by Paul Krueger
Kosuke sidled between the door and Jimuro. He tapped it, and the metal lock clicked shut. “We don’t know if there are other hostiles on this train, Your Brilliance,” he said. “Until my Cicadas have come to let me know the train is secure, I can’t let you out of my sight.”
“You don’t think I could force my way out?” said Jimuro.
“I think you don’t want to leave me alone with an enemy of the state.”
Jimuro’s eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t.”
“You’re on this train because you’ve shown, time and time again, that you don’t understand what I would or wouldn’t do for my country. And maybe you’ll get even with me once you sit the throne I’m helping you take back. But when you leave a room, people will always whisper to each other: There’s the Steel Lord who was afraid to rule.” And then he knelt next to the Shang princess and rapped the bruised half of her face with his knuckles. “Wake up, Princess.”
Princess Xiulan groaned to life, her body twitching and folding in on itself as if she were a swatted fly. Prince Jimuro watched, rooted to the spot.
“You speak good Tomodanese, but you don’t know how to drink like one,” Kosuke crooned. “You didn’t realize we tap our cups to the table before we sip, as a sign of respect for its spirit. So perhaps your understanding of our culture isn’t as complete as you thought. That’s why I’m going to teach you about it.” And he held up the steel cicada mask.
“Kosuke…” Jimuro said.
Kosuke ignored him. “The Tomodanese people can bond with the bones of the world,” he said with deadly softness. “We can command their shape, their hardness…or even their temperature.”
The princess surged up, trying to escape, but Kosuke slammed the steel mask hard onto her face and shoved her back down to the floor, pinning her there with one arm.
“I’m going to ask you some questions now,” said Kosuke. “For every one you answer falsely, I’ll raise the temperature of your mask twenty degrees. Did you know that skin starts to burn just after forty? It takes nearly four times that much to burn hair. I could leave your little bang here completely intact, if I wanted to. And that’d be just as well for you; you’d have to grow out a whole lot more hair to hide the boiling ruin that would be your face.”
“Wait a moment,” said Jimuro. His stomach had turned from Kosuke’s little speech, but he forced gruff, regal strength into his voice as he continued: “She’s a princess, clearly operating outside her father’s permission. I have to treat with her father tomorrow. Our negotiations won’t go well if I begin them by returning his daughter to him well done.”
“You don’t need to know anything about it, Jimuro,” Kosuke said, not breaking his stare into the helpless princess’s mask. In its smooth, shiny surface, Jimuro could just make out his friend’s twisted reflection. “Officially, you were never here. You’ve never met Princess Xiulan in your life. Your hands will be clean, and Tomoda’s future will be secure.” His grip tightened on the mask. “Now, Princess: Tell us how you found His Brilliance.”
“No,” Jimuro said sharply, and this time he meant it. He’d already caved to Kosuke once. He wasn’t about to let himself do it again. “This country will be mine to govern tomorrow, and I will not allow my subjects to torture in my name.”
“These outlanders deserve worse than torture,” Kosuke spat. “The Shang, the Sanbunas, the spirits-forsaken Dahali…we showed them a better way to live, and they butchered us in gratitude. They don’t deserve our decency or our mercy, and they should live in eternal fear of the day we have the strength to strike back again.”
“If you do this,” Jimuro whispered, “they’ll do everything they can to make sure we never do.”
“Tomoda is the steel of the world,” Kosuke said. “And steel does not break.”
The door tore itself off its own frame, revealing a stooped, monstrous figure of muscle and bare bone that had to duck under the train’s ceiling. Before Kosuke could even react, Dimangan batted him aside with a swat of his huge hand. Kosuke was lifted off his feet, slamming so hard into the window that it cracked where he hit it. He slid to the floor with a groan, unconscious.
Another hand wrapped itself around Jimuro’s forearm. One with strong, callused fingers.
One he’d recognize anywhere.
