The Lotus War - Kinslayer Part 10

"I don't kill helpless girls with their hands bound at their sides."

"She's not a girl," Kaori growled. "She's a G.o.dsd.a.m.n Guildsman."

Peppermint tea. Burning cedar. Old leather, sword oil and dry flowers. A perfume filling Daichi's sitting room, filling her lungs and head, too much input, sharp and pointed inside her skull. She fancied she could still smell charring meat, hear the sizzle of her skin as Daichi pressed the burning blade to her tattoo.

Yukiko stood and walked to the window. The laughing fire spread awful warmth into every corner, snapping blackened logs between its fingers and breathing smoke up through a beaten bra.s.s flue. She pushed the shutters aside, gulping down lungfuls of fresh, rain-sweet air.

Daichi watched Yukiko carefully, faint concern in his eyes.

"n.o.body in this room has more reason to hate the Guild than me, Kaori." Yukiko turned from the window, stared at the council. "But I'm not certain I want to be a butcher."

"The crews of those ironclads you destroyed might say otherwise," Kaori said.

"Oh, you fuc-"

"We all do what needs to be done, Stormdancer," Kaori snapped. "You included. We will all turn the waters red when we bathe once this is finished. The lotus must burn."

Yukiko looked to Daichi, waiting for him to weigh in, but the old man was staring at his hands, uncharacteristically silent.

"I wanted to check with you all before I did anything final." Yukiko wiped sweat-soaked palms on her hakama legs. "It's safe to bring her here. Kin a.s.sured me there's no way for the Guild to track her out of her skin."

"And you trust him?" Maro scoffed.

"Of course I trust him." Yukiko's voice was cold as winter morning. "He saved my life. I trust him more than I trust you."

"Be it made of scales or bra.s.s, a snake who sheds his skin is still a snake."

"There is no steel in that boy," Kaori said. "No fire. Only treachery."

"How can you say that?" Yukiko felt heat in her cheeks, memories of his lips rushing beneath her skin. "He gave up everything to be here with us."

"He gave up everything to be here with you," Kaori said. "He cares nothing for the revolution. If you left us, he'd be gone tomorrow. You are the reason he is here, Stormdancer. Open your eyes."

Yukiko drew breath to reply, but found no words.

"You're the reason. The first and only reason."

"This is not about the boy." Sensei Ryusaki's low growl cut through the tension. "This is about the Guildsman, and what we do with it."

"Kill it," Maro said flatly. "Their kind are poison. The lotus must burn."

"I agree," Yukiko nodded. "We'd be fools to trust it."

She looked amongst the council, noted the surprise on their faces.

"Look, I know that might make me a b.i.t.c.h, but at least I'm not a stupid b.i.t.c.h."

"What if this girl speaks the truth?" Daichi's voice cut the air like a knife. "What if there are more like her in the Guild?"

"Impossible," Kaori said.

"Aras.h.i.tora were impossible too, a few months ago." Daichi's voice was rough as bluestone gravel. "Now look at the magnificence outside this room."

The council looked out through the open doorway at the thunder tiger sprawled upon the deck. Buruu was stretched out in the rain, idly tearing up talonfuls of planking. His yawn sent tremors through the floor.

TELL THEM IT IS RUDE TO STARE. EVEN AT MAGNIFICENCE.

Hush! G.o.ds, you're too loud. Go back to sleep.

She felt the thunder tiger trying to hold himself back, aware of her pain, allowing only a sliver of himself to creep across the bond between them. And though his thoughts were tinged with bright, crackling feedback, at least the volume receded to a tolerable level.

HOW CAN I SLEEP WITH YOUR MIND SO FULL OF NOISE?.

I suppose you want to venture an opinion on all this?

YES. BUT I AM STILL BASKING IN THE "MAGNIFICENT" COMMENT. GIVE ME A MOMENT ...

"Father, you cannot mean to trust it." Kaori placed her hand on the old man's knee.

Daichi sipped his tea, cleared his throat. "All I say is consider if she speaks truth. Think of what it would gain us to start a rebellion within the Guild. Think of the damage we could do. This girl could be the secret to bringing down the chi-mongers once and for all."

Yukiko met the old man's gaze. "I don't think we can trust her."

"Can we not, Stormdancer? Yet in the same breath, you would tell us to treat your Kin as one of our own?"

AH, THERE IT IS.

Yukiko winced, turned her head aside as if from an incoming slap.

Too loud!

Buruu pulled himself back again, curling inward until only a splinter remained.

I AM SORRY. I NEED NOT SHARE MY THOUGHTS WHEN THIS OLD MAN SPEAKS THEM FOR ME. I WILL REMAIN MAGNIFICENTLY SILENT.

"I wish you wouldn't call me that." Yukiko folded her arms, ignoring Buruu's smug, self-satisfied warmth.

"Stormdancer?" Daichi's eyebrows were raised over the rim of his teacup.

"It's not my name."

"It is what you are."

"The way you all look at me ... it's like you expect to see lightning coming out of my hands, or flowers blooming wherever I walk. I haven't done anything yet, and you act like I've saved the world."

"You have given people hope," Daichi said. "That is a precious thing."

"It's a dangerous thing."

"No more dangerous than executing this girl for the sin of what she used to be."

"G.o.ds, Daichi, when we first came here you were willing to murder Kin on exactly the same suspicion. You were willing to kill me over a tattoo."

"Perhaps I have learned a few lessons since then. From a new sensei." Daichi smiled. "And you say you haven't done anything yet."

