Steel Crow Saga

by Paul Krueger

  The memories flashed through her head: The woman on her deathbed, her children crowded around her. The welcome that fled the house with her passing. The young girl who fled with it.

  Lee’s grip tightened on the dog. No, she told herself. Don’t go there.

  The memories shifted: Pulling her first big job with Lightning-Finger Liao. Coming back from a successful boost with Tungmei, and heady from the thrill as they sank into bed together. She and Lefty, up late in a ratty tenement room, plotting out the particulars of their con job by candlelight and exploring each other’s bodies in the dark.

  Xiulan’s lips on hers in the cell, as her own heart pounded in her ears.

  And then, something new: running through a garden, alongside a young boy with a blue jinbei and glasses, his long hair streaming behind him as he laughed in the sunshine.

  That was what she felt within the dog in her lap. What resonated in her own soul. Not order. Not discipline.

  Love.

  Her fear for this dog didn’t subside, but the panic did. The moment Lee let go of the urgency she felt to save it by any means necessary, her thinking sharpened itself. She didn’t just feel the dog’s shallow breaths against her palm anymore; she felt every pulse of its heart, every little twitch and contraction of its battered body.

  And there. Just like that, she felt something deeper inside herself. It was like becoming aware of her own tongue: never quite in focus, but always there, and once her attention got ahold of it, it was the only thing she could think about.

  “Lee?” Xiulan said. “What’s happening? Are you—?”

  “I…I think I’m doing it,” Lee said. Chasing that feeling felt like diving into a dark pool. She didn’t know how deep it went, but it felt like she could follow it down forever. As she dove deeper, she became vaguely aware of something diving next to her. Even with her eyes closed, she could sense feelings radiating from it: Fear. That was the main one, by far. But there was also confusion there, and sadness. The dog didn’t know what was happening to her, didn’t know why she’d just been attacked, just wanted the pain to stop.

  It’s okay, little friend, Lee told her. I’m scared, too.

  She felt the dog’s spirit waiting for something. And then Lee remembered what she was supposed to do next.

  What do you want me to be? she asked.

  Rather than answer, Lee felt a dull throb from within the dog: a sensation as real as the waning heartbeat Lee felt in the palm she’d pressed to the dog’s furry chest. And when Lee focused on it, she was surprised to find that it resonated with a similar throbbing inside herself, like two notes joining in harmony.

  When she turned her focus to that part of herself, that throbbing turned into an ache. Once again, she saw her dying mother. Her siblings leaving her on a darkened doorstep. The partners she’d had over the years, when things were good.

  You want me to help you find that? Lee asked. This dog wasn’t nearly as articulate as the rooster had been, but Lee understood her so much better. You’re looking for…love?

  Another feeling, and Lee knew the dog’s answer to her question was Yes.

  Lee gripped her tight. Then I’ll help you find it.

  She felt something give way beneath her palm, and then she was grasping only at open air.

  Lee’s eyes opened. Her lap was empty. In place of the dog, Lee felt a tingling…there, hovering somewhere around her midsection. She tugged at her neckline and peered down her dress. To her surprise, she saw something that hadn’t been there this morning: a bright-white chevron mark, splashed across her stomach. “Is…is that…?”

  “Your pactmark,” Xiulan said. Her voice was quiet, but in the rearview mirror her eye danced with excitement. “She’ll have one to match it…once you seal the pact.”

  Right. Lee needed a name and now she was back to freezing up. Naming something was more responsibility than she liked to shoulder. She flipped through the mental record of every name she’d ever heard, from every person she could remember meeting. Not a one that came to mind felt as if it’d be enough to encompass what this new companion was supposed to be to her.

  She didn’t know if it would work, but she thought to herself, I don’t know. What do you think?

  The response she got back wasn’t words so much as feelings and ideas. There was still confusion there, but all the sadness and fear were gone. In their place: a rush of gratitude, and happiness, and excitement. It was every good feeling Lee had ever come to associate with a dog, and now a bundle of them just sat there inside her, bubbling just below the surface. She imagined the dog now, as it used to be: the way it would probably run through these fields, getting mud on its already-dark…

  …Ah, Lee thought. That’ll do. “Pull over,” she said.