“We have to go, Your Brilliance,” said Sergeant Tala, yanking off the cicada mask she’d been wearing. A thrill ran through Jimuro at the sight of her. Until he felt her hawklike stare pierce him, he didn’t realize how much he’d missed it.
He wanted to ask how she’d found him. How she’d caught up to him.
Why she’d come back for him again.
Instead, they ran.
HOURS AGO
She was an hour off the main road when she finally gave in.
There were no convenient woods to use for cover, so she had to content herself with the miles of gently swaying grass that rippled in every direction. The only breaks in the scenery were the distant road to her left, and the even more distant mountains to her right, whose faces the summertime had turned green.
It was here that she finally pointed to the ground, braced herself for the pain, and muttered, “Dimangan.”
Mang came out ready for a fight: fists clenched, muscles bunched, head on a swivel. “Report,” he rumbled in his low, deep voice. “Where is he?”
“You know what he did?” Tala said. “How?”
“I don’t know what the bastard did,” Mang said, “but I know how he made you feel.” He trailed off, finally noticing the empty field they stood in. “Wait. Where is he, actually?”
“Among the Cicadas,” Tala said bitterly. She was already in rough shape, but now with Mang out she could barely see straight for the pain.
“Yeah, I don’t know what that means,” Mang said. Then he finally caught sight of her tattered sleeve and the long, cauterized cut beneath it. “Your arm!” He looked around wildly again. “If that steelhound scum was the one who cut you, I—”
“She’s not a problem anymore,” Tala said quietly. A vision of Harada flashed in front of her, face blueing as the noose around her neck tightened. Though Tala’s hands were empty, she could almost feel the tightness of the garrote on her fingers, the heaviness of her blade—
“Stop it,” she growled at herself.
“Stop what?” Mang said, still looking around. “What happened to the prince? Where did he go? What did he do?”
Rather than at Mang, Tala looked at the ground. The ground wouldn’t judge her. “He made a choice.”
She waited for him to say something, but when she finally looked up, she saw that he was just standing there, staring at her. He frowned tightly, but his huge brown eyes glinted with something else: pity.
An irritated urge arose in her to fill the silence. “ ‘You’ll fight alongside them, as long as it means you get to fight,’ ” she quoted.
“Lala—” Mang began, but Tala held up a hand, and he gave her a respectful nod before falling silent again.
“It got under my skin, Mang. Worse than any steelhound’s bullet or blade. But I couldn’t just drag you back out to prove you wrong, so…” She waded through the sharp pounding in her head. Having Mang out was never easy on her thoughts, but this was too important for her to get lost in the weeds. “I thought I could prove it to him. And for a second there, I really thought I was gonna. I thought he was more than just some steelhound, and he was seeing I wasn’t just a savage.”
She detected the scent of rain on the air, but when she breathed in, she could have sworn she smelled the tangy, salty aroma of adobo. When she blinked, for that brief moment she wasn’t in the field anymore, but back in the cabin up north. The mist was clearing from her eyes as the venom left her system at last, and Jimuro was standing at the stove, humming to himself in the early-morning sun.
Her eyes opened. The gras
s around her bowed low as the wind picked up. Overhead, the clouds thickened like a broth on the boil. In the distance, thunder rumbled like a distant train.
“I can’t believe I thought…” She trailed off. She wanted to be angry. Anger was a comfortable feeling that put warmth in her belly and strength in her limbs. But now she felt neither warmth nor strength.
“Disappointment,” Mang rumbled at last. “That’s the word you’re looking for.”
Tala frowned at him.
He shrugged and tapped the pactmark on the back of his head. “It’s not like I can help it, Lala.”
Her fingers raked through her hair, resting on the back of her scalp, where her own matching mark lay hidden. Pain radiated out from it as if it were an exit wound. He was right, of course. Disappointment hung on her like a stench, and she knew in her heart that its source was not Jimuro.
