Steel Crow Saga

by Paul Krueger

  “Your Brilliance,” said the Kobaruto captain, dropping to one knee and thumping her fist to her shoulder. “I beg you, allow the Kobaruto to serve you. Your will is the flame that drives us.”

  “Kiss-ass,” Lee muttered in Jeongsonese. The glares she got from the Kobaruto told her that whether they spoke her language or not, they understood her just fine.

  “Apologies, Captain, but this task is one that only Inspector Lee can fulfill for me.” He crossed to the desk and knelt before it. He bowed, then began to write something on the top piece of paper. Satisfied, he slid open a compartment in the desk and withdrew a small silver box. Lee couldn’t see what he was doing exactly, but when he rose and turned around, he held out a neatly folded letter bearing a fresh blue wax seal. He crossed the floor, Bootstrap at his side, and handed it to Lee. When she inspected the seal, she saw the image of a stark, simple mountain staring back at her.

  “I need you to deliver that to the Shang delegation,” he said. She made to take the letter, but Jimuro didn’t give up his grip on it just yet. He caught her eye. “Personally,” he added carefully.

  She grinned as she took his meaning: an uncalculated expression of happiness and gratitude. She tucked the letter into her dress, and then with only a tiny hesitation bowed to him. “Thanks…Your Brilliance.” She straightened. “What do I tell them if they ask what all this is about?”

  Gently, Jimuro picked up the photograph on the bedside table and stared intently into it. “I suppose by the time you deliver the message, it won’t be a lie to say so,” he mused. “So if they ask…tell them the Steel Lord wishes to talk.”

  The car glided to a stop at the curb. “We’re here,” the driver said. His Sanbuna wasn’t great, but Tala appreciated the effort.

  She nodded and summoned up the best Shang she could recall. “Thanks for the ride, soldier.”

  He flashed her a fleeting smile in his rearview mirror as she opened the door and ducked out.

  The sounds and smells of downtown Hagane hit her like a punch in the brain. There was cigarette smoke, and car exhaust, and the faint but distinct scent of sewage and trash. Foreign cars rumbled down the road, a lumbering invasive species next to the sleek, quiet native ones, their metal chassis awash in neon lights. All around her, people chattered away: in Tomodanese, in Shang, and in, shades preserve her, her own mother tongue of Sanbuna.

  It was a far cry from the last time she’d been in Hagane. Last time, the air had been thick with fire and smoke and flash-boiled blood. It had carried the roar of shades, and the screams of soldiers, and the steady patter of gunfire. That had been mere months ago, but now the street on which she stood looked as if it had never borne witness to anything more hostile than a bit of road rage. It was beyond her how the place could have already been scrubbed so clean, when all the dirt was still caked on and piled up in her head.

  The Sanbuna consulate had been established in a steel-and-glass office building. Five tall flags had been planted on either side of the front entrance, each bearing the ten stars of the Republic. Tala’s heart swelled at the sight of them flying overhead. It wasn’t home, but it was as close as she’d get in this country. She remembered how hard they’d had to fight to raise even one of these flags in the heart of Hagane, how dear the cost had been. And now she stood in the fluttering shadows of ten.

  Standing there, she offered up a quiet prayer to the memories of the 13-52-2, and the crew of the Marlin. This moment here had been everything they’d fought for. Everything they’d died for. She muttered their names, one by one: Kapona. Minip. Maki. And on and on she went, until eventually she ran out of names and just started offering up vague descriptors, like the short one with the good cheekbones. And eventually, after she’d run out of other names to call, she whispered one last one:

  “Beaky.”

  The crow-shade appeared in a flash of violet and a flutter of wings, and the thrumming annoyance he always exuded. It clashed with the empty throbbing in the back of her head, like discordant notes slamming into one another.

  “I know, I know,” she said, putting a hand up. “We have a lot to talk about. Can you please…?”

