The Lotus War - Kinslayer Part 57

But at least it was quiet.

Quiet and dark.

Michi forced herself to watch, eyes locked on Aisha's face. And after an age, an eon, an eternity filled with the shudder and moans of those awful machines, there was a soft exhalation. Gentle as a mother's hands. And at last, in the end, there came stillness.

And tears.

52.

ILLUMINATION.

The snare was set, bait moving, quarry drawing close.

Akihito crouched behind a pile of packing crates, a clay bottle full of chi in one hand, tetsubo in the other. At the sound of approaching boots, he nodded to the other Kage across the alley. Little Butcher dashed around the corner, a kaleidoscope of profanity spewing from her lips, half a dozen bushimen thundering behind her. A hissing, lumbering Iron Samurai followed, spewing chi from his power unit, -yoroi painted the white of old bones. Six Kage dropped from their perches above, nagamaki spears pinning the bushimen to the floor. Akihito rose from his niche and hurled the chi bottle at the Samurai's chest.

Terror of the battlefield those -yoroi suits might be, but in the cramped confines of Kigen's labyrinth, the loss of peripheral vision under those bone-white helms was all the advantage the Shadows needed. The Iron Samurai stepped back, bringing his chainswords up to guard as a Kage appeared from cover and tossed his hand flare.

The man screamed as he ignited, beating at the flames unfurling across his golden tabard, seething up under his faceplate and blistering the skin beneath. Akihito swung his tetsubo in a double-handed grip, nearly knocking the samurai's head off his shoulders. The soldier toppled backward, blood spraying between his helm's iron tusks.

Akihito leaned down with a wince, s.n.a.t.c.hed up the fallen samurai's chainkatana as the Kage gathered around. Two more of their number had fallen in the fight, neither one of them much more than boys. The guards were moving in bigger patrols, fighting harder-any advantage they had in surprise was fading fast. Akihito knew it wouldn't be long before they met Iron Samurai sweeping the streets in orderly phalanxes, and any edge the Kage ambush tactics gave would be lost. Hopefully, they'd bought Daichi enough time.

"All right." Akihito looked at the sky. "Time to fall back. Everyone split up and make your way to the arena. Our ride will pick us up there. Go."

The Kage moved out, pausing at the alley mouth before slipping into the streets and scattering like dry leaves. Akihito was getting ready to move when a smoke-gray shape dropped from an awning overhead, peering at him with p.i.s.s-yellow eyes.

"Mreowwwwl," it said.

Akihito looked on in astonishment as the ugliest tomcat in Kigen city brushed up against his legs, purring like a tiny earthquake.

"Daken?"

Seimi raised the blowtorch in front of Yoshi's face, turned the fuel nozzle and sparked the flint, a burst of smoking heat flaring before their eyes. The boy was trying his best to hold his nerve, but Seimi could see it in the clenched jaw, the pupils dilated to pits, the way each breath made his whole body shake.

It was beautiful.

Seimi leaned close. "I'm the one who did your boyfriend, you know."

Yoshi lashed out with his forehead, but Seimi flinched back, sidestepping the spit sprayed in his direction.

"He lasted a loooong time, considering." Seimi grinned like the cat with the cream. "Must have really cared about you to stand tall that distance. The heart weeps."

The few Scorpion Children who'd stayed to enjoy the show chuckled in the dark around him. Seimi was a master of the snip and clip; he'd once made an informer last six days in the shackles. Not out of any need, understand-the man had begun singing after thirty minutes. No, Seimi had done it just to see if he could.

He leaned close again, inhaling the fear, savoring it on teeth and tongue. And then he sat cross-legged at the boy's feet and lifted the blowtorch like an orchestra conductor before the music swelled.

"They're going to tell stories about you, boy. Stories to frighten their children."

Seimi heard scuffling at his back. One of the brothers shouting a warning. And then there was only blinding pain, a knife of burning ice thrust into his neck. He turned with a cry and she stabbed him again, long-nosed pliers ripping his carotid wide, painting the air bright red.

Blood was smeared over her features, spilling from the ruined socket where her left eye had been. But she'd torn away the leather patch covering the other side of her face, and beneath the scarred brow, above the cheek bisected by a long, broken-bottle scar, burned a round, beautiful eye-luminous, glittering like rose-colored quartz.

"Don't you touch my brother," she said.

"It's in you," her father was saying. "You gaijin trash. The white devils are in you. But I can see them. I can get them out..."

He leaned in close, holding the broken bottle up to her right eye, jagged edge reflected in that gentle, glowing pink.

"Da, no!" She shook her head, eyes closed tight. "No, no!"

"I can get them out," he said.

She felt the bottle sink into her skin, broken gla.s.s sc.r.a.ping bone, and she screwed her eyes shut tighter and screamed as loud as she could. And then she heard him gasp, and something wet was falling on her face, and he was reeling off her and staggering to his feet, clutching the chopsticks protruding from his neck. And as he turned, Yoshi thrust another one like a dagger, burying it deep in his eye.