When have you ever tried to—
She swallowed. “You’re right.” At those words, something cracked inside her. “I’ve been a shit sister, Mang.”
“I once read a play where a sister killed her brother, then slept with his son,” he said. “By that metric, you’re doing just fine.”
She could sense his own feelings: that familiar concern that reared its head when anyone in his sight was displeased. That was her brother, all right. If anyone was unhappy, he had to do something about it. “Stop it,” she said. “I’m serious. You were right the other day. I’ve been living like my soul’s my own, and it hasn’t been for ten years, not after what I did to you. That thing you said yesterday, about being afraid to stop fighting? That was true. I proved it.”
It was her brother’s turn to frown. “I said that because I was angry. I wanted to hurt you.”
“The way I hear it, the truth hurts,” said Tala. She sat down heavily in the grass, then lowered herself onto her back. Her arm throbbed from the cut Harada had scored on her, but the soft grass beneath it helped. Though the grass was tall enough to swallow her whole, it barely came up to Mang’s chest when he sat down next to her.
For a long while they sat, brother and sister. The clouds darkened, the air grew heavier, and the cicadas sang on. She scowled at the noise. They were rotten bugs, inescapable on this shades-forsaken island. But she and Mang had grown used to the pain that bound them to each other, and in time she grew used to the cicadas’ song as well.
“I did a terrible thing to you,” she said at last.
Mang shifted. “I asked a terrible thing of you.”
“And I said yes,” Tala insisted.
“I wasn’t your slave then, and I’m not now.”
“I gave myself the power to make you one, if I wanted.”
“And you’ve never used it.”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I should’ve known better. I was stupid.”
“You were ten.”
She lifted a hand and stared up at it. When she twitched her fingers, fresh shoots of pain accompanied each motion. “Do you remember the first time I summoned you back?”
“I thought I was going to pass out from the pain,” Mang said. “I was certain you would. But you didn’t. Not even then. You were a little girl covered in Ina and Ama’s blood, and you carried my weight anyway.”
She leaned against his shoulder, ignoring the way his spines dug into her sides. “You’ve been carrying mine.” She stared at the swaying grass another long moment before asking, “If we could undo it…”
He shook his huge head. “We’re not going down that road, Lala.”
Her muscles protested, but she sat up just the same. Panic seized her. “Wait,” she said. “Please, I—”
Dimangan shook his head. “You summoned me here because you needed me,” he said. “And I came because I knew it was bad. This is a time when you need me to build you back up, Lala. That’s what I’m going to do, and nothing else.”
Fear bubbled to the surface of her mind. With it, she felt a spike of anxiety: Beaky, eager to get out. Him, she ignored. This moment didn’t belong to him. “So if you answer my question, it’ll tear me down, then?”
“I didn’t say that,” said Mang. “But I know no matter what I say, you’ll find a way to take responsibility and beat yourself up over it. I swear to the shades, you were born scowling.” He smiled, in a distant kind of way. “So, spill it: Why do you care what the prince of the world’s worst kingdom thinks about you? Why do you care if he just sent away his best chance at seeing tomorrow? He doesn’t even eat meat.”
“I noticed,” Tala said, thinking once more of the mushroom adobo, its bowl warm in her fingers. “It’s just—no. It’s stupid.”
“Lala.”
“I thought he was changing, too, okay?” The words burst from her like blood from a wound. “It was just small things, but I was starting to see why Erega trusted him. I was starting to have second thoughts. And do you know the one thing that’s worse than being wrong?”
“Being right when you don’t want to be?”
She shot him a look. “You reading my mind again?”
He shook his head again. “You’re just predictable.”
She chuckled mirthlessly, then lowered herself back into the grass. She wanted to lie here, letting the soil and grass creep up her body until the ground swallowed her whole. She wanted to just fucking disappear.
But even as she thought it, she knew she couldn’t. She’d let herself forget before, but she never could forget again: Her soul was not her own to waste.