  Beaky cocked his head to fix one eye on her, and the annoyance backed down to a low simmer.

  “I never asked you about your life before…before me,” Tala said. “Kept the door closed between us. I told myself it was because it wasn’t my business, and it didn’t matter as long as I was fighting like you asked. But I think I didn’t want to know. I think there’s a reason we call splintersouls monsters, and I didn’t want to make it easier to believe I was one, too. I told Mang I hadn’t been a good partner to him, but I’ve been even worse to you.”

  His feathers ruffled, and a low croak escaped his throat.

  “I took you from him,” Tala said. “Your soul was twined with his, and I ripped you in half.”

  He dipped his head once in an unmistakable nod.

  “So before anything else happens, I needed to tell you that I’m sorry, Beaky. And whatever happens next, I’m going to make it up to you however I can.”

  He clacked his beak thoughtfully. Doubt filtered into her heart: his.

  “I know I said that to Mang,” she said. “I know. But I mean it. If you’ve got anything you want to say to me, I’m ready to listen.”

  At first, there was nothing.

  Then she was plunged into an ice-cold pool of fear.

  It caught her so off guard, her knees buckled. The memories surged through her head: of last night, with that hand around her throat and her vision fading to purple. Of her soul tearing roughly, fiber by fiber. Every single nuance of that pain came back to her, real as if it were happening again.

  She was about to push it away and demand to know why Beaky was doing this to her. But then her memories shifted. She wasn’t a soldier on a train; she was a girl in a hospital, clutching a hand twice as large as her own, and Beaky’s soul felt as if it were aflame.

  * * *

  —

  The girl who summoned him was unfamiliar, and panic fluttered in his chest like a smaller bird. Where was Mayon? Why did he feel this way? How had she known to call him?

  And why could he feel something else inside her?

  The girl spoke to him, and he felt the echoes of her feelings beneath his chest feathers. But it was impossible to understand any of it; his fear muddled everything, like he was looking through a greasy window.

  When it got to be too much, he took to the air.

  She screamed for him to wait, but already she was receding into the distance below him. He was back where he belonged: the city beneath his belly, the sun on his back, the wind ruffling his feathers like gentle fingers.

  He wheeled around and quickly assessed his surroundings. Good. He was still in the same city, the one that Mayon had taken him to all that time ago. How long had it been? He didn’t know. When he went away, he couldn’t keep track of days and nights anymore. All he had was the vague sense that however long he’d been gone, it had been a while.

  But just as he started to think ahead, something snagged him. In his old-old days, when he was small and wild, he wouldn’t have known the word for it. But Mayon had taught it to him, like he’d taught so many other things. It was sad. He was feeling sad, and it was a sadness that wasn’t his.

  It wasn’t a sadness directed at him, the kind that would plead for him to come back.

  But after a moment, he banked left and turned around anyway.

  As he flew back to her side, he understood that things had changed. There had been a rope tying him to Mayon, but he could only feel the faintest threads of it anymore. The thicker cord led directly to the little girl, and he was able to follow it right back to her.

  Her eyes were dry by the time he returned, but there was no disguising their redness. “Thank you for coming back,” she said, and for the first time B
eaky really understood her words—if not the sounds, then at least the feelings beneath them. “We’re going to have to do a lot of fighting. But I promise I’ll be good to you. And when we’re done fighting, you’ll be able to fly all you want.”

  The familiarity caught him off guard. He had never seen this girl before in his life, but the things she said, and more important the things she felt…That certainty. That drive. That commitment to the fight. Beaky knew now: This girl was a branch who would not bend in a storm. It was what he had asked Mayon to be all those years ago, when they had first forged their pact.

  And he understood now that when he had asked this girl to be the same thing, she had said yes.

  * * *

  —

  Tala surfaced from the memory with a deep, sharp breath. Concern radiated off Beaky, but Tala waved him off. “I’m okay,” she rasped, then gathered herself. In a more certain voice, she said again: “I’m okay.”

