by Jay Kristoff
“Skin is strong. Flesh is weak.”
He opened his eyes, seeing it for the first time. A flat sheet of paper, folded beneath his temperfoam futon, corner peeking out into the dim light. A smooth high-pitched whine came from his skin as he crouched down, picked it up, noting the fine misting of dust on the floor under the ventilation duct.
Someone had been in his room. Crawling through the vents, dropping down and depositing this paper beneath his mattress. Why? Who?
He opened the quartered sheet, sharp folds, a little over a foot wide. It was a square of opaque parchment, marked with simple drawings of an arashitora. An overlay of translucent rice-paper sat on top. A contraption was drawn on it, sitting neatly over the thunder tiger’s frame.
There was a note in the corner. A five-word fist in his gut, his heart threatening to burst through his ribs and fly from his chest.
“We need to talk—Yukiko.”
* * *
Masaru woke from the dream with a moan, images glowing in his memory like the afterburn of a sun stared at too long. A rolling field of animal bones, ribs and skulls and empty eye sockets, overgrown with mile after mile of blood-red lotus. He’d stood in the dark, a flickering light in his hand, and then dropped the torch and watched it burn. Sucking in lungfuls of smoke, listening to the screams piercing the night and realizing, finally, that they were his own.
He sat up on raw stone, hands shaking, smudging the dream from his eyes. The cell stank of old sweat, shit, vomit. His skin felt greasy, smudged with gray. But, for the first time in as long as he could remember, he felt clean. No lotus in his veins, no ashen fingers snaking through his skull. Unshackled, weight falling from his shoulders and drifting away in rolling clouds.
“Masaru-sama.”
A voice in the dark outside his cell. Was he still asleep?
“Masaru-sama.” Urgent. Muffled. A girl’s voice.
“Yukiko?”
“A friend.”
He could make out eyes in the dark, a thin strip of flesh between folds of a dark cowl, skin painted black. Silhouette of a kusarigama’s hooked, sickle blade at her belt, a sword on her back—a tsurugi by the look—straight blade and square hilt-guard. A weapon that long in the hands of a commoner was a death sentence.
“You’re no samurai. Who are you?”
“I told you. A friend.”
“My friends don’t carry swords.”
“Perhaps that is something they ought to think about.”
“What do you want?” He rubbed his eyes, blinked in the dark.
“For you to be ready.”
She slipped a package between the bars, wrapped in hessian, tied with twine.
“Ready for what?”
“Freedom.”
* * *
The headache had been sent by Lady Izanami herself.
Yoritomo-no-miya closed his eyes and tried to relax, let the hands just drift over his skin. Deft fingers pressed at the anxiety knotting his shoulders, crouched among the muscles of his neck. Gentle hands cupped his cheeks, forced his head sharply to the right. A loud crack in his ears, as of last winter’s firewood burning in the hearth, and the fist of tension at the base of his skull dissolved. The constriction of his veins mercifully eased, flooding his head with endorphins.
The Shōgun breathed deep, letting the gentle notes of the shamisen pick him up on a wave and carry him far from his cares. The geisha kneeling by his shoulders stepped lithely up onto his back, walking up and down his spine with small, surefooted steps. Little pops among his vertebrae accompanied her on her journey across his irezumi, her weight pushing the breath from his lungs as her toes wriggled into his aching flesh.
He heard the sound of the nightingale floor, wooden boards squeaking across a nail fretboard, the whisper of the rice-paper door sliding aside. He frowned.
“I told you I did not wish to be disturbed, Hideo-san.”
“I beg your forgiveness, great Lord, equal of Heaven,” the minister replied. Without looking up, Yoritomo could tell he was bowing as low as his old back could afford. “The Lady Aisha wishes to speak with you.”
A sigh.
“Send her in.”
Shuffling footsteps, muffled voices, geta across the floorboards and the smell of jasmine perfume. Yoritomo could feel his sister staring at him. He did not look up.
“Seii Taishōgun.” Her voice hung in the air alongside the incense.
