?”
“Do they listen in your dreams?”
Kin said nothing, staring at the traceries of black and warmth behind closed eyelids.
Shinji patted his arm. “Come. They await. If this is your What Will Be, there is no escaping it. Best look it in the eye as it comes for you, then kick it in the balls.”
Kin drew a ragged breath, nodded, sick to his stomach. The boys clomped from the antechamber, down a corridor of pus-yellow stone, machine-song thrumming in Kin’s bones. Cold sweat lit fires across his burns, his skin weighing heavy as he stepped onto the gantry.
Sparks and fire, groaning iron and glittering brass. They gathered below, an ocean of skins; every Guildsman who’d served on the Earthcrusher or the Tora Fleet, every rebel who’d survived the Yama insurrection. More than a hundred—Artificers and False-Lifers and Lotusmen. All staring with their faceless faces, eyes burning like funeral candles in the dark.
Misaki stood on the gantry, spider limbs swaying like feathers in the breeze. She nodded to Kin, descended with Shinji, down onto the machine room floor, leaving him alone beneath those glittering, blood-red stares. The air crackled with expectation, fear, anger, bringing the taste of battery acid to the tip of his tongue, the contents of his stomach to the back of his throat. He tried to keep the tremors from his voice as he spoke.
“Brothers and sisters of the Lotus Guild. Brother Shinji bids me speak the truth here tonight. But instead I think I should speak of lies. The lie to which we were born, taught before we could crawl
. The lie we swallowed and regurgitated and perpetuated every day. Blinded to others’ suffering behind eyes of red glass. Shielded from their agonies by suits of clockwork brass. The lie that skin is strong, and flesh is weak.”
Kin plucked at the metal he was encased in, fingertips ringing on the brass.
“I challenge you to look outside these walls and find weakness in the skinless of this city. In the men who stood tall as the shreddermen charged their lines, who fell burning from the sky as the Tora fleet ripped them to shreds, or sacrificed their lives to slow the Earthcrusher’s march. Who mourn their loved ones, even as they prepare to march south and face the darkness growing there by the moment. You show me weakness in that flesh. You show me strength in the ones who brought this nation to the edge of ruin.”
Uneasy murmurs floated in the darkness below, echoing on walls of stone.
“We have been lied to. By our leaders. By the Inquisition. By those who’d see the Endsinger rise, and all this world come to nothing. But more than that, we lied to ourselves. Placing the Guild above the people. The notion of Purity above the lives of innocent children. The lotus harvest above the blood of the gaijin. All of us are stained. I don’t know if that stain will ever wash away. I don’t know if they can ever forgive us for what we’ve done.
“But I know this: I know we have a chance to make a difference now. To take the Earthcrusher south with the Kitsune and the stormdancers, and send those demons back to the Hells. We owe it to the skinless. But more, we owe it to ourselves. We owe ourselves the truth: that we are no better than any outside these walls. That the suffering in Shima and Morcheba is a suffering of our creation. That we were wrong, and that we have to help make it right.
“You are my blood. We were raised to see each other as brothers and sisters. But we are also kin to the men and women outside these walls. And I ask you now, as your brother, to help me. To believe something good can come of all this, and fight to make it so.”
A hollow silence filled the machine room, the groan of engines and metal mouths the only sound. Finally, a lone voice rang out in the gloom, echoing from one corner to the next.
“And you will lead us?” Commander Rei cried. “You who betrayed us?”