Steel Crow Saga

by Paul Krueger

  This was the penance he hoped to offer her: a full army of the world’s best, so that she would no longer have this monster stalking her footsteps. With the man in the purple coat gone from the world, she would be free to live her life however she wanted. Wherever she wanted.

  With whomever she wanted.

  But as he turned his attention to the spot beside General Erega, to gauge Tala’s reaction himself, he blanched. Where before his faithful bodyguard had stood, there was now only a single long, black crow feather.

  Tala was gone.

  Her heart had become a howling black cloud of hunger, and it beckoned her to his side.

  She’d been living with the throbbing since last night, following the ways it changed and fluctuated. For most of the day, she’d chalked it up to her general unfamiliarity with having one’s soul reaved, and tried not to think about it. But while Jimuro was speaking, she’d felt it grow stronger and stronger, until it was so overwhelming she could hardly see.

  That was when she’d understood why, as the night had gone on, the hunger she felt had gone from background noise to a constant roar. Why that hunger had risen up within her, sick and caustic as vomit in her throat, and urged her to tear apart General Erega herself. It was a thread that tied one half of her soul to the other, like the last sinew that kept a severed head lolling on its neck.

  It was a thread she could follow.

  And it had just stretched itself taut.

  She had no idea what would happen next, but she knew that she’d barely had a day with this pain in her and already found it unbearable. This man had been living with it for years. She had to believe that they would both want to end this quickly.

  Though she didn’t know the twists and turns of the Palace of Steel well, the throbbing in the back of her head guided her feet. With inexorable certainty, she made her way through the corridors, sliding doors aside and skulking away from unaware servants and guards when they neared. Avoiding their notice was easy; they were soft palace pets, while she was a beast who had sharpened her teeth jungle-running. She donned the shadows as easily as she did her uniform, and shed them like a snake did its skin.

  Beaky hopped along behind her, his dark plumage hiding him even more easily than she. She wished she could’ve allowed him to fly free, with the moonlight on his back. The whole time they’d been in Tomoda, flying free was all he’d wanted, and for one reason or another she hadn’t been able to give him that freedom. She just had to hope that would change soon.

  No matter what happened next.

  She could tell Beaky was grateful for the sentiment. But she couldn’t ignore the mounting trepidation he felt with each step they took toward their target.

  She projected a mix of feelings into him: Reassurance. Gratitude. Understanding. Sympathy. But it felt like trying to bring light to a dark hole by chucking down a single lit match at a time.

  She stopped and knelt. “Hoy,” she said to Beaky, who cocked his head to get a better look at her. She patted his beak. “We don’t have to do this.” The words felt hollow in her throat, but she meant them nonetheless. What she was about to do involved asking everything of Beaky. She’d pledged to be a better partner, and that had to start here.

  She could feel the crow-shade considering her offer. A small part of her feared what she would do if he decided to decline. She wanted to believe she could trust herself to do what was right for her partner. But when the hunger was so overwhelming, the pain so impossible to escape…

  At long last, Beaky offered up a feeling that was vaguely shaped like assent, and which solidified more with each passing moment. The relief Tala felt herself was like balm on a bullet wound. That aura of fear was still there, but Beaky’s crest stood tall, his breast feathers fluffed, and a certain reluctant certainty shone in the one eye she could see.

  She swallowed, then gave him a gentle kiss at the base of his beak. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  Beaky projected feelings to her that her brain roughly translated as an eye roll. Tala smiled anyway, and felt the inside of her chest grow tight. She swallowed hard. It wasn’t fair. For someone who’d lost so much, she was still so bad at saying goodbye.

  She’d understood right away what Jimuro was trying to do, the moment he’d started talking about the splintersoul. If he convened a multinational effort to take the splintersoul down, and insisted Tala be kept close, it would insulate her against further attacks from him. She got it; he was trying to make up for dismissing her. And she appreciated it.

  But she couldn’t stomach the thought of any more innocent people dying for her sin. She knew the only thing that could make her feel whole again was having Mang back. If she had to fight her way through a palace full of soldiers with just Beaky at her side, that was what she would do. Even though the man in the purple coat had far more than a single bird at his disposal, that didn’t matter. Many years ago, she and this bird had made a pact with each other that they would keep fighting. There was no one she would’ve preferred to have at her back for what came next.

  And besides, Jimuro didn’t know that Mang had been taken from her at all. If the man so much as caught a lucky stray bullet before she had a chance to lay hands on him…

  She shuddered, then stepped away from the thought. She couldn’t even allow herself to consider going on without Mang. No matter what happened next, no matter if she even walked away from this, she would get him back.

  Beaky clacked his beak in approval. She hadn’t realized she’d been broadcasting her feelings to him, but she welcomed his support. He was more than she deserved.

  She offered up a silent thanks to him, and then another to Jimuro. After all, she’d gotten this idea from him.

  In time, she came upon one final door: paper stretched over dark wood, illuminated by the moonlight that lay beyond. And etched into the paper from somewhere beyond it was the distant silhouette of a single man in a billowing coat.