“Lady Aisha.” He winced as the geisha ground her heel into a knot beneath his shoulder-blade. “All right, get off, get off,” he waved.
The girl flinched and stepped off his back immediately, shrinking a few steps away, hands drawn up to her face. Fear in her eyes. Bruise on her wrist.
“Leave us,” said Aisha, and the music stopped as if someone had choked it, the sound of instruments being set aside and scurrying feet filling the silence. Aisha slipped off her geta and walked to her brother’s side, her split-toed socks only a whisper across the floor. She knelt beside him on the matting, began slapping his back with the heels of her hands, up and down his spine, air filled with the wet sound of flesh on flesh. Yoritomo twisted his head, felt his neck pop again.
“You are upset,” said Aisha.
“You are perceptive.”
“The arashitora?”
“I should have killed it. And that insolent Kitsune bitch.”
“But your dream, brother,” Aisha said, kneading his flesh. “Hachiman has sent you this gift. You were right not to squander it.”
“Gift or no, that little whore belongs in prison with her bastard father. We will see how much of her spirit remains after a few months in the hole.”
“And what do you think the arashitora will do without her to speak to it? How will you manage the beast without the girl keeping it in check?”
“It knows me well enough by now. I hold the key to both their fates. It would not dare raise a talon to me, not when I can have her killed with a snap of my fingers. I want that Kitsune trash under lock and key. Breathing the stink of her failure, and slowly going blind in the dark.”
“She will die in that prison, brother. She would be food for corpse-rats, you and I both know it.” She shook her head, kneaded the tension in his flesh. “No, your punishment was just. Harsh enough to leave no ambiguity about who rules their fate. Yet merciful enough to leave no permanent scars. You were wise, Shōgun. The beast knows the hand of its master now.”
“One would hope. I have never had to teach that lesson twice.”
A long silence, broken by the rasp of a crippled swallow. Her hands fell still on his skin.
“No,” she finally said. “No, you have not.”
“Yet now I am forced to wait.” Yoritomo pushed himself off the floor; sudden, startling motion. He began pacing, candlelight rolling across inked muscle. “How long until it moults again? How long until I can lead my armies astride its back? The arashitora is worth nothing to me chained in a godsdamned pit.”
“Then why did you cut its feathers, brother?”
“They lied to me. They deceived me.”
“But there were any number of punishments you could have inflicted for the transgression. Starvation. Beatings. Torture. Why cripple its wings?”
He spoke like a parent to a simple, mewling child.
“Because it wanted to fly, Aisha.”
She fell silent, face like stone, watching him pace the room.
“Yet until the beast moults again, my armies languish with weaklings in command. Not one of my generals is worthy of the title. Not one!” He wiped his knuckles across his lips. “The gaijin must be broken. We need more slaves, more inochi. Twenty years and a dozen different commanders, and we are no closer to victory than when father ruled. And what do we fight? Men of honor? Samurai? No! Skinthieves and blood-drinkers.”
“They will fall before you, brother. It is only a matter of time.”
“Time?” The word was a snarl. “If you listen to the Guild we have precious little left. They wave t
heir productivity charts and deadlands maps in my face, spitting rhetoric about the ‘fundamentals of the exponential equation.’ And every day they demand I expand the fronts. Demand! Of me! Seii Taishōgun!” He slapped at his naked chest. “I decide! I say when we will move and when we will stay. I decide where and when the deathblow falls.”
“Of course, brother,” Aisha rose smoothly, voice soothing, folding her hands inside her sleeves. “The Guild does not understand. They have minds of metal. They are not men of flesh like you. They hide in their shells and their yellow towers, quivering with fear over children who speak to animals.”
“Cowards,” Yoritomo spat. “If only…”
The sentence hung in the air, dripping impotence.
“I have a gift for you,” Aisha said finally.
“I have no need of your ladies tonight.”
“No.” She licked carefully at the wet stripe of red on her lips. “Something else. A way in which you might realize your dream and silence the Guild’s demands. And best of all, it will be them who pays the cost.”
