The Lotus War - Kinslayer Part 58

Michi pulled herself to her feet, staring at the crew dashing to and fro.

"Who the h.e.l.ls are you people?"

"Michi-chan," said a voice.

She turned and saw a tear-streaked face, pale with grief and anger, steel-gray eyes, a long scar cutting from brow to chin.

"Kaori?" Michi reached out as if the woman were an apparition. "G.o.ds..."

And they were in each other's arms, holding tight, as if the whole world might fall away beneath their feet. Michi blinked back the tears, looked at the smoke-stained faces of the folk around her, grim and drawn-faces that spoke of defeat, not victory. Her heart swelled in her chest as she caught sight of Akihito slumped against a far railing, a teenaged boy crouched beside him. Blood-soaked and exhausted, but the big man was alive at least, and for that, she closed her eyes and gave thanks. Aisha's puppy was snuffling about the boy's feet, the sh.e.l.l-shocked lad blinking, reaching down to him with one trembling hand.

"We were expecting to have to fight our way in for you." Kaori stepped back, their hands still entwined. "Where is Aisha?"

"Gone." Michi shook her head. "She's gone."

Kaori closed her eyes, looking for a moment as if she might fall. She dragged a feeble breath through gritted teeth, shoulders slumping.

"Then it was all for nothing..."

"How did you know where to find me? That I was still in the palace?"

"I told them."

A girl sat alone against the railing nearby, clothed in shadow and blood. A pale face, painted red. An unruly bob of ink-black hair, one eye covered by a blood-soaked bandage, the other glowing the color of rose quartz.

Michi blinked. "Who are you?"

The girl managed to smile. "Call me No One, Michi-chan."

"You..." Michi knelt by the girl's side, concern and grat.i.tude filling her with equal measure. The girl looked battered, bruised, b.l.o.o.d.y. But unbroken. Michi hugged her fiercely, a clumsy, feeble thanks forming on her lips.

"Guild!" A cry rang out from the crow's nest. "Guild on our tail!"

Michi looked aft, squinting through the exhaust haze. The skies over Kigen were ablaze, a handful of Guild and Tiger sky-ships locked in deadly battle with the traitorous Phoenix fleet. The Floating Palace was laying down a wall of shuriken fire to stave off the a.s.sault, slowly cruising toward the Shgun's palace, its retinue of corvettes blurring the sky around it. The entirety of Docktown seemed to be on fire. But a few Guild ships had somehow noticed the Kurea in the melee and had turned to pursue. Even with the capital of the Imperium in flames, the chi-mongers had set their sights on the Kage and intended to run them to ground.

Michi released No One, ran up to the captain's deck, Kaori beside her. Cloudwalkers were gathered at the railing, cursing beneath their breath.

"Two dreadnoughts," said one.

"Plus the corvettes to run us down," another spat.

The Kurea's captain stood like a stone pillar at the pilot's wheel, tanned skin and sparkling eyes. He was tall and barrel-shaped, with an enormous braided beard and a long plait streaming out behind him. His voice was a drumming roar over the wind.

"All hands to stations! All hands!" He turned to his first mate, teeth clenched. "Get below. Dump the ballast and any extra weight. Anything that's not nailed down. Go! Go!"

The crew scattered to their posts, half a dozen heading belowdecks, soon emerging with crates, furniture, ropes and tackle, heaving great handfuls over the side and out into the city below. Michi heard the engines pick up, the four great prop-blades churning the air, tethers and cables groaning with the strain.

"Can we outrun them?" Michi murmured.

The captain glanced at her, slammed the throttle to full ahead.

"Or die trying," he said.

54.

THE CRUELEST STORM.

His bride? Murdered.

His allies? Traitors.

His capital? Ablaze.

All was undone.

Kigen thrashed below him, body charring, skin crawling. Thousands of people fleeing to the city walls, throwing themselves into the bay amidst the flaming ruins of the Dragon clan's tall ships. Empty motor-rickshaws rolling down the roads, burning as they went. Gla.s.s falling like rain. Bewildered bystanders, faces streaked with soot and blood. Stepping aside or crushed underfoot. Fire and dancing silhouettes, a tumult, a discord, arms held to the sky and swaying in the pulse.

Chaos.