  “Strange name for a shade,” said Xiulan. “But I suppose she’s your shade, and—”

  “No, you. Pull over.”

  The car glided to a stop next to some tall grass by the side of the highway. Lee vaulted out the gaping hole where the door had been, feeling like she was fit to burst. She pointed her finger at the ground and shouted, “Bootstrap!”

  A jagged white bolt of energy shot from her, slicing through the night like a gleaming silver knife. It solidified into a creature at least three times larger than it had been in its previous life as a mere dog. Her distinctive coloring remained: gold-brown fur and bootlike dark legs. But her fangs now jutted out from the bottom of her jaw, curving up like shark’s fins. Her pointed ears now had tufts of fur adorning their tips like little baubles. Before she’d had one tail; now she had three, all curled up tightly against her back. She was no dog anymore, but a dog-shade, and she looked every bit the fearsome spirit that Lee had always fantasized about.

  Then her mouth opened, and a long pink tongue flopped out. She sat, giving Lee a glimpse of the white chevron mark adorning the fur of her belly. Her eyes met Lee’s, and all three of her tails thumped the ground excitedly.

  Lee smiled—not a calculated gesture meant to unsettle or posture, but a genuine expression that welled up irresistibly from inside her. Gently, she placed a hand between Bootstrap’s eyes. Sensing what Lee wanted to do, Bootstrap dipped her head and panted happily. As Lee ran her fingers through Bootstrap’s fur, she was struck by how soft it was. Had Bootstrap always been this way? Had that piece of Lee’s soul done that to her? She brimmed with so many questions about this new part of herself.

  “She’s beautiful,” Xiulan said. When Lee turned, the princess wasn’t looking at Bootstrap, but at her.

  Lee let her hand fall away from Bootstrap’s head. “I…I can’t believe it.”

  Xiulan’s eye glinted with moonlight. “What you have now is far more than a mere pet, or servant,” she said. “Bootstrap is a fundamental part of you now. The bond between you is soul-deep. You won’t just carry her; you’ll have her feelings, her memories…everything that made her, her.”

  Lee nodded. Her eyes flickered between the shade before her—her shade—and the hands that had wrought her.

  Xiulan pulled her pipe out of her coat. “Inspector Lee, that was superlative work,” she said. “Not only are you the first of your people known to be granted the honor of a shade, but you rose to the challenge so ably. So naturally.” She produced a matchbook. “You’ll be a living testament to the worth of the Jeongsonese people, which even the most strident critic—”

  “Princess,” Lee said, “don’t you dare light that pipe.”

  Xiulan, who had the flame halfway tipped to her tobacco, shot her a questioning look.

  Lee slipped a practiced hand around Xiulan’s waist.

  Xiulan’s flame went out. “Ah.”

  This kiss wasn’t a surprise like the last one, and it didn’t have that same urgency. But there was hunger there, and that did surprise Lee. She closed her eyes and let herself wander through it as her fingers slipped ins
ide Xiulan’s coat and began to toy with her suspenders.

  Xiulan’s whole body stiffened, but with surprise, not reluctance. The moment passed, and she melted back into Lee’s arms, her hands tugging at the bottom hem of Lee’s skirt.

  Lee herself didn’t really know what they were about to do. They were two fugitives on the side of the road, driving just about the most recognizable car in Tomoda. Lee didn’t know how much of this was feeling, or the sheer thrill of the night they’d had, or just something about the smell of Xiulan’s hair. All she knew was the script she always followed when she was with a woman, and her hands, her lips, her tongue were already playing their parts.

  A flood of images spiked in her mind, so suddenly that she tore herself away from Xiulan and staggered back.

  “Lee?” Xiulan said, reaching for her. “What’s wrong? Is there a problem with my technique? If you just show me how—”

  Lee squeezed her eyes shut and held up one hand while she cradled her head with the other. “Stop talking,” she said. She wasn’t in pain, but her whole head suddenly felt heavy.

