Beneath Ceaseless Skies #82

by Ashley, Michael Anthony

  Saga had been a boy when he’d learned of the youpi, barely two years into his training, but an idea exploded in his imagination fully formed and with all the brilliance of a Dadu rocket. Here was the opportunity he’d dreamed of, curled sleeping among the lonely water-drip echoes in his cell. Here was a way to make a home for Marrow.

  It began with one wasp. He preserved her carcass and was years studying her, using Marrow to learn her on the inside and out—the work of her organs, the chemistry of her sting. In the muttered conversation of the village elders observing his work she was the potential for an exciting new tool. For Saga she was just a test, a model of what he would, if given respite from the command Live for Kagehana, do with a proper body. In the end she became something else entirely.

  Saga still clung to Tomuchi’s wall when two sticks became one stick and time at last burned out.

  The explosion smote the air hard. A heaving pressure against the ears. A distant rain of earth. For the briefest moment he knew peace as Marrow fell silent, but all at once the rage-song returned, redoubled, swelled into an exultation of terrible joy: (Come help! Come hurt! Evil-Tomuchi and Evil-Amé and Brother-Anchor and the slow men, hurt them all! Come here! Come now!)

  The urn was broken. The ghost wasps were waking. Marrow’s children were free.

  * * *

  “What was that?” whispered one of the samurai. But his friend merely shrugged, intent on Amé’s words.

  While Tomuchi struggled to wrap his own hands, bandage clenched in his teeth, Amé slid her wounded shoulder from beneath her armor and claimed some of the liniment for herself. “Kagehana’s first success was a massacre,” she said, dousing the knife wound. “The Ink hosts, boys and girls like Saga, had no morality, no conscience, no capacity whatsoever for discipline. They did what they felt, heeded whom they wished, and released their primal Inks whenever they pleased. Rage and lust incarnate. The ghosts ripped through Kagehana like wars unto themselves.

  “The village learned by blood and ruin the strength of what they’d wrought. They learned the ghost could live without the host’s body, but never the body without the ghost, for the ghost came first. They learned it was a thing made to be hidden, and so abolished by light. And, of course, they learned of their terrible need for taming.

  “You’ve seen the wasp messengers we’ve intercepted,” Amé said. “They represent but a small portion of Kagehana wasp lore. It’s an art centuries old, bending wild creatures to village purpose. So Kagehana soon understood the solution to this final problem with the Ink. Kagehana understood conditioning.

  “From birth they subdued the Ink child host into a deep and abiding half-sleep. Then they tamed him to the rope.”

  “Rope?” Tomuchi hazarded.

  “An elegant solution, greatling-sama. While he went about a stuporous life in the care of the village—fed and exercised but with his thoughts and emotions stifled flat so that his powerful spirit was never released to harm—a rope of uncommon durability was conditioned into the child’s instinct as the very embodiment of authority. When he awoke from his stupor, every lesson was personified in the rope—’obey the village,’ ‘protect the village,’ ‘never lie to the village,’ you understand—lessons to which he clung with utmost dedication. To disobey was to suffer a crisis: paralyzing fear and pain of a power to drown him senseless. And should he persist in his defiance, that crisis would eliminate the threat to the village by stopping his heart within his chest.

  “The training was an enormous burden on the village’s resources, and in time the elders came to understand they could only afford to tame one Ink agent at a time. But by it, Kagehana manufactured a conscience. And the Ink host, with a rope to remind him of duty, became a member of the clan. He trained and studied and added to the village’s wasp lore.

  “And this was how Saga destroyed Kagehana.”

  * * *

  Some distance away, the children took flight. Once a swarm of thousands, only five wasps remained, and they were five rocketing through the night, intent on Tomuchi’s compound. Black and swift and without sound they moved at the will of their father Marrow the Ink, ghosts incarnate. They were of him but not entirely like him. They gave no heed to man. No heed to ropes. They were untamed. And they were furious.