“What is it?”
“Ah,” she smiled, lowering her eyes. “It is a surprise, my brother.”
“A surprise.” A smile began creeping toward the corners of his mouth. His eyes roamed his sister’s body, all of a sudden enjoying the game. “What kind of surprise?”
“The secret kind.” She laughed, mischievous, slipping her geta back on her feet. “I will deal with the Guild, take care of it all, and in the end you will have your dream. But I will need the Kitsune girl. Not imprisoned. Not chained.”
“Why?” Yoritomo’s eyes narrowed.
“The little whore can make herself useful to atone for her treachery. And if she defies me, the thought of prison will seem like a mercy to her, and she will wish you had not stayed your hand. I do not possess your capacity for restraint, Shōgun.”
“You are possessed of other qualities, sister. Far more tangible.”
She turned aside, avoided his lingering stare.
“No snooping, do you hear? You tell Hideo-san to hold his little spy network at bay. I want this to be special.”
“Aisha…” he warned.
“I mean it!” She turned back to him, took a step closer. “We will speak no more of it. There will be comings and goings and much noise about the arashitora’s prison and you will ignore all of it. And when I bring you your gift, you must act surprised and remark what a clever sister I am. And everything you deserve will be yours. Agreed?”
She was a vision of beauty in the low, sooty light. Her face was so pale it seemed faintly luminous, punctured by two pools of kohl-stained, bottomless black. The paint on her lips was the color of their clan, the color of blood, seeming to drip down and stain her golden jûnihitoe with a scarlet pattern of lotus blooms. Twelve layers to paradise.
He finally smiled, bowed his assent.
“Agreed.”
He leaned down to kiss her mouth, and she turned her head so that his lips brushed her pale, perfect cheek. She bowed at the knees and turned away, leaving him with the sweet scent of her perfume. He watched her sashay out the door, a river of black hair, bloody silk, soft curves. He smiled to himself.
Yoritomo loved his sister. Like no other man ever would.
* * *
Kin held one of the severed feathers, running his fingers along the path of the sword blow. He could sense a faint discharge of electricity from it. The broken plume was reflected in his rectangular eye, heavy as stone in his gauntlets.
“I am sorry, Buruu.”
The arashitora glared, motionless, curled around the twisted metal stanchion he was chained to. The arena floor was littered with cut feathers, shifting in the noxious wind. The skies overhead rolled with dark, threatening clouds.
The black rain would begin falling soon, skies spitting toxin back onto the people who had poisoned them, turning all to pitted, hissing scar tissue. Kin found it strangely reassuring; nature’s ability to cleanse itself of the filth they pumped into it. He was sure that, if the planet were somehow rid of its bipedal infection, it would right itself eventually. He wondered how long it would take for the world to muster anger enough to shake them from its skin. Quake and flood, disease and storm. Open the fault lines, let it rain, flush all of it away.
Farewell and good-bye and goodnight, everyone. Remember to shut off the light when you’re done.
Buruu stood abruptly, claws clicking across the stone, staring into the dark with his head cocked to one side. Kin turned, and she was standing there in the black, pale and perfect and beautiful.
“Yukiko,” he breathed, his voice a choir of flies.
“I’m glad you came, Kin-san.” Quiet. Lips barely moving.
“I didn’t see you there.”
“Kitsune looks after his own,” she shrugged. “But do you see what they did to him?”
“A blind man could see that.”
She moved past him in the gloom, across the arena floor. Padding softly along the straw, hands clenched, hair hanging over her face. He could see she had been crying. She reached out with trembling fingers. The arashitora stood, pushed his head into her arms, enfolded her in his crippled wings. He purred; deep thunder rumbling beneath a cloak of warm, white fur. She hugged him fiercely, face crumpling like it were made of paper, sodden with tears.