Hiro stood aboard the flagship Red Tigress, watching his world crumble to ruin. After the Phoenix attack on the sky-docks, he'd mustered what defense he could, scrambling aboard his flagship as his city burned. Two Tiger dreadnoughts and three Guild ironclads had managed to intercept the Floating Palace on its way into Upside, cut off its a.s.sault on the palace proper. But the traitors Shin and Shou had already set fire to half of Docktown, their surprise a.s.sault incinerating most of Hiro's heavy ships and half the Guild fleet while still at berth. Worse yet, the Dragon clanlord and his Iron Samurai had quit the field immediately once news of Aisha's murder spread among the troops. Daimyo Haruka had returned to the palace to rescue his wife, but Hiro fully expected him to flee the city afterward. He supposed he should be grateful the clanlord hadn't turned on him too.

This was their notion of honor? Of Bushido? Of the Way? Once the samurai of this nation had believed in something more than themselves. In courage. Service. Self-sacrifice. And yet quicker than lotusflies, both the Phoenix and the Dragons had turned and bared their fangs, their own dreams of rule burning brighter than the houses in Hiro's capital.

But was he so different?

How pure were his motives for accepting the throne Kensai had dangled before him?

The iron hand at his side clenched, the ashes of funeral offerings caked upon his lips.

"Treacherous b.a.s.t.a.r.ds all of us..." he breathed.

The Floating Palace loomed above the slaughter, buoyed by swelling thermals rushing up from Kigen's blazing carca.s.s. With a few more ships, Hiro felt he could have taken on the flying fortress and blown it from the clouds. But, incomprehensibly, Second Bloom Kensai had diverted two Guild ironclads from the battle and sent them chasing the Kage rebels, now fleeing the city in some Dragon merchantman. Hiro had received reports that the leader of the Kage had been captured by the Lotusmen-he was already in their G.o.dsd.a.m.ned hands. But Kensai seemed intent on ending the rebellion tonight, once and for all. To the h.e.l.ls with Shima's capital. No matter if these effete Fushicho b.a.s.t.a.r.ds turned Kigen into an inferno.

Shin and Shou had sat at his table. He had welcomed them into his city. And now they were burning that city to cinders. But if Kigen was truly his, if the throne, the mantle, the Way held any meaning for him at all, surely he owed it more than a token defense? Surely he owed the people below, his people, all he had to give?

Hiro clenched his teeth, enamel grinding, a burning glare set on the towering sky-ship laying all about it to waste. He turned to the Tigress captain.

"Send word to the Kazumitsu's Honor." He nodded to the other Tiger vessel floating off their starboard. "Send to the Guild ships also. Full attack."

"Hai!" the captain barked.

Engines kicked into the red, the Tigress shuddering as she swung her snout around and lumbered toward the enemy. The Phoenix corvettes were swift to intercept, filling the sky between Hiro and his quarry. Crews manning the Tigress's batteries opened up, and chug!chug!chug!chug! came the thunder of the shuriken-throwers. The corvettes returned fire, men on both sides became limp, lifeless meat, washing the decks with their insides, red as lotus blooms. Hiro ducked low, a shuriken whistling over his head, two more spanging off his spaulders and breastplate. A Phoenix corvette dropped from the sky, crashed into the walls of Kigen arena. Another collided with the Guild ship Red Bloom, clipping its inflatable and exploding into flame, the falling ironclad immolating a city block below.

Screams of pain from the streets beneath him. Prayers for mercy.

And there he stood, with none to give.

The Phoenix corvettes came about for a second attack as the Tiger fleet drew within range of the Floating Palace's heavy 'throwers. The barrage hit Hiro's ships like hail in winter's bleakest hour, tearing holes through the Honor and littering its decks with dead. Another Phoenix corvette burst into flames and exploded in midair, momentum stringing its remnants out along the sky like fireworks on a feast day. Engines roaring, men around Hiro screaming for coordinates, for ammunition, for their mothers, lying in puddles of their own guts and clutching the places their limbs were supposed to be. The air filled with gleaming, hissing death, a tempo and percussion of razor-sharp steel and chug!chug!chug!chug! went the music they all danced to, and when it stopped there was only roaring propellers and cries of pain and lifeless shapes staring at starless skies. Eyes and mouths open. Seeing and saying nothing at all.

"We can't get close, my Lord!" the captain cried. "Our inflatable is already ruptured! I can't keep her aloft for long!"

"Get on the radio to Kensai!" Hiro roared. "We need those ironclads back here!"

"They're pursuing the Kage, great Lord!"