  With cries and bells, the sentries on the wall turned their focus to the plume of dust rising from the wood, and Saga once more began to climb. When he reached the wall-top he breathed once, deeply, and crashed through the palisade to the abject shock of a mixed-blooded samurai on the other side. The man’s gaunt face was pale against the redness of his beard until Saga choked him and his torch in the blast of a chisshi bomb. Man and torch fell to the planks with a clatter. Saga held his breath through the astringent powder cloud and hobble-charged the next man on the wall, launching another chisshi blast and snuffing another torch. He wheeled. A strike of the flint, a well-aimed toss, two more men fell senseless, two more torches gone dark.

  Finally the soldiers down the line spotted him. “He’s there!” And the alarm bells pealed. But Saga grasped a ladder top and slid to the grounds and made headlong for the sulfurous embrace of the mists of the pools.

  What he knew, Marrow knew, so the children halted, hovering in the safety of the dark of the wood before changing course and speeding toward the gap he’d made in Tomuchi’s barrier of light.

  Saga found a defensible position in the mists, his back to a rock. He crouched small, opened the giant war fan and held it as a shield. And there he waited, senses strained.

  Judging from the shouts some half-dozen men had pursued him from the wall, with more detaching from companies stationed on the grounds. He watched their torches bobbing close, the fiery halos shrinking tiny in the hot mineral cloud. Fifteen, all told. The swarm would be terrible.

  Across the blasted lands and the bubbling surface of the moat, up the face of the wall, through the gap in the torch line and down into the mists, the children struck without a sound. To Saga’s left came a strangled cry, and one torch fell. Another cry and a second man went thrashing to the ground with whistled gasps of breath. “Hhhhhelp,” came the plea before his throat closed forever. The soldiers halted their advance and turned in circles, their blurred torches dancing like wisps above a marsh grave. Another man vanished in a splash of hot water. Another with a sigh and thud. A samurai fell just at Saga’s feet, his eyes bulged and twitching in terror, a silver line of drool running from his lips as he sucked hopelessly for air.

  Finally under cover of the mist, darker than shadow and on silent wings, five little dooms hasted for Saga’s flesh. He swung his fan and caught four against the iron spines, sent them spinning off into the night. The fifth stung his hand with the heat of fire. He smacked the wasp away and immediately knifed thrice at the back of his hand. Watched. Counted. Sighed in relief as the triangular cut spilled blood and shadow venom and stopped the creeping numb. But the eggs had been laid. And inside his flesh he felt the little stones turn and grow until the back of his hand was dotted by fevered blisters.

  Saga ducked from the noise—samurai gathered cursing near his hiding place—and stabbed thrice to destroy the eggs in his hand. He wrapped the new wound and folded his fan away. A tiny scream pinged inside his skull, one of the wasps dying in the light of a torch, but Saga, with his lungs heaving short and sharp, gave it little heed. His attention was on the man at his feet. The man who had stopped struggling. Whose skin darkened in a sudden rush and whose features began to twitch. Saga weighed his chances—the stung man, or the angry samurai gathered near—and chose to stand and draw his sword. For the venom had finished enslaving the victim’s body, thew and bone and blood, and at last claimed full ownership of the flesh of the brain.

  The hemorrhage-brown eyes took a new nature. They focused on Saga.

  The man began to rise.

  * * *

  Tomuchi’s head snapped to attention. “What?”

  “Saga destroyed Kagehana,” Amé repeated. “Four years ago, pr
obably during the summer Uremon festival. We found rotted food on plates and laundry still wet in tubs swarming with mosquitoes. It was a week until we hunted down the village records, longer still before we unearthed evidence of the mass pyre.”

  “Then how—who have the Denrai contracted in this business?”

  “Saga alone.”

  “But that makes no sense! The wasps, the messages....”

  “Kagehana’s network of contracted spies and plants—peasants and merchants, mostly, traders too, with an occasional noble. Your enemies, the Denrai, secret their messages to the network. The network, knowing no difference, forwards the messages to Saga.”

  “But by your own description he’s following the orders of his village.”