Kin watched them mutely, wondering what passed between them. He couldn’t help but feel jealous of the beast, to know the inner workings of her mind and heart, to speak volumes without ever saying a word. What a strange thing for the Guild to want to exterminate. What a wonderful gift. To never be alone. To know the truth of another’s soul. Maybe that was why they were afraid. Truth in the Guild was a dangerous thing.
Yukiko sniffed, swallowed thickly. She turned to Kin, scraped the hair from her eyes, one arm still resting on Buruu’s neck.
Gods, she’s beautiful.
“I can’t stay long. They will be looking for me.” Her voice was so small and fragile it made his chest hurt. “Can it be done?”
His boots rang on the stone, skin spitting chi smoke into the warm, sticky air. Walking across the arena floor, he had an almost overpowering urge to tear off his helmet, to see her again with his own eyes.
“I think so.”
“And will you help us?”
“There is nothing in this world I would not do for you, Yukiko.”
She smiled at him then, so sad and flawed and perfect that he almost cried. She flung herself around his neck and he wanted nothing more than to hold her in his own arms, to smell her sweat, feel her hair on his face. If he could have given up every day of his life at that moment, for just one minute with his flesh pressed against hers, he would have done it with a smile on his face.
She drew away, and it was all he could do to let go, to hold back from squeezing her as tightly as he could, fusing them into a single, breathing—
“How long will it take?”
He blinked, shook his head. The mechabacus on his chest spat and chattered, a voice in his head, wheels and numbers and probabilities. He could see the apparatus in his mind’s eye, felt metal being shaped beneath his hands in the stuttering light of the cutting torch amidst the smell of smoking solder. A creation for the sake of something more than destruction. Not a war machine. Not an engine to drive a slave ship or chainkatana. A gift. A gift for the one he loved, for the one she loved.
He would not sleep until it was done.
“A week,” he finally replied. “They have me working on Yoritomo’s saddle. Perfect subterfuge. I can come and go here as I please. I told them I was taking measurements tonight.”
She couldn’t see him smiling behind his mask. His heart ached.
“A week.” She smiled, tears in her eyes.
“Will you be able to get away? Won’t they be watching you?”
“I have friends in the palace. Even guards have to sleep sometime.” She shrugged. “And Kitsune looks after his own.”
“Well, let’s
hope he looks after me too.”
“I know what you’re risking to do this. Thank you, Kin-san.”
“Thank me later. When we are far from here.”
“We?”
“We,” he nodded, dropping the severed feather to the stone. “I am coming with you.”
32
A KNIFE IN THE CHEST
The days of waiting were almost unbearable. A few of the nights were not so bad.
Hiro had been taken off her guard detail, and the two new Iron Samurai stationed outside Yukiko’s door had barely spoken a word to her. They would step aside to allow servants to bring in her meals, to change the linen, fill the bath. Her attempts at conversation were met with metallic silence. Michi was her only real company when the sun was up, and the two girls whiled away their time over decks of cards or listening to the sound box, speaking in tiny, hushed voices about the wheels that had been set in motion around the city.
Michi had brought her small folded maps of the palace, outlining the entrances that the servants used to move from wing to wing, or exit into the grounds. She had showed Yukiko how she could stand on her dresser and shove aside the panels in the roof, squeeze through the space between beam and shingle and circumvent the nightingale floors entirely. Told her about the bent maple tree in the southeastern corner of the garden, and how the serving girls used it to slip over the wall and tryst with their lovers in the city proper. How the palace of the Shōgun was not the impregnable fortress he believed, and that it was compromised by people he considered beneath his notice every single day.
The bicentennial of the Kazumitsu Dynasty was fast approaching, and the court was abuzz with excitement. A grand gala had been planned, and Yoritomo was set to make one of his rare appearances before his people. Since the arena was already occupied, the sky-docks had been chosen as the venue for the celebration. Free food and drink for every citizen of Kigen, followed by a magnificent parade of the Shōgun and his court down the Palace Way into Docktown. A few hours before the Hour of the Fox fell, and the third century of Kazumitsu rule over Shima began, the gala would culminate in a twilight fireworks display the likes of which the city had never seen.