Da lurched forward and swung the bottle at Yoshi's face, ripping a four-inch tear through the brim of his new hat and missing his cheek by a hair's breadth. And then he fell, face forward onto the floor, amidst the ruin of their dinner and the ruin of their lives.

Yoshi stood above him, clenched and b.l.o.o.d.y fists, dragging in each broken gasp through gritted teeth. Staring down at the monster, the devil, the demon he'd finally conquered.

"Don't you touch my sister," he said.

She'd learned to hide it, since the Worst Day of Her Life. The pale skin they could explain away with the fox blood that lay far back in their family tree. The blond hair was easier still; just a coat of black cotton dye every few weeks to hide their golden roots.

But her eye?

Green was an oddity, but rose was an impossibility; a legacy of the gaijin blood flowing in her veins, impossible to deny. They had no idea why it had changed-whether it was trauma, age, something else entirely, and they had n.o.body to ask about it. In a Downside sake bar, Yoshi overheard a drunken soldier returned fresh from the war, slurring a tale about gaijin witches striding amongst the round-eye hordes, right eyes aglow with the hue of watered blood. The man spoke of them with horror and awe. And if Shima's people looked down on Burak.u.min trash, they looked with utter hatred on the eastern barbarians; the enemy that had butchered their colonies, fought their armies to a standstill these last twenty years.

Life for a clanless dog on Kigen's streets would have been hard enough.

But a half-breed gaijin witch-girl?

And so she hid it, even from poor Jurou, sleeping with her patch on, forgetting it herself as best she could; her brother alone knowing the secret behind the leather tied around her face.

Until now ...

Hana lurched toward the tools on the table, s.n.a.t.c.hing up a hammer as the yakuza closed in around her. She swung wildly, caught one across an outstretched hand, the man cursing and reeling back. But they circled behind, four of them now, closing in like thin and starving wolves, eyes narrowed, teeth bared.

"Hana, run!" Yoshi roared. "Get out!"

His eyes on hers. Begging. Pleading.

"Run, G.o.dsdammit! Just leave me and go!"

She looked at him then, the wolves closing in, and despite everything he'd done, everything he'd dragged them into, she found herself smiling.

"Blood is blood," she said.

One of the Scorpion Children tried to grapple her, and she caught him full in the face with the hammer, splitting his brow and dropping him like a brick. But another seized her from behind, wrapped two arms around her in a crushing, breathless hug, lifting her off the ground as she screamed and kicked and thrashed. The others closed in, all crooked smiles and empty eyes.

... Hana . .!

A gray shape pounced from the shadows, dug in with dirty razors and ran up her captor's legs. The yakuza howled and let her go, clutching at the spitting, hissing flurry of teeth and claws as Hana tumbled to the ground. He shrieked as Daken tore at his face, ripped his cheek and lips to shreds, yowling like an oni fresh from the Yomi gates. Hana crawled away from the yakuza, back toward the table. Hands seized her, tearing her hair as she screamed, a heavy weight bearing her to the ground.

... Hana . .!

She looked up and saw the bloodied yakuza seize Daken by the scruff, tearing him away in a spray of red and shaking him like a rag doll. She cried out as his hurt flowed into her, tearing muscle, popping bone. And as she watched, the man raised the cat high into the air and dashed him down onto the concrete.

Blinding pain, sending her reeling, fingernails clawing stone. Daken raised himself up, hissing, hurting, trying to crawl to safety.

... Hana ...

And as Hana watched, the gangster lifted his foot, spat a curse and stomped on Daken's head.

A scream. A scream of white pain and blackest hatred, a voice she didn't recognize as her own roaring as his spark flickered and died in her mind. She lurched to her feet, tore at the hands holding her, eye fixed on Daken's killer. But two other yakuza held her back, spitting, kicking as the grief tore her throat raw, Yoshi roaring with her, thrashing against his bonds.

She heard a heavy booming noise. A growling motor. Bubbling screams. Blades chopping at bags of wet mud, splashing and plopping onto the floor. The hands released her and she sank to the ground, stare fixed on the little gray smudge upon the stone. She crawled through the blood, tears running down scarlet cheeks, reaching out to run trembling fingers through that scarred and matted mess.

She remembered the mewling little handful of fur they'd pulled from the storm drain. Those big round eyes blinking up at her as she held him in her palm. The life they'd saved. The life that had saved theirs in return.

"Daken..." she whispered.

There were hands on her shoulders, pulling her up, and she turned and screamed and flailed. Arms wrapped around her, holding tight, and the voice roaring over her cries was telling her it was all right, it was all right now, hush, hush now Hana, it's all right. The hands held her close, not hard, gentle and strong and warm. And over the rushing tide of the blood in her ears and the raw agony of loss, she finally recognized his voice.

Akihito ...

She breathed his name, saw his face, grief plain in his eyes as he lowered her to the floor. He reached out with an unsteady hand, as if to smooth away the hurt where her left eye had been, fingers hovering just shy of her skin. And with tears in his eyes, he leaned forward and placed a gentle kiss on her b.l.o.o.d.y brow, and simply held her. Wrapped his arms about her and squeezed tight, whole and unmoving, until the cacophony of flames and cries and engines in the distance became too loud to ignore.

