Steel Crow Saga

by Paul Krueger

  “But General Erega laughed and told me she was grateful I tried it at all. And when I asked why, she told me something I haven’t forgotten: that to share a table with someone is to share everything.” He hefted his bottle higher, inviting them to clink against it at last. “To sharing a table.”

  “To sharing a table,” she and Kurihara both echoed, touching their cups to the bottle. She brought her cup to her lips and tipped it back, trying not to grimace against the burning it left on her tongue and throat. She plastered a smile on as she set her cup down…

  …and noticed that both Prince Jimuro and Kurihara were staring at her: Prince Jimuro with grim satisfaction, Kurihara with dawning fury.

  “K—” Xiulan tried to shout, but Prince Jimuro hurled the bottle of sake straight at her face. She only barely ducked it in time, and the bottle swept the trilby right off the top of her head. It shattered against the compartment wall, showering the floor with porcelain and sake. She threw her metal cup back at him, but despite their closeness it went three full feet wide of his head.

  With a roar, Kurihara plunged his hand into his kimono. Xiulan threw a long punch at the point of his elbow, which jammed his hand deeper into its folds. By the time she turned her attention back to the Iron Prince, he’d vaulted over the table, cutting off her access to the door. He braced himself against the wall and threw a punch. She snatched her sake-soaked hat off the table where it’d landed, and shoved its open mouth straight into the path of his fist. The hat swallowed the prince’s fist just long enough for her to finally shout, “Kou!”

  The small compartment was showered in black light. And then the light was gone, replaced with a whippy tail and gnashing teeth.

  At her direction, Kou flung himself at Kurihara, who screamed as the rat-shade pinned him to the floor. Jimuro made to do the same to Xiulan, but she held up a finger. “Not so fast, Your Brilliance,” she said.

  When Prince Jimuro’s eyes flickered to the other side of the table, they would see that his lover’s throat was nestled just beneath Kou’s sharp teeth. The terrorist had frozen where he lay. His hand was clear of his kimono, but his gun only half raised. He gritted his teeth and held his breath.

  A near-identical expression looked out at Xiulan from behind the prince’s glasses. But thankfully, he was staying put. She exhaled a sigh of relief, and retrieved her pipe from where it had fallen to the floor. She slipped it back into her coat and rose. Now that the immediate danger was over, they could find Lee and get off this abominable train at last.

  “A wise choice, Prince Jimuro,” she said. Already, she felt her confidence returning to her. “Now, as I was saying before, we really must—”

  From the adjoining car, she heard glass shattering and a high scream. For just a moment, her attention strayed. Had that been Lee’s voice? What was going on? Was there—?

  There was the roar of a gunshot. The flash of a muzzle.

  Then, nothing.

  Steel Cicadas materialized in every corner of the dining car, donning masks as they rose. Some appeared from the adjacent passenger cars. Some even stood up from the tables at which they’d been kneeling and eating. Screams erupted, then died just as quickly once people saw the glint of gun barrels and the shimmer of sword blades.

  At the bar, Lee had already altered her posture. Gone was the woman whose charm could open any door or any dress. She was back to her natural state: a shadow, seldom considered but always there.

  She snatched up a small paring knife from the bar, which the bartender had been using to slice fruit. Its blade was short, barely the size of a shiv, but it would do. She palmed it and hugged the wall.

  “We don’t wish to harm anyone,” said a woman with sharp, beautiful features that were apparent even beneath her cicada mask. She held a pistol in each hand, thumbs on hammers. “We, the Steel Cicadas, are fighting for your freedom!”

  “But freedom requires sacrifice from everyone,” Iwanbo chimed in. “With apologies to everyone looking to get off before, this train will now be going express to Hagane. We apologize for the inconvenience, but this is the only way.”

  Worried murmurs kicked up around the room. Iwanbo only let them continue for a few moments before he held up his gun again. Silence fell like a curtain.

  “As long as you cooperate,” the first Cicada said, “you have nothing to fear from us. What we’re doing is for the good of the future of Tomoda. The Steel Cicadas thank you.”

