Kinslayer (17 page)

“No, we can do it without combustion. I can set up the ’thrower feeders so they’re hand-cranked. They’ll be slower to fire, but it’s gas pressure that does most of the work.” Excitement in his gut, voice running quicker at the thought of building, of
creating
something again. “I can see it in my head. I was talking about it with Ayane and—”

“Ayane?” Yukiko frowned. “When did you talk to her?”

He blinked, confused. “This afternoon. In the prison.”

“Kin, you shouldn’t do that. The Kagé don’t trust it … I mean ‘her.’ If you spend time with her, they’re not going to trust you either.”

“You heard Atsushi and Isao at the pit trap this morning.” He tried to keep the bitterness from his voice. “None of them trust me anyway.”

“All the more reason to stay away from her.”

“She came all this way to find us. Do you realize what she’s given up to be here?”

“I don’t care what—”

“She’s alone, Yukiko. For the first time since her Awakening, she’s unplugged from the mechabacus. She can’t hear the voice of the Guild anymore, can’t feel them inside her head. Imagine spending years by the hearth of an Upside bedhouse. Everything is light and voices and song. And then one day you get thrown into the dark. You’ve never even seen night before. Never felt cold. But now it’s everywhere. That’s what she’s feeling right now, locked in that cell. That’s what she chose when she decided to come here.”

“We don’t know she
chose
anything. They could have
sent her here,
Kin—”

“Did you know every female born in the Guild becomes a False-Lifer?” He felt anger creeping into his voice, turning it hard and ugly and cold. “They don’t get a say in what they want to be. Don’t get to decide who they’re paired with, or when it’s time to breed. They don’t even get to meet the father of their children. Just another False-Lifer with an inseminator tube and a bottle of lubricant.”

“Gods, Kin—”

“So don’t shit on the choices she’s made, Yukiko.” He snatched his hand from hers. “It’s the first thing she’s decided for herself in her entire life. Not everyone gets a thunder tiger to help them out of their mistakes, you know. Some people risk everything they have alone.”

“Kin, I’m sorry…”

He climbed to his feet, and she lurched up after him, knocking the saké bottle onto its side. Rose-colored liquid spilled from the neck, soaking the boards at their feet. Kin turned to leave but she grabbed his hand again, pulled him around to face her.

“Don’t leave like this. Please.”

She was standing just inches away, fingers entwined in his own, lips parted ever so slightly. The world swayed beneath his feet, heart pounding against his ribs like a steamhammer. He was conscious of nothing in the world except her. The scent of her hair entwined in liquor perfume. Her skin radiating the warmth of a kiln, melting his insides. His mouth was suddenly dry, palms soaked. And though he tried, he felt as though he would never catch his breath again.

“Don’t be angry with me, Kin.” She inched closer. “I don’t want to fight with you.”

“What
do
you want from me, Yukiko?”

“It might be weeks before we see each other again.” Her eyes searched his face, lingered on his lips. “But we have an hour or so until Buruu comes back…”

She pressed against him, hands parting the cloth on his chest, trailing along his skin, white hot. He glanced at the spilled liquor around their feet, the tide of blood staining her cheeks and lips the color of roses.

“Kiss me,” she breathed.

She stood on tiptoes, arms slipping around his neck, mouth drifting toward his.

“Kiss me…”

She was like gravity, pulling him closer, heavy as the earth beneath him. No noise. No light. Only motion, only the pull of her, down, down to a place he wanted so badly he could taste it, feel it singing inside his chest. A place he would kill for. A place he could happily die inside.

But not like this.

Not like this.

“No.” He took hold of her shoulders, eased her away. “No.”

“Kin—”

“This isn’t you, Yukiko.”

“Not me?” she frowned. “Who am I then?”

“I’m not sure I know.” He gestured to the saké bottle on the floor. “Perhaps you find out when you get to the bottom?”

She remained herself for just a tiny moment longer, plain behind her eyes, wounded and sad and desperately alone. The girl he loved. The girl he would do anything for. And then she was gone. Wiped away in a rush of heat, pupils flashing, leaving the rage behind. The stranger who lived inside her skin. What had Ayane called her?

