Steel Crow Saga

by Paul Krueger

Tala and the splintersoul sported looks of disbelief at what they were seeing: the Steel Lord himself, shadepacting. For the splintersoul, his disbelief was tinged with disgust and surprise. But for Tala, that disbelief rapidly gave way to the only thing she had left: hope. Because if Jimuro could find it in himself to split his soul with another, then Tala knew she could do anything.

  Please, Tala thought, as Fumiko slashed a bright line directly across Dimangan’s eyes. Everything depends on you. Please. I can’t do this without you.

  The splintersoul dropped to a knee and wrapped his hand around the side of her face. His breath was heavy and foul, and it felt as if he was trying to crush her skull between his fingers. “You delayed justice,” he rasped. “But your mongrel friend can’t stop—”

  A streak of black unfolded from the sky, zipping past the man and bowling him onto his feet. His grip on Tala’s face slipped, and Tala tried in vain to squirm away from him.

  The man in the purple coat sat up, bewildered. A fresh cut had been gouged across his cheek, bleeding freely onto his coat. “What?” he said. “How—?” But then his eyes widened. “No.”

  Beaky landed on the ground between him and Tala. He spread his wings wide, clacked his beak, and issued a loud, throaty caw.

  Tala could have cried at the sight of him. Thank you, she thought.

  In reply, she received a wave of annoyance and fear…but also the kind of resignation Tala knew she could depend on.

  This, more than anything else that happened, seemed to send the man in the purple coat reeling. “But…you…you’re part of me,” he said. His voice was quiet. Even heartbroken.

  Tala’s right arm hung at her side, useful as an empty sleeve. She had to push herself up with only her left arm and whatever wreckage remained of her core muscles. “Not anymore,” Tala said.

  Beaky flew forward, beak flashing like a machete blade. The man in the purple coat was flat-footed, and barely managed to parry it with a swipe of his handless arm. But Beaky was right there, relentlessly raining peck after peck down on his former partner.

  Something emerald tumbled through the air: Fumiko. She crashed through a nearby wall, her bladed limbs and wings shredding its paper like spreadshot through flesh.

  His massive shoulders heaving, Mang returned his attention to Tala once more. All across his body, laceration wounds were shutting themselves, but slowly, so slowly. All the damage Mang had taken was adding up, and whatever grip he had on his solid form was probably tenuous at best.

  She had to hope his own grip wasn’t the only one that had weakened.

  “Mang!” she shouted. “I know you can hear me! I still don’t know much about shades, but I know everything about you. And if there’re two things I know about you, it’s that you’re listening, and you’re fighting!”

  Mang lumbered forward another few steps. But Tala refused to allow herself to fear him anymore. He wasn’t some monster; he was Mang. He was her brother. He was the only thing she had left.

  “A pact works two ways!” she shouted. “You’re not a slave, and you don’t need to be one! You’re my brother, and I’ll always love you, no matter how many people he makes you hurt! Even if it’s me!”

  Another step that made the earth shake. Though Tala’s fear rose like a flame, she held steady, looked him in the eye, and said the one thing she hadn’t already, the only thing she had left to say: “I’m sorry.”

  It was as if a curtain behind his eyes had lifted. Suddenly her brother’s gaze seemed sharper, surer.

  His own.

  He vanished from her sight and reappeared just behind the man in the purple coat and enveloped him in his huge arms. The man roared at the top of his lungs, froth forming at the corners of his mouth as he ranted and raved. He struggled in vain, but he was too weak to break Mang’s grip.

  Beaky retreated, flapping his wings and cawing with triumph. Shouts of surprise rose up all around her: some voices Tala recognized, some not. But all of them were thinking the same thing Tala was: This was her chance.

  But as she began to climb to her feet, Mang called: “Stay back!”

  She froze. “I need to touch him!” she shouted. “I need to get you back!”

  Mang shook his huge head. “I can’t hold him for long! He’s fighting me, Lala, and I’m not gonna beat him! You have to end it!”