  Her head spun, her limbs were weak, and she felt more thin-worn than the soles of her own boots. When she blinked, tears appeared on her lashes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to him again. She felt like she would never be able to say it enough times for it to really matter. She knelt and tentatively reached a hand out to him. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  Beaky didn’t exactly nuzzle her; even on their best days, he’d never been affectionate. But he gently laid his feathery cheek in her palm, just for a moment, and left it there. A quiet trickle of affirmation flowed from his heart to her own. It wasn’t certain, but it was strong.

  Tala could live with that. Strength had gotten her this far.

  As she collected herself, she felt a growing resignation within Beaky. When she understood what it meant, she shook her head.

  “No,” she said.

  A pulse of questioning.

  Tala nodded once. “I mean it.”

  And so Sergeant Tala, formerly of the 13-52-2, staggered into the front lobby of the Sanbuna consulate in Hagane with a crested crow-shade at her side.

  The man behind the front desk wasn’t military, and so he didn’t snap to a salute as he took in the sight of her. “May I…help you?”

  She caught sight of herself in the metal doors of a nearby elevator and realized that she still looked pretty chewed-up from the past few days. The quicker she got out of these damnable Tomodanese clothes, the better. “My name’s Sergeant Tala,” she said. “This is my shade, Beaky. We’re the sole survivors of Operation: Grand Tour, and we need to see General Erega right now.”

  The man eyed her skeptically. “The general is a very busy woman…Sergeant. You can have a seat over there—”

  “Call up to her office right now and tell her Sergeant Tala is in the lobby, ready to file a report,” Tala said. “See how busy the general is then.”

  The man frowned, but nonetheless picked up the phone at his desk and dialed. He began to relay Tala’s story to the person on the other end with a patronizing smirk, but after a moment he fell silent. The longer the silence stretched, the more his smirk melted away, until it had disappeared entirely.

  He hung up the phone and swallowed. “My apologies, Sergeant,” he said sheepishly. “One can never be too careful…”

  Tala merely waited.

  “The general is in a meeting that cannot be interrupted, but her staff has told me once it ends you will be her highest priority. A soldier will be here momentarily to escort you to a private meeting room.”

  Tala nodded at last. “Thanks.” She turned to head for the nearest bench.

  “Wait,” said the desk attendant. “I feel terrible about doubting you. While you wait, is there something I can get you?”

  * * *

  —

  It had only been four days since she’d washed ashore on Tomoda, and during that time Tala had been torn up in just about every way possible. But every inch of hell she’d crawled through to get here was worth it now, because she was chewing on a steaming mouthful of garlic rice and some sweet, salty, honest-to-shades dead animal.

  She’d been whisked to a private room that had been some mid-level executive’s office during the war. She’d knelt behind the broad, fancy oak desk, and minutes later a steward had arrived bearing a tray of longganisa, rice, and fried eggs. The smell alone made her want to die of hunger, but the taste was strong enough to bring her back to life. And she was even eating it with her own fingers and hands, like a civilized human being. The steward had easily brought her enough food for two, but she was increasingly certain she was going to end up devouring it all.

  Beaky perched on the desk, watching her with mounting disgust.

  She eyed him back. “You can’t judge me,” she muttered through a full mouth.

  In the corner of her vision, the door slid open. “Hoy,” Tala said, swallowing. “How much do I have to bribe you to get some coffee in here?” Shades take her, the only thing sweeter to the tongue than longganisa was being able to speak Sanbuna again, and knowing she’d be understood.

  The reply she got was a soft chuckle. “I’m sad to say, Sergeant, I won’t come cheap.”

  Tala nearly choked on her half-swallowed food.

  And then she rocketed to her feet, hands slapped to her sides, and pivoted to come face-to-face with General Erega herself.