“The girl all Guildsmen fear
.
”

“You don’t get to judge me, Kin.”

“Godsdammit, I’m not judging you. I care about you! And I see you turning into this …
thing,
this Stormdancer, and piece by piece I see the Yukiko I know falling away.” He sighed, dragging a hand across his scalp. “I mean … you
killed
those Guildsmen, Yukiko. Three ironclads full. Over a hundred people. And you
killed
them.”

“I let one of them live.” Her stare was cold. Defiant. “But maybe I should have let them firebomb the forest? Maybe I should have let them kill
you
?”

“Since when were you a mass murderer?”

“Don’t you
dare
.” A low growl, eyes wide. “You stood by while
thousands
died—”

The words were a slap to his face, rocking him back on his heels. The memory of pale-skinned women and children, row upon row of gaijin shuffling meekly to meet their boiling end. Rendered down into fertilizer, reborn in some far-flung field as beautiful, blood-red flowers. He knew it was true. Everything she said. But to hear her say it …

He blinked at her. Speechless. Senseless.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” she sighed. “I’m sorry.”

Yukiko breathed deep, clawed away her hair. He could see it written on her face. Boiling inside her. Curling her fingers into fists, her lips to a grimace. When she spoke again, her voice was soft with it, trembling at the outskirts.

“I know it wasn’t your fault, Kin. The gaijin. Inochi. All of it. I know there was nothing you could do to stop it. Kaori and the others say otherwise. They say there’s no steel in you, but I know helping me in Kigen took more courage than most could ever dream.

“But this is war, Kin. The Yukiko you knew? That frightened little girl in the Shōgun’s palace? She’s gone.” Fire in her eyes. “She’s dead.”

“No steel in me…” he whispered, lips twisting in a bitter smile.

“It’s bullshit, Kin.” She took his hand, entwined her fingers with his own. “Don’t you believe it. Any of it. But know you have enemies here. People who see you as Guild first and everything else second. Stay close to Daichi while I’m gone. And stay as far from Ayane as you can. Don’t give them a reason to doubt you.”

“Why would I bother?” he spat. “They’re doing perfectly well without one…”

“Kin—”

“I hope you find the answers you seek.” He pulled his hand away, let it drop to his side. “I know Buruu will keep you safe.”

Hurt in her eyes as she chewed her lip, searched the dark for the right words to say.

“Kiss me good-bye?”

Hovering uncertain. Wanting it more than he could say. Pride and anger shushing want, leaving it alone and friendless. All he’d given, all he’d sacrificed, and this was the life he’d purchased. Watching her fly away. Leaving him, just like she’d left him in Kigen. Alone.

Again.

He put his hands to her cheeks, feeling the satin warmth of her skin, the sensation of it beneath his tingling fingertips almost crushing his resolve to powder. But in the end, tilting her head up to his, her lips parting ever so softly, he leaned down and kissed her gently on the brow.

“Good-bye, Stormdancer,” he said.

And then he turned and walked away.

Part of him screamed he was an idiot. That he would regret it. But anger and pride urged him on, the burning fuel of the indignant fool, and he stalked off into the dark with the waterfall of his blood thrashing in his ears. She called his name again, just once. But he didn’t stop. Didn’t turn his head. And somewhere deep in the back of his mind, a tiny thought found its voice for the first time; a whisper almost too faint to hear.

It kept him awake most of the night, belly-up on his mattress of straw, staring at the ceiling with sandbag eyes. Breathing. Listening. The limbo of insomnia, gray and bottomless as the hours dragged on forever, leaving him in the muddy dawn with a heart exhausted and seven words lodged in his mind like a handful of splinters.

The same question.

Over and over again.

What the hells are you doing here?