  The words hit her like the lash of a whip, and tears instantly formed in the corners of her eyes. “Mang—”

  “It’s the only way!” Mang shouted. “I’d have snapped his neck myself, but—” As if on cue, his hand wrenched itself away from the man’s body, then clamped back down on it before he could escape. “Lala, you’ve got to do it! If he gets free, he’ll kill you all! You have to take him out!”

  Tala blew right past all the screaming rage and inconsolable howling she wanted to feel, and landed hard in disbelief and despair. She’d carried Mang in her soul for ten years. In the war, on the days she’d wanted to roll over and stop fighting, she’d kept on surviving because she owed it to him. So to end it all now…did that mean it had all been for nothing? That by saving her brother, she’d only set herself up to lose him in the cruelest way possible?

  “Lala—!” Mang shouted through gritted teeth.

  She looked down at the gun next to her. She had only one arm left, and it was her bad one. With distant horror, as if she were watching someone else do it, she reached for the pistol.

  A hand laid itself over hers. “Let me do it.” Prince Jimuro had dragged himself across the courtyard to her side. His topknot was undone, long hair hanging loosely around his handsome face. His deep-brown eyes bored into her own through cracked lenses.

  “Jimuro…” She blinked through her tears. “You shadepacted.”

  The Steel Lord forced a weary smile. “You can do anything if you love someone enough.”

  She thought of breaking the most basic law of shadepacting. She thought of the secrets she’d kept, of the lives she’d taken, of the lies she’d told, all just to keep Dimangan alive. She thought of why she’d done it.

  Her fingers curled around the grip of the pistol, and she lifted it with a shaking hand.

  She breathed in. She breathed out. Breathed in. Breathed out.

  Her finger tightened over the trigger…

  …and froze.

  The more she focused on the sight, the more violently her hand shook. Her sure aim had all been in her right hand. Her left was just a hand: good enough on her best days, and this was far from her best. She only had one shot to do this, and using her left hand left too much to chance. Even when her spirit had found the resolve to do it, her body was ready to fail her.

  But then she felt Jimuro’s breath on her cheek, his voice in her ear. “The steel is empty,” he said. “The steel is bone, and you are blood.”

  Her hand wouldn’t stop shaking. She tried to extend herself into the steel, to fill it like the empty vessel Jimuro said it was, but all she was doing was gripping the gun harder, which made her hand shake more.

  The splintersoul shrugged out of his purple coat, and it came away in Dimangan’s hands. With a roar, he charged forward.

  The gunshot rent the night air, silencing the cicadas.

  Her hand shook, but the bullet flew straight and true.

  The man’s entire body jerked back as the bullet sank into his chest and erupted out his back in a spray of blood. The anger bled from his face, erasing hard-worn lines as he pitched forward to the ground and lay there, dead.

  She didn’t hold back her tears. She recognized them like an old friend.

  They were the tears she cried when she’d done something unforgivable.

  As the man keeled over, Mang’s eyes widened in—surprise? Relief? “Lala!” he shouted. “Lala, I—”

  He blew away like smoke from a candle.

  A day later, the throne
room sat empty. The Steel Lord had set up court elsewhere.

  He hadn’t seen the servants take Tala into the east wing. He’d wanted to follow them, but there were too many pressing matters he’d had to take in hand immediately following the attack. There were heads of state to assuage. Media to address. Bodies to bury.

  But after an exhausting night, he’d declared that he would be retiring: not to his chambers, but to the hallway in the east wing outside the room where Tala was in recovery. The First Sage had objected, on the grounds that such conduct was unbecoming of a reigning Steel Lord. The newly elevated Captain Tamaki had objected, citing how difficult it would be for their guards to secure him in such an exposed place. But Jimuro knew that in the coming peace talks, he was due to make many, many compromises. On this, he would accept none.

  With Bhavna Devarajah, he bargained for the use of her finest healers. It hadn’t felt like a bargain at the time; she’d smiled and offered them up freely. But he knew enough of Dahal’s mercantile ways to know that he had not been given a gift, merely purchased a service on a deep line of credit.

  As he stared at the shut door across the hall, he reminded himself that it had been a worthwhile trade.

