The Lotus War - Kinslayer Part 35

Ilyitch replied with the image of a tall woman in a stone chair, grim and terrible. She had blond hair, the same mismatched eyes as Katya-one black, the other glittering rose quartz. She wore a suit of iron, black feathers adorned her shoulders, a huge bird's skull with a cruel, hooked beak on her head. Twelve stars lay at her feet, and she gathered them in her lap, one by one.

He showed her legions of stern-faced gaijin, skins of great wolves and bears upon their shoulders, naked swords in their hands. A fleet of ships, iron fortresses floating on a storm sea, powered by the lightning they hauled from the sky.

And then Ilyitch showed her an hourgla.s.s, its sand almost run out.

So Yukiko turned away from the war and focused on Buruu. She formed pictures of the great hunt on the Thunder Child, their time trapped alone in the Iishi, their captivity in Kigen and the battle with Yoritomo's samurai in the arena. Ilyitch watched her with something like awe during this pa.s.sage, jaw slack, running his fingers over the fur at his shoulders.

The boy projected a stylized picture of Yukiko, katana held aloft, sunlight in her hair, thousands of samurai kneeling at her feet. The picture was tinged with uncertainty.

His eyebrows raised in question.

She smiled and shook her head. Showed the Kage village in the mountains; a peaceful place, herself and Buruu laying in dappled sunlight. A quiet life.

He frowned at her then, as if he didn't quite understand.

Yukiko projected an image of Buruu, bleeding and twisted on the rocks. A compa.s.s needle pointing north, and the pylon she'd seen near Buruu in her dream.

Ilyitch shook his head, pushed her a childish version of the map she'd seen on the wall downstairs. Dozens of pylons, studded all over the islands around the lightning farm. Not all of them were connected directly; most of the cables threaded amongst multiple towers back to the central hub, like strands of a crooked spider's web. If the picture she'd shown him was correct, Buruu was trapped at the very end of the lines.

Miles away.

Yukiko used one of his own images; the hourgla.s.s running out of sand. A picture of food. An aras.h.i.tora skeleton on black rocks.

She reached out, leather thong tight around her wrist, fingers stretching toward his own in vain. He frowned, put his hand in hers. She squeezed tight.

"Please," she said, tears welling. "Please."

Ilyitch sighed, glanced at the doorway behind him. Avoiding her eyes, the boy stood, pointed at Red and spoke a stern command. Red lay flat and wagged his tail.

"W-wait." Yukiko sat up straighter, frowning. "Where are you going?"

The gaijin spoke a handful of words, held up both hands as if urging her to be still. Then he turned and clomped out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

Where is he going, Red?

don't know i stay here am gooddog Yukiko listened to Ilyitch's footprints receding down the hall. She had no idea if she'd convinced him, no clue as to whether he was headed to get supplies to help her, or to turn her in to Danyk. But for the first time since she'd arrived here, she found herself alone with Red.

So either way, she wasn't going to wait to find out.

The dog had gnawed through one of the tethers binding her wrists and was halfway through the second when she heard stealthy footfalls in the corridor. She looked at Red, paused with his teeth upon the leather, one ear pointing to the sky as his tail started wagging.

Is that Ilyitch?

The dog blinked.

Your Boy? Is that your Boy coming?

... no Yukiko strained against the weakened strap, finally tearing it loose, tugging at the bindings on her ankles as the footsteps arrived in the hallway outside. She was up and coiled in the shadows as the handle turned and the door opened wide.

A figure limped into the gloom, and she struck, wrapping the bedsheet over its head and kicking the back of its knee. The figure dropped to the ground with the whine of pistons and a m.u.f.fled cry of pain. She grabbed the contraption on his belt and tore it from its holster. The figure pulled the tangled sheet away from his face and turned to face her, and she recognized Piotr, pale as the sheet she'd wrapped him in, hands reaching for the ceiling.

"Stop!" His one good eye locked upon the device in her hand. "Don't!"

Yukiko realized the man was drunk; the reek of liquor on his breath and skin so strong he might have bathed in it. She pointed the contraption at his head, finger poised over what she hoped was the trigger.

"What are you doing here?" she growled.

"Please." He motioned to the hallway. "Please. I am wanting for you."

"Why? What do you want with me?"

"Using you." He licked his lips, gaze roaming from head to toe. "The body. Using for the body."

"My body?"

He reached up, put his hands on her shoulders, ran them down over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Yukiko took a step back, lip curling in disgust.

"Please." Piotr looked her up and down, put his finger to his lips. "Wanting you. Come for me. We must come."

"You sick b.a.s.t.a.r.d," she growled.