Yukiko stared at the old man, mute and still. It wasn't so long ago she was standing over him in this very room, knife at his throat while he demanded she kill him. But it seemed every time Daichi spoke, some new facet of him came to light. His hatred of the Guild and government was tempered by steady hands and a fierce, calculating mind. She could see why the Kage followed him. Why they were willing to risk their lives for his vision.

The truth was, he was a natural leader-the leader she feared she'd never be. All she had was the desire for revenge. The memory of her father's death, his blood warm and sticky on her hands, bubbling on his lips as he died. The thought of it threatened to overwhelm her, pulsing in time with the headache splitting the bone at the base of her skull.

"It seems somehow out of balance, does it not?" Daichi coughed hard, cleared his throat as he looked around the council. "To spare the boy and end the girl?"

"We can always kill them both," Kaori said.

Yukiko rubbed her pounding temples, closed her bloodshot eyes. She could feel the forest all around her, the myriad lives just beyond the window, the heat and chatter of their minds rising in her own. A barrage. A bedlam. Concussive and sickening, pouring over her like scalding water. And as she closed her eyes, tried to stifle the fires burning in her head, to her amazement, her absolute horror, she realized she could sense other pulses within the Kenning. Something beyond the fluttering thoughts of birds, the faint and furtive impulses of small warm things, the boiling heartbeat of the thunder tiger just outside the door.

She could feel the Kage too.

Blurry and indistinct, all heat and light, alien shapes and impossible tangles of emotion. Everywhere. Like the answer to a perception puzzle that, once seen, can never be missed. She remembered reaching out to Yoritomo's mind in the Market Square, trying to hold on to him like a handful of sand. But now, effortlessly, she could feel every person in the village. A low-level hum stacked upon itself, one person at a time, until the entire world was shapeless noise. She bent double, blinking hard, Buruu rising to his feet and whining.

SISTER?.

Daichi took another sip of tea, his voice a dry whisper.

"Are you well, Stormdancer?"

She smoothed the hair from her brow, the sensation of her fingertips like sledgehammers across her skin. She tried to close herself off, to force the noise and heat away, curling up inside herself and closing down the Kenning completely.

G.o.ds, what's wrong with me?

"Yukiko," Daichi said. "Are you well?"

She took a deep breath, exhaled slow. The world had fallen quiet, and yet she could still feel it, just outside her skull. The tide of it rushing back out to sea before its next surge, a tsunami rising to blot out the sun. She in its shadow, standing an insect high.

"I have a headache, Daichi-sama."

"Perhaps you should rest?" Kaori asked.

"How can I rest?" She blinked at the older woman, out of breath as if she'd been sprinting. "The Lotus Guild is trying to reforge Kazumitsu's Dynasty and you're talking about killing Kin? We should be talking about Hiro. The wedding. What are we doing to stop it?"

"The Kuro Street cell are already at work," Kaori said. "We have an operative inside the palace walls. The ceremony is weeks away. Calm yourself."

"I am calm!"

"Yukiko..." Daichi said.

SISTER.

"No, G.o.dsdammit!" she shouted. "The whole nation was ready to rise a few days ago, and now you're sitting on your hands while it all slips-"

"Yukiko!"

Daichi shouted this time, graveled voice like a slap on her skin. She forced herself to be still, caught her breath, felt Buruu's concern flooding her receptors. The world pulsing, the thoughts of everyone in the room building against her crumbling little dam as the whole earth beneath her swayed.

"What?" she hissed.

"Your ears are bleeding," Daichi said.

She reached up to her head, felt the flood of thick warmth down the sides of her neck, spattering on the floor. Black suns imploded in her vision, tiny singularities folding in upon themselves and drawing her with them. Buruu was at the doorway, his thoughts a storm in her skull, the crunch and crumble of thunder interspersed with white strobes of crackling lightning. She fought for breath, for s.p.a.ce, for a moment's silence inside her head.

The tide came rolling in.

The walls trembling, the floor beneath her rolling. She sank to her knees, clutching her temples, heard the clatter of the tiny ornaments on Daichi's shelves, chess pieces tumbling and falling. People on their feet, shouting, their thoughts impossible to keep at bay, flooding into her and out of her nostrils in scarlet floods. A teacup smashing on the boards. Daichi's sword falling from the wall. Cries of alarm from the villagers outside as the trees literally trembled in their roots, and in her head a tangle, a briar, thorned and tearing, all of their thoughts, their hopes, their fear (G.o.ds, their fear), everything they were and could have been and wanted to be filling her up and pulling her down to the dark beneath her feet.

YUKIKO!.

Buruu, help me!

WHAT ARE YOU DOING?.

I can't keep it out!

It rose up on black wings, like some forgotten beast beneath the bed in the days when blankets were armor and her father's voice the only sword she needed to keep the dark at bay. But he was gone, gone to his pyre, gone to the great judge Enma-. She could see him now; the ashes of offerings daubed on his face, cadaverous skin hanging loose from his bones, black blood still leaking from the hole in his throat. Her hands on the wound, trying to stop the flow, but it was too much, too deep, too late. Heat and thoughts and screams and floods, and as it rose up to swallow her, she felt Buruu in the black, groping toward her, burning in her mind.

HOLD ON TO ME.

Buruu!

HOLD ON TO ME, SISTER.

A tracery of blood vessels pulsing across the backs of her eyelids, strobing light beyond.

Reaching for him, her rock, her anchor, all that held her still in that gnashing swell.

His wings about her, ozone and feathers and warmth, soft as pillows.

And into the dark, she fell.

8.

NO ONE.

No matter the shape of the sh.o.r.eline, or the color of the horizon, there are three breeds of drunk to be found beneath the rising and setting of the sun.