  The Crane Emperor, predictably, had been inconsolable. He’d insisted that everything had been an elaborate ploy by the Tomodanese working in concert with the Sanbunas, and that Shang was outraged by the deceitful conduct of everyone present…except, of course, for the noble delegation of Shang. In the newspapers that his servants had brought Jimuro with his morning tea, the Crane Emperor was already on the record claiming that last night’s terror attack had been an inside job orchestrated by some vast international conspiracy. It was a charge that would be easy enough to brush away over time. This morning, though, it was the last thing Jimuro needed.

  Across the hall, the door slid open. A Dahali healer in cream-colored robes exited. Jimuro sat up straighter. “How is she?”

  “Her condition is stable,” said the woman. “And this one is doing everything she can to improve upon that. But healing is not a process enacted by sorcery alone. The patient must fight at least as hard as the physician, if not much harder.”

  Jimuro’s mouth thinned. “I know of no better fighter than she,” he said.

  Shortly after the healer departed, the door opened again. This time, the one to exit was none other than the venerable General Erega. Despite Jimuro’s somber mood, she chuckled when she saw him kneeling on his mat, anxious as a father-to-be. “You can go in, you know,” said Erega. “For one thing, it’s your room.”

  Jimuro shook his head. “I’m certain she doesn’t wish to see me. I know I’ve done nothing to earn the right to see her.”

  Erega rolled her eye.

  “I’m serious,” Jimuro said. He’d thought it was a very earnest, honest thing to say, which was why he was surprised to hear Erega chuckle in response. He felt color rise in his face. “What?”

  She just chuckled more. “Shades take me, you’re so young.”

  “General…” he said warningly.

  “What, Your Brilliance? It’s a fact: If you were a cherry tree and I chopped you down, there wouldn’t be enough rings there to decorate all my fingers.” She sighed as her laughter subsided. “I was in your position only recently, you know. I didn’t have a throne room, or a palace. But I had a country to rebuild and a people who needed me. That kind of thing weighs on a person. More like than not, it’ll end up crushing you.”

  “Not if you’re strong enough,” Jimuro said fiercely. “Not if you’re true steel.”

  That got Erega chuckling again. “Fine, so you’re true steel. A single beam, impervious to the elements. But you’re still a single beam.” Her eye glinted with the wiliness Jimuro had seen back when he’d asked her to let him try bistek. “You can hold anything up with a single beam, but only if you balance it just right. Tilt it too far one way or the other, it all falls down. Even if you balance it just right, shades forbid you get an unlucky breeze…”

  Jimuro looked away. “I believe I take your meaning.”

  “Well, forgive me if I continue to elaborate on it anyway,” said Erega. “I think it’s pretty clever, and besides that, I’m old.” She gestured to the hall around them. “The Palace of Steel isn’t held up by a single beam, Your Brilliance. And most of the beams that hold it up aren’t even steel. So how do you expect to support a whole country with only one beam when that’s not even enough to support your house?”

  He sighed. “As I said, I take your meaning. But the mutual endeavor of support doesn’t come without trust. The good lieutenant has no reason left to trust me.”

  Erega’s eye fell to his hand. “Doesn’t she?”

  Jimuro followed the general’s gaze down to the white glove he wore, but he knew they were both thinking of the green pactmark on his skin. He still hadn’t grown used to the sight of it. For his entire life, he’d thought of marks like it as a surefire sign of savagery. Now the Steel Lord himself bore one, in as prominent a place as any, save for his face. He intended to wear gloves in public to avoid too many questions, but this was the age of radio news. Sooner or later, people were going to find out.

  “Eventually, I’m going to have questions,” Erega said mildly. “About how you came to shadepact. About what relationship Mayon had to all this.” A cloud passed over the general’s face. “About what Tala…did.”

  “As I understand it, General,” Jimuro said evenly, “the only thing Lieutenant Tala ever did was what she had to.”

  General Erega opened her mouth to reply, but she was interrupted by loud footsteps. From around the corner, Shang Xiulan appeared, arms clasped behind her back.

  At once, Captain Tamaki materialized from the shadows, stepping smoothly into Xiulan’s path. “No closer,” they said sternly.

  Princess Xiulan shot Jimuro an imploring look.