  Amé shook her head. “According the records, the elders knew he was a danger the moment he became wakeful. For safety, the Ink hosts were normally bred dim. They needed only the intelligence to obey. Saga was different. He was beyond clever, took to his training faster than was natural and asked questions he ought not have asked. But his conditioning held, and there were those among the elders who became excited by his potential. He was allowed to live.”

  At that moment a man approached the room, knelt, knocked at the door respectfully.

  “Come,” said Tomuchi.

  The messenger at the threshold bowed low. “Forgive me, Tomuchi-sama, but the guard has reported a disturbance in the wood. A plume of smoke, they say.”

  Inside the prison, excitement swelled. The children were close, closer every instant, tension growing like voided sound drawn tight on the edge of hearing. The more sensitive of the samurai began to squirm, sweat budding pungent on their skin.

  “In the wood?”

  “Yes, lord.”

  Tomuchi’s teeth ground. “Tell them to hold fast,” he ordered and gestured anxiously for Amé to continue.

  “It was the last night of summer,” said Amé, “during the Festival of Uremon where Kagehana youth would pass into adulthood by adding to the village lore. Saga was no exception. The schedule of record gave little detail, noting only that Saga’s contribution was of the utmost value, and that he would be first to present.”

  Amé gave her shoulder dressing a final hurried wrap before using her chin and deft fingers to cinch it tight. She slipped her armor back in place.

  “Not even the Ink could have slain the entire village,” she said, “not when the elders knew its weaknesses. No, whatever destroyed the village was presented by Saga that night. And of its nature there is no record. What power did he find? And does he possess it still? It’s a mystery, samurai-sama, one I hope to solve very soon.”

  “If his elders are dead,” growled Tomuchi, “what is he doing here!”

  “The Ink agents can abide in two places at once. They have what was supposed to be an utter dedication to any code of behavior. They are perfect for infiltration. And their specialty, the appearance of divine retribution, is a weapon in high demand. Saga’s mission was to infiltrate your troop, to be the best samurai possible, to destroy the troop from within at the client’s discretion. The village made plans to monitor and adjust the lessons of his rope as needed. But then the village died.

  “Do you see, now? He is an arrow aimed at your heart, and here he flies still, unable to stop. He answers the client’s requests, maintains Kagehana’s network of spies, and memorizes reports for an empty village because that’s what the rope tells him to do. But he’s also learned new lessons continually for years, informing his ‘conscience’ on samurai duty. With no handler, the samurai ideas have begun to rival the akunin. And Saga has become a confused and broken tool.”

  Inside the prison there was naught but excitement and hate, pressed hard to the corners. The walls creaked.

  “K’so!” muttered the nearest man as he moved away. The others clenched their swords.

  Tomuchi rushed to finish wrapping his hands, his jaw working with stonelike grinding. “So he’s powerful,” he said, “and intelligent and mad besides, no different than half the men in my command. What does this matter to my plan, woman?”

  Amé spoke as if she’d been waiting in ambush, her words coming with the weight of axe blows. “Very little I suppose. But it is, no doubt at this very moment, having great impact on Saga.”

  It took a long moment before the implications struck home. But when they did, Tomuchi struggled to his knees and hissed at the trap. “He is listening!”

  “Of course he is.”

  “Akunin peasant! With everything we said... everything he knows....” Tomuchi called for his guard. “He could be headed here now!”

  “That is a certainty.”

  The samurai were on their feet, swords drawn as if their enemy were already in their midst. Tomuchi growled for calm and spat orders for the troop to be brought to alert. Then he rounded on Amé. “Why would you do this? Tell me before I take your heart!”

  “No need for coercion, knowledgeable lord of winged wisdom. I’ll tell you freely. I did this because, as you so noted, Saga must be captured. Because I want him captured in my fashion.

  “And because, not one hour ago,” she told them, laughing, “I stole Saga’s rope.”

  * * *

  You know the Knots, Saga insisted to himself. He slashed right like a samurai. Skirted left like an akunin.

  But the owned-man clenched both dark fists and lurched savagely, battering Saga into a full hobbled retreat. “Hate,” the man promised gutturally, dashing low with impossible speed. He caught Saga round the legs and dumped him hard to the stony earth.