“Where do you want to go?” she said.
Mang’s head turned. “What?”
“We’re partners, but I’ve never let you drive,” she said. “The way the prince chose Kurihara over me…it’s not that different from me choosing him over you. In fact, it’s pretty much fucked.”
“Language, Lala.”
“You didn’t ding me when I said ‘shit’ earlier.”
“I was going to bring it up later.”
“Point is.” She tensed, suddenly full of energy. This was something she could do. If she couldn’t be a soldier anymore, then she could be a sister. It was the job she should’ve been doing all along. “It’s your turn to choose, Mang. We’re free. Dandelions in the wind. Where do you want to drift?”
Mang was thoughtful. And then he stood and said, “We’re going to find Iron Prince Jimuro.”
Tala would’ve fallen over with surprise, if she hadn’t already been lying down. She sat right up again, certain the thrashing pool of pain in her head had addled her hearing. “What?”
“You heard me.” Through their emotional connection, she felt resolve ripple off him. “We’re going to find him. We’re going to pull his head out of his…ass. And then we’re going to drag him to Hagane by his ear if we have to.”
Tala stared. “But…you hate the Tomodanese. And swearing.”
“Of course I do,” he said. “But I love you more, Lala. It matters to you to see this through, and that means it matters to me.” He stretched. “Which way is Gorudo?”
She sat there, overwhelmed by the love she felt for her brother. She couldn’t fathom what it must have taken for him to make this choice. What—
“Lala,” Mang said gently. “Time’s of the essence. Which way is Gorudo?”
He must have pulled the name from her thoughts, she decided. Still numb with affection and disbelief, she pointed.
In the direction she’d been walking.
His gaze followed her finger. “You were heading there anyway.”
She hung her head as a bitter laugh escaped her. “I was really hoping you’d talk me out of it.” She blinked, her lashes suddenly heavy with tears. She had a lot of feelings happening at once, and she was no great multitasker. She didn’t know which of those feelings had triggered her tears, but she was grateful for the release.
She needed to b
e clear-eyed and sharp when she saw the prince again.
She started to stand, but suddenly Mang reached down and scooped her right off the ground and placed her on his shoulders. She sat uneasily on the slabs of muscle there. “Mang!”
“Only way we’ll get there in time,” her brother said. “You point, I’ll run.”
She pointed.
He ran.
* * *
—
With no cash, she’d resorted to sneaking onto the train platform at Kuronaga. It wasn’t difficult; the rain had scared all the other passengers indoors, leaving her to lurk in the shadows just at the platform’s edge.
She shivered against the cold and pulled her tattered suit jacket tighter to her body. It was beyond waterlogged by now, but it was the only protection she had. She hoped the train would come soon. The last thing she needed was to fight her way back from the brink of despair, only to die of a fucking cold.
In the dark, she acutely felt Mang’s absence. But once they’d reached civilization, she’d reluctantly put him back. The absence of pain would have been a relief, but now more than ever she felt like it was something she deserved to live with all the time. After all, Mang had to.
But any kind of shade would have drawn unwanted attention. Mang would have drawn that, plus blazing guns. So, away he went.
A separate pulse in her chest told her Beaky was in a fine mood. She sent back some annoyance of her own, along with an image of the rain falling all around her. What bird in his right mind would even want to be out in this?
Resigned grumbling from Beaky was her reply. She did feel bad for not letting him out, but now wasn’t the right time. She relented, and sent him a feeling of reassurance: If things went bad on this train, he’d be stretching his wings sooner rather than later.
This was madness, she told herself. She was going to sneak right onto a train full of dangerous terrorists who specifically hated her. She was going to march right up to their leader, who hated her most of all, and demand he release the world’s most valuable hostage. And if he wasn’t charmed by her good looks and pleasant tone, she was going to have to fight her way back off the train with one hand, while using the other to drag the Iron Prince of Tomoda behind her.