  When she slid it aside, a warm summer breeze and the song of cicadas welcomed her to the remains of the imperial garden. The Palace of Steel had been repaired to an impressive degree, considering the amount of punishment it had taken during the final assault. But while wood beams could be replaced and steel could be pacted, there was no rushing a garden.

  She imagined there had once been mighty trees, but now there stood only saplings. The grass had mostly grown back, though there were patches where it lay thin enough for Tala to glimpse bare soil. Three ponds lay evenly spaced across the courtyard, ringed by carefully arrayed stones. Their waters were still, save for the ripples created by the koi swimming beneath each one’s surface.

  In the far corner stood a fountain with a bamboo tube slowly filling with water. Just as Tala glanced at it, it filled enough to tip over, pouring the water back into the pool at its feet. And as it rotated back into a standing position, the bottom of the tube struck a nearby rock with a loud, hollow-sounding thunk that she could hear even over the cicada song.

  The way she’d had it told to her, the Tomodanese kept gardens in their homes as a place for wandering spirits to take refuge and bless the house. And as the country had become more industrial, it had become more important than ever for the spirits to have a place where they could commune with the land as it once was.

  Given how much the Tomodanese cared about these gardens, it made perfect sense that the Shang had put this one to the torch.

  But the man waiting for her amid a patch of hydrangeas was capable of doing far worse.

  In the day since she’d last seen him, he seemed to have degraded even more. His long black hair was thickly matted and a scraggly beard infested his face, patchy as the grass underfoot. One hand hung at his side, while the handless stump of his wrist was in his pocket. His purple coat was even filthier somehow, splotched with blood and pocked with cuts and tears. But the real difference was the mad sheen of hunger
in his bloodshot eyes. He was a wolf, and he stared at her like she was an exposed throat.

  “I’ve been told this is where the war ended,” he said without greeting. “That this was where the Steel Lord breathed her last. Is that true?”

  She was taken aback by the calm in his voice. In their previous two encounters, he’d been a bloodthirsty lunatic. Nonetheless, she nodded. “Shang troops found her here. She fought hard, but she was one woman against a dozen shades.”

  Within the depths of his thin black beard, she caught the yellow glint of his teeth.

  “I fought at the beginning of the war,” he said, glancing around the garden with unhurried calm. “The blood I shed then…it all flowed here, like a stream feeding into a great river and following it all the way to the sea.” Something subtle shifted in his gaze, and it took on a harsh, appraising feel. “But it didn’t stop flowing, did it, Tala?”

  Her name sounded like an obscenity in his mouth. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The war,” he said. “It didn’t really end. With every beat of your heart, every breath you’ve drawn since Steel Lord Yoshiko died, you’ve kept it alive.”

  Tala narrowed her eyes. “I fought for the freedom of my people. I fought for peace.”

  His voice was like a blade scraping across a throat. “You fought to hurt the bad people who took Mommy and Daddy away,” he hissed. “You can’t lie to me, soldier. I knew you were vicious for what you’d done to me…I had no idea how vicious you’d become since.”

  Tala scowled at him. She hadn’t come to hear him out. “What I did to you, you returned. I’m here to settle accounts. You return Dimangan to me…and I’ll make you whole, too.”

  She stepped aside to reveal Beaky standing there. His anxiety spiked in her head, but she could feel him resisting the urge to fly away. She sent back a wave of gratitude, in the hope that it might calm him even a little.

  When the man’s eyes fell upon Beaky, all the flintiness in them vanished immediately. He gave a strangled sob and surged forward a step, tears already flowing freely down his eyes.

  But he stopped when Tala brought her gun to bear on him. “That’s far enough.”

  He lurched forward, then caught himself. “I bear your brother’s soul,” he said. “End my life, and you end his.”

  “My firing instructor always said someone with good aim can kill. Someone with great aim doesn’t have to. And besides: You know I can metalpact now. I won’t miss.”

  She didn’t actually know how to pact with a gun or a bullet to improve its accuracy. Nonetheless, the man growled and clutched at his stump of an arm.

  She adjusted her sight so it was parked right over his kneecap. She’d seen him in action. He was fast, but not fast enough to stop her from turning his knee to powder and pulp with a twitch of her finger. “We’re going to do this civilly,” Tala said. “An even, equivalent exchange, and then we both walk away. Understood?”

  The man in the purple coat shook his head. “There’s nothing equivalent about what you’re proposing,” he said in a low, hollow voice. “You doomed me to years of agony. I gave you a rough night.”

  “He’s my brother,” Tala said. She felt the strength in her burnt hand starting to leave her already, and she steadied her gun with her other hand.

  “Did you care who Beaky was to me before you took him?” His voice shook as it rose. “Did you?” Fear pulsed through her, and she didn’t know how much of it was her, how much of it was Beaky, and how much the difference even mattered.

  “I’m here to make that right,” Tala said. “And with the aim I’ve got, you should be glad that’s the only score I’m looking to settle.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “The platoon.”

  Their faces swam before her eyes, one by one. “My platoon,” she said. “And however many people you killed before them and after.”

  He shook his head. “Those aren’t yours to avenge,” he said. “And besides…” He took a step toward her. “Would I have killed them all if you hadn’t torn me in two?” He took another step. “Have you yet stopped to ask yourself: If you hadn’t committed your sin, how many people would still be alive?”