"Sick?" The man frowned. "No get sick, is-"

Her knee collided with his crotch midsentence, her elbow with his jaw. His head twisted across his shoulders, spittle and blood spraying between split lips, eyes rolling up in their sockets as he hit the concrete with a wet thud. Red hopped off the bed and snuffled at the man's face, licking his nose with a hopeful wag of his tail.

killed!?

No, I didn't.

She ma.s.saged the pain in her knuckles, stared at the gaijin with utter contempt.

Although I should. G.o.dsd.a.m.ned pervert. He's old enough to be my father.

A quick search of the man's clothing revealed his carved fish pipe, a satchel of the strange leaf that gaijin all seemed to smoke, and a ring of iron keys. She was eyeing off the strange weapon in her hand when Red heard Ilyitch's footprints in the corridor. She stood and pointed the device at the doorway, not knowing how her benefactor might react upon seeing his unconscious comrade.

Ilyitch stopped at the threshold, frowning. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw Yukiko and the contraption coiled in her hands. He raised one eyebrow, letting the three satchels he was carrying fall to the ground. Catching sight of Piotr collapsed beside her, he shuffled forward with hands raised, crouching and searching for the man's pulse. A stream of nonsensical words followed, hissed through clenched teeth, accompanied by furious hand gestures.

Yukiko pushed the picture of Piotr's attempted a.s.sault into his mind, the image of his hands pawing her chest. The boy fell silent, looked at his fallen comrade with an uneasy expression. He put a comforting hand on her shoulder but she shied away, and Ilyitch let his arm drop. Turning to the satchels he'd brought with him, he knelt and rummaged inside the largest. He tossed Yukiko a dirty red coverall, heavy boots, and a yellow rubber rainskin. Not needing to be told, Yukiko slipped into the coverall and rainskin (too big), sat on the bed and buckled up the boots (also too big). She pulled the hood over her head, tugged the hem-ties as tight as she could.

Ilyitch had two coils of thick rope looped over his shoulders. He peeled one off and hung it around her neck, hefted one of the satchels, handed her another. The bag was heavy, stinking of raw fish. She guessed it was Buruu's dinner, and she was momentarily overcome with grat.i.tude for this strange boy with tarnished silver eyes.

She stepped up and kissed his cheek, careful of the swollen, purple bruise. His skin was salty smooth against her lips.

"Thank you, Ilyitch," she said.

The gaijin shot her a pretty smile, scratching at the base of his skull and blushing. She stooped to pat Red, let him lick her nose.

You stay here, all right?

can't come with you?

Not unless you can fly.

flew here You did?

from houses on the water Houses?

so many so loud!

"Yukiko."

Hearing Ilyitch say her name pulled her from the dog's mind. The boy nodded toward the door, motioned for her to follow.

Good-bye, Red. I'm sorry about before. For making you be bad.

She gave him an affectionate scratch behind his ears.

You're a gooddog. Always.

you goodgirl too A faint, grim smile.

Not that good.

Hood pulled low over her eyes, she followed the gaijin from her cell.

"You can't be serious!"

Shrieking gales s.n.a.t.c.hed the words from her mouth, dragging them off to drown in the sideways rain. Cautious feet had brought them up an auxiliary stairwell near the catchment room and from there onto the roof. The storm was so heavy it seemed night had fallen, and the glow of grubby tungsten was all that stood between them and almost pitch blackness.

Black clouds rolled overhead, thunderous, flashes of lightning catching the world in freeze-frame. All around them, copper spires stretched into the sky, twin cables as thick as her wrist leading off into the dark. She could hear the ocean below, waves crashing against the structure and shivering it in its moorings. The cables hummed in the wind; a lonely, metallic dirge over the percussion of Raijin's drums.

Ilyitch laughed and handed her the contraption, took another from the storage locker at the base of the lightning spire. Yukiko stared at the device he'd given her, stomach sinking toward her toes.

It was solid iron, slippery with rain and grease. Four grooved rubber wheels lined up along a cross-shaped bar, fixed at either side with what looked like crank handles. A leather harness was affixed to a clip at the bottom of the crossbar, and Ilyitch was already strapping himself in. Yukiko had a dreadful feeling she knew where this was going, buckling herself into her own harness as the storm raged about them. She leaned against the railing as the wind buffeted her like a plaything. Lightning struck a spire out on the ocean to the south, raced along the cables up to the building's roof. Yukiko flinched, shielding her eyes against the blue-white burn seething through the vast machine behind them. Gooseb.u.mps trawled her skin.