Minutes pa.s.sed. Or hours. She didn't know which.

"I have to let you go," he said.

"Don't." She held tighter.

"I'll come back."

"Promise?"

"I promise."

She released her grip, felt as if she were letting go of driftwood in a raging, spinning sea, sinking down, down, down into nothing. Akihito stood and cut Yoshi off the hook, sliced the tethers at his ankles. And between the pair of them, they helped Hana to her feet, led her limping from the warehouse, stepping out into a hymn of chaos and seething flame that seemed to come from underwater, muted and pulsing with faint light. The city around them trembled, burned, skies filled with smoke and the thunder of sky-ships and the rumble of a distant storm. But all of it seemed so far away; as distant and faint as the pain in her eye, the pain inside her where Daken used to be, all of it drifting up like sparks off the burning city's skin and disappearing into the black above.

"Where are we going?" she asked with someone else's voice.

"North," Akihito said. "To the Iishi Mountains."

"How will we get there?"

He squeezed her tight and the sound of his voice made her smile.

"We're going to fly."

53.

PHOENIX FIRE.

The night sky was the color of autumn days, a roll and swirl of reds and oranges and yellows, tasting of burning fuel and blackest smoke.

Michi retreated across the palace rooftops in only a silk slip, the thirty-odd pounds of her junihitoe abandoned before she'd made the climb. Little Tomo squirmed under one arm, her chainkatana clutched in her other hand. She listened to the chaos in the city beyond, the bushimen clambering up onto the roof after her. Their armor and weapons slowed them down, but it would only be a matter of time before they had her.

The guest wing was fully ablaze now, a flaming maw swallowing mouthfuls of tile and timber, creeping ever closer. Michi swung her chainkatana at a bushiman trying to scramble onto the roof, divesting him of his fingers, watching him scream and kiss the ground forty feet below.

The tiles shook, harder than the earthquake that had struck moments before, the vibrations accompanied by thunderous explosions. Michi looked toward the sky-docks, saw the Floating Palace of the Phoenix Daimyo looming above Docktown, spilling dozens upon dozens of barrage barrels from its innards onto the buildings below. Timber was reduced to kindling, metal to shrapnel as the Fushicho flagship emptied its payload onto the Tiger ships stranded at the sky-spires and the Dragon ships in the bay. The air was filled with Phoenix corvettes, firing with seeming abandon into the burning streets, strafing lines of Tiger bushi' with shards of spinning steel. It took Michi a moment to understand what was happening, and as realization dawned, she felt her lips curl into a grim smile.

The Phoenix clanlords have heard news of Aisha's death. No Kazumitsu. No oath.

"Treacherous b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," she whispered.

She tore her eyes from the carnage unfolding on the bay, back to her own world of hurt. Squinting through the roiling scrim of woodsmoke, she saw a half-dozen bushimen pulling themselves onto the rooftops at the other end of the royal wing-too far away to intercept. She heard metal biting into cedar, four grappling hooks digging into the gutters, silk line pulling taut as more guards ascended. Too many to stop. Too many to fight.

Michi backed across the roof, toward the burning guest wing, hoping the smoke might give her some concealment. Her heart sank as more and more red tabards appeared over the rooftops around her, the bushimen gathering and marching forward, one grim step at a time, naginata at the ready; a glittering wall of polished steel, gleaming with the light of the flames.

"I'm sorry, little Tomo." Michi put down the puppy, raised her chainblades. "You might have to make your own way home."

Forty feet away, the guards halted at a shout from their commander. The front row fell to one knee, blades outthrust. Michi saw the rear line drawing crossbows, loading them with quarrels thick as broomsticks.

"Cowards!" she screamed. "Come and get me!"

The commander raised his sword, and the crossbowmen took aim, expressions hidden behind black gla.s.s and red kerchiefs. Michi held her breath, stance spread, feeling the chaindaish motors as a rumble in her chest. But as armored fingers tightened on triggers, the rumble became a roar, a blast of wind and smoke from propeller blades, a black rain of arrows sailing through the air. She caught a glimpse of bold kanji running down a wooden prow, thick white letters on polished black: KUREA.

The sky-ship thundered down on the rooftop, the sound of her four great motors shaking the very skies. Splitting the tiles asunder, the Kurea interposed its hull between the girl and the bushimen's rain of crossbow bolts. Ropes were tossed and Michi thrust her chaindaish into her obi, scrabbled about on the roof, trying to scoop up Aisha's terrified puppy. The crew above screamed at her to get aboard, the ship beginning to rise. Engines bellowed with the strain, compressors shuddering as they were pushed into the redline, her inflatable groaning like it was about to burst.

Michi finally seized the pup's scruff, grabbed hold of a swaying, knotted line with her free hand. The crew hauled her up as the sky-ship ascended, the air full of smoke and crossbow bolts. Hard, callused hands dragged her over the railings and she slumped to the floor, breath burning in her lungs as the puppy scampered off across the deck. Propellers carved the air to ribbons, the ship trembling beneath them as they shed gravity's shackles, the light and noise of the burning capital fading away below.