  “Of course!” Xiulan said. “Bootstrap is responding to your heightened feelings. She’ll be trying to connect with you. What you’re seeing and feeling now are her thoughts and emotions and memories. What do you see?”

  Lee gritted her teeth rather than reply, but the answer was a lot. Images flitted by her, almost too fast to grasp. She was running in the garden again as that same young boy, now in a different yukata, threw a stick to her. She was doing her little shuffling dance as the boy, now older, bent over his desk and sketched intently. She was curled up on top of his bed, perking up her ears when his bedroom door slid open and his mother stood silhouetted in the doorway. She was—

  “The dogs take me,” Lee said, and pulled herself out of Bootstrap’s stream of consciousness. She looked at the shade, who sat patiently waiting for pets with her tongue flapping out of her mouth. She thought back to the sketchbook she’d seen. To the painting in Kohoyama. There was no mistaking it.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Xiulan said irritably, but Lee held up another finger.

  And then she dove back into Bootstrap’s mind.

  Again, she was buried under a deluge of images. But the next time she saw one of the boy, she seized on it and presented it back to Bootstrap, with as vague a question as she could manage: Where?

  She had no idea what she’d get in response. But to her surprise, a scent filled her nostrils. It smelled like man—not the scuzzy sort of musk she got from the types she met in the gutter, but something refined, like a twisted, distorted version of the scent that wafted off Xiulan when they were close enough. And there were other scents: Gunpowder. Tire rubber. Money.

  And it was all almost exactly due east.

  Lee dipped back out of Bootstrap’s consciousness again. “The dogs take me!” she shouted at the night sky.

  “The dogs take you indeed, Inspector Lee,” Xiulan said, now with naked impatience. “I entreat you to enlighten me: Where are they taking you?”

  Lee chuckled in disbelief. “Princess,” she said, “wait till you hear whose dog she used to be.”

  Jimuro had heard of the Steel Cicadas. Since Erega made a point of visiting him in his cells to discuss world affairs, he’d made a point of having the newspaper delivered, so he would actually have something to discuss. He had to adjust for the level of jingoism and libel endemic in the Sanbuna press, but it had nonetheless been a relatively reliable conduit of information.

  Every so often in the pages of the Lisan City Star, he would come across a reference to or a brief news story about the Steel Cicadas. They were patriots (his translation for the Sanbuna term terrorist) fighting small battles all over the island of Tomoda to strike back against the occupying foreign powers. The Star dismissed them as neo-monarchists and thugs.

  But witnessing them in action now, Jimuro saw only heroes.

  Sergeant Tala yanked him so hard, he lost his footing. “We’re going, Your Brilliance,” she snapped. Clearly, she’d read the news stories about the Steel Cicadas, too.

  Jimuro yanked back, slipping his hand free of her grasp. “They’re helping my people,” he said. “I have to help them.”

  “Help them from the throne,” Tala said.

  That was perhaps the only thing she could have said to give Jimuro pause. After the fight they’d had, he was beginning to truly understand what the sergeant had given up to restore him to a throne she didn’t even want him to claim. And there was something to be said about the good he could do once he ascended to the Mountain Throne.

  But the Mountain Throne was leagues away, and the people who needed him most were here right now.

  “I have to help them!” Jimuro said, then tore away from Tala and charged for the nearest Shang soldier.

  * * *

  —

  Growing up in the Court of Steel meant Prince Jimuro had had the benefit of the finest martial arts tutors in Tomoda. His basic training as an officer had further sharpened his theoretical combat skills into something street-practical. While Fumiko had excelled at the showy disciplines centered on striking, he had developed a much stronger affinity for throws, joint locks, and turning an opponent’s own weight and momentum against them.

  He’d felt self-conscious at first, that he wasn’t as skilled at laying people out in a single punch the way Fumiko could on a good day. But his mother had confided in him once that a Steel Lord had little use for their fists.