10

SALT AND COPPER

Yoshi’s lashes fluttered against his cheeks as he stole along fly-blown gutters on four feather-light feet. Towers of fetid waste looming all around him, nostrils filled with rot and fresh death, blood leaking from a broken skull onto cracked cobbles. He skulked past a snarling brood—a sleek and fearsome bunch, fourteen strong—scratching and fighting as they tore strips from the new bones. Squealing and spitting at him as he scampered by. A warning. A challenge. First spoils to the finders. Leavings to the rest. Our meat. Our alley. Our dirt.

He could smell salt and sweet copper, his stomach growled for the slippery, lovely wanting of it, warm and sticky-lush. But on he scampered, up through the spindly broken-leg alleys, a stale ocean of refuse in which to swim. Whiskers twitching. Mangy hide inflamed from the furious worrying of a dozen fat, black fleas. Pausing to scratch with scabrous little claws, delighting in the bloody relief.

Stopping in the alley mouth across from the whorehouse, blinking with eyes as dark as river water, his tail twitching. Rough-looking men were gathered in the stoop, arms inked from shoulder to wrist, speaking in hushed, lotus-scarred voices. No clan tattoos on their shoulders, no, just floral patterns and geisha girls and interlocking scorpions marking them as Burakumin. Lowborns all—turned to the shadow trade calling every man birthed in Kigen’s gutters. The fist and the fade. The smoke and the skin. A den of them. A seething, sweltering nest of them.

Yakuza
.

Minutes passed. Hours. The Moon God Tsukiyomi rode low in the sky behind a choking veil of fumes. More painted men strolled up to the stoop, ushered inside with gap-toothed smiles. And finally, as the hours wore on and the Goddess Amaterasu was just beginning to lighten the eastern skies, two men exited the building. The first, a skulking knife-thin bastard, yellowed teeth like broken stumps in dark gums. The second, a short, broad lump with piggy eyes and cauliflower ears. On their shoulders, each gangster carried a small beaten satchel, filled with the clink of muffled coin. Yoshi felt his whiskers curl, yellow teeth bared in what might have been a smile, and he whispered thanks to the body he rode and stole on back to his own.

He opened his eyes

the room throbbing and all

a-shudder flexed inside long limbs and hairless

flesh and grubby cloth the body he’d lived most of his

life inside feeling

for just a moment

longer

like something utterly

repulsively

wrong.

Jurou was sitting across from him as his vision came into shuddering focus. Dark bangs hanging in dew-moist eyes, empty lotus pipe utterly wasted on those perfect lips.

“Well?” he said.

“Same time. Every morning just before the dawn,” Yoshi smiled. “It’s a money-house for certain.”

“Who runs it?”

“Scorpion Children. Biggest yakuza crew in Downside.”

“You sure you want to start that heavy?”

“You recall a time old Yoshi ever did things by halves, Princess?”

“I’m just not—”

Yoshi put his finger to Jurou’s lips, frowning toward the door.

“Daken’s back. Hana too.”

Yoshi arranged himself on a pile of cushions in the corner, Jurou leaning against his bare chest. He sipped the dregs of their rice wine, felt the big tom drawing closer, the way a magnet must feel as iron draws near. Slouching on his cushion, legs askew, hand snagged in Jurou’s hair as Hana’s key twisted in the lock. Tipping his split-brimmed hat away from his eyes, he aimed a crooked smile at his little sister.

“This is the part where I juggle some comedy about what the cat dragged—”

Hana stole into the room, looking paler than usual, skin filmed in a sheen of fresh sweat. Behind her loomed one of the biggest men Yoshi had ever raised an eyebrow at. A straw hat pulled down low over his brow, ragged black cloak over street-worn thread. Door-broad shoulders, a jaw you could break your knuckles on, a few steps on the right side of handsome, truth be told—at least from what Yoshi could see. He walked with a pronounced limp.

“Well, well,” Jurou smiled. “Took my advice, girl?”

Hana muttered a mouthful, looking embarrassed. Shuffling before the pair like a disobedient child before the Great Judge, she gestured feebly to the giant still looming in the doorway. She spoke so fast her words tripped over each other in the rush to her teeth.