  Iwanbo grunted. “Return to your meals,” he said, as if their interruption had been no more than a random burst of dinner theater.

  Passengers exchanged uneasy glances. Some continued to murmur. One child had started to cry into the folds of his father’s coat. Nonetheless, they stayed put. No one looked like they were ready to try their luck at being a hero.

  Lee cursed her luck. A would-be hero would’ve been the perfect distraction. Now she was just going to have to make one of her own.

  She eyed the cigarette in her one hand, and the whiskey in the other.

  Quietly, she tipped the rest of the whiskey onto the floor, the sound of its splash swallowed by the grinding of train wheels. She flicked off all the excess ash from her cigarette into the nearest ashtray, leaving behind a glowing orange tip. And then she let it fall from her fingers. It tumbled end over end as it fell to the floor, seemingly in slow motion—

  —and immediately fizzled on contact with the liquid before going out with a tiny stream of smoke.

  Lee sighed. “Just my fucking luck,” she muttered, before seizing a glass candle off the countertop and hurling it to the floor. The glass shattered hard enough to make every head turn her way, and the fire bloomed fast enough to keep every head turned her way.

  But by the time they were all looking at her, she wasn’t there anymore.

  As screams and shouts erupted in her wake, she slid past the metal galley door, toward the narrow walkway that would connect her with the rear passenger and baggage cars. But as she reached for the door that would take her to the back of the train, it slammed open. A broad-shouldered woman in a soaked gray suit and a cicada mask bulled right past her, not even bothering to close the door behind her as she ran.

  Lee didn’t stop to consider her good luck. She just ran for it.

  Her short hair was caught between the wind whipping through it and the rain that plastered it to her face. She pushed heavy strands out of her eyes and tottered on, her normally sure feet unsteady on the slick iron walkway.

  The door was heavy and meant to be metalpacted, so she struggled to slide it open by hand. She had to put her whole body into it. When it finally shuddered open wide enough for her to slip through, she threw herself in, didn’t bother to shut it behind her, and shouted: “Bootst—”

  She caught herself just in time. She’d been expecting a fight, having given up the element of surprise. But instead of Cicada hijackers, she saw the bodies of three well-dressed women and men strewn across the floor. Two were still breathing, but one lay in a pool of her own blood, a fresh gunshot in her chest.

  Lee’s breath caught. She was getting flashbacks to the slaughterhouse again. The smell of blood was as sharp in her nostrils as chopsticks scraping on a plate. It wasn’t like she couldn’t handle blood, but somehow all she could think of was Lefty, and what had remained of him when she’d finally found him.

  As she stumbled through the car, one of the seating compartments slid open. A scared-looking man with a thick mustache raised an umbrella with a shout, and then brought it down on her head. But even in her rattled state, she batted him aside with ease, and he spilled right to the floor. “Please don’t hurt me!” he cried.

  Lee bit back the rejoinder on her tongue. Far as she was concerned, the wallet she’d lifted from him was enough of a comeback. She slammed the door shut in his face and continued on.

  The rearmost car was for baggage. In the dim, flicke
ring light, she saw stacks on stacks of bags and trunks. A thin stream of water traced its way down the center of the floor, leading straight back to the wide-open door at the very back of the train. Already her mind was at work: Someone had forced their way onto the Crow’s Flight, taken out the three guards in the adjoining car, and was probably fighting their way to the front of the train right now, where lay the ultimate prize: the princeling.

  And, Lee thought with a sudden chill, Xiulan.

  For the first time, she realized that when she’d seen trouble just now, she’d run straight for the exit. It was the smart thing to do. It was the kind of thing that let her walk away from bad times, while others didn’t.

  But that left Xiulan in the lurch.

  Heh, she thought. Looks like you haven’t forgotten the rule after all.