  Jimuro sighed. “She can approach, Captain.”

  They leveled a lingering stare at Xiulan before stepping out of the way.

  Gratefully, Xiulan tipped her trilby, then bowed low as she approached. “Your Brilliance,” she said. “General Erega, sir. I’d hoped to call upon our esteemed guest and pay her my respects. Is she currently of a suitable condition or temperament to receive such a visitation?”

  “And I thought you were bad,” General Erega muttered to Jimuro in Sanbuna.

  “Tala and I both said—”

  But the general had already switched to Tomodanese. “The healers say Lieutenant Tala’s arm is coming along as well as can be expected. The bones and nerves and muscle will need time to realign, and in some places regrow. Even with all their best healing, she probably won’t shoot straight again. Not with that hand, anyway.”

  Jimuro thought of her violently shaking hand in the courtyard.

  “During my brief travels with the good lieutenant, I became aware of how much value she placed in her talent of marksmanship,” Xiulan said. “I can only imagine how devastating it must be…to lose such a key part of one’s identity.”

  Jimuro noted the careful pause in her speech. So, too, did Erega, because she raised a thick eyebrow at the princess.

  “You’re welcome to go in and see her,” Erega said eventually. “In fact, it’d probably be good for her. Just ignore her when she tries to get you to leave.” She nodded to Jimuro. “Consider having dinner with me tonight, Your Brilliance. There are a few things we have to discuss.” She bowed gently to Xiulan. “Your Majesty.” When Xiulan bowed in return, she took her leave.

  Xiulan sighed in her wake. “It’s so rare to meet a person who actually lives up to their reputation.”

  Jimuro could hardly disagree. Even Captain Tamaki gave the general a nod of respect as she passed them. But he suspected the princess wasn’t there to extol General Erega’s virtues. “Where’s Lee?” he said.

  Xiulan tried to hide the way
her smile faltered at the woman’s name, but she wasn’t entirely successful. “Occupied with other important matters,” she said. “Surely by now you know as well as I that she’s not one for standing still. I fear you will have to make do with the pleasure of my humble company.”

  Jimuro wasn’t even slightly buying it, but he opted to let the princess keep her dignity intact. “To what do I owe that pleasure?” He indicated the iron teakettle before him. When Xiulan nodded, he began pacting with it to reheat its contents.

  “First, I believe I owe you an apology for our unfortunate encounter aboard the Crow’s Flight,” said Xiulan.

  Jimuro shook his head. “When I had need of you last night, you and Lee came to my aid without hesitation. However the scales were imbalanced before, I consider them level now.”

  “To be fair, I’ve also traveled briefly with Lieutenant Tala. I owed her a debt as well.” She reached into her coat. “I also wished to thank you for your gift,” she said, and produced a glossy wooden pipe that she nonchalantly began to fill with leaf. “I was surprised to discover it already waiting for me on my desk when I returned to the consulate this morning to collect my things.”

  Jimuro frowned. “I didn’t have a pipe sent over.”

  It was Xiulan’s turn to frown. “Well, I suppose the gratitude doesn’t hurt matters…” She lit the pipe, filling the air with a thick, rich smell that reminded Jimuro, for whatever reason, of an old library.

  “If you collected your things,” Jimuro said, “I imagine your father sacked you?”

  Xiulan nodded. “He wanted Shang to take no part in last night’s battle. My very presence in it undercuts his preferred narrative. He won’t disown me outright because he owes my uncle quite a good deal of jian, but he intends to take every step he can to marginalize me, I’m afraid.”

  Jimuro wished he could’ve done something to help her, but he had no credit with the Crane Emperor, and likely would never earn any. “I’m sorry,” was all he could offer up, along with a cup of steaming hot tea.

  The princess accepted it gratefully, and at last sat with him to drink it. “I know my country is far from the paragon our state media claims it to be, Your Brilliance,” she said. “In another world, these peace accords would be happening in the ashes of a Shang Empire that had come and gone, rather than a Tomodanese one. And there are those within my country who, in the ensuing vacuum created by your country’s downfall, would love nothing more than to slot my kingdom into your place.”