  She gritted her teeth and fought to stop her hands from shaking. But each thing he said felt as if it were gouging away more of the earth beneath her feet. “I didn’t kill those people. You did.”

  “When a person dies from a gunshot,” the man whispered, “you don’t blame the bullet. You blame the shooter.” And then he took another step. Whatever hesitation he’d had in approaching her before had completely evaporated. He was starting to get that mad gleam back in his eye, the one he’d had during his rampage aboard the Crow’s Flight.

  When he’d slaughtered his way through the 13-52-2.

  When he’d fought his way through Maki.

  Tala exhaled, then leaned her pistol back so it rested under her chin, angled perfectly to blow her own brains out. Panic surged through her from Beaky: This wasn’t the plan!

  “For the sake of my brother’s soul, I won’t end your life,” she said. Though she’d never been more terrified in her life than she was in this moment, she fought to keep her voice steady, her eyes cold and focused. “But take another step, and I’ll end mine.”

  “You’d orphan your own brother?” said the man. The madness was still there, but wariness undercut its menace.

  “If I leave him with you long enough, he’ll figure out a way to kill you himself,” Tala said. “I’m not worried about him. But if I’m going to die without him either way, I’ll do it in a way that makes sure you spend the rest of your life hollow.” She paused, silently offering up Jimuro a preemptive apology for spilling blood on his freshly rebuilt garden. “So what’ll it be, then?”

  The man glared at her. He clenched his hand into a shaking fist.

  Beaky cocked his head. More panic and unease ran through Tala: You can’t be serious.

  But the moment Tala had said it, she’d known she was.

  Her eyes met his. Where madness glinted in his eyes, she knew focus and discipline shone in her own, hard and bright as steel.

  They stood deathly still, while all around them the world moved: The summer breeze. The koi in the pond. The singing cicadas. The bamboo fountain, striking its stone base again with another hollow thunk.

  Then something new moved in the corner of her eye, in the upper reaches of her vision. She spared a momentary glance toward it, just in time to see a white-furred, three-tailed monkey-shade leap from the roof where it had been lurking, its hands outstretched and its fanged mouth wide open.

  In the heartbeat it took her to notice Sunny, the splintersoul darted sideways. Too late, she tried to squeeze off a shot and stop him. The bullet gouged a hole in the grass as Sunny tackled her to the ground.

  As her world became a tangle of white fur, limbs, and teeth, she willed Beaky to take to the air, where he’d be safe. And as she did, she looped her gun around and emptied its remaining five chambers into Sunny’s hide. The tight cluster of wounds immediately sparked with magical energy as they healed up, but it stunned the monkey-shade just long enough for Tala to shove him off. Unsteadily, she climbed to her feet—

  —only for a familiar hand to envelop her entire face.

  Her body seized with panic as her world went dark.

  She arched her back with agony as she felt her soul beginning to tear, his grip tightening over her skull—

  The report of another gun shattered the stillness of the night. The hand fell from her face, and she staggered back, gasping for air and blinking to readjust her sight.

  One of the rocks in the garden had shifted itself aside, revealing a tunnel beneath. And surging out of that tunnel: Shang Xiulan. Lee…whatever her name was. Their shades appeared beside them in twin flashes of light, then charged for Sunny, who had almost recovered
from his gunshot wounds.

  But the one holding the smoking gun was Steel Lord Jimuro, his glasses glaring pure white in the moonlight.

  “Jimuro!” Tala shouted. “No! Stay back!”

  “Wow,” Lee said. “Guess we can go fuck ourselves, eh, Princess?”

  “Remember me?” Jimuro called to the splintersoul. “You didn’t know who I was then.” Loudly, he chambered a round. “I bet you do now.”

  The splintersoul roared as blood oozed from his shoulder, where Jimuro’s shot had sunk in. He gave an angry sweep of his arms, shouting names the whole way, and in reply streams of light surged through the air, solidifying into a small army of shades.

  “Ah,” said Xiulan. “The proverbial army at your fingertips. Perhaps, sir, it would surprise you to know that we, too, are in possession of armies…”

  All around the courtyard, walls turned into doors, sliding aside to reveal what must have been every able-bodied fighter in the palace: the delegation of the Republic of Sanbu, General Erega at their head, their ranks rippling with fear and surprise as they beheld a splintersoul for the first time. The delegation of Great Dahal, led by Bhavna Devarajah with hands that glowed deadly white. The Kobaruto, their steel cables dragging behind them as they charged into the garden in disciplined silence.

  General Erega limped forward. “I know you, son,” she called to the splintersoul. “You were one of mine, back in the early days.”

  Surprise pierced the man’s wild, desperate air. “I was, sir.” He reached up with his good hand and tapped his left eye. “You had both of these.”

  “And you had both of those,” General Erega replied, holding up a hand. “We fought together, son. No need for us to fight each other. Stand down, and we can talk all this out.”

  The man leveled a surprisingly clear stare at the general. “You didn’t really think that’d work, did you, sir?”

  The general shook her head sadly. “I wanted it to.”