  No, this was different, Lee tried to assure herself. The princess was a capable young woman. Didn’t have the street smarts to know a shadow from a shade, but she’d read enough books to get by. She’d proven herself a capable fighter, a better linguist than Lee ever could’ve been, and on top of all that she had Kou watching her back. So Lee wasn’t running out on Xiulan; she was just respecting the princess’s skills by trusting her to get the job done. It was what she would’ve done with Lefty, or any of her partners that had come before. What was any different about this time?

  She felt another twinge along her pactmark. Bootstrap was pawing at her again, barking to be let out. With growing unease, Lee pushed her aside again so she could think.

  Her mind flitted to the forest last night. To a small body, slipping into her arms as easily as a blade between her ribs. To soft fingers in her hair. To lips, parted with inviting shyness. To—

  She shook herself out of the memory’s grasp. She’d kissed plenty of her partners. More of them than not, and she’d done plenty more besides. But a kiss wasn’t a contract. It didn’t compel her to walk herself right back into a death trap, especially after she’d just gotten away clean.

  Carefully, she stepped across the baggage car to the open doorway. She squinted against the steady spray of rain and wind in her face, and felt her dress sag as it took on more and more water. The clouds above had blotted out the stars and the moon, but one glance at the wooden railroad ties below was all she needed to tell her how fast the train was going. They looked as if they were being thrown out behind the Crow’s Flight one by one, like scraps of meat tossed into the snapping jaws of the dark.

  Her first thought was that she could never make the jump. Even if she tucked and rolled, like she’d done so often back when she was riding the rails, at this speed she’d break half her bones. In the old days, that had meant she would just stick it out and hope the train would wind up somewhere with good weather.

  But while she could never make that jump…Bootstrap could.

  At least, she was pretty sure. Having a shade was new for her, so she wasn’t completely clear on the limits of her partner’s body just yet. Shades were physical, but they were also magical, and that meant things got kind of fuzzy when you wanted to talk limits. Riding Bootstrap didn’t feel right; Lee knew in her gut that the two of them just didn’t have that kind of bond. But if she did saddle up, at least for a minute, she knew Bootstrap could get her a safe landing.

  An ache grew inside her as she felt Bootstrap barking again. Even without her summoned, Lee could understand her. This isn’t the pact. Not an accusation. Just a fact.

  Anger and annoyance surged through her—not Bootstrap’s, but her own. There was a time when she wouldn’t have even hesitated to take this way out. Only royals did stupid things like risking their necks, since they always knew deep down that, in the end, things would fall in their favor. Women like Lee didn’t have that luxury. So just because Heaven hadn’t blessed Xiulan with the wits to keep her head down, now that was Lee’s problem?

  She looked to her right: to the closed door, beyond which lay her partner, her pact…and certain danger.

  She looked to her left: out the open door, to the rainy night and the freedom that awaited her past its threshold.

  And she tasted vomit in her throat as she remembered her only rule.

  The gunshot rang out.

  The rat-shade disappeared in a flash of inky black light.

  The Shang princess crumpled to the floor.

  “Kosuke!” Jimuro screamed. “What did you do?”

  Spirits take him. The Shang princess lay dead, and with her died any hopes Tomoda had of leniency from their former enemies. If it had been Erega’s daughter at his feet, he could have expected terrifying wrath from the general, and she was a reasonable woman. The Crane Emperor of Shang, by all reports, was anything but. It didn’t matter how much both of their nations had been bled dry by the war. It didn’t matter how much Sanbu and Dahal might object. It didn’t even matter if this princess, twenty-eighth as she was, was one of his lesser children. The Crane Emperor didn’t tolerate weakness, and he would go to any lengths to avenge a slight.

  With a twitch of his finger, Kurihara Kosuke had just doomed Tomoda.

  “Jimuro,” Kosuke said. “Are you all right? Did she—?”

  “You idiot!” Jimuro roared. “You just murdered the Crane Emperor’s daughter! Do you have any idea what you’ve just done?”

  “Saved your life, for one thing,” Kosuke said, his demeanor chilling. “And for another, I didn’t kill her.”

  With a mad surge of hope, Jimuro swung his head back toward the princess. Sure enough, beneath the voluminous folds of her coat, he could see her chest rising and falling.