  Saga twisted and bit and punched, but the owned-man knew his every effort the moment it birthed in his mind and smacked each down with all of Marrow’s primal quickness. The man’s muscles crackled aloud as hard hands split the air and seized Saga at the throat, squeezed, yanked upward until their faces touched. “Bad. Work,” the man moaned, tears in his eyes, breath hot on Saga’s cheek. “Brother. Anchor. Makes. Pain!”

  Saga’s skull felt full of blood. But even with his breath dying in the clench of those fingers the will of the Rope was god. Obey Kagehana. Complete the mission. Over the owned-man’s shoulder three soldiers fought another thrall in macabre imitation of combat. Without a voice, Saga changed his grip on his sword and threw it at the feet of the samurai closest. The soldier turned. Saw. Cut at Saga’s assailant. Enraged, the owned-man threw Saga to the ground and leapt, twisting like a tiger to pounce on the samurai.

  Saga found his balance and fled.

  The five wasps were dead, killed by torchlight. But in their rampage they’d stung some two-dozen samurai, men that Marrow made his. On the rocky beds surrounding the hot springs and out in the smoke-spiced open ground the owned-men fought without hesitation or the weight of thought, muscles owned by Marrow, broken down, made better, just like he’d been taught. Saga limped past as one thrall split a samurai’s helm and cheek by the weight of a slap. Two more beat a phalanx to the ground with hurled stones and torches swung as clubs. The torchlight meant nothing to them, Marrow’s work done in the harbor of their flesh. They dragged and ripped and stamped like children made terrible and strong. Tomuchi’s samurai fought nobly for all their shock and fear, learning with swiftness to cut the legs out from under their enslaved friends—ordinary blows having been shrugged off and ignored. But the samurai were just men, and the thralls were fast.

  Saga melded into the confusion, another soldier caught in the madness of the night. He crossed the grounds shouting contrary warnings to send the samurai scattering, but he was unrecognized in the chaos and steadily made his way just ahead of his war. The owned-men pressed their attacks close at his heels, intent on the same place as he.

  Saga passed Kumo’s house and the water tower site, the peasants having long since fled, and finally ensconced himself in Tomuchi’s garden near the well Marrow had used to very carefully sneak into a trap. The headquarters building was ringed with thrice as many samurai as normal, torches jammed in every corner and crevice. An
d somewhere on the roof was Amé’s “maid.”

  Soon the battle came spilling near. Battered samurai falling like lumber. Owned-men dashing from shadow to light and back again, teeth bared, fists clubbing. Curled reek of struck flint and shit and smoke. Saga watched the thralls closely, noting the angry blisters growing on their flesh, feeling a growing anticipation in the vines of Marrow’s emotion. He hadn’t long before the swarm.

  The headquarters guard admirably held their ground in the ring of torchlight. But they were fixated. And as Saga stood and quick-stepped his way into their midst, dressed like they were, moving like they did, there was not a man among them who paid him any—

  “Bastard son of dog!” came a cry. Saga had only a moment to duck before Uji’s hairy fist came flying for his skull. The punch swiped air, but Uji’s momentum rammed him bodily against Saga and together they crashed into another man.

  “Traitor!” Uji growled before planting a blow in Saga’s ribs. “Trash!”

  Saga shrugged off the blow, wrapped Uji’s arms in a hold, then tripped him to the ground in a tangle of scabbards and loose armor. Uji was starved and fever-lean beneath Saga’s press, but he fought rabidly, kneeing and kicking and biting for exposed flesh, long enough for the other soldiers to recover from their surprise and grasp at Saga with a dozen hands.

  They dragged him away, thrust torches in his face, menaced him with their swords. But their grips were amateur and with a twist of his body he was free and on his feet. He snapped open the war fan and slashed with its pointed spines in an arc for their legs. They scrambled backward in a ragged circle, giving Saga an instant’s respite before an arrow, glowing white hot, whistled down and exploded the fan from his hands. That damned maid, Saga thought, his ears ringing, just as a natural arrow flew from the roof to impale the ground near his foot.