  The general was a surprisingly small woman, her stormcloud-colored hair in a tight bun. Her face was weathered and broad, its most distinguishing feature the brown leather patch she wore over where her right eye had once been. Despite her status as head of the Republic, the uniform she wore was barely more elaborate than a humble private’s. Her only concessions to rank were the deep-green cape draped over one shoulder and the ten-star medal pinned to her chest.

  “General Erega, sir!” Tala said with a hard swallow of rice. She bowed, aware of how little she looked the part of a good soldier. She still wore the tattered gray Tomodanese suit she’d acquired up north, for one thing, and she was sure she carried the kind of stench that would’ve fooled anyone into thinking she was still active on the front. “Apologies. No one told me you were on your way.”

  “Don’t hold it against my staff,” said General Erega. “They didn’t know I’d be coming, either. At ease, Sergeant.” When Tala relaxed her attention, the general shook her head. “I mean really at ease. Sit back down. Eat. And while you eat, give me your full report on Operation: Grand Tour. Even if you have to do it with your mouth full,” she added, the gentlest sparkle in her eye.

  Tala knelt. She bowed her head. “Sir, the operation…it was—”

  “I know it was compromised early on,” said the general. “But details beyond that are sparse. Which is why, among many other reasons, I’m glad to hear of your survival, Sergeant.” She indicated the table again. “Tell me more, but please don’t forget to eat.”

  But Tala could hardly consider eating now. “General,” she said, hanging her head lower. “Operation: Grand Tour was a failure. We came under attack last night, and in the chaos I was separated from Iron Prince Jimuro. I rushed here in the hope of being able to meet him when he arrived, but the truth is…” Her head dipped even lower. “…I have no idea where he is, sir.” She straightened, ready to receive whatever dressing-down she had in store.

  And yet, General Erega smiled.

  “I would’ve come to you sooner, Sergeant, but I was held up in my office just now. I received a very interesting phone call from the Palace of Steel.”

  Tala perked up. Was it possible?

  General Erega seemed to be able to read her mind. “Congratulations, Lieutenant Tala. The Thirteen-Fifty-Two-Two succeeded in the safe return of Iron Prince Jimuro to Hagane.”

  “Then he’s alive,” Tala said, unable to keep the relief from her voice. “Jimuro—I mean, His Brilliance, has he been…”

  “Soon, I think,” said the general. “We were issued an official summons to the
palace. I imagine by the time we arrive, we won’t have a prince on our hands anymore. And speaking of ‘on our hands’…” She stumped over to the table, then nonchalantly picked up a longganisa and popped it in her mouth. “Are you going to eat yet, or do I have to order you myself?”

  Hastily, Tala crammed more rice in her mouth.

  “Ordonia!” General Erega called.

  A moment later a soldier appeared in the doorway and saluted. “General Erega, sir,” she said.

  “Bring us the hottest coffee this consulate has.”

  After Ordonia had gone, General Erega turned back to Tala. “Now then, Lieutenant Tala,” she said, “I believe I requested a report…?”

  Tala told her almost everything, pausing only when Ordonia returned with the requested coffees. The only detail she left out was Dimangan, and by now she was well practiced in editing stories around him. By the time she was done, she’d downed the entire coffee, but her throat still felt parched.

  General Erega drank the last of her own coffee, then frowned. “He’s Sanbuna, this purple man?”

  Tala nodded.

  “And you’re certain he survived his escape from the train?”

  She felt the throbbing absence in the back of her head. “Absolutely, sir.”

  With a jolt, she realized that there was a better-than-even chance that the general probably even knew this man, if he was truly the resistance fighter from the hospital bed. But there was no way to ask that question without provoking all kinds of unwanted ones in return, so Tala remained silent.

  “An actual splintersoul, then?” the general said. “Well. I guess that tracks.”

  Questions erupted in Tala’s head. “Sir?”

  “Yours isn’t the first platoon this man’s massacred, Lieutenant,” said General Erega.