  “I shot her mask,” Kosuke said quietly. “They’re not just for show, you know. We knew going into this that we’d be going to war. So we dressed for the occasion.”

  Gingerly, Jimuro approached the princess. He peeled back her long bang to reveal that her mask was dented but not broken. Carefully, he removed it from her face, where a palm-sized bruise the color of a plum had begun to form. She looked as if someone had spilled wine on her face, but otherwise she was intact.

  He breathed deep and nearly collapsed to the floor with relief. The room started to come back into focus. His country wasn’t doomed. He wouldn’t go down in history as the last Steel Lord. He spared a pittance of concern for the Shang princess, but that only went so far. After all, she had just been trying to arrest him.

  “If you’re done having your panic attack, Jimuro…” Kosuke said, “I can handle things from here.” He stepped forward, holding a hand out for the mask.

  Jimuro frowned but handed over the mask anyway. “What’s going on out there?” he said. “I heard a woman screaming.”

  A fleeting look of…something…crossed Kosuke’s face. It was gone before Jimuro could identify it, but he didn’t have to identify it to raise his suspicions.

  Slowly, Jimuro rose back to his feet. He swayed gently to keep his footing on the moving train. “Kosuke,” he said carefully. “This train has now passed four stations it was supposed to stop at. Would you know anything about that?”

  “You’ve just been through an attack,” Kosuke said. “You shouldn’t worry yourself with—”

  “I need you to look me in the eye right now,” Jimuro said, summoning up his mother’s mettle. “And I need you to tell your Iron Prince that you didn’t hijack this train.”

  Kosuke swallowed, annoyed. He bowed his head. “I can’t lie to my prince.”

  “Spirits take us both, Kosuke!” Jimuro said, blood rising in his ears. He wanted to kick the table, even though he knew it would only lead to a set of broken toes. “There are innocent people on this train who were just trying to go home to their families. We’re supposed to be protecting and serving these people, not holding them hostage.”

  “The Steel Cicadas are protecting them,” Kosuke said. “We’re asking a small sacrifice from relatively few citizens, in order to ensure your safe
and speedy return to Hagane. It’s no different than levying a new tax.”

  “This isn’t a tax,” Jimuro growled. He could hear his mother’s voice in the back of his head warning him to keep his temper in check, but he was far past that now. “It’s a crime.”

  Kosuke laughed. “They’re the same thing, to hear Lord Sugayama talk about it.”

  “I don’t care what Lord Sugayama thinks, and I don’t care what you have to say about this, either,” Jimuro said. “I’m your prince, soon to be your Steel Lord, and I order you to stop this train at once.”

  “I’m afraid not, Your Brilliance,” Kosuke said, bowing again. “Apologies. We captured the engine room as soon as we boarded. The crew are unharmed,” he added hastily, “but we’d rather they suffer in the name of a greater cause, instead of for nothing at all.”

  Jimuro gritted his teeth. He didn’t want to believe what he was hearing, but there was absolutely no way around it. Tala had been right. Spirits take him, Tala had been right about everything. “I could order you to take your own life, and you’d be honor-bound to obey.”

  Kosuke paled for just a moment, but he held strong. “That’s true,” he allowed. “But you won’t do that. We’re fighting for the same side, and we share far more than just a cause. Even when we were kids, I always knew I’d be your right hand someday.” He reached for Jimuro’s hand. “You wouldn’t cut off your right hand, would you?”

  Jimuro snarled with disgust and yanked his hand out of Kosuke’s reach. He was so frustrated, so furious, so consumed by rage that he just wanted to scream and cry. He had faced his first challenge as a ruler: knowing who to trust. And right out the gate, he’d failed. This was all his people had to look forward to: failure after failure. The cumulative weight of his failures would press Tomoda deeper into the sea, and at their center, collapsing beneath their bulk, would be Jimuro, the last Steel Lord.

  His shoulders slumped. If he was going to be pathetic, at least he could also be useful. “That doesn’t change the fact that a woman screamed just now,” Jimuro said. “I’m going to go check on her.”