Ilyitch looked to the sky, then scampered up the lightning spire, using the copper coils like a ladder. He slung the contraption onto the double lengths of cable, grooved rubber wheels fitting snugly around the circ.u.mference of each. In one smooth motion he kicked off the tower, the device whizzing along the cables, sending him thirty feet out into the gloom. He dangled from the harness beneath the crossbar, reached up to the hand cranks and began turning them. The contraption wheeled slowly back toward the tower. Ilyitch spun the cranks the other way as if to demonstrate, the contraption traveling in the opposite direction. He looked at her and smiled.

It's a flying fox.

Yukiko yelled over the wind.

"What happens if lightning hits our cables?"

A raised eyebrow.

"Lightning!" She pointed at the sky, then along the iron, gave her best impression of an explosion.

Ilyitch held his finger aloft, then hooked it through a metal pin at the front of his harness. Without a sound, he yanked the pin free and fell down into darkness.

Yukiko screamed, reached out for the falling gaijin, knowing he was too far away to save. But five feet into the fall, a rubber thong in the harness snapped taut, and Ilyitch jerked to a sudden halt. He held out both hands and grinned, twisting in the storm like a wind chime.

"You b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Yukiko muttered.

Ilyitch climbed the tether hand over fist, swung up and hooked his legs over the cables to give himself enough slack to reinsert the pin.

He beckoned with one hand, yelling over the wind.

Yukiko licked her lips, tasted fresh salt, clean rain. Her knuckles were white on the railing, heart pounding against her ribs, fear-born nausea slicking her insides. Lightning arced across the clouds above, and she made the mistake of looking down. The ocean was a black, thrashing snarl, roaring and crashing in towers twenty feet high. But in the split second before the lightning faded and the blanket of gloom fell again, she saw the glint of a long, serpentine tail cutting through the waves.

Sea dragons.

Reaching out with the Kenning, she felt them below. Smooth as polished steel, cold and sharp and hungry. Their shape was ancient, stirring a primal fear inside her, much deeper than the thought of lightning striking the cables or the journey to come. Her mind shied away instinctively; a child fleeing into the safety of a parent's bed.

Her hands were shaking.

But then she pictured Buruu, alone and bleeding, somewhere out there in the dark. And she grit her teeth and s.n.a.t.c.hed up the flying fox, climbed the lightning spire and slung the device over the cables without another thought.

Holding her breath, eyes wide, she kicked out into the windswept dark.

29.

A TREMBLING EARTH.

Sometimes Hiro could still feel his hand.

He would wake in the deep of night, troubled by some itch or spasm, reaching toward it and finding only an empty mattress, the slippery kiss of silken sheets. In the dark, he would search the place where his arm should have been, groping about until he found the nub of flesh they had left him with: the puckered suture scars, the gristle-twisted knot of meat studded with bayonet fixtures, not even half a bicep remaining below the swell of his shoulder. And in the quiet and the still, he would picture her face and dream of all the ways he could break it.

"Yukiko."

He breathed her name as if it were a toxic fume. And every time he woke to that nub of flesh, every time his hand itched and he couldn't scratch it, he was poisoned anew. She was inside him. A cell-deep sepsis. A wound refusing to heal. Like the scars of blackened ash drifting away below his feet, the thrum of motors settling like cancer in his bones.

The ironclad Blessed Light was a thumbprint on the waking dawn, smoking black against b.l.o.o.d.y red as Lady Amaterasu crested the horizon and set fire to the sky. Hiro stood at her prow, half a dozen Iron Samurai looming around him, the sunrise tinting their bone-white armor immolation-red. The Daimyo of the Tora clan clasped his hands behind his back, sea-green eyes upon the tortured soil of Jukai province below.

The snowcapped spires of the Tnan Mountains lay to the west, and Hiro knew somewhere amidst those peaks crouched the impregnable perch of First House-the heart of the Lotus Guild in Shima. It was there the Guild had begun, two centuries ago, just after Kazumitsu I took his throne. When the Tiger, Dragon, Phoenix and Fox zaibatsu began consuming the lesser clans; the blood of Falcon, Panda, Serpent and their fellows just a feast for the Four.

The first production-grade crops of blood lotus had been cultivated here, centuries ago. Once this had been the most fertile region in all of the Imperium, but now all was ashen earth and black smoke curling from the cracks-as if a master painter had spent his last on a landscape of rarest beauty, and some jealous lover had smudged inch-thick handfuls of charcoal onto the canvas, drying and splitting in the noonday sun. On maps, the ruined land was still named Jukai province-a name meaning "Evergreen." But Shima's citizens knew it by another name.

The Stain.