"To the Endsinger with the Kage! If these Phoenix b.a.s.t.a.r.ds decide to destroy Kigen rather than claim it as their own-"

As if bidden, the Floating Palace changed course, swinging away from the Tiger palace and bringing itself to bear on the smoking chimney stacks to the west of the blazing bay.

The refinery ...

The ground around the chi refinery glittered with blood-red eyes and firelight reflections, gleaming on the suits of dozens of Guild Purifiers. The Lotusmen were dousing everything in sight with flame-r.e.t.a.r.dant foam, Guild marines spraying burning buildings with black water pumped in from the bay, beating back the inferno from the refinery storage tanks. But if the Floating Palace had any fire-barrage munitions in reserve ...

The captain of Kazumitsu's Honor had sent his ship on a roaring collision course with the Palace, but as she drew close, her inflatable was riddled with heavy 'thrower fire. The ironclad's return salvo tore great, heaving gouges in the Palace's own balloon, but its sheer size and number of hydrogen compartments kept the behemoth afloat, droning toward its target. The air was filled with half a dozen Phoenix corvettes, cutting through the rolling smoke, airborne sparks dancing like fireflies.

In a minute, maybe less, the Phoenix would be directly over the refinery.

One barrel would be all it took.

"Captain," Hiro said. "Set course for the Palace. Ramming speed."

"... Hai!"

Hiro cursed, licked ashes from his lips. Be this his last breath, he'd take those honorless dogs down to walk with him in the h.e.l.ls. The iron fist at his side clenched, involuntary, thoughts turning to the vengeance he'd now be forever denied. The murder he'd dreamed of, her face upturned to his, terror in her eyes as he closed iron fingers around that pretty throat and squeezed the very life from her body.

And then thunder tore the skies.

The reverb rolling down his spine, familiar as a lover's fingertips, gooseb.u.mps rippling across his skin. Running to the railing. Ashes cracking on his cheeks as he narrowed his eyes, squinted into the fire-clad pall filled with sparks and smoke and screams of the dying.

Looking for them.

Looking for her.

And like a dream, there she was.

"Yukiko..."

Buruu's roar cut the sky, talons tearing through the inflatable of a swift Phoenix corvette, sending it tumbling to the earth. Yukiko was pressed low to his back, katana drawn, hair streaming behind her in a cinder wind. The air was filled with shuriken fire, burning sky-ships, Tiger and Guild and Phoenix, all hammering at each other with every 'thrower they had. The city below was ablaze, folk fleeing in screaming droves, the night almost as bright as the day. Chaos. Absolute b.l.o.o.d.y chaos.

LOVELY WEDDING.

Buruu's thoughts echoed in the Kenning, underscored with the reverb of psychic trauma in the city below and fatigue from their frantic eight-day flight here. Yukiko's eyes were full of sand, head heavy as lead, bruised face and pounding skull. Every muscle aching. Every breath burning. Buruu and Kaiah had both given almost everything to get here, but at least they'd made it in time to see. The sight filled her with horror and joy, the fury and bedlam of it all. She had no idea where they'd even begun, but somehow Kin and Daichi and Kaori had done it. Set the wolves upon each other. Torn the wedding night to tatters and Hiro's dreams of dominion to ruins. She could taste smoke through her grin.

Reaching out through the Kenning's heat, she felt for the thunder of Kaiah's psyche, pulled the female aras.h.i.tora's thoughts into herself, wincing at the volume. Beneath a pulsing rush of pain against her wall, blood on her lips, she could feel both thunder tigers inside her mind, her thoughts a conduit between each, her skull echoing with the pair's bloodl.u.s.t and awe.

I don't know what the h.e.l.ls is going on here. But unless I'm mad, those Phoenix ships are attacking the city.

-LEAVE MONKEY-CHILDREN TO THEIR SLAUGHTER?- Buruu growled in response.

THERE ARE INNOCENTS IN THE CITY BELOW.

Buruu is right, we can't just- A burst of 'thrower fire gleamed through the smoke toward them, Buruu and Kaiah splitting apart and weaving through the shards. The Tiger and Guild vessels had spotted them, opening up with their batteries alongside the Phoenix ships. Whatever enmity had sprung up between the two clans, it seemed to vaporize in the presence of Yoritomo's a.s.sa.s.sin and two full-grown thunder tigers. But glancing at the deck of the monstrous Fushicho flagship, Yukiko could see her crews loading barrage-barrels into firing tubes, priming ignition charges. Picturing the bombardment of the Iishi forest in her mind's eye, looking at the course they were on, Yukiko felt a cold dread in her gut beside the two burning sparks of life she could now feel with every part of- They're going to attack the refinery chi reserves! Kaiah, you keep the smaller ships off our tails long enough for us to deal with the big one!