  “Challenges faced by the Mountain Throne seldom go away after merely being struck once,” Steel Lord Yoshiko had told him as the two of them watched Fumiko flatten their sparring instructor. “But they can be redirected. Repurposed. And more often than not, two of your problems may solve each other while you do nothing…or appear to.”

  The young Iron Prince had taken this in, and mostly understood it. “But what about the times when you do need to punch somebody?” he’d asked eventually.

  “Hn.” It had been his mother’s favorite all-purpose noise. “Those are the times you light incense at my shrine and thank me for giving you a sister.”

  * * *

  —

  He fell upon the Shang soldier before the woman even realized what was happening. He grabbed her gun arm and twisted it behind her back, then slipped his finger over hers and pulled the trigger. She collapsed to the ground with a shout, but by then Jimuro already had her pistol in hand, its steel singing to him as he poured his spirit into it. In his hands, every metal felt different: iron stubborn, gold relaxed, copper bright and friendly, but all yielded to his spirit’s will eventually. And true to his birthright, none did so more readily than steel.

  He fired off two more shots in short order, each one finding a mark in another Shang soldier. He felt the gun’s mechanics beginning to jam as he readied his third shot—typical cheap Shang manufacture—but he channeled more of his spirit and coaxed the gun into firing smoothly a fourth time.

  In mere seconds, he’d cleared away an entire carful of Shang soldiers. They lay bleeding at his feet, either dead or dying. It was justice for the innocent people they had brutalized.

  But, he realized all too late, he’d also thrown himself into an exposed position right in the middle of the road.

  Tala tackled him to the ground just before the air above him was rent with return fire. “Beaky!” she shouted, and a gust of wind whooshed past Jimuro’s face as the crow-shade took shape, and then flight. All at once the air came alive with more noise: Gunshots. Battle cries. The crackle of magic. Pinging metal, shattering glass.

  And then, just like that, it all stopped.

  “Don’t shoot!” Tala shouted, putting her hands up. She was getting to her feet, and tugged on his collar to indicate he should do the same.

  “Yes, listen to her!” Jimuro said. The scene before him looked lik
e something straight out of the war: Shang troops dead, Cicadas dead, and cars riddled with bullet holes. Tala stood back-to-back with him, while Beaky flew a tight circle around them both, cawing at the top of its little bird lungs. Three of the Cicadas had broken open the armored car and were busily relieving it of its contents. The rest ringed them, guns and swords leveled. Their steel masks glinted under the streetlights overhead. Prince Jimuro caught snatches of what they were shouting:

  “She’s got a slave! She’s one of them!”

  “She’s not Shang, look at her!”

  “Take her down, save her hostage—”

  And then a new voice cut through the din: “Spirits take me, put your weapons down, you idiots!” Their leader appeared through the crowd a second later, megaphone dangling by his side. It was hard to gauge his expression beneath his cicada mask, but his mouth hung open in disbelief.

  “If any of you shoot,” Jimuro said carefully, “you’ll regret it deeply.”

  “Your Brilliance, wait—” Tala hissed.

  “My name is Jimuro, son of Yoshiko, Iron Prince and heir to the Mountain Throne of Tomoda,” he plowed on, his voice ringing like steel on steel.

  He expected awe, or perhaps an outbreak of bowing. What he didn’t expect was for the leader of the Steel Cicadas to say, “I’d never forget your face, Your Brilliance. Why do you think I just ordered everybody to put down their weapons?” He glanced back over his shoulder at the armored car. “Harada! How’re we doing?”

  “You want it to go faster, you can come and help!” said Harada, the bony woman with the sword who’d beheaded the rider at the start of the battle.

  The leader gritted his teeth, then nodded to his two nearest comrades. They bowed (from the waist, Jimuro noted, which meant they were of lower birth), then slung up their guns and ran to help empty the truck.

  “We have to go now, Your Brilliance,” said the man. “It’s not safe here.” The more Jimuro observed him, the more he saw the man sketched in familiar lines. He squinted carefully. Where had he seen this man before? Where had he observed those movements, that posture? Where had he heard that voice…?