A low growl was her only response, and Buruu was swooping and rolling through the withering hail of shuriken spewing from the flagship's flanks. The Tiger and Guild vessels were still pouring on the fire too, a stray burst cutting one pursuing corvette to shreds. Yukiko slipped into the heat behind Buruu's eyes, felt the thunder of his pulse inside her own chest, clinging to him with all her strength as they wove through the silver rain. She felt herself falling inside him, that familiar totality stretching out to envelope her, infant lightning playing at the tips of her fingers as he opened her mouth and roared. And there in the fire-torn black, the air around her filled with whistling death, his heat beneath her skin and her thoughts within his mind, they felt the warmth of them, the four of them, and found a oneness no other could ever know.

Crashing through a corvette's inflatable, canvas torn to ribbons, the screeching of propeller blades across the sky. Falling and flying and spinning and swooping, her beak open as he roared and clapped their wings together, blue-white flaring across the severed beauty of their feathers and Raijin Song, Raijin Song, stretching out and taking hold of the night's hem, tearing it to tatters and the ships filling it alongside, a shock wave from the heart of them smashing the tiny flying things as if they were wrought of gla.s.s. Through the spinning fragments, toward the hulking shape of the death writ large over Kigen skies, the Phoenix and their palace of pleasures, now sowing death in great flaming handfuls through the streets below. Kaiah's roar thrilling them, electricity rippling along her hackles, bellowing in response, the cry for war, the call for blood, blood, blood like rain as they tore another wingless fly from the air.

But to sink in it?

To drown?

Down through the hail, a strike to his shoulder, blood on her feathers, shrieking in rage. Swooping under the belly of the colossal ship, a brief moment of stillness in the shadow below, gravity clutching them cold and trembling as they dragged themselves up the other side, momentum and ma.s.s and beautiful, thunderous will ripping them up past the astonished faces of the Phoenix crews, the open howling mouths of two men with painted eyes and beautiful, perfect faces, resplendent in sunflower silk fine enough to die in. Riding a beast of metal and wood and canvas-the dream of monkeys crawled down from the trees, looking to the skies since the day they were born and filled with yearning. To feel the clouds kiss their faces and the wind in their hair and the weak slip of gravity as it fell away like a tiny, mewling thing. A question. Always.

Why not, my friend?

Why not fly?

And they screamed it-the two (four) who were one (one), there at the last, talons outstretched and rending deep, compartment after compartment, the skin of the false-flyer peeled open like ripe fruit and spilling the squeal of escaping hydrogen out in the flooded night. Screamed their throat raw. Screamed for all the world to hear and feel and know. The answer why not, my friend, why not fly.

Because the skies are ours.

Because the sky is mine.

And the fire bloomed in their talons, reflected in their eyes, gleaming amber and bottomless black, trembling in their grip. The tiny handheld flare, just a spark unworthy of the name of flame. How easy would it be to hurl it toward the vapor, like a lover heartsick from a day of solitude, back into its beloved's arms? And in that marriage, that love, that l.u.s.t, conflagration would bloom, a shattering as wide and bright as a G.o.d's eye, searing and blistering and mushroom-shaped. An unmaking filled with the scream of Phoenix lords, princelings undone by flame's bright kiss, their Palace blown to splinters and shards of iron, raining down on fair Kigen like the cruelest storm. Ashes to scatter on the screaming wind, falling like fine snow, swirling amidst the smoke and char and soot and dusting the gutters with all they had been and ever would be.

Not enough left for even a Phoenix to rise from.

How easy would it be?

They dug their knuckles into her temples. Bloodl.u.s.t pounding in their (her) skull. They had been here before. The sight of three ironclads tumbling from the sky in her (their) mind's eye. Ayane's terrified gaze. Takeo's letter. Her own tears. Kin's voice echoing in their thoughts.

"And piece by piece I see the Yukiko I know falling away..."

They blinked.

Too easy.

And they saw true. The hundreds of lives aboard the Phoenix flagship. The men and women who were not soldiers or clanlords, samurai or butchers. The servants and engineers, the cabin boys and deckhands. The people who dreamed of beloveds' arms or children's smiles, not growling swords and empty thrones-all of them would die if she let the flare fall. If she let herself slip beneath the flood. If she gave anger its head.

Is that what she was? Is that what she'd become?